“Where two or three are gathered in my name…”

or… Where did Pastor Matt go to church?

December 20, 2017

So, one of the things I was looking forward to being able to do during this sabbatical was to visit other churches for their worship services.  Obviously, we who are pastors are typically rather ‘busy’ on Sunday mornings, so we hardly ever get the opportunity to experience other congregations’ worship services—be that for idea-gathering and imagination-sparking or simply for the chance to be in worship simply as the worshipper, the person-in-the-pew without presidership or preaching responsibilities.

As a pastor, visiting other churches for worship can be challenging, too, though… it tends to be hard to turn off the parts of our brains and hearts that are always in ‘evaluation’ mode, if you will, and simply be there to worship.  Good or bad, I guess that hazard simply comes with the territory.

Across the last 17 Sundays, my worship visits have taken me to a number of other UCC congregations, as well as to congregations in the Presbyterian/Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican/Episcopal traditions.  The journey has stretched from as nearby as Hebron, Manchester, and Hartford, to as far away as New York City, Rockford IL, and (of course) Europe.

 

(Note: In what follows, you should be able to click on any of the pictures to get larger/better versions.)

• August 27: Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Manchester, CT
• September 3: Asylum Hill Congregational Church UCC, Hartford, CT
• September 10: St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, East Haddam, CT
• September 17: Second First Church, Rockford, IL
• September 24: First Presbyterian Church, New York, NY
• October 1: St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland
• October 8: St. Mary Newington parish, London (Southwark), England
• October 15: Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge, England
• October 22: American International Church, London, England
• October 29: Thomaskirche, Leipzig, Germany
• November 5 & 12: Cathédrale St. Pierre, Geneva, Switzerland
• November 19: Center Church (The First Church of Christ) UCC, Hartford, CT
• November 26: Gilead Congregational Church UCC, Hebron, CT
• December 3: Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cambridge, MA
• December 10: Park Avenue Christian Church (DOC & UCC), New York, NY
• December 17: Concordia Lutheran Church, Manchester, CT
• Where to next?

Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Manchester, CT – August 27

My very first Sunday on sabbatical, I hopped on over to Manchester and worshiped with the fine people of Emmanuel Lutheran Church, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or “ELCA”). The ELCA is the largest and more-mainline/liberal of the Lutheran denominations in the US (in contrast to the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, which is much, much more conservative). We in the UCC are in full communion with the ELCA (meaning we recognize each other’s theology, worship practices, and sacraments as valid, and ordained ministers in one denomination can serve in the other).  For a sabbatical where one of the major centerpieces was the major Martin Luther anniversary, worshipping at a Lutheran church seemed like a fitting place to start, right?!  That aside, though, when I was in seminary in Chicago, I worshipped with an ELCA Lutheran congregation quite a bit, and have a great fondness and appreciation for the riches of the Lutheran liturgical and musical traditions (the UCC church I usually attended in Chicago, St. Pauls United Church of Christ in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, was quite a ways across the city, and Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, the ELCA church right down the street from my apartment, had high-quality worship and a wonderful, highly-diverse, and progressive congregation).

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Asylum Hill Congregational Church UCC, Hartford, CT – September 3

Labor Day weekend, I drove on into Hartford to attend worship at Asylum Hill Congregational Church UCC.  Asylum Hill—located in the neighborhood of the same name and standing on Asylum Avenue just “behind” where the Cathedral of St. Joseph towers over Farmington Ave—is often seen (at least in certain circles) as one of our “flagship” congregations of the UCC here in Connecticut.  If it’s not the largest membership congregation in the Connecticut Conference, it’s certainly one among the very top handful.  They have a well-regarded music program—although the choir was not “in season” yet on Labor Day weekend—and they are known for their annual Boor’s Head Festival.  They’re also a congregation that’s in transition at the moment: their most recent senior minister departed in June, and the congregation is doing some rather intensive soul-searching about who they are and what type of church they want to be into the future.

(Confession: Only the middle of these 3 pictures—the one with actual people in it—was actually taken by me… I simply forgot to take other ones when I was there.  The exterior shot comes from an internet search, and the third picture comes from Asylum Hill’s website).

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St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, East Haddam, CT – September 10

Hopefully this one will ring a bell for many of you… that’s right, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in East Haddam is the congregation where my partner, the Rev. Adam Yates, is the rector.  A cute little stone building just up the banks from the Connecticut River and just around the corner from the Goodspeed Opera House, St. Stephen’s is the church where Adam has been serving since September 2012.  Obviously, this is a congregation with which I’m somewhat familiar, although the truth is, this was the first time I’d actually been there for a Sunday morning worship service.

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Second Congregational UCC – First Presbyterian Church, Rockford, IL – September 17

At the conclusion of my retreat week at the Holy Wisdom Monastery near Madison, Wisconsin, I stayed around the region for the weekend so that I could attend worship back at my former congregation in Rockford, Illinois.  Well… sort of… from 2006 to 2010, I served as the associate pastor of Second Congregational United Church of Christ in Rockford, Illinois (a.k.a. “Second Con”).  In December 2012, that church and the First Presbyterian Church, which was located a mere block away, federated to become one congregation.  The Presbyterian’s building was sold, and the newly-federated church occupies the facilities that had been Second Con’s.  Officially the “Second Congregational (UCC) / First Presbyterian PCUSA Church”, it now usually goes by the moniker “Second First Church“.

I had not set foot in Rockford or that church since I departed in November 2010 to move out here to Connecticut.  It was lovely… and strange… and all of the other feelings that you can imagine… to see many familiar faces from the congregation I had once called my own, and who had once called me their pastor.  It was fascinating… and strange… and all of the other things you can imagine… to see how things at the church and in the city of Rockford had changed, and hadn’t changed… to take notice of something and wonder whether it was different or whether it had always been that way and I simply hadn’t noticed.

In the time since I’ve been gone, the senior pastor with whom I worked, the Rev. Mike Solberg, has moved on to become the senior pastor at the Union Church of Hinsdale in the suburbs of Chicago (Mike preached at my installation service here at Storrs back in September 2011, for those who remember).  The Rev. Rebecca White Newgren came in early 2015 as the first senior pastor called by the newly-federated church, and all indicators are that she’s doing a dynamite job leading the congregation and catalyzing community visibility and progressive ministry there in Rockford.  Meanwhile, Becky Erbe, who was our C.E. Director when I was at Second Con—and one of my good friends and closest working colleagues—has transitioned out of the C.E. focus and into congregational care and community connection ministries, has gone through additional lay ministerial preparation, and has become licensed by the UCC Association in that area and installed as Second First’s assistant pastor.  Yay, Becky!  (And yes, they’re a church that now has a “Rev. Rebecca” and a “Pastor Becky”!).  I was proud and honored to give Becky one of the SCC “prayer squares”.

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First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York – September 24

The last weekend before I left for Europe, I took a little field trip down to Manhattan to attend worship at the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York.  Like with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America discussed above, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is the largest and most-mainline/liberal Presbyterian denomination in the US, and is a denomination with which we in the UCC are in full communion—you may remember, in fact, that Pastor Nancy is ordained in the PCUSA and serves here at SCC by way of that full communion agreement.  (The PCUSA is also the denomination in which I grew up; I moved over to the UCC while I was an undergraduate at Michigan State University.)

The senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, the Rev. Jon Walton, is a preacher whose preaching work I appreciate greatly, and who I listen to from time to time via internet podcast.  So, I thought it would be nice to go experience him and worship in that congregation in person.  Joe Engle, a parishioner from First Presbyterian, is also who funded the Institute of Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary in which I participated in 2014 and 2015 (and after whom it is named).  A very progressive congregation and very active in the community, First Presbyterian embodies in many ways what one might want out of an excellent UCC congregation; in fact, both of the associate pastors at First Presbyterian happen to be UCC (a fact I did not know prior to my visit).

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St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland – October 1

Our first weekend in Europe had Adam and I in Edinburgh, Scotland, and we went to worship at St. Giles Cathedral, often called the “High Kirk of Scotland”.  St. Giles is a congregation of the Church of Scotland, which is a Presbyterian denomination, and is the most prominent church right in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town section.  St. Giles is the church where John Knox, the main Protestant reformer of Scotland–an associate and student of John Calvin–preached and from which he led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland along Reformed/Calvinist/Presbyterian lines.  The current Minister of St. Giles, the Revd. Callum MacLeod, is actually someone I’ve met before, him having been one of the associate pastors at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago during the time I was in seminary in Chicago; after having been head of staff during their most recent senior pastor transition, he returned to his native Scotland to become Minister of St. Giles a few years ago.

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St. Mary Newington, London (Southwark) – October 8

On our second weekend in Europe, Adam and I took a weekend trip from Cambridge down to London.  For Sunday worship, we attended the Church of England parish church that our AirBNB host attends (and is, in fact, quite active in, serving on the parish council currently), a parish known as St. Mary Newington.  Located on the south bank side of central London, on the boundary between the Southwark and Lambeth boroughs, the neighborhood is diverse but tends a bit more toward the working class and immigrant populations.  In fact, a significant portion of the congregation at the parish is comprised of Nigerian immigrants.  We intentionally decided to go to this parish church, rather than to one of the Cathedrals or one of the other “famous” churches in London, in part because—as Adam put it—”anybody can do ‘grand'”; often it can be far more interesting and enlightening (and friendlier) to get a glimpse into a more ‘ordinary’ local parish.

In the Church of England, which is where the Anglican/Episcopal tradition comes from, while worship is supposed to always adhere to the texts of the authorized liturgies (the Book of Common Prayer and other, more contemporary supplements that have been authorized), one finds a diversity in the way this common liturgy is embodied—something often referred to as one’s “churchmanship”.  As a gross over-simplification, there are three main styles of churchmanship in the Church of England: “low church” or evangelical, “high church” or Anglo-Catholic, and “broad church”.  The variances come especially in the level of “ritual” used in embodying the written liturgy—incense, bells, types of vestments, et cetera—and also often in the sorts of music one finds—the use of chanting, for example.  To a greater degree than one finds with the Episcopal Church in the US, there’s also historically been some socio-economic class correlations with the different styles of churchmanship and, as our AirBNB host explained to us, some of this runs counter to our typical American expectations; namely, there’s often been an association between Anglo-Catholic/high-church styles and a more working-class constituency and a socially progressive world outlook.  Our host said that you can see this across the Diocese of Southwark, which covers the London area south of the River Thames; this area of London has long been lower class than north of the river, and the diocese as a whole tends more high church than the Diocese of London to the north.

At St. Mary Newington, this was evident in the use of incense and certain other ritual elements, and yet the worship and parish atmosphere was also rather “informal” and “casual” in other ways:  for example, the priest preached extemporaneously from the floor/center aisle and prior to the end of the service, the children and youth who were in Sunday School came and gave a brief presentation on what they had been doing in their classes that morning.

The building at St. Mary Newington was also fascinating; as the priest put it, they were “remodeled by the Luftwaffe”.  The building the parish had occupied since sometime in the 1800s was destroyed in the Blitz of World War II, and the current building was built on the same location in the 1950s.  As you’ll see in the pictures, some ruins of the Victorian era building still remain on the site, and the new church was built behind these.

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Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge – October 15

At the opposite end of the liturgical/churchmanship spectrum, in many ways, on the Sunday following my second week in Cambridge, I went to worship at Emmanuel United Reformed Church right there in Cambridge.  The United Reformed Church is the UCC’s closest counterpart denomination in England; it was formed in 1972 by the merging together of the Presbyterians and Congregationalists.  In Cambridge, there are currently 2 URC congregations; Emmanuel URC, the congregation I attended, came out of the Congregationalist heritage.  While I was there, I found out that in 2018, Emmanuel will be merging with St. Columba’s URC, the Cambridge URC congregation that came from the Presbyterian heritage.  There will be much to work out as the two congregations come together, because even though the URC-forming merger happened 45 years ago, these two congregations have thus far held rather self-consciously on to aspects of the character and ethos of their former denominational traditions, both in the way they operate and in the liturgy and overall “feel” of their worship services.

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American International Church, London – October 22

My last weekend in the U.K. before moving onwards to Germany was spent in London, and I took the opportunity to go to worship at the American International Church.  The American International Church is also a congregation of the United Reformed Church and now has as its pastor one of my friends and fellow UCC pastors, the Rev. Jennifer Mills-Knutsen (prior to going to London last year, Jennifer had been serving a congregation in Indiana, and before that she was the associate pastor at Old South Church in Boston).  The church is known as the American International Church because, as they say, “American, because we were established by Americans for Americans living in London post-WWII and our community and worship incorporate some ways of doing and being that might seem uniquely American,” and “International, because we have grown to embrace the diversity that is reflected in the city of London as a gathering place for people from all nations and cultures.”  Indeed, in visiting with Jennifer, she reflects that the congregation truly does draw an international constituency, which makes for a very interesting context to do ministry, especially preaching—there are very few shared cultural reference points, for example.

The congregation worships in building known as the “Whitefield Memorial Church“, located on the site where the English evangelist and itinerant preacher George Whitefield opened a chapel in 1759.  The original chapel was replaced in 1899, and that building was subsequently destroyed in World War II; the current building was completed in 1959.  George Whitefield was an Anglican clergyman who became an influential evangelist in the time of the First Great Awakening.  His work—like the Great Awakening as a whole—was influential across many denominational traditions, including among North American Puritans/Congregationalists (this was the same era as Jonathan Edwards) and within the nascent Methodist tradition.

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Thomaskirche, Leipzig, Germany – October 29

For my sole Sunday in Germany, I went to worship at the famous Thomaskirche, or St. Thomas Church, in Leipzig.  A congregation of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (the united Protestant state church in Germany, combining both Lutheran and Reformed churches), the Thomaskirche is a historically Lutheran church in Leipzig’s city center.  It is perhaps most famous for being the place where Johann Sebastian Bach served as Kantor, or music leader, from 1725 until his death in 1750.

(You can view more pictures of the Thomaskirche on my photo album accessed by clicking here.)

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Cathédrale St. Pierre, Geneva, Switzerland – November 5 & 12

Both of the Sundays I was in Geneva, Switzerland, I went to worship at the Cathédrale St. Pierre, a parish of the Protestant Church of Geneva and the place from which the famous reformer John Calvin led the Reformation in Geneva—the branch of the Reformation that proved most influential not only in Switzerland, but also especially in Holland, Great Britain, and North America.

I ended up worshipping at the Cathédrale (which is not technically a Cathedral, since a Cathedral is the seat of the bishop, and we in the Reformed tradition don’t have bishops [well, there’s actually an exception or two to this… namely, in the Reformed Church in Hungary… but I digress])… I ended up here both of the Sundays I was in Geneva because the first of those Sundays, November 5th, the Cathédrale was host to the big Swiss Protestant Festival service in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and was very much not a “normal” service as they are usually conducted at the Cathédrale.  (You can see video from that Festival service, which was televised on Swiss national television, by clicking here.)  So, I decided on November 12th to go back in order to experience a more typical worship experience at that place.

In the pictures below, the ones with the fancy colorful lighting are from the November 5th festival, the ones without are from November 12th.

(You can see more pictures of the Cathédrale St. Pierre by my photo album accessed by clicking here.)

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Center Church (First Church of Christ) UCC, Hartford, CT – November 19

My first weekend back in the US after my trip, I headed on into Hartford again to one of our UCC congregations, the First Church of Christ in Hartford, ordinarily known as “Center Church“.  This is the church on Main Street, kitty-corner from the Wadsworth Atheneum.  I chose to visit Center Church largely because of the current pastoral leadership; the Rev. Shelly Stackhouse, a good friend with whom I’ve worked together on some activities at the Conference level, became their transitional pastor late this summer.

 

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Gilead Congregational Church UCC, Hebron, CT – November 26

The Sunday following Thanksgiving took me just around the corner to the Gilead Congregational Church UCC in Hebron, only about a 10 to 15 minute drive from my house in Andover.  Pastored by the Rev. Denise Eslinger, a colleague with whom I was in a clergy peer group during my first 3 years here at Storrs, Gilead Church is recognized by many within our Conference leadership to be among the most vital, vibrant, and engaged among the eastern Connecticut small town / rural congregations (both SCC and the Mansfield Center church would also be up there on such a list).

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Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cambridge, MA – December 3

From December 1st to 3rd, I was away at the Society of St. John the Evangelist (“SSJE”), partaking of their annual Advent retreat.  SSJE is a monastic community in The Episcopal Church, and their monastery is in central Cambridge, MA, right on Memorial Drive overlooking the Charles River, and just a few blocks off of Harvard Square.  Sunday worship for December 3rd, the first Sunday of Advent, was thus a part of the overall retreat experience.

I must say, I do love the 1st Sunday of Advent as a liturgical observance, and also its scripture readings, which this year (Year B of the lectionary) included the lovely and powerful passage from Isaiah 64… very poignant words in these times:  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down[!]”.  And we got to sing two of my favorite First-Sunday-of-Advent hymns, “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending” and “Sleepers, Wake! A Voice Astounds Us” (my other favorite for Advent 1 is “Rejoice! Rejoice, Believers“).

(Confession and apology:  I mostly forgot to take pictures while at SSJE [admittedly, my phone was turned off most all of the time], and so I only have this one interior shot of the chapel from after the service when it was empty and the lights were already turned out, and the exterior picture of the monastery is from an internet search).

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Park Avenue Christian Church, New York, NY – December 10

One of the places I’d been hoping to get to during the sabbatical was Park Avenue Christian Church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side (Park Avenue & 85th St.).  “The Park,” as they colloquially call themselves, is a congregation historically part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and now dually-affiliated with both that denomination and the United Church of Christ. Like with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a denomination with which we in the UCC are in full communion.  (For the curious, there are 3 other denominations with which the UCC is in full communion: the Reformed Church in America, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the United Church of Canada.)

“The Park” is now pastored by the Rev. Kaji Spellman Douša, a good friend of mine and fellow participant in the Next Generation Leadership Initiative: Target 2030 program, and also a good friend and seminary classmate of Pastor Nancy’s.  The congregation, very justice-and-social-witness oriented, has been engaging in some creative and innovative worship practices under Kaji’s leadership (perhaps before, too…? I don’t know…), including creative uses of music and visual arts.  They also now conduct their services with a significant amount of bilingualism (English-Spanish).  Kaji engages in powerful, deep, thoughtful, and prophetic public witness in many arenas; Pastor Nancy and I have shared some of her videos (or those of her church) to the SCC Facebook page on a number of occasions.

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Concordia Lutheran Church, Manchester, CT – December 17

For my most recent worship visit, I wanted to stay relatively close to home, and so I popped over to Manchester to worship at the other ELCA Lutheran congregation there, Concordia Lutheran Church.  Located on Pitkin Street, the 1950s- or 60s-era building is quite a contrast with the one of Emmanuel Lutheran, where I went at the beginning of the sabbatical.

 

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Where to next?

I have two more Sundays left on my sabbatical, so you may wonder where I’m planning to go still.

Well, as you might imagine, on December 24th, I’ll be spending the day at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in East Haddam again, where my partner Adam is the priest.  They’ll have worship for the 4th Sunday of Advent at 10:00 am, and then two Christmas Eve services in the evening; I’ll be there for all three of these.  They also have a Christmas Day worship service at 10:00 am on December 25th, as they always do (I’ve, in fact, guest preached at this service a couple of times), and I’ll be there for that, too, before we fly out that afternoon to go to Michigan to spend the rest of the week with my family.

On December 31st, the truth is that I don’t know yet where I’ll go.  Originally, I thought we might still be in Michigan, and so attending my parents’ church, the First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca, MI (the PCUSA Presbyterian congregation in which I was raised), but we’re actually flying back home on the 30th.  So, December 31st is still wide-open for where I might explore…

Then, of course, January 7th will have me back in the elegant meeting house inhabited by none other than the fine people of Storrs Congregational Church UCC!