Author Archives: Jim Honig

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About Jim Honig

Lutheran pastor in the western suburbs of Chicago. I'm a writer, a runner, an avid outdoorsman, and a curious student of people and the human condition.

Living in the Tension

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Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski in his essay, Modernity on Endless Trial writes about the constant tension between conservation and evolution. Human society, he posits, lives in the pull between wanting to hang on to the old and the reality of constant change.

His thesis has the ring of truth to me, not only in society, but also in my own life, and in the church that I serve.

I like new things. I like new shirts and new sweaters. At the same time, there are a few of my old things that I hang on to and wear even beyond when they ought to be replaced. I have two flannel shirts that I’m thinking of. They are soft, they fit me really nicely, they have long tails so they tuck and in and don’t come out of my pants even when I’m working in the yard or on some house project. And I keep wearing them, even though I have other flannel shirts that I could wear. Each of my old favorites has a couple of broken buttons; I could replace the buttons, but I haven’t yet. I keep wearing them with the broken buttons. By contrast, I can think of other items in my wardrobe that have immediately become favorites upon their purchase and they have quickly replaced other items that I used to wear regularly. What’s to account for the difference? I don’t know.

I do know that I encounter the same thing in the congregation as a living organism. I can think of one woman in a former parish who was all about innovation in worship. I introduced a gospel procession and she loved it. I was the first pastor to enlist women to read the lessons. She loved the new way. The list is long of new things I brought to our worship life that she loved. I can think of one that she didn’t: the Good Friday Tenebrae service. When we left behind Tenebrae for the Liturgy of the Cross, she was quite vehement that we needed to go back to Tenebrae. To her credit, it wasn’t even that she didn’t like the Liturgy of the Cross; there was just some emotional connection with the old that she wasn’t willing to give up.

Some people love new hymns and they want to make sure we sing their old favorites. Some people want to completely eschew the liturgy, but don’t want to see certain rituals disappear. Some people are gung-ho for new ministries and programs and don’t want to put to rest old programs that no longer serve their purpose.

I don’t know how to account for it, but I do know that it’s real, in my own life, and as I experience parish life with other members of our church community. I don’t know that it’s even a bad thing, or that it’s something that we should work to change in ourselves. But I do think it’s something that’s useful to remember and to call ourselves out on. And in being aware of it in ourselves and in others might make us a little less emotionally reactionary when we do encounter change or when we experience others encountering change.

I think it’s also useful to remember the tension especially when we hear the constant voice for change in the church. That shouting becomes so loud sometimes that I can’t hear anything else. “We’ve got to change or we’re going to die!” Yes, there’s always a drive to be relevant to current culture, but the church has been fairly successful at doing that for a long time. And the biggest changes in the church have not come because someone said, “We’ve got to change or we’re going to die.”

I think of Martin Luther, for instance, who had no intentions of leaving the church or starting a movement. In many ways, he was a deeply conservative man who simply wanted to restore right teaching to the church that he held dear.  Yet he was on the cutting edge of so many changes in the church and in western society in general.

I don’t think everything from the past is worth hanging on to. Some is. I don’t think that everything new is worth embracing. Some is. So, we live in the tension. And I think this is so key to understand — we live in the tension. Let’s acknowledge it, accept that it is part of our personality and that as a collection of individuals, it’s part of our life as church. Let’s acknowledge the tension and then work together in community to discern what is worth hanging on to and what is worth embracing.

Change and Fear

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We need to think with more clarity about change.

The fuzzy thinking came up again, as it does quite often, in a bible class that I regularly teach on Thursday mornings. The participants are all retired and range in age from about 70 to 90-something. One of our 90-something men was an executive with Sears and Roebuck, and has kept up with trends in corporate excellence and success. He is fond of sharing sound-bite phrases and aphorismic wisdom, relating them somehow to the particular passage we are studying for the day.

This week, I introduced a study of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Honestly, I can’t even remember now how it came up, but my beloved bible study partner (and I really do have a great deal of respect and affection for this man) interrupted and interjected, “It seems like it always comes down to “change” and how much we dislike change and how hard change is.”

I would agree with my friend if what he means is that change is constant and often uncomfortable. What I would disagree with is that change is the root issue. People love to change if they perceive that change is beneficial. When Bob and Mary take two weeks of vacation in January and escape the harsh Chicago winter to spend some time on the beach in Aruba, that’s change. But it’s not difficult. In fact, that’s why they go — because they deeply want a change from the cold, snow, and disagreeable weather of Chicago in the winter. Millions of people play the lottery in hope of experiencing a deep change in their lifestyle; if they win, they will quit their job, travel, pay off all their bills, and give away ginormous amounts of money. And for most players, those aspirations represent change.That’s not how they are currently living.

So, it’s not change per se that we don’t like. This light bulb came on for me again a few weeks ago reading an early section of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ron Heifitz, et. al. He makes the strong case that change is not the problem, it’s fear of loss.

That rings true to me, both theologically and practically. While change may indeed be hard in some instances, change is not what causes anxiety deep down. It’s the fear of what we might be losing.

At a very root level of our personal and corporate faith, it’s one of the reasons repentance is so hard. To repent is to turn around from the way we’ve been living before God. To do that, some things need to change. And with that change comes the fear of giving up sovereignty of our lives in the call to follow Christ. We fear that God may call us to do something that requires risk and to give up something that brings pleasure or satisfaction.

At a more practical level, I see that fear of loss happening all over congregational life. As communities and culture change, congregations can’t stay the same. We have to be constantly seeking ways to share the love of Christ and forming people in their faith in a meaningful way. What played in 1970 doesn’t necessarily play today. So, change becomes a constant. And with change comes the fear of what might be lost.

A few years ago, at the recommendation of our Director of Family Ministry, we shut down a long-standing tradition of a midweek after school program for children. The reality was that participation had been dwindling for some time. In our community there is simply a lot going on; many (can I say most?) parents want their children to experience a wide range of activities. So in contrast to a day when an after school activity at church may have been the only game in town, there is now significant competition in that midweek after school time slot. With respect to our particular program, families were making other choices about where their kids would go after school on Wednesdays.

There was a lot of anxiety about that change and some fairly strong resistance. As I reflect on that change, the greatest reaction came from two places: those who had been involved in the leadership of that program in its early years, and members who had participated in that program and who were now parents themselves (or a corollary: those whose kids had participated and wanted the opportunity available for grandkids).

In one case, the fear was losing their connection to and personal identity with a program that had been meaningful for many children and families over the years, and I suppose the fear that we would no longer be doing meaningful ministry with kids. In the other case, the fear was that their children would not have meaningful experiences at church like they had. Thankfully the leaders have gone on to other ministries which are meaningful and allow them to use their gifts. And we have birthed other opportunities for children to be formed in the faith and to have meaningful experiences at church.

Part of the art of pastoral and congregational leadership is to think and act more clearly when it comes to change. Change is inevitable; growth is an option. And for growth to happen as things change, leaders would do well to think about and anticipate what people might be losing in the process of change. Leaders would also do well to discover ways to articulate the possibility of loss and to articulate the good that is also possible or even likely in the new. That articulation has to include conversations where what is lost and what might be gained can be talked about honestly and safely. Effective leaders will discover ways to draw out the fear that people are experiencing as they walk through change. We can’t fully eliminate people’s fear of loss. But we can minimize it and help alleviate it by anticipating it and helping people talk about it.

And we can keep pointing to the Constant in a sea of change. In the church of my childhood, evening services were common in the seasons of Advent and Lent. And I remember that nearly every one of those services included the hymn Abide with Me. Even now, as I recall my childhood from the vantage point of someone past middle age, I can sing several verses of that hymn from memory. And one of the lines that so often pops into my head is this:

. . .Change and decay in all around I see;

Oh, Thou who changest not, abide with me.

On Being a Pastor and Leading Worship

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Several weeks ago, I attended our monthly denominational pastors’ meeting, a meeting which routinely begins with some kind of worship. The host pastor began by telling us how happy he was to be able to offer this worship experience for the other pastors because as those who lead worship, he suggested, we never get to “really” worship. We’re too busy and distracted with leading the worship of the rest of the congregation to actually worship ourselves. Or so the mantra goes.

I write this coming off a Holy Week intense with worship. In our congregation, Holy Week is a big deal. It’s the pinnacle of the church year, at least as far as worship goes. We inaugurate the week with Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday worship that is rich in movement, ritual, and Word. We are one of the few Protestant congregations in the whole country, I suspect, that actually has services on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in Holy Week. Then, of course, there is the Great Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and The Holy Saturday Easter Vigil. While this one service that happens over three days is my favorite of the year, it requires a lot of my energy, time, and focus. What’s more, I also know that I have to gear up for Easter Sunday, the day in which our attendance swells to almost three times our average Sunday attendance. In short, as a worship leader and planner, this week is as intense, taxing, and exhausting as it gets. Not only is there a lot of effort that goes into planning and preparing for this week, there are simply a lot of details that have to be attended to in the moment of leading worship.

Yet, I cannot say that as a worship planner and leader that I find it difficult to actually worship. It is not a part of my experience that leading worship stands as an obstacle to worshiping myself. I find that my own experience of meeting God in word and sacrament, in prayer and fellowship, in the context of these rich services is profoundly meaningful.

No doubt, there are other places I worship. Even other places I appreciate worshiping  For instance, there are conferences I go to where I enjoy opportunities to worship with colleagues. But those occasions are not the only times during the year when I can truly worship. Nor are they the worship experiences that I prefer.

There is an image from our Good Friday Liturgy of the Cross that is engraved in my memory. At the end of the service, while we sing The Reproaches, we invite worshipers to come forward for some personal act of reverence at the foot of a large, rough-hewn cross that has just been brought into the sanctuary. Most kneel at the cross for a moment of prayer, some touch it, some even kiss it. Last Friday, a family of five came forward: Mom, Dad, young son and daughter, and Mom’s mom, aka Grandma. Grandma knelt at the altar railing, folding her hands in a moment of prayer without touching the cross. Mom and daughter (1st grade plus or minus) knelt at the opposite side of the cross. Dad and son (3rd grade plus or minus) knelt at the foot of the cross. Junior didn’t seem to know exactly what to do, but when Dad put his hand on the cross, the young boy imitated his father almost exactly. It would have been a touching, Norman Rockwell-like image to even the most casual observer.

And as pastor of the congregation, I saw what the casual observer could never have known. Six weeks earlier, we held the memorial service for Grandma’s husband in that very sanctuary. On Maundy Thursday afternoon, just one day before this veneration of the cross, I had visited with Grandma in her home just to check in about how she was doing in the aftermath of her beloved husband’s death. And I knew that all of them, even the young son and daughter knelt at the foot of that cross with a much more palpable experience of death than many of the worshipers at that service. And I also knew that the community of faith had embraced them and held them, literally, and figuratively in prayer. So, for them to come to the cross in a moment of profound reverence was more than just following the crowd to the front of the church. It was meeting God. How could that not be a moment of worship for me also as a pastoral leader of the congregation?

See, while there are other places that I appreciate worshiping, there are none that I’d rather be a part of than my own church family, even though I am also a leader of this family. This community where I am a pastoral leader is also my church home. These are the people that I have lashed myself to the mast with so that we are sailing on the seas together when the seas are calm, when they are rough, and when they are downright dangerous. We are in this together. These are the people who recognize my gifts and also my deficiencies. These are the people who complain about the hymn that I chose, but also express their deep gratitude when I have touched them deeply through something I have proclaimed in a sermon. These are the people whose insecurities and defensiveness sometimes drive me crazy and these are the people who also know my sometimes very ugly humanness. This is my church home, and these are the people I want to sing with, pray with, hear the Word with, share the meal with, and grow in faith and service with.

What I prefer is to worship with my tribe, the people that I have to live with day in and day out. And just because I am standing up front and trying to concentrate on my sermon and what comes next and why the lector isn’t coming to the ambo and why there is commotion in the balcony with the choir and what I should do as I discover that a hymn number is printed incorrectly in the bulletin — just because these are the realities of worshiping with a community comprised of fallible human beings, it doesn’t mean that I can’t worship with them. In fact, this is worship at its best.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

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I’m a reader. Some books I enjoy, some I don’t, and lots are in-between. Occasionally, I read a book that has a deep impact.

A few weeks ago, finished a book like that: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. This 2011 Booker Prize winner appeared in my office around Christmas time as a gift from a member of Faith. I say that because I’m not sure it’s a book I would have picked up based on the dustcover description.

Barnes has written several novels and it’s clear that he is a master of his craft. The book is well-written and the plot wonderfully inventive. As a writer myself, I’m interested in the writing process and I kept asking myself, “How did Barnes think of that?”

The story opens by recounting a friendship between four English boarding school students. The narrator remembers events that happen after they finish boarding school and go off to university, including a romance that ends badly. In a happening pivotal to the story, she ends up with one of his friends.

The second half or so of the book jumps decades forward to the narrator as an older man, retired and now unexpectedly in contact with the woman he once lost to his friend. Who remembers what, how accurate are the memories, and what path has led them to where they now are in their lives — these are the questions that drive this part of the story.

And these are the questions that have driven me to some significant reflection on my own life. There’s no such thing as being in control of our lives. There are too many things that happen that simply happen — we are recipients or victims as the case may be. On the other hand, there is also the possibility of guiding the trajectory of our lives by the decisions we make, the work that we do, the values and priorities we set. So, the question is, to what extent will I simply be reactive to what happens around me? Or will I use some of my energy, determination and persistence to push my life in a certain direction? And if there are changes that I need to make for that to happen, am I willing to shake up the status quo ante with which I have become comfortable?

Here’s another big one that I’ve been thinking about: to what extent do we remember with any accuracy at all what has happened in our distant past. My father died last September. I’ve said publicly that my father’s life was in some ways tragic. I feel like he never quite found his calling and was always dissatisfied and restless. The most he ever stayed with any employer was 5 years, and usually it was more like 3 years. That, of course, meant lots of instability and change for our family.

After dad’s death, I began a writing project to go back and record what I remember of my father from my earliest memories up to the past few years as his health declined and  he died suddenly in the fall. I found that memories of certain events jogged my memory to other contiguous events, things that I hadn’t thought about for years and years. So I wrote much more than I expected. And the narrative became not just a narrative of my memories about my father, but of my own childhood and our whole family. I tried to recount with joy and appreciation when I could, and to be honest about the whole thing, not trying to gloss over the struggles. As a result, my memories were not always complimentary.

So, now I’m wondering. How much of what I remember and what I’ve written really happened? How far off have I wandered into my own interpretations of those events?  I’ve been around long enough to know that our memories never reflect exactly what happened. They are always conditioned by so much subjectivity. As I was I reading The Sense of an Ending, I realized that I’ve lived with the arrogance of convincing myself that I had written an accurate and definitive description of what my father was like as I grew up. But that’s wrong. The best I can say is that I’ve recorded what I remember; and it’s heavily influenced by the trajectory and events of my own life, and indeed, the very things I’m experiencing in my life in the present.

At the very least, I’ve determined that I’m going to shy away from language of certainty about what has happened in the past, and I’m going to seek to live with a little more grace, not only in my memories of others, but also as I hear others tell their own stories.

One of the signs of a good story is the reflection it prompts on the part of the reader. On that score, The Sense of and Ending gets two thumbs up.

Save It for Monday

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As I sat in a sticky booth at IHOP, talking with a pastoral colleague over pancakes and scrambled eggs, I heard a familiar story. A Sunday morning service just finished. Pastors standing at the door greeting parishioners. Some folks always have comments about the service, usually good, mostly generic. And then comes the occasional verbal hand grenade, set to detonate right there in the line out of church, just after the service.  In this case, my colleague had done the prayers of the church and had prayed for peace, for an end to the war in Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine, Syria, and other places around the world. And one of the congregants assailed him in what my colleague characterized as harsh language and a harsh tone of voice, “Why aren’t you praying for our troops? We’re working trying to bring democracy in places that have only known tyranny, and you’re praying for peace. Why don’t you try praying for. . .”

For now, I’m not interested in the substance of the comments. But I do have something to say about that kind of harsh criticism immediately after a service, even when the message has a modicum of truth.

Years ago, I heard a seasoned and highly respected pastor say at a workshop about building a cohesive church staff, “On Sunday everything is perfect. Not until Monday do you even think about addressing what went wrong or what could be improved.”

The truth that stands behind his sound bite is this: every professional church leader and every lay volunteer who is involved in Sunday morning worship pours his heart and soul into what he does. There is no professional detachment. It’s personal. What she does and what she says comes from a deep place of her own calling, her picture of God and how God has called her, and her best efforts at using her gifts and talents in God’s service. Because it comes from such a deep place and is expressive of something so closely tied to our very identity, and because we’ve worked hard and are just now taking a relaxing breath, any criticism, even if constructive, will likely be heard as a personal attack in the few minutes after a service. Those few moments are moments of vulnerability.

I have tried to follow my wise colleague’s principle in my own ministry with both staff and volunteers. In those moments immediately after the service, I try be effusive in sharing my gratitude for those who have contributed to Sunday morning. I try every week to thank my professional colleagues, trying to mention something specific they have done that I have appreciated. I have attempted to thank all the volunteers, from ushers to altar guild to lectors to assisting ministers to acolytes. “Thank you for your service” or “Thanks for sharing your gifts” or “I really appreciated the way you read that second lesson this morning.”

Because worship always involves human beings and always is messy and always includes mistakes and other distractions, it’s never perfect. So, there are always things to address that could be improved. And I always, I mean ALWAYS, refuse to even mention them on Sunday, but address them during the week that follows. When both staff and volunteers have had a chance to sleep on it and are a little more detached, they are much more able to hear criticism as constructive and not personal. We can acknowledge the good things they did. And we can talk much more calmly about what went wrong or what was a little weak and how to make it better next time.

So, if you are a person sitting in the pew Sunday after Sunday, and you have some thoughts about what went wrong or what could be improved, file it away. Don’t lose track of it. Make sure you make time to offer your feedback. Just don’t do it on Sunday. On the way out of the service, you have no idea what a world of good you will do even if all you can say is “Thank you for sharing your gifts today. I’m grateful for you.”

 

I Am My Brother’s Keeper

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There aren’t very many Lutherans in Syria. Which helps to explain why it was unusual, to say the least, that sitting the pews of our suburban, white, historically Swedish congregation on a recent Sunday there were six youth and 2 adults who were all either born in Syria or whose parents were born in Syria.

As a result of common work in our community we have a relationship with a mosque from another nearby Chicago suburb. When they were trying to secure building permits for a new mosque, we went to the mat for them in helping to convince county government that all religious institutions – not just Christian religious institutions – are part of the strengthening fabric of our communities.

So when they put out the call offering to have representatives from their mosque come to our congregation to tell their story and to solicit our prayers for peace in Syria, I was quick to accept their offer and invite them to speak.

What I didn’t expect was the powerful testimony that took place. The youth that showed up on Sunday morning were all in high school. They weren’t politicians, they weren’t pundits, and they weren’t ideologues. They were sons, daughters, cousins, and granddaughters. And they told of how the violence in Syria is a story that is impacting their families. Ameer told of how his cousin in Syria was abruptly taken from his family’s apartment in Homs and not heard of for three weeks. Feared dead, he was one of the lucky ones and was dropped at the door of his family’s apartment, his body black and blue and broken from his torture at the hand of government forces. Sarah told of her grandparents who had just barely managed to flee Syria, the land of their birth and the land where they lived their entire lives until one month ago. She told of sitting and watching the reports on TV and seeing her grandparents weep for their friends, their family, their community, and their country.

For months, I have watched with outrage at the way the Syrian government and military are brutally attacking civilian populations and quelling any dissent. I have been frustrated at what seems to me the lukewarm response of the international community. Now my outrage has become personal. This is Ameer’s cousin and Sarah’s grandparents. The global community has shrunk to the point where the violence in Homs is violence against my community and my friends and my brothers and my sisters.

Leave it to a few high school youth whose ancestral homeland, culture, customs, and religion are different from mine to remind me that we are all part of the same family and that somehow, I am my brother’s keeper.

Pray without Ceasing?

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Over the past six months, I have been working at cultivating a more regular prayer life. And I cannot report the effort an unqualified success.

Prayer is supposed to be part of the life of every Christian (every religious person?), and certainly it ought to be part of the life of every church leader. I get that in my head. I have found it hard to put into practice.

To be fair with myself, I pray. But it happens mostly in gatherings with other people.  Prayer is obviously a part of our weekly Sunday services, and I pray as I write sermons, and as I join in the corporate prayers of the gathered people of God.  Our church staff meets for a brief service of scripture, reflection, and prayer every morning, Monday through Thursday. I’m usually there. Prayer is a significant part of those services and I engage seriously and sincerely. So, it’s not like I never pray.

The challenging part has been developing that regular, every day, at the same time every day, discipline and practice of regular private prayer. It seems like I go a few days in a row and then suddenly it’s been a week without. It shouldn’t be that hard, should it?

Almost a year ago, I registered for the Grace Institute of Spiritual Formation, figuring that after trying to go it alone for years with not much to show for it, maybe I needed some professional help. The spiritual formation process consists of 8 three-day retreats spread over two years. Each retreat includes a cognitive element in which we learn intellectually about some aspect of spiritual discipline and spiritual practices and each retreat includes time to engage in those practices both alone and in the context of a small covenant group.

I’ve now attended two of those retreats and while they’ve been helpful, they haven’t been a magic bullet. I’ve gotten instruction and some practice in different kinds of prayer. I’ve gotten encouragement to develop a more disciplined prayer life. But what I have not gotten is some easy, foolproof solution to what I have viewed as a problem for a long time – how to develop a disciplined and regular prayer life.

Part of what I’m trying to come to grips with is that my challenge to pray is not just about prayer. It’s about the contours of my life and personality. I do not like routine. There are things I do regularly, but find that I need to switch them up often. I exercise regularly, but don’t like doing the same thing over and over. I don’t like my days to look the same day after day. I find that after a few months of using the same process for sermon generation, I need to change it and do it a different way for a while. I don’t like cooking the same things week after week and am always on the lookout for new recipes.

So accepting that this is the way I am, what I’m trying to figure out is how to make prayer a regular part of my days, knowing that a rigid routine is probably not going to work for me.

In all of it, what I’m learning is that for me at least, developing the habit and practice of prayer is work; it is hard. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep trying, but it does mean that the magic bullet, the whiz-bang solution are probably not out there. I let you know how it goes.

That They May Be One

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When I was in the seminary 25 years ago, my 20th Century Christianity class studied the ecumenical movement that experienced it’s glory days in the early 20th century. We read books about how big international conferences brought together theologians and other church leaders from around the world to talk about the unity of the church and to devise strategies for how that unity might be lived out in the church. They made grand pronouncements and issued statements that seminary students will read and study for time immemorial. I was so intrigued with these  dialogues that I did independent study on the dialogues between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches in the US, beginning in the 1960’s. While still a seminary student, the 1985 pivotal dialogue on justification was completed and the statement and accompanying study papers published. As a parish pastor in a denomination that had a very narrow position on union and cooperation with other church bodies, I watched from afar with admiration as dialogues led to actual formal agreement and cooperation. Ten years ago, when I entered the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I had long admired their aggressive vision for fellowship, ambitious dialogue agenda, and subsequent agreements and statements of agreement.

While grateful for the work and agreement on the denominational level, I have at the same time held some restlessness about church body agreements that never find their way to the local parish level. Until they get lived out in the grit of St. John’s by the Gas Station, they are little more than academic exercises. I am a company man and support denominational initiatives; yet I also believe that the primary expression of the church is at the local level where God’s called people gather weekly around the gifts of God at pulpit, font, and table. And I often lament how relatively rarely the unity of the church finds expression at the congregational level. Rather than working together in any meaningful way, local congregations more often see themselves in competition with neighboring churches for a dwindling number of folks who have any interest in participating in the life of a congregation, regardless of teaching, theology, or denomination. I am shocked at the number of times I find pastors who have never even met their colleagues at congregations that stand mere blocks from their own.

That’s why I took particular joy yesterday in being part of a budding partnership between 2 Episcopalian parishes and 3 ELCA Lutheran parishes in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, the western suburb of Chicago where I live and serve as pastor. Almost a year ago, the five congregations entered into conversation about how we might work together to do the work of the Kingdom more effectively and more efficiently, and more importantly, how we might live out God’s vision and Jesus’ prayer that the church be one.

Here’s what happened yesterday: pastors from the five churches left their own pulpits and tables and went to one of the partner congregations to preach and preside. I was guest at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church and took joy in sharing the Word and the Table with the good people of that neighboring parish.

In the broad scheme of things this is small potatoes. One might ask, “What did it accomplish, really?”

This afternoon I sat in my office when one of our members, an active member who has such a strong and generous vision of church, came into my office and said, “I think that what you did yesterday is such a good idea. It’s about time.” Yes, it’s about time. To the skeptics, yes, exchanging pulpits for a Sunday will not change the world or the church. But it sent a clear message to the members of all five congregations that we are not in competition with one another. Not one of us holds the whole truth or has a corner on the best way to do congregational ministry. We proclaimed that we will stand together before we stand alone and that we believe that we are stronger in partnership than we are as lone rangers. And we have let our members and the community know that in the future we intend to join hand in hand and live out the vision that the church be one.

Like a young man and woman trying to figure out a new relationship, there will be awkward times, messy times, and a lot of times when we don’t know what to do next or whether we’re doing the right thing at this exact moment. And there will be joy exhilaration in discovering that we are more together than we are apart.

When I told the woman in my office this afternoon that the next step is for the church councils/vestries of the five congregations to meet together for a joint meeting in March, she could hardly believe it. She asked, “Does the new church council know this?” as if it was something that could never really happen. We have a ways to go. There will be obstacles, both practical and attitudinal. And I am grateful to have colleagues and leaders who see a larger vision for the church than to sit on proximate corners in the same community as self-contained silos.

A Good Place to Die From

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After the early service on Sunday, someone came up to me and said, “Faith is really a good place to die from!”  How’s that for a marketing phrase? Wouldn’t they just be breaking the door down if that word got out?!

She was making reference to a memorial service the day before for one of our beloved, active members who had died earlier in the week after living for a long time with cancer and finally dying from the effects of the disease on his body.

I will blow my (our) own horn a little and say that we really do funerals and memorial services well here. We spend time with the family talking about memories of their beloved who has died, in conversation about scripture that may have been meaningful to them or to the survivors or that would make some special connection with their own life of faith. We talk about favorite hymns, and hymns that the larger church sings, hymns that may open a window of meaning for the service we are planning.

While there is always sadness at a funeral or memorial service, we plan so that the hope of resurrection predominates. What we plan is in direct contrast to what our culture demands that a memorial service should be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that they want the service to be a celebration of the life of the deceased. That has become the cultural norm. And that is defiantly not what we do.

I’m not really that interested in an anthropocentric celebration of a broken life, however virtuous it may appear on the surface. What the church is called to do is celebrate the life that God gives in Christ. So, we hold up the promise of God given in baptism, now fulfilled in death.

The church  – in contrast to the culture – will rightly call attention to how God’s love shone through the life and work of the deceased. In this instance, Bill was not only regular in worship attendance, but was engaged in nearly every Monday evening bible class I’ve taught over the past 10 years. We shared a lot of time together and over the course of years developed a common language for talking about faith, our brokenness, and God’s goodness and promises in Christ. Bill also held a deep concern for the poor and that the faith be transmitted to the next generation. And he was actively involved in a few of our ministries concerned with those very things. So, even though I could rightly give thanks for the pastoral relationship and the ways in which I got to know Bill, my job last Saturday was not to proclaim Bill, but to proclaim resurrection. No virtues of the deceased count a whit in death. And the fact that I as pastor was close to Bill will get him no chits at the pearly gates.

No, what we celebrate is the promises of God, repeated over and over, day after day through life and now made complete in death. That’s why we can have a spirit of joy in the midst of grief and look to resurrection when the signs of death are all around us. It’s why we can sing our Easter alleluias even as we stand at an open grave.

AND it’s my job to remind those who are gathered in their black mourning clothes that we don’t have to wait until we die to live in resurrection. By virtue of our baptism that’s the way we get to live each day.

Brother Bill, whose body we laid to rest knew that. He lived that. Bill lived in the midst of resurrection even as his body was being taken over by disease.

So, because that’s what we celebrate, I suppose it’s true: Faith Church in particular and the Christian church in general – they are pretty good places to die from.

Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

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Let me create a couple of scenarios, an amalgamation of people struggling with a dry period in their spiritual life. Let’s talk about John and Mary, two different people (fictional) who in different ways are walking through the wilderness, and are finding it hard to go to church.

John has experienced an unexpected and shocking cluster of deaths, in his family, a colleague at work, and a couple of tragic accidents of leaders in the community.  John is in his early 50’s, in good health, a good job, a good family. A good guy all around. Yet he’s finding it hard to go to church. Strangely enough, at his age, until now he hasn’t experienced death within his close circle of family and friends. Death has always been at arms length, something that happens to someone else.  Now with the cluster of death, he’s asking a lot of questions that haven’t been very real before, questions about life, death, who God is, what God is really like, why bad things happen, the often inexplicable and seeming random nature of things that happen. The answers that he’s looking for don’t seem to be coming, and the life and vitality he consistently has found in the church just don’t seem to be there anymore.

Mary recently went through a divorce. For her, the church has also been a place of spiritual life and vitality for a long, long time. But now after her divorce, church has become a place that reminds her of the pain of her present life and grief over what she has lost. She and her family always attended church together. Now her kids are gone from home, and she has to attend alone. She and her husband were active in lots of ministries together. Even though he has left the church, there are constant reminders of what is no longer true. And the caring people of her faith community ask her how she’s doing to the point that she is tired of answering the question and just wants to stay away to avoid having to talk about it one more time.

Now both John and Mary, to their credit, are still coming to church. And I suspect that this time of walking through the wilderness will not last. There will come a time when being a part of their congregations will once again be full of life and vitality.

As a pastor, I haven’t had the option of walking away from regular attendance, but I have known my times of walking through the wilderness. There have been times in my life and ministry when I was going through the motions, when I wasn’t sure where God was or even, if I’m honest, if there was such a thing as a personal God who cared a whit about me.

I don’t think that’s unusual or should be particularly alarming. Life is like that. Most marriages go through dry periods. Most people go through times of vocational uncertainty. We get restless, bored, flat, directionless.

I’m a marathoner – not a good one, just one who hopes to finish the races I start. In every marathon I’ve run there have been times when all I could do was put one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t think about getting to the next mile marker or the next water station, much less the finish line. I cared nothing about whether I was maintaining my pace. It was just put one foot in front of the other and then one more step and one more stop and so on. And in every case, I have finally gotten to the exhilaration of the finish line.

My own spiritual wilderness wanderings have been like that. One foot in front of the other. Get up and go to church. Sing the hymns, say the prayers, listen to the Word as best I can. And I always know that by putting one foot in front of the other, I will get through the wilderness. And when I get through the dry period, I have without exception been able to look back and see that my life of faith was not dead and God was not absent.

Shouldn’t we somehow be telling people that such times are normal and even to be expected.? I almost feel like when people join our church I should give them a guidebook that tells them to expect times of barrenness and offer some counsel for getting through them.

My question today is how many people give up in the middle and never find their way back to spiritual life and vitality.