S A I N T S T E P H E N ’ S E P I S C O PA L C H U R C H
PENTECOST | SUMMER 2019
SPIRIT A
writer for Richmond magazine recently interviewed church staff and volunteers about St. Stephen’s Church. She’d heard there was a buzz about St. Stephen’s being a vibrant and welcoming gathering place for the city, with offerings that appeal to a broad cross-section of Richmond. She was interested in our “church as village green” approach and where that comes from, and she asked me for a written comment. I had to be succinct, she said, because the article had to be brief.
Sarah Der
Why a village green? learn from all of us, along with others who know her. We need each other that way. No one of us has the full picture. In the same way, I don’t care that much about abstract religious doctrine anymore, unless it helps a person to love more and judge less, to see how much we need and belong to each other. If we are loving and taking care of each other, then we are loving and taking care of God. But failure to love and take care of each other is, in my view, a form of blasphemy. By Gary D. Jones
I tried to do what she asked, but I failed at being succinct. I sometimes sense that tweets, simplistic slogans, and labeling are responsible for the pervasive misunderstandings, combativeness, and lack of depth in our cultural dialogue now. The village green idea emanates from a particular theology and a particular understanding of our society’s need. But church is more than that. We also have a deep, rich, and expansive heritage as Anglicans, so another paradigm I use is “the church as the new abbey,” that is, the church as a place of reverence and hospitality for all who are journeying through this transient and often difficult life. But that’s another article. For now, here’s how I answered the writer, being as brief as I could possibly be. ✤✤✤
You asked me for a succinct statement about my “overarching hope for establishing the church as a multifaceted community hub or village green.” Well, you can kick this back to me with a note that I failed my assignment because it’s too long, or you can lift a couple of sentences here and there and use them as you wish. But honestly, I just don’t know how to talk about this sort of thing succinctly, because in my view there are so many misunderstandings about what church should be all about. For starters, I don’t think God cares about a person’s religion. I think God only cares about whether or not we are loving and caring for each other, for the world and all its inhabitants. The tradition that shaped me teaches that all human beings are sacred bearers of the divine, and that if there’s one God, then all human beings are equally loved siblings from that same God. And I’m not sure it matters much how we describe God. If you asked my brother, my sister and me separately to describe our mother, you’d come away from those separate conversations with very different ideas about who our mother is. So I’m not surprised we have so many different ideas about who God is. But I love my brother and sister to pieces and would never doubt their love for our mom or the sincerity and truth of their relationship with her. And if you really want to know who my mother is, you’d need to listen and
So, my hope for church as a “village green” is to help expand people’s understanding of what a church is all about. Some people think it’s important to genuflect before an altar or the sacrament. But if that doesn’t lead us to genuflect before each other, even before perfect strangers, immigrants, or whomever, recognizing that all humans are equally sacred and precious, then what’s the point? Again, I don’t think God really cares about a person’s religion. Religious ideas and practices are good if they help people to become more compassionate. If they don’t, they’re bad. And there’s a lot of bad religion out there. Our current epidemic of loneliness, depression, anxiety and suicide is not just a social problem. It’s a theological problem. So “church as village green,” church as a place where all people equally belong and are equally cared for, where all are invited into healthy practices that care for our souls and bodies, and for the earth (as in our farmers market, our emphasis on reverence in a time of contentiousness, and our classes on meditation), a community where all are invited more deeply into soul-nourishing experiences of beauty (as in poetry, art, and music), where all are supported and cared for in intimate communities (as in all sorts of small groups), and where all are invited to lives of service (as in our ministries with prisoners, the unemployed, the distressed, and the marginalized), this kind of egalitarian village green feels to me and to many of us like what the world needs most right now, and will always need. ✤
in this issue: Retreat: a time to step back and gain perspective National outreach tends to areas hit by disaster RE:work’s members work toward independence A time to serve Books and movies Virginia Girls Choir celebrates milestones The ministry of the acolyte Farmers market welcomes new vendors
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