Calling

Margaret Ann Crain

Dr. Margaret Ann Crain, Professor of Christian Education and Director of the Deacon Program at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary

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October 06, 2009

Can You Hear Me Now? Confessions of a Spy in a Greenhouse of Hope

I have become a spy in my own congregation. As a part of a research project in partnership with Calling Congregations, I have begun carefully observing our practices and our language for the past 6 months. I’m watching for the ways we invite our people—young and old—into Christian vocation. I have begun to hear the words calling and vocation popping up all over the place. I have no way of knowing whether they are used more frequently than before, but I’m noticing them now.

Since beginning research in this congregation for FTE’s Greenhouses of Hope project, I have heard the language of calling repeatedly. In this congregation, the center of our life together is worship. Children and youth are intentionally part of the worshipping community. Leaving worship one Sunday I commented to Jane that I had heard her refer to calling quite prominently in her Prayers of the People. “Would you have used that language before we started the research project?” I asked. She answered, “Probably not so much.”

This reminds me of the ways in which those who study congregations can’t help but impact them. It is as if I’ve focused a spotlight on a set of words, activities and practices. The heightened awareness brought by our research has stimulated more attention to how God calls us.

An event from last winter is a good example. The January children’s sermon drew about 20 young children to the steps leading to the chancel of our big gothic sanctuary. The usual scrambling for seats next to the Pastor of Youth and Family Ministry worked out peacefully as she began her children’s sermon. The text was 1 Samuel 3:1-10, the story of the call of Samuel. The pastor began by holding up her cell phone and asking, “Can you hear me now?” Referring to a well-known television commercial, she asked the children if they knew of times when their moms or dads had trouble getting good reception. She likened the calling of Samuel to this: his reception of God’s call was poor. He couldn’t really understand the message. Pastor Jane tells the story:

It was a Holy Spirit moment. I was talking with the kids. I told them, “This guy Samuel kept hearing all these funny things from God. He was about the same age you are.” I was using my phone to illustrate that sometimes the message doesn’t get through. Just then, I looked down and I saw that my phone was ringing.

She paused and looked uncertain for a moment. The small red cell phone she was holding to make the point about poor reception had buzzed unexpectedly, right in the middle of the children’s sermon! Jane recalls, “I was kind of startled.” She looked quizzically at her phone, and then glanced up to the balcony in the back of the sanctuary where the teenagers all sit together. She knew from the caller ID that it was one of the teenagers up in the balcony calling her. Apparently all the kids had whipped out their phones, hurriedly entering Jane’s number, as she began the illustration in the children’s time. One of them got through.

Everyone roared with laughter when Jane commented that the call had come from one of the youth in the balcony. It was a powerful moment of feeling connected and drawn together throughout the huge sanctuary and across the gulf of generations. Jane recalls, “It was so funny. I remember saying to all the parents out there, `You’ll be happy to know that I’m not going to tell you who just placed this call.’” Jane’s prayer with the children on the steps before sending them off to children’s church was that all of us might hear God’s call when it comes.

Congregations that nurture leadership among their young people are ones that intentionally adapt their environment to become hospitable to new generations. We call these congregations “Greenhouses of Hope” because they foster practices that create space for young people to grow into leaders themselves. Regular practices such as a children’s sermon on the chancel steps, an honored space in the balcony where teens congregate, and a pastor who has teens’ phone numbers on her caller-id may seem commonplace. On closer examination, though, they reveal a congregation that values its young. These practices teach that this is a place where young people receive nurture.

Jane is respectful and fiercely protective of the youth. She commented,

After worship that day, the kid who had called me could not wait to tell me that it was him. “I did it, I did it, I did it!” I really wasn’t going to tell, because his mother might have been upset with him. But he could not wait to tell me that it was him.

Dr. Margaret Ann Crain has been doing ethnographic research for over 20 years and enjoys supervising students as they investigate how congregations work. To read the full article of her study of First United Methodist of Evanston, click here.