Why Pittsburgh?

My experience in Pittsburgh looking for the movement of God’s Spirit in that city

Dr. Larry Thorson
October 21, 2007

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Last month I was feeling spiritually exhausted and it only got worse as we moved into October. A high number of deaths, transitioning of staff, the Family Center Task Force and a broken air conditioner at home just plain wore me out. I knew that I needed to get away and do some studying, praying and reflecting.

The other thing on my mind was how to do worship in a way that would be meaningful for those under 40. I had planned for us to start the Legacy service in September as an alternative style of worship but the more I read the more I was realizing that that generation I was trying to reach was changing very rapidly and my thinking as to how to do that service was becoming very dated. So I put off starting the service until I could get a better understanding.

One night in September when I was particularly tired I saw an article on the Presbyterian Church USA website about a new church development called the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community in Pittsburgh that was running 400-500 mostly young people every Sunday with a very different kind of worship. I asked the Lord if I could go and it turned out that since I had been bumped on a flight to New Orleans last year, I had vouchers on Delta who flew right into Pittsburgh. I picked a date when my voucher would pay the most and then looked up Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the Presbyterian seminary there to see if they had anything going on during those dates that I might want to attend. It turned out that they were hosting something called an “Emergent Conference” which brought in speakers to talk about how to do ministry among 20 and 30 year olds.

So off I went to Pittsburgh to get some rest, some inspiration and learn how they’re reaching the next generation. What I didn’t know before I left was how ideal Pittsburgh was for studying how Presbyterians can respond to the 20 and 30 year olds.

When the steel mills closed in the 1970’s and Pittsburgh lost its primary employment base, my generation that are now in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s left town to find work. That left a city of the very poor and/or the elderly. But Pittsburgh beautifully reinvented itself with high tech and banking jobs in the 80’s to replace the lost factory jobs and it’s a model redevelopment city now.

What you see in Pittsburgh now are the very elderly, those who could take retirement from the steel mills and the very well educated young. Housing is cheap there. Two seminary students I met bought a three bedroom house with a full basement in Pittsburgh for a whopping $45,000. The daughter of my former senior pastor in Texas is a student at the seminary and she and her husband splurged and bought a beautiful home for around $90,000. It’s ideal for young people starting out in their careers.

The other factor about Pittsburgh is that prior to the closing of the mills it was the mother land for the Presbyterian church in the United States. There were more Presbyterians per capita in Pittsburgh than anywhere outside of Scotland. So what you see there now all over the city are large, beautiful, old Presbyterian church buildings sometimes across the street from one another. They’re everywhere in Pittsburgh, empty for the most part, rejected by the young professionals who live there now.

Pittsburgh Presbytery, the largest Presbyterian district in the country, knew that they needed to respond to these empty sanctuaries and do something but they didn’t know what. They decided that spending all their efforts trying to revive the dying churches wasn’t very fruitful and decided that they would start new churches to reach a new generation. The only problem was that those in Pittsburgh Presbytery doing work belonged to my generation or the one before it and they didn’t know what to do. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? You pray and that’s what the leadership of Pittsburgh Presbytery did. Out of the whirlwind came three new grassroots churches in three different communities in Pittsburgh. They approached Pittsburgh Presbytery for funding because they already had some people. Let me share my experience with those three churches.

On Thursday morning, my second day in Pittsburgh, my devotional reading for that day in my “Read Through the Bible in a Year” program finished with this passage from Matthew 6 starting at verse 25

That particular passage really spoke to my tired soul that day but I didn’t spend much time thinking about it because well I was excited and on a mission that I felt I had to get on to. It did stick in my mind all day and I was sure hoping that God wasn’t trying to make some kind of point with it to me.

That Thursday night the Hot Metal Faith Community website said that they offered a weekly worship service at St. Casimir’s church on the southside. This was a former Lithuanian Catholic church that was to be made into condos. The website said the building was under renovation and the pews were out so bring a blanket to sit on.

I got there for the 7:00 service at 7:05 and the building was all dark, the front doors locked. But I could see a little light in a window and I was determined that I was getting in. I walked around a very dark corner and went down a very dark alley to the back of the church where I saw some people going through what looked like a hole in the wall.

That hole put me in what looked like it had been a sanctuary. All the pews had been long gone alright, there were about 8 candles burning and some little construction lights on. A Nissan pickup and a motorcycle was also parked in there along with a lot of tools. One person was lying on a hammock. Others were walking around looking like they were either stoned or in prayerful meditation. I think it was the latter or at least I hope it was. Music from a cd was playing in the background.

Finally about 7:20 some guy stands up and leads us in a pray and liturgy. We were supposed to respond with something like– “mercy of God be upon us”. At that point I was wondering if he was the minister but I wasn’t certain.

Then he introduced a guy at the keyboard who began playing something I had never heard of, and couldn’t understand what he was singing. Then he tried to talk in between songs but he didn’t enunciate so I couldn’t tell what he was saying.

Meanwhile during the music the pastor guy laid down on the floor up front. Now in my church when someone goes into that position in church I tell the ushers to call 911. I just sat there on this steel girder that was sitting on the floor.

After about a half hour the music guy quit playing and the pastor guy got up and told us we were going to do Lectio Divina tonight. Oh good, I thought, something I can understand. That’s where someone reads a portion of Scripture and gives you time to meditate on it and then reads it again.

It was so dark in there and I don’t know how he could see his Bible. He just started reading without telling us where he was reading. He began to read…

That guy not only read that passage once and let me sit there for ten minutes with it, not twice, not three times but four times. Let me tell you, after a while in that dark, drafty, cold room on that hard steel girder that wasn’t some preacher man reading some random passage to me anymore. That became the voice of Jesus himself. Then for some odd reason tears started flowing from my eyes. Then I started sobbing. Why? Because the Master had talked to me.

Then out of the dark this bread and juice appeared on a little coffee table – one by one we knelt down at this little table lingering as long as we wanted at the table with Jesus Then just as I came so I left, back out through the hole in the wall into the dark.

On Friday our own Jane Kehrli happened to be in town that and we toured the Bailey Ave. United Presbyterian Church where she grew up and where she married its pastor George Kehrli who died this past April and I did his service in this sanctuary. It was wonderful being with her and learning what Pittsburgh used to be like.

On Friday night and Saturday there was the conference on reaching the younger generation at the seminary. That was boring but helpful.

On Sunday I got to see the future – the next generation of Presbyterian churches. I got to see what the Wall Street Journal and the Presbyterian News Service were talking about at the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community.

Sunday services for that church are very different from their Thursday night services. They’re held in the third floor cafeteria of the Goodwill Building. I got there early because there’s almost no off street parking. It was supposed to start at 11:00 but hey we’re having fun visiting, who’s in a hurry, let’s try 11:20.

This is what I saw at 11:20. Chairs were set up in a rectangle around the communion table. There was a small band with two guitars and a lead singer off to the side and in back. The focus was on the communion in the middle. The pastors, two of them, walked around the table leading worship.

There was a time of sharing about things that they were grateful for that day and things they could pray on. There was a prayer time. There was a sermon about Jesus’ story of the leper and it was acted out in a skit. I saw a few portable speakers and two microphones but no high tech projectors and no stag. What I did see were at least 500 people in worship. There were easily only three of us over age 50 with an additional 4 over age 40. I don’t think the rest will see their 30th birthday for a long time.

Near the end of the service the pastor broke a loaf of bread and invited everyone to come up and partake of the Lord’s Table. Right then everyone got out of their seats and formed two lines going in opposite directions to break off some bread and dip it in the cup. By going in opposite direction they had to face each other and recognize that they were all invited to the same table of our Lord.

Meanwhile I didn’t even notice bountiful food appearing on tables against the walls. Where did that come from? As soon as the communion was over we got in a giant circle, joined hands, and the pastor blessed the food. As soon as he said “Amen” chairs and tables went flying as they set up for their weekly meal together. They serve 500 people for a free meal every Sunday after worship. They build the expense of that meal into their budget because having a meal together is that important to them.

The pastor shared with the church that day that the Goodwill people have sold their building to a developer for a lot more than the church could afford to pay. By January 1, 2008 this church with an average weekly attendance of over 500 on Sundays will be homeless. Two blocks away from the Goodwill building sits the 100 year old Southside Presbyterian Church, a church that in the 1920’s & 30’s had close to 1000 members but now runs maybe 20 on Sunday mornings in a facility that needs some work that they can’t afford to do. Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community has submitted a proposal to their Session to merge the two churches.

Here’s the thing, what would you do if you were an elder in that Southside Presbyterian Church, one of the 20 still worshipping there? Did I tell you that the Monday night Bible study at Hot Metal Bridge is in a tattoo parlor? It’s called “In the Blood”. From what I could tell a lot of their members are regular clients of that shop.

In the evening after attending an organ recital at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church I went to the second of Pittsburgh Presbytery’s new church developments, the Open Door. The Open Door meets in the Urban Project, an old church that the Mennonites are renovating as a community center for teaching job skills to the poor including a Starbucks training center.

I walked into the old sanctuary which is in the process of being redone and I found myself in a dinner line. Open Door starts their one Sunday worship service with dinner at 6:00. Again there were 3 of us over 50 and the place was packed. Again it was a free dinner. The sermon that night was a mission trip to Mexico that this church had come back from. They did use a projector and words on the wall, drums, and electric guitars. Their whole emphasis is to help build up the community working alongside the poor of that East Liberty neighborhood

On Monday I visited the Pittsburgh Project. It was started by a Presbyterian minister in the north side of Pittsburgh in 1982. The Pittsburgh Project runs an after school tutoring program in a former Catholic school building for about 250 kids Monday-Friday from 2-5. They tutor another 35 middle school students and run a basketball team for about 30 high school students. Sound familiar?

Pittsburgh doesn’t have a well funded Valley Wide Recreation department like Hemet to run its parks. When the steel mills closed a lot of their tax base went with them. So the city turned the park across the street from the tutoring program over to the Pittsburgh Project. That park includes a community pool that would have closed if the Project hadn’t stepped in.

The Pittsburgh Project is now raising money to build the only gym in that community and that will be on park land across the street from their campus. They’ve also mowed two vacant lots in front of the park and have turned the area into a community farm to help provide vegetables for their students.

In 2003 they were able to buy the abandoned Catholic church building next door, renovated it, opened a restaurant in it to train the poor for food industry jobs and also opened the third new church development for Pittsburgh Presbytery, the Mosaic Community, led totally by volunteers.

Here are some lessons I learned in Pittsburgh. We have everything we need to minister to all the generations right here in our church right now. Nothing that I heard in those services would be offensive to any generation. Now you may not like the tattoos I saw or the body piercings but nothing I heard was loud and offensive.

Secondly, their worship services were exactly what we were doing this summer except for a few songs sung in a different manner. The worship services I saw were also not performances by a few but a community celebration for all. They share together. They laugh together. They cry together. They sing together. They pray together. They eat together. That’s the community that Jesus came to create.

If this church is a community of Christ it can’t be that I come to this church because I’ve always been a Presbyterian. It can’t be that I come to this church because they sing the kind of music I like. It can’t be that I come to this church just because I like organ music. It can’t be that I come to this church because they don’t have drums. It can’t be that I come to this church because they preach the word in a certain non-offensive manner. It has to be that I come to this church because I see Jesus here, flesh and blood Jesus. Not a sterile, theoretical Jesus in a pulpit but a flesh and blood Jesus whose body is you.

I don’t think you can get to know this Jesus by just sitting in that pew staring straight ahead. That’s why meals are so important to have together. That’s why small groups where you can share your private lives are so important.

Next Sunday we’re going to be sharing a really nice meal together after the worship service to celebrate Pastor Scott’s ministry here. Then again, another meal on Nov. 18 after the worship service to dream and imagine together as a family about the possibilities for our Family Center and hearing more about the Pittsburgh Project from a team that we’re sending back there to take a closer look. In January we’ll be launching a whole series of new non-threatening small groups. My hope is that we’ll be eating a whole lot of meals together and singing of our praises for our Savior, the savior of the world, Jesus Christ.

As God could speak to me on that steel girder in that very strange worship service, I really believe that God is about to do a new thing in our midst and it’s going to be good.