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July 18, 2009
Greenhouses of Hope: Congregations Where Young Leaders Flourish
“Every single one of us has a “good work” to do in life. This good work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us. When it is finished a new work emerges that will help us make green a desert place ….” Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope
Make green a desert place. Take something barren, lifeless even, and slowly tend it with the right amounts of water, sunlight, and nutrients. Watch life return. Slowly green shoots emerge.
We’ve been looking for green shoots lately. We’ve been scanning for congregations where youth and young adults want to be, where young people are heard to say “If this is church, bring it on!” Show me a church where young people are learning to shape their own liturgy. Show me a congregation that likes reaching out in quirky new ways to its neighborhood. Show me a young person, supported by a team of elder cheerleaders, launching into a year abroad – not wandering Europe, but standing with orphans in Malawi or Sudan. These are the places we’ve gone in search of.
As part of an initiative called Calling Congregations, sponsored by The Fund for Theological Education, we’ve launched a quest for stories about such vibrant, life-giving, greening congregations and the practices they embrace. If these churches were gardens, they’d have signs that say “Flourish” and “Grow” strategically placed where young people walk.
Churches – those institutions with deep roots and ancient ways – are catching glimpses of a fairer future reflected in the eyes of its young. Teens and 20-somethings are seeing visions. When the adults who love them embrace this glimmer, when they nurture that young leader, we see churches engaged in God’s good work of making green a desert place.
At Calling Congregations, we name these churches “Greenhouses of Hope,” and they’re popping up all over the place.
A Greenhouse of Hope (GOH) is a Christian congregation that is free to experiment with new ways of following Jesus. They are engaging in “good work” through practices that genuinely care about and engage the gifts of its young. Even as its elders age, this congregation is growing younger. It imparts not just sufficient but plentiful nurture -- nurture that creates a deep, dark, rich soil from which young lives responsive to God’s hope for the world sprout and flourish. In the process of loving its young, such a church finds itself changed into a more beautiful, more life-giving, and more faithful reflection of God.
In the months to come, read here about:
• A congregation in Greenville, South Carolina where a group of adults are learning practices of holy listening so as to create trusting circles where young adults can get help discerning God’s call.
• A church in Yorktown, Virginia where practices of hospitality create a healthy environment for college students to “try-on” the role of pastor for a summer.
• A church in Philadelphia, PA, that converted an empty urban gothic sanctuary into a center for celebrating art, music, and the Spirit while also creating ministries of feeding, clothing, healing and hoping.
• A church in Minnesota that understands its baptismal vow ramping up, just as students graduate high school and go to college.
A greenhouse is a place that provides just the right nutrients for an otherwise vulnerable young life to grow sufficiently strong. A young life so nurtured does not shrivel up and die when uprooted. Rather, it thrives when transplanted to a more challenging environment.
Are you part of a Greenhouse of Hope? If so, tell us about it.
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