eMusing Series: Doing Pastoral Work In The Big Apple
Part Seven – Doing Pastoral Work And Being Church After 9/11
September Eleventh 2004 – John L. Ng © Copyright 2004
Three years ago, during our family’s Thanksgiving meal, I asked each person to share where (s)he was on the morning of September 11th. It was three months ago, on 9/11, terrorists hijacked two commercial airliners and slammed them into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within minutes, both towers collapsed to the ground, killing more than 2,700 people. The shock and awe of that tragedy had etched in our memory those terrible, anxious moments. We remembered how each had frantically tried to reach one another by phone. Nancy, my sister, was stranded in her office building few blocks from ground zero. Because the phone lines were jammed, we could not reach her for hours. My daughter, Johna, living in Boston at the time, viscerally tried to call people she knew, even if they were not in New York.
I remembered rushing to my church office that morning to organize a chain call to make sure every congregant was accounted for. Although all were safe, many were fearful and anxious about much. Several who had moved to New York recently left soon after 9/11. That Thursday the church called a prayer vigil. We wanted to gather as a community to seek God in prayer for the city; we also wanted to provide a place for those who sought the comfort of community. Many shared from their hearts, at times incoherently. It was a good cathartic time. We prayed for our city, the city officials, the families of the victims and one another. It seemed everyone knew someone who had died in the tragedy. I knew two family friends who had perished.
The tragedy of 9/11 occurred between the deaths of my parents. Looking back to my parents’ funerals, I gain some insights about how New Yorkers cope with 9/11. There are two rituals in a funeral. At the graveside, we lower the casket into the earth. It is painfully desolate to be confronted by death’s abrupt finality. Then there is the memorial service at church. There we remember in celebration of the life of the one who has left us. These two disparate rituals are analogous of how the city copes with the pain of 9/11.
During the weeks that followed 9/11, it seemed every day there were memorial services somewhere in the city. Most families did not have physical remains of the deceased. So there were no actual burials. The many memorials functioned as virtual burials. We saw on TV nightly this overwhelming sense of death’s finality. During the initial weeks, the whole nation shared the pain with those suffering families as they held pictures and read out loud the names of the dead.
Many found this abrupt finality of death unbearable and unacceptable. As if they did not want to give in to it. They kept coming back again and again to the virtual grave to grieve its irreversible reality. They were so pained by the finality of death that they could not celebrate the lives they had shared with the deceased. Many New Yorkers were getting weary of these repeated images. One congregant said to me in private, “Enough, all ready. How many memorial services can we have. . . . We cannot undo what has happened.”
This congregant is right. New Yorkers in a post-modern world are not very good at glancing back to their past or preparing for their future. They distrust most things too much to consider anything reliable, including their past and future. (Look at part six of this series Doing Pastoral Work In The Big Apple: Living With Congregants In A Postmodern Environment). Seemingly, they cannot look to the past with confidence or the future with anticipation. So they keep coming back to that day of lost as the only way to express their anguish.
Many families of those who perished have channeled their helplessness to a political crusade. Some seek to keep ground zero a permanent shrine in honor of those who had died there. Faced with enormous pressure, the Bush Administration appointed a commission to investigate what had caused the tragedy. After the report was published this summer, many hoped that this would bring closure for our city. But it has not. The question “how did it happened?” is really “why did it have to happened.” Realizing their powerlessness to undo the past, many desperately want to blame someone for what has happened. Some are suing the airlines, the federal government, the city and just about any one they think that are responsible.
In my “Pastoring an Urban Church” class one evening, I scratch a crude line drawing of the World Trade Center towers and the St. Paul Chapel as an analogy of urban ministry after 9/11. Once that historic gothic church was the tallest building. It was a beacon of faith, hope and community for many in the city. When the World Trade Center was erected in 1973, its shadow dwarfed the chapel. It was analogous of how the citadel of commerce had overshadowed the sanctuary of God in the city. But after the commerce center’s collapse, many since 9/11, especially the emergency workers during the crisis, found St. Paul’s Chapel again as their sanctum of rest and reflection. The church should always be that place of faith, hope and community in the city.
After three years, the distance between the 9/11 and the present grows wider by the day. Public officials like to say that “it is the day we should never forget.” Yet most New Yorkers have moved on seeking normality of their lives. During this year’s anniversary, only some pause to have a silent moment of remembrance. The crowds at the ground zero observance were sparse. Time magazine reports that the number of monthly calls on the mental-health referral hotline in the city has gone down from 1,000 last year to 600. Apparently, many New Yorkers are feeling more confident in coping with the threat of terror on their own. Yet many are still anxious about their personal safety in a very unsafe world.
The churches around the country reported an increase in worship attendance during the first months after 9/11. Apparently the initial shock has caused many to think about God. Facing death has a way of making us face life’s questions. These questions naturally gravitate toward the thought of God. But these God-thoughts did not last. By the following Spring, the number of worship attendees had gone back to the level prior to the tragedy.
The immediate week’s end after 9/11, our church had its scheduled annual retreat. Different congregants voiced different opinions about whether to have it or not. But the church leaders and I thought that it was best to move forward with it. But the speaker, with fear in his voice, informed us that he was unable to come. The lot fell on me to do the teaching at the retreat. I stumbled through the sessions and spoke from my heart about what it meant to being church in difficult times such as this.
“At all times, especially at difficult times,” I said to those who came, “as your pastor, I have this awesome responsibility of calling you to community by saying, let us worship and let us pray. These two acts of faith are who we are as people of God.” Throughout history, in the best and worst of times, the people of God have always worshipped and prayed. The way the church worships and prays as a community is still the best witness to a troubled world.
I reminded my congregants that under the shadow of 9/11 our church work in New York City is still profoundly orthodox. The increase in church attendance after 9/11 reminded us again that when our world conditions become uncertain, people instinctively go to church for answers. The answers they seek are neither simple nor adequate. In fact, it is impossible for the church to satisfy their every question.
Church work is fulfilled not by our theological responses to their inquiries about evil and God, or despair and faith. Church work is done by doing what we do best. We may not know all the answers to their questions about God, but we do know how to worship and pray to God. When ordinary Christians rehearse the redemptive story of God in communal worship and tell their own stories of redemption in communal prayer, those watching can not help but see a community that is genuine about God’s reality. The church at worship and in prayer is the most potent witness of God’s presence to the world (Revelation 5.6-14).
Communal Evangelism
Church work is never a ministry of individuals to individuals; nor is pastoral work the solo task of preaching to a crowd. The pastoral task in church work is community build. Salvation is very personal, but never private. It is communal. When a person becomes a Christian (s)he at once becomes a member of a community. Baptism is a sacrament through which believers are added to that community. In some church traditions, communion is immediately observed after baptism with the newly baptized. The observance of these two sacraments expresses profoundly what it means to be Christian in community.
The presence of the unchurched in church after 9/11 is indicative of their human need to feel the presence of God and the comfort of community. I am appalled to know that on the Sunday after 9/11, some Asian pastors did not even acknowledge the tragedy. They imperviously mentioned it with few passing words and moved on to their planned worship. This oversight showed a deficient understanding of the communal nature evangelism of the church in the city.
The church can not live in isolation. It ought to be an intrinsic part of New York City. Paul talks of the church local as a viable community among many in the city (I Corinthians 10.32). In fact, the best tool for evangelizing the city is the way Christians live and work in community. In a post-modern, post 9/11 reality, individual Christians sharing their faith to individuals may not be the best means of evangelism. It is just one’s individual opinion against someone else’s opinion. Who is to say what is true. The most effective evangelism is when these individual Christians collectively express their faith in God. The reality of their community makes what they claim real. Luke takes note of this notion of communal evangelism in Acts 2. 42-47. That fledging congregation enjoyed “the favor of all the people” in Jerusalem by the way they worshiped in fellowship in community.
There is much uncertainty about subjective living and little certainty of objective absolute truths these days. Our communal vitality as the church in worship and prayer will validate the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is, by the way we live, we proclaim that the gospel is very much true in our community, and it shows.
Let Us Worship
The church is a place where our rites of worship express the inner realities of our faith in Jesus Christ. Through the seasons of life, the church celebrates the seasons of redemption. From the Season of Advent, to Christmas, to Epiphany, to Lent, to Easter and to Pentecost, the church proclaims the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even in their uncertainty about much, the unchurched will be impressed with the certainty of those inside the church about God and meaning and hope.
I Corinthians 11-14 talks at length about the dynamics of communal worship that bears witness to the presence of God. Paul speaks of communal worship as a powerful tool for evangelism. When Christians gather for worship, the unbeliever watching the way Christians worship “will be convinced by all that he is a sinner” and “he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among us.”” (14.24-25; italics are added for emphasis)
Robert Webber, of Northern Seminary, calls what the church does at worship Liturgical Evangelism. There are at least two good reasons why communal worship is liturgical evangelism: One: communal worship provides an accepting place where everyone is welcome. In an alienated and anxious city, there is no better place to sense belonging than the church at worship. Two, communal worship is the human environment in which we can experience the presence of God. When the church gathers in worship, the presence of God can become both life directing and life changing. People who experience communal worship will never be the same again.
Let Us Pray
The church is also a place where Christians gather to commune with God in communal prayers. When the pastor says, let us pray, implicitly in that is an invitation to experience intimacy with God. We pray because we want to know God. A US News and World Report magazine cover story surveys why people pray. Many pray to petition the divine to do something for them. But Christians pray not to ask God for something but to answer God who is already doing something in their lives.
Richard Peace, of Fuller Theological Seminary, calls this invitation to communal prayer Contemplative Evangelism. That is, as Christians live and pray together, they confirm that indeed “God is really among us.” When we say collectively, Let us pray, we are simply making time and space for anyone who wants to seek with us an intimacy of God. By our prayerful lifestyle we demonstrate God’s presence in our midst and invite others to experience the same.
The city in a post-9/11 existence needs to see the church in it communal setting in worship and prayer. Conventional methods of evangelism that involve rational presentations and systemic plan of salvation are no longer effective. It is simply too cognitive and dogmatic in a post-modern world that is too skeptical of dogmatic claims.
When a seeker exclaims “God is really among us,” (s)he is not reacting to an individual’s systemic presentation of the gospel. Rather, (s)he is responding to how this individual is living in a community with others in Jesus Christ. It is our communal worship and prayers that bears witness of God’s presence; it is our communal life that will attract the unchurched.
