Untitled Document

Annual Meeting 2004
Maine Conference of the United Church of Christ
Sunday River, Bethel, Maine
September 24, 25, 26, 2004

Listen, Learn, Love: God Is Still Speaking...
________________________________________

Annual Meeting Keynote Speaker

Tony Robinson

Tony Robinson lectures on transforming congregations

While on sabbatical from Plymouth Congregational UCC in Seattle during 2001, Tony Robinson wrote two books, culminating several years of preparation. Now he is giving presentations across the United States on one of those books, Transforming Congregational Culture.

That book is based on reflections from his experiences as senior pastor 14 years at Plymouth and as pastor at UCC churches in Carnation, Hawaii and Arizona. Robinson describes a shift from the notion before the mid-1960s that mainline Protestant churches were the de facto established church in American Christendom to today's "post-Christian, post-modem period."
"The ways churches learned to be the church then are not helpful or appropriate today," he said in an interview in early October after he gave a presentation for Seattle area churches on "Behold! I Am Doing a New Thing."
Into the 1960s, he said Christianity was the unofficial religion, supported officially by the culture-through public schools, through no stores being open Sundays and through the inclusion of clergy in community celebrations. That church, in which Robinson grew up, consisted of mainline and liberal churches trying to make Christianity sensible to the modern scientific world.

"In this post-modern period, we are religiously pluralistic and officially secular," he said. "We now see the shadow side of modem culture in progressivity, rationalism, optimism and selfsufficiency. Those approaches do not speak to present concerns with people looking broadly into what religion, seeking a sense of holy presence or encounters with God that change, transform and heal lives and communities."

Robinson, a 1977 graduate of Union Seminary in New York, finds people looking for meaning. He said Plymouth's mission states its goal as "to grow people in faith to participate in God's work in the world."
"Our faith and theology suggest that we are here to repair the universe and reconcile,communities," he said. "The purpose of the church is to change lives, a capacity the church needs to discover ways to recover, because it is how people are engaged.

"We live in a culture that is seriously troubled with violence, individualism, materialism and broken relationships," he continued. "People are looking for more than getting on a committee or writing a letter to Congress. They are seeking a center in life and community, relationships and engagements that are real, truthful and life-giving. They are not seeking religious clubs or social clubs with a religious overlay."

Chapters in Transforming Congregational Culture discuss moving from civic faith to human transformation, from assuming to delivering the goods, from givers to receivers who give, from board to ministry culture, from community organization to faith-based ministry, from democracy to discernment, from the budget as an end to the budget as a means, from fellowship to hospitality and from passive to active membership growth. He then discusses skills and strategies for leadership for change.
Robinson has given presentations in Florida, California, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Colorado, Washington and British Columbia, favoring clergy or judicatory events for teams of people from churches.

He said groundwork for the book, published by Eerdmans, was the 1999 book he co-authored with Martin Copenhaver, pastor of the Wellesley (Mass.) Congregational Church, and William Willimon, chaplain at Duke University, called Good News in Exile: Three Pastors Offer a Hopeful Vision for the Church. In addition to publishing articles in Christian Century, Theology Today and Journal for Ministers, Robinson also wrote a book, New Occasions Teach New Duties, Renewing the Teaching Ministry of the Church, published in 1996 with United Church Press.

His latest book, Words for the Journey: Letters to Teenagers about Faith and Life, in July with Pilgrim Press, is also co-authored with Copenhaver. In Words for the Journey, the authors write letters to their 16-year-old children, Todd Copenhaver and Laura Robinson, discussing faith topics, vocation, and difficult matters of homosexuality, wealth, abortion and gender issues.

"We are talking as parents who are also pastors, speaking out of our faith about the things that are most important to talk about, but often the least spoken about," Robinson said.

back