Monthly Archives: February 2013

Want to Be Relevant? Quit Trying So Hard

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Last week I finished a seven-week class on the history of Lutheranism for the members of the congregation I serve.  Admittedly, in seven weeks, we didn’t go into a lot of detail. Rather, we tried to establish the long narrative arc, the view from 20,000 feet.

To be honest, I’m not sure what possessed me. In people’s busy lives, who would come? I was certainly under no illusion that people would be knocking down the doors to learn about stuff that happened centuries ago. On the first night, I got there early, was setting things up, and kept wondering, what was I thinking? Who will come to this? Why would anyone be interested? I am, but so what?

Yet, over the course of teaching the class at three different times, over 50 people have attended. Astonishing. That’s way, way beyond what I expected.

Why’d they come? I’m not sure, except that it’s part of their story, and a part that most of them don’t know very much about. Most know the rudimentaries of Martin Luther; maybe Western Civ. classes do a decent job of situating the Protestant Reformation as a significant movement in European history. Most of us in the Lutheran tradition still observe Reformation Sunday; if nothing else, we know the 95 Theses and the castle door in Wittenberg and A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.  For most folks it doesn’t go very far beyond that. But they’re interested.

What most surprised me most was how engaged people were in the whats and whys and hows. Far more often than I expected, our treatment of highlights from the dustbin of church history led to fascinating conversations about life in the world and in the church today. One class used a conversation about the emerging church structure in the transition to Orthodoxy in the early 17th century to launch into a conversation about social media and the church. Don’t ask me how we got there. But of all the conversations about social media and the church — and I’ve had quite a few of them — this was one of the most interesting and stimulating.

I would never have thought about this class as an attempt to make the church relevant in contemporary culture. In fact, my gut told me I was going in the opposite direction. Yet  my impression is that people found it wonderfully and surprisingly relevant. Why? I’m still trying to figure that out.

I have some hunches. I’m wondering if relevance is one of those things that remains elusive as long as we are seeking it. That relevance is the by-product of something else, not a a goal that can be sought for its own sake. My son reminded me that relevance is related to meaning and we can’t impose meaning for people. They will find it on their own. We can provide context and information and a good setting for conversation. But meaning — that’s something each of us will find.

Furthermore, I’m going to try this out for a while:  relevance and meaning will come when leaders and congregations are interesting and interested,  engaged and engaging, and just plain foster a spirit of curiosity about this pretty danged awesome world God has placed us in. I don’t think every pastor ought to teach a class on the history of Lutheranism. If you’re not interested in it, don’t do it. But I am. I suspect that curiosity and my firm belief that our history does have something to say to our life together right now probably showed through. On the other hand, I’m not that interested in the intersection of religion and science. maybe you are. And if so, that interest and curiosity would, if I’m on target here, translate to a very relevant class for your parish.

Here’s what I’m suggesting as a working hypothesis: when the church accepts that gifts are given and assumes that they are to be used for the sake of God’s big thing in the world and takes action, then what we do will be relevant.

Ashes to Go

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ashes to go2013This past Wednesday — Ash Wednesday — our pastoral staff stood at the local commuter train station with our Episcopalian counterparts offering an ashen cross on the forehead of commuters who were willing to take 30 seconds out of their busy day for a spiritual moment. We’ve done this now for 4 years and it always gets a lot of attention in the press. This year, my colleague appeared in a photo on the front page of our local daily newspaper. It’s good for the church to out in the world, right?

I’m here to express a pretty strong tension and ambivalence about this practice.

Four years ago, when we began the practice annual tradition, it was new and fresh; I’ve got the personality that is always eager to try something new, just to see if it will work or not. I had heard of the practice from St. Gregory Episcopalian parish in San Francisco, though I understand it was actually conceived by an Episcopalian parish in St. Louis. I talked to my colleague at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church; he also was aware of the practice and we agreed to make it a joint project.

Here’s what we do. We stake out a little corner of the parking lot near the commuter train station that the majority of the commuters have to pass by on the way to their preferred train. We have a little table, a cross, a sandwich board sign, and two or three clergy are positioned near the table. We seek to be upbeat and hospitable, greeting people as they pass by. Some ignore us, refusing to make eye contact. Some make eye contact, smile, say a warm “hello” and keep walking. Some actually stop and ask for the ashen cross. We ask their first name and then make an ashen cross speaking the words, “Roger, remember that you are dust; to dust you shall return.” Then we hand them a card with a one-paragraph explanation of Ash Wednesday, an Ash Wednesday prayer, and the service times of our parishes printed on the back side.

On the one hand, it’s good for the church to get out in the world. Too often we do our thing inside our safe buildings and we expect people to come to us. Except they’re not coming to us. We are seen as irrelevant or worse. So, it’s good to take our message of our mortality, of the temporariness of life, of our brokenness and God’s work of healing and reconciliation to the street. It’s good to communicate that we care about more than our members, that we can be warm and hospitable, and that we don’t have to be judgmental.

On the other hand, I wonder if we are not giving the wrong impression of the church. That our rituals are paper thin; that no commitment is required; that a little spirituality in the form of ashes on the head can’t do anyone any harm. See you next year, kind of thing.

What I hope for people is that people will know God and know the peace of God’s grace and mercy, and that know the joy of being called to something bigger than themselves and that they, too, will become part of the big thing that God is doing to bring fullness to all creation. I’m just not sure that drive-by ashes at the train station brings them any closer to being a part of that big, wonderful, life-giving project.

 

 

Things Don’t Always Work Out

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I had to make one of those tough pastoral calls today. I had to bid farewell to one of our senior couples, two people who had lodged deeply in my heart over the past 10 years. They’re moving from their senior living facility to a nursing home because their money has run out.

They’ve been members at Faith for 47 years. He’s 99; she’s a year or two younger. He’s had dementia for the past 10 or 12 years, but still physically pretty strong, at least for 99. She’s solid as a rock, physically, mentally, spiritually, and until recently emotionally. You can imagine the toll that such a situation would play on a woman who was an astute business woman and accountant — she kept the books for a local real estate agency until she was 92.

Until 7 years ago, they were living in their own house. She didn’t want to move out, but finally recognized that she could no longer care for him on her own. They could have moved into one of the facilities that promised perpetual care, but instead they moved into the one that they liked better and was closer to church. They knew it would be expensive and would likely use up most of the proceeds from their house and their savings. But they also knew their age and they knew that statistically, they’d die before the money ran out and they would still be able to leave something to their one living son and to the church.

Now here they are, after having spent close to $600,000 over 7 years. They thought that their substantial savings and the profit from the sale of their house would be plenty to carry them through; now it’s all but gone. And they have no choice but to move into a facility which will take the remainder of their money. After the balance sheet reads 0, Medicare will kick in.

There are way, way too many changes for them to endure. They were two blocks from church and church people would show up regularly just to say hello. Now they will be 45 minutes from the place that has been their spiritual and social home. They have been seeing the same doctors for decades. Now they will be faced with a whole line-up of new doctors because their doctors here don’t make house calls there. They go from an apartment where they were surrounded by their own furniture and pictures and keepsakes to a single room with two hospital beds.

Here’s the hard part: having to sit with good, good people who lived their life the right way, worked hard, and planned for the future, who have come to the point of having no good choices. In what will undoubtedly be the last years, or even last months of their life, they are forced to give up the last vestiges of their former life — furniture, photos, momentos, pots and pans, their bed —  everything. And go to a place that they don’t want to be.

I don’t really have any answers. I’m not sure what I would change. But to see the pain in her face and to know the many transitions that they are being forced to make that they don’t want to make, has brought me deep sadness.

I would like to believe the platitude that things always work out. But sometimes they don’t.