First Newville

First Presbyterian Church, Newville
Pastor Vern Gauthier

Since starting my position with the Presbytery of Carlisle, I have been astonished by the architectural genius that has gone into major renovation projects in some of our church buildings, and I have not been to all of our churches yet. Silver Spring, Waynesboro, Derry, Market Square, Falling Spring, Greencastle have all done brilliant and beautiful renovation projects. Now I also add First Newville to this list of Presbyterian architectural masterpieces. Their gorgeous, new entry and greeting area with its warm and welcoming windows, and prominent accessibility ramp inside is a wonderful addition and renovation. I am especially delighted that the congregation had the insight to keep those beautiful oak trees in the middle of the parking lot! (There is another image we may ponder. How many huge, box stores – Walmart, Home Depot, Target – cut down huge trees to make room for their parking lots, only to plant tiny, new saplings in proper, unobtrusive places when their construction is done. At these big stores the trees are made to fit around the parking places; at First Newville the parking places are made to fit around the trees. I think the church has a better idea!)
I was delighted to be with First Newville for a Sunday morning. I was impressed with the fact that the adult Sunday School class I was asked to lead was more than twice as large as any other congregation I have visited. There is a strong, noble heritage of Sunday School at First Newville.
My reflections from my morning with First Newville really took off from Vern’s sermon. I do not remember his title, but I would like to rename his excellent sermon as “Practice, Practice, Practice.” Vern used a baseball image as a guiding metaphor and lifted the importance of practicing our Christian faith. This message was ideal for the season of Lent with our tradition of spiritual disciplines. But in my mind his sermon touched on one of the great reformations happening in our Church today. We have renewed and reclaimed an emphasis on practicing our Christian faith. In so many ways there is a new emphasis on Christian practice. In worship we are practicing our faith more by greater attention to the sacraments, the increasing use of laypeople in worship leadership, and many creative expressions of worship like rededication of baptism and anointing with oil. We are practicing our faith more by a renewed commitment to active mission service, not simply giving money. Mission service projects locally and mission trips are now common Christian practices in our churches. Spiritually we have renewed the practice of our Christian faith with greater attention to Bible reading, personal devotional practices and very intentional ministries of prayer. Our Christian faith will blossom and grow when we put it into practice. Vital Christians today want to do it; not simply talk about it.
Vern’s sermon on practice, practice, practice brought to mind a great new book from the Alban Institute which I recommend to all our church leaders: Diana Butler Bass, The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church, (Alban, 2004). Bass pushes out a thesis that I have been working on from a number of different directions: I believe the best days of our old, mainline denominations are yet to come. Bass’ thesis is the same: “Thirty years removed from the initial studies of mainline ennui, the most precipitous drops seem now to be ending and these denominations may be entering, however tentatively, into a new period of their history. In some cases, numerical decreases have slowed or stopped, mainline church attendance appears to be rising, mainline theology is demonstrating new sophistication, and higher levels of commitment and giving are beginning to register among the laity. Quietly, without much attention from either an uninterested public or skeptical scholars, reports of emerging vitality are being heard across the old mainline” (page 10).
For Bass the key to this new mainline vitality is practicing the faith. These paragraphs capture her thesis:

“Christian practices are both individual and corporate. Christian practices embody belief, and, conversely, beliefs form practices. Christian practices are the constituent parts of a larger Christian way of life, as revealed, modeled and taught by Jesus Christ. Christian practices necessarily involve reflection, imagination, tension, attention, and intentionality. Practices imply practice, repetition, craft, habit and art. Christians engage these actions for their own sake – because they are good and worthy and beautiful- not because they are instruments to some other end (like increasing membership or marketing the congregation). Practices possess standards of maturity and excellence to which practioners can aspire.
Practices fall roughly into three definitional categories: moral, ascetical, and anthropological. Moral practices – activities like hospitality, healing, dying well, stewardship, doing justice, and caring- stress communal formation in virtue. Ascetical practices, including contemplation, silence, and union with God – things that may be achieved by a variety of means in the form of spiritual exercises – emphasize deep connection with God and personal Christian maturity. An anthropological approach to practice resists fixing such actions. Rather, Christian practices are just the things Christian people do – eating, meeting and greeting – as they negotiate their faith in relation to the larger culture; theological reflection arises within the ordinary workings of Christian lives. Whatever the difference between these approaches, they all integrate faith and life, define practices as social and historical, understand that practices are part of living tradition, and articulate a kind of theological wisdom embodied in the life of all God’s people.
When Christians understand that what they do comprises a way of life that is corporate, ancient and wise, the theological imagination opens up.” (pages 65,66)

May it be so in all our churches!