Locating a Center: The Liturgical Calendar and Sustainable Living at First Congregational Church, Memphis
Student report by Kathryn Pocalyko (M.Div. ‘13)
First Congregational Church of Memphis, Tennessee, lives in the midst of many cycles. Throughout the week, various groups cycle in and out of the United Church of Christ congregation’s sanctuary. What served as Sunday’s worship space becomes a classroom, a dance studio, a food pantry, a fencing court, an art gallery, or a movie theater. While introducing her church to the ISM Summer Seminar participants, Pastor Cheryl Cornish described how at best, all the activities make First Congregational a vibrant community center. At worst, it becomes chaotic.
First Congregational came to the seminar hoping to locate a single, unified center. They came seeking to build a sense of cooperation between community partners and the church’s worship, and to link justice initiatives to spirituality and theology.
Their intended project revolves around climate change, which deeply concerns congregants at First Congregational. Younger worshippers especially wonder what kind of natural world they will inhabit in the future, if any at all. “We need to respond to the despair felt among young people about the environmental crisis,” Pastor Cheryl explained, and they need a theological ground in which to plant that response. How might their church use worship to cultivate sustainable living practices? What can make these practices part of the church’s spirituality and not just another activity on a long list? “Our folks get mission,” Pastor Cheryl said, “Our issue is finding a unifying context.”
First Congregational suggested that their project’s starting components—sustainable living practices and a unifying, theological context—may meet in the liturgical year. Could the liturgical calendar provide this center, the way to link their environmental projects to a Christian identity?
The morning prayer service that First Congregational led during their week at Yale hinted at an answer to that question. Their worship showed creative ways to embody concern for the environment in liturgy. During a visual lament over the rivers of the world, images of the Mississippi, Shenandoah, and Ganges rivers flashed across a screen while Pastor Cheryl read statistics on water pollution, wildlife degradation, and health hazards. Then she led a prayer of confession: “We, your human creatures, have sinned against the soil that gave us birth; we have filled your rivers with rubbish and your waters with waste.” The lament concluded by praying for God to “free us from our bondage to lifestyles that poison your planet” and to “awaken us from the sleep of indifference and open our eyes to the anguish of our toxic world.” First Congregational seamlessly and beautifully wove together creation care and Christian worship.
Their project’s plenary session asked how they might employ the liturgical calendar as an overarching, unifying element. Two conference faculty members facilitated the project’s brainstorming session. Rita Ferrone’s introduction imagined the liturgical calendar as a royal garment shut up in a closet. “What if we took it out and wore it?” she asked. Teresa Berger noted how the liturgical calendar embodies the Christ event, mapping Christ’s life on to human lives in daily, weekly, and annual rhythms. Her explanation on how the Christian liturgical calendar was configured with the solar calendar piqued the First Congregational team’s interest. Easter’s date, she reminded everyone, is governed by a natural rhythm: it falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the northern hemisphere’s vernal equinox.
The natural basis of the liturgical year captivated the team and illuminated their project’s vision. “The liturgical seasons make more sense to us in light of sustainable living and the natural world, not the other way around,” Pastor Cheryl explained.
Professor Berger also passed out a circular version of the liturgical calendar with personal dates—birthdays, vacations, anniversaries—marked on it. She asked, “How might First Congregational map their church’s calendar on to the liturgical calendar?”
During the final planning session, Mary Lin Hudson, First Congregational’s lay representative and Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics at Memphis Theological Seminary, pulled out a piece of paper. She drew two concentric circles like Professor Berger’s handout. The outer loop marked the liturgical year, and the inner loop designated events in their congregational life. Four quadrants behind the circles indicated the seasons. Immediately, ideas flew. A focus on creation could take place for four weeks in autumn, leading up to Saint Francis’ feast day, an established celebration in the congregation. Advent and Christmas could highlight solar energy and light, with water issues featured during Epiphany. Lent, beginning with the Ash Wednesday liturgy, should spotlight earth and soil, complete with a composting project. Easter would obviously center on renewal and themes of reuse and recycling. Ordinary Time might focus on the planting and harvest process, on food gleaned for distribution, culminating in a Thanksgiving celebration.
“We are intentionally linking what we do liturgically with what we do missionally,” Mary Lin said. The team will develop a liturgical resource that every Sunday connects worship with the sustainability project: a prayer, a litany, a spoken affirmation used continually to reinforce the project’s engagement and theology.
Mary Button, First Congregational’s Minister of Visual Arts, brainstormed many artistic ideas for the project and worship. She envisioned large blue and white sun prints for the season of creation. She imagined how she might use soil creatively in the liturgical arts during Lent. Could they bring wheelbarrows full of soil into the sanctuary? Display worm composing bins? The team prioritized their project’s artistic angle: it would inspire congregants to get involved in making the sanctuary’s art.
At First Congregational, finding their way is their way. They provide the place and space for diverse partnerships and inspiring initiatives. Their question is how to pull it all together and how to frame it in a theological context; in other words, how to find a centering point. The liturgical calendar has been part of the Christian church’s way for centuries. It provides the centering point of Christ throughout the year. The ISM Congregations Project seminar showed the confluence of these cycles of life—new sustainable living practices and the age-old liturgical calendar—will come to share a center at First Congregational.