I’ve attended several funerals in that sacred space. This coming Sunday I will go once more, not to pay my respects to someone who has died, but to say farewell to a congregation that – after eight decades of service – is dissolving.
When this congregation built its house of worship, the Cully neighborhood was spare, unincorporated countryside. As the congregation known as Luther Memorial grew, the big city gobbled up the land. A generation ago, the church went through a nasty situation; people scattered in every direction. A remnant soldiered on, with Pastor Greg, a faithful shepherd of the Word, leading them for twenty years.
When that shepherd retired, another took his place. Pastor Carol has faithfully ministered to that aging gathering of believers for more than a decade, until now it’s time for her to let go as well. While her staying on has extended the life of the congregation, her departing is triggering what Lutherans call a “holy closing.”
I’ve known that congregation for nearly 15 years. Even as I saw their physical strength and numbers diminishing with every memorial service, I never called it a dying church. A dying church is one that has no vision. This church of 30 people had a vision for its community, a vision that saw them feeding 50,000 people a month during COVID – even as they may not have been able to gather while COVID raged. They, a vulnerable population, could not meet in person.
But a church ministering to 50,000 people a month is by no true measure a dying church.
A church where the Word is proclaimed every week is by no means a dying church.
A church where people tenderly care for one another and for anyone who walks through their doors is not a dying church.
But they’re down to a handful now. A handful of saints in their 80s and 90s has a hard time attracting young people. And so, their time has come. They can’t keep up with a building aging like them. They are too few to support a pastor.
And yet, their vision remains strong. So strong, they are passing on their building and property to the ministry that has grown up in their basement, a ministry that feeds all those neighbors in need. The ministry isn’t theirs alone; it’s a partnership with many churches and hundreds of volunteers and donors under the umbrella of the watchful eye of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.
When I lived in Portland, I ran that ministry in the basement – the Northeast Emergency Food Program (NEFP). For several years, in fact.
As I ran NEFP, I came to know every member in the congregation upstairs. Some I worked beside downstairs as they fed and clothed their neighbors. Some I counselled with in their church councils and fellowshipped with over cookies after service. Pastor Carol and I often met for lunch at Peter’s Bar & Grill to share vision and encouragement. Dozens of Sundays, I preached in their worship gatherings. Over and over, I prayed for them and they prayed for me.
The church I regularly attended was a couple miles away. More familiar to me in worship style and doctrine, Mosaic Church had welcomed me when I was going through a rough patch in life. Before I started running NEFP and met the congregation of Luther Memorial, Mosaic had become my home.
What initially attracted me to Mosaic was a video on its website. The video told the story of how a shrinking congregation had passed on their building, property, and significant bank account to a much younger congregation that had started meeting and flourishing in its basement.
The older group and the younger group believed the same theologically, but they had very different styles, different approaches. And while the younger group had a blazing vision to reach their city, the older group had vision to pass on all they owned to this younger group. Members in the older congregation now lived far from the church and far from each other. There was no way to regroup elsewhere. So they did a turnkey operation – no strings attached, except for a commitment to further the gospel.
That older church did not die. A dying church has no vision. The older church just made way for the next generation.
And that is what my friends at Luther Memorial are doing. They are making way for the next generation to carry on their vision of ministering to their neighborhood, a neighborhood where lower income folks, who have been pushed out from the hub of the city, come to find more affordable housing. But housing is never truly affordable in this part of the nation and so their material needs are great. The congregation knows this and still supports that ministry at heroic levels, but they know it is time to pass the baton of labor and leadership.
So, they’re turning over their building and land to this faith-based emergency food program that they had a hand in growing and that they have allowed to flourish in their space for the past couple of decades. It’s not a turnkey situation – the church has obligations to fulfill – but it is close enough. The food program is raising funds to cover the congregation’s obligations and to do much needed work on a property with a lot of deferred maintenance. It is still a bargain deal for NEFP.
This emergency food program won’t be holding Sunday services on the property, but lots of other forms of ministry will take place as services to those in need spill out of the basement and fill every nook and cranny of that old building. Just as it happened during COVID. And it will happen again now, thanks to the blessings of a people who, like Caleb of old, still have great vision late in life.
You know the story of Caleb? He was a leader of the Israelite tribe of Judah, one of the multitude who left Egypt passing through the Red Sea with Moses. Caleb took a stand one day as the Israelites were on the brink of the Promised Land.
Moses had instructed Caleb, Joshua, and 10 other leaders to go up and spy on the land they had been promised by God as a place to call home, a place where their ancestors had lived before going through centuries of oppression down in Egypt. These 12 spies went up and did what spies are supposed to do – they investigated the territory without getting caught.
Ten of the spies came back and reported about how impossible the idea was. Caleb and Joshua alone returned with a positive outlook. “We can do it, Moses,” they said. “It is a fair land and God is with us.”
For lack of vision, the Israelites spent the next 40 years wandering homeless in the wilderness. Of that generation, only Caleb and Joshua survived. They alone lived to enter the Promised Land after all the rest had died.
The best part of the story is what happens when they finally do enter the Promised Land. Caleb, who is now at the ripe old age of 85, comes to Joshua and says, “You know the hill country God and Moses promised me 40 years ago? I’m ready to take it.” That land, called Hebron, became the inheritance Caleb passed on to his children and his children’s children.
Hebron was a place of great significance. It was where the Israelites’ forefather, Abraham, had settled and made covenant with God. It was where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all buried. It was where Israel’s greatest, the shepherd David, would be anointed king. It was the land of Caleb’s vision.
It’s a lesson for us all. Age has nothing to do with vision. I know the text about young people having visions and old people having dreams. Dreams, visions, call it what you want. What we are talking about is the ability to see beyond what is to what can be, regardless how old your birth certificate says you are.
Since I moved away from Portland a year and a half ago, I’ve been hearing reports of how teenagers from my old home church, Mosaic, are helping with food distribution in NEFP at Luther Memorial. People I know and love who don’t know I know the others are ministering side by side. The vision of service carries on even as the old saints pass the baton.
Few of those saints from Luther Memorial are able to get out and volunteer at NEFP anymore, though I have a sense Ken is still finding ways to serve. Now in his mid-90s, he always loved to help with NEFP’s food distribution at Sacajawea, the Head Start school the next block over. But I know those saints will continue to support NEFP out of their means, just as they have long been doing, even as they scatter.
This Sunday is the last these friends of mine at Luther Memorial gather on the land God gave them nearly 80 years ago. I’ll be there to worship with them, to celebrate what God has done in their midst, and to witness their vision of passing on the land.
I also hope to learn which directions they are scattering. Ken, who lives walking distance from the church, will have to find a church home farther afield. Others will join churches nearer to where they live. Still others are in senior congregate housing where someone, hopefully, will bring service – and their beloved communion – to them.
These friends at Luther Memorial have long had a wish that may now go unfulfilled. They have hoped that, as they passed, others would gather in their familiar sacred space – just as they’d gathered for those who went before them.
The thing about legacy is we don’t write it ourselves. Oh, we may try, but it is up to others whether or not our self-written legacies last. It is up to others to celebrate our lives in ways they deem appropriate. Sadly, we are a society losing its memory muscles when it comes to knowing how to celebrate those who go before us. As more and more people forego funerals or memorials for departed loved ones, we lose out on celebrating lives and marking the passing of the baton.
And that is a tragedy, for memorials are what visions are built on. Ask Caleb about Hebron.
And yet, this I firmly believe: What we do now lasts an eternity, especially when it is done for the good of others and in the name of Jesus. As the old saying goes, “Only what’s done for Christ will last.” Memories may be useful for inspiring generations that follow. But they do nothing for those who have already gone. The value of one’s own legacy is the look on the Master’s face as we cross into that final Promised Land.
My son, Robert, recently reminded me of a message I preached years ago when we were living in China and he was a teenager. I’d shared the idea that the fruits of our labors in this life become the treasure we lay at Jesus’ feet in the life to come. It’s called casting our crowns before him. There is no greater joy than having something to give to those we love. The gift we give to our Lord is our legacy.
Well done, good and faithful friends at Luther Memorial!
To read the story of Caleb, check out Numbers 13-14 and Joshua 14-15 in the Bible.
If you’d like to help Luther Memorial and NEFP with the cost of transferring and transitioning the property, contact my friend Kristi Baack at Kbaack@emoregon.org. Kristi is Director of Development at EMO. Tell Kristi I sent you.
To read a great story about Luther Memorial and NEFP, see A place for Roxy that I wrote last summer.
To let me know what you are thinking after reading this story or to keep up with other stories I’m writing on justice, compassion, and faith, sign up here.
Photo: Luther Memorial Church, Portland, Oregon.
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