Church as Community - Change and Renewal of American Parishes

by Rev. Dr. MICHAEL PLEKON

In the scriptures, the Liturgy, and in the writings of the great teachers of the faith, there is a long list of names, some even descriptions or definitions of “church.” The term “church” itself stems from the Greek and Latin ekklesia/ecclesia, which in turn seem to be translations of the Hebrew qahal. All of these have nothing to do with a building, which for most, is the first way of understanding “church.”

Rather, all of these refer to a gathering, an assembly, a group that regularly meets, that is held together by common purpose, aims, ideas. The Hebrew Bible itself is full of terms and images. The Temple, and before it the Tabernacle or tent, is a sacred place/ space, first portable as it accompanied the Israelites in their wanderings, then to some extent localized in the Ark of the Covenant’s residence with the priests at Shiloh. But the principal location of God’s house would be the Temple at Jerusalem. Many towns and villages, even outside Palestine, would have their own houses or gatherings in the form of local synagogues.

For the first disciples of Jesus, of course, there was still the Jerusalem Temple and local synagogues, but as in Judaism, the home was an important place of prayer and celebration. The first celebrations of the Eucharist were in homes, around a table where a supper would follow. These Christians would have known the many descriptions of their existence as God’s people—God’s flock, vineyard, God’s field, God’s tent, temple, and dwelling place. Israel was the beloved, the spouse of Yahweh. God was their shepherd, leader, ruler, and loving parent, invoking images of both father and mother.

We are familiar with the terms introduced alongside these by the letter-writing Apostles: the body of Christ, the royal nation, holy priesthood, and the band of God’s spokespeople or prophets. Other Scriptures would use images of the bride, a mother, and a heavenly city of great beauty and delight. Paul speaks of the church that gathers or meets in the houses of Junia and Andronicus, Aquila and Prisca, and Lydia. The community or fellowship—koinonia—lives and acts “as one, in the same place, for the same purpose,” united in “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.”

So the Acts of the Apostles tells us (2:42- 47). Paul tells the faithful of Corinth that they share the one loaf of bread and one cup that are the Body and Blood of the Lord, and this is their unity (1 Cor. 10:16- 18, 11:23-34). They become, as Augustine later would say, what they receive. They are the body of Christ in their community. They receive the bread of life and become like that bread: sustenance for the life of the world. We need to keep these images and understandings in mind as we examine what changes have come upon churches today, as well as what being “church” is today and what being “church” can be going forward.

We know what being “church” has meant in the past: a gathering of those from the same oblast or province back in Eastern Europe, from the same region, the same ethnic background, the same work backgrounds, or a common identity as immigrants seeking work in late 19th and early 20th century mines, factories, and mills. For Orthodox Christians as well as Roman and Byzantine Catholics and Lutherans, among others, being “church” until recently came with an ethnic qualifier on the sign outside: Greek, Russian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Albanian, Georgian, or Belorussian. Often, people simply knew St. Mary’s or St. Joseph’s or Holy Trinity as “the Italian,” “the German,” “the Polish,” “the Slovak,” “the Swedish,” or “the Norwegian” churches. “Church” has also meant “tribe,” and this has extended beyond ethnic and language groups to race and socio-economic class.

The notion that we’re a “nation of immigrants” now raises negative feelings in some Americans. Immigration of every sort, undocumented as well as legal, has its opponents, despite this country being completely composed of immigrants (except for the indigenous peoples).

Coming closer to the details of local congregations of immigrants in urban areas and towns, families would bridge across parishes as well as church bodies. Many from the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, now western Ukraine, had different ethnic and church bodies on both sides of families that had intermarried even before immigration—a pattern that has continued uninterrupted until today. My own family, all from the same village in the same Ternopil oblast, was just such a mix of languages and church backgrounds.

For decades, certainly in the years between the wars and right after WWII, the local church was typically the main place of a family’s social engagement. Most parishes were composed of multi-generational families. Those were the days when people were born, grew up, were educated, had their own families, and eventually retired, all in the same place, with pretty much the same tribe or group, whether Polish, Slovak, Norwegian, or Greek.

Not anymore! As has been noted by scholars who study community and churches—such as Robert Putnam, Nancy Ammerman, and Sally K. Gallagher, among others—a host of changes, all of them demographic and none of them having to do with belief or practice, have transformed the landscape of American communities and churches. No region of the country is immune. This is no longer a predominantly urban phenomenon, but now one that affects suburbs, exurbs, and small towns. Nor is any ethnic group or church body immune. We are a society of diversity, mobility, and consumer choice. Look at pictures of a parish gathering for a feast day or anniversary from 10 or 20 or more years ago and it immediately becomes evident how many relocate—our children, our grandchildren, and, indeed, ourselves.

Neither is age any longer a measure of church membership and attendance. Those who don’t belong to any congregation and have no regular pattern of attending services—what are called “religious nones”—are as common among over 50 as among people 30 and under. Maybe it is obvious, but in addition to mobility, intermarriage, and unmooring from community, the American church landscape is aging. This holds true across all church bodies. Moreover, the loss of members is not being matched by the influx of new ones. Thus, many historic parishes are rooted where the factories, mines, and mills once were, and from where those who were united by common languages have long since relocated.

St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Church Kansas City, MO - Stacey Shannon-Bryce is baptized into Christ by Fr. Justin Mathews

Yet, these sobering truths do not add up to some sort of death sentence on larger communities of faith or parishes in particular. In my research, writing, and presentations of recent years, I have become convinced that while change is both inevitable and necessary, “church” is far more durable and adaptable than many might believe. For my forthcoming book, I have gathered numerous cases of parishes merging, being adopted by others, reviving, reinventing, and otherwise renewing themselves. The legacy of a community— not only the property, but its faith, its place in the memory and history of a city or town, is precious. God works through, with, and in us. Nowhere is this seen more powerfully than in the life and work of the people of God, the church, in a particular place.

The ways in which congregations find new lives are diverse and unbelievably creative. Sometimes a community may have to end a parish’s history but then be resurrected as part of a new community. This is more than merely closure and merger; rather, it is a kind of resurrection. More tribal communities sometimes muster strong resistance to even participating in services and other activities with members of another parish, thus blocking a new expression of the body of Christ, the church in that neighborhood.

But such reinventions do occur. I have collected dozens of examples, from all over the country, in urban as well as smalltown settings. A Methodist church in Haw Creek, NC, near Asheville, turned its sanctuary, rectory, and educational rooms into a Commons, a space that is used on weekdays as well as for Sunday services. Some of the community activities housed there are studios for yoga, dance, woodworking, ceramics, and textile craft classes, and for community groups' meetings. There is also a commercial kitchen, soup kitchen, and food pantry. The rectory is a retreat house, while the outside property contains bee hives, a community garden, and a playground.

A Presbyterian church in Tacoma, WA, with considerable space in its block of rooms, opened both afterschool care and tutoring programs, plus a soup kitchen and community meeting space. The Lutheran church on the campus of my school in Manhattan (Baruch College, CUNY), was near to closing. However a new pastor and core of members decided to reach out anew in ministry to the neighborhood. Gutting the church house created a new space for a community nursery school as well as scouting programs, AA meetings, both Indonesian Lutheran and Jewish congregations, and parish education and meetings. A new connection with musicians will give rise to a regular concert series in the sanctuary, which of course remains the place for Sunday liturgy. The parish's rooting in the liturgy was the foundation for new forms of service to the wider community and a new sense of its being the body of Christ there in Gramercy Park.

An example from the Orthodox world is the St. Mary of Egypt parish, in Kansas City, MO, which began in a neighborhood where no church would go—or stay. Over time, its pastors and people have followed St. Mother Maria Skobtsova’s example, where her houses of hospitality, which sheltered and fed and protected so many in need in wartime Paris, were centered on the Liturgy, the Eucharist, and prayer. It has partnered with Reconciliation Services, which provides mental health counseling, a group of interdenominational and multiracial Christians formed a ministry called “Reconciliation Ministries” in the inner city of Kansas City, Missouri. What began as an outreach to help the physical needs of the neighborhood gradually emerged into an Eastern Orthodox Christian community.food for the poor, and help with rent and utilities, among other services. It is an essential part of the St. Mary of Egypt parish community. The bread of life is shared and then shared again for the life of the world around them.

Other communities find ways to continue as “small congregations” that are very different from what they were decades ago. Still others find new life, just as the Gospels promise, in reaching out to their neighborhoods by making space for notfor-profit groups such as health clinics, employment centers, food and clothing pantries, and soup kitchens. FOCUS North America nationwide includes numerous examples in the Orthodox churches nationwide. There are parish communities in this diocese with similar stories to tell, some of which have been shared in the pages of Jacob’s Well and on the diocesan website.

Every community has a rich history, and many have remade themselves since their beginnings 100 years ago or more. That a parish passes to another kind of service and identity is of the very nature of the koinonia, the fellowship or household of God planted in society. So many parishes here have experienced this since their planting by 19th-century immigrants and enduring two World Wars and a Great Depression. Founders of my own parish have described the journey of their home parish—the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on E. 2nd St. in Manhattan— from their childhoods seventy or more years ago to the present. This story is repeated in my parish and many others whose histories stretch back many decades. But church endures.

Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on E. 2nd St. in Manhattan

One could say that while the Church cannot simply hold on to the big basilicas and the parish structures and forms of earlier times, “the church is still in the house.” Tribe is not always a component of a parish, and, over time, it is possible to let it go. In fact, intermarriage and the welcoming of new members could be said to “de-tribalize” a congregation. In some places, various versions of “tribe” persist. But beyond the “tribe” and the extended multi-generational family, “church” is still the dwelling place of God among us, still the body of Christ, the bread for the life of the world. Christians still are made by water and the Spirit, still gather around the table of the Lord, and still become what they receive in the bread and cup. We still are “Christified,” as St. Mother Maria Skobtsova said, so that we may, in turn, be the face, hands, ears, and heart of Christ and His mercy to all around us. She wrote, echoing St. John Chrysostom, that there is a liturgy that continues “outside the church building,” a liturgy celebrated not on an altar of silver or gold but in the hearts of the neighbor, the brother and sister in need.

In the Gospels, Jesus honors all the rules and structures of His church, that of the holy people of God, Israel, the Temple, and the teachers. But the radical message of the Gospel is inversion—to turn things on their heads or inside out. It is metanoia, or t’shuvah, which we usually translate as “repentance,” but it is much deeper and more intense—a transformation, a conversion, a profound change.

If “church” is about following the Lord, then our life as community must bear these qualities. Jesus constantly finds new moments of healing and of opening up God’s way, the Kingdom, in parables, and in images of farms, fishing, and family homes and villages. Church is Jesus alive, doing His Father’s work. That is the “new temple” in which we experience Spirit and Truth, not to be confused with old customs and routines, and with buildings that are homes for the Holy One but which cannot completely contain God. There will always be more places, spaces, and people the Lord can inhabit. Koinonia— community, in all its many aspects—is the continuing presence of God among us and the ongoing gift that God and we, as God’s people, can give to our world. Church is fast becoming one of the rare places where real community is found, where people of very different backgrounds, viewpoints, and experiences are able to demolish the walls between them, creating unity, communion, and community with God and each other and the rest of the world.

The Reverend Dr. Michael Plekon is an emeritus professor of sociology at Baruch College in New York City, and an attached priest at St. Gregory the Theologian Church in Wappinger Falls, New York. He is the author of numerous books on sociology and religion.