At the time of this writing, some nine years have passed since John Sonnenday assumed his pastoral duties in Laurel in February 1977. These nine years are still too close to the present to allow more than a brief resume of their main points. A fuller historical evaluation of them will have to wait for the passage of time.

For nearly six of those years Sonnenday served the church in a quietly difficult pastorate that improved with the passing of the years. At one level, the church continued to do most of the things it had always done, but underneath its activities and worship lay a number of problems, which stemmed chiefly from the difficult Harris years. As Sonnenday himself and other members remember it, much of the church's membership seemed to have lost direction and purpose while a small group of conservative members, including some ultra-fundamentalists, appeared bent upon leading the church towards a more evangelical station. Although a minority in the congregation, this group had taken a leadership role in the dispirited congregation, and they and Sonnenday soon came into conflict as he resisted what he believed to be their attempts to move the church rightward. Although it witnessed some long and tense meetings over matters of policy and program, the church at large simply did not participate in, or totally understand, the theological duel between Sonnenday and the conservative faction. It took some four years for this tension over theological differences to dissipate as slowly, one by one, the more vocal conservatives left the church and went elsewhere to worship.

The church had for several years already lived with a trend in which both the very liberal and the very conservative left to find churches more to their liking elsewhere. The majority of the church simply did not support demonstrative theologies on either side. During Sonnenday's ministry, the church, in a sense, returned to the days before Ritchie when it accepted diverse theological positions as long as the holders of those positions did not push them on others. Particularly in the late seventies and early eighties, the church wanted and valued an outward harmony compatible with its self-image as a caring, friendly community.

While the church at large did not want theological disputation, it did want a pastor who could befriend it. In that context, it took several years for Sonnenday and the church to learn how to relax in the presence of each other. Cultural differences again played a part in the relationship of the church to its pastor. Sonnenday was a Northerner, and he had just served a parish in Upstate New York. He felt uncomfortable with the 'Southern' atmosphere in the congregation, which seemed to require a lot of outward displays of affection. The church too felt uncomfortable in the presence of a pastor who seemed to them reserved and formal. With Sonnenday, as with Harris, the Laurel Church displayed a distinctive border state culture. The church felt inherently uncomfortable with both the reserved Northerner and the outgoing Southerner, even as each of those men felt that in Laurel they came to, perhaps even went beyond, the outermost limits of their own regional culture.

However members felt about Sonnenday's personal reserve in his first years at Laurel , the years from 1977 to 1980 marked a period when the church continued to mend itself. Sonnenday conducted worship, carried out his pastoral duties, and administered the church in a workman-like fashion that allowed the church to regain its balance. Under his leadership, the church concerned itself with the processes of its own organization. Sonnenday's own meticulous administrative style also encouraged the church's lay leadership to carry out their responsibilities competently. In December 1980, the church thoroughly surprised its pastor with a generous gift, one that symbolized for both pastor and church a growing sense of appreciation one for the other. The church's feeling that it could care for its pastor helped it gain a greater sense of self-confidence, and Sonnenday and the church established a positive cycle of growing understanding of each other. The addition of a modest number of new members attracted by Sonnenday's ministry further strengthened his relationship to the church.

Sonnenday left Laurel in December 1982, and, at a superficial level at least, the church seemed to have recovered from the strains, positive and negative, of the previous two decades. Indeed, in some important ways the church of 1982 resembled more the church of 1964 than it did the church of 1969 or 1974 or 1977. Most of those attracted by the person and program of Stuart Ritchie or those who sought a more evangelical emphasis in the church were now gone. The size of the church, the mix of long-time members and new members, the closeness of people within the church to each other all called to mind the 'old' LPC of the early sixties. A residue of liberal concern appeared occasionally in the Presbyter in the form of requests to participate in community action groups or provide assistance to needy people and in pastoral letters concerning important issues. The church also opened its facilities to more outside uses than it did previously. Yet, in actual fact, the church appeared to have withdrawn from intense community involvement. Long gone were the days of hectic creativity and involvement of the Ritchie years. The church no longer experimented with different forms of worship. By 1980, the age of turmoil when the church reacted to so many different forces, events, and ideas had ended for the church, even as for the nation.

The Rev. Norman Stanhope filled in as interim pastor after Sonnenday left. Generally well liked, Stanhope's brief tenure witnessed the emergence of another issue, an issue which emphasized both the extent and the limitations of one of the fundamental changes in the life of the church in the sixties and seventies. A segment of the Pastoral Nominating Committee wanted the church to seriously consider extending a pastoral call to a woman. The 'PNC' itself had signed a statement, required by presbytery, that it would give full consideration to women and minority applicants.

By the early eighties, women had gained full access to and participation in every facet of the life of the church to such an extent that the Women of the Church organization no longer functioned as a church within the church. Indeed, attendance at WOC declined, partly because a larger percentage of its potential members worked full-time and partly because women could serve the church directly in all of its various organizations, committees, and activities. The idea of a woman pastor, however, met resistance. Some resisted the very idea, but others shied away from the possible controversy such a call might create. Many in the church were looking for something else in a pastor than potential controversy, and the recent past still haunted the church. While the Pastoral Nominating Committee and the church avoided a major crisis, it became apparent that the final step in admitting women to full and equal life and leadership in the church could not happen in the quiet way that women gained full lay participation. Once again LPC displayed its border state character as it combined both elements of South, more generally resistant to the idea of women pastors, and North, generally more open to that idea.

The incipient controversy over the gender of its next pastor did not prevent the Pastoral Nominating Committee from nominating a pastor. In April 1984, the presbytery installed the Rev. Frank D. Hayes. In his first two years, Hayes displayed a combination of skills, concerns, and personality well suited to encourage the church to rediscover a sense of purpose and direction. Hayes almost instinctively demonstrated the balance between closeness and distance that the church sought in its pastor. The church, down to a membership of 230, began to grow numerically and financially.

In this way too, the church appeared to have come full circle and returned to where it was in 1964. Hayes embodied for the church important aspects of 'the age' in much the same way as had Ritchie in 1964. The sixties and seventies had carried the church and the whole country to heights of greatness and depths of turmoil, and in the eighties the church and the nation approached the issues of the day a little more circumspectly, perhaps even more patiently, in spite of the bombast of special interest groups. Thus, in the mid-eighties the church seemed once again to be following its own course while, at the same time, headed in the direction of its whole society.

The history of 'The Presbyterian Church at Laurel ' reveals a number of significant themes, which provide a framework for the church's reflection upon itself and its ministries. In terms of its life within itself, one of the important themes emerging from its past is that LPC has retained a certain closeness to the Laurel , Maryland , of the past. Many of its members still look to the church to provide their primary social relationships and a sense of living in an identifiable social community. LPC, in other words, provides a feeling of rootedness, which, nostalgically, late twentieth-century Americans associate with the small town life of earlier eras.

Even the geographical mobility of its membership duplicates the church's demographic character at the turn of the century. That is to say, both Laurel and LPC have long been wedged between Baltimore and Washington. Fifty years ago and more, members of the church caught an early train into Baltimore or took the street car down to 'DC' to put in a day's work. It has retained, in the same manner, a sense of sitting at the cultural boundaries between South and North. It is a place where people of those two cultures meet each other and accommodate themselves to a church community that both resembles and differs from what they grew up with at 'home.' One calls to mind the statement of one former member, raised a Northern Presbyterian, who joined the church in the forties: that it was six months before he realized he was attending a Southern Presbyterian church. This mixing of cultures allows members to learn to know individuals from other cultural regions of the nation as individuals. That same mixing of cultures, however, also results, at times, in missed communications and misunderstanding.

One cannot say, however, that the church has simply remained the same as it was in the twenties or the forties. It has not. Yet, the dynamic of change itself seems to arise more from trends in the culture of the nation rather than from within the church itself. The experience of women in LPC most clearly demonstrates the principle that sociocultural trends are the engines of change in the church. Until the late sixties or early seventies, women experienced life in LPC in a way fundamentally different from men. On the one hand, they used the church as a primary outlet for their need for a life outside of their home. They used the church as a place to exercise management, organizational, and entrepreneurial skills that they otherwise had little opportunity to develop. On the other hand, the church confined their exercise of leadership within carefully defined boundaries.

The role of women in LPC has changed because the role of women is changing in American society. And, because the church was a Southern Presbyterian Church, the emergence of women from behind the walls of their 'place' in the church came about somewhat more slowly. Society began to change first. In a sense, then, even when the church experiences fundamental changes, such as in the role of women, it still exhibits historical patterns which have not changed. One of the most potent of these unchanging trends is that fundamental changes in the church's life do not originate in the church.

The church's relationship to its pastor is one pattern that has not changed since the church began hiring pastors. Once again, the nature of the church's relationship depends, in part, upon the general social trends in the nation. Pastors, in their leadership skills and style, often reflect the times they and the church lived through together. More precisely, the organizational and spiritual health, as well as the program, of the congregation at any given time depends upon the relationship of the church to its pastor. The church defines the boundaries of that relationship through its expectations of how it wants the pastor to relate to it. The pastor moves within those boundaries, then, to fine tune the relationship by guiding the program of the church. As long as the pastor does not violate the church's need for a satisfying pastoral relationship, the latitude for action by the pastor is fairly broad.

The church appears, then, to change significantly from pastorate to pastorate, as each pastor brings a different personality, set of skills, and set of interests to the church. The changes are more apparent than real. In fact, a set of 'core concerns' persists throughout every pastorate, These 'core concerns,' represent the fundamental commitments of the church, and they are expressed through a set of 'core activities,' which involve significant numbers of members investing significant amounts of church resources over extended periods of time. Historically, the Laurel Presbyterian Church has three core concerns: worship, Christian education, and fellowship. Core concerns do not appear to change over time, and LPC, in the l980s, remains deeply committed to its three core concerns. It seems unlikely that the church will drop any one of them in the foreseeable future.

The core activities with which the church embodies these core concerns include maintenance of an adequate facility, administration and stewardship, the Sunday School and youth activities, worship services and the choir, and fellowship events and programs. Core activities do change over time. Until recently, for example, a women's organization has always existed as a strong, ongoing element in church program. Now, however, the traditional women's program is fading away. Since the middle fifties, by the same token, the church's choir has emerged as a core activity expressing the church's core commitment to worship. It should be noted that the choir did not become a core activity until more than forty years after the church established its first permanent choir.

There is evidence, however, that a new core concern may be struggling to emerge as a fourth fundamental dimension in the life of the church. Until the sixties, ministry to and engagement in the Laurel community was not a core commitment of the church. The historian can point to particular programs, such as the Sunday School at times in the nineteenth century, or periods, such as those of Baker and Bird, when the church performed ministries directed at the community. What the historian cannot point to is a pattern of such activities that would reveal a core concern for meeting human need outside of the church. The congregation, for the most part, isolated itself from Laurel .

Since the mid-sixties, however, the church has more frequently engaged in particular activities designed to meet human need or reach out to people in Laurel . Over the last two decades, it has wrestled, from time to time, with the questions of where and how it can directly and locally minister to people in need. The church has established a series of committees and groups charged with such ministries. It is possible, then, that a new core concern is struggling to emerge.

One would expect, given the model of Christ himself, that a clearly defined commitment to ministering to human need, spiritual and physical, in the church's own community would emerge as a fully developed core concern expressed in a set of core activities. LPC members point out that the church has, in fact, become more open to the Laurel community. As evidence, they point to a number of outside groups which use the church building. They also cite the community activities, originally encouraged by the church, of a number of members. Yet, they also admit that the church has not yet defined concretely what community involvement means for it. It is not sure precisely what needs exist in its community which it can and should meet. Some members, in fact, argue that it is not even clear in which 'community' LPC, with its scattered membership, belongs.

As a result, the church has not established a set of outreach core activities involving significant numbers of individuals and amounts of resources over an extended period of time. Those community outreach and ministry activities conducted by the church have been dependent upon the personal interests of one or another of the pastors or of particular lay leaders. Unlike the Sunday School, worship, or fellowship programs, these activities have been sporadic and of relatively brief duration. The church, then, appears to be caught between the vision of a fourth core concern, first articulated some twenty years ago, and the powerful currents of a much longer past which focuses the attention of the church more narrowly on its own inner life. Whether or not the church will incorporate as a core concern and as a set of core activities the meeting of significant human need outside of its own organizational structures remains uncertain.

LPC has shown, over a period of nearly thirteen decades, a remarkable consistency in its expressions of its understanding of the Christian message. It has always placed worship at the center of its life. It has always invested deep concern in educating its children into the Christian faith. It has always valued the experience of a shared fellowship within its membership. It expects that its officers, particularly the pastor, will sustain and promote these core concerns. Its major internal crises have involved differences over worship, Christian education, or fellowship.

In other ways as well, the church has changed little over the years. It continues to depend upon its pastors for the quality of its program. It continues to be a highly mobile church and to display certain characteristics of a border state congregation. The most significant changes in its life have been the result of social and demographic changes beyond its control. It continues to be a place where members give a great deal of time, effort, concern, and money to sustain its life. In short, for all of the vast social changes that have taken place in American society, in Laurel and its environs, and in the church itself, LPC continues to behave much as it always has behaved. The question its history poses, consequently, is this: is it not time for 'the Presbyterian Church at Laurel ' to take stock of the drifting decades? Faithfulness to the church's original calling in Christ would seem to urge reflection upon how those decades have both sustained and limited the witness of the Laurel Presbyterian Church to the self-giving love of Jesus Christ. Amen.