[Dialogue] 12/15/11, Spong: Harrisena Community Church in Lake George New York: A Story Worth Telling

[Ellie Stock]

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Harrisena Community Church in Lake George New York: A Story Worth Telling
This church was built in 1866 by John J. Harris to be used as an Episcopal summer chapel serving vacationers in the Lake George, New York area.  In 1869 it was deeded to the vestry of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Glen Falls, New York.  It was closed in 1883.  It re-opened in 1918 as an inter-denominational summer chapel and closed again in the mid 1920’s. In 1930 it became Presbyterian and was part of a five point rural congregation of the parish of the Glenn Falls Presbyterian Church, served by a circuit-riding preacher. It became independent once more in 1947, calling itself Harrisena Community Church in honor of its original founder.  Its first full time pastor was called in 1952 and the congregation grew to a membership of 98 people.  In 1969 the congregation called its third pastor, a newly-ordained American Baptist clergyman just graduated from the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, the seminary that produced Martin Luther King, Jr.  His name was Lamont Robinson and he arrived with his wife Dodi, who had also attended Colgate-Rochester, but trained to be a church musician.  They were in their mid-twenties.  This couple has now been at this church for 42 years.  Today it has about 300 members; a newly-expanded building to house church and community activities, and a well-trained and talented choir of about 20 people.  Its congregation, deeply dedicated to serving this basically rural community is made up of two distinct groups:  retirees, drawn by the Lake, and long-time local and thus permanent residents.  The blend is magnificent.  It is one of the most exciting churches I have ever visited and Monty and Dodi Robinson have created in this place a spectacular gathering of people, who are self-defined as open, questing, questioning, stretching and progressive Christians.  I am compelled to share with my readers the story of this church and of this remarkable couple.
Harrisena Church is the focal point of community life around Lake George.  Monty Robinson is a part of everyone’s family.  Dodi Robinson has made it a place of exceptional music.  To keep themselves up to date with contemporary biblical scholarship and theology, they have just instituted an annual Public Lectureship to enable their congregation and extended community to embrace new ways of thinking.  I was privileged to be the inaugural lecturer in this series.  It was for them a big venture, even a scary venture.  Could they entice nationally known speakers to this remote and rural area?  Would the community support or even appreciate this emphasis?
They publicized the lectures widely through mailings, billboards and the media available to them, in this case a local newspaper called the Post-Star.  In one published article a retired Methodist minister, who is not a member of the congregation, expressed the excitement that was building in the community with a bit of obvious hyperbole.  Referring to my arrival he said, “It’s like having Bill Clinton come on Sunday morning!  It’s that monumental!”  Only my mother would have agreed with that assessment and not all people would regard that comparison as flattering, but it did reveal the expectations that are not untypical of this church.
To take the pulse of this congregation, we have only to look at the liturgy and worship of their Church. They have turned the stated goals of the progressive Christian Movement in the United States into a statement printed on the back of the Sunday bulletin:
We believe in the profound message brought to humankind by Jesus of Nazareth. We believe that it is in this message rather than the institutions conveying it that forms the most enduring foundation for a positive life. We believe that Christ’s message is at least as germane to the world today as it was two thousand years ago. We believe that this message better enables each of us to see and worship God in our own way. We believe that Christianity is enriched by human reason not in conflict with it. We believe that as a church family, we are responsible to one another and our community.
Inside the bulletin they state that while Christianity is their pathway into the mystery of God, they are aware that there are other pathways that they must also honor.  Their commitment is to be open to all people including, but not limited to: Conventional Christians and questioning skeptics-believers and agnostics-women and men-all sexual orientations-all classes and abilities.
In this congregation, I met a woman who said that she was not only “out of the traditional religious box, but had never been in it;” others who were in various stages of their faith journey and even one just convicted of a felony and awaiting sentencing.  Indeed, all were welcome.
How has it been possible for this gem of a church to be born and to thrive in this relatively rural area of upstate New York?  The answer is surely found in the leadership of its pastor and his wife.  For forty-two years they have lived at the heart of this community, raising their family here and identifying with the people.  As soon as they arrived, Monty joined the volunteer firemen and took training to be an Emergency Medical Technician working with the Rescue Squad.  Dodi took the ten anthems that the church simply rotated every ten Sundays and stretched them into a music library that much larger churches would be proud to possess.  To volunteer in activities that benefitted the whole community, regardless of creed or lack of creed, became the mark of the congregation.  The Youth Group tended to be made up of non-church going teenagers and Monty made it a focus of his ministry from his first days as pastor until today.   Alumni of that youth group have become significant leaders in the congregation.
The current anxiety in the congregation is the contemplation of a future without Monty and Dodi.  He is now 68.  The time of his retirement cannot be many years away.  Monty is such a fixture, indeed a lynchpin in the lives of so many that they cannot imagine life without his being part of it.  He is also sensitive enough to wonder about the effect either he or his presence might have on his successor.  Should he move away when the day of his retirement comes?  To do so would be to ask him to move from all his roots, from all his friends and from the community that he has in large measure created.  Retirement would thus be almost a prison sentence that would “send him away” for the balance of his life. If his moving away was a prerequisite for the new pastor to succeed, it would inevitably doom that new pastor, for he or she would always be thought of symbolically as the one who caused their friend, guide and spiritual leader to be lost to them.  That is an emotional load that few can carry successfully.  The future pastor will never replace this man and if that is the future pastor’s agenda, then he or she will fail.  The new pastor must rather supplement Monty, build on his genius and appreciate his counsel.
How did these two people accomplish all that they have accomplished?  To quote a familiar commercial, they “did it the old fashioned way.”  They earned the trust of the people in the community.  They became an additional set of parents to every teenager.  They did it life by life. No one’s needs were dismissed and no one’s confidentiality was compromised. There are few pastoral careers in the United States that continue in the same church for forty-two years, and fewer still that remain creative, exciting and life giving for themselves and for their congregations.  Monty and Dodi Robinson are rare indeed in their accomplishments. There are few churches left in our society that are still the center of the life of the community they serve. Harrisena Church is exactly that. Unusual things like these do not happen accidentally.  This pastor and his wife invested their entire careers in this single community.  They constantly upgraded their skills, reinvented themselves and re-focused their ministries so as to be creative over long periods of time, not growing stale with familiarity. Monty and Dodi Robinson are rare specimens of a unique and unusual pastoral couple, each possessing quite independent talents. Colgate-Rochester Divinity School should honor them both with honorary doctorates. It was my privilege to meet them both; to enter into this congregation ‘s life for a single weekend; to be inspired by what I saw, and to embrace a picture of what I think the Church was intended to be.
In 1993 this congregation decided to expand its buildings by erecting on its ten acre lot an assembly and educational facility to supplement its small stone sanctuary.  The new structure would include an auditorium that would seat 250 people, a place in which they could house church dinners, public lectures, wedding receptions and even community functions.  It was an enormous undertaking for this small congregation, but they believed it was a necessary one.  When this building was nearing completion, the church trustees conducted a contest on what the new facility should be named.  While these trustees were said to have received numerous suggestions, they kept the final decision secret until the day of the building’s dedication in 1994.  There was a large plaque on the wall that when unveiled announced the winning name to the world. The plaque read “Robinson Hall,” erected “in thanksgiving for the lives, the presence and the ministries of Dodi and Monty Robinson.”  That had been the only name submitted, they said, a fitting tribute to an incredible couple, whose names are not only on this plaque, but are written across the hearts of literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the Lake George area.
In our society, most of us are normally remembered for no more than three generations.  Dodi and Monty Robinson will transcend that limit.  Theirs is a ministry for the ages and people in that community generations from today will repeat the familiar stories and recall this unusual clergyman and his equally unusual and dedicated wife. I believe that people ought to hear words of appreciation before the retirement or funeral orations, so I ask my readers to e-mail Monty and Dodi at Harrisena at albany.twcbc.com.  Thank them for lives well lived and ministry powerfully engaged. I hope their mailbox is flooded.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.




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Question & Answer
Margaret, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
I just want to say that the writings of Bishop Spong have been such a gift.  They give me hope when I tend to think there is no hope that God can be imagined in ways different from institutional Christianity.  I am a firm Christian but know that our thinking can be so limited.  Bishop Spong’s writings echoed so many of the ideas that have become part of my faith journey.  It was so wonderful to see them in his books and columns.  I did not feel so alone.  His ideas have nurtured my spirituality in so many ways that I cannot even begin to express.  I am so grateful for the Spirit in him that he has shared with so many.
Answer:
Dear Margaret,
Thank you for your comments.  I find it fascinating to observe what institutional religion does to people.  I get letters that say, “You have given me permission to think, to ask questions and to grow.”  The implication is that their church communities have denied that permission and enforced it with a message of guilt.
Faith in the biblical narrative does not mean giving intellectual assent to propositional statements like those found in creeds and dogmas.  All creeds and doctrines are human creations.  Faith means having the courage to walk into the new, the strange and the unknown in the confidence that the power and presence we call God is not constrained by the human patterns of yesterday and thus can always be found in the changes that accompany tomorrow.
Faith is a journey into the mystery and wonder of God and that journey will always take us beyond the road maps of our human past.
Journey well!
~John Shelby Spong




New Book Now Available!
RE-CLAIMING THE BIBLE FOR A NON-RELIGIOUS WORLD

John Shelby Spong presents Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, a book designed to take readers into the contemporary academic debate about the Bible. 

A definitive voice for progressive Christianity, Spong frees readers from a literal view of the Bible. He demonstrates that it is possible to be both a deeply committed Christian and an informed twenty-first-century citizen.

Spong’s journey into the heart of the Bible is his attempt to call his readers into their own journeys into the mystery of God.


Order your copy now on amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com!








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