United Methodist Church
Morgan Hill, California

History & Future

Pecot's Putterings In January, I am surrounded by numbers. Being a connectional church means that a larger organization cares about how we are doing, as they hope we care about how the larger organization is doing. So, we report to them, they report to us, we report to other churches. Agencies within the larger church report to the Conference and to us. Paper work and more. And ministry gets boiled down into numbers and statistics. In the midst of all these numbers. We learn that you can tell a lot about someone's ministry by looking at their numbers. Worship attendance is down – that may not tell you what is going on, but it tells us we need to look at the situation. For example: our church has 106 members and about 241 active participants. That's interesting. Of those 241, about 75 are children, 58 are pretty active. Worship attendance is usually about 70-75 (or 1/3rd to 1/4th of our active constituency each week). About 25 people help with the education program (one for every three kids overall), and we have about that many adults participating in some group in the church (about one out of every six adults). That's interesting. We are operating about a $100,000 budget or about $1,000 each year for each member, or $400 for each active body. Of that $100,000 about $2,000 is given to mission outside this church. That's interesting. Of our 106 members, three are not Caucasian. In a town where 35% or more of the population is Hispanic, only one of our members has that ethic distinction. That's interesting. This year, our worship attendance is up overall, but down since September, our leadership involvement is up, our spending is up, but our membership is down as is our giving to anything outside our church That's interesting. What it is easy to forget is that while numbers can point us to questions and show trends and compel us in directions, the numbers don't tell us anything about ministry. Ministry is concrete, not a statistical. Sometimes, we forget when we are working on numbers, that ministry is with people. Most of the Northern California and Nevada Annual Conference never gets to see the real ministry of a church, all they see are numbers. They have to trust that the numbers speak a word about real ministry. They have to trust that we know the difference between numbers and real ministry. Am I or we feeling guilty about our church, or somewhat less about it because the numbers aren't what I or we want them to be? Are we calmed or frightened by our images of what we think it should be? It is here that I have to step back into the place of trust. I have to realize that my expectations about what the church should be are not God at work. And that is the temptation of numbers. God doesn't care about the numbers, but cares deeply about the people sent to be nurtured and nurturing. God wants to know what we are doing with the "talents" that we are given. Do the numbers tell us that? In this issue, I will reflect on our church in a kind of state of the church address. I will be talking about statistics, about history, but also about vision and intuition, hopefully, what God sees and wants.

Ted

Assessing Our Church
for the Next Year
January 1, 2000

History

In the World for 2000 Years

We began as small communities sharing their resources awaiting an immediate end to the world in its first couple of decades. Two thousand years later, just the Catholic Church has become the largest and I think richest organization in the world. We are involved in every imaginable ministry from world economic and nuclear issues to local garage sales to raise money for a poor family in just about any neighborhood in the world.

There are still places that know nothing about the Christian church, but very few. There are still people that don't know anything about the Christian church, but almost all of them will have had their lives impacted by the Church in some way.

In two thousand years, the Christian church has begun more institutions to serve people in need than any institution in the history of the world. It is probably the most diverse institution in history. And, it is probably the most contradictory one – there probably is no single belief shared by every Christian community.

Almost from the beginning, one mark of the Christian church is its tendency to divide into factions. These factions have created the environment for wonderful dialogues, but also argument or war. Because of the Christian church's aggressive theology of conversion, we have at times been very violent in our history, at times on the side of justice, and in reflection, often on the side of petty power struggles and insecurities.

If our goal was to bring a message of Jesus to the world, we have essentially succeeded, especially in these last decades of shared information. If our goal was to create a united community of believers in Christ, well that's another story. If the criteria for judging our faith is "Go therefore into the world and make disciples" then we have many. If it is "they will know you are Christians by your love", then we may have a long way to go.

On the West Coast for about 500 Years

The Christian Church came to this area of the world from all directions.

It came first from the South as Spanish conquered their way through native communities and explored its way into wilderness and the church followed creating a network of missions and colonial villages. The church came from the East, as Americans of various ilk spread to the frontier, creating small communities of faith. The church came across the ocean from Asia with the trade routes creating settlements.

For much of the last five hundred years, the heart of the church's work in whatever other form it took has been mission. Christians converted the unchurched folks and taught them to live in whatever life style they came from. They built buildings and organized communities.

It is sad to say, but part of the eradication of native people and their culture in this area is due to the work of the church and it's often inability to tolerate other ways of following the spirit and other ways of living. This has some mighty exceptions, but for the most part, the church in the West Coast has transformed the people and cultures of this area into European customs and ways of living, while it was transforming them to the gospel. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether the missional work is more religious or more cultural.

The church worked aggressively to change people. Missional churches proceeded from the belief that people aren't good in and of themselves, but become good by leaving the old life behind and being transformed by Christ. They believed that the "old life" was evil and sinful, and only in Christ was there good. Therefore, cultures that formed before the Christian church was present, customs, clothing, cooking, were judged as evil and replaced by a new life, in faith but also in culture.

It is disturbing that the lifestyles they created in their transformation of spirit mostly have supported the European businesses and Western philosophies. Worse yet, because of these beliefs, our church has supported slavery, war, ethnic prejudice and racial extermination. Our church talked about the need to serve the poor, but if the truth is told, most of the developing United States church has served better off or the rich with a token amount going to the poor.

This is not true in the church's ability to create community in whatever area in moved into. It is incredible the number and diversity of Christian communities formed in five hundred years from the richest white areas of California to the poorest areas of within the quickly diminishing populations of reservationed Native Americans, from Silicon Valley to the slums of Oakland to farming communities like Morgan Hill.

The bad things our Christian brothers and sisters have done had great impact on this area. However, most of the energy of the Church in this area, was spent on the simple things of life that made things better. Mostly churches spent time worshipping, studying, praying, and helping each other. Most of the time, if evil was done it was not from intention or plan but from inaction unconscious fear.

As many of us look back on our history, there is much we can celebrate, much we can be proud of, but there is also parts of our past that we need to remember with mindful and penitent hearts lest we repeat those sad mistakes.

What We Have Been Doing in Morgan Hill For A Hundred Years.

As the 19th century turned, the Methodist Church took root in Morgan Hill. They probably didn't really think of themselves as Methodist particularly. They were people from a number of different religious traditions, gathering in this farming community. They gathered in homes and meeting places to worship together, hear visiting preachers, and be a church. But soon, they began meeting in the Methodist fashion of small groups exploring each other's spiritual growth. In 1894, they organized and established the Morgan Hill Methodist church, and put their energies into building a place to worship, which was also used as a school building. They built a parsonage and established themselves in this town.

We became a place of song, of prayer, of food and help. We grew slowly throughout the years, and declined slowly, keeping about the same numbers of members, with a fluctuation of only twenty or thirty, for a hundred years.

As we read the history of this church for a hundred years, it is not know for anything remarkable. Most of the news reports collected were of changes in the building, new ministers coming to town and old ones leaving. And this is true of most churches. We made an impact gradually, relationally People loved and cared for one another and for the town, making their continual presence felt in gentle ways. Members of the church served in the community in every capacity – some on city councils, some as members of the education boards, teachers and farmers and business people. Increasingly we consisted of members who worked outside of Morgan Hill (now most do).

What We Have Been Doing In The Last Decade:

In the last ten years, this church has been rebuilding itself. The last twenty years have seen increases in age of the congregation and declines in membership, upkeep, and attitude.

We started with the building and redevelopment. While Dwight Kintner was here, the church entered into agreements with the Redevelopment Plan in Morgan Hill and completely overhauled the building. New foundations, new loans, new wiring, fresh paint, earthquake repairs filled the time and energy of the congregation.

Next the finances. While Sandra Exelby was here the church began its work to undergird the church with a strong sense of ownership of its finances. In a time when small churches are dying because there is simply not enough people and money to make it work, this church became more aware and responsible with the financial foundations of its work.

We simply could not have done what we have done in the past three years without their work. When I came to the church, I knew the church was in good structural shape, was thinking about growth, and was financially real, and we could turn our attention to growth.

In the last three, we have worked on our attitude about this church.

We worked on a worship style that was relevant, spirit-filled, based on story telling. This church didn't see itself as a musical church four years ago. Now almost 1/3 of our hour and half service is music. This is a gift of many adults who don't consider themselves musicians and a mess of children who know they are. We are making wonderful music constantly and we feel better about ourselves. And this is a distinctive character of almost every aspect of our church. We don't really know what we are doing, and together, by accepting one another's mistakes, we are doing amazing things.

We began a process of long range planning to make sure that the church had what it needed to continue into the next millennium, and that we were doing what was most important.

State of the Church 2000

Where are We Now?

We have grown dramatically in the last three years, accomplishing in two years what we hoped to accomplish in five.

We set a target population: resident families with children. At this point most of the membership is in that population. We targeted 175 active participants, we have 241. Our children's program has grown very rapidly, often faster than we could provide leadership. We have grown from twelve active kids to seventy. We have twenty-five adults working with the children's ministry in one way or another. We have a regular child-care worker. This year we added a new class. And there is no end in sighte for this growth.

We continue to draw new participants to this church at an astounding rate. An overwhelming movement of our members elsewhere matches this. Of the twenty or so members we have confirmed in the last two years, twelve to fifteen have moved since they joined. Our active constituency has tripled in three years, but the average attendance at church is less than it was three years ago, people coming an average of once every three or four weeks instead of two to three.

Twice this year we have been ready to move to a second service, and each time attendance dropped and we didn't make the move.

There are probably a number of reasons for this. We have hit the national 80% wall, which suggests that when a Sanctuary is 80% full people can't find a seat easily and tend to find more excuses for not coming. Breaking that barrier is one of the hardest things a church can do, and we have been there for over a year.

Another reason is the controversy in the church. We have done a lot of talking this year about the homosexuality issue and after I participated in the Holy Union last January, some members left the church. In our church we have probably gained more members from that action than we lost. What has been far more influential is the underlying sense of conflict and some fear that has built up in the congregation. Our church is anxious not so much about the issue as about whether we won't get along, or that polarization will drive us apart. Our discussions have been very good at honoring the diversity in our midst while still holding a place for disagreement, but the anxiety exists and that has played a role in the church this year. In this midst of that, on the other hand, the people who have come to this church in the last year of varying life styles have felt the church to be welcoming and very open, a place where they can be themselves – for the most part. I am very pleased about that.

Worship is going well. Choir just keeps getting better and better presenting music that charms the members. It has also been a place of teaching one of our spiritual values, that we want participation, not necessarily expertise. Each week, people that don't think they know what they are doing get up in front of the church and offer their gifts of song. People join the choir not knowing how to do it and within weeks, they have offered to sing their first small solo in church, knowing that the church is going to receive their gift with appreciation and grace. That same spirit underlies the congregation's ability to share in dialogue within the sermon and stories we tell. It is probably the most exciting and distinctive feature of our church and gives a vibrancy to worship that is hard to express. In this Church, the minister doesn't preach the gospel, it is the community that gives expression to the Voice of God, we all do it together. And that is very close to what it should be.

Our weakness in worship is prayer and intimacy. More about that later.

We are doing well administratively. Finances are in good shape. Our membership supported the biggest budget it has had in history. We ended the year paying all operating expenses, paying apportionments in full and honoring our agreement to the District (we still have yet to pay all "askings"). We spent $2,500 on the parsonage for a fence and termite tenting, and we set aside almost $4,000 to rebuild the parsonage bathroom floors in 2000.

We have had pot lucks, barbecues, swim parties, actions, and a rummage sale. We have probably not done enough social events to help the congregation get to know one another.

We have dramatically increased our work in mission, which was a major goal for this year. Catherine Stone Circle continues to lead us in this priority in their constant work caring for others. This year they invited the rest of the congregation into a ministry of caring and feeding the homeless. Our new mission springs from the vision of a few members of the congregation to help close the widening gap between opportunities for rich and poor by bringing computers into the home of children who don't have them. A small mission group has spent the year preparing and in December put our the first flyers to help fund this mission.

Adult education has decreased in its historic forms this year. The adult Sunday school has been good but serves the needs of far fewer of our adults than in the past. The women's study group is moving along and has done wonderful classes this year, and new groups are forming around interests in the Reconciling movement and building community.

What are the Issues that Face Us in Coming Years?

The overall work of the church is sound at all levels This means that the issues that face us are not about us becoming church, but about deepening the church we are. In this deepening process, there are some challenges and questions, perhaps puzzles and tests that lie ahead.

The Youth Are Ready to Go

We just, finally, hired our new youth director. We are ready to GO. And this is the challenge, just to go. We expect that this program is going to grow very rapidly and we are going to be panting to keep up with its needs. That is a good thing, but we need all of us thinking like mad to make sure we are spiritually, financially, and spatially ready for ministry the youth will do.

The Administrative Team Wants to Reorganize

The Team members feel they have done what we reorganized them to do, and what they need is more ownership of the members for the church. So, soon they will suggest some changes to help all of us become more involved.

I Come to "Trial" in the Next Month

The Conference Committee on Investigation will meet on February 1-4 to determine whether 68 ministers in this Conference will be charged with disobedience to the Order and Discipline of the United Methodist Church. If they do charge us, then there will be a trial sometime this year. In addition, General Conference meets at the beginning of May. I have heard that 40% of the legislation coming to the Conference that will set the policy for the whole United Methodist Church concerns homosexuality in one way or another. Our church fears that this issue will overwhelm us and many do not want the controversy. So, in these next months, while struggling out and thinking through these complex issues, we must be gentle with one another.

Lack of Intimacy.

We are an increasingly new church. We do not know each other and have very little contact with each other's lives except on Sunday morning. Since we are just getting to know one another, we are still are at a relatively superficial level with one another and there is little sense that we are a primary community for one another.

This, in one sense, is not a problem. Church does not need to be the primary source of our friendships. This may perhaps seem odd may see odd to say, but because we are in a Christian dominated culture, and because community can happen in contexts and on a scale unheard of in other generations, it is possible to imagine a Church without a primary community within it.

Not only is it possible, it is what we now have. Members mostly come to church finding strength and insight to add meaning to lives which are almost completely out of the church. Our jobs and the networks of interaction in our lives set the contexts for our friendships. Life in Morgan Hill tends to support this kind of organization. Our time is so precious many in the church don't want more involvement or simply don't have time for it. As I talk to many of you and other pastors in the area, this is common to most organizations and churches here.

On the other hand, right now, if someone comes to church looking for friends, they tend to be frustrated with the church until they "get in the swing of things". Is that what we want? We can build a church plan and program on that kind of interaction. We become a filling station, or education center for spiritual and ethical life within the United Methodist Christian pattern in Morgan Hill.

The problem with thinking about this as a style for our church is that many of us are feeling critically lonely, longing for a community within our church. Many have been in Morgan Hill for years without making any friends – so much so that we don't even expect it. But the sadness of this grows. Many feel stuck and can't figure out to make friends, want and need them desperately. And our church, that offers the hope of community and teaches it doesn't provide it, will loose it's credibility and it's members. And this is the challenge. How might we break through these barriers if we want to. I am excited about a number of people who are beginning to work to take on this issue. None of us really know what we are doing, but the faithful and honest dialogue will bring us close to God's voice for us.

The lack of intimacy, however, is creating another problem that is one shared by our culture. We don't expect anything from one another, and for the most part we have stopped asking. Since this is not our primary community we don't expect what we would from an engaged religious community.

A Ministry of Healing

Our culture has become obsessed with health-care – of being taken care of -- but we seem to have given up on healing. Everyone, including the health care organizations, have turned over healing to someone else. Therefore, no one is in charge of real healing. No one really expects to heal others. It's not their job.

For centuries, healing was the job of the Church. We claimed the healing power of God, and where our prayers and help could not initiate the transformative changes in people's lives, we funded the doctors and built the hospitals and housed the children, and cared for the addicted. But in the last hundred years, the church has given even the description of healing over to medical center or prisons or drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

We give the healing of our culture over to happenstance as much as anything else. Scientific method rules the process not faith. That is not bad in and of itself, but there are many things a scientific community simply cannot heal, and worse, the support of people who need healing and that is essential for the healing process, is almost absent. Now, healing is a science, and health-care is a business, and we our culture is gaining longer life spans and less quality of life, and almost no transformation.

And, as a culture we are failing dismally at healing. Drug and alcohol treatment facilities have minimal success rates. Hospitals cure diseases at a rate unheard of even a decade ago. But as much as this is a benefit, they cure diseases, not people. We know we simply do not know what to do with diseases of the mind. We do not know how to heal the sicknesses in our societies. Marginalized people are left adrift, a growing wound. What of healing? Who are our healers?

The fundamentalists, in this country have become intolerant of the mainline church. Most are deeply hurt by it because they believed what we say, that Christ changes lives, and yet, they were untouched by most of the church. So, they have created independent communities that seek to live the hope and healing Jesus promised to us. They have had it with Christians who don't believe the Bible and are content to leave healing to medical centers and chance. That may be a fair criticism.

It is certainly true of our church. Our prayer life shrivels at the point where we have confidence that we can really help change, for the better, one another's lives. Our faith doesn't even reach into this area. And therefore, our intercession time in worship, our prayer chain, and our hope in one another is weak.

This year, I would like to begin exploring healing. As we do mission work we will learn some about this, but our problem is a spirit problem. For the most part we don't believe and don't want this ministry in our midst. And when we open ourselves to the possibility, it scares us. This year, we will deepen our prayer and our hope.

Deepening our Education

With as many new people as we have, the base of education in the faith has diminished. We have a whole congregation of people who don't know what they are doing. We are doing really well with this, but to develop strong leadership in Morgan Hill we must begin to grow and mature in our faith. We need adults who are willing to learn and deepen their understanding of the faith. We don't always need to not know what we are doing. This year we must train leaders better, offer more consistent training in membership. We have agreed that everyone that comes is treated as a member for the last three years, it is probably time for us to decide what we think membership means, teach that, and draw us into a deeper involvement in this church. Right now, this is an education issue and a pastoral issue. We need constistent training and we need me to be consistent enough to help these foundations grow. It is a point I must stretch in because I like starting new projects, not sticking with the job till it's done and sewing up the finishing stitches.

This will also probably mean, in our church, an understanding of our faith within, not against, the context of other faiths in the area. One of the strong words that we have to speak from our church is one way among many ways.

We have lost our authority and integrity.

Forty years ago, churches had authority because they were churches. Now, the culture doesn't really care or want to hear what churches have to say. This is probably a good thing, and wise considering the voice that the Christian church has had in politics in this country for the last twenty years. For the most part, the voice of the Christian church has been a fearful and conservative voice. It has been a voice of intolerance, proceeding from the same aggressively converting beliefs that created so much of the violence in California in the centuries past. It has been a voice speaking it's own way instead of fostering discussion and dialogue. In a marriage we would characterize this kind of behavior with an unbridgeable and belligerent partner. It is probably better that the culture does not listen to the church.

It is time to get our integrity and authority back, here in Morgan Hill. Who should be teaching the culture values if not the church. But we abandon our dialogue to the experts of society who know so little about what we spend every week on.

Our challenge is to let our distinctive voice be hears in the community, speaking with power. We are operating on a theology far less conservative than anything else in the town and offer a ministry unique in that, also a voice from the church that is unique. Will we be silent?

Long Range Planning We live in one of the fastest growing areas in the Bay Area. With Cisco coming to town, we are going to see incredible growth and change even within the next decade. The next hundred years are going to bring unimaginable changes into this valley. Within fifty years, regardless of what city councils say, this area is probably going to be wall to wall with people and business. There are only two United Methodist Churches in this valley. Costs for starting churches are skyrocketing as years tick by. And we have no plan to expand. Worse yet, both the Gilroy and Morgan Hill churches are land locked with only minimal parking -- fine now, but it twenty years, this alone could kill the churches. Neither church has adequate space for growing youth groups or mission space for nurturing our communities. We have worship space, that even with multiple services probably can only accommodate about a total of 500 worshipers, if that much. If we only doubled with the doubling of the population over the next decades we will run out of room. In addition to this, both buildings are about a hundred years old and are not going to live forever. What then.

Our joint Charge Conferences with Gilroy in the last couple of years have been questionable at best. But, the idea is right. This year, we should initiate some discussions about what we will do together to plan for the church in the 2000s.

We are doing well. We have grown and attained many of our goals. But, we can't stop at good beginnings, we must dive into the depths of the Spirit in our community and in our own spiritual lives. So,

What do You Think God is Saying to Us?

Originally published in the December 1999 Good News Letter of the Morgan Hill United Methodist Church.

Last update: 1/17/03WG