Category Archives: Life in the church

On Leaders Who Disappoint and How Real Change Happens

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francis.jpgIn his speech before Congress Pope Francis managed to rise above the fray.  With no histrionics, he spoke directly and simply, yet profoundly. The speech surprised me; he managed to address the divisive issues that have become occasions for the two parties to shout across the aisle at each other. He spoke in such a way that all of us in this divided house could listen.

Not forty-eight hours later came the report that Pope Francis met with Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who has refused to issue marriage licenses to anyone as a way to make a stand for her opposition to gay marriage. Since the news came out, there have been as many interpretations of that visit as there are positions to take. And regardless of the Pope’s awareness and degree of complicity, that meeting has enormous symbolism. I’m not ready to make a personal judgment; however, for the symbolic impact of that visit, I am disappointed.

It’s disappointing to me because Kim Davis is the icon for a brand of Christianity that is disdainful to me. It’s a brand of Christianity that makes our faith more about the rules than about relationship, and especially rules about sex. I wish we could just get off of that. Every time I turn around, someone else is reinforcing the ridiculous notion that the Christianity is mostly about rules, and we’re concerned about the sex rules more than any others. It’s maddening.

While I’m disappointed that the meeting happened, I’m not losing much sleep over it. While I was impressed with the pope’s speech before Congress, I never went over the moon about it. He represents a change of tone from the Vatican, but perhaps not much else. A friend, who is a good Roman Catholic and an astute observer of all things Catholic, often reminds me that nothing of substance has changed.

Leaders inspire us. Leaders disappoint us. Sometimes leaders just downright make us mad. Just ask the members of my congregation.

The whole back and forth saga of the pope’s visit to America — and I have to imagine that it feels the same for both conservatives and progressives — is a reminder that while leaders have influence, real change is not going to happen from the top down. Bernie Sanders (another leader who inspires me and who I’m sure will disappoint me and enrage me) reminded students at the University of Chicago this week that real change, deep change never happens from the top down. It always happens from the bottom up, beginning at the margins and moving towards the center.

Earlier this week, I facilitated a bible study with a group of about 20 women. Part of our study was about the gospel lesson for this coming Sunday (Mark 10:2-16, if you want to read it), a difficult text where Jesus pits scripture against scripture. On the one hand he holds up the inviolability of the marriage covenant; on the other, he cites the Mosaic law which allows for divorce in certain occasions, a legal move which was only available to the man.

The study led us into conversation about marriage, about the difficulty and hard work of relationships, especially relationships like marriage. And it led us into the tall grass of a conversation about same sex marriage.

I fully celebrate that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters can now be legally married. The sealing of their covenantal love is just as holy and just as wonderful a relationship and covenant as heterosexual marriage. I also know that not everyone in the congregation I serve shares that opinion.

The conversation we had yesterday would not have happened a dozen years ago in this place. Partially, it’s a sign of the rapid change that has happened in the larger society.

But I’d like to think that the priority we’ve placed on having deep and meaningful conversation in our congregation has contributed to the change. Over the past dozen years, we have created space for lots of conversations about lots of things. Forty or fifty people meet every week for bible study. We host conversations about the intersection of faith and life. We talk a lot these days about the rapid changes in our society and their impact on the church. Every council and team meeting includes time for conversation and prayer. At any given moment in time several groups, including our staff, are reading and discussing a book together. We have hosted authors to lead us in conversation about things that matter. When space is created for people to listen to one another, space is also created for the Spirit to soften our hearts.

It’s not the kind of change that happens rapidly; it’s not always even visible. But it’s the kind of work that forms and shapes us as the body of Christ, forming us as individuals, and more importantly, forming us as a corporate body, so that our thoughts, words, and deeds are in greater alignment with the work God is doing in the world, so that we are participating with God in bringing about the kingdom.

Lament at the Closing of a Church

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churchclosing.jpgFor an unremarkable Tuesday morning, too many cars populated the aging parking lot, weeds abundant in the cracks in the asphalt. In the lobby of the church, a woman sat with a clipboard balanced on her walker taking the names of those who entered through the front door. Next to her was the first indication that something was a little off. Still the middle of September, boxes of Christmas decorations, including strings of lights and a random collection of extension cords, sat on the floor in the open area. In the church office, another white-haired woman sat behind a desk. Next to the door was a hand-written sign written with a felt-tipped marker. “Donations.”  The short hallway leading to the sanctuary was littered with rolls of colored paper, a portable steamer, and a few boxes with unidentified contents. A variety of textiles — banners, altar paraments, vestments —  draped the sanctuary pews. On a shelf behind the altar and on the communion railing were rows and rows of glass vessels of all shapes and sizes. Scattered around the altar were candles and candelabras and a potpourri of gadgets used for the church’s worship.

The congregation is closing at the end of this month. What lay around the building was a collection of physical stuff that had accumulated over the years that this proud congregation had been serving its neighborhood.

So, this is what it looks like when a congregation closes. Or at least what it looks like when one congregation closes, one of the over 4000 that close in the US every year.

I had traveled to the south suburbs of Chicago to see if there were things that could be put to use in my congregation. It didn’t feel good to be there. It felt a little like picking through the clothing of someone who had just died. While there, I was dealing with my own feelings about the closing of a congregation. What had happened? What was the tipping point? What does this say about the church? Is this where we all are headed?

Later on in the day, I started thinking about those women. What must it have been like to see things that had meant so much to you carted off and loaded in the backs of cars you had never seen before, taken by people who were strangers and who were taking them to undisclosed locations? What did it feel like to see banners that had been visual reminders of faith and that once hung in your sanctuary, folded up and carted off? What was going through their minds when someone carried out in a cardboard box eucharistic vessels from which they had received the sacrament hundreds of times. To those of us picking through the spoils they were just things that we hoped might find a use; to those who were watching, it must have felt like a part of their lives were being carried away. Maybe it was a little like the women who sat in a different garden in a different time and place.

I was chatting with another pastor, sharing with him my discomfort at picking through the piles. He shared the same discomfort and then added, “It’s a positive that this congregation has decided to become a legacy congregation.” I suppose in a sense that’s true. Their stuff will live on in another ministry. It’s at least a way to put a positive spin on it. When they sell the building, the proceeds will likely go to a judicatory fund that is supporting new initiatives. On some level that is all good.

But I’m leery of jumping to the positives too quickly. To jump too quickly to the saccharine platitudes covers over the reality that something is dying. It’s not something anyone has to feel guilty about. It may not even be something that anyone has to take responsibility for. Yet it’s real. There is loss. There is sadness. There is grief. I can imagine that it must hurt. To acknowledge that is important. To lament is a holy thing.

Something will rise from the ashes; that’s God’s way. Accompanied in the wilderness by a God of resurrection and life, that’s our hope. Hope is made more real when we can acknowledge that we don’t need to explain away or cover over the grief and sadness.

To you, members of Prince of Peace Church, I don’t know with any precision what you are feeling in the midst of all this. But I acknowledge my own sadness and that I could feel something of your grief in my bones. And for the moment, I sit with you at the waters of Babylon.

Relationship. Relationship. Relationship.

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picnic2Here’s what happened on Sunday afternoon at church. Nine people who didn’t even know each others’ names at 12:00 noon, 90 minutes later were hugging one another, shedding a few tears, and demonstrating a general reluctance for the meeting to be over.

It was the first gathering of folks who want to become members of our congregation. We did it differently than we’ve ever done it before; not surprisingly, the outcome was different than it ever has been before.

Thirty years ago, my pastoral training told me that I have the responsibility to impart a certain body of information to those who want to join our church. They need knowledge of the very basics of the Christian faith: who Jesus is, what he did, what we believe about God and the Spirit, what faith is, how we are saved, what the church is, the sacraments, stewardship, and on and on. I’ve had this sense that if people are going to join a confessional church , then they ought to have an idea of what they are confessing.

As if that weren’t enough, I’ve thought it would help them to assimilate into the congregation if they were given information about our church: our worship and why we do what we do, our various ministries, Sunday School and Adult Faith Formation, the stuff we do in the community. We’ve brought in staff members to describe their ministries, and folks who are already members to tell them a little about what they love about Faith.

In the back of my mind, it’s always felt a little like we were going through the motions, that people showed up, but they weren’t transformed in any meaningful way. It was like we had set up this relatively benign obstacle course that they had to complete in order to join the club; they did it; and they were in.

We did something different on Sunday. We had lunch together and enjoyed some casual conversation as we ate. Then we did bible study. Here’s the catch: not informational, knowledge-based bible study. Instead, we used Eric Law’s Kaleidoscope Bible Study method. The passage is read three different times; each time, the group is given a different question to reflect on while the passage is read and then there are three rounds of sharing. We also used Law’s process of mutual invitation:  after each person shares, they invite  someone else at the table to share.

It would not be appropriate for me to relate the conversation that happened in that room, but I can say that it got very real very quickly. People told stories of loss, of the difficulties of life, of the challenges of parenting, and of the struggle to believe. Matters of faith became intertwined with the realities of life and the Christian faith bloomed into something intensely relevant. What’s more, an almost miraculous personal bond developed among people who walked into that room not knowing each other’s names. In 28 years of ministry, I can’t ever remember that happening with a group of new members.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t discovered the holy grail of assimilating people into the faith. It was one meeting. We have a long ways to go.

But that experience was one more in a long line of experiences that is reinforcing for me just how critically important relationships are to the work of the church. I did not get into this work leading with my heart; I got into this work with my head. I love theology and books and bible study. I began pastoral ministry with the central notion that it was my job to impart a body of knowledge that would help people be Christians. “Faith comes by hearing. . .” and all that. It was never that relationships were unimportant; they just weren’t primary.

It’s been a long, long transition — one that I am still learning, and still trying to live into — to come to the place of putting my head in the background and leading with my heart, to know that all church work is about relationship and that while the cognitive aspects of the faith are not unimportant, they mean almost nothing apart from relationship. After all, a relationship with God is very, very different than knowledge about God.

A Story from Gandhi and What It Means to Do Evangelism

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Gandhi.jpgEvangelism was taken pretty seriously in my seminary training. The required class in evangelism was mostly about the principles and techniques of The Church Growth Movement.  The class also included a complete submersion baptism in The Kennedy Evangelism method, including a weekend at a local church in which we spent about 8 hours canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on the doors of complete strangers, seeking within about 90 seconds to get to some pretty serious and intimate conversation about faith.

The Kennedy method asks folks “the diagnostic questions.”  “If you were to die tonight, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven.”  If no, then “Well, I have good news for you. . .” and then one was to launch into the memorized speech that would give the ABCs of Christianity and would propel people towards conversion.  If yes, then one was to ask how they would answer God when God asked them why He should let them into heaven. Unless the response was faith in Jesus (which it almost never was), here was the other opportunity to launch into the speech that would save.

I didn’t like it back then. I attributed my discomfort to my introversion and uneasiness in talking with strangers. Almost 30 years later, I think it was due to something much more fundamental. It’s offensive; it is sanctified hucksterism that sees people as objects of a technique, not human beings whom we are called to love. 

Yet, it does honor the fact that Christianity is fundamentally a proselytizing religion. After all, the last words that Jesus gave his disciples in The Gospel according to Matthew, “Go and make disciples of all nations. . .”  And nearly the entire Acts of the Apostles tell stories of Peter and Paul on a mission to spread Christianity to the entire known world.

I wonder what evangelism means these days in the North American context. What does it mean to proclaim that salvation comes through Christ in the culture of 21st century America, a culture that increasingly eschews formal institutional religion for a self-designed spirituality that requires no connection beyond the self?

I’m convinced that question also has to take into account the sin-soaked legacy of Christianity from the very beginning of our presence on the North American continent. The Canadian theologian, Douglas John Hall, urges caution and humility on North American Christians who would engage in aggressive proselytizing, reminding us of multiple sins including the brutalization and near extermination of indigenous Americans, slavery, systematic racism, the exclusion of gay and lesbian persons, and the list goes on and on. No doubt, Christians have been the force for much good in the U.S., but unfortunately, the good can’t erase the legacy of hatred, oppression, and exclusion. Hall suggests that anything we say is liable to be contradicted by that legacy.

So, if the fundamental assumption of Christianity is true, that God is drawing all things, including all people, to fullness in Christ, that there is something good, salutary, and eternally beneficial to knowing God in Christ, then how does one go about the task of Christian mission without making it seem like a slick marketing campaign?

In Mohandas Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi recounts a number of interactions with Christians while he was working in South Africa. Most of them could be lumped into one negative memory of being put off by Christians whose sole agenda was conversion. As you might expect, he was particularly put off by those who tried to motivate his conversion with threats of perdition. “They would not leave me in peace, even if I desired to be indifferent.” 

By contrast, one interaction with a Christian couple was positively noteworthy and memorable. He wrote of a friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Spencer Walton. Walton was the head of the South Africa General Mission. The Spencers opened their home to Gandhi, and by all accounts practiced generous hospitality. Mr. Walton “placed his life as an open book before me, and let me watch all his movements.” He mentions this fact specifically: the couple never invited him to embrace Christianity. Yet their friendship kept alive his interest in religion at that time in his life. “We knew the fundamental differences between us. Any amount of discussion could not efface them. Yet even differences prove helpful where there are tolerance, charity, and truth.”

Relational evangelism is not something new. Simplified to bare bones, it goes something like this:  Befriend people who are not Christians (or not connected to the church). They will see your lifestyle and your relationship with Christ. They will want that for themselves and ask you about it. Then you can tell them about Jesus.

I certainly don’t mean to discount the fact that relational evangelism probably works. Heck, in many cases, the Kennedy approach “worked.”  Yet it still feels manipulative. It feels like a hidden agenda. It feels like setting up a good thing — loving your neighbor — as the means to an end — getting someone converted.

What if we are just called to love people without an agenda? Just because it’s the right thing to do. Truth is, Jesus spoke often of loving the neighbor. But it wasn’t the means to something else. It was the end itself. If loving the neighbor is the means to anything, it’s the coming of the Kingdom of God, which is not something we do anyway; it’s always something God does. So if loving the neighbor is instrumental, we’ll leave that up to God, just as we do conversion. And in light of our Christian the dark legacy of Christianity in North America, maybe this is precisely the kind of evangelism that is needed, simply to love people. Period. That is the whole thing.

I’m not sure yet how that squares with the Great Commission of Matthew 28. But maybe at least in our context, we ought to give some serious attention to the Greater Commission, love God and love your neighbor. For a few hundred years. And then we’ll see if we’re in a better position for more aggressive proselytizing.   

Into the Streets

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ethiopiancross.jpgIn my life and in my vocation, I am deeply committed to the Christian Church and what it stands for. I find deep meaning in the understanding of that a life with God comes to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I also find meaning in many of the rituals, symbols, and traditions of the Church.

I also stand as an insider looking out on a world that seems increasingly uninterested. It feels like being the proprietor of a shop that only sells winter clothing in the middle of May. I know what I have is useful, but no one seems very interested, at least not right now.

Recently my wife and I had lunch with a couple who recently retired and has spent a good portion of the last year traveling.   The wife grew up in a Jewish family; it sounds like she does not particularly practice her Jewish faith, nor her husband’s Christianity. She said, “I have not felt particularly drawn to Christianity.” With passion and intensity in their voices and a sparkle in their eyes they told us about a recent trip to Ethiopia. I wish you could have heard her describe their participation in the Epiphany celebration of the church in Ethiopia. Epiphany is perhaps the most important celebration in the Coptic Church, the time when they celebrate Christ’s birth. The celebration has the people dancing through the streets in procession to the church. The people are all dressed in white, many of them in robes; they carry crosses decorated with colorful fabric, and they twirl colorful umbrellas, part of their liturgical decoration. She told about how they were invited into the procession, joining with the Ethiopian Christians in their singing and dancing through the streets of the town; they were a bit of a novelty as the only white faces in the processional crowd. When they got to the church, she was hot and tired, and found a place to sit just outside the church door. One of the priests came and sat next to her and engaged in conversation, taking delight that she lived in the midwest, where he had spent time in theological training. She was dumbfounded that on this most important day of his religious year, a time when he clearly had many things to think about and do, he would take the time to engage in conversation with a stranger he would likely never see again.

As a token of their visit, she bought a cross pendant. She said, “I feel a little funny wearing a cross around my neck, but in that moment, I was drawn to Christianity.”  That Ethiopian Christian cross had become for her a sign of life, not as a generic religious symbol, but as a reminder of the warmth and hospitality she had experienced.

I find a pretty striking lesson for me in my own life as a Christian and as a pastor in the church. The theology, ritual, and symbol that I find so meaningful will not likely be meaningful to anyone outside the church unless and until they experience the love and grace of God embodied in the warmth and hospitality of people like me. Fewer and fewer of them are coming onto our turf to give us a chance to demonstrate that love and grace. The chances are slim that it will be through Epiphany celebrations that wind through the streets of our communities. But it will be important (dare I say essential?) that we find our own ways to get the Body out of the building and into the streets.

Making Space

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Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 8.36.36 AMDoes it require more than just the disposition to live the Christian life?  What happens if we have the desire and the intention, but not the space?

Social psychology talks about two difference classes of explanations for why people do what they do — dispositional and situational. The dispositional explanation relies on the fact that people are who they are; they have certain traits that at least in part, govern how they behave. Situational explanations recognize that certain circumstances in the moment contribute to a response and can override dispositional traits.

In his book, , Daniel Levitan recounts a famous study whose subjects were divinity students at Princeton Theological Seminary. The subjects were asked to come to an office to provide their opinions of “religious education and vocations.” After completing a questionnaire, the interviewer explained that the instrument they had just completed was a bit simplistic and that the second part of the interview would be a three to five minute recorded response to a reading they would be given. One group was given a reading on whether ministering is possible anymore; the other was given the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Here’s where it gets interesting. Half of each group was told they needed to hurry because the assistant in the next building over had expected them a few minutes earlier. The other half were told, “It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head over.”

Between the two buildings the experimenters had placed a research assistant sitting slumped in a doorway in obvious need of medical attention. When each student passed by, the confederate coughed and groaned.

What happened? The students who were in a hurry were six times more likely to keep on walking and pass by the visibly injured person without helping than the students who had plenty of time. Even the ones who had just read the Parable of the Good Samaritan!

I know this experiment is not about the spiritual life, so I’m not going to suggest any scientific conclusions about the life of faith. But it does prompt some reflections.

What we believe about the life of faith is that the Holy Spirit, at work in us, continually shapes and molds us into the mind and life of Christ. With the daily remembrance of our baptism, we are called to daily conversion, leaving the old incurved life behind and embracing the life of service to the neighbor.

But what happens when we don’t make space for that? What happens when our lives are so full of tasks and self-satisfying external stimulation that we don’t even notice the injured one at the side of the road or the groaning student in the doorway. What I see around me (and also in the mirror!) are people who are working way too much, spending way too much time on devices and entertainment, carting kids around to a hundred different activities. When it’s all over, we collapse into bed exhausted, only to get up and start the same thing over again six hours later. Who can blame folks if they aren’t coming to church as often as folks did 30 years ago? Maybe Sunday morning is the only time in the week they don’t have to run off to something else — unless it’s a little league sports event.

No wonder the church is anemic in it’s mission. We members of the Body have filled our lives with so many things. The situation overrides the disposition. The slow work of paying attention to what’s going on around us, noticing the opportunities to be kind or helpful, stopping to listen deeply to someone, and caring for creation has become get pushed to the edges. There is no space anymore to live the Christian life.

Which makes me wonder. Maybe the priest and Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan were not the callous, uncaring, cold-hearted characters we have portrayed them to be. Maybe they were just on their way to an important meeting, a few minutes late.