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!

The Last Stop of the Day

It was the last stop of a long afternoon.

We had been out since just after lunch, bringing communion to people unable to get out to attend worship. It had been a long few hours, having driven all over town and had conversations with nine other people in four different places. Then setting up, praying the Great Thanksgiving, and serving little bites of bread and sips of grape juice to the small gatherings.

It doesn't sound like much, but it is tiring. And so now, at the last stop of the afternoon, I was kind of zoning out. I was ready to be done. I mechanically checked the supplies, seeing that we had enough bread and juice in the portable communion set.

It was a little house and an elderly couple lived there. He is quite hard of hearing and so we had to yell our greetings in his direction. She is not in the best of health and deals with almost contstant pain, but has to take care of him because he is just as bad as her, and he is starting to slip a bit mentally.

She can't leave him alone for very long at a time. Like to go to church or something.

We sat in an uncomfortably warm living room, talking with her and yelling at him, and discussed the weather and "The Shack" and flowers and how she used to read books to school children. And when enough time had passed, I got out the bread, poured juice into the little plastic cups, and turned to the Great Thanksgiving in my pocket book of worship.

"Shall we pray?" I asked.

And they nodded.

I read the prayer for the fifth time that afternoon, and didn't stumble over any words. I even emoted.

At the "Amen," I picked up the tiny plate with pieces of diced bread stacked on it, stood up and took a couple of steps over to where she was sitting. Holding out the bread, I looked into her face. Before I could say, "The body of Christ..." - my voice caught in my throat.

She was crying.

Her cheeks were wet, and tears filled her eyes. Her chin was even quivering just a little. She took the bread gently with her arthritis shaped hands. "The body of Christ is for you," I whispered.

What had happened? For me, it was the fifth Great Thanksgiving of the day; I was tired; it was diced bread and juice, some of which I had just spilled all over the back seat of the car trying to refill that silly little bottle; it was rote; it was me doing my job.

For her, it was Holy Communion.

God showed up in spite of me. For a moment there, she was connected to her church again, connected to God through the sacrament in a real and powerful way. For just a moment there, she wasn't worrying about her nearly deaf husband who was starting down the path to dementia. For a moment there, her chronic pain was not invading every waking thought.

I almost missed it. I don't think I've ever been more keenly aware of my role as a vessel of God's grace as I was upon realizing that moment. Melt me - Mold me - Fill me - Use me. God didn't even move me aside; God just went on ahead as if I wasn't there at all. It seems to me that a whole lot of ministry is just showing up. God does most of it, to tell the truth.

It happened at the last stop of the day.

The Economy, Humility, and Another Fine Mess

How does humility play in our world today? I mean, it’s certainly not the latest fad or anything. In fact, it feels like those who have humbled themselves and thought of others first and been servants of others are actually suffering quite a bit these days – losing jobs, losing retirement funds, caught in bad mortgages – its all under the umbrella of “the economy.”

While unfathomable greed has led a relatively few unscrupulous people to do things for their own sakes that impact others in horrible ways without a second thought, just about everyone else has just been trying to live life, make a living, feed a family, enjoy a bit of comfort, simply be who they are. I’m not being naïve about this, though. I get it; a lot of people had to make a lot of bad decisions in order to land our economy in the state it is in now.

But neither am I going to over-simplify things by thinking that people finding themselves in financial trouble have only themselves to blame for it. The truth is, 95% of us don’t understand enough about “the economy” to even ask intelligent questions about it. And so, in order to avoid getting stuck in figuring out who is to blame for the situation, the question becomes: What shall we do next?

And in that sense, humility has an enormous role to play. If we take seriously the words of Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves,” then the Christian response to this financial crisis must be shaped by service, not judgment.

I know that a lot of people are angry at the people who “got us into this mess.” That’s okay, we can be angry as long as we don’t sin because of it, allowing the anger to fester (Ephesians 4:26). The anger isn’t bad, but if we hold onto it, we get ourselves into trouble. Humility is the very thing that unlocks this anger and allows us to move on.

Erin and I were talking at lunch today, and she mentioned how during the Great Depression people would prepare extra food at dinnertime when they could, anticipating that hungry people might knock on their doors asking for a bite or two. That would never happen today, which is really sad when you think about it. Suspicion and fear would prevent that level of humility and service in most homes.

I’m pretty sure we’re not going to see humility and servanthood from Washington D.C. or Wall Street. Corporate executives are not going to turn suddenly altruistic, putting the needs of others ahead of their own. So that’s up to you and me, average everyday people out here living our lives in the best way we know how.

We have got to help each other through this, without judgment or blame, looking not to our own needs but to the needs of others. At this point, it really doesn’t matter how “they” got into this mess; there is a mess, and so let’s get busy cleaning it up. A bit of humility, a little service, a little self-emptying here and there will go a long, long way toward making things better for everyone.

Morphing Into Servanthood

One of the things a congregation should do is equip people to serve. It appears in the promises of membership, as one of the aspects of faith through which people promise to support the congregation – “…prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness…”

Often when we think of serving, we think of particular actions, like preparing a meal or volunteering in a clothes closet or going on a mission trip. How often do we think about the attitude that underlies these actions? How often do we think about the motivation behind them?

See, not only did Jesus serve, he took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7). The word “form” is from the Greek word morphe, which is in the English language as the verb “morph,” very common in the superhero/fantasy vernacular. It is used when a character takes on a new identity.

In taking on a servant’s form, Jesus was doing more than going through the motions of serving others. He was taking on the identity of a servant. “Though he was in the ‘form’ of God,” he voided himself of this “form” (2:6) in order to take on another form altogether.

It reminds me of the difference between a politician serving soup in a homeless shelter for the sake of a photo opportunity versus a person whose only thought is to help other people in every single moment. It is about an authentic attitude of servanthood guiding our every action. The acts themselves are manifestations of the attitude.

One of the “General Rules” for Methodists says that they will “continue to evidence their desire of salvation” by “doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and as far as possible, to all.” In other words, taking the form of a servant, in humility and selflessness, always regarding the needs of others before one’s own needs.

It's interesting to me how that word also carries a different meaning. Sometimes when you're talking about an object having the "form" of something, you mean that it is shallow. As in someone who claims to be something that they are not, like an "in name only" kind of deal. It is possible to be all form and no content.

I know that the church sometimes does that, kind of pretending to be the church or acting as if it is the church, all the while functioning actually as a social club, or a place of business, or a family chapel. Certainly there are individual Christians that do so, too. As if the "form" of servanthood is a mask one can put on and take off, but isn't any deeper than that.

This meaning of "form" is not the meaning conveyed in Philippians 2, however. Jesus did not just put on a human mask over a divine identity. (This heresy is called docetism, I believe.) Rather, the incarnation is about God truly becoming human, flesh and blood, a really real in your face human being.

Christians serve a Lord who is a Servant - one of the beautiful paradoxes of our faith. As churches equip people to serve, we are striving to live Christlike lives. Regarding others in all we say and do and are means morphing into servanthood, just like Jesus did.

This is our world...

Here's a few snapshots of the world we live in.

The president has a message to Iran, so he posts a video on the White House website.

I don't want to watch the game CBS has on my TV, so I pick a different one from their website and watch it on my computer.

We miss last night's episode of ER because we were at a foster parent training, so we just watch it on Hulu the next day.

There is at least as much buzz about the change in Facebook's homepage as there is about the 9% unemployment rate.

There is great freedom. There is immediacy. There is a sense of profound connection to the world. One can find answers to one's questions. One can discover questions that one did not even know were being asked. Plus, it's just pretty darn enjoyable (to continue a theme from last post).

The "if" clause that precedes it all is access to the technology that makes it available. With the technology comes access to the information. With the information comes empowerment.

So shouldn't one of the things the church does be ensuring access to the technology that empowers people? Laptop giveaways? Free internet cafes made available to the community? Technology classes equipping people to use the tools available?

What say you? Anybody already have any kind of ministry like this happening? Good idea?

The 500th Post - Enjoyment!

This is my 500th Enter the Rainbow post. Click here to read the first.

In January of 2005, when I started this blog, it was still a fairly new thing. It's funny to think of something that's only four years old as being old, but it feels that way. So it goes.

Why blog? What's the point? Why do I do it? Four years, 500 posts - there must be some purpose there, mustn't there?

Well, I'm reading Philip K. Dick's novel "Valis" at the moment and there's a line that really caught my attention toward the beginning of chapter 6. "Fat had no concept of enjoyment; he knew only meaning." ("Fat" is the hero of the book, Horselover Fat.)

So I've been thinking about that a lot, the relationship between enjoyment and meaning. And I think that sometimes in the search for meaning we forget to enjoy. Maybe we're so obsessed about being purpose driven that we forget to simply have a good time.

Another book I'm reading at the moment, called "Simple Church" advocates adopting a simple disciple-making process and then "abandoning" everything else that your church does. The softball team? The Wednesday night knitters? The arthritis excercise class? Really? Where's the fun in that?

I'm not sure I dig the idea that everything you do, individually or as a community, has to fall within the boundaries of a narrowly focused mission. I don't even think everything you do has to actually mean something. That's just exhausting.

And so there is no purpose for my blog. There is no meaning or mission statement or overarching vision.

I just enjoy it. I have for 500 posts, and I'll keep doing it until I don't enjoy it anymore. I hope you enjoy reading it; I really enjoy reading your comments. I enjoy the back-and-forth, hearing a bunch of different ideas. I enjoy seeing my ideas on screen and seeing how they have changed over time. I enjoy writing about the church, about my favorite sports teams, about theology, about my kids, about foster parenting, about social issues, about politics, and about nonsense.

I write this blog because I enjoy it. That's all. Thanks for reading!

A Psalm:

What

the

hell

is happening here?