The day before Pentecost I watched a 60-foot white oak tree being taken down from in front of our house. It was the second white oak we have lost in our yard. After the chain saws had stopped and a load of wood split and hauled away, I counted between 130 and 150 rings.

The tree was taken down limb by limb. When I saw the limbs being lowered on a rope, they reminded me of a poster I had once used to teach young people about church history. It was an illustration of the historical evolution of the branches of the church: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox — three streams. It was the Protestant stream that caught my attention: the inter-connectedness, the numerous branches, the common source historically — and the visual lesson of how much older other branches were than my very own Baptist branch.

Watching the dead limbs of the white oak falling to the earth, I wondered what caused the tree to die? The paved driveway that has existed beside it for more than 30 years? The retaining wall holding back rocks and soil that was reconstructed about 15 years ago? The drought of the previous two years? When the huge trunk fell the earth shook. And with it fell the home of squirrels, birds, insects and parasitical plants — as well as our protection from the bright rays of the sun.

Looking at the tree at eye level, it appeared to be healthy and thriving. One had to look intentionally toward the heavens to glimpse the naked branches and to realize the tree would produce no more acorns. Is it possible that there are parts of the church that have been dying gradually, but few have been observant enough to notice? That we’re so focused on keeping the church going that we allow the no longer useful parts of the church — the dead and decaying parts of the church and denominational life — to collect around us unaware?

My brother and sister-in-law live next door to a Primitive Baptist Church. The only occasion that draws a crowd to the church grounds is a memorial service for a long-time member. The tiny Sunday School classrooms built in the 1950s in the church I attend are now used for storage. There are fewer and fewer students of, and masters of, the pipe organ — once the centerpiece of worship. My children do not find their hearts stirred by the hymns that nurtured me. The Sunday morning worship hour is no longer sacrosanct and the church finds its schedule competing with athletic schedules. There are many aspects of the traditional church disappearing from sight.

Simultaneous to mourning the losses in the church and of the white oak, I looked around my yard and noticed the new life. Last year’s acorns covered with a fresh layer of mulch in the fall always means a new crop of oak seedlings that I must pull from around the hostas and rhododendrons. The loss of the white oak does not mean the disappearance of trees in my yard. It means that there is now an opening in the canopy of trees where more light may enter and nurture the seedlings that sprout each year. If allowed to grow, the seedlings will mature to produce shade, hardwood and sustenance for the squirrels.

The seedlings of the church sprouting up across the globe simultaneous to decaying and falling branches of the church is a church some are calling the “emerging church movement.” It is a decentralized church that is suspicious of many aspects of traditional religion — especially hierarchical and institutional structures. The focus in this growing church movement is on a way of life lived by the members of the community instead of a focus on a set of beliefs — so the message is an embodied or lived message rather than a proclaimed one. According to Tony Jones in his description of his church he shared with us at our recent regional gathering of the Alliance in Nashville, it is a church that invites the world in instead of shutting it out.

What do Alliance congregations have in common with this emerging church movement? Plenty. Our congregations are re-visioning ministerial staffing and committee structures and ways of being and doing the work of the church in the world. Our congregations emphasize relationships and the gathered community in prayer rather than a set of beliefs to which one must subscribe. Our congregations exhibit a willingness to take an unpopular stand on issues of conscience that challenge the status quo. Our congregations demonstrate a vibrant call to ministry and mission in the world. Alliance congregations possess an incredible openness to where the Spirit’s power is at work in the world coupled with a desire and willingness to be stretched by the Spirit.

Recently the workers returned to remove what remained of the tree in our yard, an enormous log. I had assumed they would cut it up for firewood; at least it would keep someone warm next winter. Instead, a carpenter came to investigate what might be constructed from the luscious hardwood that had taken nearly 150 years to form.  Something else may come from the tree that could last another 150 years and could be useful to nurture and sustain the life of a family — much like the white oak in my yard had sustained us as well as the many wild creatures that had found it to be home.

I believe the winds of the Spirit of God are very much alive and at work in the church today creating newness from the embers of faith. I have heard and read theologians and historians such as Phyllis Tickle and Harvey Cox who so testify of our being in the Age of the Spirit. If we but open ourselves — and the churches we love — to the fresh winds of the Spirit blowing in our midst, perhaps we too will discover more effective ways of being the people of God doing the life-giving work of God in our worn and weary world.

Thank you, God, that you do not leave us — the church — to sort out all the aspects of our existence as individuals and as a community of faith without guidance, without the presence of the Spirit. Thank you for the Spirit and for all the ways Wisdom guides and sustains us, enabling us to remain faithful as we confront whatever circumstances and challenges we face. Thanks be to the life-giving Spirit alive and at work in the church today. Amen!