And we're done ...

One of my favorite TV shows that you might never have heard of was a little Joss Whedon production called Firefly. Despite a real core of dedicated viewers, it was cancelled after one year.

It came back a few years later as a motion picture, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, called Serenity. I wonder what ever happened to Whedon? Oh, oh, yeah, that Avengers movie, the second-highest grossing movie of all time. From premature failure to overwhelming success. Perhaps there is a lesson there.

That said, here's the news: The experiment I’ve been part of, privileged to be a part of, is done. The New Church on South Carrollton, which was a holding name till we transitioned to a permanent new name for our church, is done. Kaput. They’ve pulled the plug. On July 1, this church we’ve been part of will revert to being Carrollton United Methodist Church, and we, the two pastors who have done their best to co-exist for a year, will be sent elsewhere..

Why? Too much money needed that wasn’t coming in versus too few people coming in who would or could give. Simple math.

Oh, we more than doubled attendance, converted to a contemporary style of worship that we believed more fit the community, developed a band, began a children's ministry, fixed a decrepit, leaking building, put in more equipment than the Saenger Theater enjoys, fed teachers up the street once a month, fed Tulane students on occasion, sent a team to feed St. Mark’s homeless,  planted a garden that we gave away to the community, washed dogs and handed out what I now know to be koozies (those things you wrap your, er, water around). We had 92 persons in worship on March 15, and we averaged 61 this year after arriving at a church averaging 25.

And we’re done. I will be serving at another church (I assume) come July 1.

A huge chunk of me feels a sense of failure. I don’t know how one could look at it another way. I’ve never worked as hard as I did at this church, but we made mistakes we couldn’t overcome.

I don’t know what will happen here at Carrollton, I don’t know where Mary and I will live, and we’ll be moving for the third time in three years, once to Eunice three years ago, once back to New Orleans last year and the one coming up.

Here’s what I know: I’m not who I was when I arrived. I was somehow chosen for a project that wouldn’t normally be part of my resume as it were. I’ve learned a lot, seen a lot, been frustrated a lot, succeeded a lot and failed enough to learn from.

This morning there is a young woman walking a pug with a cone on outside my big, big office picture window, visible just over the azaleas that are in awesome bloom.

The year has passed so quickly. I’m gearing up for still (I think) one more challenge, one more church, one more move.

I wrote this in mid-April last year, quoting from a book by Dottie Escobedo-Frank called Restart: "Some churches are still alive but declining rapidly. Some are near death, clinging to what once was as the hope for the future. As a result of the obvious near-death experience of congregations, denominational structures are looking for ways to “revitalize” churches. Revitalization means taking what is and making it alive again. It tends to utilize current leadership, current understandings of what it means to be a church, current locations, and current worship styles. Revitalization makes an assumption that what is was once vital, and therefore, can be vital again, if we do the same better. So churches increase programs, dollars spent, and formulas adopted in order to bring the re into revitalization. The prefix “re” means back to the original place again. It infers stepping back in time to recapture a period when the church’s role in society was vital. A church seeking revitalization typically does more of the same, but in a hyped-up fashion."

So, what we're doing in New Orleans won't be a revitalization. For those do not work, I've read over and over. What does work is a restart. That is what we're going to do.

In God's time, in God's way.

We never stopped our church, but tried to have it both ways. We never did a restart. And failure crept onto us like an infection.

So, one year into a four-year experiment we’re done.  We will never know what might have happened with a second year, just like Firefly. Maybe we’ll come back in four or five years as a movie.