Calling

Dori Baker

Scholar-in-Residence

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October 01, 2009

Greenhouses of Hope

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. In time, green shoots emerge.

We’ve been looking for green shoots lately. We’ve been scanning congregations for where youth and young adults want to be, where young people are heard to say “If this is church, bring it on!” In the midst of somber news about mainline denominational instability, we hear whispers of other realities, of a renewed imagination for the role of young leaders . Where young people want to be, young leaders will arise.

We’ve set out to tell the story of a few of these greenhouse churches in thick, rich detail for a volume called Greenhouses of Hope: Congregations and the Practices that Nurture Young Leaders (forthcoming, Alban Institute). In this book, our research paints pictures of these greenhouses—not as sterile, tidy hothouses—but more often as messy, organic, creative, intentional, and sometimes even seemingly chaotic places that in richly varying ways cultivate just the right nutrients to sustain and strengthen emerging young Christian leaders. We tell these stories in hopes that readers will recognize familiar longings, catch glimpses of their own stories reflected, and be inspired to more fully imagine church as they wish it would be.

We hear about a church where young people regularly shape the liturgy. We know congregations that reach out in quirky new ways to their neighborhoods. We find a church creating hospitable space that invites the live questions and doubts of young people in unhurried, unworried ways. We know congregations where young people’s gifts are not stored in the basement, but brought forth and celebrated as whiffs of fresh air. If these churches were gardens, they’d have signs that say “Flourish” and “Grow” strategically placed where young people walk.

In Calling Congregations, we name these churches “Greenhouses of Hope.” A Greenhouse of Hope (GOH) is a Christian congregation being free to experiment both with newly imagined and time-honored ways of following the path of Jesus. Its members respond to God’s love through practices that genuinely embrace the gifts of youth and young adults.

Calling Congregations, an initiative of The Fund for Theological Education, has launched a quest for stories about such vibrant, life-giving, greening congregations and the practices that grow there. We are convinced that such congregations spring up from an intelligent awareness of their particular context, history, people, resources, and crises. Each one looks different: there’s no kit to buy, blueprint to copy or curriculum to adopt.

In this volume of the e-journal, we introduce a few of these congregations and their practices to you. Read them as you might visit a garden, noticing the native species and the kinds of care provided them. Wonder about what species grow in the soil of your congregation. What does your Greenhouse of Hope look like? We urge you to think about the ways your congregation is creating space for the dreams of young people to be grafted into God’s dreams for the world.

Churches—those institutions with deep roots and ancient ways—are catching glimpses of the future reflected in the eyes of their young. Teens and 20-somethings are seeing visions. When the adults who love them embrace this glimmer, when they nurture these young leaders, we see congregations engaged in God’s good work of making green a desert place.