{"id":635,"date":"2009-07-01T19:31:41","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T19:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/?p=635"},"modified":"2017-05-25T12:56:17","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T12:56:17","slug":"writing-a-living-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/2009\/07\/01\/writing-a-living-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing a living faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Betsey Norgard<\/p>\n

\"MichaelBaptisms, confirmation classes, choir pictures, pastor controversies, new buildings\u2014what makes up the history of a congregation?<\/p>\n

Three Augsburg history professors\u2014 Jacqueline deVries, Don Gustafson and Michael Lansing\u2014tried to answer that question, spending time outside the classroom over the past several years planning, researching, and writing the histories of their own congregations. It was a coincidence of opportunity for them to engage their skills as historians within their church communities, helping to interpret the past.<\/p>\n

The three congregations\u2014 Westminster Presbyterian Church and Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, and First Lutheran Church in St. Peter, Minn.\u2014vary in denomination, location, and size, but all recently reached the milestone of a centennial or sesquicentennial anniversary. All three books have been published over the last year and a half.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks be to God for these stories, and for the hundreds like them\u2014stories of those who have worshiped and served God over the years at Westminster Presbyterian Church \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

LIVING FAITH: STORIES FROM THE FIRST 150 YEARS<\/em><\/p>\n

Jacqueline deVries,<\/strong> associate professor and chair of the History Department, co-wrote Living Faith: Stories from the first 150 years, for the sesquicentennial of the large, downtown Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Michael Lansing<\/strong>, assistant professor and director of the environmental studies program, wrote The Faith of Our Forebears: 100 Years at Mount Olive Lutheran Church for his congregation in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Don Gustafson,<\/strong> professor, and a third-generation member of First Lutheran Church of St. Peter, created Three Sundays at First: A Story of Our Congregation, for its 150th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Historians to the task<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historians are really storytellers\u2014 and, as DeVries says, \u201cAs a historian, you have certain skills that you can share in recording and telling and helping people to reflect on the meaning of their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, none of the three volunteered to be an author.<\/p>\n

\"Living<\/a>Both deVries\u2014who co-wrote Westminster\u2019s Living Faith: Stories from the first 150 years\u2014and Lansing served on church committees charged with creating histories. In both cases, they began by helping the congregation understand the importance of oral histories and archives.<\/p>\n

DeVries set up a professional training project at Westminster that collected approximately 75 oral histories. Lansing, who wrote The Faith of Our Forebears: 100 Years at Mount Olive Lutheran Church, joined a church heritage committee that had already begun a process of collecting oral histories to contribute to a historical narrative. Both helped their committees appreciate the complexity and work of interviewing, asking the right questions, and transcribing the work for an archive.<\/p>\n

That work turned into an author assignment. DeVries was on the committee that interviewed outside writers for the job, none of whom pleased the committee. A Sunday morning sermon about a former, prominent preacher, whose intriguing story piqued her interest in the church\u2019s past, led deVries to realize she should be the writer.<\/p>\n

\"TheWhen Lansing joined the committee as a relatively new congregation member, he resisted signing on as writer. But he saw the need and felt a desire to serve\u2014and was reassured by the committee that he was the right person because he would see things others couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But, for Lansing, that meant \u201cgetting up to speed on all kinds of things I knew nothing about.\u201d Mount Olive\u2019s distinctive history and identity sent him delving into church history\u2014first to examine both ELCA archives and the congregation\u2019s former Missouri Synod affiliation. He also researched the liturgical movement within the Lutheran Church to understand how the congregation developed \u201ca powerful push for intentional liturgical recovery paired with progressive social ministries in the neighborhood.\u201d This hooked him into the project.<\/p>\n

While Lansing as a relative outsider fit well for Mount Olive\u2019s history, Gustafson, as an insider, was a natural to write Three Sundays at First: A Story of Our Congregation, for First Lutheran. He was recruited for the job, considered it a compliment, and felt it would be a snap\u2014until he realized the amount of records and faced the job of \u201cturning lists of data into a meaningful account.\u201d Then the task became more daunting.<\/p>\n

Organizing the histories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Neither Westminster nor Mount Olive had organized archives, and Lansing realized that first collecting and securing the church\u2019s records \u201cwas an even more important legacy the committee could leave.\u201d The oral histories in both churches were crucial to learn how the congregations developed. Then the writers faced the task of shaping and organizing the histories.<\/p>\n

DeVries and Lansing took a thematic approach, looking at the big picture, turning points and context. In the introduction to Lansing\u2019s book, he says, \u201cInvestigating different facets of Mount Olive\u2019s history in specific milieus\u2014relations with the broader Lutheran church, architecture and liturgy, congregational life, and social ministry and missions\u2014helps us to better understand not only what happened but also how and why Mount Olive became what it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThreeGustafson chose to build a more narrative history around three pivotal incidents in the congregation\u2019s 150 years, all of which happened on a Sunday, and the chronology fills in between these moments. It is \u201cnot the final word but rather is expected to provoke questions about as well as appreciation for our shared heritage, to prompt a nod of the head in agreement, and also sputters of protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, all three historians had to deal with controversial or painful moments in the congregation\u2019s past. For instance, DeVries and her committee decided that the story of two pastors who had an affair and left the congregation had to be included. Gustafson included the concern some members had about having a gay pastor. Lansing was advised to \u201cflatten out a controversy\u201d in Mount Olive\u2019s fairly recent past. They all chose words carefully and\/or referred readers to the archived oral history.<\/p>\n

Navigating the writing process<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inevitably, some tensions on the church committees arose over writing styles and documentation. With a very readable book as the goal, there probably was some nervousness about putting the task in the hands of academics.<\/p>\n

The three professors focused on readability, use of subheads, photos, and design that would attract readers\u2014in part to disarm stereotypes about scholarly faculty. \u201cWe as writers tried very hard to say something historical but also something simple,\u201d says deVries.<\/p>\n

Of the three, Lansing\u2019s is the most scholarly, a good match for a congregation that includes 35 seminarians as members. His history focuses on the congregation\u2019s distinctive historical role in the schism of the Missouri Synod and leadership in pursuing a distinctive liturgical tradition. His book is very readable, and, instead of footnotes, he included end notes with documentation. DeVries was asked not to use footnotes. She protested, seeking their inclusion as proper documentation for future historians, but was overruled by the project\u2019s editor.<\/p>\n

Given the many personal relationships that he has in his parish, Gustafson decided that he would not quote anyone without their subsequent permission, hoping that this would encourage candor during his interviews.<\/p>\n

Paring the volumes of information and choosing the stories was challenging. Gustafson says he could have written much more, \u201cbut part of being a historian is not to tell it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legacies remain<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three histories have all generated praise for their writers. Especially satisfying are comments about fairness, honesty, and charity in which church members and situations are portrayed, especially difficult ones. Some readers commented on how much they learned. Gustafson says this history is probably the first one being read, since earlier families actually lived the history of the church.<\/p>\n

In April, when Mount Olive celebrated its centennial, Lansing was asked to give the keynote speech at the banquet. He sought to interpret their history from the eyes of a relative newcomer and as a historian. He suggested that history can be dangerous in terms of stifling innovation while trying to live up to the legacies, and in terms of measuring others against the rigors of their liturgy and tradition. It struck a chord and made people think.<\/p>\n

Beyond the books themselves, perhaps even greater legacies were left. All three churches now have organized archives with oral histories. DeVries sees these oral histories as \u201cnot only important for posterity, but important for building the connections among church members, because it was church members interviewing other church members.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the three books are all different, their uses are also different. The coffee table-quality of Living Faith: Stories from the first 150 years lends Westminster\u2019s history to fundraising and recruiting new members to the congregation.<\/p>\n

Lansing\u2019s history of Mount Olive documents its distinctive denominational history and will remain of interest outside its parish. In the Introduction, he says, \u201cBecause the congregation engaged so many cutting-edge trends in 20th-century Lutheran life, the parish\u2019s history rises above the local and parochial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gustafson\u2019s narrative history is given to all new church members and can be reprinted easily.<\/p>\n

What did the three historians learn in these projects? DeVries says, \u201cWhen you work on a church history like this, it\u2019s far closer, and it makes you confront your role as an objective historian \u2026 and also your service to not just posterity, but to people you sit next to in the pews every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gustafson quipped that \u201cit is far easier to write about dead people on another continent than about living people one might meet tomorrow at the grocery store.\u201d And, he\u2019s already collecting materials for First Lutheran Church\u2019s 200th anniversary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Betsey Norgard Baptisms, confirmation classes, choir pictures, pastor controversies, new buildings\u2014what makes up the history of a congregation? Three Augsburg history professors\u2014 Jacqueline deVries, Don Gustafson and Michael Lansing\u2014tried to answer that question, spending time outside the classroom over the past several years planning, researching, and writing the histories of their own congregations. It <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-summer-2009"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7949,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/7949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}