[Dialogue] 10/28/10, Spong: A Gem of a Church in Montana

Wed Nov 3 14:36:59 CDT 2010

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Bishop Spong's November Schedule
(Please see Event Calendar for details) 
11/6: Call to Action National Conference, Milwaukee, WI
11/7: Trinity United Church of Christ, Brookfield, WI
11/13 & 11/14: Unity of the Valley, Eugene, OR

Thursday October 28, 2010 

A Gem of a Church in Montana

A major street near the center of this city was named "Last Chance Gulch." Another was called "Prospect Street." One quickly got the sense that Helena, the state capital of Montana, was born in the western gold rush and that its original prospectors were disillusioned and even financially ruined before gold was actually discovered. Now, however, this city of 40,000 plus is a thriving community located just east of the Rocky Mountains. Helena has wide temperature variations from summer heat that can reach 100 degrees to a winter chill of 30 below zero. Nearby is the Missouri River, whose headwaters are west of Helena and its flow increases dramatically before it joins the Mississippi River at St. Louis and later empties into the Gulf at New Orleans.
Just outside Helena one can climb Mount Helena, as we did, to a perch well above the city's skyline and enjoy an amazing panoramic view of both the city and the surrounding countryside. From that vantage point, church steeples rise skyward revealing the city's diverse, but active religious life. Juxtaposed almost cheek by jowl is the Roman Catholic Cathedral in its gothic splendor and St. Paul's Methodist Church with its starkly modern architecture. Making that physical closeness even more intriguing is the fact that the Senior Pastor of this Methodist Church, The Rev. Marianne Niesen, was, for 17 years of her life, a Roman Catholic nun. As a well educated nun, she was engaged in the task of helping men to become priests, equipping them with her skills, but was still forbidden because of her gender from ever doing the things she was training men to do, an insight into the irrationality of prejudice. Her desire, she would say "her calling" to the life of an ordained pasto r, led her to seek a faith community in which the ordination of a woman was possible. Supported by her Roman Catholic order of nuns, who are always more open that the male hierarchy of that church, she entered the process leading toward ordination in the Methodist Church. Today she is the senior pastor of one of Montana's largest and most creative Methodist Churches.
I went to St. Paul's Methodist Church in Helena in September to do a series of lectures as part of a major lectureship that this church offers each year to the people in that part of Montana. Previous lecturers in this series included noted authors Professor Marcus Borg of Oregon State University and Professor Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University, both of whom are also members of the Jesus Seminar. Dr. Levine is unique in religious circles because she is both Jewish and a New Testament professor. She walks in the tradition of Dr. Samuel Sandmel, a noted rabbi and scholar, who was a New Testament professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School a generation ago. This lectureship is an annual event in which the whole congregation is actively engaged. The lecturers are invited at least two years in advance. People from across Montana and the surrounding states seem to plan their lives around attending this event. This church receives publicity help from the local radio station and newspaper, both of which appear to expect great things to come out of this church. Marianne Niesen is a highly-respected community leader and a much loved congregational leader.
The church was packed for the lectures. The attention level was high; the questions that came from the audience following each lecture were sensitive and intelligent. The attendees were quite willing to probe beyond the usual security levels that mark so many religious folk. Educational opportunities for this congregation are not designed to confirm their current belief system, but to stretch them to new possibilities and new frontiers. This rare congregation does not claim to possess the whole truth. They seemed to know intuitively that all definitions of God are by nature inadequate simply because they are human definitions and are therefore both finite and mortal.
This audience seemed to me to see the Christian life as a journey they are taking together into a profound mystery that they cannot define. So they accept religious ambiguity as an asset rather than a liability, view uncertainty as a virtue to be embraced not to be feared and they engage insecurity as a part of their humanity.
The opening session began on Friday night with a concert featuring a local jazz band augmented by this church's magnificent 30+ voice adult choir. The organist and the choir director are a husband and wife team, each with uncommon skills. The choir director was a baritone, wore mutton chops and seemed to have been born to sing "On the Road to Mandalay" or "Old Man River." The choir was not only enthusiastic but enormously talented. This was clearly an activity to which its members were committed and one that they enjoyed. Various soloists were interposed into the program. One of them gave every indication that she might have once been a torch singer in a New Orleans bar. She turned out to be the daughter of a former pastor. Another sang with such enthusiasm shaking her head in time with the music that I thought she might shed her choir vestment accidentally. I would have wanted to attend this concert even if there had been no lecture to follow.
The three lecture series concluded with the Sunday liturgy. The sense of ownership of their worship on the part of this congregation was obvious. A portion of the service was clearly designed for the children, who were both enthusiastic and happy to contribute their insights in response to the pastor's questions and to the delight of the congregation. The choir was back in action lifting everyone's spirits. The hymns were not dirges lifted out of the 18th century, which meant their vibrancy was not weighed down by doctrines, bizarre to the modern worshiper, like the "sacrifice" of Jesus, blood offerings and atonement theories concentrating on human wretchedness. The most striking feature of this worship came when the Rev. Marianne Niesen announced that they would now receive the morning's offering--and the congregation broke into applause! I had never seen that practice before. My initial response was to be startled, but that was quickly replaced by a sense of both res pect and appreciation. Before the ushers came forward to receive the offering plates, Marianne said a few words about some aspect of their corporate life that these offerings supported. On this Sunday, she talked about their buildings, of which they were deeply proud. "These buildings are here for you," she said, "not only as your house of worship, but as the place where your children can be baptized, where young adults are married and where your loved ones are brought to be buried. Out of these buildings our ministry flows to this town, this state, this denomination and the world. From these buildings the needs of the poor and the homeless of our city are met. Previous generations built them for our use; we maintain them for today and preserve them for tomorrow." It was a statement of their purpose and those who owned it wanted to applaud and they did! Next week a few words would be said about their educational ministry, then about their outreach ministry and then ab out their attempt to create an inclusive community from which no one would ever feel excluded. These people so clearly rejoiced in being part of such a church and their desire to keep it strong and healthy brought applause every Sunday when the offering was about to be received.
I have the privilege of visiting a wide variety of churches across this country. They worship in many different styles. I have worn Episcopal vestments, Lutheran vestments, Methodist vestments, Presbyterian Geneva gowns and no vestments. I have been with congregations that knew that their church made a difference in their town and I have been in others that if they disappeared overnight no one other than the members themselves would ever notice the loss. I have been in churches that were vital and alive and in others where rigor mortis would be too positive a word to describe the quality of their lives. I have been in churches that were so eager to avoid controversy that they stood for nothing, and in others who seemed to understand that churches die of boredom far more quickly than they die of the conflict that comes from standing for truth and justice.
St. Paul's Methodist Church in Helena, Montana was one of the most exciting congregations I have ever visited and the Rev. Marianne Niesen was one of the ablest pastors I've ever watched in action. I came home from Helena renewed and encouraged about the future of Christianity and I wanted my readers to know about this remarkable church and its gifted pastor, hence this column.
Would you like to know more about this church? If so, visit their website at www.stpaulshelena.org. Would you like to commend and encourage Marianne Niesen? Then e-mail her at mniesen at stpauls-helena.org and thank her for her life, her ministry and her inspiration. It will only take a few moments, but every deserving pastor needs to hear the words of Matthew once in a while, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Don Ewing from Guelph, Ontario, Canada, writes: 
As you have moved into the origins of the gospels, accepting your accounts of how they came to be written as they were, do these books still constitute our main source of our knowledge of who Jesus really was, how he spoke and how he related to his contemporaries, indeed our main reason for calling him great? After explaining how Mark's gospel served the synagogue, will you dwell on his choice of the taxpayer Matthew as his disciple, on his placing of children in his scheme of things, indeed his whole view of life? 
I shall look forward to this part of your articles.

Dear Don, 
Thank you for your letter. The series I have developed through this column is meant to give each reader an introductory knowledge of each of the books in the Bible, in a kind of sweeping overview. The questions you raise are good ones but they do not fit the scope of this present series. 
I have referenced in the column on Mark, one of the roles that the story of the calling of Matthew from the receipt of customs plays as a Yom Kippur story in which Jesus enters a place of ultimate uncleanness, namely that of a Jew in the employ of Gentiles dedicated to the impoverishment of the chosen people. From that context of uncleanness Jesus calls and transforms the offending Jew Levi Matthew restoring him to ritual purity. Making clean that which is unclean is a Yom Kippur theme. 
The gospels do remain our primary sources for knowledge of Jesus. It is not, however, that we go to the gospels to obtain literal knowledge. The gospels are not based on photographs that capture Jesus literally at any moment in his life nor are they based on tape recordings of what he actually said. 
We need to remember that the gospels are the product of the second and, even in John's case, the third generations of Christians. The authors are not eye witnesses. The gospels are written 40–70 years after the crucifixion and in a language, Greek, that neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke. They are much more like portraits painted by a Jewish artist attempting to interpret a life–giving experience. The leaders of the Jesus Seminar, chaired by Robert Funk and Roy Hoover, have written a book entitled, The Five Gospels in which they sought to determine the historicity of each saying attributed to Jesus. Their conclusion was that less than 20% of the words attributed to him were actually close to having been articulated by the Jesus of history. Many of the deeds attributed to Jesus fall into the same category. I think of the Palm Sunday procession and the cleansing of the Temple. Both stories seem designed to link Jesus with the messianic projec tions of the prophet Zechariah, which are written in chapters 9 through 14 of his book. 
What you are requesting would be a massive undertaking. The closest I have come to that is my book, Jesus for the Non-Religious that I happily commend to you. It will not answer all of the questions you raise, but it will address most of them. 

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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