Analysis: What's Driving Churches in Maple Grove Apart?

When asked about inter-church cooperation in Maple Grove, Pastor Peter Geisendorfer-Lindgren at Lord of Life Lutheran Church said “If you’re goin' study somethin’, it’s why churches cooperate less now then they used to.” All the ministers I interviewed felt the quantity and quality of interaction between churches and their clergy decreased over the last several years.

Listen to Pastor Geisendorfer-Lindgren on inter-church relationships in Maple Grove:

Two inter-church programs represent the recent downswing in inter-church cooperation in Maple Grove: a community Thanksgiving service and the “ministerium” or minister’s meeting group.

Years ago, the Maple Grove “ministerium” met regularly, attended by ministers of most Protestant denominations (and even the local Catholic priest). Clergy would meet to discuss community issues over lunch or coffee and even attempted to start a police chaplain ministry. But a year ago, the evangelical pastor who facilitated it stepped down and George Bunnell, Pastor at Grove Christian Center, took charge and changed the format substantially. The group now meets for prayer early in the morning and no longer shares meals together. According to Pastor Bunnell, the attendance has dropped significantly since then. Now, mainline denominations are under-represented. Smaller churches are more likely to attend than larger churches.

Listen to:

• Pastor Bunnell on Maple Grove's ministerial group:
• Pastor Geisendorfer-Lindgren on Maple Grove's ministerial group:

All the clergy I spoke with mentioned the annual Maple Grove, community-wide Thanksgiving service, sponsored by Lord of Life Lutheran church. Pastor Geisendorfer-Lindgren at Lord of Life says, “It used to be really, really, really popular…and now, just less churches are interested in being a part of it…we used to go to the other churches, but we’ve really been the driving force, but interest has waned.” And as interest has waned, mainline Protestant groups are over represented at the service. Pastor Jenny Moran at Christ’s community church says “that [the Thanksiging service] was mostly Methodist or Moravians.”

Listen to:

• Pastor Moran on the annual community Thanksgiving service:
• Pastor Bunnell on the community Thanksgiving service:

The following factors, identified in interviews with clergy, determine whether leaders of one church will participate in a dialogue with leaders of another or whether churches will conduct joint services together.

To participate in inter-leader dialogue or conduct joint services, two churches must:

1. Be open to and interested in working with other churches or leaders when planning their programs or other ongoing operations.

If a church does not even consider working with others, they are unlikely to even begin participating in inter-leader dialogue or conduct joint services.

For example, St. John’s Lutheran Church rarely participates in inter-church dialogues or joint-services. Why? As a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, they are doctrinally prohibited from “worshiping alongside others.” This doctrine severely limits the extent to which they even consider interfaith cooperation.

Listen to Pastor Geisendorfer-Lindgren on nearby St. John's Lutheran Church:

But considerations outside of doctrine also drive whether a church considers working with others. The size of a church and the resulting busy-ness of a church’s staff control whether cooperating with other churches or their leadership is even discussed. Pastor Bunnell explains the recent drop off in ministerial group participation accordingly:  “We become too busy as clergy and we don’t see the significance in that…smaller churches, I can get those pastors here.” As a church’s size grows, its staff becomes busier and likely has less time to consider interfaith interaction.

Listen to Pastor Bunnell on Maple Grove's ministerial group:

2. Consider each other as peers.

When churches consider establishing relationships with other pastors or conducting joint services, they ponder a list of possible partners. But this list does not necessarily include all churches within the same geographic area. Jen Lindwall at Church of the Open Door makes it very clear that her church does not consider many of the other churches in Maple Grove as peers:

“It’s not at all that I’m against churches in this area. I think my energy level for calling up all the other Evangelical churches in Maple Grove is not very high.”

Church size also drives which churches decide to be peers. Church of the Open Door seeks out relationships with other large religious groups in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, including non-Christian ones. But they have little interest in relationships with the smaller churches of Maple Grove. Size seems to determine whether they consider another church a peer.

Proximity, or how near churches physically are to each other, also drives what churches identify as peers. The only ongoing, well-attended joint-church service I found in Maple Grove was hosted by Christ’s Community Church and Maple Grove Lutheran Church. The two churches began their relationship when Pastor Jenny Moran arrived at Christ’s Community Church and noticed the Lutheran church across the street.

Size affects proximity. In Maple Grove, large pieces of land are far easier to come by on the outskirts of town than in the town center; larger churches tend to be at the edge of town farther away from other churches. For example, Church of the Open Door is on the far north side of the city of Maple Grove and Lord of Life Lutheran is on the far west side. In these more isolated locations, larger churches are less likely to notice other churches or be included in their “peer group."

Frequent pastor turnover at a church may also affect whether other pastor’s are likely to conceive of that church as a peer. Pastor Bunnell mentions pastor turnover as a problem for the ministerium, a key opportunity for establish who is the member of the peer group.

Listen to Pastor Bunnell on Maple Grove's ministerial group:

3. Approach comparisons of their beliefs and doctrines looking for similarities instead of differences.

“The grounding element is that we’re all people who believe in Jesus Christ and consider Him to be our Lord and our Savior. That’s something we choose to celebrate instead of saying ‘you disagree with us about this or that'.”

– Pastor Jenny Moran at Christ’s Community Church

Churches that approach comparisons of doctrine or belief searching for similarities, instead of differences, are more likely to establish a relationship with other churches. Christ’s Community Church is the only church in my sample to conduct regular joint services with another congregation. When asked what underlies the relationship between Christ’s Community Church and Maple Grove Lutheran, Pastor Moran replies that members of each church find common ground in that each “believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” Although there are some doctrinal differences between the Moravian and Lutheran churches, especially related to hot-button issues like homosexual members and pastors, Pastor Moran and her counterpart at Maple Grove Lutheran find similarities, instead of differences.

Listen to Pastor Moran on the common ground she finds with neighboring churches:

Conversely, churches that focus on differences in doctrine are less likely to establish a positive relationship with others by conducting joint services or building relationships between clergy. Pastor Moran notes that Evangelical and non-denominational churches tend to focus on key doctrinal differences between their church and hers, making any warm relationship with pastors whose churches have different views difficult. “It makes them pause [these issues]…it’s unfortunate to see that people are making that an issue to be divisive, rather than unifying.”

Pastors’ highlighting doctrinal differences between one congregation and another tend to focus on “hot button” issues, such as the ordination of homosexual and women clergy. Instead of focusing on commonalities, some Evangelical ministers respond uneasily to Pastor Moran because of her gender: “The most immediate thing is, ‘oh wait’ she’s a woman…and I’ve had comments to that effect.” This issue likely plays out less frequently because the majority of church leaders in Maple Grove are men.

But every clergy person I spoke with mentioned the ordination of homosexual clergy as the “hot button” issue that was creating tense relationships between churches. Although Pastor Moran’s national organization did not approve the ordination of homosexual individuals, it does “celebrate, welcome and allow” homosexual members. Christ’s Community Church elected an openly gay member to its board. “That makes a big problem…that separates mainline churches from other churches.”

Listen to Pastor Moran on her church's doctrinal differences with others in Maple Grove:

One pastor described a harrowing tale of inter-church turmoil that followed his denomination’s decision to accept homosexual pastors. As his congregation intensely studied the issue (with many members leaving or threatening to leave), the pastor received an email from three evangelical pastors, offering to meet him for a time of prayer.  When the pastors met in the prayer room, the evangelical pastors “jumped on” the other, saying, “you’ve got to do something about this.” The receiving pastor was shocked that the others presumed to know what to do.

4. Have similar conceptions of the purpose of inter-church communication.

In order to engage in joint-services or build relationships between their clergy, churches must have a similar conception of the purpose of inter-faith work.

The clergy I interviewed described two possible purposes for inter-church clergy gatherings or joint services. One assumed that getting together just to “get together” was valuable. In other words, eating a meal together, even if it did not involve heavy theological conversation, was a worthwhile enterprise for a community’s ministers.

But other clergy felt “getting together for the sake of getting together” was purposeless. “We didn’t have any focus,” said Pastor Bunnell, “We need to have a focus. If it’s just getting together to have dinner, coffee, lunch…I don’t know if that’s a purpose. That’s why we started changing it.” Pastor Bunnell feels that “prayer time for the community” is a more definite purpose, and has changed the format of the ministerial group meetings accordingly.

Listen to Pastor Bunnell on Maple Grove's ministerial group:

Feelings about whether the city of Maple Grove is “sinful” or needs “repentance” drive a pastor’s conception of the purpose of interfaith work. Pastor Bunnell dreams of a city-wide summer service of “repentance” for the city. Repenting for what exactly? “Our mediocrity…our idolatry. A lot of times people think we have this influential community, Maple Grove. There’s violence, drug addiction, there’s so much pain. People think because they’re influential they don’t have the problems of the intercity. There’s brokenness in every one of these homes…we’ve got to get out of church early so we can go to the big idol and bow down on Sunday afternoon. I think sports has become an idol to a lot of people. When activities, sports, comes before God, I think we have an idol.” Because Pastor Bunnell conceives of the city as sin-ridden, he understands the central purpose of inter-church work to be the alleviation of city-wide sin.

Listen to Pastor Bunnell on Maple Grove's need for a summer service of repentance:

5. Have similar styles of worship.

If churches or their pastors worship in substantially different ways, they are less likely to conduct joint services or build relationships between clergy. Pastor Bunnell speculates that his church was not as “safe” a place for the ministerial group as was its previous home. What might “safe” mean? Other pastors mentioned that they were uncomfortable with the style of worship evangelical ministers used. In particular, the highly public, energetic prayer style of evangelical ministers seemed to alienate mainline pastors. These feelings of discomfort decrease the likelihood that non-evangelical pastors will attempt to join services with evangelical pastors. And if prayer plays a large part in the interactions between evangelical pastors and other pastors, non-evangelical pastors are likely to be driven from collegial relationships with their evangelical colleagues. In other words, the different prayer styles of evangelical pastors in Maple Grove drive their non-evangelical counter parts away from joint-services and collegial relationships with them.

Differences in the use of the word “prayer” among interviewees showed how each conceive the practice of prayer differently than others. In my interviews with mainline Protestant pastors, the word prayer rarely appeared. In one interview, it only appeared when the pastor was critiquing the evangelical pastors of his town. In other words, prayer seems to be a private, individual activity that one would not discuss with an unfamiliar, outside researcher. None of these ministers denied that they pray, but none mentioned it without prompting. On the other hand, evangelical Pastor Bunnell used the word “pray” repeatedly. He not only used “pray” to describe the behavior of his congregants on a Sunday morning, but also to describe his decision-making process. When describing his church’s response to the arrival of a Hindu Temple in the Maple Grove community, Pastor Bunnell says “We’re strategizing and praying specifically on how to reach them.” In other words, prayer is not an individual, pious activity for Sunday mornings, but a day-to-day tool for decision making. Evidently, in Pastor Bunnell’s sentence, prayer is closely related to strategizing. In other words, the mainline Protestant ministers I spoke with perceive prayer as individual and private, while the evangelical minister I interviewed seem to conceive of it as a frequent, day-to-day activity, necessary for church strategy.