Being a parish minister, the kind that stands up in an old brick building on Sunday mornings preaching to the sometimes sleepy and occasionally skeptical folks lined up in pews, one quickly might realize that part (if not all) of survival in the job is to get people to show up, and to come back again and again to that event. And so we labor to lure souls with seemingly ever more modest results in a changing world. We then regularly gather as clergy to console each other that all the data show that traditional church is everywhere declining, it’s not just us, “no accounting for the millennials, after all,” we say.
There is a natural tendency to become focused on who we draw in to become part of our world rather than what we put out there in the larger world. What if the church were to become more radically public, without boundary? What if we accepted that 99 out of 100 people in town who would benefit from what the church embodies will never—no matter how clever, exciting and welcoming we are—walk through the front door? What if we considered some truth might come from mouths other than our own, especially from those who are rarely invited to speak? What if the church learned to better “show” rather than “tell” about the flourishing life? Every once in a while, we need to contemplate doing church a little differently.
Mindful of these questions, we tried an experiment in our little church. We opened up a community radio station in the basement, and we just celebrated its one year anniversary. This simple summary skips over years of work by so many impassioned volunteers, a surprising amount of money, lots of trial and error, and a dose of good fortune. But now here we are out over the air, WRUU, 107.5 FM (wruu.org on the web). The kind of radio station you can actually hear in your car. We’ve learned that old time radio has the power to rewrite the playbook; it has the potential to make us a more expansive public church, turning our attention a bit from the inward direction and spirit of gathering up, to an outward position and the spirit of spreading out.
I am often asked on the one side, from new church people: Why a radio station? What does that have to do with the real work of the church? And from the radio side, with people who volunteer to do shows from all parts of the community, deeply committed to different faiths or no faith at all, they ask me: “It’s a church station—is there something you expect us to say or not say?”
Well, for the latter group, we tell ‘em about FCC rules (no cussing on the air and the like), and that we care about treating everyone with dignity, but we also tell them that if we wanted to hear one long 24-hour-a-day sermon of our own broadcast, we’d never have made a community station. We want to be surprised by the truth and beauty that wasn’t evident here already. I wanted to extend our tradition of the free pulpit; when one of our ministers invites another into their pulpit, it is with the understanding of mutual respect and the grant of freedom to use that pulpit for the common good, without hindrance. I want everyone to feel that power and the gift it represents.
And as for the other inquiry, why is a little church in the South in the radio business? The first and simplest answer is that the work of the church rightly understood, the heart of the gospel, is not to convince people of anything or incite them to do anything for the church, but to encourage them to see the truth more clearly for themselves, to pay attention to the possibilities surrounding us, and to generously serve everyone who has human need.
I hold close the long-time examples still alive in our churches—serving the hungry in soup kitchens, providing shelter to the homeless, offering resettlement support for refugees, or a lifeline for those incarcerated. The list of the ways that our old-school ministries, carried out from the base of aging buildings, are still bearing the bread of life to so many goes on and on. The living church (made up of so many diverse parts) must persevere to serve all of the children of God, ensuring them all the goods owed as a universal birthright. To name just a few: food, shelter, safety … and then also voice. That last one can’t be left off; it is one of the rights that protects all the rest.
Creating space for the prophetic voice to arise from the people, and for showing how we are collectively interdependent is central to our civic faith. It takes a while to learn that wise ministry has us often handing over the microphone to others and listening for the good spirit which emerges.
So now when people ask me about radio ministry, I simply say it is an example in motion, for what church ought to be: public, participatory, unpredictable, provocative, and fun. It happens not because we are looking to fill up a space, like the sanctuary of the church (either with people or with the sound of our own voice), but because we are stretching to open up a space, that others may be invited to enter and make something life-affirming, an unexpected place to encounter friends and grace anew. And for this, we are very grateful and extend an invitation for you to join us.