Certain convictions hold a great deal of sway in church circles. One of the most prevalent of these convictions is that a church is either maintenance minded or mission minded, but not both. Another widely-held conviction is that ministry requires a lot of training and planning to be successful, preferably employing the expertise of outside consultants and lots of (expensive) resources. Happily, our experience at the Church of the Advent in ministry with Spanish speaking persons has challenged these convictions!

We have an average Sunday attendance of 30 and a projected budget for 2004 of something around $60,000. According to prevalent beliefs about church sustainability we are not very sustainable. This is complicated by the fact that I am a very part time rector, living nearly 40 miles away from Cynthiana, and the full time parent of a preschooler (a job that doesn’t offer much “free time” to contribute to church work!). As our senior warden, is fond of saying we have no “slackers” in our congregation — every active member does more than their fair share, all the time, in ways too numerous to count. For those of you in small churches this sounds all too familiar — too many jobs, too few dollars, too few people. It’s understandable how congregations get mired in a survival mentality, and we are not immune to falling into that trap ourselves. We aren’t always responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves, but we are responsible for our individual and corporate reaction to our situation!

A little over a year ago, we had a brainstorming meeting where we threw out all sorts of ideas of things we could do in terms of liturgy, outreach, Christian nurture, etc. Someone mentioned ministry to the predominantly Mexican farm workers that are living in Harrison County, and it got tossed around for several weeks. We discussed it at Bishop Sauls’ visitation and at other times, formally and informally. People had been coming to me, suggesting that we needed to look beyond ourselves, toward the needs of our community. We were also looking to make some improvements on our campus, as we had members wanting to build something that would be useful to us and to the larger community. We had one big advocate for the Spanish speaking ministry (you’ll hear from him next) and with his “encouragement” we began to plan to offer the Eucharist in Spanish once a month (we decided that offering it at a separate time was not sustainable for our small congregation, and it seemed patronizing, as if we didn’t want to worship with them).

Several things are interesting about this decision, not the least of which is that my command of the Spanish language is nonexistent to terrible. I made C’s in college Spanish. I admit that hesitantly, but it’s true — at 18 I was too embarrassed by my thick (to my ear) Appalachian accent to go to Spanish lab the way I was supposed to, and as a result I made the worst grades of my academic career in Spanish.

The interesting thing is this: no one seems to care. Sure, some of our folk are uncomfortable celebrating the Eucharist in Spanish. Change is always hard. There may even be snickers about my language skills behind my back, but I guess I’ve grown up a lot in the last 17 years because I don’t care so much. For the Spanish-speaking people who come and worship with us — many of whom come repeatedly — it seems to be a reprieve from a world where few people even try to speak their language or understand their culture. My optometrist father has always worked with vision care missions in Central and South America, and from those experiences I learned that just trying to communicate is half the battle.

When we started this ministry I was firmly convinced of several things: for one, the old tension between mission and maintenance is not an either/or proposition. We are a good example of a congregation engaged in both at the same time. I also believed that experts don’t know everything (if you look at the way Spanish-speaking ministry “should” be done, we are way off the mark), and all the training and expertise in the world can’t make up for an earnest, prayerful attempt to address the needs of a specific, lived situation.

Last spring, we found out that Community Action wanted to initiate a migrant Head Start program in Cynthiana and all of our earlier discernment left us poised to act. We dedicated our new wing on Dec. 21 — we have two lovely Head Start classrooms, a fantastic playground, and other much-needed improvements to our facilities like a privacy fence between us and the train and a new parking lot. We have learned a lot in the last year through our collaboration with Community Action (the Head Start/Early Head Start program is scheduled to open in the spring) and in our Spanish Eucharist. Two things stand out: first, in encountering other people very different than ourselves, and in offering them true hospitality, we encounter Christ. The second thing is this: God has great things in mind for us and, if we allow, God will use us in ways better than we could ask for (or train for) or even imagine. We welcome you to join us on the second Sunday of the month.

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Senior Warden Dan Clifford and Advent parishioners enjoyed both the reception and the dedication of the new Head Start facilities when the Bishop visited in December.

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