(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Getting Started." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Defining a Lutheran Congregation.")

Getting Started

A major obstacle to overcome early in your project is our culture's associations with the word history. Mention historian and watch the stereotypes emerge. We imagine dusty and lonely old men and women who spend all of their days in libraries and studies poring over yellowed pages. Their heads are crammed with names, dates, places, and other assorted facts. They seem ready to tell us more than we want to know about anything that we might raise for discussion.

What is more, we usually think of historians as people who work by themselves for the better part of their lives and leave behind a book that only a few stop to read. Other unpleasant associations come from elementary and secondary school, where history consisted of facts to be memorized and regurgitated for tests. Seldom did history connect with our lives. Only occasionally did we discover—perhaps when reading a biography, taking a vacation, or visiting a museum—that history could contain treasures of insight and wisdom.

Breaking free of these stereotypes will be as challenging as any other part of the task you will face as you attempt to lead your congregation into a discovery of its own history. Every time your project is mentioned, people will hear those dusty, antiquarian overtones. Pastors, congregational leaders, and members—whether or not they are active project participants—will need to be shown and eventually to help explain to still others that what you are setting out to do is something very different.

St. Peter's Lutheran Church, the Bronx