Doctoral Project Approval Sheet
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Doctoral Project Approval Sheet This doctoral project entitled PRESENT CHURCH: ECCLESIAL ADOLESCENCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND ANNUAL RE-APPRAISAL AT NORTHLAND VILLAGE CHURCH Written by JAMES B. WAMMACK and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry has been accepted by the Faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary upon the recommendation of the undersigned readers: _____________________________________ Dr. Ryan Bolger Content Reader _____________________________________ Dr. Kurt Fredrickson Associate Dean for Professional Doctoral Programs Date Received: June 5, 2020 PRESENT CHURCH: ECCLESIAL ADOLESCENCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND ANNUAL RE-APPRAISAL AT NORTHLAND VILLAGE CHURCH A MINISTRY FOCUS PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY BY JAMES B. WAMMACK JUNE 2020 Copyright © 2020 by James B. Wammack All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Present Church: Ecclesial Adolescence in the Twenty-First Century and Annual Re-Appraisal at Northland Village Church James B. Wammack Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2020 The goal of this study was to consider a small worshipping community, Northland Village Church (NVC), as it enters its second decade, and whether and how it can pursue a commitment to reconciliation in the US in the twenty-first century. NVC’s seed verses, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, claim that God has reconciled and is reconciling the world to Godself through Christ. Within the ongoing nature of that work, a worshipping community is given the ministry of reconciliation whereby to participate in, and be subject to, God’s activity in Christ through the guidance of the Spirit. In order to do this with integrity and coherence, this study outlines a theology of being present, such that a worshipping community, in a spatial, temporal, physical, and relational sense, is present with God, neighbor, and the worshipping community itself. Furthermore, it argues that being present requires a continuously reforming posture, wherein the worshipping community is attentive and responsive to the impact of being present with those three entities. A theology of being present is the way by which a reconciling community can allow itself to be reconciled, and, therefore, this transitional existence is both the means and the goal of faithful commitment to the role of God’s people. Approaching this with attention to the needs of the community specifically and humanity generally and a Spirit-led liberative and creatively disruptive hermeneutic of Scripture ensures that the progression will be in keeping with God’s Kingdom’s advance. This study concludes that a reconciling worshipping community will allow its understanding of itself, its neighbor, and God, as well as its actions and principles, to be continuously subject to God’s work of reconciliation. A regular re-appraisal session for NVC is thus proposed and included. Content Reader: Ryan Bolger, PhD Words: 284 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Northland Village Church for their contributions to this project. They’ve provided ample room to learn, attempt, misstep, grow, and enjoy. Without them I’d likely have dropped off long ago; with them I’m intrigued and compelled. To borrow Pasternak: “The succession of these open spaces tuned you to a vast scale. You wanted to dream and think about the future.” iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii PART ONE: MINISTRY CONTEXT INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER 1. MINISTRY CONTEXT AND CHALLENGE 15 PART TWO: THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 37 CHAPTER 3. THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION 70 PART THREE: MINISTRY PRACTICE CHAPTER 4. DESIGN 110 CHAPTER 5. IMPLEMENTATION AND ASSESSMENT 120 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 124 APPENDICES 141 BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 iv PART ONE MINISTRY CONTEXT Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines – Maya Angelou INTRODUCTION Her aim was to “reconcile us with our history; but also to reconcile us with ourselves.” – Maureen Freely Northland Village Church (NVC) is a small PCUSA worshipping community founded in 2009 in Southern California. As of the fall of 2019, it is a congregation of about sixty adult members, with Sunday attendance ranging from twenty to forty. These sixty adults are saddled with twenty-five children, whose weekly attendance ranges from five to twenty. Of these twenty-five children, twenty are under the age of seven (my pair included). Thus, during the more well-attended Sunday worship gatherings there can be sixty persons gathered with a third under the age of ten, and on the lower end of attendance there can at times be as little as two dozen bodies, 20 percent of which are children. The congregation is predominantly White, with approximately 10 to 20 percent persons of color. It is predominantly hetero and cis-gendered, with approximately 5 to 10 percent queer and gender-nonconforming. Worship gatherings begin shortly after 4:30pm on Sundays, and typically end shortly before 6pm. An offering is not part of the liturgy, and Eucharist is served weekly. There are three members of staff: the organizing pastor (myself), the Director of Community, and the Audio/Visual Technician. Presently there is also a Children’s Ministry Consultant and a few paid nursery assistants. In late-2016 NVC moved from Atwater Village to its current location in Pasadena, meeting at Harambee, a historic outreach center in northwest Pasadena founded by John Perkins. In the first decade of its existence NVC settled into liturgical, congregational, and theological grooves as would be expected of any new worshipping community. These 2 grooves, though, are in flux, to greater and lesser degrees, in large part due to the worshipping community. That is to say, NVC has, since its inception, been a moving, morphing entity because the community itself is similarly fluctuating. A significant underlying and sustaining component of NVC is its emphasis on community, marked specifically by authenticity and relationship. As such, NVC’s characteristics have been shaped as much by the membership as by PCUSA considerations and the focus on reconciliation in its seed verses and mission statements. It is a community deeply shaped by community, rather than by a defined liturgy, theology, location, tradition, or denomination. As with any worshipping community, ongoing challenges abound. And, as with any church plant, there is a point at which the entity must advance to its own standing rather than remain perched on the support of the parent organization. To say that NVC crossed the bridge of the latter and successfully settled routes through the former might imply that it became at some point something dramatically different from its original profile. One might expect to find a worshipping community that passed from infancy to adolescence and then moved into mature adulthood. One might also expect to find a worshipping community that gathered in certain ways during its formative years and then matured into new mannerisms. This, however, is by and large not the case. The worshipping community has progressed, certainly, but in a kind of perpetual working out of its own maturation, rather than in phasing from one plateau or project to the next. Because NVC is not centered on a building, a doctrine, a centralized leadership, or even a firm size of membership or budget, its permutation is ongoing. It resembles, as it were, 3 adolescence, but in a perpetual manner. That this has become the goal and not the means to a further goal is, admittedly, rather unusual. While this mode of existence has, for better or worse, allowed NVC as a worshipping community to survive, and very often thrive, over the years, it has always occurred in an informal manner. Recently, however, there have been major changes to staff, congregation, and culture, and these factors, coupled with entry into its second decade of existence, make it both appropriate and necessary for NVC to engage formally in a program of self-appraisal. Were the congregation to still be comprised of charter members, who had navigated the successes and failures of the worshipping community’s history and its particular way of doing things, this formal effort would be somewhat unnecessary. In that hypothetical situation everyone would have a common understanding of where the congregation has been and why it comports itself the way that it does: things like the centrality of the Eucharist table to the worship gathering would be understood as deliberate and ritualistic; things like the decentralization of leadership would be understood as stemming from purpose rather than paucity. The congregation is not, however, replete with charter members (for acceptable and regrettable reasons, to be discussed below), and thus many of the attendees and even long-time members are somewhat ignorant of the decisions that preceded their tenure. Many of the changes the congregation has undergone over the years have been gradual and subtle, such as demographics and political affiliations. Some changes have been deliberative, such as the decision to become formally open and affirming to the LGBTQ community or the location changes. The current congregation has varying degrees of understanding of those changes, and because of this paucity there is a 4 pronounced lack of awareness of how decisions are made, how changes occur, and what rules and guidelines are in place in decision-making processes. For