A few lines from one of the letters of Flannery O’Connor:

Love and understanding are one and the same only in God. Who do you think you understand? If anybody, you delude yourself. I love a lot of people, understand none of them.

I don’t understand most of the people around me. Sometimes they simply annoy me. Sometimes, I am intrigued. I’m working on trying to be more curious and intrigued than annoyed.

This week I was chairing a gathering of about 20 clergy. Part of my job was to report on news of the judicatory. I reported about a series of workshops the judicatory is offering for congregational leaders. About 15 minutes later, when I asked if there were any announcements from the congregations, a big, loud, gregarious pastor announced that the judicatory is offering a series of workshops for congregational leaders, as if this were news to the group. Except it was the same announcement I made 15 minutes earlier. I know he was in the room. I wonder what was so pre-occupying him at the moment when I made the announcement.

In the same gathering were a senior pastor and associate pastor, a ministry team from the same congregation. The associate has accepted a senior position at a congregation about 60 miles away. Their relationship has been strained for some time. In this gathering they were cordial and said all the right things. I wonder what was going on underneath. I wonder what each of them wished they could say. I wonder how they are each feeling about the days and weeks to come.

A colleague showed up at the meeting for the first time since she hosted the monthly meeting at her church nearly a year ago. Part of it was my fault. I send out announcements for the meetings by e-mail; I had her e-mail address wrong and it took me a few fits and starts to finally make the proper correction. So when I saw her, I welcomed her to the meeting and apologized that it took me so many tries to correct what should have been a simple mistake. (I’m admittedly not very good at technology stuff.) Another colleague standing close by overheard my comments and said, “That’s ok. She doesn’t like these meetings much anyway.” While I think it was meant in jest, it felt like it hit a little too close to home to be funny. Did he intend it to be a barb, or was it just an attempt at humor that went way wide of the mark?

When you think of all the psychological baggage that each of us carries, the difficulty of communicating with any precision, our ubiquitous fears and anxieties, and all that we’ve experience in the one hour or 6 hours prior to an encounter with another human being, no wonder it’s hard to understand each other.

And yet we are remarkable. We are resilient. We are unique and complex. We so often rise above our anxieties and fears to accomplish astounding things. Though we are cracked and broken, still we are created in God’s image and that mystery comes through almost in spite of ourselves.

I’m working on trying to be more curious and intrigued than annoyed.

This past week I was in a gathering of five seasoned pastors and five seminarians, each serving a full-time internship in a congregation. We spent nearly two hours of engaging conversation about important and meaningful things. Such conversations are life-giving for me.

At one point we turned to the matter of how we handle diverse, even contradictory positions among the members of our congregations. We agreed there are several issues currently raising controversy in the larger culture that also generate conversation, controversy, and tension in our churches – homosexuality and the place of gay and lesbian persons in the church, gay marriage, abortion, the growing anti-labor sentiment, even the place of ethics within the realm of economics. The members of our congregations represent a wide spectrum of opinion on these and many other issues. Then someone asked this question, “Do you talk about these things? I mean have real, meaningful dialogue? Or do you just peacefully co-exist, sort of tolerating each other without ever engaging each other?”

The question comes at a time when, in the larger culture, we have few if any role models for having reasoned, respectful conversation about things about which we disagree. In the presidential primary debates, and lest one party be unduly targeted, even in the larger political context, our so-called leaders engage in personal attack, hyperbole, and outright lying. It doesn’t seem to be necessary anymore to speak factually about the opponent’s position or record. The hoped-for kernel of truth lies buried somewhere in a concrete vault of demagoguery.

So, that makes it all the more important that we cultivate the church as a place of true community where we can have meaningful and respectful conversations about things about which we disagree.

I recall a particular conversation in our own congregation that became an iconic pattern for subsequent conversations. In the days after the second invasion of Iraq, there was not only anxiety in the larger community, but it was palpable in our building. All week long, the building was buzzing, people talking with concern in their voices about this new war. In our congregation, we have conservative hawks, avowed pacifists, and everything in between. So, one Sunday, we invited people to gather in our fellowship hall in the hour between our services just to talk and listen. I set some ground rules for our conversation and then the associate pastor and I each spent about 5 minutes talking about what we were thinking and feeling. Then we opened the floor. What happened was a remarkably open and respectful conversation. People talked, and more importantly, genuinely listened. Before long, speakers were acknowledging opposing viewpoints as they spoke their own opinions. There didn’t seem to be a drive to convince the other about the rightness of “my” opinion, nor any need to belittle “your” opinion as wrong. It was genuine dialogue.

This is the kind of thing we have to cultivate in the church. We have to give people the sense of the wonder and gift of true dialogue. And we have to give people the space and the opportunity to practice this skill so they can take it into the larger community where, at least as I observe, it rarely if ever happens.

Civil conversation has to begin with acknowledging that there are things we disagree about, and that disagreement doesn’t make the other person bad or necessarily wrong. We have to learn how to disagree well.

On the matter of disagreeing well, I recently ran across these guidelines from a short speech by John Roth, now bishop of the Central/Southern Illinois Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

1) Fairness.  I am disagreeing well when I can state the position of the person I am disputing with accurately enough that that other person recognizes that position as genuinely his/her position.

2) Intellectual integrity. I am disagreeing well when I can state the strongest, most compelling argument against my position.  In other words, I am disagreeing well when I can recognize and acknowledge where my own position is most vulnerable and where a contrasting position makes valid points.

3) Honest humility.  I am disagreeing well when, after thinking through my position and expressing it with true conviction, I acknowledge that as a fallen, flawed human being I myself may be wrong.

Not a bad place to start.

In our upper middle class, suburban, mainline congregation, we’re working on hospitality. When I came as senior pastor 10 years ago, the congregation had identified hospitality as an area where they needed growth.

Hospitality to those who are not like us or are not part of our tribe is particularly important in our denomination that historically has descended from the various ethnicities of Europe: Gemany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland. (Have I left anyone out?) These days most unchurched folk have no idea what it means to be a Lutheran, but they know if they feel welcome when they step in our doors.

We’ve had additional opportunity to practice hospitality because refugees from around the world – a large number of them from Burundi in Western Africa – have been resettled almost literally in our back yard.

So, today as I was reading Matthew 3, I was caught up short when the gospel writer reports that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to the wilderness to be baptized by John. His response was anything but welcoming, calling them a brood of vipers and castigating them for merely putting on the show of repentance. How’s that for hospitality?

So, what’s going on? Was there something in their behavior that is not reported but was offensive to John? Did these unfortunate few become representative of what John saw as a whose system of corrupt religious leadership? Was that the kind of thing he said to everyone?

I don’t know. But I know it sounds harsh and unfair to my ears so distant from the scene.

And it makes me a little uncomfortable. Jesus certainly showed a preference for the poor and the rejected, the ones who had no claim to Jesus’ time, his ear, or his mercy on the basis of who they were, what they had accomplished, or what status they had. At the same time, he reserved his harshest criticism for the religious leaders and the whole institutional and structural system.

And then I reflect that I am a religious leader who gets a paycheck twice a month from the institutional church and live and move and have my being within the structural system of the church.

I wonder what John would have to say to me?

While running errands this week, I ran into a member of our church who I haven’t seen for a while. He and his wife are new empty nesters and have gradually dropped out of participation at church. What’s surprising about this couple is that they were heavily involved for several years as their children progressed through elementary school, middle school, and high school. Mrs. Member served on our church council and was active on one of our worship teams. Mr. Member served on a couple of short-term task forces. Their children were not active in our youth ministry, but attended consistently with their parents, at least through confirmation age.

What I see in this couple is a pattern that is not unusual. In the church, we lament the trend of our youth dropping out of church after they graduate from high school and go off to college, and then upon college graduation, begin to find their own place in the world. But what about their parents? Over and over again I see parents who were regular in worship attendance, even participating in church leadership, drift away when their children graduate from high school and go off to college.

What gives? Was it always only about the kids and providing them with some background in religion and spirituality? Was there nothing in their church participation that fed them and which they found meaningful? Is there something missing in our congregation’s ministry, or was this inevitable?

I often ask myself the question, “Would I be actively involved in the life of a congregation if I was not a pastor?” I try to get beyond my professional investment in this congregation to consider my personal connection to the faith and to congregational life. Do I find meaning beyond my vocation as pastor?

For me, the answer is unequivocally “yes.” My connection to congregational life is far deeper than the fact that I have been called to this life as my vocation. Especially in worship, I find something deeply meaningful in allowing ancient texts and ancient liturgy and hymns both new and old help me to interpret my life and experiences and thrust me forward in this mystery we call life. I think I would be one of those every Sunday attenders, and I would find a way to use the gifts that I have as a volunteer. Church life is meaningful to me beyond my vocation. I have never been involved in the church for the sake of my kids. I have instead wanted to invite them into a life that I have found very meaningful.

So, that’s me. But my experience is obviously not universal. And so the question remains: what’s the difference?

Several weeks ago I read an article that continues to haunt me. In the article, Walter Brueggemann reflects on the interactions between the Egyptian pharaoh and the Israelites at the time just before the exodus. He took note of the fact that one of the ways the pharaoh oppressed the Israelites was over time to make them do more and more with less and less. At first the straw was provided to make bricks. Then in what sounds like a 21st century cost-cutting measure, the Israelite slaves were required to make the same number of bricks, but now also get their own straw. In the story, the demands continued to grow until they simply could not be met. Moses intervened with the call to action, “Let me people go.”

Over the past several years, I’ve shared many meaningful pastoral moments with people listening as they tell me what they do for their work and how their work is going. Work is somehow very basic to what it means to be human. Quite a few of those pastoral moments have uncovered frustration with the corporate downsizing movement that sounds eerily like what the pharaoh imposed on the Israelite slaves – to do more and more with less and less.

Like a conversation a couple of weeks ago when 30-something guy, working in the corporate world, father of an elementary and a preschool child, told me that he heads off to work in the morning just as his kids are climing out of bed and generally works until past 7 at night and rarely gets home in time to have dinner with his wife and kids. Over the past several years, his unit has laid off people and simply transferred the work to those who still have jobs. He doesn’t like it, but has simply accepted it as the way it is.

The story is replayed over and over; only the company-specific details change. And while few like it, the prevailing refrain is that it’s just the way it is and in this economy, they’re just happy to have jobs.

But I wonder a couple of things. Having a job is a good thing, even a necessary thing. Having meaningful work brings satisfaction, not to mention keeping a roof over the head and food on the table. But is having a job the highest good? When do we step back and reflect on whether a particular job is robbing us of the more basic intangible things that bring meaning and satisfaction. What happens when putting food on the table is in direct conflict with the even more basic calling to be in relationship with spouse and children? What will it take for those who work in the American corporate culture to collectively rise up and say, “You are exacting too high a price on things that are most basic to my humanity. I will not give you anymore.” And whose job is it to go to the nameless and faceless pharaohs of our culture and say, “Let my people go?”

What I try to talk myself into is not paying attention to numbers. After all, so much of ministry is intangible. How do you quantify the impact an 8-week bible study makes on someone? How do you measure how a sermon might change the thinking and behavior of one of the Sunday morning hearers? What difference does it make, quantitatively, for someone to give a Sunday evening at the local homeless shelter?

Yet I can’t help thinking about numbers. I find it difficult to purge myself of the notion that if numbers are ascending, then good things must be happening, and if numbers are going the other direction, then failure and decline must be setting in.

A good friend and colleague gave me a mantra to help guard against too much attention to numbers. He encouraged me to reflect on any event in terms of who needs to be there. And to assume at any gathering that the people who needed to be there are there. And that sometimes just a few can have a disproportionate impact going forward. That’s been helpful. (Thanks, Bob!)

My most recent love/hate relationship with numbers goes back just a few days to Christmas Eve, and then our Sunday service on New Year’s Day.

For several years now, we have had four services on Christmas Eve: 3:00, 5:00, 8:00 and 10:00. The first two services are more informal and we market them as family services, planned especially with children in mind. The two later services are traditional candlelight and carol services.

Over the past few years an attendance pattern has emerged: light attendance at 3:00, overflow at 5:00, overflow at 8:00, and light attendance at 10:00. This year, after the 3:00 service I found myself buoyed in spirit noting that the attendance at 3:00 was larger than years past. Then I was a little disheartened to see that 5:00 wasn’t as well-attended as previous years. The same thing held true for the later two services. So, while the trends didn’t hold true for individual services, the cumulative total was on par (and even a little more) than previous years.

So, it’s a reminder again not to place to much credence in numbers, especially in the short-term, narrow perspective. It’s also a reminder that in this work of the church, so much of the impact of what we do defies explanation. And even when we try to come up with an explanation, I always come away with feeling like any explanation is as good as another. Why the change in the attendance trends compared to the last few years? Good weather? Christmas Eve on a Saturday? Go ahead. Come up with one of your own. I’m sure it would be as good as either of the above.

Because both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day happened to fall on Sundays, we altered our normal Sunday service schedules. While we normally have three services (7:30, 8:45, and 11:00) and normally have about 375 in attendance, we decided to have only one service at 10:00 those two Sundays. What has brought me delight is that attendance exceeded our expectations for both Sundays. Especially on New Year’s Day, I didn’t know what to expect. One can excuse not attending on Christmas Day because most folks would have been in church the night before. But on New Year’s Day, the only excuse is a night of partying the night before, hardly an excuse for which one would want to get into an argument with God about. Still, I was not optimistic about attendance. I’m delighted to say that we had a church-full. Not the numbers of a normal Sunday, but still more than I expected. And there was something encouraging and exhilarating about starting the new year in the sanctuary, around God’s gifts, with a church full of people. Another sign that numbers will never tell the whole story.

For most of us, the new year begins with high hopes for carving out a better me, a better life than what we had in the past.

I’m not the most disciplined person in the world, so I look with some skepticism on my own resolve to do better in the new year than I did in the past. I wish I was more disciplined in my eating habits. The truth is, I exercise so that I can eat what I enjoy eating. While my friends and colleagues see me as a disciplined person when it comes to exercising, the exercise is only a way to enable my lack of discipline in my eating habits.

I always hope for more discipline in my spiritual practices. While I have done better in the past year, I have much room to grow.

Several years ago, I was extraordinarily disciplined in my daily writing; I wrote an hour a day without exception. Lately, I haven’t done so well, although I ended the year with a string of two weeks of daily, one-hour-a-day writing. I’m determined to extend that into the new year.

So, as I enter this new year, I will give thanks for the habits and practices that have become meaningful parts of my life. And I will determine to make small steps of progress. And I will try to offer myself a little grace. And above all, I will give thanks for the generous, unimaginable, faithful discipline of God in loving me and all of creation.