By Pastor Kerry Nelson
Connecting with Spiritual Orphans, Prodigal Children and the Blessed Rest
Spiritual orphans (those baptized but not raised in a Christian community), prodigal children (those who were raised in the church but fled to the far country at the first available opportunity) and the blessed rest (those who expect a local congregation to provide meaning, ministry and mission for the good of the world) live in and around all of our congregations.
No doubt there are many other “spiritual types” out there in the world but these three seem particularly “reachable” by traditional Lutheran congregations – who are willing to be open-minded, open-hearted and adaptable in creating safe and meaningful opportunities for people to find their place in the life of the congregation.
What follows now are some suggestions on what connecting with these spiritual types might look life in our worship and ministry.
Connecting with Spiritual Orphans
Spiritual orphans, even more than prodigal children, are quick to describe themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious.” Often they have been burned along their life journey by religion and religious people. For many, that began in their homes as they internalized the negative messages they received from their (often prodigal children) parents.
They might show up alone and unannounced at church on a Sunday morning but they are more likely to come at the invitation of a friend. They are looking for relationships, good relationships, trustworthy relationships.
The good news about spiritual orphans is that most of them are not yet fully inoculated against coming down with a full blown case of Christianity. But – if we are going to create a safe place for them – we need to pay special attention to the following:
1. Emphasis (and commitment to) the inclusive love of God for all people. If we pick and choose who we will accept, spiritual orphans will smell a rat and see how easily they could also be rejected. This is where the unchurched world rejects the church because of racism and homophobia.
2. The practice of radical hospitality in every area of our life together. If we fall prey to “birds of a feather flocking together” in forming congregational cliques, or saying that “everyone here is related to someone else somehow”, spiritual orphans will only be reminded that they are, and will forever be, outsiders from the club.
3. We need to make a high priority of offering “first steps of the faith” experiences for those new to our congregational ministries. More than new member classes (but obviously including them as well), we need to have relational messages and systems in place to help people learn what it means for them to be Christians, and to practice the Christian faith, in ways that are helpful to them and the world around them.
4. A growing network of relational small groups help spiritual orphans find a place and a group of people to belong to in life-affirming ways.
Connecting with Prodigal Children
Prodigal children are those who were raised in Christian community but bolted and haven’t often looked back. They are our sons, daughters and grandchildren. But, given the slim loyalty contemporary people attach to denominational heritage, it doesn’t much matter what denomination they were raised in. If a life crisis opens their minds to the possibility of returning to church, they are usually more interested in finding a church that works in their lives than in finding a Lutheran church that works in their lives.
It is precisely for the sake of prodigal children that we are invited to think about our Sunday morning worship experiences from the point of view of the story from Luke 15. The father was overjoyed to see his long lost son coming up the road. He was prepared to see that son because he had been checking that road every day, every time he stepped out on the porch. He greeted his son with a warm embrace, oblivious to his son’s carefully crafted apology. And he threw a party for him, celebrating his return to the place he had always belonged.
This – if we are going to be evangelistically effective with prodigal children – needs to be the operative image in our mind as we plan and conduct our worship life. Absolutely central to this is the realization that, if a prodigal child is going to hear Good News upon their return home, then what they discover there has to be both GOOD and NEW.
If a prodigal child returns to their grandma’s Lutheran church, to a service planned for, led by and intended to reach, the elder brothers of Luke 15, they might stick around long enough to get their hurt healed but they’ll be gone by morning.
Central to an experience of Sunday morning worship targeted to prodigal children (and a safe landing place for spiritual orphans) is a spirit of hospitality and celebration, anticipation and removal of any shaming moments (experienced as an unwelcomed feeling of sticking out and self-consciousness) and both relevance and applicability to modern life.
A spirit of hospitality begins with…
o the care and appearance of the church property
o the ambience of the gathering space
o the openness of the people and the absence of insider language
o the presence of food/refreshments
o a worship service that anticipates the needs of someone brand new
o the promise, communicated in worship, that help is available to people in crisis within the ministries offered by the congregation
A note of celebration is sounded in worship when…
o there is a palpable feeling of joy and honesty in the room
o the music and prayer life of the gathering uplifts the spirits of those in worship
o as much time is given to human hopes and aspirations as to human illness and the brokenness of life
Pastors and worship leaders strive toward the removal of “shaming moments” in the service. Such shaming moments include:
o Entering largely empty worship spaces where the congregation has failed to pay attention to the ratio of available seating to the average number of attenders. We need to provide seating so that each service is 50% – 80% full. Visitors like to sit at the end of the rows, more to the back of the room. When members hog those seats they make it uncomfortable for a visitor to enter into worship.
o Forcing visitors to self-identify and therefore stick out. Pew registers require being passed down a row – when a prodigal child or spiritual orphan sits in a row by themselves they don’t know what to do. Using communication cards that are given to everyone, and filled out by everyone at some point in the service, accomplishes our need to track visitors (and follow up with them) without shame.
o Uncomfortable downtime created when worship leaders are not prepared or ready during the transition moments in worship. There is nothing spiritually significant or helpful watching someone walk down to the front of the church to read a lesson. It just looks like we don’t know what we are doing and it makes a visitor self conscious rather than being caught up in the movement of the worship experience.
o Children’s sermons inevitably detract from the movement of the service. Visitors with children are stuck making a decision about whether or not to send their children forward, perhaps battling with the wishes of their children. In some settings, the one or two grandchildren who go forward strike an unconscious chord of memory or desire (I remember when we had a lot of children around here or I wish we had more.) And usually (except when given by people with the gift of publicly communicating with children) the lessons are exactly the kind of banal moralisms that prodigal children ran away from. (And, for those pastors who say, “But people tell me that they ‘get more out of’ the children’s sermon than the regular sermon”, see below.) Don’t do children’s sermons.
o “Passing the peace” that encourages people to leave their seats, wandering around the sanctuary interminably, often lasting three or more minutes. This is death to the prodigal child who might actually be close to tears having just heard a word of hope in a sermon or sensed God in the prayers of the church. Suddenly they are being accosted by well meaning people they don’t know and forced to shake hands with strangers. While it is significant that, precisely in the point in the service where we are going to receive Jesus in bread and wine, we begin our preparations by exchanging a hand of fellowship with another human being, we need to do it without shame. Worship leaders can greet one another and then the musician can come in with music as the worship leaders sit down.
A worship experience has a better chance of being relevant and applicable to modern life when it is planned and conducted in view of the fact that we live In an age when few people read music, fewer listen to classical or organ during the week, and the majority of people are functionally biblically illiterate. We can address these issues by:
o Printing everything needed for worship in a nicely laid out bulletin or projecting everything onto video screens
o Having one strong voice singing into a microphone to carry the congregation into music that might be unfamiliar (people find it easier to sing along with a voice rather than with the congregation as a whole)
o Transposing music pitched too high down to a range where a baritone can comfortably sing the melody
o Preaching with passion, conviction and intellectual honesty.
- Think “five minutes at a time” broken up with interesting movements – stories, videos, humor, interviews, etc.
- Think “teaching” as much as preaching.
- Preach to 8th graders and you’ll hit everybody.
- Dig more deeply into the Bible rather than picking a topic and leaving the Bible behind
- Use visual aids and some of the things you used to use when you preached children’s sermons.
- Don’t adopt a “preachy” tone or pulpit voice.
- Be who God made you to be, don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t.
- Intentionally preach to men during portions of every sermon.
- Draw illustrations from real life, newspaper, pop culture and personal experiences.
When a prodigal child walks into a worship service that was tailored with them in mind, he or she will have a sense that “something is different”, “something has changed.” They might not even like all the changes but that is far better than leaving them with the idea that “nothing about the church has changed in all these years.” If they are return to the same place they left, they will most likely leave again.
In addition to a celebrational worship service that is both good and new, effective congregational ministries will have programs and people in place to help prodigal children in their daily lives, especially in processing and working through the crisis that brought them back to church. If it all works, they might find themselves home again to stay.
Connecting with the Blessed Rest
In the old days, it was almost expected that people have some kind of connection to Christian community. It wasn’t simply an ethnic expectation (to be Roman Catholic if you were Irish or Italian, or Lutheran if you were German or Norwegian) but also a cultural expectation. Bank loan forms asked for your denominational identity or your church home. Politicians were expected to be connected to a church. It ought to be no surprise that those days are long gone.
But aspects of that way of thinking still linger among our older members who are part of the blessed rest. They remain part of our ministries out of a strong sense of duty, loyalty and heritage. But the most mature among them realize there is more to Christian community than that. They want to see meaningful ministry happen and they are willing to make it happen.
Strangely, in this same spiritual camp are those who are radically disengaged from the church but who are socially conscious and aware of the real human hurts and hopes of contemporary life. They want to be involved in making the world a better place. Congregations can potentially become channels for their involvement.
Unchurched people among the blessed rest are far more likely to turn up at a volunteer opportunity at the invitation of a friend than they are in worship on Sunday morning. Therefore the key here is to make sure than our congregations are involved in various types of missional work that benefit the wider community.
In the old days, the pattern might have been 1) believe, 2) join, and 3) participate. That has changed. Among the blessed rest, especially around younger people, the pattern has now become 1) participate in something connected to the church, moast likely an activity happening out in the world, for the good of the world, 2) join in a worship or learning experience geared to their place in life, and 3) be surprised to discover that they are drifting into a new place in their belief in God.
We Can Do Better
As the church continues to wrestle with all the changes that have rolled over us in the past 100 years, as we come to grips with our diminishing influence and increased marginalization in the world, there is a temptation to batten down the hatches of our lives and close ourselves off from the world. That is a death spiral.
There are certainly times when we feel discouraged and frustrated. Times when we wonder if the church isn’t the problem rather than part of God’s answer. It feels at times like the church is the only team that we’ve played on that tries its best to lose.
But we can do better.
In every synod across the country, there are Lutheran congregations who continue to be effective evangelical missions. They have adapted – dare we say reformed themselves – to do what it takes to connect with new people. Knowingly or not, they have found ways to connect with spiritual orphans, prodigal children and the blessed rest.
If one congregation can do that, any congregation can do that. We can do better.
