(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Your Congregation's Inner Life." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Your Congregation's Public Profile.")

Your Congregation's Inner Life

What makes your congregation different from all the others? Asking such a naive-sounding question invites a variety of responses. There are many who expect only a monotonous sameness from American congregations. After all, congregations do similar things like conduct worship services, run Sunday schools, provide pastoral care, and minister to the needs of those whom Jesus called "the least of these." They play a common role in our society as they gather people from a community and help them to search for God and to find deep and strong connections with one another. Moreover, they all address the same set of human needs for meaning and belonging, and they provide rites of passage at key moments in life: at birth, entry into adulthood, marriage, and death.

Others will argue that denominational distinctiveness is lessening in our society and point out how Lutherans have borrowed from Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and evangelicals. They will show how similar liturgical practices, hymnody, educational strategies, and patterns of organizational governance are found in so many different congregations and denominational settings.

They will also remind us that few congregations can point to a single denominational or ethnic lineage. Lutherans do not marry only other Lutherans, and the new members of our congregations often bring other denominational, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds that can soften whatever original distinctiveness a particular congregation might have had. Has American religion really homogenized the traditions that people brought with them to this country? Has the melting pot cooked us all into a bland stew?

A third group will disagree with these readings and argue that there are distinctive differences between congregations. They will point to the differences between inner city and suburban congregations, between acculturated mainstream Protestants and new Asian or Hispanic congregations. The sheer diversity of American culture makes impossible an oppressive or bland uniformity, in these people's eyes. Instead, they point to the ongoing American saga of the arrival of newcomers and their always unsettling new worlds of belief and practice that refuse to fit neatly into any single cultural form. The future of our culture does not seem to be in the direction of a generic American oneness. Instead, our "manyness" seems to be growing more and more apparent.

In addition to the strong cultural diversity in our society, there are clear differences between denominations. Worship at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City differs from worship at an Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Baltimore. Women can be clergy in some denominations and not others. Some congregations baptize only adults and insist upon their total immersion. Others sprinkle people of any age. Genuine religious distinctions still do exist and give congregations a Methodist, Catholic, or Lutheran feel.

But even those who would agree that there are differences between American congregations might find it difficult to affirm that every congregation can point to its own unique character. Yes, Lutherans might differ from Methodists, or Asians might differ from Anglo-Saxons, or rural might differ from urban, but just how can one Lutheran, midwestern, suburban church differ from another? These people might feel comfortable talking about distinctive types of congregations but shy away from asserting that each congregation has its own distinctive story to tell.

This section will take you beyond concern only for a Lutheran distinctiveness. Instead, it will help you discover how each congregation—including your own—constructs its own particular identity out of a wide variety of cultural, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, familial, denominational, and biographical materials.

The materials will, by necessity, include strands that are the same as those found in other congregations. In certain ways, Germans are like other Germans; professionals do share certain life-style preferences; urban congregations have certain characteristics in common. And Lutherans should expect to find similarities with other Lutherans. But what congregations do is package similarities in distinctive ways. The congregational historian seeks to learn how one group of people has shaped its identity over time.