Thoughts from Our Bridge Pastor
Rev. Barbara K. Peronteau
Theology on Tap is the first Friday of the month which also falls on the first day of September this year. There’s no time to settle into a new month and then wonder when the first Friday is. Not this month. Boom! There’s the new month and there’s the first Friday all at the same time, all at once. Sometimes that’s how the calendar happens.
The topic for this month’s Theology on Tap is “What does ACC 2.0 look like?” This topic grew organically out of our last Spiritual Journey. To be sure, almost every church in America is asking the same question. Indeed, our Jewish and Muslim friends are asking the same questions. It’s new territory. I mean, talk about things they didn’t teach you in seminary!
If you were to ask me why there are so many Christian denominations, my first response is the history and geography of Europe. This is not a three-minute elevator conversation. As do all immigrants, Europeans brought with them what they knew; their ways, customs, and religion and planted it here. Some communities insisted that the liturgy be spoken in their native German, or Hungarian, or Swedish tongue. By the third generation the original language from the Old World was no longer relevant.
There is a shift in contemporary religion going on right now in the present moment. Some of us have recognized, for at least the last ten years, there is a new re-formation of the church going on even as we speak. COVID-19 sped up the process.
I have included a link to an article from Sojourners Magazine, called “What is Church Now.”
I offer it as a starting point. An appetizer to begin the conversation. One place to start is to think about what COVID has taught us. What are the lessons learned from the last 18 months of lockdown and our use of ZOOM and YouTube? What is the church? Who is the church? How do we connect with others? What are our gifts we are eager to share and how do we share those gifts? What is the role of the building and grounds? How can the church be relevant in the third decade of the twenty-first century? I know, more questions than answers. Questions are where we begin. Questions are the seeds of discovery. Questions are the seeds of our faith.
I don’t expect our conversation about what ACC 2.0 looks like to result in any definitive answers, but who knows? My hope is that we begin a conversation about what’s next for Arlington Community Church as we enter a healthy and respectable dialogue with one another. It is a very important conversation the wider church and healthy congregations are having. There is a place at the table for us to join the conversation.
If I don’t see you at church first, I’ll see you at Theology on Tap next Friday at 4 pm.
Peace and wonder,
Rev. Barbara K. Peronteau, Bridge Pastor