A Reformation Season

There are some occasions, albeit rare, when one is aware that one is witnessing history. These are the times when we are able to step back from the events of the day and think, “Our children’s children will study this time.” Coming to that realization allows us to more deeply appreciate the moment as it happens.

What if the Church of Jesus Christ is experiencing such a season right now? What if the church is moving through a time of reformation on par with reformation moments of the past? What if the last few decades of the 20th and the first few decades of the 21st centuries are studied by future historians as a truly pivotal moment in the life of the Gospel?

There are scholars who believe as much, and have done the work to back it up. Several church historians have pointed out how the Church tends to cycle in 500 year periods of reformation, and the last one was (you guessed it) about 500 years ago. That was when Martin Luther famously mailed a letter with his “95 Theses” enclosed to his bishop, beginning what we now know as “The Reformation.”

Just think a minute - what if we are living through a similar season? What if we are witnessing a reformation period that our children’s children will study in their church history classes?

If we are willing to entertain that thought, the question then becomes one of response. How will we conduct ourselves in this season of reformation? Will we see changes as threats, or embrace them as opportunities?

Remember, reform doesn’t mean that everything old is worthless and needs to end immediately. Reform means that “everything old is new again!” Reform breathes new life into ancient traditions. Reform recreates meaning in ancient practices. Reform reminds us of the “why” of following Jesus in the first place.

I am hopeful that the church embraces this season of reform and allows the Holy Spirit to move us into a bright and vibrant future. By God’s grace, I know that we will not only make it through this season, but we will flourish for the sake of the Gospel as we do so!

What 'The Internet's Favorite Pianist" Can Teach the Church

I heard the radio announcer introduce the upcoming recording with the phrase, “the internet’s favorite pianist.” I was intrigued, so I did what anyone would do, I googled the phrase.

Google told me to read this Washington Post article about Valentina Lisitsa, a conservatory trained, classical, pianist from the Ukraine. Instead of becoming “just another blond Russian ex-pianist,” as she puts it, Lisitsa decided to do something differently. She uploaded a video of her playing piano to YouTube.

Her channel now has over 126,000 subscribers. Every video has tens of thousands of views. The most popular have millions. And what is the content of these videos? Is it edgy, crazy, and weird? Is it violent, aggressive, and arrogant? Is it exhibitionist, shallow, and vain?

Nope. The videos she posts are her sitting at a piano playing classical music, just like classically trained pianists have done for ever and ever before her. And it just so happens that sitting at a piano playing classical music is something that Valentina Lisitsa does very, very well.

The church needs to pay attention to stuff like this – especially the portion of the church that fears change, that doesn't like to do things differently, or that feels like the Gospel is somehow compromised if presented in a different format.

If there is a sub-culture of the world that is even staler than the church, it must be classical music. The stereotype is old, rich, well-dressed people sitting in luxurious places applauding politely at the appropriate times. The perception is that classical musicians are all about the purity of the art form, appreciating the music at a highly knowledgeable level, and staying faithful to the composers’ intentions without deviation. In other words, snobs.

But Valentina Lisitsa says, “We musicians want a bigger audience, we want more people to come and listen. We sometimes act as though you need a great education to understand [classical music]. But I look at who is listening to my videos on YouTube, and it’s people from developing countries, not associated with classical or big concert halls. I see the growth and want to connect with these fans.”

Now, the ironic kicker in her story is that her online success has led to album sales, concerts, and much of the more traditional markers of classical music success. None of which would she have experienced had she not posted a few videos on YouTube seven years ago.

Not that Valentina understood this inherently; she learned it. A DVD of her playing was being uploaded illegally. At first, she was removing the videos one by one as she discovered them. Conventional wisdom is that online access, free downloads and such, will be detrimental to a musician’s career.

“At first I was removing the clips one by one, but then I thought, ‘What am I doing? I’m angering my fans,’ ” she said. “I uploaded it to YouTube and a strange thing happened: It hit number one on Amazon.”

If I might analogize, the music is the Gospel.

The way the music gets to the audience is the church.

If we are unwilling to change the way the music is getting to the audience, then the music will remain unheard.

I do not want the music of the Gospel to go unheard. The church needs to think differently, speak differently, and act differently. We need to stop metaphorically taking down YouTube videos out of fear that it will detract from other markers of so-called “success.”

However, the flipside is also true – I do not want a video of some random person playing Chopsticks to be packaged as the Chopin Etude Opus 10 No.4. Make no mistake, Valentina Lisitsa is a highly talented, conservatory trained pianist whose technical skill and artistic prowess are exceptional. If she was not, there’s no way her Chopin gets 3,750,000 views.

She wanted more people to hear Chopin; she did not want to play “Chopsticks,” thinking somehow it will be more accessible to the audience.

To continue the analogy: sometimes the church thinks we have to change the music so that more people will hear it. Sure, a piano player can start with Chopsticks, but maturing and growing at piano means hard work, moving on from Chopsticks, to “Heart and Soul” and beyond, realizing that Chopin is out there beckoning, inviting, and challenging us to excel.

If the music isn’t getting to the audience, and one of our jobs is making sure it does, then we’re going to want to figure out what to change. It will not suffice to wring our hands and wonder why more people aren’t coming to the concert hall.  Neither will it suffice to put on a concert of repertoire exclusively from Mel Bay’s Big Note Songbook.

We have got to look for new ways to convey the Gospel in new places. We have got to share God’s love with creativity and innovation and vision. We have got to let go of old models and experiment fearlessly.

Dear Church – John Wesley submitted to be more vile for the sake of the Gospel, and we must follow his lead. We have to put Chopin on YouTube. 

Reframe it with Resurrection

“Kids are leaving!”

“Change or die!”

“The church is doooomed!”

It has become quite trendy in the church to make sweeping pronouncements such as these. Consultants, coaches, superintendents, bloggers, experts of various levels of expertise, and so on - all seem to be chipping in these days about how awful the situation is, and getting worse every moment.

If you have read my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably read something I have written on this topic. I find myself a bit outside of the mainstream when it comes to questions of the church’s imminent demise. I’m not inclined to hand-wringing and navel-gazing. Instead, I find myself inclined toward resurrection.

It is from that perspective that I read the piece that made its way around the interwebs last week. It was called “Why Millenials areLeaving the Church,” written by Rachel Held Evans.

I almost always like reading what Rachel Held Evans has to say. She writes a lot, and I haven’t read everything she’s written, but what I have read I like. But I will admit that I definitely cringed when I saw the title to her recent post on CNN.com. “Why Millennials are Leaving the Church” is a title that sets the stage for another hand-wringing, navel-gazing lament.

At first, I was upset with the generalization that an entire generation of people has a rather uniform critique of religion that the church was struggling to hear and understand. Been there, heard that. At first, it was just more of the navel-gazing same. But then I realized that this was clearly not just another “Change or Die” piece written by a church insider.

“We long for Jesus,” she said. “Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we long for Jesus.”

Evans’ short (and easy to read - I hope you do) piece is a call for substance, for meaning, for theology. It is a call to rid ourselves of obsession over superficial style and moralistic sermonizing and reclaim the depth, the complexity, the challenge of truly following Jesus.

Yes! Yes, please, and more of it.

Now … Can we please not frame that in “I-told-you-so” language? Can we please not write hand-wringing headlines for pieces with such life-affirming truth? Could we please re-do the prelude to this service so that it doesn’t set such a negative tone for the proclamation of the Good News?

The church does not need to change because we are dying.

Rather, the church is changing because God is at work in the world.

The choice that faces church leadership is not whether to change or not. The choice that faces church leadership is how exactly we will cooperate with the vast and transformative changes that clearly are taking place. These changes, I believe, are no less than a great resurrection movement of the Holy Spirit.

Much of that movement seems to be taking place outside of the outdated structures of the church. It’s happening over in the garden while the disciples are sitting in a locked room, wringing our hands and worrying. However, many, many churches are responding to that new movement in exciting and creative ways, and that’s where I believe church leaders need to place our focus.

No need to wring hands, no need to lament, no need to get all worried! God is doing a powerful, wonderful, brand new thing. A healthy doctrine of resurrection will convince you of that.

Come on, church. Let’s go out to the garden with Mary and see what God’s up to these days.

UMC Judicial Council Rules, World Keeps Spinning

And the gates of hell remain unshaken.

The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church has issued a ruling that has been much anticipated by absolutely no one outside of the United Methodist hierarchy. (FYI: Basically, they overturned a change made at General Conference this year. The change had been to eliminate the idea of a “guaranteed appointment” for United Methodist pastors. The motivation for the change was to increase accountability for excellence in pastoral leadership.)

So this means that the one shred of reform that was left in place after General Conference has been itself shredded. All the work to de-tangle the hairball has been nullified, most of it at General Conference and now the remainder, by the Judicial Council.

A hairball that is tangled tends to remained tangled. It’s organizational entropy. Or something.

With that said, I am not in the least bit discouraged by this decision, any more than I was when the reform efforts all but failed at General Conference. The motivations are there, the principles are there, the mission is there. The picture has been painted in stark reality. Anybody in United Methodist leadership who cannot see the impending Weemsian wave “death tsunami” and appreciate its implications to the church hasn’t been paying attention.

(And by the way, I call dibs on the term “Weemsian Wave.”)

The allusion above to the gates of hell is from a letter John Wesley wrote to Alexander Mather in 1777. I wrote about it here. His point then, and mine today, was/is that the focus of Methodism has been diffused. Our denominational attention is focused on so many different things, many of them internal, that our energy is sapped, our mission is compromised, and our priorities are unclear at best.

In response to the ethos present in his day, John Wesley asked for “one hundred preachers,” clergy or laity, who had an intense focus on God, and they would do no less than “shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of God on earth.”

Whether or not the ordained itinerant clergy of the United Methodist Church are guaranteed an appointment is one of the navel-gazing questions that diffuses our denominational focus and takes it away from God, where it needs to be. And by the way, it is a change that I’m all in favor of trying, knowing that we either have to change intentionally and proactively or we will be changed by the circumstances around us. I’m in favor of all of those “Call to Action” changes that were first resisted, then rejected, and now reversed by the status quo.

Because in the meantime, people and communities and congregations already are changing, in spite of the hairball. Or they might be orbiting around the hairball, drawing on its gravity in order to sustain forward momentum. This is why I’m not discouraged by the Judicial Council’s decision this week. They are going to do what they are going to do, functioning in a system exactly as it is designed. You cannot blame them; they are bound by the system in which they exist.

However, congregations that innovate and change, ministries that are flexible and responsive to community needs, communities of faith who are creative and passionate, individual disciples who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God - these will be surfing on the leading edge of the Weemsian Wave, even as old systems and unchanging structures are drowning in the flood.

The change starts locally, and percolates outward from there. It must. Neither the General Conference nor the Judicial Council are change agents. The local church is. The changes that need to take place must take place at the local level and eventually the General Conference will catch up.

The gates of hell remain unshaken, and the kingdom yet awaits realization.

Annual Conferece Wrap Up 2009

I had a great time at Annual Conference last weekend.

The change we were talking about was more substantive than in years past. It was a change of heart, a change of atmosphere, a change of ethos – not just a change of programming or a change of mission statement or a change of structure.

The shift we talked about was more about turning the ship and less about rearranging the deck chairs (to use a weary cliché). It is in many ways a more complex, more fundamental, and much more difficult change.

There was less panic and more hope. To be sure, the “change or die” attitude was still there, and even breached the surface a few times. This attitude is not only not helpful, it is actually counterproductive to Christ’s purposes. But it was minimized this year, and for that I am grateful.

The catch-phrase was “Somewhere Out There” (cue Feivel) which ended up feeling just about as corny as I thought it would feel, but gave a new focal point to evangelism that was very refreshing. There still are those whose only concern is filling up pews, but the overriding message was not one of numbers, but of people. The theme affirmed for me that sharing grace with just one other person is effective ministry, whatever the result.

(As a side note, I cannot describe how much it grinds my gears when someone says, “Of course it isn’t about numbers, it’s about people” and then proceeds to talk only about numbers and never mentions people.)

The gist I took away from that “outwardly focused” theme was that, if a congregation is doing what congregations do, and doing it faithfully, people will respond to that and want to become a part of it. This is what I’ve been saying all along. Focus on growth is not healthy; focus on being church in a healthy way will result in growth, like a healthy tree bears fruit.

Bishop Schnase’s teaching hour on Monday morning was remarkable. He was at his best. There were a few moments when … yes, I believe so … the Bishop was … I’m pretty sure I saw it … a bit … well … fired up. You kind of have to know Bishop Schnase in order to appreciate how cool it was to hear him and see him allow himself that moment of fervor. It was great!

He talked about ministries of mercy and justice. He talked about Methodism and celebrated a Methodist identity. He talked deeply about why we do this thing we call church, and I loved it. He talked about sharing grace with people and then not knowing how the story ended, in other words, not knowing if the person “gave themselves to Christ” or even started going to a church or anything. Sometimes planting seeds is all you can do, and that’s okay.

I’m going to order the video of his presentation and show it to the congregational leaders. He was sharing personally, not just ecclesially. That hour, more than any other thing I’ve seen in a long time, gives depth and nuance to a new brand of evangelicalism that I hope the church embraces. I want Methodists to claim an evangelical identity again, without having to worry about the political baggage that goes along with it. The way Bishop Schnase talked about it Monday shows a way that we can do that.

So I left Annual Conference energized and excited. There are still people who are rearranging deck chairs and calling it change, but I was convinced this weekend that the transformation that I am hoping for in the United Methodist Church may not be as far (somewhere) out there as I once thought.

Barack Gets It

This article in the New York Times is worth a read.

But the idea behind [the new organization] — that the traditional ways of communicating with and motivating voters are giving way to new channels built around social networking — is also very evident in the White House’s media strategy.

If we changed this article to be about the church insteand of government, it is exactly the same idea we were trying to get across at this year's Ministers' school. The thesis statement of Ministers' School (if Ministers' School had a thesis statement) could have been a rewritten version of the quote above: "The traditional ways of communicating with and motivating disciples of Jesus are giving way to new channels built around social networking."

The undertaking will require Mr. Obama’s aides to wedge technology that worked for them in the campaign into the infrastructure of the White House, with its relatively older technology and security restrictions.

This quote could be rewritten to say, "The undertaking will require those who want to change the church to wedge technology that works for them into the infrastructure of the institutional church, with its relatively older technology and ecclesial restrictions."

The larger point being, the kind of ground-shifting changes the inaugural address talked about are also happening in the church specifically. It's not just about new technology; it is about a new way to look at the world.

Ministers' School - Day 2 Begins

The first half-day is done, and I'm pretty happy.

I spent yesterday kind of hovering, waiting for problems to arise. As a result, I wasn't really fully here until the middle of the afternoon. But I was definitely here for Tony Jones' presentation, and he pretty much nailed it.

An hour and a half of Tony talking about the current cultural ethos is pretty cool. My only wish is that he wouldn't confine his dispatches to this nebulous group of people he calls the "emergent people." Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie. I think the dispatches he articulated last night are far more common. When he talks about emergent people as if they are different from other people somehow it makes what he has to say seem less meaningful.

Truth is, his dispatches make sense to a LOT of people, many of whom are sitting in the pews of traditional mainline places - many of whom are in ministry leadership roles in traditional mainlines places.

His dispatches were: Comfort with paradox, suspicion of "tabernacles," ambivalence toward denomination, a mosaic of world Christianity, theological acumen, organizing our church based on our theology, starting churches to save the faith, seeing no ontological difference among people (even ordained people), rejection of left/right politics, and positive witness in the community.

Makes sense to me, and I know it makes sense to a lot of people. But I'm afraid that some will be very quick to say, "OK, that's fine for those 'emergent people' but it won't play in my congregation." For whatever reason. To say this would really be a shame, of course, because they would have missed the point altogether.

Tony used the stories of St. Francis and Martin Luther to describe how the institutional church can either embrace or reject change. He said that both men stood up in front of the church in their day and said, "You are missing the point!" The church made Francis a saint, but excommunicated Luther. It felt like he was using this metaphor to implore (his word) the mainline church not to reject the people who are changing things, the current day reformers.

So all of this is making me thing about reformation and innovation again. Just to get this thought out there, and maybe comment on it later when there is more time - whether it is reformation or innovation, navel-gazing change is not the point. And even more insidious is when navel-gazing change is disguised as transformational change. Bluntly put, trying to get people to notice how cool you are is not a good model for being church.

But like I said, I'll need to think more about that and write more about that later - I've gotta go to morning worship now for Day 2 of Ministers' School.

btw - I'm Twittering now, whatever that means.

Innovation and Reformation - Together At Last

Among people who see a need and want to lead change, there is a philosophical distinction between two approaches. The first, which I’ll call innovation, wants to create new stuff. The second, which I’ll call reformation, wants to do existing stuff differently. These two approaches certainly do not exhaust the options, but for the most part change agents are either innovators or reformers.

In her amazing book, “The Great Emergence,” Phyllis Tickle writes that “the tension toward changing things externally into new forms, as opposed to reworking them internally into what should be, has been a major characteristic of each of our previous hinge times and will continue to be part of our present one” (p. 58). Tickle notes for example that after Martin Luther was pushing outward with the new “Protestant” vision for the church, the Catholic Reformation followed with renewal from within. The result was a “genuine, sincere, and in many ways beneficent” reform.

There is no need to choose either innovation or reform. There is nothing inherently wrong with brand new things, just as there is nothing inherently good about them. Similarly, there is nothing inherently wrong with tradition, just as there is nothing inherently good about it. And both tasks are difficult. It is just as hard to create something from scratch as it is to breathe new life into something ancient. Both approaches are perfectly reasonable, effective ways to lead change.

But too often, innovators and reformers compete with one another instead of cooperating. Some of this competition gets nasty, even. Innovators do not think reformers truly desire change. Reformers see innovators as throwing out the baby with the bath water. It becomes difficult for an innovator and a reformer to even talk together about change sometimes.

“Can you not see how beautiful this tradition is, if we could only do it better?” says the reformer.

“Oh, you’re just saying ‘We’ve always done it this way’ and that kind of thinking never leads us anywhere!” says the innovator.

It degenerates from there quite quickly.

"You have no respect for tradition!" says reformer.

"You old fuddy-duddy!" says innovator.

I am more of a reformer than an innovator, in that I love the ancient forms of the Christian faith and want to breathe new life into them. I loathe stagnancy, and lament when the beautiful liturgy of the church becomes rote and mechanical. And so I want to change things by reforming that which we already have so that it lives again. So I will take an ancient hymn and compose a new tune for it, for example.

And at the same time I do not begrudge innovators who are creating brand new things in the meantime. There is room for both approaches. "I love the unknown, baby!" (as my friend John Schmalzbauer said at a recent Christmas party). Brand new experiences stretch us, make us think, compel us to respond. We grow and learn via new ideas, insights, and encounters.

One of the coolest things trending in churches right now is a reclamation of ancient expressions and practices of faith. An the thing is, people have "grown up on" contemporary church with all of its innovation and new emphases, so now the ancient things seem new and innovative! What an irony, huh? We do a sung liturgy for communion for example, an ancient practice, and people think it is the latest, greatest innovation!

The nutshell is, I believe that the church needs to change in order to stay faithful to God's mission, and I think that change needs to be both innovation and reform. "Because we've never done it that way before" is not a good motivation whether you are in favor of change or opposed!

Change Like a Tiger

I root for the Kansas City Chiefs.

HEY - I hear you snickering! Watch it!

Anyway, as I was saying, I root for the Kansas City Chiefs. And they are terrible. The game last week between the Raiders and the Chiefs may have been the ugliest football game I have ever seen. They stink.

But I know them. They are my guys. And I'd rather root for a horrible team that I know than try to find another team to root for that might be better. I could root for a team that would be fun to watch, a team for whom there was a sliver of hope, a team that could run a wider variety of plays than Kansas City, whose offense seems to consist of running Larry Johnson into a huge pile of linemen three times and then punting.

But to do that, I'd have to learn about a-whole-nother team - players, colors, logos, coaches, everything. All of that change and then I wouldn't even be 100% sure that they would win the Superbowl, anyway. So I stick with the hapless Chiefs, who as I have mentioned before, stink.

I wonder if that's what the Hebrew people were feeling when they got hungry in the wilderness and complained to Moses in chapter 17. Their complaint was that in Egypt, at least they had food. But out here in the wilderness, there's just nothing! In other words, they knew Egypt. Bad as it was, at least they knew it. The wilderness was new, and despite Moses' leadership up to this point, they saw no hope that things would get better any time soon.

What's that expression? Better the devil you know...

Now add to this that I also root for the Missouri Tigers. This is also a team that I feel like I know. These are also my guys.

And they pretty much kick butt.

Number one offense in the NCAA, two legit Heisman Trophy candidates, hands-down favorite in the Big 12 North and some say the Big 12 championship game. In the past few years, they have completely transformed their offensive scheme and recruited a ton of really talented players to run it. And I must say that it is a lot more fun to root for a team both that I know and is also really, really good! I'm sure not about to change to rooting for a different college team; it's not even on my mind to do so.

So, speaking of changing the church -

Is there a way that transforming the church can be more of a Missouri Tigers than a Kansas City Chiefs experience?

A lot of people in the church seem to me to be reluctant to change because we prefer the church that we know to the unknown future church that might be. Even if the church we know may be stagnant, irrelevant, lethargic, it is at its core ours - or so we like to think. (Yes, I could drop in an argument at this point that the church is really God's, but for the sake of this discussion bracket that out for the time being.)

But maybe transformation of the church could involve both a sense of hope and also a sense of "ours." To infuse that which we already know with a new energy, to revive that which is familiar, to rejuvenate that which for so long has been obligatory and routine - this is the kind of change that I would like to witness in the church.

The Tigers didn't change their team colors, fire Truman the Tiger, remove the big "M" from behind the north end zone of Faurot Field, stop playing football, scoring touchdowns, making tackles. But the Tigers completely transformed their identity as a football team, which meant they completely transformed the way they play football. So they are still "our team" and also they are exciting to watch.

To be sure, I believe that the church needs to change - or better said, that the church is changing before our very eyes. But I really and truly do not think it has to change to the point where we don't even recognize it anymore. I'm going to root for the church, because it is "my team" and more seriously because I am called by God to serve through the church as a pastor. But I'd rather be rooting for a church that not only is "my team" but also in which I witness a sense of hope, energy, and excitement.