Being A New Member – A 6-month checkin

April 26, 2007 by
Filed under: Church New Member Process, Religion 

About 8 months ago, I wrote Church – A New Chapter, in which I announced that I was beginning the new member process for joining the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville (NJ).  I actually joined 2 months later.  That makes this about the 6-month anniversary.

Time for a report card.  I’ll stick with my hopes and fears from 6-8 months ago.

The overall grade is B+.  The church has come to feel like home, and I often refer to it with the same feeling that I would use to refer to my family.  There are some things that could be better, and I haven’t completely settled in yet.  The details are really long, so they continue below (those reading on the site itself will need to click the link below).

Fear – Church is a closed society – B
One of my biggest fears was something I’d seen in my past – that “church” was a closed society.  Either you were an insider or an outsider.  The people in power positions were all insiders.  I have to give Lawrenceville a B.  The positions of power in the church are not closed – the folks on the Session and the various committees clearly rotate through fairly large numbers of people.  The reason that it isn’t an A is that everybody knows everybody else – except for the new folks.  It’s a tough crowd to break into, but once one or two “well-known” members accept you you’re OK with everybody else.

Hope – Somewhere to do good works and be involved – B+
Once upon a time, I was very involved in church stuff.  One of my hopes was that I would be able to find my niche and be able to do good works again.  Lawrenceville earned a B+ here.  I have been able to get involved up to my eyeballs, and the church is being careful about not burning out the new guy.  In 6 months I’ve gone from walking in as a new person to being the co-chair of a Task Force and being so busy that several of my activities all hit on the same day.  I’ve been involved in the Green Team, the Sr. High Youth Group, and now this new Task Force.  The church didn’t quite make an A for reasons similar to the Closed Society grade.  In order to get involved, I had to take affirmative
steps alone.  With the Green Team, I had to show  up for the first open meeting.  For the Sr. High group, I mentioned to another youth advisor that I needed to find something to do at the church and she brought me along to a Sr. High meeting.  The church needs to do a little more to invite new members into activities and groups.

Hope – It feels like the church I grew up in – A+
I had chosen this church because it initially felt like the church that I grew up in.  They used the Gloria Patri, the order of worship was about the same, and even the building felt similar.  Here I found it to be even better than I’d hoped.  Lawrenceville is very much like the church that I grew up in when it comes to things that I liked about the old church.  It’s also different in ways that bothered me about my old church.  Folks are generally friendlier than the old church, and open to participation by new people.  The feeling of the service is less stilted but still very familiar.  About the only complaint is that Lawrenceville doesn’t have a handbell choir for me to join, but that’s small potatoes.

Hope – the church is tolerant of all viewpoints – B+
A church can lean politically and theologically into one of four groups:  left (progressive), right (conservative), we avoid conflict, we desire diversity.  Lawrenceville is in the last group – they value diversity.  Lawrenceville does lean to the progressive side, but not to the point of making it an identity element.  Lawrenceville prides itself on being
open to people of all viewpoints, and the church while doing “church” doesn’t concentrate on any issue that separates people.  It’s very easy to work with someone knowing that they disagree with you on some or even all issues.  I gave the church only a B+ because I do see the progressive slant creeping into a few places where I’d rather that the people make up their own minds.  Those include the youth groups and some committees.  Even so, these “incursions” are so minor that they may be safely ignored.

Fear – that it will be hard to incorporate church into my life – B-
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One fear that I had was that I’d be able to get myself out of bed every Sunday, and get myself interested enough to get involved.  The opposite has proven to be true – I’m so drawn in that it is hampering other parts of my life.  My flying has dropped to minimal levels because weekend church activities cut heavily into my free time for flying.  My wife occasionally complains about not seeing me enough because she chooses not to participate in most of my church’s activities (being involved in her own church’s activities).  None of this is the church’s fault – it’s all my own time management.  I am perfectly able to say “no” or to choose not to attend an event.  I suspect that I’ll settle to a happy medium reasonably soon.

Hope – that the church is a “thinking” church – A-

I had hoped to find that the church is a “thinking” church.  That nothing is accepted at face value but rather that each idea is tested.  That the church relates faith to issues of today rather than issues of 2000 years ago.  What I’ve found is that if anything the church is a little light on the Christian basics.  The church covers issues of today and comes up with what I generally feel are the right answers, but they don’t link it back to the faith as well as I’d like.  That’s not because they CAN’T or have chosen ideas that aren’t faithful – it’s more the case that everybody has enough grounding in the faith that the links are obvious.  We need to repeat those obvious links.  Some of this may be my failure to HEAR the links; they may be there and I’m just missing it.

Hope – that the church is strongly connected to Camp Johnsonburg – C+
I love Camp Johnsonburg.  One of the main criteria that I had for a church was a connection to the camp.  This church’s connection to the camp is through retreats and through people.  One member of the church worked at the camp for most of this year before receiving her Peace Corps assignment.  The camp held Jr. High and Sr. High retreats at camp last fall.  There will be an All-Church retreat at camp in June (which Carolyn and I will attend).  There is a downside.  For some of my committee work, I got information related to the subject of the committee from camp.  It was summarily dismissed by the committee chair, who preferred to use information from her own sources.  I had a similar reaction when I brought up the Reconnecting with Faith retreat with some people (but others were enthusiastic).  It seems that the church views the camp as a retreat center and summer camp, and not as a partner in spiritual pursuits.

Hope – that committee work would be less painful than I remembered – C-
I don’t know what I was thinking hoping for the committee process to be better here than anywhere else.  I have found it to be just as painful.   I’ve seen all of the personality quirks that I’d seen before – the person who has to feel in
charge, the person who can’t run a meeting, the folks who like to hear themselves speak.  They are here as they are elsewhere.  Corporate America realizes the inefficiencies that exist when people aren’t trained in how to  communicate, particularly in ad-hoc or permanent committee structures.  I’m not sure why churches haven’t come
to this realization as well.  It’s not like training people would necessarily cost money – I haven’t found a church yet that didn’t have someone who understood these concepts well enough to teach them to others.  I guess we just aren’t looking to teach life skills – we’re only looking to teach spiritual disciplines.  The really ironic part of this is that I think I learned most of my communications skills as a Youth Advisory Delegate to the Synod 20 years ago.  I learned more in YAD training and in being a YAD than I’ve learned in occasional communication training since I entered the working world.

Fear – that the national schism in Christianity would affect my experience – C
When I joined this local church, I was worried that the major progressive/conservative schism that is affecting the PC(USA) would affect my experience.  My hope was that the local church would be insulated from that issue.  What I’ve found is that the schism is in many ways even worse than I’d feared.  We’ve reached the point where trust between the progressive and conservative sides is nearly non-existent.  Some folks won’t even TALK to someone from the “other side”.  The church WILL split in two soon, with lots of pain from the folks who are in the middle, don’t care about national politics, and will be collateral victims.  In Lawrenceville, we don’t see these things.  What we DO see is a lack of a denominational presence.  These fights have damaged the ability of the presbytery and particularly the national denomination to do good work and provide educational resources.  It’s reached the point where we no longer belong to a denomination – we are merely part of the “Presbyterian tradition”.  The denomination is a ghost of what I remember it being in the past from the point of view of the local church.  That’s sad – so much energy that could be directed towards educating members and building discipleship has been used to fight – and now we need to do everything ourselves at the local level.  The national fighting has lessened the value of the denomination.  I had feared that it would be a direct experience – that the fighting above would spread to the lower levels.  It’s more indirect, as if the local church has become an island with no help from the mainland.

Unexpected Delights
1.  Working with the youth.  I didn’t really think that I’d be good at it (having no kids myself) but I’m really enjoying it.  I don’t think I’ve made a solid connection with the kids yet, but the Youth Director is making happy noises about my contribution.
2.  Finding that I am able to write/summarize a solid paper on a theological issue.  I was totally surprised at how well the Environmental Stewardship paper came out, and how far reaching the consequences were.  The youth group used my paper as the basis of a Bible study, and then used the scriptural passages that I used as the backbone for the Earth Day, Youth Sunday service.
3.  Providing useful information to the greater church through my blog – I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the reaction to some of my blog writings from all of you.  Thanks!

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Comments

One Comment on Being A New Member – A 6-month checkin

  1. Quotidian Grace on Fri, 27th Apr 2007 11:22 am

    2. Thanks so much for posting your reflections on the last 6 months. It’s very instructive. I agree that for most churches the denominational controversies don’t affect them directly, but indirectly “as if the local church had become an island with no help from the mainland.” A very trenchant observation!

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