by Stephen Kriss
I’ve been in a lot of meetings where there’s discussion about decline in the church. But every time I hear it, I think about the churches I work alongside. While I know numbers are down in a lot of places, that is not the reality in most of Franconia Conference churches in Allentown and Philadelphia. In South Philadelphia alone, among three conference churches we have 500 members, almost 10% of the conference. This past Sunday I spent the day visiting these congregation.
First I worshipped with Philadelphia Praise Center (PPC), which is my home congregation. I was the oldest person on the platform during worship. There’s a growing number of children and lack of Sunday school space. Worship was energetic and bilingual. The congregation counts about 150 people as part of the community.
After worship, I migrated down to the new building for Nations Worship Center (NWC). The long delay with the permitting process is frustrating, so the congregation continue to meet in rented space on South Broad Street. Worship attendance can go as high as 150 people not including special programs. They’re anxious to finish the building on Ritner, about six blocks South of PPC’s building. While they will be close to PPC, both churches reach different demographics among the 5000 or so Indonesian speakers in South Philadelphia.
After conversations at NWC, my next meeting was to explore a new facility for Centro de Alabanza. Officially a conference member congregation only since this fall, the church needs to relocate again after outgrowing their worship space just off Passyunk. It looks like they’ll move to purchase an old United Methodist building on Snyder Avenue. Under the capable leadership of their pastors and a leadership team from across Latin America, the church continues to grow with over 100 adults and 50 children under the age of 18.
Just up north of these three properties is Indonesian Light Church. It’s the smallest of our South Philly congregations and just joined the Conference this past fall. Our Executive Minister, Ertell Whigham, was preaching this Sunday. Emily Ralph Servant is serving as an interim pastor as they immerse themselves further in Anabaptist identity, and Bobby Wibowo from PPC is serving his seminary internship with the church. Most of the church is from the Batak tribe from Sumatra, though they speak Indonesian as well as their tribal tongue with most members from the neighborhood, with others driving from New York to attend.
Over the last decade, unexpectedly, God has built a connection between Franconia Conference and the growing immigrant population in South Philadelphia. This is what fruitful investment and going to the margins of our communities might mean over the long haul. It’ll have meant purchasing about $1 million in property in the city and 500 members in the neighborhood. But this work takes time and patience. We’ve learned some things along the way. And we’ll keep learning.
As we explore going to the margins again, as our churches in the Lehigh Valley and in South Philly begin to fill up and to represent increasing percentages of our Conference population, we’ll be required to rethink and reimagine what it means for us to be together. And we’ll discover, hopefully, again the God who brings about transformation and even resurrection.
And amazingly, yes, we did. I sat down with my sister in Christ, the social worker, the boyfriend, and the grandmother and we worked out a schedule of care that included having me sleeping on the living room floor several nights a week so the children could stay in their own home overnight. The boyfriend covered the nights that he wasn’t working, and the grandmother covered afternoons and early evenings. We signed the children up for half day summer camp at the program where I worked. Church members planned special trips to the park, to their houses, and the zoo for the weekends and picked the children and their grandmother up for church on Sundays. There were offers to help buy groceries, prepare meals, and provide transportation. The whole team supported the core figure, the grandmother, as best as we could for three weeks.
“Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. 2 When he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth, 3 and said, “My Lord, if now I have found favor in Your sight, please do not pass Your servant by. 4 Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; 5 and I will bring a piece of bread, that you may refresh yourselves; after that you may go on, since you have visited your servant.” And they said, “So do, as you have said.” 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Quickly, prepare three measures of fine flour, knead it and make bread cakes.” 7 Abraham also ran to the herd, and took a tender and choice calf and gave it to the servant, and he hurried to prepare it. 8 He took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and placed it before them; and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate.”
My 4-year-old daughter invited me to join her picnic, complete with plastic fruit. I looked at the stuffed animal guests, “Wow, you have very different friends. Aren’t you afraid the bear will eat the dogs or the dogs will eat the cats?” She patiently responded, “No Mommy. That is not going to happen because Jesus is with us.” She pointed to a doll wrapped in white lying on the edge of the picnic blanket. “See?”
As a young boy, I enjoyed going to my grandparent’s house to explore the many knick-knacks that were displayed around their home. Of all the fun items to see, the one that intrigued me more than any other was my great grandfather’s tuning fork. I would spend countless hours repeatedly striking it against the heel of my shoe and then holding it to my ear to listen to the sound of the vibrations – a concert A – over and over again. I would then attempt to match the pitch that I heard in my ear with my own voice while imagining myself as a chorister leading a hymn. The inscription pressed into the metal on one of the tuning fork’s tines stated “A = 440 vibrations guaranteed,” meaning that the sound in my ear would always be the same – guaranteed! But although I always heard the same pitch in my ear, somehow my ability to match that pitch with the sound of my voice was less than a perfect match.
by Barbie Fischer