Easter 3B
2018 RCL
Rev.
Dr. Adam T. Trambley
April 15,
2018, St. John’s Sharon
Ministry Project Learnings
Last month, I defended my Doctor of Ministry
dissertation. While we have a formal graduation in May, I am now officially the
Reverend Doctor Adam Trambley, although Jane said when I called Sharon
Regional, I wasn’t allowed to introduce myself as Dr. Trambley. I wanted to
share some of the practical results of the thesis work I did with you this
morning. Over the past three years, I’ve
actually shared more of my school work than you are probably aware of. A few summers ago, I did a presentation on
some of the results from the congregational study that was my first project
toward the degree. Those presentations
are still on the church website, and a number of folks in the parish helped me
put together the data. Other class
projects and papers have turned into sermons or other kinds of projects. While school
work included a variety of theological and theoretic readings, the focus was on
practical ministry development in the context of this parish and our community.
For my thesis project, I took nine community
leaders on prayerwalks and brought them together for a ninety-minute focus
group afterwards. Everyone I worked with had a Christian background, so we had
a common basis to understand what we were doing, but they all had different
levels of belief and church involvement today.
Most who were active in a church are Roman Catholic, which isn’t
surprising for this area.
I decided to take people on prayerwalks for a
couple of reasons. The most primary one
is that I’ve seen a lot of people doing what I would consider God’s work in the
community, but without understanding that their passion is also a real vocation. The Bible contains a number of places that
describe characteristics of a redeemed city for God. For example, Isaiah chapter 65 describes a vision
of people having meaningful jobs, extended families networks, adequate food and
shelter, health and long life, and an absence of violence. Striving to create communities with these
characteristics is basic Christian ministry. Church outreach ministries are
based on this kind of vision, and we do some of this work on a weekly basis at
St. John’s. A lot of the work that helps
determine whether a city can take strides being such a community, however, is
accomplished in work that rarely turns up on a church committee agenda. Work like community development, neighborhood
clean-ups, zoning, municipal bond financing, personnel policies, and community
policing can all make a huge difference when done with integrity, courage, and
vision. Helping people who are already
doing that work see their work as God’s work is important for their own
understanding, as well as allowing us all to be the church for our entire
community. Most folks, even those in
church every week, do most of their ministry in places besides the church, and
we need to recognize and value the importance of those ministries.
The second reason I chose to take community leaders on prayerwalks is because I believe prayerwalking transforms communities. Prayer matters. Prayer changes lives. Prayer is the spiritual work we do to shine light into dark places, to invite God’s transforming power into the situations around us, and to make known to God our hopes and dreams for our lives and our communities. Prayerwalking is, as one author puts it, “praying on-site with insight.” When we prayerwalk, we walk through a section of town and lift up to God what we see, taking the time to really notice what is going in our community. When prayerwalking we give thanks for where we see God at work, ask God to bless good things that are happening, and ask God to intervene in those situations that seem to require a transformation. Prayerwalking can be done alone, but is even better with two or three people walking around and just talking to God together about what they see. As one of the people in my thesis project said, “it was like being on a three-way call with God.”
Over the years, I have done a lot of
prayerwalking personally in this community, and we as a parish have also had
teams of people prayerwalking at times.
When people have gone out into the community, whether into residential
neighborhoods or through downtown or to the Mercer courthouse or around schools
or wherever, we have seen God show up in noticeable ways. By taking community leaders on prayerwalks, I
hoped that they could see where God was at work in the city in new ways while
also recognizing the importance of their own work.
Through interviews following the prayerwalks
and the focus group afterwards, I found that a number of important things
happened for people. One outcome was that some leaders realized the need to connect
prayer with their other work. One
person, for example, said he didn’t realize God had anything to do with
economic development, but now saw that we need to bring God into our economic
development conversations and bring the right intentions to the table. Another person noted how much he thought
about the community needs and how after the prayerwalk he felt he could just
talk to God about them.
A second outcome was that people learned how to
pray. So often, churches have presented
a very formal, complicated sense of prayer that should be left to clergy or
other “spiritual” people. Any of us can
pray, however. All we need to do is
invite God into a conversation about what is going on around us. After the prayerwalk, one person talked about
how she never knew that she could just pray, even though she has been active in
church all her life. She said she
regularly takes her children for walks in their neighborhood, and now she could
encourage them to thank God for good things they see on their walks. Another participant said she isn’t sure she
believes in God. Yet, when I talked to her a few weeks after we went on two
prayerwalks, she could point to at least two different times when she saw
something going on and started praying, which she described as putting good
energy out. Even if she doesn’t use
churchy words, she is lifting up needs in the community and shining light into
them.
Other participants were able to identify the
work they were doing as participating in God’s vision for the community in ways
they wouldn’t have articulated otherwise.
One participant, who rarely attends church, works tirelessly as a
volunteer in different neighborhoods. He
talked about how God’s vision is that people are taken care of, and if a couple
of blocks away people are suffering, God would want us to do something about
it. Another participant described how he
felt called by old buildings that needed to be rehabilitated, and how helpful
and meaningful taking the time for prayer was when we prayerwalked around some
of the places he was working on.
These results are some of the direct fruits of
taking people on just two prayerwalks.
On one level, simply by prayerwalking with others, people’s
understanding of God at work in the community and the value of our own work in
the community deepened. I think those
from the parish who participated in prayerwalks at different times would also
say they experienced similar things. On
another level, I know that these prayerwalks made a difference for the
community, even if I can’t point specifically to what that prayer accomplished.
I would also note than anyone can not only prayerwalk through their
neighborhood, but they can also invite someone else to join them – and probably
see similarly important changes. If you
have further questions about how to get started prayerwalking, let me know and
I’ll work with you.
For my project, those who went on two
prayerwalks gathered afterwards for a focus group. In that conversation, they touched upon places
that the church could make a difference in the community. These topics arose as people talked about
what they experienced and where they saw God at work. As I went through what I heard, I distilled
these areas as places that community leaders saw a need that is also smackdab
in the middle of what churches are supposed to do. These areas are natural places of entry for
as we seek to make a difference outside our doors and share God’s love with
people. Here are some of the ways we can
live out our purpose while meeting the community’s needs.
A second issue that community leaders raised
was the need to have hope. Christians
have hope. Easter is all about
hope. Yet so many areas of our community
do not have hope. They think they are
stuck where they are and have no way out.
They need someone to offer them hope and we can do that. We offer hope in a couple of important
ways. First, we know that people are
children of God who live in communities that God has a vision for. We lift up hope as the eventual working out
of God’s plan for his children, which means that the hope is not in the next
exciting plan or new proposal, however helpful those might be. Hope also means that the negative aspects of
our current life need to be recognized so they can be removed. Hope is not ignoring our present
difficulties. As a church, we show we
believe in that hope by sticking with our community and living like we believe
things can and will be better. We take
care of our facilities, we are present to those around us, and we work with
people who want to make our community better.
Everyone here who decorates the outside of the church or who weeds the
lawn or does any work stemming from the belief that God is doing something at
the foot of the West Hill in downtown Sharon is proclaiming hope to this area,
and the community needs that hope.
Third, people in the community are hungering
for spiritual practices. People are eager to learn how to pray, how to connect
themselves to something transcendent, and how to find peace. These disciplines
are the basic framework of Christian daily life. At the same time, most unchurched people, and
especially unchurched young people, are not going to break down our doors to
ask us to teach them. We need to be out
in the community sharing our own practices in different contexts, including in
informal one-on-one situations. Self-help
books, on-line forums, and places like the Emerald Tablet are all testaments to
people looking for the kinds of answers that the church can provide, but we
have to be where people are instead of waiting for them to find us.
A place to belong is another huge need that
everyone has. Churches can offer places
to belong on a variety of levels from being able to anonymously sit with others
in a liturgy to working together on projects to developing significant
friendships in a small group. Ensuring
that we are welcoming and loving and respectful of what kind of belonging
people are looking for can make a huge difference for people’s lives, as well
as their faith.
Memory was another area that mattered to
people. By memory, I mean being able to
have a place where someone can come to terms with what has happened in their
lives, feel loved and accepted regardless of their past, and be able to
integrate those past memories into their current life in a healthy way. Such integration doesn’t necessary require
lots of intense sharing of people’s past, although in some cases it could. What is necessary is proclaiming in both word
and deed that God does love everyone, the Jesus died and rose for all of us to
destroy sin and death, and that we believe that forgiveness is real. Such a message that comes through in all a
church does allows people to come for the healing and wholeness they need and to
experience it as the Holy Spirit works with and through them.
The community is also looking for partners in
doing good, and the church can stand beside secular organizations and people of
other faiths or of no faith to feed the hungry, to clean up neighborhoods, and
to live out any of the ways that whatsoever we do to the least of our brothers
and sisters, we do for Jesus. An
important aspect of partnering, however, is letting our partners know that we
are engaged in this work because we believe in Jesus and that God is calling us
to do it. Such clarity allows us to make
a difference in the community ad while explaining how and why we do it.
Finally, the participants in my project noted
that in many cases the community needed permission to make positive changes,
whether collectively for the city or even to do personal spiritual work
themselves. For a variety of reasons,
including the increasing secularization of society, people are looking for
credible leadership with faith and vision to say that good things matter and
can be done. The church can do that by
pointing at community needs, by blessing a fledgling initiative, or by leading
the way ourselves. We have more
credibility than we sometimes give ourselves credit for, especially when we are
willing to live by what we profess. People
are sometimes afraid or too confused to step out and do good, but we don’t have
to be.
I know this is a lot. If you want to read the entire thesis, I’m
happy to provide a link to a PDF of the entire thesis, complete footnotes and appendices. (That links is here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=17sIjhbM_UQA4Q7BVm87r9MVVl9qmc9ho ) I close with
three quick summary points, however.
First, a whole lot of people in the community are not in our churches, but
are searching for a deeper faith and spiritual life. If we can meet them where they are and
provide what they are longing for, we have a chance to share God’s love and
good news in powerful ways. Second,
prayer and prayerwalking matters. When
we prayerwalk we can change our communities and see God at work in important
ways. When we bring others with us, we
can connect them to God just by helping them see through new eyes. Even if prayerwalking seems like a stretch to
you, going out and doing it can be transformative. During the focus group, one participant said,
“Collectively, we all thought it was
going to be weird.” Then another person
said, “And it was weird…[Then] you suddenly realize that this isn’t weird, in
fact I was weird before [for not prayerwalking].” Third,
personally, I want thank you for your help and support during this process, and
there is cake in the lounge after the service.
