Eulogy for a Faithful Church

My wife, Sara, wrote a book. It’s called, Eulogy for a Faithful Church: The Story of a Congregation’s Courageous Ending and Enduring Legacy.

Twenty years ago, when we were both spanking new pastors, Sara began serving at St. Peter Lutheran Church in North Plainfield, New Jersey. Three years later, the congregation completed its ministry.

Sara has wanted to share this story for a long time. Not as a story of failure but as a story of faith. As the book jacket says, “with grief, sacrifice, and trust in God, the people of St. Peter chose to say goodbye their sacred place and beloved community.” And they did more. They invested the congregation’s endowment and building and their own selves in the larger church and a bigger vision. They sowed seeds for a future harvest that is now quite evident and abundant. They “chose to die and, in doing so, found new life.” That’s the story Sara tells in this book, both the death and the resurrection.

I commend Eulogy for a Faithful Church to you, because it speaks to anxieties that some of us have about the future of Zion and that many Christians have about the church in general. I trust it will give us courage. With Jesus, the end may be painful but it is never the end.

And moreover, Jesus gave sisters and brothers just like us tremendous courage and faith to do whatever it took to follow him. Jesus’s call now to us, Zion Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa, is different and the same. Different because it’s not about completing this congregation’s ministry. The same because it is about risking new life.

Some 15 years ago, at an ELCA training for pastors, I learned three rules of thumb for congregational vitality.

A vital congregation:
•    Has committed and capable leaders
•    Is meaningfully engaged with its neighborhood
•    Is willing to do whatever it takes to pursue its mission

For St. Peter, doing whatever it took meant ceasing to be St. Peter. For Zion, it means remaining, continuing. For both them and us, it means grief, sacrifice, and trust in God. Because that is simply what it means to be called by God. Also joy. Great joy.

Zion is clearer now than we were a year ago about what our God-given mission is. Through Zion’s new strategic plan, we’ve challenged ourselves to engage even more meaningfully with both our neighbors and each other.

This will take serious leadership development, including my own. It asks new and existing leaders to commit to training and to changing our habits and growing our comfort zones. The Core Team leads us in this. Consider saying yes when they invite you to a new role or opportunity.

Just like athletes train and students study, pursuing Jesus’s call is a workout. Jesus is calling you, so get ready for a faith workout as much as anything. Jesus is growing our trust muscle. Our prayer muscle. The muscles involved in exercising all those values to the right. Crawling to walk, walking to run. Standing on the shoulders of our forebears. Learning from the witness of St. Peter.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark

P. S. If you want a copy of Sara's book, talk to me.