GIVING AWAY THE CHURCH: REFLECTIONS ON FRESH ECCLESIAL EXPRESSIONS
Just as you might share a bottle of wine by pouring it into glasses for other people to drink, so the church pours itself out in new expressions of church for others to enjoy. As the church does this, it passes itself on sacramentally. It gives part of its own body away in a way that other people are able to receive. Far from being diminished in this giving, just as Jesus is not diminished when he gives himself in the Eucharist, the church is enriched by this sharing of its body because others are drawn into its communal life.
—Michael Moynagh, Church in Life: Innovation, Mission, and Ecclesiology
Forty or so of us sit in chairs around a small altar in the center of a stone chapel. Its ornate arched wooden ceiling rises 50 feet above us. A huge stained glass window flanks the back wall depicting biblical imagery from the Gospel narratives. A 30-something woman stands to do the first reading. As she reads, she begins to weep. Later she shares that, as a woman, that was the first time she had been allowed to speak publicly in church. Later, against the sound of children’s feet padding across the floor someone makes a connection between the Gospel reading and his newfound security that his transgender identity is celebrated as part of God’s deliberate act of creation. After the benediction we are led by our worship musician as we sing a cappella in unison, “God welcomes all/strangers and friends/God’s love is strong and it never ends.”
The description above comprises an amalgam of moments from the Noon Service, now in its third year at Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati, Ohio. Amidst the rising buzz around the #exvangelical movement and the steady increase in the number of Americans leaving Roman Catholicism, the Noon Service has become a laboratory for how to cultivate a radically welcoming worshipping community grounded in the Anglican tradition among a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-gendered group of exvangelicals, ex-Pentecostals, ex-Catholics, and cradle Episcopalians. Many of us bring with us spiritual trauma and histories of ecclesial marginalization because of our sexual and gender identities. Many of us distrust church or wonder if church distrusts us. Many of us feel unfettered joy in the freedom to ask difficult theological questions without fear of retribution or reprimand.
Our own stories fit the profile of the likely Noon Service attender. I (Sara) “accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior” in high school through involvement with a North American Baptist youth group. This decision led me to attend Moody Bible Institute where I was “courted” by my first husband. We married a year after Moody and, soon after, the trouble began: I started asking questions. I became a social worker and witnessed structural injustice along intersectional lines of race and class. I became friends with a number of LGBTQ+ peers in my Master of Social Work program. My conservative evangelical faith had no theological language except “no” for what appeared to me to be complex theological and ethical matters. My politics grew more progressive and my theology soon followed. As my marriage fell apart, I found myself at Yale Divinity School (YDS) eager to ask questions I felt liberated to explore, while also petrified to let anyone know I was divorcing. The first time I ever sat in my New Haven Episcopal church I was filled with shame and fear that if I was found out I would stand accused as an adulterer, an interpretation of Matthew 5:31-32 that had been cast at me more than once in the church communities I had just left. This sense was never confirmed nor denied by members of my church. During the service I experienced alienation from others in the pews and after the service I felt like a social pariah to the “coffee hour cliques.” Despite this, I was received into the Episcopal Church in 2013. I credit this to the deeper Episcopal fellowship I encountered at YDS, the Episcopal food pantry at which I worked, and with my roommate, a cradle Episcopalian who spent hours over coffee and harder stuff than that helping me to see that grace truly does abound.
I (Dan) was raised in a nondenominational fundamentalist church. I met my wife while living in an intentional Christian community affiliated with the Vineyard, where I also served as a house church leader. After asking the wrong questions about biblical inerrancy and the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals in the church, I found myself churchless for a decade of my life. My wife and I did what many disaffected evangelicals of our era did when faced with desire for deeper community: we started a coffee house. As rewarding as we found that community, we eventually re-entered the world of the churched as we sought a foundational Christian community. Our entry to the Episcopal Church was a little rough: while we admired much about Episcopal theology and were curious to explore its liturgical practice, we very nearly left the church after our first Sunday. The ritual was simply too alien, the formality deeply off-putting. If it hadn’t been for our son’s desire to connect with the Cathedral’s youth group, it’s unlikely we would have lasted longer than a month. Ironically, within two years I was hired as the Cathedral’s Director of Youth & Young Adults. One of my top priorities has been assisting with the development of a new worship service that would present the depths of Episcopal tradition to newcomers like myself, a service without the sense of deep foreignness and rigid choreography that had nearly driven my family out the door.
We linger on our own stories because they encapsulate many of the dynamics to which a growing membership from more conservative Christian expressions requires us to be attentive. We celebrate that the Episcopal Church is one place in which those spiritually wounded by the church can find grace and wholeness as both of us eventually did. But what often goes unrecognized is that ministry to these populations requires us to go beyond Episcopal business as usual. As our autobiographical experiences suggest, often even the most well-intentioned Episcopalians have been part of the Episcopal cultural status quo too long to recognize that this culture is not essential to the tradition and, in fact, can feel alienating, off-putting, and confusing to those unfamiliar with it. Welcoming exvangelicals, ex-Catholics, and others from outside the Episcopal Church requires they not only learn the Anglican tradition, but demands that we grow and adapt as well. It asks us to let go of our clericalism, a hierarchical mode of church deeply wounding to those who have histories of feeling controlled and manipulated by religious leaders. Pastoral care for this population does not look like offering easy, feel-good spiritual answers. It looks like leaving things messy and open-ended. We want a space to ask complex theological questions through dialogue, but also through creative forms of expression such as media and the arts. We long for radical openness and hospitality that truly expresses “you are welcome” with no asterisks or agendas.
The Noon Service developed in response to these important commitments, though the journey was neither simple nor quick. Our first attempt to create a service that centered around these commitments, “Shifrah,” was a contemplative evening prayer service inspired by St. John’s Cathedral in Denver’s “Wilderness” service. It featured candles, art, and a contemporary musical aesthetic … but it never connected with the community we sought to reach. The service drew about 20 people each week, almost entirely individuals already within the Cathedral community. To address this, we moved Shifrah to a small neighborhood church building not associated with the Cathedral. We experimented with prayer services, dinner church, and community conversations. Eventually we shifted to an “event-based” model where we hosted authors, bands, songwriters, and speakers of various kinds. Many events were well attended by those beyond the existing Cathedral community. But there was no consistent community emerging: each event drew a different crowd. We went back to the drawing board. For six months, Shifrah lay fallow. During this time, we talked with as many young adult communities in Cincinnati as possible about their experiences with religion, good and bad. Common themes emerged. Most had deep questions about life, theology, and meaning. Many had visited a church or two in hope of gaining some clarity. All had found church to be a place where there was no space for actually having the conversations they desired, so they left. Again and again, we heard people describe church as a place where one goes to watch or have something done for you. What they desired was a place to dialogue and act with others.
From these insights, the Noon Service was born. We began with a weekly worship service of about 15 people, some from the existing Cathedral community, others who had been involved with Shifrah. We kept the liturgy simple, we made community conversation a central part of the “homiletic event,” and we invited musicians to create music that connected ancient words with modern melodies. Within a year, our average attendance was 35. Two years on, the community has grown to an average Sunday attendance of 45 to 50, with a broader community of around 80. The vast majority of this community are newcomers to the Episcopal Church. They are people who would have been unlikely to connect with “traditional” Cathedral Sunday services. The vision for a new kind of community has finally taken firm root.
The Noon Service is part of a movement in our diocese to cultivate fresh expressions of church. Fresh expressions involve the planting of new congregations that are different in style and culture from the church that planted them because we want to reach different people. These forms of church are deeply aware of their missional context. They understand the importance of relationships as the path for discipleship. This movement is happening in many places but has grown out of the Church of England. In the Diocese of Southern Ohio, we have spent eight years developing a variety of church expressions that reach emerging cultures and generations. This has included a wide range of experiments in church including dinner church, pub theology, intentional communities, art communities, new worshiping communities, immigrant communities, and social enterprises. Each of these communities of faith are an invitation to proclaim the gospel afresh in our time and to consider how to build authentic relationships and cultivate disciples beyond our existing church structures. This means stretching ourselves to try on new practices, engage in uncomfortable conversations, and practice self-examination and repentance around how our church cultures are often inclusive only of those who are “like us.”
As we celebrate resurrection during this Eastertide, we reflect on ways in which the Episcopal Church might live more fully into its calling to witness to the grace of Jesus Christ to all people. We dwell on how we are called to revise our own cultural dispositions to become a more radically welcoming community of faith to those who come to us in search of a spiritual home. In a series of three Earth and Altar articles, we look to core commitments of the Noon Service at Christ Church Cathedral as a lens for this. In this first piece, we have dwelled on meeting exvangelicals and ex-Catholics where they are. In the next piece, we will explore the creation of open and brave spaces for music and the arts in the context of the Anglican liturgy. The final piece will detail our practices of radical hospitality and dialogue—including the use of digital spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Noon Service is not perfect. We seek to live into these commitments even as we fall short of them. Our hope, however, is that our reflections will invite readers to reflect on their call to die to self—our own cultural tastes and proclivities—so that others might find life.
This article is by:
Sara Williams
Sara Williams is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religion in the area of Christian Ethics at Emory University. She is a member of Christ Church Cathedral, Cincinnati where she currently serves on the Nominating and Noon Service Leadership Committees. She resides in Cincinnati’s Northside neighborhood with her husband, 2-year-old son, and precocious dog. Sara is committed to local civic engagement, maintaining walkable and affordable communities, and discerning ways to be in just and right relationship across lines of social identity difference.
And
Dan Carlson
Dan Carlson is the Director of Youth and Young Adults at Christ Church Cathedral, Cincinnati. He is also currently a freshman in the Low-Res MDiv program at CDSP and a postulant in the Diocese of Southern Ohio. He is married to singer-songwriter Kim Taylor, with whom he has been able to collaborate on various projects from owning a coffee house to raising a son. He lives in Cincinnati with three rescue dogs and a BFA in oil painting that he’s really going to find a use for one of these days.
With contributions from:
Jane Gerdsen
The Rev. Canon Jane Gerdsen is an Episcopal priest serving the Diocese of Southern Ohio as Missioner for Fresh Expressions, working to encourage new forms of Christian community across the Diocese of Southern Ohio. She is also the founder of Praxis Communities, a network of new faith communities and has served as the chair of the Episcopal Church's Advisory Group for Church Planting and Missional endeavors. Jane is a wife and mother to two children and loves yoga, gardening, and planning dinner parties.