The Conditions for Thriving

Dear Friends,

Kaiser Permanente has used the word “thrive” as a slogan in its advertising for a number of years. When I looked up synonyms for “thrive,” I found the terms “flourish” and “prosper” among others. In a rapidly secularizing society, the church has been understandably concerned with “survive.” And survival is seen as numbers in the pew and numbers in the congregation’s savings account. This has not been my preoccupation. When you pastor a small congregation, you know there will be weeks when there are big empty gaps in the pews and years when the numbers in Sunday school leave much to be desired. The question I ask is: “But are we a healthy and healing community?” I like the word “thrive.” Are we helping our people thrive? I think this is what the Church is supposed to do: make people thrive in a full sense of the world. If done well, the Church can do this better than any other institution in society. On any given Sunday, we attempt as much as possible to nurture the congregation spiritually, nourish it creatively, stimulate it mentally, challenge it socially, and bind it together as a community. Separately, each of these acts can be achieved better by other entities: certain TV preachers for the spiritual, great restaurants for the nutritional, institutions for higher learning for the mental etc. But to address them all as an integrated whole, no one can do better than a good congregation. Nevertheless we must also be humble and realize that we cannot make people thrive per se.

We can set the conditions for thriving. When we preach, we try to set the conditions by highlighting the sacred text in such a way that we might facilitate God speaking to you. When you provide your unrivaled coffee hour spread, you set the conditions for people to enjoy good food and thrive in a supportive social setting. When we challenge your thinking with an eye for compassion and justice in sermons and community minutes, it may make you (and us) uncomfortable, but the goal is for us to help set the conditions for our society 
to thrive morally. The Church never lives in a bubble; it must be in dialogue with
the scientific knowledge of our day and respond to the injustice of its times. This is as true in 2018 as it was in 1918 at the end of the Great War or in 1818 after 
Napoleon.

This month we mourn the loss of Rev. Gail Cullerton, who served you faithfully and provided continuity whenever I was away. She was truly concerned about your thriving. But I want you to know that you made her thrive, too You enabled her to do what she was passionate about and as such gave her great joy.

If you were to ask me what gives me the greatest joy at this point in my ministry, I would answer: to see our residents thrive and you along with them. I see them do well at Parkview, and it does my heart good. I see them come back from preaching in other pulpits and hear about good feedback, and I can see their confidence grow. I know it is to a great extent because of the space you have created for them. They can touch other congregations more ably because of you. May we all thrive and try to do better to set the conditions for one another’s thriving.

Thanks be to God for our ministry. See you in church. Aart