by Jill Fandrich

November 29 is the first Sunday of the new church year, which begins with the season of Advent, the time leading up to Christ’s birth. How different Advent was last year compared to now.   

Last year at this time, we gathered for our traditional “Greening of the Church” festivities, hanging wreaths, putting up trees, and setting out nativities, banners, and candles, after which we went to a member’s home to celebrate with food and drink. During December worship, we carried the banners down the aisles, lit the candles on the Advent wreath, and sang carols. We held our annual Deacons Brunch, gathering in the Great Hall of the church to share food and fellowship. Our kids dressed in costume each Sunday, telling the Christmas story in a series of mini-pageants. We held special services for Longest Night and Christmas Eve. We sat closely together in the pews, shared food, sang hymns, shook hands, hugged, and laughed, blissfully unaware that these would soon be things of the past.

A year later, the sanctuary sits empty on Sunday mornings while we worship together in front of our computer screens in our homes, connected through Facebook Live (and the Holy Spirit). The huge trees and church decorations will stay in their storage boxes. Instead, the pastor will light the candles on the Advent wreath each Sunday on livestreamed worship. We will put together a “virtual Christmas pageant,” using pictures and photos contributed by members and friends. Our Longest Night Service, which is needed more than ever this year, will be livestreamed from the sanctuary on December 21, still proclaiming the “light which shines in the darkness,” but in a new way.  We are distributing candles, Christmas hymnals, devotionals, and small gifts to our members so they can worship from home. Rather than seeing hundreds of handheld candles flickering in a darkened sanctuary on Christmas Eve, we will light our candles at home, connected online as we celebrate Christ’s birth separately, and yet at the same time, together.

Part of me feels saddened by these differences, but a part of me rejoices too. Of course, I miss my church family and the traditions which have been a part of my life for so many years. But something good is growing out of these changes too. We are learning new ways to be the church of God. We are telling the “old, old story” in fresh new ways. We’re learning not only what we miss, but also what we don’t.

For instance, one of the amazing things we have found since being “forced” to worship online is that it has opened up a whole new community of people beyond our walls.  Our worshiping community includes not only our “regulars,” but also friends and family of members, shut-ins, former members who’ve moved or drifted away, people from out of state, and community folks who never worshiped with us inside our building but who do so regularly now. Online worship is intimate, lively, collegial, and participative. Many prefer it to the “old way.” Even after we return to the sanctuary, we will continue to worship online, incorporating in-person and online community at the same time, and adding some of the spontaneity and intimacy that we’ve come to enjoy.

Churches talk about change a lot. Actually making change happen is harder. Churches are notoriously slow to break out of old patterns. Although 2020 has been hard, it has also given us a gift. We have been forced to do things differently, to try new ways of connecting with others, to take chances, to move forward with hope, and to see that the church exists (in fact thrives) beyond our walls. For that, we are grateful.

​In this time of Advent, we hear again the story of Mary and Joseph receiving unexpected and alarming news that they would give birth to a son who would change the world. They were confused, afraid, and unprepared for what was being asked of them. They traveled the dark and dangerous road to Bethlehem, not knowing where they would lay their heads and not knowing what the future held. And yet they trusted that God was with them. As 2020 comes to a close, with all its unpredictability, pain, and hardship, we begin to live into the changed world before us, and we remember and rejoice that God will be with us too.

​by Rev. Patrick David Heery
 
Some have wondered why a church of God has a sign declaring, “Black Lives Matter.” Some have wondered what business a church has in hosting a vigil for racial justice, or a discussion on immigration, or an action on poverty, or a day in solidarity with domestic violence victims. Some have wondered why this sacred space should be so marred by the contention and discomfort of public issues. Why can’t this just be a nice place to be at peace?
 
It is not a bad question. And we are not the first to ask it.
 
Daniel arap Moi, former president of Kenya, once quipped, “How could subversive documents come from the house of God?” In 1980s postcolonial Kenya, it was a reasonable question. The Kenyan church had never been a source of social change before. With its eyes firmly fixed on heaven, it had ignored the violence, corruption, and white supremacy on earth. The church’s role was to worship and save souls. Social change was not in its jurisdiction.
 
So when Timothy Njoya, a Kenyan pastor of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, preached a sermon on the Gospel of Luke, calling for genuine democracy and the release of prisoners of conscience, he was labeled a “subversive,” banned from radio and television, and eventually detained without trial and tortured.
 
It was at that moment that many expected the church to falter. But something surprising happened. Thousands of Kenyans began going to church, and the church began to awaken. Njoya’s church was overwhelmed with requests for sermons. Njoya says that President Moi gave the gospel a special gift when the government arrested him, “propelling faith to become the forum for change.”
 
Blaine Harden of the Washington Post wrote at the time, “The church has emerged as one of the few institutions willing to challenge the policies of Kenya’s powerful president.” That was because, as one elder from Mombasa put it, “The Presbyterian church gets its theology and government from the Bible and the Holy Spirit, not from the state”—or, as Njoya likes to say, echoing Paul, “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9).
 
To President Moi’s quip, Njoya and Presbyterians all over the world answer: when it comes to the powers and principalities of this world, the house of God is always subversive.
 
As a church, we are never partisan, never Democrat or Republican, but we always, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “seek the welfare of the city” (29:7). We, like our Savior before us, carry our crosses into the streets, and ask what our faith means for the suffering we encounter there. Our Book of Order is clear: “The Church bears witness in word and work that in Christ the new creation has begun, and that God who creates life also frees those in bondage, forgives sin, reconciles brokenness, makes all things new, and is still at work in the world.”
 
The word Protestant comes from the Latin “to witness” and from German Reformers who were dissenters. The word isn’t simply negative, as often used today, but originally meant to protest or testify FOR something or someone.
 
We are called to protest for the new creation that Jesus announced in his ministry and embodied on the cross and in the empty tomb. We are called to challenge any system, be it religious, cultural, or political, that denies the new creation that proclaims liberty for the oppressed, good news for the poor, sight for the blind, and the day of salvation (Luke 4:16-30).
 
We are the disciples of the One who overturned tables, poured out coins, and drove out wrongdoers (John 2:13-22). We are the inheritors of a Reformed tradition that founded public education, sought the abolition of slavery, elevated the rights of women, and was one of the first to ordain and marry LGBTQ persons. We are the flame carriers of revolutionaries like John Witherspoon (the only clergyperson, a Presbyterian, to sign the Declaration of Independence), or like Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who stood in protest of the Nazi regime and died opposing it), or like Martin Luther King Jr. (who overturned a segregated temple and nation). We are a people of protest.
 
To be Protestant is to submit to the subversive, world-turning, life-changing work of God, and then, to tell… everyone. To open their eyes to the tables already smashed, to the people already loved, to the cross already broken and the Christ already risen.