Homegrown commitment
With six active “house churches,” a small congregation in Virginia offers a powerful, New Testament–based model for cultivating 21st-century disciples
 By Louis B. Weeks
Most Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations are relatively small; in fact, half have 100 or fewer members. One good way of “making small work” is openly to expect and invite all members to higher levels of commitment and discipline. A small congregation can expect more of its members; it can set a “high threshold” for those who belong and those who join.
So it is with Trinity Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg, Va., a town of 40,000 that also is home to tens of thousands of university and college students. Trinity’s pastor, Ann Reed Held, and its members gladly tell of their work and worship, encouraging others to attain a congregational life that fosters deeper, wider, more-disciplined discipleship.
Overseas partnership: Trinity members bidding farewell to guests from South Africa last year. Photos courtesy of Trinity Presbyterian Church.
Trinity began its life in 1962 in a stately 1829 home, donated to the church’s founders and several times refurbished. Recently added wings house a sanctuary and space for education and fellowship. Congregational life is organized around six “house churches.”
“When you join Trinity, you really make a commitment,” says Beverly Silver, one of the members. “Almost everyone joins a house church, and in a house church, mission and care are together.”
Trinity’s organizational model grew out of conscious attention to New Testament witness. The organizing pastor and 77 charter members, in the words of their welcome brochure, “caught a vision of small-group ministries meeting in homes midweek, gathering at the church house on Sunday for renewal, and going out into the community again on corporate mission.”
One house church focuses on partnership with African congregations and care for African students. Others work on a clothes closet, sustaining of God’s creation, health issues, non-violence, and the special needs and resources of older persons. Each house church has four leaders.
The house churches’ offerings are changeable. Each fall the congregation discerns whether to make another one-year commitment to a particular house church. Each year some end and others begin.
“I think Trinity had the first AIDS awareness and support church group in this part of the state, even before most folks knew the disease was spreading to this area,” Silver says. “It began when a new group of folk with HIV positive relatives asked to use our building. We started a study group and soon had a house church focused on HIV/AIDS.” Now, with so many others focused on HIV/AIDS, the concerns have broadened to include other health issues as well.
A Picnic Prayer: Trinity members with a group of visitors from a Presbyterian church in South Africa giving thanks in preparation for sharing an outdoor meal.On a Wednesday evening the pastor and 12 Trinity members gather in the home of 90-year-old Isabel Dotson. This house church focuses on partnerships and mission efforts with African congregations. They share a potluck supper, read Scripture and pray. They talk briefly about various members’ concerns, including Joanie, who has cerebral palsy and is assisted by other members to eat and wheel her chair.
One of the house church leaders, Clerk of Session Teresa Harris, tells about taking a group of students to Kenya and South Africa.
“There’s no better way to study early childhood development than to be deeply involved with children from another, very different culture,” says Harris. She laces the report with glimpses of videos of the church’s African partners. Some of these partners spent time in Harrisonburg as students at James Madison University or Eastern Mennonite Seminary. Others are people members of the house church met on trips to South Africa.
Several elements in the house church meeting are notable: the moving, fluid leadership of the group, in which everyone takes some responsibility; the accommodation by everyone to the physical limitations of the host and the member with cerebral palsy; the participation and leadership of the pastor; the level of knowledge among the members of Scripture and of the situations related to a whole range of African people and communities of faith. It is apparent that careful organization underlies the spontaneous and intimate worship, fellowship and
learning time.
Group members cite Dotson as a model of discipleship. She’s taken African students into her home, given generously from her meager resources, gone to South Africa (“at a spry 82”), and hosted monthly meetings and potlucks when she could no longer leave her home to participate elsewhere.
“We focus on stewardship of time, talents and money,” Dotson says.
Activities for all ages: Trinity young people at a bake sale, with youth advisor Megan Shifflett, seated in front.The congregation has grown from 90 members, in 1990 when Held arrived, to 152 members. A score more attend worship and share in the mission efforts, but have not officially joined.
Trinity does not emphasize numbers. Its mission statement says, “We believe that ‘success’ for God’s church is not measured by statistics and budgets, but by losing itself in concern for God’s world,” and continues, “therefore, we seek to reverse the world’s view of the church as an institution pulling in, to that of an organism reaching out.
“We believe that total commitment is the realistic command of Christ Jesus for discipleship,” says the mission statement, “therefore God calls us to a life of disciplined spiritual growth that includes worship, nurture, fellowship, and mission.”
Trinity’s organization is more complex than that of most churches its size. And the influence in the community of the pastor, officers and members is also disproportionately stronger than one would expect from a small congregation. Most Harrisonburg residents know where Trinity is because many groups meet there. Its community outreach is pervasive.
Well-organized hospitality is typical of the organization. At Sunday worship visitors are invited to speak or to be introduced by a member. The next day a member takes the visitor a loaf of bread. The visitor also receives a letter from Held later that same week.
But it’s the particularly well-administrated house churches that comprise the “fulcrum” of the congregation’s work.
Held became pastor of Trinity Church after serving two Memphis, Tenn., congregations. Remarkably productive and unassuming, she was one of the first ordained female Presbyterian pastors to serve a congregation in the Deep South.
She specializes in Christian education, but her skills are apparent in every ministerial function. She has written church school curriculum and study materials for mainline Protestants, and her books — Nurturing the Seeds of Spirituality and Keeping Faith in Families (Mariners Press, 1987, 1998) — focus on Christian practices of piety and witness.
A highly gifted administrator, she does not call attention to administrative tasks; in fact, she downplays her abilities in that area. She does several things subtly that help lead wisely — she repeats mantras of participation suggested by officers and members, backs session decisions whether she agrees or not, and participates in a number of church activities, not as a leader but as a supporter of other people in leadership.
Held also accepts and frames for others Trinity’s unique culture and history. She plants the seeds of ideas and lets them ripen without too much prodding on her part. She also participates in a number of community organizations, some of which she has played key roles in starting.
A 12-member session, with Held as moderator, is Trinity’s administrative and pastoral core. “The session at Trinity is large for the size of the church, almost a tenth of the congregation, but the work of members of the session justifies the numbers,” says Held. She explains that session members participate in each of the house-church groups.
The Pastoral Care Team is made up of two active session members, one elder not currently on session and two church members. Trinity also has 12 “Shepherding Groups” that provide pastoral care in times of need. In each of those groups a “shepherd” takes responsibility for about eight families or individuals. Some, but not all, elders are shepherds.
Pastoral care is a vital part of session meetings as well. The session used to begin meetings with a devotional time, “do business” and then talk about pastoral matters. A session member suggested turning the agenda around, and now the meeting begins with the naming of pastoral concerns and a time of prayer. Then it moves to “business” and finally a spiritual time devoted to “sending” church officers to lead in worship and mission.
New-member classes are under the direct supervision of the session, with elders teaching and then testing the prospective members. Those seeking to join Trinity Church embark on a disciplined course of study, learning about the congregation’s varied activities and administration.
“We may make a new-member class eight weeks long, since so many of the folks now come from other parts of the church — Baptist, Catholic and so on,” says Held.
Each September the session distributes and collects “Time and Talent Commitment” forms from all members, including children. On Dedication Sunday each person offers his or her time and talents, much in the same way they also make annual financial pledges to the congregation.
Fervent worship, deeper discipleship, wider mission, friendly fellowship, increasing numbers of people involved, new leaders emerging — Trinity offers them all.
Louis B. Weeks is president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary/Presbyterian School of Christian Education. This article is adapted from All for God’s Glory: Redeeming Church Scutwork (Alban Press, 2008).
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For more information about Trinity Presbyterian Church visit the church’s website. |
