The Parker City United Methodist Church is an established, mainline church located in the heart of a small town in rural Indiana. Its roots as a congregation go back as deeply as the roots of the community in which it is located: founding members of the church were also some of the same settlers who pioneered the town at its establishment. Both the church and the community face decline in light of a changing world. Rather than defining ourselves in terms of our role in the community, our thesis is that the congregation will become a more vibrant, grounded and life-giving Christian community if we intentionally define ourselves in light of the living Word embodied in the ancient story and traditional practices of the Christian faith. This requires first naming our current reality, then interpreting that reality in light of the normative Christian tradition, then remaking our sense of identity, grounding it in the deep tradition, not simply the customs of our particular past. The Gospel promises that there is treasure in both the old and the new, and wisdom in seeking to live intentionally at their junction. By utilizing Christian traditioning and traditional Christian practices as tools for re-framing our sense of congregational identity, we will be able to meet the challenges of change empowered by what Dr. Homer Ashby has called, “a sense of our authentic identity which shapes our lives and actions.”
