Newspaper Columns by The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis
Evidence of things not seen
By Bill Lewellis
For the past 22 years, I have worshipped at Grace Episcopal Church in Allentown.
At different times during those years I have been member, lay worker, lay leader, pastor, preacher and "priest-not-in-charge" - yes, "not," but that's another column.
I care desperately about local churches and their ministry to the community.
With the congregation at Grace, I have experienced joys and sorrows, fits and starts, failures and sucesses, isuffering, death and resurrection. It's not always Easter at the local church..
We've wondered at times if we would survive, yet never focused on survival. Our practical theology, if I may, has been a line attributed to a former Archbishop of Canterbury: The church exists for those who do not belong to it.
Our focus has been on in-our-face questions: Why are we taking up space on this corner of God's earth? What is God calling us to be and do? Were we to disappear into a sinkhole today, who would miss us tomorrow -- and why?
Grace is a large small church - 70 families, one fulltime priest, a budget of $150,000. That's small.
Grace's children, however, are AIDS Outreach of the Lehigh Valley, Grace Montessori and Grace Community Foundation. With separate boards, funding and accountability - and combined budgets of $450,000 - the children have developed beyond where the parent alone could have taken them. They have touched more lives than the parent could have.
AIDS Outreach worked against the cultural grain years ago when more than 90% of its clients were gay men. AIDS Outreach continues to work against the grain today when more than 90% of its clients are the marginalized inner-city poor.
Grace Community Foundation serves some 200/300 ethnically, religiously and racially diverse families in the inner city, one of only two food pantries in urban Allentown.
Grace Montessori, a unique award-winning preschool, kindergarten and day care center, provides scholarship assistance to inner city children whose families would not be able to afford a Montessori experience, one-third of its diverse student body of 70,. Its reputation for educational excellence, moral grounding and diversity brings children from affluent suburban families to the inner city.
As I meet the deadline for this column, I am about to leave for San Antonio to tell a national Pastoral Summit about this large small church that is located within a block of City Hall, the Courthouse, the Art Museum, the Baum School of Art, The Morning Call and Lehigh County Prison.
I was asked to do so by the leaders of a Lilly Endowment funded project at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington that studies the characteristics of Protestant and Catholic churches that they have come to call "excellent congregations" in books already published for the project.
Identified characteristics describe excellent congregations as those that embrace new possibilities as risk-takers and self-starters, those that enter into partnerships that allow them to do their work better, those that revere tradition as a springboard, not a wall, those that call leaders rather than fill slots, those that have a clear yet changing sense of mission, those that have powerful,life-situation preaching, those that see themselves as unique, and those where laity are trusted to be competent.
There is great interest in local congregations and their potential to become the "evidence of things not seen" - evidence of the Risen Lord -- for many people who are not members and might never be.
Recently, during my favorite "religious" program on television, "The West Wing," someone tells C.J. she's remarkably upbeat for somebody who's been shot at twice in four years. She says it's because she's got faith which she then describes with St. Paul's words as "the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen."
Toby asks, "Faith in what?" C.J. says, "In us." Toby asks, "The people in this room?" She adds, "And many, many, many others."
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