Reading: Genesis 32:24-30
47:27-31
A letter to the 2000 members of the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, MI, the church in which I grew up:
Dear Fountain Streeters:
On the surface, my Fellowship, located in Wisconsin's Fox Cities, is quite different from Fountain Street Church. To begin with, my Fellowship's building was formerly the home of Moose Lodge #367. A Unitarian Universalist congregation in Las Vegas recently joined my Fellowship as the only liberal churches in the country that are housed in former Moose Lodges. My Fellowship building has a different feel to it architecturally than Fountain Street Church. Our sanctuary (we call it the "main hall") looks more like a Moose Lodge auditorium than your cathedral-like sanctuary. We don't have the beautiful stone masonry or the mosaic or the rose window or the dozen plus other stained glass windows or the 5000 plus pipe organ or the eighteen hundred seats or the balcony. I don't speak from anything like your marble pulpit. In fact, our foyer is about the size of your pulpit. We don't have spotlights on the pulpit, either. Most of the time lately our lights have worked pretty well, though. Sometimes our temperamental sound system works, too. I guess you could say we're a little less fancy, a little less polished, and a lot smaller.
There are other obvious differences between my Fellowship and Fountain Street Church. One is that my Fellowship is relatively new: it was formed by nine people in 1955. In 1955, Fountain Street Church was firmly established on nearly a hundred year heritage, and the church was flourishing. I am a third-generation member of Fountain Street Church. I know there are fourth and fifth generation members as well. We don't have such continuity yet at my Fellowship. Fountain Street Church was and is a central part of the fabric of the life and history of Grand Rapids. My Fellowship, on the other hand, is not all that well-known in the Fox Cities.
Our services, too, have a different feel to them. Because of our size, it is easy and practical for many folks to take an active part in the services. For example, we have a time when anyone in the congregation come forward, light a candle and share a joy, concern or sorrow. Immediately after the sermon, there is a general discussion period during which anyone may voice agreement or disagreement. Those things wouldn't work well with 1500 people in attendance at one of your services. Because of our size and the feel of our building, there is an air of informality that is completely absent at your church.
In spite of all these differences, there are some notable similarities between my Fellowship's situation and that of Fountain Street Church. Most notably, the Fox Cities are in many ways a smaller version of Grand Rapids. Like Grand Rapids, the Fox Cities are experiencing rapid growth and development. Our area is thought to be a "nice" place to live--a good family town in which to raise children. Both areas are politically conservative. We are Joseph McCarthy's home town, and we still have a statue of him in our courthouse. We are also home to the John Birch Society. Like your area, ours is also mostly religiously conservative. Instead of the Christian Reformed presence, we have large numbers of Wisconsin Synod Lutherans and conservative Catholics.
Given these similarities, is it conceivable that my small congregation could develop into a church of Fountain Street Church's size and vibrancy? I don't know. I am sure that part of Fountain Street Church's success is its 125 year heritage and the presence of liberalism for a hundred years. It will be many years before my congregation can claim such deep roots. I remain convinced, though, that even if we cannot repeat the Fountain Street Church story, there is much we can learn from your story. Indeed, there is much all liberal churches could learn from the Fountain Street Church story. Fountain Street Church is one of the beacons of liberal religion.
What should my Fellowship know about the Fountain Street Church story?
First, Fountain Street Church is distinguished from many of its fellow liberal churches by its recognition that the spirit and the intellect are not separate. My Fellowship and my Unitarian Universalist Association are beginning to discover this. In their haste to dispense with tired and worn traditions, too many liberal churches over the years have thrown out the spirit, too. Or, to put it more precisely, they have failed to see the essential unity of the intellect and the spirit. They have missed the reality that you can't truly have spirit without intellect, and there is no intellect without spirit.
Your beautiful building, your services, your beautiful music, your small group activities--all of these things speak to and about the spirit. That's why the Young Adults' Kouncil, the small group my parents and many of their friends still belong to, has survived long enough to see all its members become senior citizens. Spirit was a strong theme of your emeritus minister, Dr. Littlefair, during his fifty-year ministry. I agree with him: the spirit is not something that is easily defined or even talked about. It is a quality, or as he so often puts it, a "feeling awareness." It is not a quality that the church provides--here, have some spirit--but it is a quality that I have often experienced there--in Sunday School, in youth group, during worship services and, yes, even as a solitary custodian there, picking up the discarded orders of service after a Sunday service.
Another aspect of the Fountain Street Church story I would like my Fellowship to know has to do with your church's vision and principles. Fountain Street Church has a vision of what it is and what it can be. Your liberal vision has been alive and mostly well now for one hundred years. Your vision is the center around which every aspect of the life of your church is structured. Your vision is like the trunk of a huge tree. The branches--all of the different activities and programs of your church--go out from the trunk. Keep the trunk alive and healthy, and the branches do well.
From this vision comes the church's liberal principles--principles like these: each person has the right and the responsibility to think and speak for him or herself; there is no absolute truth--at least no truth that is known absolutely by humans; an openness to other religions' truth is good and desirable. These principles and this vision are what your church is all about. They are the foundation. Have been for a hundred years. They are more than and not dependent on your individual ministers.
Too many liberal churches lack a positive vision. If there is a vision, it often is almost entirely negative. We are not the fundamentalists. We are not the evangelicals. We are not the Catholics. If you come here, you won't feel this and you won't have to believe that and you won't have to do this. Now this may be a necessary stage through which a liberal congregation must move, but to become stuck in it is deadly. It is not compelling, and the place dies. Fountain Street Church was able to move through the negating stage and eventually become a place with a positive identity. This is a crucial aspect of the Fountain Street Church story.
However, it remains a constant challenge for your congregation (and for mine in Wisconsin) to maintain its positive identity. There is ever present the temptation to become defensive and negative, to build up walls and build a fortress. Whenever we do so, we experience a failure of the spirit. You see, not only do we need to remain positive about our own faith, but we need to hang onto and remember the validity of our neighbors' faith. We need to remember that we do not have sole access to truth, but that our Reformed and Baptist and Catholic and Lutheran and Jewish neighbors' faiths reflect some truth as well.
Another noteworthy aspect of the Fountain Street Church story is the degree to which your church is known in the broader community of Grand Rapids and even West Michigan. I am positive that only a very small percentage of people in the Fox Cities have even heard of my congregation. We are literally off the beaten track (though that will change dramatically six months from now when we move into our new building). Too many people in the Fox Cities are simply unaware that we exist. I think that it is safe to say, though, that most people in Grand Rapids have heard of Fountain Street Church and have some inkling what the church is all about. They may not like the church--they may even hate it--but they know it exists and they have an idea about what the church stands for. This is accomplished not only because of the church's large size, but because it has always been a visible center of the life of the larger community. The church is right there in the thick of whatever issue is currently rocking the city. Your minister in the early part of this century involved himself in the struggle between labor and management Quite probably the people who burned your church down in 1920 were not happy with your minister's involvement. Another minister took on the Mayor of Grand Rapids. You opened your doors to Stokely Carmichael and Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War and Malcolm X. You allowed showings of the films "Hail Mary" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" after all local theaters backed down in the face of boycott threats. The list goes on and on. If you live in Grand Rapids, you most likely have heard of the Fountain Street Church. My hope for my Fellowship is that it becomes as broadly known in the Fox Cities as Fountain Street Church is in Grand Rapids. Then, anyone potentially interested in becoming involved in a liberal church will know where to start looking for one.
Another aspect I want to highlight of the Fountain Street Church story is what I call "creative community." Any congregation is more than its principles. One member of my Fellowship put it well recently: "This Fellowship is not just a bundle of principles, important as principles may be; it's a vulnerable and very precious living whole, composed of individual, imperfect humans..." Fountain Street Church is a creative community in which diverse ideas and perspectives are embraced. Examine any issue, and there are bound to be numerous, even opposite opinions. Nowhere is this more clearly true than in issues of politics. As national newspeople who focused on Grand Rapids during Jerry Ford's presidency observed, many of the local leaders of both parties come from Fountain Street Church. Ford's (Democratic) opponent for Congress in 1972 is a member of your church, as are some of Ford's top (Republican) advisors.
In many liberal churches, there is an increasing tendency to assume that every member is a political liberal. It is assumed that everyone agrees exactly about all political issues--from abortion rights to foreign policy to animal rights. It's as if there is a clear understanding of what is politically correct, and all members must tow the correct line. Fountain Street Church, though, has always declared that being religiously liberal does not necessarily make one politically liberal. Our liberal congregations must not become places of enforced political conformity. When they do, they are no longer creative communities.
My own Fellowship has some of the political diversity you have; we have even more theological diversity than you have. Talk about a challenge to creative community! Creating meaningful services for a congregation that includes significant numbers of Buddhists, agnostics, Christians, humanists, pagans, and atheists (to name but a few categories), not to mention some folks who want an overwhelmingly intellectual focus and others who want a spiritual focus--that is more than enough to keep our Sunday Services Committee and me challenged.
Genuine, creative community is not always easy or pleasant. In a creative religious community, you cannot be afraid to struggle with tough issues. The massive stone walls of your church have never been intended to be like the walls of the Crystal Cathedral, shielding out the unpleasant in an attempt to focus only on the positive and the upbeat. You were not afraid to wrestle with McCarthyism, Vietnam and Watergate. You are not afraid to wrestle with issues like death and poverty and sexism and homophobia and racism and violence. You are also not afraid to wrestle with each other about what it means to be part of a liberal religious community. I remember the time in the mid-1980s when you debated whether to declare yourselves a nuclear-free zone. One minister preached against it one Sunday; the next Sunday another minister preached in favor of the declaration. You argued--about the issue, about the appropriateness of taking collective political stands when not everyone agrees. And then you voted. By only a few votes, you decided against declaring yourselves a nuclear-fee zone. The majority ruled and you moved on.
Over the years, many other issues have seemingly divided your congregation: whether to allow a new minister to publicly take on a member of the church who was serving as mayor of Grand Rapids and allegedly was the pawn of a corrupt political machine, for example. Or how about when the same new minister asserted the inherent humanity of the Germans in the midst of World War Two? Or the time you wrestled with whether you should allow a black power leader who openly advocated violence to speak in your church? Then there were the discussions about whether to stop regularly doing baptisms even though you were then ostensibly Baptist, and whether to stop doing communion services once a month (or even once a year).
None of these issues were easy or comfortable. You did not handle them perfectly or without cost. Religion and spirituality are not easy. The metaphor I think of is Jacob wrestling with God. Sometimes, like Jacob, you even get wounded in your wrestling with God and each other and tough issues, walking around with a limp the rest of your life. Yet like Jacob, the place of your wrestling is holy ground. Religion is not easy. Being part of a religious community like yours is not easy. You have had your ups and downs, your good times and your tough times. Your vision and your good will have seen you through it all. Through the wrestling, you have been challenged to grow.
The final aspect of Fountain Street Church's story that I would like
my congregation to know about is more difficult to define. It is how your
church, in spite of or maybe partly because of the wrestling, is a spiritual
home. Deep in my soul, I know that Fountain Street Church remains one of
my spiritual homes. Your church is a place I might want my bones hauled
for burial. I often talk about "growing up" in your church. I mean exactly
that. Your church--along with my family--is where the most significant
things of the first eighteen years of my life happened. It is a home. Always
will be. One of your ministers put it just right in a sermon he preached
right around the time he retired:
You see, my Fountain Street friends, I have a dream. I have a dream that my Fellowship will be this kind of a spiritual home for more and more people. I have a dream that our youth today will feel just as connected to my Fellowship twenty years from now as I do with Fountain Street Church. I have a dream that they will remain as connected to each other as I have to the Fountain Street friends of my youth. I have a dream that many of our members will want to have their ashes hauled to our new memorial garden to be scattered amidst the flowers and the memories. I have a dream that in 2055, my Fellowship will celebrate a hundred years of religious liberalism, proud of the impact we have had on our area, aware that more challenges await, confident in our future. I have a dream that the children of the children of our youth today will become third generation members of our Fellowship. I have a dream that my Fellowship will, like Fountain Street Church, one day be a beacon for liberal congregations everywhere.