Churches face challenge of initiating seekers into faith
7/9/2001 News media contact: Linda Green · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - Congregations that welcome seekers and inquirers often need "porches" to give newcomers a hospitable entry point into the church.
However, many of the same congregations lack a process for initiating seekers into Christian life once new people are in the church.
People from congregations that are implementing an "ancient-future" Christian approach to welcoming and initiating seekers met in a June 28-29 consultation to listen to and learn from one another. Participating churches represented various ministry settings, such as campus ministries and churches, rural county-seat towns, and large urban and suburban congregations. The United Methodist Board of Discipleship sponsored the event.
Congregations that welcome seekers and inquirers are like porches, said the Rev. Dan Benedict, board staff member. The porch is where people slowly find out about and get comfortable with one another before making life-changing commitments. He compared the welcoming process to a porch experience because people may inquire about God and the life of faith without having to enter the church quickly.
"A porch is a gracious structure between the interior of the house and the street, a place where people can swap 'howdies,' get to know each other, tell stories and listen, and develop relationships without having to rush to some kind of commitment," he said. "Many churches may have a 'porch attitude' but don't have an intentional process in place for inquiring people."
In the third to fifth centuries, the church used a model called "catechumenate" as a way of making disciples of seekers and inquirers. The model was a process of initiation using stages and rituals to make the Word of God echo in the hearts and lives of the disciples.
Participating in powerful rituals, reflecting on Scripture, learning to pray, and serving God and neighbor daily are the components of becoming Christian disciples within the ancient-future approach, Benedict said. New disciples are immersed in the church community, he said.
"This approach does not apologize for or compromise for being the church with deep and full traditions of worship, Scripture, sacraments, and service to the poor and marginalized," he said. "It takes seriously the needs of seekers without 'marketing' the church. It trusts that being disciples and making disciples are part of the same process."
The ancient model of making disciples would be beneficial today, many people at the consultation said. Churches that live up to the theme of the upcoming "Igniting Ministry" advertising campaign will need such a structure for making disciples, especially among those who have little background in the Christian faith and practice.
Igniting Ministry, which will be launched in September, is a four-year advertising effort to reach "unchurched" people and seekers. The campaign will be centered on a series of national cable network commercials designed to raise awareness about the United Methodist Church and offer messages about God's love. The ads are centered on the theme: "Our hearts, our minds and our doors are always open. The people of the United Methodist Church."
During the campaign's first month, United Methodists will throw open the doors of their churches and get ready for the visitors that the ads are expected to attract.
Throughout the consultation, the congregational leaders made observations on how they added a "porch" to their ministries and the impact it has made on church life. They also described how they struggled to be faithful to the process while dealing with such stresses as closely timed services that make it difficult to present people on the journey; student schedules that conflict with the Christian year; and the need to get lay members involved in leadership so that the process isn't driven by the pastor.
The ancient-future way of making disciples is marked by four dimensions: a way of being church; belonging before believing; public time and space for conversion; and a "better caught than taught" approach, according to Lester Ruth, professor of worship at Asbury Theological Seminary. By "caught," Ruth referred to discovering what it means to be a disciple in caring relationships and lived experience rather than classroom environments.
Participants at the consultation described their efforts to structure enough time and build relationships with inquirers so that trust develops between the seeker and the church.
As the porch helps people build relationships, so to must the welcoming process, said Mort Kothmann, a professor at Texas A&M University in College Station and lay leader at nearby A&M United Methodist Church. The heart and soul of the disciple-making process is not the content but the relationships with mentors, he said. "Confidence and trust built in the small groups and living toward baptismal questions give shape and directions to what inquirers experience."
Guy Pry, a retired clergyman, said his search for a different way of initiating people into church life occurred after a Sunday morning invitation to membership. A respondent asked him, "Is that all there is?" Pry, a former staff member at A&M Church, said he began to look for ways to move beyond making members to making disciples. As a result, the church implemented a process called "Journey to Christ," and it works primarily with student inquirers.
As the participants talked and listened to one another, they discovered that their process of moving an inquirer to discipleship usually takes six months. The churches tie the inquirer's process and progress to the church year, baptizing or confirming at the Lord's baptism or at Easter.
The participants noted that imagery and things that make initiation into Christian discipleship more sensory and tactile during worship are necessary for seekers, especially younger people.
The audience watched a video of the Easter vigil service at Evanston (Ill.) First United Methodist Church, in which two people were baptized by immersion and others were baptized by pouring. Benedict observed the "visceral response" to the uses of water, oil, bread and people moving to receive others into the life of the church community.
The consultation concluded with participants urging the Board of Discipleship to continue developing video resources on the ancient-future way of making disciples and how it works. They urged the board to offer more introductory consultations and to encourage bishops and their cabinets to become knowledgeable about the process.
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The Rev. Dan Benedict, staff member at the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, provided the information for this story.
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