Staying In The Neighborhood

There we were, processing every which way out of old church buildings to brand new ones up the street, bumper to bumper in cars or shivering on foot in the wind and rain, but with smiles on our faces, eyes and hopes glistening, grateful to share an experience of a lifetime. Short as it was, the journey nevertheless yielded time enough to conjure a few thoughts about what it took to get this journey in faith on the road at all.

Start-up churches aspiring to become large, and large churches aspiring to become even larger, typically follow the advice of church-growth consultants who believe that moving up always necessitates moving out, moving on, and most especially, moving away. And so, way out on mega-acres, paved over with mega-parking spaces, mega-churches continue to draw to themselves mega-numbers of newly prosperous city flee-ers content to leave the spiritual problems of the not so fortunate to be taken care of  by the smaller, struggling churches that they either avoid in the first place or eventually leave behind.

To be fair, most mega-churches have mega-budgets for outreach and mission. What they do not have, however, is physical presence with their left-behind fellow believers who need their presence the most. Inviting the remaining city and inner-city dwellers to “come see us, y’all” isn’t much of a gesture to those among them who have no cars and have yet to learn how many bus transfers it will take to get to their would-be hosts’ front doors.

By the time my umbrella threatened to fail me on my walk up Custer Road Sunday, what I was most appreciating was how short the trek itself was. And this realization led me to a more important one: as mega-church moves go, “Moving in Faith” looms up as a quite different kind of project than the First United Methodist Church of Richardson, Texas, could and might have entertained. Yes, the church has moved, and to a truly beautiful and inspiring new setting. But it has not moved far, and it is has not left behind those who over the years have found in this church a spiritual home close-by. This, as some like to put it these days, is a good thing --- a very good thing.

The heart of Richardson, its inner-city heart at least, is changing dramatically, and it will continue to change dramatically in the years to come. Its economy, at long last, seems to be turning around, which means that there could be a little more money to be thrown around. Some of it might even find its way into FUMCR’s coffers, to alleviate at least a little of the strain of paying for the new digs, and to help keep alive the church’s long-standing tradition of minding the ministries as much as it minds the store.
 
The really big changes taking place in Richardson, though, have less to do with the economic and more to do with the ethnic, less to do with prosperity and more with pluralism, less to do with achieving oneness and more with celebrating diversity. For this new church on the city’s central artery, the really big change worth contemplating, a change unusual for mega-churches, is its commitment not to hoard its fancy new buildings for the sake of the upwardly-aspiring and the privileged, but to make the beauty of and the community within the place an inspiration to people whose lives are constantly threatened with ugliness and hopelessness, and menace thrown in for extra measure. I’m glad, really glad, that the church has chosen not to move away from this challenge.

The positioning of the new complex itself makes for a powerful symbol of embracing the challenge. With so many of its stunning windows opening out on a major highway, it deliberately makes the traffic flow visible rather than hidden, and a constant reminder of the church’s mission to be in this part of God’s world a welcoming and centering place for all kinds of people passing by, moving in, and staying on, who can rightly expect to be renewed from the experience of having dwelled in it even for a short while.

In the decades to come, it will be good to remember that in 2006, this church moved on in faith by also staying close by, by bringing into even clearer view the increasingly diverse people who will both pass by and settle in, and by celebrating the fact that the congregation remained who it most essentially is by staying right in the neighborhood, to be with and for them.