Who Are We? (Volume 1)

That is not such a silly question as you might think. On the Bishop's Bike Ride this week, I stayed with Episcopalians in four other towns, and none of the parishes felt much like St. Matthew's.

You can probably name businesses that have failed because they forgot who they were and what they were trying to do—tried to do too much or went in the wrong direction. (Baldwin Piano Company went into bankruptcy largely because they tried to diversify into investments and insurance.) So the question St. Matthew's has to answer is really the same Baldwin failed to answer: What do we do best? What one thing does God want us to focus on?

The Rev. Brad Purdom, Canon for Congregations, came down from Cleveland to ask us this question two different Sundays. (The Vestry invited him after hearing what he had to say to that smaller leadership group.) We are a fairly small congregation, and we can't do everything a mega-church does, nor should we want to. What should we be doing?

Some things we're obviously not
Purdom pointed out that there's nothing wrong with being a small church—and that most churches in the length and breadth of Christendom have been small. So the first thing we're not is big. We're around 40 people most Sundays, and like most churches, the majority of the work is carried by a smaller portion of that group. (We do a pretty good job, though, of getting the majority of the people involved in things.) So here, just off the top of my head, is a list of the things St. Matthew's is not, and probably never will be.

• A place where a visitor can hide. We really do notice when someone new walks in, and even though it's a bit overwhelming to a few, the visitor will get greeted and invited to coffee hour.
• A church with a bus ministry. We have a very small number of kids, and there's no point in buying an old school bus.
• A church with a praise band and songs on PowerPoint slides. The area has dozens of those, and there's no point in trying to be another one. We really do like the old hymns and the pipe organ. We're also in love with a form of worship that includes tons of Scripture reading and a format that we've been developing for hundreds of years.
• A church where the preacher does all the work. Even if our priest were not a part-timer (who, by the way, puts in at least three times the number of hours we pay her for), the Episcopalian setup, both for worship and for daily life of the parish, assumes a lot of participation from everyone in the group.
• A church that shuts people out. One of our core beliefs is that baptism works, no matter who does it. So we're quite happy to share the Lord's Table with all brands of Christian. We're also quite happy to welcome people who might not fit into other church groups: rich or poor, gay or straight, old or young, black or white—you get the picture.