True Love

First Corinthians 13: It’s not just for weddings anymore!

Sometimes I feel the need to make this assertion. There is a great danger in relegating this powerful passage to some lovey-dovey, cutsie little newlywed poem, intended only to describe that gushy sentimentality that makes us all tear up at weddings, providing us a polite chuckle when we come to the “love does not insist on it’s own way” line, remarking after the ceremony that Uncle Joe “did a wonderful job” with the reading, and forgetting that this passage is intended to describe how all of us are supposed to be living our lives, for heaven’s sake!

Not to put too fine a point on it; this passage should kick our fannies.

I don’t have anything personal against weddings, you understand, though my initial paragraph may make it seem like they are for me an experience akin to pulling teeth out with rusty pliers. Not at all. I am simply lamenting our cultural tendency to rob 1st Corinthians, chapter 13 of its enormous convicting power, its profoundly hopeful promise, and the offer of a new way to live contained therein.

So go ahead and enjoy it at the next wedding you attend. The chances are good that it will be included, since it is included in roughly 98.7% of all weddings in the U.S. (based on thoroughly unscientific research conducted by me and me alone). But this Sunday we will consider it NOT in the context of a wedding, but in the way that it might apply to anyone’s life at any moment.

“What is love?” is more than an early ‘90s dance track that Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan used to dance to on Saturday Night Live. It is an important question that we all should ask ourselves from time to time. How do we know love? How do we discern between true love and surface level attraction? How can we tell when love is “real” and lasting, and what does that even mean?

In worship Sunday, we’ll think together about real love, whose source is God and whose expression should mark every aspect of our being.

Doubt and Faith

Faith in God.

It means trusting the promises that God makes without needing proof.

Doubt.

It means to be uncertain about something. It can also mean to distrust.

So are faith and doubt compatible? Can one live while the other survives? Does the presence of doubt at all mean a total absence of faith?

Sunday I'm preaching about doubt and faith. In Mark 9, the father of a boy who is in need of healing utters what can only be a paradoxical expression of faith. Jesus tells him that all things can be done for one who believes, to which the father replies, "I believe; help my unbelief." (pisteuo, apistia - for you Greek scholars.)

So does he believe or doesn't he? John Wesley thought that this verse indicated the man's faith was there, but in so small an amount that it seemed to not be there at all. I think Mr. Wesley had to do a few too many interprative leaps to get to that conclusion. But far be it from me to come right out and disagree with Wesley, of course!

I think the statement is best left right where it is. The answer is yes, he believes; and no, he doesn't. And there it is. And there we are, most of the time, if we are completely honest about it. Living in the paradox.

Have you ever known a person with a sick loved one, and the person prayed for that loved one who then made a complete recovery, and the person subsequently thanked God for answering prayers? And on the other hand, have you ever known a person with a sick loved one, and the person prayed for that loved one who then did not get better but actually died, and then ... well, then what? Would you ever dream of saying to that person, "If you had only had more faith..." "If you had only prayed harder..." "If you had only..." Of course not!

The truth is that stuff happens to us that shakes our faith - i.e. causes doubt. The most faithful thing we can do at such times is to acknowledge the doubt, bring it to the surface, and deal with it. If we do, God will give us the grace we need to move through it and get on with life. The most dangerous thing we can do at such times is to ignore the doubt, or worse still to deny it. It is an unhealthy person who claims absolute certainty in absolutely every situation.

Salvation is a journey and there are times we are a lot closer to the destination than other times. But wherever we are, God's grace is there, ready to draw us closer. Doubt, then, is not a bad thing inherently. It's what we do with it that counts.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball - Thumbs Up!

I've just finished with "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" by Gordon MacKenzie. It's great. It is written with respect to the business world but is very illuminating for any organization, including school or church.

The hairball is the organization, which may have started out as a dynamic movement but has inevitably become an entagled mess of policies and procedures and rules and committees and ... basically a giant hairball. The book is NOT about how to unravel the hairball, an improbable if not impossible task.

The book is about how to use the graviational energy of the hairball to propel yourself into a creative orbit around it, neither being sucked in to its tangly fibers nor launching off into the vacuum of space beyond it. It is about valuing creativity and genius and spontaneity in and of itself, without demanding an accounting in the "proper" channels of the hairball. Consider this snip:

...in the eyes of any Anal Retentive worth his salt, anything that cannot be measured is of doubtful value - and even of doubtful existence.

...the Anal Retentives...lust for the fruits of creativity ... but mistrust the act of creativity, which remains invisible and elusive.

Only the Renegades in Orbit, removed from the Hairball's obsession with quantifying everything, are free to ream the unpredictable bounty of the inscrutable creative process.

MacKenzie worked for Hallmark, a corporate giant that started out as a creative impluse. It is a great case study, actually, because Hallmark is a giant hairball of a company that still tries to specialize in creativity, and the juxtaposition of organizational grey and the creative spectrum is very apparent.

Seems to me there's a lot the church can learn from this approach. The church has become in many ways a giant hairball of organization, bureaucracy, and self-sustaining archaism. But I do not want to dismantle it - not in the least. The key then, is how to use the hairball's gravity to attain orbit.

To me, becoming upset by the existence of the hairball is what gets me sucked in to the hairball itself. So the key is to just let the hairball be what it is without getting upset about it, and at the same time fly around in a creative orbit around it. To me the hairball is attendance figures, membership lists, budgets, insurance issues, pointless committees, overly numerous committees, overly numerous pointless comittees, and that kind of stuff. It is a part of the hairball if it exists solely for the perpetuation of the hairball itself, with no other purpose.

For me, this book is a refreshing counterpoint to the "Bull's Eye" books, which articulate hairball thinking quite eloquently. It takes a really gifted person to so succinctly describe the hairball while all the time professing to be anti-hairball through and through. And even more, to decry the current state of the hairball and offer up a replacement hairball as if it will somehow make everything okay takes (ironically) a healthy dose of creative genius itself.

But I just don't see it that way. The hairball is the hairball, and we're not going to get rid of it. Removal of even one strand is a major undertaking, because of the entaglement and mess it's in down below. Rather, let the hairball be! Dance around the edges of it. Flirt with it. Maybe even skip off of its surface. Just don't get sucked in. And don't leave it's gravitational pull either, finding yourself in a place where you have to generate all of the energy yourself. That's just crazy.

MacKenzie uses the metaphor of water skiing. The leader is driving the boat and the follower is holding on to the rope. If the leader will keep the boat steady and straight, the follower can pull and lean, jumping far outside of the wake, then zoom back in by pulling and leaning the other way, jumping high over the wake in the process. If they get going just right, the follower can actually pull even with the leader, and perhaps get ahead for a moment or two.

A good leader keeps the boat going at an even speed and basically in one direction, always letting the follower know if a turn is coming up. A good follower uses that energy to do amazing tricks on her water skis, often far outside of the wake. The one thing the follower does NOT want the leader to do is stop the boat.

It's a great metaphor, isn't it? That leader keeps things going to allow the follower to do those great tricks, and that follower trusts the leader to provide the momentum to do them. That sounds like a pretty cool church!

I am grateful to Bishop Schnase for introducing me to the Giant Hairball book, and I give it a high recommendation.

Back Home Again

What a great vacation!

Missouri > Illinois > Indiana > Ohio > West Virginia > Pennsylvania > West Virginia again > Maryland > Washington, D.C. – spread over three easy days of meandering.

Then five great days in D.C., all the monuments, museums (Native American, Air and Space, Natural History, American History), worship at the National Cathedral, Arlington Cemetery, Capitol tour. We stayed in a hotel in Georgetown and saw George Stephanopoulis on the street. We visited Claire McCaskill’s office and ran into Kit Bond walking between Senate office buildings. We called up some old friends from Kansas City and spent the afternoon with them at National Harbor. It was great.

We took a side trip to Williamsburg, visiting the Fredericksburg Battlefield along the way. We went to Jamestown and to Yorktown, and enjoyed two trips to beaches, one in Norfolk and one in Virginia Beach. On the way home we made a stop at Monticello, which is awesome, and a stop in St. Louis to visit family and see Harry Potter 6, which is also awesome, except in a different sort of way.

We picked up the foster kids from respite care and had a great reunion with them; they did just fine and we are so thankful for good foster families who are willing to provide respite care.

And now we are home and catching up with life. It is good to be home, as always, even considering the great time we had on vacation. It’s always nice to come home.

Vacating

For the next two weeks, we're doing the good, old fashioned, "family vacaction" thing! Piling in the mini-van and heading out across the country to visit Washington D.C. Along the way we'll meander a bit, taking three whole days to travel and see some sights between here and there. I can't wait!

We will be placing our two foster sons in respite care for the time we'll be gone. Thank God for respite care providers! Every foster family gets a certain number of days per year of respite care. As rewarding as it is for us to provide foster care for our kids, it is very nice to reconnect with just the four of us every now and then.

But at the same time we're concerned for them. We know the respite family is really good; the boys' case worker knows them and has worked with them a lot. She recommends them. So its not that. Its just being away from them for that long, we'll be worried. So if you don't mind, say a prayer or two for our boys and us in these upcoming days!

I don't think blogging will be a high priority for me for the next couple of weeks. So don't be surprised (or chagrined ... or relieved either) if you don't see anything posted here until July 21st-ish.

Washington, here we come!

Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

This is the ending of the Declaration of Independence, right before the signatures. I am much more familiar with the first part, about the self-evident truths. But after that part, and after explaining how governments should secure those unalienable rights, and then very carefully explaining how the current government has not done so, and in fact has abused its power at the expense of the people, and even after declaring therefore that the united Colonies are now free and independent States - that's when this line appears.

Theological reflection on this sentence leads to a conversation about "Divine Providence." If Divine Providence is the sovereignty of God to order earthly events toward realization of God's purposes, one necessarily must place the concept in tension with "Free Will." This conversation has been repeated numerous times in Christian history, and faithful Christians hold diverse beliefs about what it really means.

Not to diminsh that conversation, but what caught my eye when I read the Declaration this time was the final clause: "...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

What a beautiful idea. The idea of freedom was so important to the authors of the Declaration, they promised one another their very lives.

They promised one another their fortunes, from which I infer they meant their material resources. I wonder what they would think of the greed so blatantly on display these days.

They promised one another their honor, which to me says they "had each others' back." Like, "When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day."

What an exciting time it must have been. It still captures my imagination, to think of the atmosphere in the colonies 233 years ago! It was risky, scary. It was fresh, new. There was such energy and passion. It was this energy that made it possible for them to make this pledge, I suppose. They were caught up in the revolutionary spirit, and deeply unified.

Their unity transcended their differences, which at times were very strong (here's one essay among many making this point). The revolutionaries had unique individual perspectives on the situation, and made their opinions known. And yet to dissent was not condemned, it was encouraged. It is one of the most important aspects of our national story, in fact; the freedom to dissent against the British crown was the cornerstone of the revolution.

I wish sometimes that we would revisit the last line of the Declaration of Independence as a nation, you know? Maybe just once skip the part we had to memorize in school, skip the list of historically contextual complaints against the king, and just focus on the end.

What would it take for the United States of America to once again "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor," instead of so often thinking first and only of one's self, jealously clinging to one's own possessions, and fomenting divisiveness in the guise of dissent?

I guess that sounds pretty cynical, and I'm not - really. I am happy and proud to be a citizen of the United States of America and I celebrate the freedom that living in this country affords me. But neither am I naïve about people, some of whom take unjust advantage of their freedom for selfish gain at the expense of others.

Independence Day, for me, is a day to reclaim the revolutionary spirit. It is a day to remember that my rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the same rights given all people. It is a day to celebrate freedom. And it is a day to once more pledge to one another our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor.

Look at God's World

Psalm 8 seems to have a phrase missing. It reads

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

Grammatically, it seems to me to lack a linking phrase that says why the initial observation leads to the subsequent question. The reader is left to infer the connection.

It might mean, "When I look up at all the stars that you made, it is so unbelievably big that it makes me feel small, so I wonder, what are we people worth to you?"

Or maybe, "When I look out into space, it seems so infinite compared to my finite experience, it makes me wonder how I could possibly matter at all."

Or it could be, "When I think about all of the beauty that you created, then realize how plain I am, how do I possibly compare to that?"

Or even, "The universes you created are unimaginably complex, and I am so simple by comparison, you must not think much of me."

But I think the best way to read it is just to leave the pause in there and just let our minds wander over it for a few moments before we go on: "God, when I think about the immensity of all you have made, every single star in the cosmos ... (pause) ... what are we to deserve your attention at all, let alone your love?"

It is a staggering claim, isn't it? To say that the One who created all that is has a particular concern for you and me is audacious! Maybe even impudent? And yet that is precisely the claim this Psalm makes. Not only that God pays attention to human beings, but it goes on to say that God elevates human beings to a kind of "favored creature status" by giving us the rest of creation to care for.

My prayer yesterday was, "Are you sure that's such a good idea, Lord?" I mean, we don't do so well at taking care of things given to us sometimes. If we need a power line there, it doesn't matter that a tree is growing in the same space, just cut apart the tree and make room for the power line. If we need a development there, it doesn't matter if there is a hill in the way, just flatten the hill to level the ground for the development. If we need more parking there, it doesn't matter that there is a beautiful green space in the way, just pave it over so we can cram more cars in.

Humanity's callousness with the environment lends even deeper incredulity to Psalm 8. "What are human beings, that you are mindful of us?" Truth be told, we're not all that great. I know that there are those who will minimize humanity's impact on the earth, and they have a retinue of scientists to quote that back up that viewpoint, just like there's a whole slew of scientists saying the opposite. But simple observational common sense goes a long way in this particular conversation. We simply don't do a good job of caring for the natural world a lot of the time.

It starts with looking. "When I look at ..." When was the last time you did that? When was the last time you just sat and looked at a tree, the stars, another person, birds at a bird bath, or something else in God's wonderful world? To look with no agenda other than observation is to begin understanding the pause in the middle of Psalm 8.

When I look ... What am I?

Cori's Random Thoughts On a Monday Afternoon

Hi! I like Pie!! Llamas are cool animals!!! Cow is a funny word! Pencils have erasers. French Frys are weird! Balloons are good to eat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! glue is sticky! how come fish don't have ears?! Wall - e. I don't like bacon. summer school is bad for you. hi! the world is round. Why R smily faces yellow? bubbles pop! hang ten!!!!!! 3 x 3 = 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 hi!

"Hunger Can Be a Positive Motivator" - My Thoughts

There has been a bit of a blow about Representative Cynthia Davis of the 19th District here in Missouri and her comments about a summer food program for low-income children.

Click here to read her remarks in full.

The catch phrase many are jumping on is, "Hunger can be a postive motivator." She actually wrote that line to emphasize that children who are at least 16 years old can get jobs during the summer to pay for food instead of getting it from this program. In fact, she helpfully points out that "If you work for McDonald's, they will pay you for free during your break." She is not talking about little kids, but teenagers.

So in context that line is a little less blatantly cold-hearted as it first appears. It is still pretty ignorant of conditions in the world. As if a bunch of 16 year olds not applying to work at McDonald's is the source of all poverty in our nation.

There's nothing really that shocking in her commentary, to tell you the truth. It is a pretty good summary of a conservative perspective on a social program. She doesn't like it. She thinks it represents the government trying to do too much. She thinks individuals should take more responsibility and rely on government less.

It's pretty standard fare, as far as that particular viewpoint is concerned. And it happens to be a viewpoint with which I disagree.

For example, she writes a couple of things that I have some pointed issues with. First, she writes, "I represent many fine families in District 19 and I am proud of all of them for doing what is best for their children." I wonder. There are no children that have to be taken into foster care in the 19th district? No neglect? No abuse? She really knows that all of them are doing what is best for their children? I'm sure it's not quite that simple. I mean, I think I know what she's trying to say there, but it is a statement with multiple interpretations. Like this one: she doesn't represent all the families in the district, only a percentage of them, only the "fine" ones who are taking care of the kids. As for the other families... I wonder who is representing them.

Later she writes, "Laid off parents could adapt by preparing more home cooked meals rather than going out to eat." Again, were it only that simple a solution. In her world, not going out to eat for meals and cooking at home instead works great, I'm sure. She writes a lot about the delicious strawberries that her family has. Wonderful. But not all that realistic. Poverty is insidius, and simply eschewing restaurant food in favor of grocery store food is not the answer.

Actually she confesses, "While I have not seen this as a problem in my district, it is entirely possible that this program is designed to address problems that exist in other parts of Missouri." So apparently Missouri District 19, which includes O'Fallon, St. Peters, and St. Charles, is immune from hunger issues. Again, that would be wonderful, but I am skeptical as to how realistic it is. And anyway, how selfish is it to not support something because it doesn't affect anyone you live close to, albeit you confess it might affect others? It would be a little like saying, "I know racism is an issue, but I only know white people so I'm not going to do anything about it."

So the bottom line of this deal is that Representative Davis's opinions are not scandalous or extreme. I think that they are a rather mainstream, party-line set of opinions for conservatives. I happen to disagree with her position, but many do not. (Although it seems to really, really irk Olbermann, which is a real kick in the pants.)

I've decided that I'm not going to waste much energy worrying about Rep. Davis, because I need all the energy I can muster to provide foster care for two kids whose mom was having a really hard time feeding them appropriately at the time they were taken into care.

The Power of a Touch

I love kids! I had such a great time at Vacation Bible School last week, hanging out with a couple hundred kids every morning, singing together, dancing, praying, laughing, joking, making faces, and sharing in the story of the Exodus.

Needless to say, there were times when things got a bit wild and crazy, but for the most part everything went quite smoothly. There were some times when an individual kid needed a bit of extra attention so as not to detract from the experience of the whole class. Sometimes this even involved one of the adult volunteers chasing a kid around or perhaps taking them out of the room.

But a few times, when a kid was creating a disruption during a time I was teaching, all I did was make my way over to where they were sitting, and calmly continue what I was doing while simply putting my hand on a shoulder. I just got close to them, didn't even make eye contact, and reached out to touch them.

In doing so, I was telling them, "I know you're here. I am acknowledging you, and I value your presence. You are a part of this group." I was giving them the attention that they were seeking without detracting from what the rest of the kids were doing. All of this was accomplished by simply touching them. And inevitably, the attention-seeker calmed down and the class carried on.

People have different comfort levels with touch. For some, it is a severe violation of personal boundaries to do more that shake hands. Some are much more comfortable with touch and will hug and hold hands and pat shoulders with no thought at all. So we must be very sensitive to individual responses. There is definitely "good touch" and "bad touch."

With that in mind, there is something very meaningful about human contact. I remember in pastoral care classes in seminary being taught that people in hospital beds with tubes and wires coming out of them all over the place are often longing for a simple touch, a hand to hold or a gentle pat on the shoulder. A touch can be a healing gesture.

There's a great story in the Gospel according to Mark about touch. It's actually two stories woven together, one about Jairus' daughter and the other about a woman with severe hemorrhages. The woman approaches Jesus from behind, reaches out, and touches just the hem of his clothes. She is immediately healed. Jesus then goes in to Jairus' house, reaches out, and takes his daughter by the hands. She is immediately revived from death.

In both cases, healing happens in the touch. There is a reason that a powerful emotional response is called feeling touched. Something miraculous happens in a good touch.

"Become Like Children"

Seems to me there's three parts ...

"Unless you change"

"Become like children"

"Enter the kingdom of heaven"

... of Matthew 18:3, the scripture I'm preaching about this Sunday. But it also seems to me that there is a whole boatload to say about each of those three parts. Like it could be a series of three sermons.

So I'm going with that middle part this week - "Become like children." In response to the disciples' question, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven," Jesus tells them that they're not even going to GET IN if they don't become like children. And as for being the "greatest"? Forget about it.

I read in a couple commentaries this week that in the time of Jesus, a child was most definitely not in a position of earthly greatness. Children were not valued intrinsically, they were considered property, they had neither power nor control. And yet in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, according to Jesus, this is the position that we must assume.

Now some people think "become like children" means be all innocent and pure. (Obviously these are people who do not have much experience with real live children.) I don't think so. That just wouldn't follow from the literary context. That interpretation doesn't make sense in response to the disciples' provoking question.

To yield all power and control of your life, to confess your utter dependence upon God, to become like children in not conforming to earthly definitions of power and success - these are the characteristics I believe Jesus was referring to in this passage. That matches up with other places where Jesus is teaching about the "greatest." The greatest is the least, the servant of all, the humble one.

I'm preparing this sermon in the middle of Vacation Bible School week, with 250 kids running all over the building. There has been all of the energy, excitement, and barely controlled chaos that usually accompanies VBS, and I am loving it. I have been reminded numerous times that I am not really in control of things!

I feel like when I am talking with the kids, I am definitely entering the kingdom of heaven.

Economic Quiz Answer

Yesterday I asked about the significance of this dollar amount:

$3,036,258,899

There were some fantastic guesses. Thanks for playing. Unfortunately, no one came up with the right answer, so no one will take home the cornucopia of prizes I had prepared.

My addition might be wrong, but I looked at this list of Major League Baseball salaries for 2009 and added them up. I just added once and may have missed a million or two, but according to that sloppy research (of which I am quite proud), that amount represents the sum total of the MLB payrolls for this season.

Three BILLION, thirty-six MILLION, two hundred fifty eight THOUSAND, eight hundred ninety nine dollars.

Starting with the Yankees whose payroll is $201,449,289, an average of $7,748,050 per player, and down to the lowly Florida Marlins, who shell out a measly $36,814,000 for their team, on which each player scrapes by on just $1,314,786 on average. (Poor guys, how do they manage?)

Okay - let me just say that I really am a baseball fan and I am not bashing professional sports or anything. So this is definitely not an anti-sports thing.

I just think it kind of puts things in perspective somehow. I'm still working out exactly how. Three billion dollars. I'm just saying ... that's a lot of dollars.

An Economic Quiz:

Hi kids! The number of the day is:

$3,036,258,899

Here's a quick quiz. What is the signficance of this number?

Is it a stimulus related figure perhaps? Maybe the gross domestic product of a country? Could it be the budget of a major charity, putting all those dollars to work to help people in need?

That's three BILLION, thirty-six MILLION, two hundred fifty eight THOUSAND, eight hundred ninety nine dollars.

I can't wait to read your guesses ...

... the answer will be revealed forthwith.

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.

Church Business

The Church has been using business models for a long time. It has been quite fashionable for church leaders to borrow jargon, organizational structures, mission and vision foci, and leadership styles from the business world in recent memory. In this paradigm, making disciples of Jesus Christ is equated with selling a product or service.

And so I’m wondering, now that GM has gone through bankruptcy and plans to come out smaller, more efficient, more specialized, “leaner and meaner” (whatever that means) will the church follow that model, too? GM is not the only company to realize that being a giganto-normous behemoth may not very well be the best business model to follow, but definitely is one of the most apparent.

GM has decided to eliminate some car lines, reduce its workforce, and close a bunch of factories. So, will the church now eliminate some ministries, reduce its staff, and close a bunch of congregations?

Are we supposed to follow business models when unlimited growth is the goal but eschew them when that goal proves unsustainable?

It seems to me that there may be a pattern that goes something like – a business starts out with a great idea, then people start loving that idea so much that it becomes really popular, so the business grows in order to meet that demand, and as the business grows it adds bureaucracy to handle the growth itself, then eventually the bureaucracy outweighs the idea and the whole mess begins to implode. The bureaucracy, the growth itself has replaced that great idea as the focal point of the business, and lacking that impetus there is no outcome but collapse.

Unless you see the pattern and catch it before the implosion starts.

So what if the great idea in question is God’s love? This is the greatest idea of all! And it’s a pretty popular idea, too, right? So because it is so popular and so many people are drawn to it, the church grows, and some bureaucratic structure has to be created in order to facilitate all of that. I mean, someone has to be in charge, right? So the institution of the church adds a little structure here, a little hierarchy there, all for the sake of encouraging growth. Until eventually we notice that the focus has shifted from the great idea (oh yeah – it’s about God’s love!) to the bureaucracy, to the growth itself. When that happens, it is not long before the implosion starts.

By the way, I think the pattern can be expressed at multiple levels: a congregation, a conference, a denomination. Like a fractal kind of thing.

So what now? Seeing the implosion happen to GM, having followed business models adapted for church growth, are we to continue following them knowing that eventually there will be no way to sustain the unwieldy structure, no matter how great the original idea was?

Are we to take a couple of steps back on the “life cycle of an organization” and rethink vision, mission, and strategies in order to avoid the impending collapse, only to enter into the cycle once again at some time in the future?

Or maybe the problem was when we thought that it would be a good idea for the church to follow business models in the first place. Maybe what we should do is stop trying to be like the business world and start trying to be the church. Maybe God has a better model for the church than a market-driven consultation firm.

Or maybe we just go with it, declare some version of “bankruptcy” like GM did, and come out the other side with the ecclesial version of “leaner and meaner.” What would denominational bankruptcy look like? Tossing the Book of Discipline out and starting from scratch?

What would a simpler, smaller, and less cluttered church look like, and what would we be able to do for the sake of the greatest of all great ideas?

More On Saving the Church

"The truth is I feel tremendous pressure to save the United Methodist Church."

So says Rev. Eric Van Meter, director of the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State in a column for the UM Reporter. And so say we all. It is a pressure from within, driven by our love for the church and our deep desire for the church to flourish. It is a pressure that he says many young adults feel, and I count myself as one of those many. So I really resonate with what Eric is saying, and commend his column to you to read in full.

I have written before about the ministry of young adults; I have led a couple of workshops; it is one of my favorite topics. Among other things, my underlying feeling is that young adults are being objectified by the church as "savior" figures, rather than being valued intrinsically.

It seems sometimes as if young adults are valued as long as they can be useful in reanimating the dying denomination, and by "reanimating the dying denomination" I mean acting like younger versions of the people currently populating the pews. But not if they're just being themselves.

The problem, as Eric sees it, is when the church does things that "give church insiders something to rally around, [but have] little impact on most folks who populate Sunday morning worship or Wednesday night council meetings." And a lot of that complicated (and expensive) navel gazing has exactly the opposite effect that was intended. Let me explain.

Trendy programs and slick websites sometimes give the impression of trying too hard, especially when the true life experience of the church just doesn't jive with what is being presented. Or as Shane Raynor puts it (as only Shane can), "Let's face it...some of our churches stink. Why should we spend money advertising them?"

I might not want to say it exactly that way, but I fully agree with the sentiment. When a young adult (or any adult, just about) looks for a church, they go online. Based on what they find there, they'll attend a worship service or two or three. But if they do not experience a connection, something that resonates with what they have seen in the ad, they'll head somewhere else in a hurry.

As I see it, the way to "save the denomination" is to stop trying to save the denomination and focus on the church's identity as the body of Christ in the world today. The early church grew amazingly quickly, and it did so with an anti-publicity campaign that actually kept everything secretive and subversive, meeting at night and communicating with codes. They basically just cared for one another, ate meals together, and talked about Jesus. What would be the 21st century equivalent?

I love church, and I would like to see the United Methodist denomination flourish by being the body of Christ in a distinctively Methodist way. And I think that if we do, we will grow. Eric Van Meter asks, "Does wanting to save my church mean that I should fight to keep her young, or let her die and trust in the hope of resurrection?" I think that is a false choice; there is another way to think about it.

I think that wanting to save my church means that you have to abandon all thoughts of saving your church, and simply be the church as best you can. God will save the church if God will. In the meantime, we just live faithfully.

Chasing After Wind

Better is a handful with quiet
than two handfuls with toil,
and a chasing after wind.
(Ecclesiastes 4:6)

This verse from Ecclesiastes called out to me this week, begging to be reflected upon.

It makes me think of Jesus saying, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest."

It reminds me of a part of my sermon a couple of weeks ago, from 1st John 5, "God's commandments are not burdensome."

It makes me think about so many people I know who work until 6:30, 7:00, 7:30 at night, or even later, relating to their families like the proverbial ships passing in the night. Chasing after wind.

It makes me think of a lot of pastors I know who work 60 hours a week or more thinking they have to work themselves into worthiness. How many of them burn out early and spend the last years of their ministry cynical and bitter?

Why do we tend to place unqualified value on hard work? We wax on about a high work ethic as if people who work hard are to be emulated without critique. There's nothing inherently wrong with working hard, to be sure. But there's nothing inherently right about it, either.

Better is a handful with quiet ...

(Give us this day our daily bread ... just enough for today ... a handful.)

...than two handfuls with toil.

(Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin...)

I mean, sure. You've got your two handfuls, but at what cost? Love your house! Great car! But have you worked so hard that you are unable to enjoy it? Wouldn't it be better to have a handful and be able to enjoy life in the meantime?

I know that some with the metaphorical "two handfuls" are content with life, even happy. I'm not saying that those who have done materially well in life are automatically sad work-a-holics who never spend any time with their family. I'm saying that it is all about balance.

When the scales tip over to the side of material gain and work to the detriment of contentment and harmony, then you've got problems.

And it doesn't have to be just affluent people affected by this insidious condition. Pressure to work hard and produce results affects us all. I feel it. Middle managers feel it from their bosses. Every day working people feel it all the time. The expectation of hard work is pervasive.

And a lot of it comes from within, to tell the truth. Much of the pressure we feel comes from expectations we place on ourselves. Although those self-expectations are learned from somewhere, likely imprinted upon us at an early age.

In an environment of pressure, expectations, and hard work, a verse like Ecclesiastes 4:6 is refreshing. Better a handful with quiet - in other words, a happy life with just enough - than two handfuls with toil - in other words, a miserable life with excess. How much time are we going to waste chasing after wind?

I for one have better things to do.

Nice Is In

Great news everyone! Apparently use of the word "idiot" in blog posts is down by nearly 50% in the last 6 months.

The New York Times opinion piece where I read this fun fact is saying that it is now "in" to be nice. Actors like Paul Rudd, advertisements like the latest Volkswagen campaign, and websites like Operation Nice dot com are evidence of our new found era of niceness, according to the piece.

There is a critique, however, offered by Professor Eric G. Wilson of Wake Forest University. Niceness, he thinks, results in mediocrity. The attempt to be agreeable and polite leads us down "predictable and vaguely reassuring" paths like "easy listening radio or greeting card sunrises or Tom Hanks." (When asked for comment, Hanks reportedly said, "What an idiot.")

On the other hand, I happen to think that we can be nice without drifting into mediocre fluffiness. I do not see the two as mutually exclusive, I guess. Being nice to one another doesn't preclude disagreement, dialogue, and even argument.

So I for one applaud the social trend toward niceness. Especially as so much of what is happening in the world seems to trend toward fear, tension, and suspicion, simply being nice to one another can lighten the atmosphere considerably. A smile, a heartfelt handshake, a hug, holding the door open for someone, allowing another person into the line ahead of you - simple gestures of kindness can convey a lot.

I love watching what happens to a foul ball hit into the stands. People get pretty excited about it, and it's fun to see their celebrations. But what I love most is that inevitably, if a grown up catches the ball and a kid is nearby, the grown up gives the ball to the kid. Nice! In fact, if the grown-up doesn't do so, there are almost always a few "boos" from the crowd. Being nice to the kid is the norm, and keeping the ball for yourself is socially unacceptable.

It's easier to be nice than mean, anyway. Being mean sucks too much energy. Being nice somehow seems to generate energy of its own. Being nice to one another makes everyone feel a little bit better, including you.

So be nice - everyone's doing it.

Have a nice day.

Can I Get a Witness?

One of the last things Jesus says to his disciples just before he ascends to heaven is, “You will be my witnesses…” (Acts 1:8). What is a witness?

Sometimes we carry a perception that “witnessing” must by definition involve publically telling an emotional story to a group about how the speaker was living a horrible life and turned 180 degrees around after accepting Christ. The experience is quite cathartic; there are almost always tears, uplifted hands, and “Thank you Jesus”-es.

This is indeed a way that witnessing can happen, but by no means the only way. In fact, sometimes our misperception (that this way is the only way) prevents us from witnessing ourselves. Since not many people have the kind of dramatic, emotional life stories that tend to define the caricature of witnessing, we might fall into the trap of thinking we cannot be witnesses ourselves.

We may even think our own testimony unworthy, after hearing an especially touching story. “Well,” we might think, “my life isn’t all that bad. Surely anything I have to say about my relationship with God would be pretty pathetic compared to his.” We therefore minimize how God has been and continues to be active in our lives in a myriad of ways.

The thing is, if you say you are a Christian, you ARE a witness. For Jesus’ disciples, “witness” is the default mode of living. Everything you say, everything you do, every conversation you have, every purchase you make, the kind of house you live in, the kind of car you drive, the amount of time you spend with your kids, the attitude you assume toward your co-workers or classmates, etc. – everything that you are gives testimony about Jesus.

More specifically, everything that you do/say/are gives testimony to who you think Jesus is. Remember, testimony is neutral; in that it can say something negatively just as much as something affirmatively. So for example, if you treat a person with contempt, that says something about who you think Jesus is to those who are watching you. And that wouldn’t be a good thing.

Conversely, knowing Jesus to be loving, compassionate, forgiving, and just, our actions and words and being should testify to that knowledge. Christians ARE Jesus’ witnesses, in our families, in our churches, in our communities, and “to the ends of the earth.”

Commanded to Love

This Sunday is the last Sunday in the season of Easter, and so will be the last in our worship series “Love So Amazing.” I cannot begin to share with you how reading 1st John all during this season has impacted me.

The punctuation mark on this season is taken from John 15:12 – “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Here the theological parallels between the Gospel According to John and the book of First John are very apparent. Quite simply, followers of Christ Jesus are commanded by our Lord to love one another.

Not only love one another, but love one another as Jesus loved us. This seems like an impossible task. How can we possibly love with the kind of selflessness and grace that Jesus offered?

However, the author of First John tells us that “…his commandments are not burdensome” (5:3). And so it seems that this apparently impossible task is not only possible, but will not even be a burden to undertake. It makes me think of Matthew 11:30, where Jesus promises, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”


Maybe it’s like riding a bike. (Bear with me here.) Learning how to ride a bike is really hard! It is scary to think about losing your balance and tumbling to the pavement. Sometimes the fear of failing even prevents us from making the attempt.

But when we do, and begin to get the hang of it, riding a bike is exhilarating! It sets us free! We roll along with ease, wind in our face, wondering what we ever could have been scared of. And once we learn how, we never forget. It’s like … well … actually it’s like riding a bike!

Perhaps that’s what it means to say that the commandment to love one another as Jesus loves is not burdensome. Maybe it sets us free in a way we cannot imagine unless we put our fear aside, make a few wobbly attempts, skin our knee a time or two, and figure out how exactly to love one another as Jesus loved us.

And then when we finally get it, it is exhilaration like no other. We are set free in God’s love to live as sisters and brothers together, without having to hang on to all of that burdensome baggage that comes with trying to do it by ourselves. It’s only impossible when we think we have to do it alone.

And so, as this season is ending and likewise our brief sojourn with First John, I am hopeful that we will enter the next season transformed by God’s amazing love.

My Brush with the Law

Saturday’s mail had a letter from the City of Springfield, addressed to me using my full name, which caught my attention right away. When I opened it, it had a couple of green pieces of paper, one of which said

IMPORTANT INFORMATION.
THE SPRINGFIELD MUNICIPAL COURT HAS ISSUED A WARRANT FOR YOUR ARREST. A COPY OF THE WARRANT IS ENCLOSED WITH THIS NOTICE. THE WARRANT WILL BE ENTERED INTO A COMPUTER SYSTEM AND YOU MAY BE ARRESTED ANYWHERE IN THE STATE. IN ORDER TO HAVE THE WARRANT CANCELLED, YOU MUST APPEAR, IN PERSON, AT THE MUNICIPAL COURT …

The copy of the warrant enclosed with the notice indicated that my charge was “Failure to appear in Municipal Court to answer the following charge: 18/52(A) - Dog not displaying rabies tag. FTA arraignment 04/17/09 @ 9:00 a.m.”

My bond had been set at $500.00.

Okay, see, here’s what happened -

Six weeks ago, our little old dog Amos got out of the yard. It remains a mystery as to exactly how the gate got left open, and interestingly enough no witnesses have yet come forward to offer testimony to this event. Regardless, Amos was picked up by a thoughtful neighbor some five to six blocks away from our house, and turned in to the animal shelter.

Amos did not have his tags on.

You see, we had removed the tags from Amos’s collar earlier because he has a skin condition that causes him to itch so that he chews on himself until he bleeds. (I know that is probably too much information, but nevertheless, it is the case.) In the middle of the night, this chewing on various parts of his body would cause his collar tags to jingle very annoyingly, waking us up even out of our deepest, most restful slumber.

So we took them off.

And then he got out of the yard.

And then someone picked him up and took him to the Springfield animal shelter.

We discovered him in the shelter by perusing the pictures of the various dogs they have there. These little canine mug shots are posted along with a description of the dog and the location and time they are picked up, so that families can come and get them. Click here to see what I'm talking about.

At this point I might note that we live on the southeast corner of Springfield. The Springfield Animal Shelter is on the northwest corner of Springfield.

It takes seven hours to get there from here.

Seeing Amos’s canine mug shot on the website, our daughter Cori and I jumped into the car and rushed off to rescue him. Eleven days later, when we arrived at the shelter, we discovered that it had closed five minutes prior to our arrival. Nonplussed, we journeyed the three week trek back home, resolving to spring Amos in the morning.

Arriving in what I thought was good time the next morning, I went into the shelter and verified that it was, indeed, Amos who was incarcerated there. We figured out how many nights he had been there, which determined the amount of the fine. Pulling out my checkbook to pay the agent, I was informed that he could not accept a check, the bail had to be posted in cash. “No problem,” I said through clenching teeth. “I’ll run to an ATM and be right back.”

“We close in ten minutes,” I was informed.

Apparently, the Springfield Animal Shelter is open for intermittently random hours at a time. Just kind of whenever they have enough income to pay their workers, perhaps.

Anyway, I sped to the nearest ATM, at a convenience store exactly four and a half minutes away from the shelter, got my cash, agreeing to pay the $1.50 fee for doing so, and sped the four and half minutes back to the shelter, arriving exactly one minute before they were scheduled to close.

At the counter, ready to pay the guy, get the dog, and go home, I was informed, “Oh, and then I’ll have to write you a ticket because he didn’t have rabies tags.”

There was a moment there, in the terse silence that followed, that I thought to myself, “Why not just leave him? You know, I could tell the kids that the trauma had just been too much for old Amos. His heart just couldn’t take it, and now he was playing up in doggie heaven.”

(They would never know!)

“A ticket?” I asked.

“Yep, we’ll just set you a court date here and you can just go in and pay the fine ... or you could plead not guilty and see what happens,” he said, oh so very helpfully.

So he wrote out the ticket, handing it to me with the receipt for Amos’s bail, and we went to the back to get the dog. Now, I don’t know if you have ever been to a dog pound before, but it is the most disgusting place I’ve ever been. The stench is palpable; my eyes were watering and I was struggling not to gag. A worker had Amos in his arms, so I clipped on his leash and took him to the car, loaded him in the back and drove the six month pilgrimage from the shelter back to our house.

(I should pause at this point to explain that it really isn’t all that far to the shelter, but driving in Springfield, Missouri is like entering into a rip in the space/time continuum and so everything seeems loonggerr thaaan iiit reeaaalllyyy iiiisssss.)

Well, here's where it gets a bit tricky. Amos was rescued, the gates were closed, the tags were reattached to the collar, and life moved on. In fact, life moved on so rapidly over the next few weeks that the hearing date for Amos’s rabies tags began to fade into the mist. I think I was always vaguely aware in the back of my mind that I had some nebulous obligation I needed to fill, but other thoughts so quickly crowded that one out that it really never had a chance to take hold.

The date of the hearing came and went without fanfare; in fact, we didn’t even notice at all. It was just another day of chasing toddlers, shuttling kids to school and other various and assorted activities, maintaining a household, working (Holy Week and Easter happened in there somewhere), and just generally living the busy-ness that is our life. To tell you the truth, the notice of my impending arrest was the first time I had thought about it at all in weeks!

So, from that fateful Saturday when I got notice of my arrest warrant until Monday morning, I was a wanted man.

I had visions of one of the police officers who are a part of the congregation walking down the aisle as I was preaching on Sunday morning ready to take me it. “Excuse me, Mr. Bryan. You’ll have to come with me. I’m placing you under arrest for failure to appear in court. You have the right to remain silent,…” And so forth. There would be gasps of surprise all around the room, and murmured conversations as people asked one another what, if anything, they knew of the drama unfolding before their eyes. Then someone would make a pithy quip like they always do on Law and Order. (*dun dun*)

It felt strangely exciting. I was dangerous. On the lam. An outlaw. I watched the world go by through desperado eyes, squinting suspiciously at anyone I came across. I trusted no one.

I made it through Saturday and Sunday without incident. The first thing Monday morning – actually the first thing right after I got the kids ready for the day and dropped the bigs off at elementary school and the smalls off at their day care – I headed to the City Court building. I entered the building, then had to be directed back out so that I could come in through the metal detector since I had entered through the exit side. (Outlaws do that kind of thing.)

Boldly I strode up to the counter where a clerk waited behind a plexiglass barrier, a suspiciously pleasant expression on his face. “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

Taking my notification pages out of my pocket, I put them on the counter and said, “I’d like to take care of this, please.”

He very anticlimactically asked me for my name, went to the back room and came back with a file folder, which he opened and glanced over. “Do you want to just plead guilty?” he asked, “Because I can go ahead and recall this warrant right now if you do.”

“Yes please,” I replied, suddenly not feeling very desperado like.

“Okay,” said the clerk, “and do you have the $99.50 today?”

He said “Ninety-nine fifty” and so I thought he was talking about a form or some kind of official document. “I don’t know what that is,” I said.

“It’s the amount of the fine and your costs,” he said, with a rather puzzled look.

“Oh. Yes, I have it.” I wrote the check.

Taking it from me, he printed off a page and handed it to me, saying, “You should probably keep this with you for 60 to 90 days, in case you get pulled over or something like that. The warrant should be recalled in the computer, but just in case. And that’s it.” I sensed that I was being dismissed.

So I said, “Thank you, sir,” and left.

The paper says, “WARRANT RECALL NOTICE.” It has the ticket number on it, the date of the recall, and the signature of the Honorable Todd M. Thornhill, Municipal Court Judge.

So that’s my story. Having stood toe-to-toe with the Thirty First Circuit Court of Missouri, Springfield Municipal Division, and then humbly paying my debt to society, I have come out on the other side a better person for the experience. And now, after living life on the edge, a fugitive of the law, I may be a bit harder, a bit more flinty, but at least I can say with confidence that I am a free man.

From Success to Signficance

I believe that the time has come for the church to stop thinking in terms of success (or effectiveness or excellence), and start thinking in terms of significance.

I have been nudged three times recently along this path. The chair of our Trustees got me thinking again about this shift at lunch Tuesday, when he told me about a meeting in which the speaker talked about shifting from success to significance in the business world. Then two days later the website "Church Marketing Sucks" linked to this article about the same idea as applied to churches. My first nudge came a while back, when I heard Melissa's sermon about significance last fall. Added together, it has made an impact on me.

In the article that "CMS" linked to, the author (Eric Swanson) wants to flip the business cliche "Good to Great" that so many churches have glommed onto. Instead, he sees churches engaging in a different movement - "Great to Good." Even though this original article is from 2003, it is really appropriate today.

From the article:

But large churches discover a troubling secret. Size alone isn't good enough. Great or small, churches need something more than bigger numbers.

Congregations with a lot of people, an impressive facility, a big budget, and a whole lot of activities can rightly be called "successful." Let's just give them that. So now the question is, being successful, as you are, how are you significant? After the initial reports of your high numbers and net worth are out of the way, tell me about how you are embodying Christ in the world?

Swanson:

Yet Jesus' ministry is summed up, "he went around doing good." [(Acts 10:38)] Maybe from God's perspective, the greatest thing we can do has more to do with goodness than greatness. Some churches follow that pattern—trading "greatness" in numbers for doing the "good" that Jesus modeled.

These are the "Great to Good" churches.

This has been a favorite topic of mine for a long time. In August of 2005 I wrote

And what do we mean when we say a church is “succeeding?” Lots of people, (and more and more people every week), lots of money, lots of programs, super-cool facility, high-tech sanctuary, snappy t-shirts and coffee mugs with the church logo emblazoned on them. Yes! Absolutely, the church that exhibits these fruits can properly be said to be a successful church. The problem is, we are not supposed to be holding the church up to the yardstick of success in order to assess our faithfulness to the gospel. We are supposed to be holding the church to the yardstick of the cross of Christ.

Now, I have changed my mind about a lot of things, but not this. With the cross of Jesus Christ as the standard, our entire approach shifts from striving for success to striving for significance. We may have a deep theological debate about whether or not the cross is "successful" or perhaps we could redefine what we mean by "success" in terms of the cross or perhaps "success" looks different to God than it does to people - no doubt a scintillating conversation. But we would all likely agree that the cross is significant.

Swanson specifies significance in four areas: ministries of mercy, ministries of empowerment, ministries of evangelism, and ministries of replication. Ministries of mercy are those that meet an immediate need, like feeding hungry people. Ministries of empowerment are those that make a lasting difference, like teaching people to read. Ministries of evangelism are those that invite people to participate in the reign of God, transforming lives for an eternal impact. And ministries of replication are those that trasform followers into leaders, who subsequently continue in significant ministries themselves.

How easily would this translate into congregational life? I'm telling you, people understand "significance." It makes sense intuitively. It would not require a 40 day book study to implement. It is simple, and profound.

"Significance" gives shape to ministry in a way that "effectiveness" doesn't quite convey. Significant ministries penetrate deeply and work at foundational levels; effective ministries may move a lot of surface-level stuff, but lack the depth to make a lasting difference. At least, that's the way I hear those words - I may just be splitting semantic hairs.

It is the same with "excellence." It has been very trendy to talk about doing things with excellence, and I understand where it comes from. We want to give our very best in service to God. But excellent can turn into a synonym for showy, and may imply a layer of razzle-dazzle shellacked onto an insignificant activity.

"Significant" goes beyond "effective" and "exellent" in that it is possible to have an excellent, effective ministry that is not at all significant. Say for example, you have a very excellent, highly effective spelunking ministry in your congregation, developing some of the best spelunkers in the area. I've got nothing against caves, but the most effective spelunking ministry in the world is not very significant in terms of being the church that God calls us to be.

Now, of course a spelunking ministry may be significant. For example, if the church is inviting impoverished kids who otherwise would never have the experience to participate. That would be a ministry of empowerment. Or if the ministry focuses on the wonders of God's creation and learning to be good stewards of that creation. That would be a ministry of evangelism.

Becoming a disciple is deciding to be significant for Christ's sake. A church should be a community of people whose desire is to be significant, to make a difference, to move from great to good. Let's stop scrambling for success and start being significant.

Papa Larry

It’s funny how life can realign one’s priorities, isn’t it? I haven’t written anything for my blog in over a week, which feels like an eternity. Somehow it just hasn’t been a top priority for me just lately.

See, my stepfather-in-law died last Saturday night. Just like that. Saturday during the day he was happily visiting with his family at a get-together celebrating his granddaughter’s first communion. Saturday night he was rushed to the ER. Sunday evening he was gone. Bam.

And so it goes.

“Stepfather-in-law” sounds pretty distant. But that is definitely not the case. Larry was a profoundly important part of my life and my family’s lives. He was a great guy and we were very close.

I want you to know Larry, at least a little bit. When I think about Larry, I wonder ...

How many books did he read to our kids?
How many pens did he carry around in his shirt pocket?
How many puzzles did he work - crossword, sudoku, word problems, pencil puzzles, etc?
How many horrible puns did he crack?
How many baseball games did he watch?
How many old rock and roll songs did he know?
How many "Oh bloody hells" did he mutter under his breath?
How many pictures are there of him with his hand up in front of his face?How many walks through how many different neighborhoods did he take?
How many quick trips out to the store to pick up this or that?

Larry was so good. He loved our kids unconditionally, and took such joy in playing with them, reading to them, teasing them. Our foster kids were accepted and loved without question as his own grandkids. He would do anything for anyone. We are going to miss him so much.

His grandkids called him “Papa Larry.” Cori says that she will remember the walks, just walking nowhere and talking about nothing. Wes says that he will remember the jokes, which Wes thought were funny, and that made two people (counting Larry).

I cannot adequately convey what a unique personality Larry had. He redefined the word eccentric. He was a wonderful person, with the rare combination of such deep compassion and an unbelievably bizarre sense of humor. I loved being with him, talking with him, exchanging jokes with him, talking baseball trivia or rock and roll history with him. I loved how he said some words with a bit of a British accent, but not all words. When he laughed sometimes it was completely silent but hid shoulders would shake up and down exaggeratedly.

What a tragedy. He was 57 years old and his heart was so badly damaged by the attack that the only glimmer of hope was a transplant, but there just was no way they could have gotten him stable enough to do it.

Just like that. Bam. Here – Gone.

So with all the stuff I could be blogging about – H1N1, the amendments to the United Methodist constitution, the economy, upcoming sermon topics, other churchy things, the first place Kansas City Royals, and so forth – I just can’t seem to muster the energy to focus on them long enough to come up with anything significant to say about them. They’re just not that important at the moment.

We miss you, Papa Larry.

Oh bloody hell…

40

Rarely have I been so grateful for the presence in my life of my wife Erin than in this past week. She has sung counterpoint to my anger and frustration, working untiringly to lighten the collective mood of our household during a pretty rough time for our extended family. I am so lucky that she is in my life. I love you so much, E.

Rarely have I been more cognizant of my love for the church than this past week. My work has been a firm foundation for me when some other stuff has felt pretty shaky. I am surrounded by incredible people who love God with such dedication and give of themselves so selflessly, it lifts me up just to witness them, to be in ministry among them, to work together on Christ's behalf with them.

When something happens in your life that challenges the fundamental assumptions of what you thought to be true, you become immediately aware of your sources of strength. Like jumping into a lake and trying to find a foothold without being able to see the bottom, you try to step on a rock that won't shift with your weight, or that is too slippery and you slide off, or that may be sharp and cut you.

What has happened has made me angry, more angry than I have ever felt before. The anger has seeped into just about every part of my life, affecting my words and thoughts and actions. I find myself unable to think rationally about "the situation," let alone offer any grace or understanding. The truth is, I don't feel gracious and I don't understand. I'm just angry.

"Clarity emerges over time," said one of my wisest friends. I know that well. Water that has been muddied will clear as the sediment settles again. And in the meantime, all you can do is try to stand on firm footing, waiting for the current to move.

And I have found my firm footing, the metaphorical rocks that I can trust not to shift or slip or cut me. And I thank God.

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the desolate pit,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.

The Cure Is Worse than the Disease, Perhaps?

If there is a problem, and you come up with a plan to solve the problem, and then you learn that your plan is actually making the problem worse, you stop. To keep up the same approach in spite of evidence that it was making things worse would not be a viable option.

So then, say the problem is declining numbers in your denomination, and the plan you come up with to solve the problem is to focus exclusively on bringing new people in, but then you realize that this plan is actually turning people off and they are leaving, thereby making the original problem even worse, then what?

Dan Dick thinks that’s what is happening in the United Methodist Church, and he has written a blog post about it. He writes, “A steadily growing segment of the dear-departed is not the less active fringe, but the faithful core. Long time, deeply committed congregational leaders are packing it in and staying home.” It is becoming a trend, he continues, “for disillusioned, disenfranchised, and disheartened lifelong members to not [just] shift [denominational] allegiances, but to leave the institutional church altogether.”

In his post, he lists five responses he has come across in his research. They represent categories of responses of “a variety of deeply committed Christians who have left ‘organized religion.’” These are my summaries of his summaries:

1) Getting new people has become more important that encouraging spiritual maturation.
2) Head counts have replaced faithful lives as the measure of success.
3) There is more concern for bringing people into the building than sending people into the world.
4) Congregational resources are more frequently used for selfish, rather than selfless reasons.
5) There is an insider vs. outsider mentality in churches that precludes truly loving one another.

Rev. Dick then outlines three potential options for how the church might react: to defensively dismiss these responses, to ignore them altogether, or to take them seriously and hold them up next to the values the church professes to hold dear, and then reforming where we should.

I have written before about my opinion that trying to grow for the sake of growth actually defeats the purpose, and I am happy to read Rev. Dick’s perspective on this issue. Though in a comment exchange on his wordpress site, it appears as though his perspective is not valued by the General Board of Discipleship. At least not enough to keep him on staff there. I wonder what it means that I resonate so well with the ideas of a person the GBOD fired? Well, Beth Quick likes him too, so at least I'm in good company.

I love the church and I love serving in the church. I lament the decline in church participation as much as anyone, I suppose. But I reject the idea that the church should attempt to counter this trend by trying to be more attractive to "new people." I do not believe that the church needs to "pander to the lowest common denominator," as Dan Dick puts it.

When the church is being the church as best it can, that kind of koinonia is inherently attractive. When a local congregation is relevant to the immediate neighborhood context, aware of and active for the cause of justice in the global millieu, continually inviting an ever-deepening relationship with God through Christ, and equipping people to serve one another in love, that congregation is going to grow. Not because its trying to grow, but because growth is the natural consequence of being a healthy church - like apples are the natural consequence of a healthy apple tree.



(Hat tip to Clayton for sharing the post with me originally.)

I Am ... Human / Christian / Methodist / etc.

I am a baseball fan. I am a Kansas City Royals fan.

(After you are done snickering, please proceed.)

It is a metaphor, and therefore limited. This I know. However, it is possible for me to be both a baseball fan in general and a Kansas City Royals fan in particular. It is not the case that I am a baseball fan in general and I live that out by rooting for the Kansas City Royals.

And beyond that, I am a sports fan. I enjoy watching pretty much any sport, and participating in many. But again, it is not the case that I am a sports fan and I live that out as a baseball fan with my specific activity directed toward cheering for the Royals.

Okay, it is the season for baseball analogies to once more make appearances in sermons and articles all over the land. So I'm sorry for that. But this analogy is helpful for me in thinking about a couple of responses to my last post. Spencer Smith and Guy Williams each wrote complimentary ideas, in essence: My identity is in Christ and I live that out in the United Methodist denomination.

Guy wrote, "...that use of language must be reserved for the Church Universal and not for any particular expression of it." Scott wrote, "I see my identity in Christ, usually understood Wesleyan, but by no means UMC."

I understand their point. However, I do not see the question of identity as being mutually exclusive in that way. At the most basic level, I am a human being. To be semantically accurate to the fullest, we probably should limit our own personal "I AM" statements to that alone. Our "child of God"-ness is one of the few aspects of our identity that is not nurtured in life somehow or that we choose for ourselves.

And then when I say, "I am a Christian," I am not negating the previous statement in the slightest. But I am acknowledging that I am a Christian because I have chosen to be. I made that choice because of a number of factors: my family's influence, my personal experiences of Christ's grace, my desire to make the world a better place, and on and on and on.

However, when I say, "I am a Methodist," I am expressing (as truly as I know how) the way I feel about how I have chosen to live my faith. And I am negating neither of the previous affirmations in doing so. And I say I am a Methodist because of resonance. Sally's comment on the last post is beautiful. She describes a class of seminarians who realize together why they are Methodist. It resonates.

If you press and hold down the C above middle C on the piano such that it does not make a sound, then keep holding down and strike the C below middle C so that it does make a sound, the C above middle C vibrates, too, producing its own pitch. That is resonance. It is a sympathetic vibration, an otherwise passive entity responding to an external stimulus.

So, like the old Sunday School song says, "I am a C!" (Insert rim shot). I resonate Methodist. I am a Christian. And I am a human being. All three, all the time.

Flip it : All of us are human beings. A lot of us are Christian. And some of us are Methodist. Each of these statements is true without negating any of the others, also.

Although I have not written a direct response to the quesiton, "Why am I Methodist?" I wrote a post describing a "distinctly Methodist" congregation that pretty much sums up my answer, albeit from a different angle. Click here if you'd like to give it a read.

I hope the conversation about Methodist identity is one we continue for a while. I believe this conversation is critical to the health of our congregations, our denomination, and the church universal. All of which are simply means to center us on what is truly important: our reconciled relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the midst of the Holy Spirit.

Why "Why I Stay" ? - A Metho-blogo-trendo?

The first page of a Google search for "why i stay methodist" turns up these hits:

Jenny Smith (picked up by UM Portal)
Guy Williams
Matt Kelley
Andy Bartel
Paul Gravely
JAy
Ashle Alley
Paul G.
Jayson Dobney
Kevin O'Neill (a Beliefnet thread)
The Thief

These are each really good posts. There may be more on this theme. If you know of any off the top of your head, let me know in the comments.

The question on my mind has been, why are there so many blog posts on the subject of staying in the United Methodist Church? Of course, given that there are a whole heck of a lot of blogs in the world, I know that this represents a pretty small sampling. But the topic seems to have been on people's minds lately, to say the least.

The question has been around for a while, too. I remember my dad talking about the question years and years ago. (He's old.) Old school social justice people have answered the "why I stay" question among themselves with some variation of "because I want to change the system from within" for a couple of decades now.

To answer a question about why you stay in a group means that there is a reason one might leave. There may be anecdotal evidence, perhaps even statistical evidence that people ARE leaving. You may have good friends who have left, or know people who have made the decision to leave for one reason or another.

I do.
+ I know people who have left because of the way the denomination treats people who are homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered.
+I know people who have left because of the way the denominational ordination process had ground them up and left them behind.
+I know people who have left because a pastor has abused his or her power in a way that is demeaning, abusive, or disrespectful.
+I know people who have left because they believe the itenerancy to be outdated and unfair.
+I know people who have left because the church down the street has a cooler band (etc.).

And so it goes.

However, the anecdotes of people leaving and the statistics that show denominational decline are describing two different phenomena. The denomination is in numerical decline not primarily because people are leaving, but rather because people aren't coming in. It is, as Bishop Schnase says a lot, not a back door problem, but a front door problem.

Granted, there is a "given that..." inferred in a "why I stay" response. Given that the denomination is in decline .... or ... Given that the denomination does not marry people who are gay ... or ... Given that the ordination process is so long ... or ... Given that there aren't any young people in the church ... why do you stay? Or something.

But I do not think there is a correlation between the denomination-wide decline in membership and the individual stories of people leaving. The denomination is in decline because people in it are dying much more quickly that people are joining. (Not to put too fine a point on it.) Children of members are not joining the churches their parents belong to, but are looking for their own places to be. People with no church relationship are finding life meaning in other places. And they don't care if the place is Methodist or not.

And so here's what I'm thinking - the "Why I Stay" trend in the Methoblogosphere is another symptom of the panic that is setting in across the denomination. It is the same panic causing the whole "young clergy will save the day" attitude. It is the same panic causing us to define effective churches merely as those whose numbers are trending dramatically upward.

We seem to feel this urge to defend our decision to stay when in fact the question hasn't really come up. Except for other United Methodists, no one really cares why people stay. I'm not saying this to disrespect my fellow bloggers, because I myself have written and talked about it from my own perspective. So I include myself when I say that talking about "why I stay" is just a sophisticated form of navel gazing.

Instead, our response should be to claim the distinctive identity of the Methodist movement. I think this is what the "why I stay" posts are trying to do, but are coming at it from the flipside. I think we're all trying to describe the feeling of resonance that we sense when we read John Wesley or attend a connectional event or receive communion around an open table. But we somehow struggle to talk about it without seeming a bit defensive.

It's shouldn't be "why I stay," but rather "why I am." (Or maybe "why we are.")

I'd like for us to write articles and have conversations and design events that help us think about "Why I am a Methodist." (I know that Bishop Willimon has a book with that title, almost 20 years old, and I'd like to see us reclaim that kind of language.) I'd much rather think about church as a description of who we are rather than of what we do.

See, "staying in the church" doesn't make sense when church is more about identity than activity. The church is not a club we join, then decide to quit, or stay in, as if having our name on a list of members is all that "being the church" is comprised of. The church is who we are, and the denomination is a particular manifestation of that identity. Our congregation, then, is a local expression of that identity.

And as I've written before, if we as the church are faithful to being the church, if the church is the herald of the gospel it is called to be, if the church is the body of Christ, if the church is the realization of the reign of God in the world, then we'll have no need to write any more "why I stay" posts.

Two Books Diverged in a Yellow Wood

I am currently reading “The Shack” and “Valis” at the same time. As a result, my mind is kind of splitting in two.

I’m not very far along in The Shack yet, but I’ve heard enough about it that I kind of see where it’s going. And I’m about halfway through Valis. So both books are incomplete, though it is interesting to anticipate how each is presenting the theme of God communicating with people, albeit in dramatically different ways.

In The Shack, God initiates an encounter by putting a note in a guy’s mailbox. In Valis, God initiates an encounter by sending a beam of pink light that is comprised of pure information directly into a guy’s mind. The Shack refers to God as “Papa;” Valis names God “Zebra.” The crisis in The Shack is the murder of a daughter; the crises in Valis involve drugs and cancer and mental illness, to name a few. So they are actually pretty good books to read together.

But the reason my mind is splitting in two has to do with the level of mental energy each book absorbs. So, if for some reason I am not fully engaged with Valis, and a sentence slips by without me, I’m lost. There is naught to do but go back and re-read it, because the writing is so thick and every word important. It is the kind of book that I have to set down every now and then in order to process the paragraph I have just read.

On the other hand, The Shack is very easy to read, since it is pulled along by the plot (at least so far). I mean, sometimes I may even doze off for a page and when I wake up I find that I’m able to just continue on, filling in the gaps as I go. I’m waiting for the juicy, “controversial” stuff to happen, which might be a bit more engaging, but so far I’m not seeing what all the buzz is about. It is a good mystery novel up to this point, to be sure, so we’ll see what happens with it.

Both of the books are great; I enjoy both ways to read. The complex, heady stuff in Valis charges me up in a very powerful way. And the catchy, surface level storyline of The Shack is fun to read, and makes me want to see what’s next. So I decide which book to take up and read based on what mood I’m in!

If I’m kind of tired and want a good story to occupy my mind, I read The Shack. If I’m clicking on all cylinders and want some intellectual stimulation, I pick up Valis.

Anyway, this post is pretty narcissistic, isn’t it? Let’s see, how to redeem it?

Oh, I know…

So how many books do you have going at the moment? Do you like to read just to occupy your mind, or do you like to read to stimulate your thinking? Or both?

What’s the best “just occupy your mind” book you’ve read? What’s the best “stimulate your thinking” book you’ve read?

There, now this post isn’t all about me!

Let There Be Great Rejoicing in the Land!

Mike Anderson will be the Missouri Tigers men's basketball coach for the next seven years!

Oh yeah!