Earlier this year I had an email exchange with my favourite sparring partner, Rev. David Webber, over the fact that rural issues are not well covered in the magazine. A few weeks later I had a passionate email from a lady in Saskatchewan who was expressing the opinion of her friends that the Record does not do enough stories about the western part of this country.
In April I was at a very interesting conference of immigrant and ethnic members of the Presbyterian Church. In a closing statement they said of themselves that they felt “marginalized” within the church. (I will be reporting on this conference in a later issue.)
Last September Presbyterian youths, Patricia and Ryan Browne, wrote in the Record: “Our home church, like many Presbyterian churches, doesn't seem to have a place for us. We are approaching the void.”
Over the years I have met many other people who feel marginalized within, and perhaps even by, the church. (Our cover stories this month are about the aftermath of a heinous policy whereby the church actively marginalized – negated, many would say – a large segment of the body of Christ.) The Record received a powerful letter a year ago which spoke of the loneliness and pain a homosexual person felt within the church.
The list is incomplete, I know, of all the people who feel left outside. There was a project started in Toronto several years ago which was supposed to reach the unchurched, that is those people who have spiritual yearnings but no religious experience. Within a year, however, the project demographic shifted interestingly to those who were churched, but disgusted with, or just merely tired of, church. That is, they knew when to stand up and sit down during Sunday worship, but didn't feel the church was interested in speaking to them.
My feeble defense to Webber and the lady from Saskatchewan was the same: Yes, oh yes, more can be done to tell rural and western stories and the only practical way of managing that is to have rural and western folk feed those stories to the magazine.
But, when I said something similar at the race conference a minister kindly chastised me because he felt the Record could have done a better job in telling a story his congregation had forwarded. I agreed and begged him to not judge the magazine with that one example.
We strive at the magazine to be all-to-all but we realize we may end up little-to-most. It's a daily challenge to give voice to all the members of the church – young-mature; rural-urban; Ontario-restofCanada; established-forming. We affirm we are open to all voices – with the usual provisos about hate and discrimination – and we need our readers and members to feel empowered to share those stories.
The Brownes had come to the same conclusion in their article last fall: “So, let's step up, young adults, let's make our voice known, and create a place by ourselves, for ourselves.” That's the right attitude and the best approach.
But it ain't always easy: yes, anyone can walk into a church on a Sunday morning and worship God and His Son, but the church has to be welcoming. It's not only about faith and theology, it's also about (and often largely about) hospitality. Leave the church doors open on Sunday morning and at least one new person will walk through per month – 12 new members a year, if you know how to feed them.
Feed them; then nurture them; get them onto the session; more nurturing; encourage the voice; then listen; nudge them to the heart of the Presbyterian power-base: Presbytery. Now they'll need a lot of nurturing because one of the great uncollected statistics is the number of Presbyterians turned-off Church by a presbytery meeting.
The antidote to marginalization is Voice. The Record is open to all voices; but, that's not enough. They have to be heard in presbytery! And, that is a much more complicated, but much more rewarding, matter.
