EDITOR'S NOTE: This short story was written as a final project for a class at seminary called "Triune God and the World." In it, I tried to imagine what the future of our church will look like 20 years from now. The story was written in January 2020.
“2040: A Church Odyssey”
A short story about the future of the church
6:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 9, 2040
Kitchen of the Brooks household
“Hey, thanks for making breakfast before you take off for work, hon,” Devlyn said. “I appreciate it.”
“Glad to,” Shelley, his wife, answered. “So, what’s your day look like?”
“Oh, you know, a few meetings, here and there. … Kind of a loaded day, actually. Meeting a woman who seems to be going through a pretty difficult divorce this morning at the Third Drop coffee shop. … Swinging by the synod office for my weekly office hours, and then I have a late meeting tonight,” I said. “You know, that sensitive situation I told you about this weekend. Can’t share anymore then that, of course. But it’ll be late when I get home.”
“Yes, I know. I appreciate that privacy, and all that, but it sure seems that you’re putting in a lot of hours lately,” Shelley said. “I liked it better when you used to work in the church. At least the hours were steady, and I could count on knowing when you’d be home.”
“Ahh, yes, the good, ol’ days when people went to church on Sundays and respected a pastor’s family life,” Devlyn said with a sly, but kidding smile. “The days of church in a church were good to me. … I agree, but you know, we’ve had to roll with the times and innovate. The church is still the church, even if we aren’t tied to a traditional worship service each week. … And even you know that there were many people who showed up on Sundays for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with church. … At least my pastoral meetings now are with people who actually want to meet with me.”
Shelley harrumphed at the thought.
“Sure, I know you have to follow where the Spirit’s needs takes you, but it’s really not fair that you get called away from us on a moment’s notice, and you get pulled all over town. Cafes, restaurants, the hospital … the synod office. You’re all over the place. It’s not fair.”
“Oh hon, I think you’re romanticizing the ‘olden’ days a bit,” Devlyn answered. “Most of my work wasn’t at the church anyway. … Most of my work was in pastoral care, and that work wasn’t usually at the church anyway. Besides, the pastor job now is far more truthful to the position than it was back then. … You know there really never is an off switch. There never was.”
Just then a cell phone on the kitchen counter trills. It’s the designated sound for the ELCA’s app on Devlyn’s phone. … And both Devlyn and Shelley look at it, and then at each other. … And several second pass in quiet.
“Well,” Shelley says smiling wearily, “you’d better check the app. You might be needed. … You know there really never is an off switch,” she mocks in a friendly banter, as she heads out of the kitchen to finish getting ready for work.
Devlyn finishes the last scoop of eggs on his plate, ala scrambled with onions, peppers and ham, his favorite, as Shelley knows, he thinks to himself. And then he swipes open the ELCA app. “Alright, Holy Spirit,” he said, shaking his head as he thinks about his ever-understanding wife, “where are you calling me now?”
8:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 9, 2040
Third Drop Coffee shop, Moorhead
Sitting at a corner table that gazes out the floor-to-ceiling windows at Moorhead’s most popular coffee shop, Michelle Geller, swipes open her ELCA app again. At first dubious about seeking out spiritual help on a phone app, she trusted her good friend’s advice and looked it up.
She thinks to herself, she often heard her mother talk about “going to church, where the churching should take place,” many times over when she was younger. But her mom’s church -- and she supposed her church at one point, though long ago -- closed 10 years ago. That was during a a time in her life when she never even gave church a second thought. Now, she thought, church was practiced by essentially a roving band of freelancing pastors, available on the ELCA’s app “RevOnTheGo,” the app which her friend suggested to her.
As crazy as it sounds, when she hit her breaking point last night, she downloaded it, created an account and filed a request to meet with a pastor. After receiving notification that Pastor Devlyn Brooks was available the next morning, she read through his biography and his experience, as well has his personal theological statement, and decided it might be a good fit. Afterward, she noticed the app also provided some specific readings about going through difficult times, and she spent some time dwelling on scriptures for the first time in many, many years.
And, now again, this morning, sitting at the coffee shop, she swiped her finger across the app to check to make sure that Pastor Devlyn was still on time. And the app tracker showed that he was. … She scrolled around the app some more, poking in here and there, checking out the features. And then she happened onto the donation button. .. She paused, and her thumb hovered over the button, as the guilt set in after not having given to the church in more than a decade. … But then she paused, and thought, well, let’s just see who God sends me here first.
“Mom, must be rolling over in her grave,” Michelle said out loud just under her breath with a heavy sigh. “I’m having coffee with an internet pastor.”
“Well … not quite an internet pastor,” Pastor Devlyn said as he walked up on the corner table, steaming latte made with almond milk in his hand. “Maybe more like a pastor you found through the internet,” he added with a smile. “But maybe I’m splitting hairs.”
Michelle immediately blushed. “I am so sorry!” she gushed. “That was really inconsiderate and in poor taste. I am so ashamed!”
“Really, it’s OK,” Devlyn said soothingly. “Don’t sweat it. … Trust me, I’ve been called far worse! … May I sit?”
“Oh yes! Please!” Michelle said. “Where are my manners! … Sorry, I’m just a bit distracted nowadays.”
Shrugging off his coat, and pulling out his chair, Devlyn sat down. For a brief moment, Michelle’s eyes fixed on his clerical collar, and her gaze continued to shift downward to his pectoral cross. Finally her eyes rested on her still steaming coffee mug, which she had firmly wrapped in both hands.
“I could see that from the posting I received in the app. Sounds like you’re going through some tough times. Would you like to share any of that with me?” Devlyn asked. “It sounds like you could use someone to talk with.”
Michelle, eyes still focused on her coffee mug, allowed a shudder to roll through her.
“Oh where to begin. … Yes, I’m going through an ugly divorce that is tearing me up, but just absolutely ripping apart our two kids, a boy 12 … a girl 8,” she said. “My husband isn’t a very nice person, and he’s making this divorce tough on all of us. And, I just feel so alone. I don’t know where to turn. He took our friends, and everywhere I turn, it seems he’s turned the entire town against me.”
“Oh Michelle, what an awfully difficult load you must be carrying, and I know that you must be missing your mother terribly now. She spoke a lot about you back in the days at the church,” Devlyn said. “I miss her too. I can only imagine how you feel without her during this really tough time.”
“Well, pastor, she spoke a lot about you too. She really loved going to your church. She said she could just soak in the Holy Spirit in the sanctuary every week; it just permeated the service,” Michelle said. “I’m sorry I never attended more. I guess I missed the boat there, didn’t I.”
“Yeah, no doubt about it, I miss those days as well. I loved the Sunday morning ritual as much as your mother did. From the moment I arrived in the morning to open up the place, to teaching Sunday school and confirmation, to the worship service and even the coffee in the church basement fellowship hall afterward … I loved it all,” Devlyn said, with a rueful smile. “Loved every minute of it. … But, I’m sure that’s not what you came her to talk about. How about you? How can I help?”
“Oh, I don’t mind. Frankly, it’s nice to talk about something other than the divorce,” Michelle said. “Do you mind?”
“No, not at all,” Devlyn said. “I’m up for a good bout of nostalgia as much as the next person. What do you want to know?”
“Well, what happened. It wasn’t that long ago that your church closed its doors. What about 10 years ago?” Michelle said, with a tinge of red creeping up her face, as she realized she didn’t know the answer.
“Yeah, 10 years ago this month, actually. … Just after the annual meeting,” Devlyn answered. “There were only about a dozen people who turned out for the annual meeting, and more than half of them were council members. Those attending made up nearly all of the regular attendees on Sundays anyway. The only one that couldn’t make it that day was Rose ... who was 93 at the time! And while she still drove, that particular January day was a bitterly cold one. She decided it wouldn’t be prudent to venture out on a day like that, annual meeting or not!”
Devlyn realizes at that point that he’s drained his latte, and wonders out loud if he can buy Michelle a second cup of coffee, as long she’s being a good enough sport to let him prattle on about the good, ol’ days. She nods in the affirmative, and it’s apparent that she’d sit through a reading of an old Encyclopedia Britannica right now if it meant she didn’t have to talk about her divorce.
Back with two more steaming cups of coffee, Devlyn started again.
“Now, where were we? … Ahh, yes the church closure. Anyway, the dozen people in attendance recognized they could no longer financially keep the doors open, and that they’d have to go the way all the other ELCA churches went. Close up shop, and agree to the ELCA’s ‘pastor on call’ model, as they called it in the early days.”
“Wow, that sounds so sad. … I can remember mom talking about what a travesty it was,” Michelle said. “She was pretty upset that people had turned their back on the church.”
“Oh, there were a lot of similar hard feelings for a lot of people. They didn’t want to see their church’s doors close, but the model was just not sustainable any longer. So, they had to make a decision that was in the best interest of the congregation and the greater church,” Devlyn said. “So they bought in. The congregation sold the physical assets they had, the church, the land, the youth group van, everything. And they liquidated the financial assets, the endowments, all the funds for the various missions, youth, women, music and worship. Everything was turned into a liquid asset, with sum total worth about $800,000. That money was turned over to the ELCA office in Chicago, and then the church became a full member of the church’s pastor-on-call initiative. Basically, as all of the churches have closed, the assets have been turned over to the central church office and they now have taken over the directing of pastoral work. The individual congregations’ contributions were invested wisely, and now they bankroll all of the church’s pastors, who are employees of the central church, not congregations any longer. So by eliminating costly infrastructure, it was possible to spend the money on pastoral care.”
Michelle looked up from her coffee, a little perplexed. “Well, if people aren’t going to church on Sundays, how do you serve them?”
“Just like this,” Devlyn said, gesturing to the coffee shop around them with a hand. “I go where the need is. The central office in Chicago monitors the app traffic. When people such as yourself log into the app and submit a post looking for pastoral care, the app managers check where you live, see which pastors are available in the area at the time you are requesting a pastor. If you’re not on vacation or out for family reasons, you’re in the pool of available pastors. And then the office tries to match our experience and talents with the need being requested. And then we get assignments, just like I received your assignment last night.”
Michelle arched an eyebrow and took a sip of coffee, an invitation to go on.
“Well, to be honest, this part of the job isn’t much different than what a lot of my job used to be, even when I had the church,” Devlyn continued. “People saw the time I put in on Sundays because it was so visible to everyone. But they never saw the time I put in outside of the church on the other six days, and that was a majority of the time spent. Calls to hospitals, homes, jails. … Coffee shops! … The pastor care work is really pretty much the same now as it ever was.”
“Yeah,” Michelle said, not convinced. “But how does it all work? How do you get paid? … And what about church? Actual church? A service? … How do people get together to worship?”
“Well, we’re still the same church. We’re just not as congregational as we once were. Instead of the ELCA being a bottom-up, congregational-based church as it was in its heyday. It’s much more a centralized, efficient, flattened organization, which has a network of pastors nationwide. The national church office manages all of the pastoral resources and still distributes them on a geographical basis. So, for instance, right here in our Northwestern Minnesota Synod, we have about 100 pastors who are used throughout the entire synod. And while that is about half the number of pastors we had 20 years ago before the churches closed, we actually work about the same number of hours because we’re much better organized now. And we spend far fewer hours worrying about keeping church building doors open.”
Michelle nodded, giving him permission to continue.
“So now there is 100 of us to cover the synod, which as you know is a big geographical synod. But they’re likely not going to call me out to an assignment in Roseau, which is four hours away.” Devlyn said. “However, I may get a call to backfill for a pastor on vacation in Detroit Lakes, which is 45 miles away. … You see, now, instead of each of us being a pastor over a little church fiefdom, we’re part of the larger pastoral resource group for the synod and we serve the entire synod when called upon. It does make a lot of sense, if you think about it.”
“In some ways, by cutting us free from the physical churches, they freed us up to do the true, one-on-one work the people needed from us. … And, frankly, I do not miss those three-hour church council meetings anymore in the least!” Devlyn joked.
Michelle smiled, a half-hearted attempt to reward the pastor for the lame joke.
“But don’t you miss the church? I mean the services at all? Christmas? Easter?” she asked.
“Oh, well, sure, on occasion. But the truth is that people used to come to church for all kinds of reasons, not all of them for worship. So, maybe we’re doing more good with the way we’re serving now.” Devlyn said. “And we still hold Christmas and Easter services. A few others. We just host them at the ELCA office here in town, and we do a few other regional services in a couple of the big towns across the synod. We still get some big turn outs on those occasions, and yet we don’t waste thousands of hours each year planning services for 200-plus parishes for 52 Sundays that very few people attend. We pour those pastor resources back into the actual work of pastoral care. It seems to be working.”
“Wow, that really is a different kind of church, isn’t it!” Michelle said, her head mournfully moving from side to side. “Mom must be rolling in her grave right about now.”
“Well, it is, and it isn’t. Some traditionalists think we gave up on the church, for sure. They think what we’re doing now is sacrilegious, and so they’ve left and joined other, smaller denominations that still meet in churches. But those churches are few and far between now. Some folks travel an hour and a half or more each way, each Sunday, just so that they can attend an ‘actual church.’ … Which is good. Some folks, and some pastors need that structure. They need to feel the church walls around them.” Devlyn said. “Other pastors, me included, always just wanted to be in the field, so to speak, anyway. … You know, the Holy Spirit doesn’t require the four walls of a church building to act. In fact, I contend that the Spirit breaks into the world as often outside the church as it ever did in it.”
“Well, what about members? Does the church a lot fewer people now?” Michelle asked.
“Admittedly, that is harder to gauge now. You know, we used to keep track of membership on the congregational level. And that told us how many members we had churchwide. But, you know, that wasn’t always correct either.” Devlyn said. “For instance, our little church had 300-plus members on its rolls for many, many years. But only a sixth of them would attend church, and even fewer would contribute financially to the church. So really, maybe how we do it now is more truthful anyway. People who come to the ‘RevOnTheGo’ app, come for the sermons posted there; for exegetical readings on the lectionary; to ask for prayers; and to ask for in-person meetings, such as yourself. And then, every Wednesday night at 6 p.m. we host an online discussion forum. Sometimes the discussion is based on that week’s lectionary. And other weeks it’s not. Sometimes the group participants ask to go in another direction, and we discuss how the Spirit is interacting in some world event. … And there are other participation events too, such as traditional hymn sings, contemporary concerts, live liturgy readings, etc. … And for a lot of people, this is a much more valuable way of doing church. They get right what they need in the moment, and they never have to leave where they are comfortable.”
“Yeah, but it seems so sad!” Michelle said. “Just thinking back to what my mom told me about church.”
“But is it?” Devlyn asked. “You said yourself that church wasn’t for you when you were younger. But yet I’m here with you now. Church still exists; we’re just doing it differently. … You know, as a matter of fact, church hasn’t always been the same. For instance, there were no ‘churches,’ per se in Jesus’s time. … Sure, there were synagogues, for Jewish believers. But the followers of Jesus would get together at houses, and the service looked much different than what our chruch services looked like. There weren’t pastors, either. But individuals who would take turns leading readings from the Hebrew Bible, and possibly other scriptures we don’t even know about now. … There’s no place in the Bible where it tells us what the church has to be.”
“Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I guess, right?” Michelle asked with a smile.
“Yes, exactly. We are two and we are gathered in his name. … To me, this is a church right here,” Devlyn said. “But, now, we’ve been here an hour, and we haven’t even talked about you. … There’s a reason you reached out to me. Tell me about how you’re feeling. We’re supposed to be here for you.”
“Well, pastor, there’s just so much going on. The kids are distraught. I’m overworked, overtired and frankly don’t have any other adult connections right now,” Michelle said, her voice cracking. “And then there’s the whole ‘divorce’ thing in the Bible. Am I in trouble if I go through with the divorce? You know, his family says that I’ll go to hell.”
“Wow, OK, let’s try to unpack some of this for you,” Devlyn said. “I sense there are multiple things stressing you right now. But, let’s start at the most crucial questions. First, you need to know that the Bible is a collection of writings, written mostly by privileged men in a society in which women were treated as property at best, with not standing at all at worst. Lower than slaves even. … So you have to know that the passages on divorce were really written to protect women so that men couldn’t throw them away, but we’ve contorted that over the years, and used it as a bludgeon against women. … Secondly, I’m pretty certain you aren’t going to hell because you are leaving a marriage that is no longer life-giving. It’d take a long time to unpack that, but if you are interested, we could schedule another time to meet to talk about hell if you want. … Finally, you know, I have a loose group of ‘parishioners’ around the area who have gone through similar experiences as this. Would you find it beneficial to get together with them, and just talk to them, one struggling parent to another? … In fact, some of them even have kids, and it might be good for your children to connect to.”
“Really, you’d do that? … And there’s a group willing to do that?” Michelle asked.
“Of course, just because we no longer have a church building doesn’t mean that we stopped trying to build community. We just don’t do it at a church on Sunday morning nowadays,” Devlyn said.
“Alright then, please count me in; I would be grateful for the support,” Michelle said. “And, yes, I would appreciate meeting with you again. Could we schedule it?”
“Well, you know how to use the app! Just hit me up!” Devlyn said.
“OK, I will do that,” she said. “So, what’s next for you?”
“Well, I’m off to the synod office now. Each of us pastors has a certain number of office hours we have to work either at the main synod office or one of the two branch offices. We’re there for walk-in crises, but we’re also there for baptisms, weddings. … We still host an occasional funeral there too,” Devlyn said. “And then tonight I’ll be meeting another person at a bar. They’re battling some fierce addictions, and they’re looking for spiritual support. So that’s my day. Spirit-filled, and never once will I walk into church!”
“Wow, that’s fascinating!” Michelle said. “Church has really changed in the past 20 years, but it sounds like God is still at work.”
“Yep, he sure is,” Devlyn said, “and he keeps steering us pastors in the direction he needs us!”
“I guess that is pretty awesome. I’m glad the church is still around. Maybe Mom wouldn’t be so upset after all,” Michelle said. “And, hey, Pastor, before you leave …”
“Yes?”
“Can I give you a 5-star rating on the app?” Michelle asked with a smile. “You’ve earned it!”
“Well, thank you! That’s very kind!” Devlyn said, smiling back. “But that’s not … quite … how it works!!!”
After watching Devlyn leave, Michelle pulls out her phone again, opens her app, and swipes her way to the donation button again. She stares at it, clicks and donates some money to the ELCA to help fund the church’s pastor-on-demand model.
“If not me, then who?” she says out loud to herself, and slides out of her chair to leave too.
10:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 9, 2040
Northwestern Minnesota Synod office, Moorhead
To be continued ...
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