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The Legacy of Metanoia Peace Community United Methodist Church: 1986 to 2024
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It is widely acknowledged that churches as we have known them in America are dying, including an unusual number of United Methodist congregations. In our own Oregon-Idaho Conference dozens of congregations have closed their doors over the past 10 years, and others are poised to do so in the near future, mostly because of dwindling membership and the attendant inability to meet the rising costs of building maintenance and staff salaries.
Metanoia Peace Community UMC in Portland will join the list of church closures at the Annual Conference Session in Tigard, Oregon in June, 2024, but not because we are dying or because of financial difficulties. We will close because our work as a congregation is finished and God has called, and is calling, our remaining members to other places and ways of service. The congregation will dissolve this but the Peace House, which is the current home for several of us, will continue to thrive and serve for several more years through the efforts of the 7 adults and 4 children who remain.
As we end our life as one of the churches of the Annual Conference we want to leave behind a legacy as a gift to the churches that remain in the struggle to survive and serve effectively to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world.
This publication is a part of that legacy. In it we share a short version of our 38-year story, unusual among United Methodist churches, and some of the theological understandings and practices that made us unique and successful in what we have done. We reveal what we learned during our almost 4 decades of life together. And, for those who are interested, we have included lists of some of the resources that helped us along the way, and resources that we ourselves developed to share with others. We will be delighted if you are able to benefit from what you may learn here about our experience by reading this book.
Included also in this legacy publication is an essay entitled, “Ten Practices for Emergent Churches,” which I wrote a decade ago and which lays out the theology that we pursued and refined in our life together. By including the essay in this publication we are now commending it to those who are rethinking the meaning and possibilities of new church development in the years ahead.
It is widely acknowledged that churches as we have known them in America are dying, including an unusual number of United Methodist congregations. In our own Oregon-Idaho Conference dozens of congregations have closed their doors over the past 10 years, and others are poised to do so in the near future, mostly because of dwindling membership and the attendant inability to meet the rising costs of building maintenance and staff salaries.
Metanoia Peace Community UMC in Portland will join the list of church closures at the Annual Conference Session in Tigard, Oregon in June, 2024, but not because we are dying or because of financial difficulties. We will close because our work as a congregation is finished and God has called, and is calling, our remaining members to other places and ways of service. The congregation will dissolve this but the Peace House, which is the current home for several of us, will continue to thrive and serve for several more years through the efforts of the 7 adults and 4 children who remain.
As we end our life as one of the churches of the Annual Conference we want to leave behind a legacy as a gift to the churches that remain in the struggle to survive and serve effectively to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world.
This publication is a part of that legacy. In it we share a short version of our 38-year story, unusual among United Methodist churches, and some of the theological understandings and practices that made us unique and successful in what we have done. We reveal what we learned during our almost 4 decades of life together. And, for those who are interested, we have included lists of some of the resources that helped us along the way, and resources that we ourselves developed to share with others. We will be delighted if you are able to benefit from what you may learn here about our experience by reading this book.
Included also in this legacy publication is an essay entitled, “Ten Practices for Emergent Churches,” which I wrote a decade ago and which lays out the theology that we pursued and refined in our life together. By including the essay in this publication we are now commending it to those who are rethinking the meaning and possibilities of new church development in the years ahead.
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