Loading...I recently attended a conference entitled “Tending the Vineyard” at St. Francis in the Field. People from around the world gathered to learn about church growth from a team organized by “The Living Church” magazine.
A lot of people are asking about the future of “organized” religions, as we experience the decline, in many places, of church attendance. Just last week I was asked by someone at the Farmer’s Market what the Church is doing to grow. I responded that that is the million-dollar question, because if we knew the answer, we wouldn’t need to ask the question.
One of the first things I heard at the conference is that Gen Z people are “Pre-Christian” not “post-Christian.” This was a significant “a-ha” moment, an epiphany, if you will, for me. I had not given much thought to the fact that so many of our young people have no experience with Christianity. They simply were not raised in any church. The speaker in this session claims, and I don’t disagree, that “People are starving to know about God.”
The thing is, she went on, we are called, as Christians, to “Turn people’s hearts toward Jesus.” She also said that “grace works slow.” While there is a sense of urgency, patience is key.
Our job is not unlike that of the 70 Jesus sends out two-by-two in this Sunday’s gospel reading from Luke. We, like they, are being sent out into the world to show the world what love looks like. To take time, because grace can work slowly, to tell the story of Jesus in our lives, of how we have come to know Jesus, and to invite others to join us in the loving, life-giving, liberating body of Christ we call the Episcopal Church.
That can be frightening for some of us. Telling others about who God is to us and how we have come to follow Jesus and to try to explain the mystery of the Holy Spirit as she breathes through our daily life can feel like revealing a part of ourselves with words, when we just might want to limit that revelation to our actions.
This is where reading and studying scripture, maintaining a life of prayer, and being an active participant in a faith community like St. James’ comes in handy. Those “pre-Christian Gen Z-ers need us to show them what walking a life of faith can mean for them. If they are hungry, we need to feed them!
I hope your involvement at St. James’ nurtures your spiritual growth so that you can be like one of the seventy who go out and spread the seeds of the Good News, and water the vines, and tend the vineyard. It starts with planting a single seed, and I know you have a packet or more of them stored up, ready to scatter. If you aren’t sure where to begin, I’m here to help.
Prayerfully and actively planting, nurturing, tending…
Rev. Debbie+
