Ministry and Contextualization II | | Dr. D. Kortright DavisProfessorEvaluation of My Church Experience |
Jacqueline D. Rooths 2/23/2012
Jacqueline D. Rooths 2/23/2012

I have attended five churches in my life. Born and baptized in the old Israel Baptist Church. During the height of the Civil Rights movement, my family transferred membership to the Church of the Redeemer Presbyterian church in Washington DC; we relocated to Long Island in my senior year of high school and we joined Memorial Presbyterian church. As an adult, I joined Hemingway African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church and for the past 24 years, I have been a member of Union Bethel A.M.E church. I stood on the fringes of the first four churches, observing from a far, but by virtue of age and experience I have been intimately involved in the bowels of Union Bethel A.M.E. church.
Each church denomination has their body of governance. The Baptist denominations follow congregational church governance in which each individual congregation is governed autonomously, free from the direct control of any other body. The Presbyterian Church has a democratic form of city and church government called "presbyterian," meaning "governed by elders." The Presbyterian Church is a connectional church, functioning on several levels, the first level being the local church. Local churches are grouped geographically into Presbyteries, and Presbyteries are grouped to form Synods. The highest level of the church is called the General Assembly, which meets every year with representatives coming from all levels of the church, across the entire country and internationally, to consider the issues, the business, and the mission of the church. . The African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church operates under an Episcopal polity that is hierarchical in structure where the denominational leaders are bishops of the church with the chief authority over a local church.
George B. Thompson, Jr.’s narrative Church on the Edge of Somewhere, Ministry, Marginality and the Future, reminds church congregations of their mission to embrace those person who are valuable, worthy of the churches attention, although they may be different and live on the fringes of the comfortable society – a marginalized people.
Thompson defines congregations by their specific concentration of ministry (outward or inward) and by the social-economic status of their members (conventional or marginal):
• Inner-directed marginal - are in a survival mode. Like the storefront churches of immigrants, they have little physical or leadership capital for reaching out to other marginal persons. It is enough for such churches to reach stability or conventionality as a precondition to having more empathy.
• Empathetic conventional - serve marginal persons but without expectation that the marginal persons will become part of the worship and mission of the congregation. These might be vibrant inner city churches where ministry for those in need is a badge of membership. The next step is to move from for to with.
• Empathetic marginal- the smallest number moves beyond obligation to help those on the margins to finding new vitality in ministry with them. Thompson points to the Church of the Savior in Washington, DC (small) and Trinity UCC in Chicago (large) as models.
• Inner-directed conventional -supported by middle class members determined to promote the well-being of the congregation and its members; Marginal persons are really no their focus.. Some of these churches have declining memberships, within the denomination.
Evaluation of My Church Experience
My formative year’s birth to 13 was spent at Israel Baptist Church my paternal grandmother’s church located on 11th Street N.E. in Washington DC. I was an active participant in Sunday school and vacation bible school. I was not part of any of children’s ministries that were available at that time, choir and the Baptist Training Union, because I did not live in the community. I can remember when I did attend vacation Bible School, the children were always curious about who I was, simply because I arrived by car and they as well as the teachers all arrived on foot. At that time, early 60’s Israel Baptist church was an Inner Directed Conventional Church. By the definition provided, Israel was a church with established structures defined roles. This was a community of believers who lived within the community where the church resided. At that time, the landscape for the congregants were extended family members, such as my own; it was my grandmother’s church after her relocation in the 30’s from Anne Arundel County, close to her employer who lived on Capitol Hill. She and many of the members were domestics and/or tradesman. Their offspring such as my father were first generation college graduates and even high school graduates. With the advent of the civil right movement in the 60’s, my father as a first generation college graduate was offered employment in Baltimore, so we moved to suburbia, 30 miles from my grandparents and 30 miles from his employer. Being interested in the movement, he and mother attended a meeting, where the pastor at that time of the Church of the Redeemer, a presbyterian church in northeast Washington, spoke. As an adolescent, I again was thrust into an environment as an outsider, and since I lived nearly 36 miles away, I only attended services on Sundays. I was active in Sunday school, which has always been a wonderful time in my life. There I was not a stranger, and included in the activities, which was refreshing. Church of the Redeemer was very middle class, with a congregation of mostly college graduates, homeowners, business owners and management level Federal employees, and an Empathetic conventional church, except the marginalized community was of the same ethnicity, African American. This church was very active in supporting the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, the boycotts in the south and voter registration. My father assisted with tutoring the community in reading and math. My parents decided to remain with the presbytery when we relocated to Long Island. We joined Memorial Presbyterian Church. That church had become an Inner-directed marginal church. The church had lost membership, there was a negative history associated with it and the governing board was considering removing support. However, after I went to college in 1972, a new pastoral appointment was made and over 35 years later, the church moved from an Inner-directed marginal church to Empathetic conventional church, largely responsible for incorporating the African and Hispanic communities within the church, providing social and financial services. It is the perfect example of Jesus ministry. As an adult, I returned to the area and joined Hemingway Memorial A.M.E. church because they provide discipleship care for me during a health crisis while I lived in Austin Texas (while in Texas, I visited many churches, never finding a home.) It was most definitely Inner-directed conventional church, with generations of families present. The efforts and focus of the church were building and discipling within the church. At that time in my life, I needed the teaching and the discipleship. Although, I had been baptized at Israel Baptist, I met Jesus there and I was far more active, with the teaching ministry and liturgical programs. I am now a member of Union Bethel A.M.E after moving several miles away from Hemingway in the 1980’s and served in several leadership positions and serving on the ministerial staff . Union Bethel has been an Inner-directed marginal church, primarily family members of the slave community that was in southern Maryland. With the appointment of the current Pastor, the increase in homes sales and building of the suburban community Clinton, the church migrated to an Inner-directed conventional church. There was a need to work hard to overcome the family only mentality that had been there for over 100 years. The Pastor’s strategy was to operate strictly by the Discipline of the A.M.E church, which broke the silos in the church, increased the teaching ministries, and encourage the members, both old and new to fellowship. Our Pastor is very personable, and homey, and invited people into him and his family’s personal space. During that time, we grew tremendously and built a new church to accommodate the growth. In 2002 we opened a second location, and provided space for the Hispanic community to worship as well, moving from an Inner-directed conventional church to an Empathetic conventional church, establishing several community related non-profits, receiving funding from federal and state government and offering a myriad of community services – counseling, job training programs, food pantry and homeless shelters, with much success but not gaining many members from those specific efforts. Our growth continued through member sponsored discipleship and the presence of the military in our area – we are centrally located and available through several military bases. Our church has now moved to an Inner-directed conventional church. Our pastor began a campaign for Bishop in 2008, often on the campaign trail, not being the primary preacher, or teaching bible study as often, and that has caused a decline in the activity of the church. With the economic decline, we closed our day care center and have experienced some financial concerns. Although, he lost the bid in 2008, he is once again running with the aspiration of victory this July and it appears that it may be so. There is an apathetic spirit and he does realize it, because this will be a magnanimous change for this congregation, having the same Pastor for 25 years. We are existing and almost but not quite becoming Inner-directed marginal church, we have lost some members because of uncertainty, but there are those of us who are working and working overtime to keep the spirit lifted and the remaining, just trying to have hope.

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[ 1 ]. http://christianity.about.com/od/baptistdenomination/p/baptistprofile.htm
[ 2 ]. http://www.christchurchnow.org/church_structure.cfm
[ 3 ]. The Doctrine and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. (2000).