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

Your Congregation's Public Profile: One Person's Story

From the vantage point of the front steps of Faith, you (again the participant-observer) need to find ways to identify both of these types of public impact. Once more, the best way is to follow the people and watch what they do. Martin Miller, for example, is an elder of Faith Lutheran Church. He spends most of every Sunday morning at the church, and at least two evenings of the week he can be found there. One of the last to leave the building after Sunday worship, he makes a stop at the community hospital to extend the celebration of the morning Eucharist to a member recovering from hip replacement surgery.

Once home he joins his wife and two children for a traditional Sunday dinner where they dissect the pastor's sermon, giving Pastor Schmidt high marks for delivery but questioning her interpretation of the current political situation. In the afternoon, Martin and his wife, Janet, return to Faith to attend a concert that is part of a series of sacred music events sponsored by the congregation for the community. After the concert, the Millers join another couple from the community for dinner. There the group's conversation turns into an impassioned discussion about the morality of abortion on demand.

During the week, Martin commutes downtown to his office, where he works as chief financial officer for a Fortune 500 corporation. Throughout his workdays, Martin is called upon to make decisions that affect hundreds of employees and thousands of consumers. His planning will determine whether the corporation grows or declines; a decision to manufacture a new product line in Mexico will create many new jobs south of the border, but it will also result in a plant closing back home in the United States. The personnel and compensation policies he shapes will determine the expectations and behavior of employees around the world.

His noon lunch meeting is devoted to leadership of the local United Way fund-raising campaign. Later he meets privately with a staff member whose family is coming apart under the ravages of alcoholism. One of his weeknights will be spent at a meeting of the local Lutheran high-school association, where he serves as Faith's official representative. Another evening is given to hosting the congregation's religion and literature group, which includes a number of people who are not members of Faith.

Most of the things that Martin does outside the walls of Faith church are invisible to most of its members and might not be viewed, even by Martin, as extensions of Faith's ministry. Yet in individual acts ranging from setting the tone of dinner conversations to counseling a co-worker to supporting a concert series, Martin is extending into the world the congregation's struggle with sin and grace. Each decision he makes at work, each commitment of his time, each expenditure of money is an occasion for Faith to reach through him to the world that God so loved.

But notice also how, as Martin moves through his week, he occasionally participates in actions of the whole congregation. The Sunday concert series is one way Faith reaches out corporately to the world. So are the meetings of the religion and literature group and the congregation's participation in a local high-school association.

Certainly few members occupy positions with as much power as Martin does. But your congregation well might have a school leader who has inspired the imaginations of hundreds of high-school students, or a personnel officer who helps new immigrants prepare resumes at the same time that she shows them how to survive in the city. The point is that each member follows a distinctive path into the world and carries the congregation's influence—for good and for ill—into the world.

Following those paths into your community's organizations, social activities, and economic and political decision-making arenas helps you bring the congregation's full story into view. Obviously, a congregational history cannot include the total experience of all of its members. But as you work, you will want to remember that the drama of the congregation's story, the place where the Word becomes flesh, is in the lives of its members. Representative samples across the congregation's history must be taken. Here is where oral history, diaries, even obituaries can be precious resources.