I have been in love with the church all my life. My earliest memories are sitting on soft cushions in a familiar pew, listening to my preacher father’s warm voice and watching the sunshine streaming through the tall windows. I was never bored – even as a preschooler – because I focused on light and color and sound and touch and feeling safe. And I loved clutching my quarter waiting for the offering plate to come my way. Even as a child, worship centered me and comforted me and gave me energy for the week ahead.
This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of my ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. And I still love the church – not the building or the polity or the institution – but the church as community and catalyst – the church as yeast and light and salt in a troubled, complicated world. After serving congregations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Missouri, I fully retired a year ago. These days I sit in a pew here in St. Louis, next to my wiggly grandsons, and I still soak in the beauty and the hope and the creativity of worship – feeling fed by ancient words that sound fresh every morning. I now understand why all those older members I visited during my decades of pastoral ministry considered Sunday morning to be the highpoint of their week. The nourishment of worship is manna for spiritually hungry lives – old, young, and every age in between.
When I was ordained in 1974, the mainline Protestant Church was still thriving. In those early days of women’s ordination, there were about 200 female pastors scattered across the country (today there are over 5000
in the PCUSA), and only a few search committees would consider a woman’s resume. But we forged ahead, partners with our brothers in the faith, called to serve a church in turmoil as the world changed drastically around us.
The Presbyterian Church of 2024 is radically different than the Church of 1974. We have lost 70% of our membership (4.5 million down to 1.2 million), the average age of Presbyterians is 65, and fewer baptisms reflect not only the demographic decline of American births, but the choice of more and more young Americans to claim no religious affiliation. Today, embracing church as part of our busy lives is a choice, not a habit or an expectation. Competing cultural options consume much of our time, with popular concerts and sports events and all-consuming social media replacing the rhythms of worship. Individual autonomy, instant gratification, and turbulent social movements absorb our attention, and divisions of caste and race and gender weaken the power of community. If I had used a crystal ball fifty years ago to glimpse the future of parish ministry, I am not sure I would have had the courage or the imagination to begin my ministry journey.
And yet, at age 75, I still love the church. I still cherish the church. I still trust the church – because the Good News of the Gospel continues to proclaim possibility in the midst of turbulent times. Joy instead of jeering. Generosity instead of greed. Abundance instead of avarice. Justice instead of judgement. Empowerment instead of enmity. Grace instead of grievance. Creativity instead of cynicism. Love instead of loathing. Truth instead of treachery. A way of life in a culture threatening death.
I have come to believe that the church of 2024 is healthier than the church of 1974. Reclaiming the precarious days of the early church, many of our contemporary congregations are providing counter cultural communities of joy and justice. The growing diversity of our life together is renewing the values of the Gospel – diversity of people and ages and identities – woven in a stunning fabric of God’s creative vision. A variety of musical expressions – from jazz to organ, from bluegrass to country, from Gospel to good old Protestant hymnody is allowing us to offer praise in the rich emotional language of a pluralistic world. The increasing expression of beauty through poetry and fine arts, liturgy and biblical art is getting us out of our heads and into our hearts. Our ministry with the hungry and the lonely and the poor in our communities embodies God’s radical grace. Our growing boldness in speaking truth to power, and pouring our biblical vision into policy and politics, is leading us to claim God’s vision of shalom. And the sheer talent of the younger pastors and activists and elders and teachers who have answered the call to ministry in these chaotic days gives me the greatest hope of all.
I am not naïve. Money and power and ignorance and self-absorption are threatening the very foundations of the precious world that God has created. And the cultural power of progressive Christianity is at an all-time low. There are days that I despair about the future for my four grandsons – wondering if there will be peace and purpose and joy and beauty for them in this decaying world. And I worry that I have not done enough to partner with God in the ongoing work of creation. But then, I remember that it is not about me. It is not UP to me. I remember that nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God. And that a living Jesus in my heart and the heart of the Church, has given us the promise and the power and the promise to persevere.
When I knelt on the Chancel steps of the Church of the Covenant in Boston on September 29, 1974, the hands of those ordaining me felt heavy, and I was scared. But an hour later when I walked out into a wet, stormy world, I glanced up and saw a stunning rainbow. And I was reminded that weeping may last in the evening, but joy – always – comes in the morning.
May it be so for you and for me – and for the church we all love.
Rev. Dr. Susan Andrews
Honorably Retired
