Mees Tielens on Hope in a Dying Church

The Rev. Mees Tielens (MDiv '23), PhD, is a recent alum of CDSP's residential program from the Diocese of California. Tielens spoke to us about the significance of lay leadership, a broad vision of what it means to be bi-vocational in the Church, and what congregations have to offer in a time of increasing religious disaffiliation.

Transcript

 Jeckonia: This is Jay from Church Divinity School of your Pacific. And I'm here with Mees Tielens, a third-year student at CDSP. Mees, welcome  

Mees: Thank You.  

Jeckonia: Share a bit about who you are, where you call home and what has drawn you to CDSP. 

Mees: So, I am Mees. I’m a third year here. I am originally from the Netherlands. And I moved to the States in 2013. And then California in 2015. And started the discernment process relatively quickly after that. And my family and I moved to Berkeley in 2020 to start seminary, and I'm a at this time I transitional deacon in the diocese, California and will hopefully be ordained a priest in May.  

And I was interested in CDSP, for a couple of reasons. Some of them practical, like I would prefer not to move like family cross country for three years. But also for ministry-oriented reasons. I wanted to be able to take classes at the GTU and thought that would be a great addition to seminary. And I also think of the Bay Area as like this unchurched Silicon Valley space. It's a really interesting place to do ministry, and in some ways, also kind of a unique space. So having my formation here made a lot of sense to me in that regard. 

Jeckonia: So what is the one question you have encountered in the classroom that has sparked curiosity related to ministry and all your vocation?  

Mees:  One thing that I was interested in coming in from the Diocese of California that talks a lot about bivocationality. And, I'm sure there's more nuance to it than this. But what we as pastors, I think, often hear is bivocationality as like, you need a secular job to subsidize your job, or you have to be living with someone who can subsidize your church job. But then in in our second year, we read something from a book about bivocationality. And the point of that book that that has really sparked my imagination is that it's not just the priest who's bivocational, but it's the congregation. The congregation, in today's church landscape, has to step up and lead in a new way.  

And I really mean, I really value my training and preparation for priesthood and for leading churches. But I think there's something really important about lay people understanding that they don't need me to say prayers at mealtimes, right? They don't need me to minister to each other. They like, I work really hard on my exegesis classes, but they also don't need me to tell them how to read the Bible. So helping, like or leading in the kind of church in which priests and laypeople work together and not in this hierarchical top down way. I've thought a lot about that, as we go through classes, and as I go through field Ed.  

Part of why I think about that is the experiences I had before coming to seminary where I’d go to a Bible study group on like, Wednesday mornings, and I could do that because I was a stay at home parent. So I'd be there with like, a baby and a later toddler and a bunch of retired people basically. And in a lot of ways we really different, but in some very important ways we were also not different. And I remember, at some point, someone was talking and he and I didn't always get along, like we'd had some rather enthusiastic discussions, we’ll say, about ways of reading the Bible or just like social issues. But he was talking about his time in the military and raising his kids and I suddenly realized, like, “Oh, you and I don't necessarily like, we don't share political views or there’s a lot we don't share but like, you are looking for that same sense of belonging and safety and belovedness that I am looking for.  

So what I'm Interested in in church work, I guess in ministry is helping people kind of bridge that gap for themselves or seeing how we're more similar than we think we are from other people. Like we're not as separated from people as we think. And then I think taking an active role in leadership and leading the congregation is an important way to get there, right? That like the cultivation of spaces in which we are like, you know, able to heal and to come together and to go out into the world. Like, there has to be something that we all do together, that can't be me, as a priest at the front, right? And then congregation as an audience, right, the congregation has to be ministering, like, we all have to do at the same time. 

Jeckonia: And what is one event, or one issue happening in the world that has impacted how you view ministry today? 

Yeah, well, I started Seminary in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and that obviously had a really big impact on the the kinds of questions I was asking. And I know pandemic is kind of like old news right now. But it's, I think, I think we're still like working through the lessons of it as a church. And though I think church still works for a lot of people the way it was, but the pandemic also showed us where it maybe wasn't working as well anymore. And if we're, you know, if we're resurrection people, then we can't ignore the places where they were the church isn't working.  

And I think about, like, at my sending parish a lot of families didn't come back to church, the way we might have expected them to, even even really active ones. And as a parent, I totally get it. Because there are a lot of Sundays, where it'd be really nice if I didn't have to, like, get up and get my kids ready for services, right? Or there's like sports games or birthday parties or, you know, yeah, so you have to do the grocery shopping at some point.  

But as a, you know, professional religious person, I do think that what we are offering people is worth the trade off of having your Sunday morning be somewhere else. And it's our job to figure it out. That if the model we had pre pandemic is not actually working anymore, what do people actually need? Where do people actually like, where are people actually and how can we reach them? And I need a lot more ministry experience first. But I think at some point, it would be really rewarding to go into interim ministry or a congregational development work so that churches can to help just kind of figure out like, who are we, where is God calling us to be, in this time in which we're living in this place in which we live? 

Jeckonia: And what has been one creative or experimental ministry opportunity you have explored or encountered over the last year that has inspired you? 

Mees: So I've been mostly interested in in these ministries that are connected to churches, but are not happening in church buildings. And I will say that, for me, it is important that these these ministries are like rooted in Jesus, right? Church is not a social club. I do think you need Jesus in church. But I also think that church can, you can think of church in a more broad sense, or the, you know, who is church and who comes to church can be a lot wider than we think about it now. And I'm thinking about how last week in our leadership for ministry class we had a priest come in who is working on a project that would take people both church people and non church people and bring them together at like, they have like a playground, and they want to like offer Friday, Saturday night, gatherings with like food, and adults can talk and kids can play and just people can meet in ways that you don't necessarily have room for otherwise. I think that is fascinating.  

 And for my field Ed, I work in a regular congregation, a small mission congregation in Contra Costa County But the vicar I work with is also the farm church missioner for the Diocese of California and she has been working on a farm church for a while. And it ran into some roadblocks, which, which in itself was frustrating, but good lesson in faithfulness and flexibility in ministry. But the idea of extending church that I see in the farm church that I see in that playground ministry and I see a lot of congregations starting to think about this like that. That's really inspiring. 

Jeckonia: So where and how do you sense God calling you to live into your vocation beyond your seminary experience? 

Mees: You know, I came to seminary with kind of a clear idea that I wanted to be a parish priest, and then I got here and then suddenly, it wasn't so sure anymore. So I think for me, it's been really key to kind of lean into the openness and flexibility. So when I think about, like, what, what I want my vocation to look like, or like vocational work to look like and where I think God is calling me, I think a lot about values. Like, I'd be interested in associate work, or in a CPE residency or youth ministry or school chaplaincy. Or like, I don't know, a combination of all the above if that's possible.  

But in all of those, I think, what I'm, the work I'm interested in is, you know, lay formation and that kids and youth feel safe and empowered, and, you know, helping congregations be generous and hospitable places, which for me, also looks like you know, queer inclusion and disability inclusion and anti racism and that kind of thing. And making it possible or easier for people to like, experience, the kind of transformation that sacraments have given me. Like that. That's the kind of thing that I can feel God calling me to, and I don't quite know what that looks like yet, but I do, I do have faith that somehow or other a path will, will open. 

Jeckonia: Right. And what is a final word of encouragement you have for those listening to this episode, especially the CDSP community. 

Mees: One thing I noticed when we got the seminary was that we hear a lot about the church dying. And, and we know the church is dying. And I wish we heard a little bit more about what resurrection might look like. Because when I look around me, I see so many bright and passionate and compassionate people who, who love God and love the church and have a lot of good ideas about where the church could go. And not just like not just in the seminary on the seminary campus, right, but like so many people connected to CDSP and, and I also see a lot of churches that have been broken open by the pandemic and you know, by the injustices that we're now paying a lot more attention to and I see a lot of courage for change so that in itself I think gives me a lot of hope for the for the future. 

”Why church?” is a really good question. I think it's also a really hard question to answer. Partially because what we are offering is, at least in the Bay Area, but I don't think only in the Bay Area, very countercultural, right? Because we're asking you to come to church and to give up your time and give up your money and, you know, sit, well not sit quietly for an hour, but like, be present to something for an hour and like, you know, not scroll through Instagram.

We're asking you to give your attention to something in a very particular way. And our liturgies are not always as accessible, I think as we would like them to be or as they feel to, to those of us who are frequent visitors and leaders. But I think that, that counter cultural insight cause of the friction is also exactly why we should go to church or like what church offers, and that I don't know of a lot of spaces where you can come and be entirely who you are, where you are with people that in some ways are similar, but in some ways are also different. 

When I had my, my baby, like she, she suddenly gained, I don't know, a million church, grandmas and grandpas, and my family is like a long way away. So that was really meaningful. And think, because we're bound together by, by our belief in God and by our, our faith that somewhere in the thousands of years of tradition, there is something worth holding on to that is bigger than ourselves. And I think in the Episcopal Church, we express that in our prayers and we especially for me, I would say we express it in the Eucharist and the coming together in that particular way, standing together around the altar, and being present to each other in that way is something that you just don't get in other places. And is such a source of transformation if you let it.  

So both for like the individual transformation that it can do for people like the healing that it does for people or like just you know, the way that having fellow parents to worship with who could see when I was struggling and you know can also give you the nod of like you're doing just fine. When your kid is fine and you are fine and someday they will not be screaming in the middle of a service. Whatever you bring to church is fine and good and can be there. You take that back out with you right? Hopefully when you leave church you're leaving with a little more knowledge of the grace that you've been giving given right. You're leaving with a little bit more inclination to see other people as the children of God. 

Jeckonia: Thanks so much for joining us on Crossings Conversations.  

Mees: Thank you