Reflection Roundup: Sacramental Hospitality
Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. Here are 10 things worth sharing this week.
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1. As we move through the throes of pandemic transitions, we continue exploring how to enrich and strengthen human connection within our churches. Simple Church in Grafton, Massachusetts, a body of believers familiar with relevant worship innovation, has found something that is sticking. Discovered within the query, “What of our practices translates well online?” dinner church continued seamlessly – and expanded – through last year’s transition to Zoom. Kendall Vanderslice writes “How are dinner churches surviving the pandemic?” for Christian Century, quoting Christian Scharen, pastor at a Brooklyn, New York, church experimenting similarly: “Our culture and our identity, our hospitality to one another, that translates just fine.” Vanderslice writes, “Scharen believes that this ability to feel known and acknowledged, to express fears and hear the concerns of others, is precisely what worshipers need from church right now.” For more on the topic of table fellowship, see “Eating Together” by David Camera for Tabletalk, and Going to Church in the First Century by Robert Banks.
2. Opening our hearts to the pain of the world means first hosting our own wounds and acknowledging their commonalities with those of humanity. As spring resurrects life from an earthy-hard winter, Jake Owensby reminds us of the repetitive references Jesus made to the seed and the death it must undergo in order for a multitude of life to spring forth in “Dealing With Our Pain.” In the wake of exhaustion and grief many times over, may we sow and be sown in love for the sake of God and for the benefit of the people of God.
3. Gallup senior editor Jeffrey M. Jones reports “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time.” As the population of the United States shifts, those in younger generations are less likely to designate membership in a particular church even as those who profess religion remain around 70%. While the recent decline in affiliation could be pandemic-related, “continued decline in future decades seems inevitable, given the much lower levels of religiosity and church membership among younger versus older generations of adults.” Jones cites Gallup’s 2017 assessment of the reasons folks go to church, but perhaps the world has recently changed to such a degree that a real-time look is in order. ACU’s own professor of Sociology & Family Studies, Suzie Macaluso, writes “Resource Highlight: What the Church Health Assessment Is Teaching Us About Generational Differences” for Mosaic, naming and unpacking some of these generational differences in meaningful ways based upon data generated by the Siburt Institute’s Church Health Assessment.
4. Globally, Christianity is on the rise. Y Bonesteele writes “How the Growing Global Church Can Encourage American Christians” for Lifeway Research, exemplifying how data from around the world challenges U.S. trends in hopeful ways. Drawing on other sources, she shares that “Protestant Christianity is probably the fastest-growing faith” in China (from The Economist’s article) and that “before 2050, Africa will be the first continent that is home to more than 1 billion Christians” (from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary’s research). Bonesteele charges, “Let’s continue learning these lessons from believers in other countries to help us grow in our own maturity and the maturity of God’s church for the glory of God.”
5. The Crossway Podcast hosts author Rosaria Butterfiled for “Practicing Hospitality in a Pandemic,” in which Butterfield applies her robust theology of hospitality to the current season. She describes this moment as one in which the church is “relying more heavily on basic means of grace just to get through things,” saying that “hospitality is ground zero for the church and has to continue.” Butterfield unpacks how her pastoral family has done this and reminds us, “We have to think about our impact on those who do not yet know the Lord, those whose lives have been ruined by the shutdown, and not just protect ourselves and our own.”
6. John Mark Comer, author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, joins Carey Nieuwhof on the Barna Group’s Church Pulse Weekly podcast in a compelling conversation extracting the root of many current challenges for leaders in any capacity: fear. Comer describes a personal journey to the feet of the mystics, away from this tendency of fear and grasping for control, toward embracing what comes, in love. The conversation propels leaders to be mindful. “God can use the stripping away of comforts, familiarity, predictability, to teach us God is in control, and moves us to a place of trusting love for God.” Comer offers practical strategies to rest hard and resist the tyranny of the urgent, reminding the listener that leadership itself is a form of suffering.
7. Author Jay Y. Kim, author of Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age, expands the topic of joy in “Should Online ‘Church’ Continue After the Pandemic?” He unpacks the longing even the introverts among us feel for the presence of the body of Christ in worship. Nehemiah reminded the people of their joy in his teaching message to the worshipful body: together with the Lord and one another, therein lies our strength (Neh. 8:10). Kim offers practical suggestions to re-engage our hearts, minds, and bodies alongside one another; it’s been awhile!
8. In his article on workplace burnout for Harvard Business Review, senior associate editor Dave Lievens hits on some frames through which one might view any place experiencing the events of this past year. “How the Pandemic Exacerbated Burnout” evidences ways in which the pandemic has contributed to a general feeling among many people of being overextended as increased daily demands don’t appear to be relenting. Lievens’s interview with Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach offers fruitful ways to acknowledge this reality, including expressing gratitude for the contributions people have made, communicating openly, and acknowledging that things have, in fact, changed. Expressing care for the personal well-being of those around us goes a long way in combating feelings of overload.
9. As many of our churches contemplate ways to gather, safe health practices point us to smaller groups. It appears, once more, that small groups are where it’s at! Ryan T. Hartwig shares “Why Teams? Top 10 Benefits” on Care-Net. We are the imago Dei, and Hartwig reminds us of 10 truths regarding our reflection of the community that is God, which make so much sense for this present moment in our churches. Hartwig is co-author of Leading Small Groups That Thrive: Five Shifts to Take Your Group to the Next Level along with Courtney W. Davis and Jason A. Sniff.
10. Many of us have thought about it; this couple actually did it.
