The Honest Shepherd

Please Plagiarize, Pilfer, and Ponder

2011-01-07T10:13:00.001-05:00

One of the signs of being a good pastor is knowing when to stop talking. Many a sermon are finished before they are over.

The same is true for blogs. Too many blogs are streams of insipid consciousness, mindless chattering. Probably the most counter-cultural value one can hold is the belief that not every thought needs to be published. In other words, it is time to shut my pie hole.

Still, I think there is value in the posts on this blog. They were originally written as devotions for the weekly staff meetings at Speedway United Methodist Church. Because Speedway is a very typical congregation I think these devotions may have some value for you. My only goal was to be honest about the experience of being a church leader. Too many devotionals are syrupy sweet in the way they portray church life, but if you are going to lead you will need more than sap.

So, no more new posts. In fact, by the time you read this I may be serving another church--or I might be dead. Oh well, let this ghost offer a little inspiration and perspective for your ministry: Go ahead and use them, rewrite them, and even claim them as your own. Copywrite is an overstated right. If at some future date I happen to learn that you are ripping-off this blog, then I will grin and take it as a hidden compliment.

Rev. Darren Cushman Wood, elder
Indiana Conference
The United Methodist Church

Tolerance or Support?

2010-09-29T11:21:00.000-04:00

“Therefore encourage each other with these words.” –I Thessalonians 4:18

Back in the day during my baseball career—that is, when I played little league in fourth grade—we ended every game with the customary greeting. You lined up with your team and quickly shook hands with your opponents as each of you grunted out, ‘Good Game.’ No one really meant it; it was perfunctory sportsmanship (a far cry from the coach’s speech at the awards banquet who always preached the virtues of sports because it produced ‘character’). The truth is, I never played a ‘good game.’ At best, I was tolerated as I stood in left field half-heartedly chanting ‘hey, batter, batter’ as I perfected my ability to make patterns of holes in the dirt with my cleats.

There is a difference between being tolerated and being supported. You are tolerated when your purpose is to fill a slot. Being supported is when they believe you can make a contribution. You are tolerated when they give you a lot of B.S. about how valuable you. Being supported is when they give you the resources you need. You are tolerated when they tell you that anything you want to do is fine—as long as you do not ask them for help. Being supported is when they take the time to tell you what you are doing wrong as well as right because they want you to do the best job. You are merely tolerated when no one warns you about the potential problems. Being supported is when they stop you from making a stupid choice.

There is far too much toleration in the church. Lay leaders and pastors alike are merely tolerated. What is so deceptive is that toleration sounds so nice. I mean, they say great things about you. But there is no follow through. In the end, you get used.

We need to support one another in our varied ministries. Support comes in a variety of forms:

• Compliments for specific things done well

• Advice about how to do a task you have never performed before

• Putting their money where their mouth is by giving sufficient funds and other resources

• Suspending judgment and criticism long enough to allow you to experiment and figure it out on your own

• Warning you about potential problems

• Being willing to spend a lot of time helping you sort out those problems
Real support is hard work—and sometimes it is hard to accept—but it makes our ministries better.

Success is in How You Keep Score

2010-09-22T08:37:00.000-04:00

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
--II Corinthians 12:9

During my second year in ministry I evaluated the progress of all of the programs and ideas I had tried to start at the church. My conclusions were dismal: seven out of ten ideas had failed. I had a thirty percent success rate! If I had been graded I would have gotten an F in ministry!

Paul was feeling discouraged in his ministry. He had tried to overcome one of his shortcoming, what he called “a thorn in the flesh”, which limited his effectiveness. Three times he had prayed for God to take it away, but in the end God kept it there to needle him. Finally, Paul heard God telling him to rely solely upon his grace to enable him to do ministry. The thorn remained but the grace was stronger so that it would be abundantly clear who really deserved the credit for his success.

Any ministry that is ordained by God will be fraught with failures. It sounds counter-intuitive because we automatically assume that unfettered success equals God’s blessing. In reality—the reality of grace—there will always be elements of royal disaster in our ministry. And yet, because of God’s grace alone they will survive and thrive.

This proves to us that they are truly a divine calling because they require God’s protection and supervision in order to exist. If all they required was our hard work and smarts then there would be no need for God. How ironic, a ministry that does not need God! It is no ministry at all, only an extension of our ego.

When grace, rather than ego, is the motivation and foundation for our ministry then we can risk more in trying new ideas. We literally have nothing to lose because we already have our eternal salvation secured. Along with the risk will come failure, and so a byproduct of serving through grace will be failures. But sometimes God allows it to fail because it is the wrong time for such an idea to be implemented in the church; the congregation or the community is not ready for it. At other times, it will fail because it never was God’s will in the first place and God needs to refine our character through failures. Sometimes it is only through failure that we become receptive to seeing the way God wants it done.

The most radical thing we can believe is that the church is sustained and renewed by grace. It frees us to risk more, to be more vulnerable, more accountable, and more loving. It is through our weaknesses—both individually and collectively—that God is able to make His grace effective. After the resurrection the disciples were only able to recognize the risen Lord by the marks of his crucifixion in his palms and side. The marks of his weakness verified the power of his strength. So if the church is the Body of Christ it most fully realizes this status by coming to terms with its own nail marks, its failures and weaknesses. Only when we realize this can God’s grace can have its full renewing effect.

So I spent the better part of the day that second year sulking, feeling sorry for myself and resentful of the church’s failings. But then I read batting averages on the sports page. In baseball, three out of ten gets you a 300 batting average. That’s not too bad. In school, it is an F, but on the baseball diamond it may just get you into the hall of fame. So it is with ministry. God’s grace is sufficient to work in, through and around our failings.

Lessons from My Father

2010-08-25T11:40:00.002-04:00

Ten years ago yesterday my father, Forest E. Wood, died. Forest—also known at Woody, Butch and F.E.—died too young and lived too large to be forgotten by his family. Perhaps it is a good thing that he was not around over the past several years given the stress and changes our family has endured. But his example and inspiration is still vital for me and my son, Joe.

As father and son, we did not share any hobbies. He liked sports, I preferred the theater. The one thing we shared was work. In particular, we cut wood—a lot of wood—every Saturday. He was unceasing in his drive to get the job done and unending in his supervision of me.

It was forced child labor. Let’s face it: I would rather have been watching American Band Stand or Johnny Quest. I am convinced that we are born lazy and one of the primary tasks of parenting is to teach children a good work ethic.

As I look back, the greatest gift he gave me and his lasting legacy is the discipline of diligence.

The discipline of diligence is one of the essential characteristics of being a church leader. It is not always easy and you are not always rewarded. And yet, you have to stick with it. That is why ministry is called a ‘calling’ and not a ‘choosing.’

Without it many opportunities for ministry are squandered. In a recent interview, Roseanne Cash said, ‘Discipline your skills to protect your inspiration.’ What she meant is that inspiration comes along only sporadically but you need to be ready for it when it comes. And so you keep honing your skills so you are ready for those moments.

God inspires the church for ministry but we are only ready to receive it when we practice the discipline of diligence.

Programs or Practices

2010-08-11T10:56:00.000-04:00

Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual GrowthSpiritual Classics : Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups on the Twelve Spiritual DisciplinesFive Practices of Fruitful LivingThe Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old ChurchStrength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in CommunityFive Practices of Fruitful Congregations‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ –Romans 12:1-2

At the Monday night Council on Ministries meeting we discussed the current funk in our church. Right now, the church is drifting like a boat with no oars or sail. It is not leaking, it is not sinking, it is not being battered by strong winds. It is just bobbing around in the water with people’s attendance and participation waning and leadership feeling a bit worn out.

In the past the church has gotten some wind in its sails from a project or a program: remodeling the sanctuary five years ago, offering 16 sessions of Alpha, the creation of the Chaos Sunday School class, the bowling league. Right now, all of those programs have lost their luster and the next big idea has yet to emerge.

This episodic approach to church growth sadly matches our culture in which the latest fad or cause attracts attention and passion. But after a while it dies down and you have to catch the next big wave or you begin to lose people. We try to create that wave by creating new programs, which are the wave machines of modern church life.

This is a far cry from Paul’s command, ‘present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ This advice is not just for individuals. The New Testament Scholar Richard Hays demonstrated that Paul was speaking about our church relations; collectively we become a ‘living sacrifice’ (singular) when we do not conform to the world. In today’s church that includes not getting caught up in the frenzy and fickleness of middle class culture.

Instead of programs we need to be focused on practices. There are some basic spiritual and communal practices of the Christian faith that God uses as a means of grace both in the life of the individual and the life of a congregation. They are listed in our membership covenant: hospitality, study, giving, serving, praying, worshipping, and caring for one another. When programs work they help foster these practices, but when these practices are not the underlying focus then the programs become draining and distracting.
Specifically for church leaders, maintaining these practices will give you renewal and discernment.

The next ‘big thing’ at Speedway needs to be a shift from programs to practices. Instead of trying to create a wave machine, we need to stand ready with our sails to catch the fresh winds of the Holy Spirit. Until then keep your sails up

Your Ministry Partner

2010-07-13T14:26:00.000-04:00

“Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.”
--Mark 6:7

I worked with Pat at Atlanta Urban Ministries in the nineteen eighties handing out food, clothing, money and toiletries to every straggler on Ponce de Leon who found their way into our “office” which occupied an abandoned church basement. We were an unlikely pair. Me, a skinny and naïve white boy from the north, and she, a large African American from the Deep South.

As our clients dwindled at the beginning of each month because they had received welfare checks, we had a lot of time to talk. We rambled about everything and joked about anything. From time to time she would express her grief and anger over the racism she had experienced. This cracker knew just enough to keep his mouth shut and listen.

It was one of those friendships which you know will not last beyond the time you work together but during that period in your life you become quite close because of the burden you share. Our deepest moments of sharing centered on our frustrations with the clients we served. We complained, kvetched, and cackled over the overwhelming problems we faced. To an outsider we must have sounded callous and cynical. But as two people who were committed to the cause it was essential and spiritual.

When Jesus sent the disciples out to confront the unclean spirits he made sure they went in pairs. Partnership in ministry is essential and when God calls you to a task God always gives you someone to share the load. We often wish there were more and usually feel out-numbered but God always gives us at least one fellow traveler.

Our partnerships are marked by intimate confidentiality about our ministries. It is in these relationships, and only in these relationships, that we can bear our souls. Your ministry partner is the one person you can unload on. Your partner knows that whatever you say goes no farther than his or her ears and that you just need some time to vent. They give you gut-level criticism without every looking down on you. They feed our souls and jerk a knot in our tails.

As essential as your ministry partners may be, there is always a dangerous temptation for those relationships to go awry. There is a fine line between venting and gossiping. There is a strong temptation for heart felt expression to degenerate into a grip session. We can become cliquish. It is so easy for these relationships to reinforce cynicism. In extreme situations, they can cross ethical and sexual boundaries. When any of this happens, these relationships impede the ministry of the church because they malnourish our souls with the wrong kinds of conversations and information.

Prayer and vision must be at the center of our partnerships in order for them to be edifying. Praying for one another and with one another reminds us of the third partner, the Holy Spirit, who unites us. Prayer forces us to listen for the Spirit in and through our conversations. The Spirit reminds us of the shared vision for ministry that guides our partnerships.

Who is your ministry partner?

Success is in How You Keep Score

2010-06-24T14:16:00.000-04:00

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”--II Corinthians 12:9

During my second year in ministry I evaluated the progress of all of the programs and ideas I had tried to start at the church. My conclusions were dismal: seven out of ten ideas had failed. I had a thirty percent success rate! If I had been graded I would have gotten an F in ministry.

Paul was feeling discouraged in his ministry. He had tried to overcome one of his shortcoming, what he called “a thorn in the flesh”, which limited his effectiveness. Three times he had prayed for God to take it away, but in the end God kept it there to needle him. Finally, Paul heard God telling him to rely solely upon his grace to enable him to do ministry. The thorn remained but the grace was stronger so that it would be abundantly clear who really deserved the credit for his success.

Any ministry that is ordained by God will be fraught with failures. It sounds counter-intuitive because we automatically assume that unfettered success equals God’s blessing. In reality—the reality of grace—there will always be elements of royal disaster in our ministry. And yet, because of God’s grace alone they will survive and thrive.

This proves to us that they are truly a divine calling because they require God’s protection and supervision in order to exist. If all they required was our hard work and smarts then there would be no need for God. How ironic, a ministry that does not need God! It is no ministry at all, only an extension of our ego.

When grace, rather than ego, is the motivation and foundation for our ministry then we can risk more in trying new ideas. We literally have nothing to lose because we already have our eternal salvation secured. Along with the risk will come failure, and so a byproduct of serving through grace will be failures. But sometimes God allows it to fail because it is the wrong time for such an idea to be implemented in the church; the congregation or the community is not ready for it. At other times, it will fail because it never was God’s will in the first place and God needs to refine our character through failures. Sometimes it is only through failure that we become receptive to seeing the way God wants it done.

The most radical thing we can believe is that the church is sustained and renewed by grace. It frees us to risk more, to be more vulnerable, more accountable, and more loving. It is through our weaknesses—both individually and collectively—that God is able to make His grace effective. After the resurrection the disciples were only able to recognize the risen Lord by the marks of his crucifixion in his palms and side. The marks of his weakness verified the power of his strength. So if the church is the Body of Christ it most fully realizes this status by coming to terms with its own nail marks, its failures and weaknesses. Only when we realize this can God’s grace can have its full renewing effect.

So I spent the better part of the day that second year sulking, feeling sorry for myself and resentful of the church’s failings. But then I read batting averages on the sports page. In baseball, three out of ten gets you a 300 batting average. That’s not too bad. In school, it is an F, but on the baseball diamond it may just get you into the hall of fame. So it is with ministry. God’s grace is sufficient to work in, through and around our failings.

Bloomsday

2010-06-16T09:51:00.000-04:00

Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses

Ulysses

‘I will remember the deeds of the Lord”—Psalm 77:11

Today is Bloomsday, June 16, the day James Joyce chose for his novel Ulysses to commemorate the date on which he met his wife, Nora Barnacle. Bloomsday celebrations are taking place around the world, including a pub crawl through Brooklyn with actors reading selections from Ulysses in six different pubs.

Memory may be the most important resource we have for doing ministry. We must remember what sparked our original passion that started this long journey of servanthood. We remember the successes in order to repeat them—and our failures in order to avoid them. We remember the pain we endured so that we can remain attentive and faithful to those who are suffering now.

What events in your life do you need to remember and commemorate in order to remain a faithful servant of Christ?

Some Sundays as I sit behind the pulpit ‘waiting to go on’ I get discouraged. The crowd is thin, the service is mediocre, and I start complaining in my mind about what I thought I deserved and what I did not get. I just do not want to preach.

But then I remember back to that time when I was just beginning to hear my calling. I remember all those times when I wanted—no, ached—to preach (that is the nature of a calling, it hurts until you can get it out of you). Then I become immensely grateful that there is somebody, anybody, who will sit through my sermons.

The Necessity of Self-Denial

2010-06-02T08:41:00.002-04:00

Check Out: The Cost of Discipleship

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”--Mark 8:34

When I am walking in the woods early in the morning I often see a deer. Or rather the deer sees me first, stops to see if I am dangerous, and then lets me pass by. I can get within ten feet of a deer if I walk slowly but one step further and it flees into the protection of the understory. Self-preservation is a natural instinct in animals and us. When we feel that our reputations are threatened, our work criticized, our families attacked, or simply our time inconvenienced, we revert to our animal nature of fight or flight

Jesus’ command of self-denial is counter-intuitive. On an individual basis, it does not make sense. Yet, the nature and purpose of the Church is preserved by the collective effect of every leader setting aside his or her agenda for the greater good. Just as Jesus denied himself in order to fulfill his mission, so too must each member of his present-day body deny him or herself in order for the Church to fulfill its mission.

A congregation loses its effectiveness when its leaders do not practice self-denial. She defends a pet project which has lost its usefulness but no one dares to criticize it. His opinion dominates the committee meeting. She has an ulterior motive for getting something done. He is a broken person who needs healing but instead expresses it in inappropriate ways. She cannot move beyond how someone offended her years ago. On and on it goes until the church grinds to a halt and the Gospel is no longer proclaimed.

Self-preservation is very tempting because there is always a kernel of truth at the core of it: at one time the pet project was effective; he had a good idea; she was right and the other person was wrong; he certainly is a wounded individual. The command to self-denial has a shadow side. It has been used to put the burden on members who are already overworked and shamed with low self-esteem. For some, the language of self-denial is twisted into an expression of self-pity or passive-aggressive self-glorification. Even worse for the church, self-denial can degenerate into an abusive relationship whereby the sins of the church are never confronted and the leader a scapegoat.

But self-denial is only the first step for the leader. Jesus gives two more commands in this threefold process. Step two is to take up “their cross.” We are not called to take up anyone else’s cross except our own. Each person has a specific task to perform and no one person can do it all. Remember: There is only one Messiah and you are not it!

Step three says that we are to follow him. As leaders this is a daily requirement to follow the Spirit of Christ into our own healing and discernment so that we can practice self-denial and discover our cross. We must follow Christ into our own healing so that we are not spreading our infections to others. We must follow Christ in our discernment so that we can know when and how to speak and act for the greater good of the church.

This three-fold process of church leadership flies in the face of our culture. We obsess over ourselves and assume that ‘self-fulfillment’ is the supreme evidence that it must be God’s will. Consider how we talk about the ‘purpose-driven life.’ Sooner or later our job must make us feel good. At best, sacrifice is a very temporary aspect of a narcissistic spirituality—‘No pain, no gain.’ This is cultural Christianity which cannot understand how self-denial is at the heart of true discipleship.

Make it a regular practice to ask yourself: What is the greater good of the church that comes before my own agenda and preservation? In what ways do I need to deny myself the opportunity to be right, to receive an apology, to be comfortable so that the church can do the mission of Jesus Christ?

Flowers for Protesters

2010-05-26T09:01:00.001-04:00

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind.”
--Philippians 2:1-2a

In 1996, Yugoslavian President Milosevic refused to accept the election results which would have swept opposition parties into power, and as a result hundreds of thousands of people protested in the streets of Belgrade. Each day as the protestors marched through the streets they were greeted by an elderly woman who stood on her balcony waving, throwing flowers and money or waving a flag. It was Olga Radovanovic. She was eighty-two, too feeble to join the marches, but cheering them on nevertheless.

Encouragement is an essential ingredient for effective ministry. We need encouragement from others to verify the inward calling that propels our work. God’s grace flows through the encouraging words of others to rejuvenate our passion for ministry. As leaders we must encourage others who volunteer and work for us. Our encouragement will help them to be more productive, it will create a sense of unity, and it will enable them that their work has meaning and connection to God’s vision.

Olga was a modern-day Barnabas, whose name means “son of encouragement.” (Acts 4:36). He was Paul’s ministry partner through some of the roughest times. Together they faced criticism and they faced persecution. Yet, the only time they got into an argument was when Mark joined them. Paul thought Mark was not inadequate for the job because he had deserted them in Pamphylia. But Barnabas was willing to give him a second chance, and Barnabas took him under his wing while Paul teamed up with Silas (Acts 15:36-41). Paul had every right to reject Mark, but Barnabas was willing to risk the immediate effectiveness of his work in order to train this young man.

What if Barnabas had not been encouraging? Perhaps Mark would have left and the church would have lost a vital leader. Or even if he had worked under Paul his enthusiasm would have been diminished and many things might not have been accomplished. Would we only have three Gospels if Barnabas had not encouraged him?

It is tempting to replace encouragement with uncomplimentary direction or criticism. When we are impatient we tend to bark out direction. When we are inflexible in our vision we tend to become critical of others who do not see it our way or do it the way we want it done. Ironically, the more we criticize and bark out order the less productive and responsive others become.

One a deeper level, our impatience and inflexibility is a sign that our leadership is not led by the Holy Spirit. Paul calls the Holy Spirit Paraklesis which can mean Encourager, Advocate, Counselor, Comforter. If our leadership is Spirit-led then we, in turn, will be an encourager to our volunteers, an advocate for their programs, a counselor in making decisions, and a comforter when their work is frustrating.

Who needs you to throw flowers at their feet today?

How to Vomit Like a Minister

2010-05-18T15:41:00.000-04:00

“As God’s steward….be hospitable, a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled.”
--Titus 1:8

Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control

Our home is filled with melodrama. Our sixteen and twelve year old daughters have a passion for writing and story telling, and too often the drama on the page spills over into real life. Whether it is clothing or politics, there are far too many emotions expressed in our home. They don’t just wear their feelings on their shirt sleeve, as the old saying goes. It is projectile vomiting.

The other morning, my twelve year old was spewing about God-knows-what, and without pause I yelled, “Can you please repress your feeling!” Someday, a psychologist will be thanking me for making her very wealthy.

The temptation to spew our feelings about the frustrations of ministry is overwhelming. We just have to unload, get it out, explode. At the right time and with the right person—who is not always your spouse—it is perfectly healthy to do some ministerial vomiting.

However, most situations are not the right time and most people in your congregation are not the appropriate people. Most of them are innocent bystanders who had no hand in causing your frustrations. For those who are accomplices in the demise of your ministry, chances are they are broken people for whom your ranting will only reinforce their dysfunctions and sins rather than lead them to healing.

The temptation to stop being in control, even for just a few minutes, often obscures the fact that it is us who may have caused the problem in the first place. When we are out of control we cannot see where we have fallen short in our leadership or the ways our own brokenness has created these problems. We may have brought it on ourselves but taking it out on other church members is a way for us to avoid seeing our own guilt.

Self-control must be a fundamental discipline for any church leader for two reasons. One, self-control protects the vision of the church. If you can keep the vision of the ministry constantly before you then you will understand why it is essential to practice self-control. You do not want your temporary desire for an emotional release to damage the long-term prospects of your ministry.

Two, self-control nurtures the spiritual resources for achieving the vision. Sophocles used the word to mean someone who is “in possession of power.” There is a spiritual power of one’s gifts which are given by the Holy Spirit. The discipline of self-control helps you channel the energy of one’s spiritual gifts in cooperation with the Spirit. If you do not possess self-control you are making it harder for the Spirit to work through you.

It is easier to maintain self-control when you know that you have the power of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is inspiring your ministry then you know that everything will work together for God’s glory and that set backs and modifications are to be welcomed. Even opposition and apathy is tolerable because we have the perspective of spiritual power which reminds us that God is in control—of the situation and of us.

Repression isn’t such a bad thing because it allows the Holy Spirit greater expression. We may not get to say anything we want any time we want, but it will allow God to say more and do more in our church.

Spying on a Vision

2010-05-12T10:00:00.000-04:00

“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”--Philippians 3

In 1917 L.L. Nunn founded Deep Springs College in the desert of California. It is an all-male junior college which combines dairy farming, cattle ranching and philosophy. Nunn, who never graduated from college made his fortune in the early years of hydroelectric power with George Westinghouse. He envisioned a geographically isolated college where boys could be transformed by the great ideas of history. His vision was a combination of “Christian mysticism, imperialist elitism, Boy Scout-like abstinence, and Progressive era learning –by-doing*.” Deep Springs was not his first attempt at vision-building. He had tried unsuccessfully to create a similar school in Virginia (it was too close to town) and he funded a scholarship house at Cornell (too conventional). Ninety years later, Deep Springs still adheres to his original vision—and over half of its graduates go on to finish other degrees at Harvard, Yale or Oxford.

What is the vision that drives your ministry? Nunn had a vision that outlasted himself and Paul kept striving “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call.” We need a vision larger than ourselves to sustain our ministries. The goal must be broad enough to encompass the whole Church and deep enough to move us beyond our self-interests. Without a vision, not only do the people perish but we as leaders languish. We become bored by or burned out from the tedious grunt work of ministry. We develop bad habits that hurt ourselves and others. Ironically, we need to be a part of something larger than ourselves for the sake of ourselves. Chances are if it is a goal that you can achieve in your tenure or lifetime then it is too small a goal. It does not require a leap of faith.

The Greek word skopos (“goal”) is rare in the New Testament. In Philippians it means “the object on which one fixes the eye” or a “mark” as in an athletic contest. But the word can also mean a “watchman”, “a look-out guy”, a “scout”, or even a “spy”.

All of which are good metaphors for how we should be visionary leaders. The vision is a gift from God, who is constantly giving it to us as we do our work. We don’t create it so much as we receive it in bits and pieces over time and through a variety of people and events in the life of the congregation. The task of the visionary leader is to be on the look out for fragments of God’s vision refracted through the desires and events in the Church. We are to scout out those ideas. We are to do surveillance in the congregation for any positive signs of the Spirit’s direction.

Visionary leaders discern these fragments and put them together in a coherent whole. What made FDR a great President was that he was able to sense what the people wanted and put it into a concrete plan called the New Deal. In 1932 no one was asking for that specific set of programs, but there was a general sense in which the people wanted the government to do “something.” As a visionary leader he was able to tap into that desire and give it form and function.

A visionary leader can get too far ahead of a congregation when he or she comes up with an idea that is not connected with their desires. If the leader does not listen closely and pause for critical self-reflection, then he or she will resent the congregation. “Why don’t they get it?” and “They just don’t want to do anything!” become the mantras.

On the other hand, a leader can get too far behind a congregation. He or she can be so wishy-washy that the congregation spins its wheels in frustration because they have no direction. Like a car stuck in the mud, the church is like a bunch of kids in the backseat complaining and fighting with each other. Without a vision they have no where to direct their energy except against each other and the leadership.

What is your vision, the goal toward which your ministry is pressing on? Is it bigger than your ego? Is it deep enough to touch the passion of the congregation? Is it God’s vision?

* Dana Goodyear, “The Searchers,” The New Yorker, September 4, 2006.

Too Much Zeal

2010-04-21T11:50:00.000-04:00

‘for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors’—Gal. 1.14

This one comes from the ‘lighten up’ category:

In 1979 judges that the Sunflower Stage Expo in Topeka, Kansas ruled that a quilt entered in the competition was ‘deviant.’ They allowed the quilt to be displayed but only face down because its imagery was deemed offensive.

So what was on the quilt? Members of Seamsters Union Local 500 made a quilt depicting the famous appliqué ‘Sunbonnet Sue’ being killed. Each member created a panel showing their fantasy of how they would knock off this overused icon of quilting. In a spirit of jest, they called the quilt, ‘The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue.’

It is okay to be passionate about your passion, including quilting. But there is a line which we cross in our passion and it ends up becoming obnoxious.

From time to time, this happens in the church. An individual discovers their calling and launches a new ministry. They feel the overwhelming sensation of the Holy Spirit moving them to do this work. That’s great! But then, others do not share their passion for the ministry or do not support it with the same amount of devotion that they do. So the individual leading the ministry feels disappointed by the other members. He or she begins to feel as if they are not supported. Criticism and judgmental attitudes ensue. Why? It is not that the other members were not supportive; the inspired person has been unrealistic.

This is the opposite of the more prevalent problem, which is no one feeling inspired to do anything. But it can do just as much damage. The inspired person will eventually become burned out and bitter. They have set themselves up for disappointment.

The set up is based on a false premise about the nature of the church. Unwittingly, they have made their calling the center of the church rather than Jesus Christ. When Christ is the center, then there will be a wide variety of ministries performed in his name. His Spirit will call people to a diversity of tasks (see I Corinthians 12), each one complementing the others to form a unified witness for Christ. Unity is not the same as singularity, which is what happens when one person’s calling becomes the center of the church.

Beware of your passion. Lighten up and learn to understand that others have a different calling which is not in competition with what God has called you to do. Otherwise, your zeal will be your ministry’s worst enemy.

Trash Talk

2010-04-14T09:19:00.003-04:00

'How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me?'--Numbers 14:27

Yesterday, the New York Times front page featured Denmark’s choice for alternative fuel: trash. The Danes are burning trash in environmentally-friendly incinerators that filter the pollutants while producing energy. They have 29 such plants (there are around 400 across Europe). Fifty-four percent of their waste is converted into renewable energy and only four percent ends up in a land fill (In America, over fifty percent ends up in a land fill).

[If you want to get involved in ministries of environmental justice join the Indiana Conference’s Creation Care Team. Contact Dennis Shock at dennis.shock@aol.com]

Church leaders need to be like the Danes and learn how to convert the trash in the church into productive energy. The trash is the complaining, the belly aching, the gossip, the criticism—talking trash—in the hallways after worship and in the classrooms during meetings. There is a lot of litter in the church.

We need to take the negative energy and redirect it to good use. First, this requires us to stop complaining ourselves. Church leaders tend to be the worst when it comes to belly aching, precisely because they have the most to complain about. Do not succumb to the temptation. Second, stop tolerating the complaints. Cut off the conversation when it becomes a grip session. And the best way to end discussion is to ask a simple question:

‘OK, what are you willing to do about it?’

Top 5 Films Good Friday Films

2010-03-30T15:03:00.000-04:00

Holy Week breeds bad cinematography. From sentimental portrayals like ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ to grotesque reactions such as ‘The Passion of the Christ’ to iconoclastic revisions like ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ to flowery metaphorical works such as ‘Godspell’, the life of Jesus is a deadly trap for filmmakers. I do not believe that you can portray the true meaning(s) of the cross in a straightforward manner. The truth is too rich for mere historical recreations.

The best films are the ones that reflect the meaning of the crucifixion through stories. Instead of Jesus looking like a cardboard figure, the best films show the depths of divine love reflected in other settings. Here’s my top five picks for films that capture the true essence of the cross:

5. Amistad (1997)—Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, Djimon Hounsou; Director: Stephen Spielberg—In 1839 Africans successfully overtook the slave ship Amistad and ended up in America. They won their case for freedom before the Supreme Court. The key scene in the film portraying the cross is the integrity of the judge who rules in their favor. Spielberg weaves scenes of the Catholic judge praying with the Africans learning the Gospel story. Watch closely for the symbol of the three crosses in the ships’ masts. It is a wonderful symbol of what it means to bear one’s cross.

4. Eleni (1985)-- Kate Nelligan, John Malkovich; Director: Peter Yates—Malkovich plays a journalist in search of his mother’s executioner thirty years after her death by a firing squad in the Greek Civil War. His mother, Eleni, is an example of sacrificial love and the surprise ending demonstrates the power this love has to overcome hatred.

3. The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)-- Mel Gisbson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt; Director: Peter Weir—Set against the backdrop of 1965 Indonesia’s civil war, Gibson is an Australian journalist who must choose between his career and his love for a British diplomat played by Weaver. The Christ figure is photojournalist Billy Kwan, played by Linda Hunt who won an Academy Award for this role. Hunt’s character brings to life the emotional struggle and futility Jesus must have felt in the Garden of Gethsemane.

2. Kanal (1957)—Director: Andrzej Wajda—This Polish film chronicles the desperate escape of a platoon from the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1944. With the Nazis surrounding them their only route of escape is through the sewer system (‘kanal’). The sewer is a great metaphor for sin and evil and the way of escape that Jesus bearing the cross offers us.

1. To End All Wars (2001)—Robert Carlyle, Kiefer Sutherland; Director: David Cunningham—based on the true story of Ernest Gordon, who later became chaplain at Princeton, it shows the struggles of POWs at the hands of the Japanese during World War Two. Every major theological theory about the atonement is portrayed in this film. It is by far the best film ever made that conveys the true meaning of Good Friday.

3 Kinds of Committees

2010-03-24T11:29:00.001-04:00

'Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil'--Ecclesiastes 4.9

When did ‘committee’ become a dirty word in the church? It brings up feelings of frustration. It is equated with ineffectiveness and is seen as the opposite of a ‘Spirit filled’ ministry.

Our negative view of committee work goes back to a deeper problem. The church lacks the passion and motivation for ministry. When the church gets into a maintenance mentality then committee work degenerates into inertia and nay-saying. The problem is not the committee structure per se, it is the spirit in the machine. You can dress it up and call it something else—‘team’, ‘task force’, ‘work group’ (I prefer ‘cabal’ or ‘fifth column’)—but if the spiritual mood of the congregation is lethargic it does not matter what the label is.

Let’s be very clear: Just because a lone individual feels the passion to do something does not mean that he or she is motivated by the Holy Spirit. We are too quick to equate emotionalism with spirituality. The Holy Spirit works through our relationships and makes our ministries stronger through good processes of discernment and planning. If you believe that the Holy Spirit can speak to an individual through a vision then why can’t the Spirit also speak to a committee through its regular business meeting? To deny this is to limit the work of the Holy Spirit. So, yes, the Holy Spirit can and does work through committees if the committee members are led by the Spirit.

There are three kinds of church committees:

1. Dead Committees—This is what we have all experienced. They do nothing except talk it to death and act like a boat anchor.

2. Friend Committees—They don’t get a lot of work done, but that is not their real purpose. They are a gathering of friends to share one another’s burdens. They just happened to have another title which is very frustrating to the pastor or a newcomer who assumes that this is their business. However, one should be patient with them because they are creating community. The real trick is to make sure that the work gets done.

3. Spirit-Led Committees—Being Spirit-led does not mean that you do not have an agenda or keep minutes. It means that you seek the guidance of the Spirit in everything you do. And if you believe that the Spirit is working through your committee then you will honor the Spirit by being as organized and efficient as possible.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit with your disorganization.

Lessons from St. Patrick

2010-03-17T09:01:00.002-04:00

Green beer, leprechauns, and four leaf clovers hardly suffice for a real celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Patrick’s story gives church leaders great insight for ministry.

Born around 387 into a Christian family in what is now Scotland, Patrick was enslaved and taken to Ireland at age 16 where he worked as a herdsman for six years. After seeing a vision he escaped. He entered the ministry and then felt God calling him to return to the people who had once been his captors to preach the Gospel. There are two letters he left behind—His Confession and the Letter to Coroticus. These ancient letters hold timeless truth about ministry:

1. God’s Calling Demands Flexibility—Patrick never could have guessed that God would call him to evangelize people who had enslaved him. His faithfulness demanded flexibility. We cannot predict where God will call us to serve but we must be willing to go.

2. God’s Calling Demands Courage—Coroticus was a local chieftain who had taken several Irish Christians captive. In his letter, Patrick calls him to task for his hypocrisy and excommunicates him and demanded that he release them. There are times when we must take a stand, no matter how unpopular it may be or how uncomfortable it may make others feel. Ministry is not a popularity contest.

3. God’s Calling Demands Integrity—His Confession was written in response to charge brought against him for an unspecified problem related to financial matters. In his defense, he claimed to have refused the gifts of the wealthy. Our leadership must be above reproach so that our behavior does not impede others from accepting the Gospel.

4. God’s Calling Demands Prayer—Patrick’s Lorica (‘Breastplate’) is a prayer of protection. We who do ministry need God’s constant protection:
This translation comes from John Skinner (Image Books, Doubleday, 1998):

I arise today
In a mighty strength
Calling upon the Trinity
Believing in the Three Persons
Saying they are One
Thanking my Creator.

I arise today
Strengthened by Christ’s own baptism
Made strong by his crucifixion and his burial
Made strong by his resurrection and his ascension
Made strong by his descent to meet me on the day of doom.

I arise today
Strengthened by cherubims’ love of God
By obedience of all angels
By service of archangels
By hope in reward of my resurrection
By prayers of the fathers

By predictions of prophets
By preachings of apostles
By the faith of confessors
By shyness of holy virgins:
By deeds of all holy men.

I arise today
Through strength in the sky:
Light of sun
Moon’s reflection
Dazzle of fair
Speed of lightning
Wild wind
Deep sea
Firm earth
Hard rock.

I arise today
With God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me
God’s wisdom to guide me
God’s eye to look ahead for me
God’s ear to hear me
God’s word to speak for me
God’s hand to defend me
God’s way to lie before me
God’s shield to protect me

God’s host to safeguard me:
Against devil’s traps
Against attraction of sin
Against pull of nature
Against all who wish me ill
Near and far
Alone
And in a crowd.

I summon all these powers to protect me—
Against every cruel and wicked powers that stand against me
Body and soul
Against false prophet’s wild words
Against dark ways of heathen
Against false laws of heretics
Against magic and idolatry
Against spells of smiths, witches and wizards
Against every false lore that snares body and soul.

Christ protect me today
Against poison, against burning
Against drowning, against wounding
So that I may come to enjoy your rich reward.
Christ ever with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ to my right side, Christ to my left
Christ in his breadth, Christ in his length, Christ in depth
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me

Christ every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
In a mighty strength
Making in my mouth the Trinity
Believing in mind Three Persons
Confessing in heart they are One
Thanking my Creator.

Salvation is from the Lord
Salvation is from the Lord
Salvation is from Christ
May your salvation
Three Lords
Be always with us.

Dog Poo and Churches

2010-03-09T15:47:00.000-05:00

'Do count them but dung, that I may win Christ'--Philippians 3:8 KJV

It is that time of year again: Time to shovel out the back yard, not of snow, which has melted, but of dog. The backyard is a beagle bathroom. As I was shoveling puppy poo it gave me time to meditate on parish ministry and here is what I heard the Lord sharing with me so I can pass on to you:

Leadership in the local church is like shoveling dog poo because the backyard looked beautiful as long as it was covered with snow. But when it melted you could see countless canine landmines.

Lesson number one: As long as you cover up the problems in the church everything looks fine. However, this does not mean that the problems have gone away. Sooner or later those problems will surface and you will have to deal with them. Being a leader in the church requires you to expose those problems and deal with them.

Leadership in the local church is like shoveling dog poo because it is concentrated in a few areas. They do not do their business all over the place; they have their choice spots where all of it accumulates.

Lesson number two: Problems in the church tend to congregate in the same ministries or with the same people. Do not be surprised if what appears to be one problem is just the tip of the ice berg.

Leadership in the local church is like shoveling dog poo because it kills the grass. Manure only works as fertilizer when you spread it around. This stuff if you do not shovel it will burn the grass.

Lesson number three: Problems in churches must be dealt with or they will do long term damage and prevent growth.

Leadership in the local church is like shoveling dog poo because there is a special way to scoop it up without destroying the grass. You have to be careful not to dig into the dirt. I prefer a side-scrape technique with my spade (There was a lot of poo…I had a lot of time to think about this one….)

Lesson number four: Solving church problems requires special sensitivity. On the one hand, you must resolve the problem. But on the other hand, you need to do it in such a way so that you do not spread the problem or cause another problem. Tact, discernment, sensitivity are all a part of the technique to cleaning up church messes.

Go forth, with a Bible in one hand and a shovel in the other. Take courage when you hear the hounds of hell baying at your church!

Guilt-Ethic

2010-02-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

‘Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’—Romans 5:1

“The Method” is an approach to acting which was pioneered by Stanislavski in Russia and popularized by Lee Strasberg and others in New York City in the late 1940s. Marlon Brando and James Dean represented this new form of acting which emphasized the actor creating a character based on internal feelings rather than external props and gestures. One primary element of the Method is understanding and developing the motivation of the character. What is the underlying motivation of the actions the character?

What is your motivation as a church leader? We all have a part to play God’s drama, what is the motive for your part? There are many worthy motives from the desire to help others to the impulse to praise God.

One motivation which plays a larger role than we care to admit is guilt. Sometimes we serve in the church out of a sense of guilt. We feel guilty because we forgot to send someone a get well card. We feel guilty because we did not do enough at the food pantry last week. We feel guilty because we did not turn in a newsletter article on time. We go to church because we would feel like we were disappointing our dear departed grandmother who was a pillar of the church. And so it goes.

You can get a lot of work done with a guilt-ethic, but it will not sustain you over the long haul. Even worse, it discourages new leadership whenever the existing leadership guilts them into serving.

At the heart of the Gospel is the removal of guilt. Jesus forgives us for our sins—including all those mistakes we have made in leadership positions. Because we are saved by grace we have no need for to sustain our lives or validate our egos by our own good works. Everything we do can be done out of pure gratitude.

Do you need to shift your motivation from a guilt-ethic to a gratitude-ethic? As a church leader, are you motivating people with guilt or gratitude?

Wanted: Good Foreheads

2010-02-17T09:54:00.000-05:00

Ash Wednesday ‘Then the Lord God formed the human from the dust’—Genesis 2:7
‘Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes’—Job 42:6
‘The Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory.’—John 1.14

What every pastor wants on Ash Wednesday is a good forehead. The ashes stick better to some than others, and the best are foreheads that are slightly greasy. Of course you don’t want bangs because you have to flip the hair back. The more experienced priests can do it with one hand—with you pinky you raise the bangs and smear the ashes on with your thumb. The ideal forehead has a receding hairline with a little grease. Think: Dick Cheney or Squidward.

Regardless of hairline or skin quality, all of us are good candidates for the imposition of the ashes because it is who we are. We are dirt people. We come from it and without the constant connection with God’s Spirit we are little more than ‘cumbrous clay’ as Charles Wesley described us in one of his hymns.

Dust is no insult. It is just a statement of fact. We are finite creatures who are utterly dependent upon God to breathe life into us. Those who forget this fundamental fact are prone to complaining, arrogance, greed, and destruction. Think: Dick Cheney or Squidward. Ash Wednesday is a reality check.

However, there is affirmation in ashes. God in Jesus Christ became one of us dusty people in order to bring God’s glory into our finitude. Through Christ we are taken up into the very life of God. In Christ we are made into vessels for God to come down into us. Today, we celebrate that God got His hands dirty remolding us.

Here’s a poem for today:
The Word in the Dirt
(John 1 & Genesis 1)

In the beginning
the Word made the dirt
the Word spoke in dirt
a true dirty Word

Fertile, rich and dark
The Word grows in dirt
Grass and trees from dirt
a beautiful Word

Not from clouds or stars
But in clumps of dirt
God’s image in dirt
an echoing Word

But they saw only
Dirt to be swept off
Dirt to be cash crop
a forgotten Word

God, the lover of
all dirty creatures,
planted Divine-Man
an all-loving Word

In His healing and
crying and dying
got his hands dirty,
a redeeming Word

And now dusty folk
Image in the dirt
See the Word in dirt
a beautiful Word

Whose Image?

2010-02-10T08:46:00.001-05:00

‘We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.’--II Peter 1:17-18

Of all the stories about Jesus that Eastern Orthodox artists have turned into icons, the transfiguration story is the most popular (Mt. 17:1-8; Mk. 9:1-8; Lk. 9:28-36). More paintings have been made of Jesus being glorified on the mountain top than any other story.

Why? In that tradition, these one-dimensional paintings are used in meditation. The hope is that the Holy Spirit will work through the image and the prayers to transform the believer. It is not idolatry, which believes in the power of the image itself. The icon is the instrument of God that turns the believers into a better instrument for God. The hope is that you be draw into the Spirit of Christ and be transfigured by His presence as you meditate on the image of Jesus’ transfiguration.

Churches would be a lot healthier if the leadership was transformed by the presence of Christ in their lives. It sounds basic, but how can you be a leader if you do not have His Spirit animating your attitude and actions? There is no gimmick to being a good pastor; it simply requires letting Christ transfigure you from the inside out.

The transfiguration was not the end of the story. It was simply a preview of what was to come on Easter, and after Easter came Pentecost when the transforming presence of His Spirit was spread throughout every believer in the church. What was an exclusive sneak preview on the mountain top was released for wide distribution on Pentecost.

So it is with the church today. The transforming presence of the Holy Spirit is not reserved for an exclusive club within the church. Rather, it is God’s will that every member have this transformative experience. And yet, too often we accept the notion of nominal membership. We assume that it is normal for the 20 percent to do all the work while the other 80 percent sit back and watch the show.

Stop trying to make the church into the image of our culture’s obsession with spectator sports and voyeuristic television. Our obsession with big attendance and over reliance on the latest church growth gimmick is just another form of idolatry. They may have big audiences but no one is transformed by it. This Sunday, level the mountain top and invite everyone into the presence of Chris and let the church reflect his image.

Groundhog Sightings

2010-02-02T10:46:00.001-05:00

‘Where there is no vision the people perish’—Proverbs 29:18

Two years ago we packed up the kids and my mother for a summer vacation in Pennsylvania. Along the way my wife, Ginny, kept seeing groundhogs. All total she claimed to have spotted 14 of the oversized rodents. We did not believe her and after a couple of days we started making fun of her.

Like the Union troops, Ginny was vindicated at Gettysburg. While standing on Little Round Top, Emma and I looked down and saw an advancing woodchuck heading our way!

In honor of groundhog’s day, let us meditate on the mystical wisdom of groundhogs and church leadership….

Okay, so there’s not much there (either as theological insight or literary metaphor), but if there is one of two lessons we learned from Ginny and her Marmota monax (that’s Latin for groundhog) visions:

Option One: Good leadership can spot God’s blessings at times and in places that the rest of the congregation cannot see. If you are a church leader you need to be on the look out for those surprising ways God is working in your church.

Of course, this assumes that groundhogs are sacred animals, like cows in India. But what if they are not….hmmm….

Option Two: Good leadership can spot a problem at times and in places that the rest of the congregation cannot see. If you are a church leader you need to be on the look out for those surprising ways that sin is working in your church.

Whether you are a supporter of PETA or the NRA there is something to learn from groundhogs today!

A Rosenwald for 2010

2010-01-06T11:42:00.000-05:00

Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck started their mail-order company in the 1890s after Sears, a railroad agent from Minnesota, was successful in reselling watches he had ordered from manufacturers to agents down the line. By 1894 their 300-page catalog was so successful that they could not keep up with the orders. What did they do with the back orders? They burned the forms and never filled the orders! With a business model like that their company was going to come to a swift end.

What saved Sears and Robebuck was the administrative skills of Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald implemented a variety of changes which brought order to the chaos and made sure that the customers were served. By 1908 even Sears himself was gone, but Rosenwald kept the best of the past—famous Sears catalog.

Many good ministries fail because of disorganization. We tend to think of ‘administration’ as a dirty word which has nothing to do with ‘ministry.’ However, there is a real ‘ministry of administration’ that keeps everything in order so that people can be served and leaders can utilize their spiritual gifts and talents.

What do you need to do as this new year begins to get your ministry organized? As a committee chairperson or staff member, organizational skills may not be your strong suit. That’s okay. All you need to do is get someone on your committee or ministry team to handle the administrative stuff, a ‘Rosenwald’ whose gift is creating order out of chaos.

Prayer Guide for Ministry Part 4

2009-12-29T16:38:00.000-05:00

As the New Year begins it is a good time to look back over the ministry you did in 2009. In many cases, this is not a pleasant task because it reminds us of all the failure, stress and conflicts that we had to endure. Doing ministry is like making sausage: it may look okay when it all finished but you don't want to review how it was made.

Memory is a subjective act. How we remember our past is determined by our faith. If we really, truly believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord of all time and encompasses our past, is present in the present and is the hope for the future then we can see what we did last year in a more hopeful light.

This last prayer exercise is simple to describe-but sometimes hard to do. Give it a try and it may help you feel better about what God is calling you to do in 2010!

#4: Thanksgiving

Conclude your time with a prayer of thanksgiving. Give thanks for your calling. Review what you did for the week by recalling one blessing God gave you for your ministry each day of the week (or if you are reviewing an entire month, then one blessing per week; an entire year, then one blessing per month). If you have had problems in your ministry match each problem with a one sentence prayer of thanksgiving. Conclude with the Lord’s Prayer.

Prayer Guide for Ministry Part 3

2009-12-15T14:35:00.000-05:00

Our ministry to others begins before we meet them because the Holy Spirit works in advance to prepare the context, the timing and the attitudes of us and them. In Methodist Theology we call this 'prevenient' grace (prevenient means 'to go before'). Methodist historian Charles Yrigoyen calls it 'preparing' grace.

Prayer makes us attune to the preparations the Holy Spirit is doing. Ministries often fail because the timing is wrong or because the leadership is not sensitive to the context. Through prayer we become more sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit and better able to comprehend what we need to do.

#3: Pray for the Recipients of Your Ministry

Make a list of the persons you will pray for this week. Begin your prayers for them by reciting the ‘Kyrie’

Lord, have mercy

Christ, have mercy

Lord, have mercy

Say each person’s name and either (1) pause silently as you picture their face or (2) pray for specific needs they have. After your have prayed for each person conclude with the Kyrie.

After praying for each person, remain in silence and let the Spirit fill that silence with the persons who need to receive our ministry which we do not currently know. Conclude with the Kyrie.

Prayer Guide for Ministry Part 2

2009-12-07T12:10:00.001-05:00

Last week we began praying for our ministries by praying for ourselves so that we can become better channels of God's grace and receive God's vision for ministry.

This week we look outward. We will be praying for other leaders and volunteers with whom we do the ministry. When Jesus sent the disciples on their first preaching tour he sent them in pairs (Mark 6:7). God always provides at least one other person to be our partner in ministry to encourage us and correct us. We have a spiritual bond with our ministry partners through the Holy Spirit who is animating each of us to serve. Prayer enables us to become sensitive to that spiritual bond and through it receive strength and guidance.

If you are engaged in an existing ministry make a list of the volunteers and staff with whom you work. Then make a list of the persons who are not involved in your ministry but need to be invited to join in the work. Next, envision the kinds of persons who need to help in the ministry. You do not know who they are now but you can pray for God to show them to you. Once you have your lists begin praying the following prayer exercise:

Pray for the Other Leaders and Workers

Read Ephesians 3:14-19 and insert the person’s name wherever it says ‘you’ or ‘your’:

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that ___________may be strengthened in __________inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in __________heart(s )through faith, as ________ is/are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that _____________ may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that __________may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Prayer Guide for Ministry Part 1

2009-12-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

Advent in the season of preparation for the celebration of the birth of Christ. Call it spiritual 'nesting.' It is a time to open your heart and mind and hands to receive the presence of Christ being born in you. Certainly that is something all church leaders, lay and clergy alike, need.

I have been leading our staff through a series of prayer exercises for their ministries. Over the next four weeks I will post them. This week we begin by praying for ourselves as church leaders. It is tempting to rush headlong into prayer with your list of what you want God to do with your ministry. However, prayer is not a wish list or a to-do list for Jesus. Prayer begins by opening ourselves to receive God's presence. The only way we can lead is by first being led by Christ.

Prayer Exercise #1: Pray for Yourself

For Virtue: Use the ‘Breath Prayer’ technique to express your needs to God:
(step one) think of the most immediate need or feeling you have;
(step two) think of a name for God.
(step three) Put the name with the need to form a breath prayer.
Example: I am tired—Almighty God—Prayer: “Almighty God, give me rest.” As you inhale say to yourself the title and as you exhale say the need.

For Vision:
(step one) recite Habakkuk 2:2-3, “Then the Lord answered me and said: ‘Write the vision; make it plain on tablets so a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time.’”
(step two) ask yourself: Where do we want to be with this ministry one year from now?
(step three) conclude your meditation by reciting again Hab. 2:2-3

Whack It With a Stick

2009-11-17T16:55:00.001-05:00

“Share in the suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”—II Timothy 2:3

This is why there is a privacy fence behind the parsonage:

At 2 a.m. on Friday morning our two beagles, Rufus and Chloe, started howling and chasing a opossum in our backyard. The opossum was perched on the neighbor’s chain link fence and the dogs were barking mindlessly when I ran out to quiet them. Like all opossums, this one was too stupid to jump down on the other side and wander off to safety. So I poked it with a rake hoping to knock it off into my neighbor’s yard. Instead, the opossum flipped over and ended up clinging to the fence on our side of the yard.

Immediately, Rufus grabbed him and ran off with a live opossum in his mouth. At two in the morning in my bare feet and boxer shorts, I was whacking the dog with a stick in order to save the opossum’s life—and our neighbors’ peaceful sleep. The opossum played opossum, the dogs ran in the house, and I retreated to the garage with my rake.

If I had not poked him they would have been barking all night. If I had not whacked him there would have been a bloody opossum carcass all over the backyard, and they would have barked all night.

As with beagles and opossums, sometimes in the church you just have to whack it with a stick.

There are problems every church faces that no one wants to deal with. Too often church leaders turn a deaf ear and look the other way in the hopes that someone else will deal with it. Who else is going to confront the problem except you? Whether you are the lay leader or a committee chairperson, you have been called by God to deal honestly and swiftly with problems in your church. It is not just the pastor’s responsibility. If you ignore them they will only persist and usually get worse. Part of being a leader means getting the dogs to stop barking in the pews and the parlors.

And sometimes that requires you to whack it with a stick. Don’t ignore problem. Yes, it is unpleasant and uncomfortable, but being a part of a church requires doing some unpleasant stuff. So, don’t let those problems linger because, in the end, you will have a bloody carcass strewn all over your congregation.

Cowbells and Koinonia

2009-11-12T15:09:00.000-05:00

‘Bear one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.’—Galatians 6:2

The Cowbell Theologians left Speedway last week. Who are the Cowbell Theologians? They are seven pastors who get together a couple of times a year to read, write, talk and laugh about theology and ministry. Thee are four Lutherans, one Episcopalian, one Mennonite and a Methodist (me) scattered from San Diego to Goshen, Atlanta to Green Bay.

We were thrown together five years ago by the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, a hoity-toity religious think tank that use to sponsor a ‘Pastor-Theologian Program.’ They, rightly, figured that pastors need to think deep thoughts and so with some drug money from the Lilly Endowment (‘the church’s one foundation’) they organized 70 pastors from across the nation into small groups and assigned a theologian to each group. Think of it as a cub scout troop for nerdy middle aged pastors.

Two years ago the Pastor Theologian Program ended but our group wanted to keep meeting so we applied for another Lilly-funded program through Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s College of Pastoral Leaders. Austin support a motley bunch of ‘cohort groups’ of pastors that are organized around a variety of themes ranging from a group of women pastors in Michigan who are studying a Medieval femail mystic to a bunch of pastors who do woodworking as a hobby. Being neither female nor handy with power tools, my group had not unique theme. We just wanted to get together and talk about theology and our churches.

Inspiration comes in a variety of forms and ours appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Will Farrell, a cowbell and an old Blue Oyster Cult song. We wrote a mock theological treatise about the ‘sanctus campana bovis’—‘holy cowbell’—and sent it in as our application.

Either the good people at Austin are stupid or have a weird sense of humor, but they accepted our application and from henceforth we became known as the ‘Cowbell Theologians.’

Over the past five years the Cowbells have become a source of support for my ministry. They have challenged me to think, to pray, and to rest. They have affirmed me and prayed for me. Their fellowship has made me see the potential and goodness in my church and have given me the support I have needed to make this a long-term appointment. I hope I have done as much for them as they have for me.

Fellowship is essential for church leadership. We never serve on our own. We need others to reflect with and laugh with. We need others to challenge us and affirm us. God uses them as a means of grace so that we can continue to be a means of grace to the people we serve.

Lost Pencils

2009-11-03T12:47:00.000-05:00

‘Commit your way to the Lord; trust him God and he will act.’—Psalm 37:5

About once a year my pencil cup comes up empty. Normally there are at least a couple of pens or a stray pencil. The rest rotate in and out of the cup from my shirt pocket to my suit coat to my briefcase to the pulpit and back again to the cup. But when the moon and the stars are aligned and the spirits of the four winds begin to blow none of them make it back into the cup on my desk. A lead vortex perhaps or an inky Bermuda Triangle? This is the work of the devil!

Is your cup empty? As a church leader God has equipped you with a cup full of talent. But over time we end up misplacing, misusing and misappropriating our talents. We misplace them in activities and organizations outside the Church, giving more allegiance to secular organizations than we do the body of Christ.

We misuse them in the church when our ego becomes the driving motivation for our work. Here is a ‘misuse test’: Did you get your feelings hurt when on one recognized your hard work or creativity? Are you mad at the pastor because she did not send you a thank you note or recognize you on Sunday morning?

We misappropriate our talents when we keep doing jobs in the church for which God no longer calls us or we are ill-suited. It may look like bravery and self-sacrifice, but in reality you are getting in the way of another person’s calling because you are taking their place.

Over time the misplacing, misusing and misappropriating of our talents leaves us empty inside. We are not doing what God designed us for and this is a real drain.

This week, gather up your pens and pencils and put them in God’s hands.

Useless Beauty

2009-10-21T11:19:00.000-04:00

‘In your presence there is fullness of joy.’—Psalm 16:11

Sunday night we worshipped at the Marion County Jail with the inmates from cell blocks 4D and 4W. During the prayer requests one of the inmates asked for ‘God’s presence to be felt in this place.’ Instead of requesting prayers for his family or his court date, he asked for something less practical—and yet far more profound and transformative.

Too often our prayers and worship focus on fulfilling a particular need. We pray for healing, strength, peace, guidance and a slew of lesser pious stuff. We want worship to be relevant and inspiring so we can ‘get something out of it’ and recruit new members. Regardless of how worthy our desires may be, we reduce prayer and worship to spiritual technology that we use to get what we want or need.

Church leaders often act like technicians when the only reason we pray is in order to cajole God to ‘bless’ our work. Don’t get me wrong: We should ask for God’s help and pray for divine intervention. But this should not be the primary reason we get down on our knees.

The most important prayer request and the only goal of worship is for ‘God’s presence to be felt in this place.’ How often is this our goal, to simply be engulfed by the Spirit? Rarely. We have our agendas and our wish lists when we pray. Prayer becomes a business meeting with the Boss. Several days a week I walk around Eagle Creek Park as a part of my prayer time, but too often I am a spiritual hunter-gatherer foraging for the next sermon illustration.

When you get caught up in God’s beauty it is an end itself. It is not for something else. It is not a means to a greater end. In that sense, it is ‘useless’; the experience is not ‘used’ to achieve something else. Or as Elvis Costello once asked, ‘What shall we do with all this useless beauty?’ The goal of the Christian life is to be taken up in the presence of God which by the world’s standards is a ‘useless beauty.”

The goal of all our ministries is to assist others in coming into God’s presence—this ‘useless beauty’. So, as church leaders, God gives us these moments to feel and see and taste what we are working for.

At best we can say there is a byproduct. After we have had these temporary moments of being in God’s beautiful presence we will have greater focus and peace and stamina for doing the mission of Christ. But as soon as we try to conjure up or manipulate these spiritual moments they evaporate because we are turning God’s gift into a tool.

At the end of the worship service the guards did not come on time. We filled the time with taking requests from the inmates and singing. Someone shouted, ‘Play ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ but we only had one hymnal that had it. I lined out the words as the pianist played. The chapel roared with the most beautiful tenor and bass voices like a cascade of sound. The guards came. The music ended. The bars locked back in place. But for a few moments we felt the ‘useless’ beautiful presence of God in that place.

Stop scrounging around for answers to your prayers and just enter into God’s presence. When we let go of our agendas we can see the beauty of God’s love and power. Sometimes God overwhelms us with divine beauty through nature or music, but it is found even in the ugly places like a jail because the cross is the reflection of God’s beautiful grace.

Crazy Prophets and Honest Shepherds

2009-10-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

'"I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice....a bruised reed he will not break." --Isaiah 42.1-3

Yesterday Rev. Lisa Marchal and I gave a presentation on advocacy ministries at the Indiana Conference convocation for pastors. One of our major points was that advocacy and social justice ministry is at its best when it comes out of the passion of the laity, and the role of the pastor is to cultivate their calling to work for peace and justice.

During our presentation, our friend Greg asked a great question, ‘What do you do when the only people in your congregation who have a passion for social justice are crazy? They are the folks who annoy everyone else and are so dysfunctional that they hurt the causes that they are passionate about.’ Whether it is nuclear disarmament or foster children, the cause is noble but the messenger is a wing-nut.

The first temptation for the pastor is to not deal with that person. Be nice to them, humor them, but don’t give them a platform. Quarantine them from the rest of the congregation and keep working on the other stuff that pastors do. This is a prudent and effective strategy.

However, it is not a faithful strategy. Advocacy and social justice are basic aspects of discipleship. They are as essential to the practice of the Christian faith as prayer, worship and Bible study because of Jesus. His ministry and message includes the transformation of the world, not just the conversion of individuals. The Jesus that we have in our hearts is also the Jesus who cleansed the Temple of money changers.

So if you are really, truly serious about refocusing your church on making disciples of Jesus Christ you must figure out ways to give your congregation opportunities to engage in social justice ministries. It is tempting to ignore this because no one is asking for it. They want vibrant worship services, quality Bible studies—and tasty potluck dinners! But no one is asking you to lead the church in addressing world hunger.

Except the wing-nuts. And that is the gift they bring to the church. They force us pastors to focus on it.

What does it say about our churches that the only persons who are concerned about issues of social justice are those on the margins of the congregation? Have our congregations become so completely indocrinated with American middle class selfishness that anyone who is concerned about the world looks odd?

Our task as pastors is to use their passion as an opportunity to confront their dysfunction. We must help them understand how they undermine what they love. And we must give them guidance because they lack the spiritual gift of discernment; the Holy Spirit has outsourced that gift to us.

This is a long, painful and exhausting process for the pastor—but that is the nature of making disciples. It is a messy and dangerous process because along the way they may mess it up and create a little havoc in the church. So be it. It wouldn’t be the first time the church weathered someone’s dysfunction. But it does make for more work for us pastors. And that is why we often ignore these people.

If we are committed to being shepherds then we will do this hard work because it is only through our honest shepherding that they stand a chance of healing and they learn how to lead the church in healing the world.

Why Invite People to Church?

2009-10-07T13:35:00.000-04:00

"Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation." --Mark 16:15

In the early nineties, Bishop LeRoy Hodapp sent quarterly ‘Catch the Spirit’ reports to the pastors on which you were to record your average worship and Sunday school attendance and calculate the increase or decrease over the previous quarter. At the bottom, there was always a space for you to “Share the reasons for your growth.”

It was my first appointment and one of my churches was what Lyle Shaller calls ‘A Passive Congregation.” They were wonderful folks but they didn’t have pulse or a passion for church growth. I had tried everything to get them to increase their membership and nothing seemed to work. So every quarter these forms poured salt into my bruised ego.

One quarter I recorded astronomically inflated numbers and listed several ridiculous ‘reasons for growth’ which included: ‘Scratch off lotto on the back of the welcome cards in the pews’ and ‘topless ushers.’

A few weeks later I got a letter from the bishop. ‘Dear Darren, thank you for sharing with us your success. We should have you come to the cabinet meeting and share with us about these innovative church growth strategies!’ At least, the bishop had a sense of humor.

Church growth amounts to little more than bean counting when institutional anxiety is the primary motivation.

Why invite people to church? It is a simple question, so simple that we assume that we have the right answer. Yet, one of the chief obstacles to real evangelism is the wrong motivation. Rarely do church leaders have an explicit and clarifying conversation about it.

If you are a church leader ask yourself, Why do we want the church to grow with new people? You may be motivated by the wrong reasons, which include

‘We need to replace the old ones who are dying off’—This sounds crass but it comes from a genuine concern. You love the church but you are worn out. You want to retire from leadership but there is no one around to keep it going. It saddens you to realize that this place where you made friends and found faith years ago could come to an end. There are two variations on this motivation:

The first type is the ‘old fart’ attitude who wants everything to be done exactly the way it has always been done. Do you want to make disciples or do you want to hire curators?
The second type sounds like they have the right attitude because they are very willing for new members to make changes—as long as the church survives. However, the real motivation is for the perpetuation of the church, not the transformation of the individual. It does not matter whether a new member receives spiritual mentoring or biblical training; we don’t want to know whether they are having marital problems or a personal crisis. All we want to know is whether they are willing to chair the committee! Do you want to form Christians or do you want to hire managers?

‘We want cool people’—Pastors and young adults are often infected with this motivation. They look around on Sunday morning and realize that the congregation is made up of boring, old folks who do not understand or share their tastes and interests. They want new people to whom they can relate. They do not want a bunch of visitors who are needy and desperate. There are certain types of visitors who are a better catch than others. Young professionals are primo, but a recently widowed senior citizen is not a priority. Will you welcome seekers or do you hope for celebrities?

‘We like the thrill of it’—It is always exciting when there is a big crowd on Sunday morning. Inevitably, someone after the service will say to the pastor, ‘We really had church today!’ as if on those Sundays when the attendance is low and the choir stinks that we are not the body of Christ. We Americans measure success in numbers and too often we want newcomers to boost our attendance because we like worship to be a spectacle. Do you want believers or do you want fans?

There is only one right motive for inviting people to church. We do it because Christ cares for them. He longs for each individual to receive His unconditional acceptance and transforming presence. The Church is where He wants people to experience His grace. If we are possessed by His Spirit then we too will have a passion for their well-being, not the preservation or renovation of our institutions.

The right motive is very basic but it takes honesty and guts to abandon the wrong motivations. If our sole concern is truly offering them life in Christ, then we will not be hung up on numbers. In fact, the process of discipleship is long and exhausting and may not end in any kind of tangible results that you can record on a form.

The Mis-Churched

2009-09-30T12:10:00.000-04:00

'Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.'--Matthew 18:20

'Where two or three believers are met together, there is a church.'--Cyprian

It was a hard re-entry when I returned from my sabbatical. My children were upset that I had been gone, the parsonage kitchen was still being remodeled, and I had a kidney stone attack. Adding insult to these minor injuries, the day I got back home my dog, Rufus, a two year old beagle, urinated on my briefcase. Welcome home, Master!

I guess I deserved it. While I was gone the electric fence started malfunctioning. Rufus wears a collar that sounds a warning beep when he gets close to the fence. Part of the wire, the part that is not suppose to shock the dog, goes across the patio. When he needs to pee he goes out the back door, across the patio, to the wide open bathroom of our backyard. For unexplainable reasons in late July, the patio wire started picking up the signal and Rufus was getting shocked every time he went outside. Instead of going outside, he created a new toilet where I kept my briefcase.

How would you like to be shocked every time you went to the bathroom?

For some people, going to church is worse. They got burned by the last congregation or by the last pastor and now they are very hesitant about re-entering into church life. It could be something as severe and damaging as sexual abuse which occurred years ago. Or it might be the garden-variety fighting and bickering, judging and snobbishness that happens in congregations. Or it might be nothing at all—literally, nothing was said or done in their moment of crisis during a divorce or a death.

Be it abuse, divisions or neglect these folks have been ‘mis-churched.’ We talk about folks being ‘unchurched’ as if the only barrier to church membership is finding a congregation that worships at a convenient time and has a nice parking lot. The ‘mis-churched’ are those who have been given a distorted view of what is the Church. If Church is a community in which disciples of Jesus Christ are formed then the ‘mis-churched’ have been marred by congregations for whom sin in the mold.

If you are a church leader and have encountered a newcomer who is hesitant about participating or joining the church or seems unreliable it may be that they were ‘mis-churched’ by their last experience. Be sensitive. It does no good to talk poorly about them with other leaders or members. Be patient. It may take years for a person to feel comfortable entering into the fellowship of your congregation. Take them as they come. Continue to extend the invitation but don’t get upset because they are inconsistent.

The ‘mis-church’ bring a tremendous gift to us leaders. They remind us that there is a shadow-side to church life which we must be diligent in exposing and overcoming. They challenge us to seek the real core of being the Church. Most of all, they push us to refocus our goal. The goal is not membership but discipleship. If all we want are more members then we should not waste our time on them. There are plenty of ‘unchurched’ people who are easier to recruit. But if the goal is to make disciples then we must be willing to go through the long, hard process of helping them find healing—and leading the congregation in repentance.

Cuthbert's Cave or Joe's Bedroom

2009-09-22T05:19:00.003-04:00

‘God is love and those who abide in love abide in God.’—I John 4.16

Through a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment (the pharmaceutical giant) I was on renewal leave in the UK this summer. I spent the first week walking St. Cuthbert’s Way, a sixty-plus mile path that runs from Scotland to England through the Cheviot Hills. Cuthbert was a local boy who became a monk (and later a bishop, against his wishes) in the seventh century. He traveled throughout Northumberland converting pagans and trying to find a quiet place to pray where the church wouldn’t bug him.

One of his cribs was a cave out in the woods between Horton and Buckton. What he was looking for in his cave was the mystical experience of complete unity with the Spirit of God. For centuries hermits, saints, monks and nuns have been trying to receive this gift of the ‘beatific vision’ through solitude and contemplation. This contemplative tradition teaches that you must separate yourself from the world and purge your mind of everything in order to receive this experience.

With a stash of drug money and credit cards, I too was trying to get away from parishioners so I could recreate Cuthbert’s mystical vision. Day four of my walk took me past his cave. On the way, I misread the guide book and ended up in a cow pasture. I spent nearly an hour going from one corner to the next looking for the right stile to cross. No beatific vision, only bovine.

Back home, things were rough. Our son Joe was struggling because I was not home. He has Asperger Syndrome—and a mood disorder, a tic disorder, a learning disorder, gluten intolerance, and probably a couple of other things the doctor doesn’t have a label for.

The worst was at night because his brain would not let him rest. It has always been that way. I have spent more nights than I can count sitting in the dark beside his bed rubbing his feet, his back, his head trying to help the medicine and the supplements jump start his neurotransmitters. Some nights it is a three to four hour battle helping him calm down with showers, books and music. All the while, I must keep my cool lest my impatience adds fuel to the fire in his brain. So all I can do is sit in the darkness of his room or the hallway and wait.

God knows, there have been many nights when I have blown it. But on those nights when I do it right, when I am able to be patient and simply be in that moment for him, it is because I have let go of everything. I make the sign of the cross and let Christ possess me. His blood becomes my blood. I no longer parent, God ‘parents’ through me.

I have come to realize that it is in those moments when I truly experience the spiritual unity Cuthbert and the other saints were looking for. It is not found in quiet, isolated contemplation, but in our moments of sacrificial love. It comes in the practical, tedious, monotonous acts of compassion that suck the life out of us so that the life of Christ can be poured into us.

If ‘God is love’—not, ‘God loves’ as if it is something God does, but rather love as the very essence of God—then we experience union with God in our loving. The high spiritual moments in our lives are not found on a weekend retreat or on a mountain top meditating with the monks but in a dark bedroom with your child screaming.

Greener Pastures

2009-05-18T13:52:00.002-04:00

This is my last installment of the Honest Shepherd for the summer. I will be out in the pastures and meadows where all good shepherds spend their summers. Only without my sheep.

Through a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment, I will be taking a renewal leave from May 24 to September 7. Most of my time will be spent in the U.K. hiking and visiting fellow Methodists. A side trip is scheduled in June to Slovakia where I will tour United Methodist congregations as they are rebuilding from decades under communist rule.

Many of my colleagues who have taken renewal leaves have blogged as a way to keep in touch with their congregations. I have decided not to do this because I need to get completely away from my role as shepherd. That includes tending this blog.

Best wishes for the summer.

Darren

Ascending Ministry

2009-05-13T11:35:00.002-04:00

“As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

--Acts 1:9

Ascension Day

(I know I am a week early. Ascension Day is May 21 and Ascension Sunday is May 24. But I will be starting my renewal leave by that time. So, since I will be 'ascending' next week I wanted to get this one in.)

One of my first jobs was bailing hay with Thorton Myers. Thornton must have been about 150 years old, or so he seemed to a 12 year old boy. He could barely see and his hearing wasn’t much better. But he knew how to give orders. While the boys loaded bails onto the wagon he would bark out commands.

Because his eye sight was poor he thought the bailing wire was too loose so throughout the day he kept tightening the wire. In order to pick up a bail you need a little slack in the wire in order to grab it. By the afternoon it was so tight that we could not pick it up by the wire and because he was nearly deaf he never responded to our repeated pleas. Never once did he lift a bail and not once did he stop telling us what to do.

In the ascension story, Jesus is all command and no help. At the very moment that he gives the disciples their greatest challenge he leaves the world. Like a missile launch, he is heading for the stratosphere.

If ever there was a passage in the Bible which seemed to be the most irrelevant to church leadership it is this one. I can find great inspiration in the incarnation, guidance in his teachings, challenge in his crucifixion, and hope in his resurrection for my ministry. But the ascension seems like a good excuse to escape from the daily grind of bearing witness. WWJD—What Would Jesus Do?—Get the hell out of here!

How many times do we want to get out of there, out of those places and situations when doing the work of Christ is tough? Avoidance and foot-dragging is one of the most common temptations for a church leader.

Yet, Jesus had to leave in order to enable us to stick it out. His ascension represents his transcendence. Transcendence is not aloofness, it is “otherness.” Jesus needed to become something other than one of us so that we can become like him in our ministries.

He had to ascend in order for us to receive two essential things for our ministries.

One, we need a higher purpose. It is so easy for our outlook and attitude to become weighed down by the trivial concerns and tedious tasks of daily ministry. Burn out is more likely when we cannot see the greater goal for what we do. Resentment builds up in us when we must make sacrifices which seem to have no greater purpose. He is exalted in order to raise our perspective and give us his vision for ministry.

Two, we need a higher power. Several weeks after he ascended the disciples experienced Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which empowered their witness. If Jesus had not ascended his Spirit would never have descended into their hearts. We need a power from above to keep us from being bogged down by the powers here below. If we are only relying upon our power then we will give up. It is not enough to find that “inner power” because we do not possess it within ourselves.

Christ, who has been high and lifted up, will keep our heads up and our hearts on fire for his mission in this world.

Missing Coltrane

2009-05-05T16:27:00.003-04:00

“The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.”
--Acts 15:12

The other day, while I was listening to internet radio I heard one of my favorite jazz artists, the great pianist Thelonius Monk, but I couldn’t make out the song. It sounded familiar but something was missing. The song was “Nutty.” My recording at home has John Coltrane playing sax, but all I could hear was Monk on piano. I checked the website and my settings and still could not hear Coltrane. Then, I held the left speaker to my ear and realized that it was dead. The stereo recording had split the sounds between the speakers and all I could get was piano on the right one.

Listening is key to good ministry. We have to weigh all the facts and consider all the options if our ministries are to survive. We need to hear all sides of the issues and be open to new directions that the Spirit is trying to communicate to us if our ministries are to thrive and grow. The Spirit may speak through a variety of channels and the most unlikely people and situations. The early church quickly discovered this when Paul and Barnabas came back with fantastic stories of Gentile converts. If they had not listened to Paul the church would not have grown beyond a failed sect within Judaism.

What gets in the way of good listening? Our preconceived notions keep us from listening to God. The leadership in the Jerusalem church could have denied Paul and Barnabas a hearing. They could have argued with them because the news that they were sharing did not fit into their assumptions about how God works and whom God saves.

We must listen to what is said without fitting it into what we want to hear or expect to hear. We must listen to what is not said because silence reveals potential problems that often go unnoticed. We must listen to how it is said and take into account the mood and motivations of others. We must listen for why it is said in order to develop a deeper empathy and respect.

We must learn to listen to the forgotten voices in the church and in society--the marginalized, the poor, the immigrant, the disabled. This is hard to do because church has been aligned with those of privilege and power. Even so, the Spirit moves in ways to challenge us with their voices in order to reform the church to reach out in new ways and new directions.

Sometimes we do not hear God because God’s instructions do not fit into our plans. We have it worked out and how dare God get in the way! We have ‘already tried that before’ and we have stopped listening for any new opportunities which may make it a real possibility this time around.

Before we can lead we must adjust to hear the fullness of God’s message.

[The image of John Coltrane comes from St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco.]

Open Communion

2009-04-30T14:04:00.004-04:00

In his book John Wesley and the Church of England, Frank Baker describes Wesley’s attempts to make the Lord’s Supper more meaningful for the masses in the 1700s. He would lead his Methodist followers into the local Anglican church on a Sunday morning and bring them down the aisle to receive the elements. In a few incidences, there were so many that he would lead them down in groups of a hundred. And they would coming singing because Wesley believed that singing was the best way to prepare one’s heart to receive the sacrament.

We good United Methodists believe in ‘open communion’ which means that we do not require someone to be a member or to be baptized in order to fellowship with us at the table or kneel with us at the railing. It does not mean that there are no requirements. Rather, the only requirement is that you want Jesus in your heart. You don’t have to have it all figured out or recite a creed; it is not a requirement of the head. All you need is the desire in your heart. This is why Wesley wanted to open up the sacrament to include the poor and forgotten. In the same way, we welcome all kinds of folk when we serve communion.

Open communion is not just a ritualistic practice. It is a way of being the Church. Just as Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors, we too must befriend those who are ignored, misunderstood and rejected by society. At Speedway, we do this through our Special Needs Ministries. For youth who are struggling with impairments, school is often the place where they are scrutinized by teachers, evaluated by professionals, and rejected by peers. Church is the one place where they can feel the unconditional acceptance of Jesus.

Open communion cannot be restricted to one specialized ministry. It must be the attitude of every leader in our church and the atmosphere permeating every ministry we perform. The opposite of open communion is the clique. Too often we unwittingly form cliques because it creates a comfort zone for us. We don’t have to develop new leaders, we don’t have to risk new friendships, and we don’t have to challenge our own biases.

Open communion calls us as church leaders to stretch ourselves. It calls us to adopt the attitude, “Any friend of Jesus is a friend of mine.” Remember, Jesus was friend to the people who were never a part of the ‘in crowd.’ Charles Wesley put it best:

“Come, sinners to the gospel feast, let every soul be Jesus’ guest.
Ye need not one be left behind for God hath bid all humankind.”

Not only did he write about it, Frank Baker practiced open communion. During World War Two, a POW camp was located near the Bakers. On Sunday afternoons he invited German POWs into his home for dinner and fellowship. Through his radical hospitality, one 19 year old prisoner came to believe in the transforming love of Christ. That prisoner was Jurgen Moltmann, who later became one of the most famous theologians of our time.

For more about United Methodist beliefs about the Lord's Supper read This Holy Mystery, the official statement about communion adopted by our 2000 General Conference.

Bleach Water Attitudes

2009-04-22T09:51:00.003-04:00

“A cheerful heart makes a cheerful face, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken.”
--Proverbs 15:13
(NIV)

The National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education’s manual, Caring for Our Children, recommends the following bleach and water mixture for cleaning:

For spray applications on surfaces such as diapering areas, countertops, toys, door knobs and phone receivers: ¼ cup of bleach to 1 gallon of cool water

For weaker solutions for submerging eating utensils that have been detergent-cleanded and rinsed: 1 tablespoon of bleach to 1 gallon of cool water.

Too little bleach means that it will not kill the germs but too much bleach irritates the skin and leaves a film on the surfaces.

Like bleach mixtures, our attitude as church leaders affects the rest of the congregation. If the leadership has a positive and forward-looking attitude it will eventually filter out into the congregation making them more flexible to change. But if the leadership has a negative, distrusting or defeatist attitude it too will saturate the congregation leaving them with a sense of frustration or combativeness. One of the things that church leaders create with their attitude is the mood in a congregation.

The simple definition of a leader is one who has influence over others. Whether good or bad, the leader can get people to do things and adopt ideas. The same is true for feelings. It doesn’t take much to create a particular mood, which is easy to feel but often difficult to pinpoint because it is passed on in unintentional ways.

We tend not to think of ourselves possessing this kind of influence on people. It sounds too sinister as if we are engaged in mind control. Yet, it is an inevitable fact of leadership that our attitude spills over into the relationships with those whom we serve. We have all seen situations, good and bad, where the attitude and tone of the pastor creates a mood on Sunday morning. We have all experienced situations where fighting and cooperation among church staff members has an affect on the church’s lay leadership.

Just remember: your negative attitude is like spraying the cat with bleach water. It will get her off the countertop but she will hiss and run.

A joyful and positive attitude casts a tone in your committee or program that encourages people to work together and give their best. Even though others may be more skeptical or negative, your positive attitude is like posting a sign that says, “No Whining Allowed Beyond This Point.”

Sometimes your attitude needs to be serious in order to create the kind of atmosphere which will help people deal with the reality of a problem. By your seriousness you are inviting others to share the concerns which pain them. It prevents the ministry from covering up serious problems with the façade of happiness.

What is your attitude and how have you seen it unintentionally passed on to others? Like bleach water, your attitude can help clean up the church or can leave a toxic residue.

Too Wordy?

2009-04-14T13:09:00.001-04:00

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”
--Psalm 119:105 (KJV)

American treasurer hunter Mel Fisher made history on July 20, 1985 when he discovered the wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha. Known as “The Atocha Motherlode” this 1622 wreck is worth over $450 million, which includes 40 tons of gold and silver and nearly 100,000 silver coins. Fisher found it after sixteen years of searching, but the first three were a misadventure. They had misread the Spanish manuscript and they had been one hundred miles off course.

Reading the map the right way is the key to effectiveness in treasure hunting as well as ministry. How often do you read the Bible as a source of inspiration and guidance for your work?

We have a thousand excuses for not reading it but the biggest for church leaders is an ironic one. We are too busy doing the work of the church that we don’t feel like we have the time to read it. And why should we, we are being “doers of the Word” and isn’t that more than enough? When we do read it we skim it, we give it a passing nod, looking for something to justify the decisions we have already made and assuming we already know what it says. It is the worst form of proof-texting.

The worst offenders are pastors who prepare sermons every Sunday and so they assume that they already know what the text says or they are simply looking for the next sermon idea. For the typical mainline Protestant pastor, attending committee meetings have replaced leading Bible studies and doing paperwork has replaced solid exegesis. Hats off to Bishop Joe Sprague who laid down this challenge: “I am convinced that every ordained deacon and elder should be leading at least three groups or classes a week.” (from Affirmations of a Dissenter).

And yet, most mainline Protestant pastors surrender the ideological high ground to outsiders. Small groups and Sunday School classes use all sorts of curriculum that is filled with consumerist fluff or fundamentalist tripe. It is as if a group of teachers and preachers invaded a church while the pastor was cloistered in the office. For no other reason, pastors should be teaching, writing curriculum and guiding the selection of education materials so that he or she can keep the church grounded in ones’ tradition and good scholarship and directed by a common vision.

Could it be that the reason why your work, whether you are a pastor or a lay leader, is not more effective or edifying is because you have not enriched your leadership with the reading of scripture? We must read it deeply and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the words in order for the Bible to guide our work.

We misread it when we do not allow it to speak to us. The Holy Spirit needs to challenge us in order to refine and redirect our work, and the primary avenue of communication is the scriptures. We need to linger in those moments of reading so that the Spirit has a chance to speak to our spirits.The primary purpose of scripture for the minister is to refine his or her character. The Bible is not a treasure map in the sense that it will lead us to the big pay off for our work. Instead, it is like a light, as the psalmist suggest, helps us examine our leadership and guide our decision making.

Lost Lorca

2009-04-09T14:33:00.003-04:00

Maundy Thursday
I Corinthians 11:23-26

Garcia Lorca is Spain’s most famous poet and playwright. There is a statue of him in Madrid and a memorial for him in his home region of Granada. And yet, no one knows for sure where he is buried and the government is unwilling to find out.

You see, Lorca was executed by the fascists in 1936. He was among hundreds of thousands who were tortured and assassinated by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. Today, there are mass graves scattered all over Spain: in Monto Torozo there is one believed to contain a thousand corpses, in Orgiva, three thousand more, and in Merida, another thirty-five thousand. Supposedly. No one knows for sure because to this day, seventy years later, it is still controversial to talk about these human rights atrocities.

After Franco died there was a transition to democracy in the 1980s and as a part of the compromise to make it work a collective silence developed, el Pacto del Silencio or the Pact of Silence. To this day, the government, which is led by conservatives which had ties to Franco, will not fund any of the exhumations of these mass graves. Instead, a volunteer organization, called the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, has been slowly unearthing these places and returning the remains to family members.

Even their work would not have gotten off the ground if it had not been for the international fame of Lorca. The nation had to acknowledge that their most famous poet, their representative to the world, was executed. If you travel to Alfacar you will find a part and a marker on a spot believed to be where he and three other bodies are buried. And yet, rumors abound that in the sixties a government official dug him up and moved him. And still another rumor is that he is in a mass grave in a nearby town.

El Pacto del Silencio, a pact of silence surrounds all our deepest tragedies. We do not want to look at the ugliness. We would rather move on, bury it, act as if it never happened. But the evidence remains. The artifacts of abuse are still there—a poet’s pen, bread crumbs, wine stains.

The Lord’s Supper is the artifact of crucifixion but the Corinthians wanted to live in denial. It is understandable considering their context. Crucifixion was the most shameful, humiliating way to die in the Roman Empire. Not only was it a form of public execution, it was torture. The crucified were a billboard to any would-be insurrectionists cautioning them to not follow suit. Think Abu Ghriab. Think Guantanamo Bay.

The Corinthian Christians had no problem celebrating the resurrection. That’s a hero’s story. But Paul did not say, ‘for as often as you eat the bread and drink the wind you proclaim the Lord’s resurrection;’ he said, you ‘proclaim the Lord’s death.’ Yet, that death was an extreme embarrassment. His death was a political execution by the Empire working in collusion with the local elite Jewish authorities, and as such the facts surrounding his death were highly controversial and any association with the deceased was highly suspect. No wonder they wanted to live in denial.

Or should I say, eat in denial. Whenever they celebrated the Lord’s Supper (which in those days was a full meal) the wealthier church members did not wait for the poorer ones. They took the best for themselves and looked down their noses on the rest. In short, they were mimicking the values and customs of society inside the church.

Paul takes them to task for their hypocrisy. They may have been saying the words to the ritual, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ but their actions betrayed the proclamation of the Lord’s death.

We betray Jesus every time we take this sacrament in the church but do not let it live in our lives. What does it mean for us to truly proclaim the Lord’s death in the breaking of the bread and the drinking from the cup?

Every time we break the bread our lives must be broken in the service of Jesus Christ. Just as his body was touched, exhausted in ministry and later beaten, broken, tortured, and executed in the ultimate service on the cross—just as the bread is broken and given in this sacrament so too our lives to be given in the service of Christ to the world. We are the visible body of Jesus Christ in the world today. The world sees Christ through our acts of mercy, love, peacemaking and justice. Our service is to the ones who are forgotten and rejected, abused and scorn like Jesus was. Our solidarity with Christ is a solidarity with the oppressed.

What makes our good works more than just human efforts is when we dedicate them in this sacrament. Our service is taken up in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and what little sacrifice we make participates in his ultimate sacrifice. There is a portion of the Great Thanksgiving prayer near the end which is traditionally called the anamnesis, the Remembrance (‘do this in remembrance of me’). After those words are said the prayer immediately prevents this from being simply an historical recounting. Instead, the remembering gives way to a request that our lives participate in his sacrificial service. We say:
‘And so, in remembrance of these your mighty acts in Jesus Christ, we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us.’

Whenever we serve Christ in our everyday lives we are actively remembering him and participating in his sacrifice. When we serve in the name of Christ our solidarity forces the world to remember those who are being tortured and abused. Then the bread is truly being broken in our lives.

Every time we drink from the cup we must rely upon Jesus to give us life. The symbol of life was blood, and his blood is what gives us life. He killed the forces of death by the shedding of his blood. And this is what gives us life, both to live for him today and eternal life after we die. Think of it as a blood transfusion. We can only live when we are constantly relying upon his Spirit to be transfused throughout our lives.

When we take this sacrament we are receiving his life-giving Spirit. Again, the Great Thanksgiving says, ‘Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine.’ The sacrament is the port of entry into our hearts for the Spirit to infuse us with peace and hope and strength. You and I cannot live a single moment without God giving us the strength and peace to keep going on. We cannot go on sacrificing for the work of mercy and justice unless our lives are transfused with his life-giving blood.

When we serve and trust in Jesus we participate in his death which is offered to us in this sacrament. Tonight we remember the painful history of Jesus’ death. We don’t sweep it under the rug. How can we? The evidence is all around us. But it is evidence of his love. The artifacts of his crucifixion are in our sacrificial service, the breaking of our bodies for his work, and in our dependency on his blood as our life source. We remember his love on the cross, a pain which is captured in one of Lorcas’ poems:

[It’s True]

Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!

For love of you, the air, it hurts,
and my heart,
and my hat, they hurt me.

Who would buy it from me,
this ribbon I am holding,
and this sadness of cotton,
white, for making handkerchiefs with?

Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!

So tonight, come to the table remembering the pain it cost Jesus to love you as he loves you.

Tongue Tied

2009-04-07T10:57:00.004-04:00

[This first appeared on UMNexus.org.]

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….to [one is given] various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.”
--I Corinthians 12:7, 10

Gift of the Spirit: Interpretation of Tongues

At the 2004 General Conference of The United Methodist Church I was chosen to chair a subcommittee of a legislative group. As the legislative group reorganized into subcommittees I herded my two dozen or so delegates into a corner of the banquet hall and started assigning tasks. When it was time for lunch I was feeling pretty good about my efficient leadership when a middle aged Native American woman approached me. She was an official observer for our Commission on the Status and Role of Women (COSROW), who along with the Commission on Religion and Race, monitor and give advice to all General Conference meetings in order to ensure inclusiveness.

Even though she was respectful and complimentary of my leadership she said something that really stuck in my crawl: “I noticed that you do not say ‘Please’ or ‘Thank You’ very often. You may need to be more intentional about this because in other cultures you may be perceived as rude and disrespectful.” Me, rude?! I spent most of my lunch fuming about what she had said. I was on a mental rant about ‘political correctness’ and her rudeness with me.

As I was walking back from lunch, muttering under my breath, I caught myself: “She sounded exactly like my wife!” Ouch! For years my Southern-born wife has told me that I am too gruff and she is constantly reminding me that I need to be more polite. There is nothing more humbling than to realize that your wife’s opinion has the backing of a general agency of the denomination.

She and my wife were right. There are subtle (and not so subtle) cultural differences that impede our leadership when we do not realize it. Having grown up in a blue collar, Midwestern family which did not place a high premium on manners or genteel speech (bowling alleys are not known for teaching etiquette) what I perceive as honesty and efficiency others who have been raised in other cultures, perceive as abrasive or disrespectful.

That is why we need people in the church who are sensitive to cultural and personality differences and can help us understand those differences. They are translators and diplomats who can assist in lessening the conflicts which arise from miscommunication. These need not be major cultural differences. In relatively homogenous churches there are different temperaments, personal histories and family systems which make it so easy to talk past one another.

These translators and diplomats possess the gifts of ‘speaking in tongues’ and the ‘interpretation of tongues.’ Too often a literal reading limits their relevance for today. Speaking in tongues referred to either the ability to speak another foreign language or an incomprehensible spiritual utterance in worship and prayer. Either way, they were communicating outside your normal language. Others had the gift of interpreting to the church what others were saying. In both cases, these persons had been given the ability to communicate with people who are different from us. They had been given the gift of ‘cross-cultural’ communication.

Churches often bemoan that they have a ‘communications problem.’ That problem may stem from persons not exercising the gifts of speaking in tongues and of interpretation. We need folks who can communicate the Gospel across all the communication barriers, be it ethnicity, race, age, or culture. And we need others who can bridge the gap whether it be as explicit as a different language or as subtle as a different personality type.

As General Conference wore on our legislative group debated a major resolution regarding HIV/AIDS. The African delegates in my group had been personally affected by the pandemic, yet they kept silent while American delegate after American delegate voiced their reservations about the cost of implementing the resolution. I could not understand why the Africans remained silent.

During the break I asked the COSROW observer to help me with this dilemma. She was instrumental in arranging for a translator to help with a conversation between key African delegates and the vocal American opponents. She also helped us understand that the culture of church meetings is different in the African context, wherein the delegates are accustomed to waiting for the bishop who chairs the meeting to prompt them to speak from the floor (something which would be considered out of order in an American context). The omission of the chairperson prompting them to speak meant that they sat by while the Americans eagerly spoke out.

After the break, the legislative group resumed the debate over the AIDS resolution. This time the Africans went to the microphone, the Americans listened, and the group supported the resolution.

Those who possess the gift of interpreting tongues help the church perform its ministries because they break through the communication barriers. Those who possess the gift of speaking in tongues help the church communicate with people we would never be able to reach. Both gifts tie us together in one ministry in Christ.

The Lottery Gift

2009-03-31T10:42:00.002-04:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….to another the discernment of spirits.”
--I Corinthians 12:7, 9

Gift of the Spirit: Discernment

By all accounts, Buddy Post was sitting pretty in 1988. The Carney had won the Pennsylvania lottery: $16.2 million. He married his sixth wife, Constance, had his tattoo on his arm blotted out, and bought a mansion north of Pittsburgh.

Within five years it was all gone. He had started several businesses, from a tavern to a used car lot, but all of them failed. He was convicted of assaulting his stepdaughter’s boyfriend over one of the business deals. His landlord got a third of the prize money in a lawsuit claiming that Buddy owed him half. His brother was arrested for plotting to murder him. By 1993 he was bankrupt because he was $500,000 in debt, not counting his attorney fees.

Is it overkill to state that he did not use good discernment?

Discernment: the gift that makes all the other gifts keep on giving. The gift of discernment is knowing when and how to use all the other spiritual gifts for the good of the Church. Without the discernment, wisdom and knowledge are just clever advice. Without discernment speaking in tongues is divisive gibberish. Without discernment, the miracle of church growth is just a flash in the pan.

However, with discernment all of the other gifts are used in their proper place for the smooth functioning of the Church. The Holy Spirit uses the gift of discernment to sort out where people should serve so that no one is misplaced in the body of Christ. What good is a foot if it is stuck in the mouth? Or how can a head function properly if it is shoved up….Well, you get the picture.

The gift of discernment enables others to share their spiritual gifts at the right time and in the right way for the mission of the Church. There is a right time for everything Ecclesiastes reminds us. The Holy Spirit tells us when we should move forward with and when to refrain from a specific ministry. Those who have been blessed with discernment act as a traffic cop to ensure that the church keeps on moving forward with Christ’s mission without ending up in a multi-car pile up.

The person who has the gift of discernment can see God’s calling in others and encourage them to answer the call. The one who has discernment must speak the truth in love, especially when it goes against the herd mentality that settles into most congregations. This person is given divine authority to bless and curse—and know when each one is appropriate.

God has blessed your church with a vast treasure of spiritual gifts. In fact, you have everything you need. But unless there is a church leader who will exercise the gift of discernment your church will squander the jackpot it has won.

Prophet in the Pew

2009-03-24T09:04:00.000-04:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….to another prophesy.”
--I Corinthians 12:7, 9

Gift of the Spirit: Prophesy

Dr. J. Richard Gott, III claims that he can predict anything. In a 1993 Nature article, this Princeton astrophysicist proposed a formula for predicting the life span of everything from Broadway shows to the existence of the human race.

The only problem with his formula is that the predictions are rather broad. It is based on the assumption that at any given point in time there is a fifty-percent chance that you are in the middle of the life span of the subject in question. In the case of homo sapiens , which if one assumes have been around 200,000 years, means that there is a high probability that we are (to quote the good professor) “going to last longer than fifty-one hundred years but less than 7.8 million years. (The New Yorker, July 19, 1999, p. 37).” Wow, that narrows it down!

Biblical prophesy seems to be about as accurate as the astrophysicist. It is a misnomer to equate the gift of prophesy with predicting the future. Prophesy and the prophets were simply God’s spokespersons for a specific time and place. The message may have included warnings and promises about the future but it really focused on the relevancy of God’s will for the present.

Prophesy was one of three major aspects of Israel, the priestly and wisdom traditions being the other two. The three worked hand in hand, especially the prophetic and priestly traditions because the prophet made relevant what the priest taught and what the rituals stood for and in some cases the priest and the prophet were one and the same. The specific messages and methods of communication were different but all the prophets had one focus: they spoke divine revelations to actual situations.

The early church continued the prophetic tradition. Paul describes specific people who had been given the gift of prophesy. In some cases, it might have been a lay person but in other situations it was a traveling preacher. The prophet in the early church was the person who revealed God’s will for their current situation and was able to apply the Gospel and the scriptures to the specific needs.

God continues to give the church prophets who show us God’s will for today—and it may be you. That’s right, you, the lay person! We automatically assume that this is the role of the pastor. Not so. The gift is found in the pew as well as the pulpit. The prophetic sermon is incomplete without the prophetic conversations among the laity.

Lay leaders who have the gift of prophesy are inspired in church council meetings to speak out when the conversation starts to go in a negative direction. The prophetic lay leader is the one who is willing to interrupt the unofficial hallway meetings with a spiritual perspective. He or she will break the silence and apathy of a committee meeting with a challenge to get off our butts and do something.

Too often churches fail to do God’s will not because of mean people but because of quiet people. We have been taught that church is the place where everyone gets along and so we shy away from even the hint of controversy or perceived disagreement. You may have gotten the message that you do not know anything So you remain silent even though God has placed it on your heart to speak out.

Could it be that God has given you a message for your church? Could it be that God has given you the gift of prophesy and if you do not exercise this gift the church will waste away in the silence of good people?

Wonderful Interventions

2009-03-16T15:11:00.002-04:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….to another the working of miracles.”
--I Corinthians 12:7, 9

Gift of the Spirit: Miracles

Each year during holy week thousands flock to Santuario de Chimayo, a tiny chapel in rural New Mexico, for a holy relic: dirt. The shrine was built in 1815 to house a crucifix that, according to legend, was found in the dirt on the site. Over the years people have claimed that the dirt has miraculous healing powers. Pilgrims walk as far as 90 miles, from Albuquerque, gather some of the dirt from a hole in the floor or from a long box on the altar in the hope of a miracle.

The Bible is full of miracles and most of us believe that they are possible, even if we are not sure what they are. According to the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas there are three types of miracles. One, there are things that God does that nature could not do (such as, making the sun stand still in Joshua 10). Two, there are things that God does that nature could do but not in the same order (such as, recovery from cancer). Three, there are things that nature can do but God does them without using nature (such as, quick recovery from a cold). In all these ways, a miracle is God’s intervention in the natural course of things—or at least, as far as we know them.

But there is more to a miracle than divine intervention. The word tells us more. ‘Miracle’ is derived from the Latin ‘miraculum’ meaning ‘something wonderful.’ When God performs a miracle it is a wonderful intervention in the natural course of things. It is God’s way of interrupting us with grace.

God knows that the Church needs to be interrupted with grace more often. We go along in the ‘natural’ course of business in the church acting as if there is no god. We may rail against ‘secular humanists’ but the typical church member is a practical atheist. Just sit through any finance committee meeting when they are working on next year’s budget. Do we really follow the Holy Spirit as closely the Dow Jones?

We do not expect to be wonderfully interrupted by God in worship, but instead we prefer to do the same old thing, sit in the same old spot and watch the same old people do nothing.

Because the church survives by grace alone, God interrupts our churchy monotony with wonderful interruptions that renew, redirect, and reinvigorate the church. God uses certain leaders as miracle bearers. These are the folks who interrupt the budget meeting with a divine perspective that challenges us out of our complacency. They are the ones who on Sunday morning actually respond to the altar call or say ‘amen’. They make us uncomfortable during the prayer requests with a personal testimony that takes the worship to a deeper level of transformative intimacy that allows God’s grace to spread.

In short, these folks—as weird as they may be—interrupt the normal course of church life with God’s renewing grace.

Whenever a church gets out of its rut and moves in a new direction that truly is a miracle.

Holy Healers

2009-03-10T10:41:00.000-04:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit.”
--I Corinthians 12:7, 9

Gift of the Spirit: Healing

What do you do for:

An ear ache from worms—drop in warm milk, which brings them out. Or, juice of wormwood, which kills them.
A convulsive cough—eat preserved walnuts.
To make hair grow—wash it every night with a strong decoction of rosemary. Dry it with flannel.

Such was the medical advice of John Wesley in Primitive Physics, which was his most popular publication in his lifetime. While it sounds strange to us today, it was common for the clergy to collect and publish remedies in an age which was just beginning to develop a professional medical establishment. Much of the advice he offered was standard for its day, and some of it still works today. Primitive Physics was a part of a larger ministry of health care among the Methodists which included medical clinics and dispensaries for the poor.

Wesley illustrates the crucial role health and healing play in ministry. Jesus’ healing miracles were signs that the Kingdom of God was coming, and healing was a ministry of the early church.

Healing is more than physical recovery. A holistic view of healing reveals that there are four different types of health. Besides physical health, there is also emotional or mental health, relational health, and spiritual health. Often it is difficult and unhelpful to see these four types as completely separate. For example, a physical disease often affects our emotional state and our relationships. Mental illness often has a neurobiological dimension. A chronic disease can make one question one’s faith.

Just as health is multidimensional, healing takes a variety of forms. God can perform miracles and defy the natural processes by restoring someone’s body. But God also uses modern medicine, therapy, counseling and prayer. Healing may mean removing the disease but it may also mean learning how to manage a disorder or trusting in God’s eternal hope when physical recovery is not possible.

Because there are a variety of ways God heals God gives a variety of people the gift of healing in a congregation. The most visible representatives of healing in the church are parish nurses whose holistic approach to medicine reflects God’s comprehensive view of health. But there are others who may not have the title but possess the gift.

When there is conflict among members God gives the church a leader who can heal the wounds of past conflicts and facilitate reconciliation. When there is a troubled member who has isolated himself God called and equips a leader to be a channel of divine peace to that individual. When there is someone whose religion is re-enforcing an illness God sends a leader to help that person understand how spirituality and medicine can work together for our good.

As the body of Christ the church has a lot of scars. Church leaders feel these wounds probably more than anyone else. Many church leaders need healing in order to more faithfully and effectively lead the church. Some need healing from problems in the past. Others need healing from emotional problems which have never been fully acknowledged. Still others need healing from addictions and abuse. When church leaders themselves have not been healed they spread their disease and disorder throughout the congregation. Like cancer cells, the body of Christ becomes riddled with the chronic diseases of its leaders.

God gives the church persons with the gift of healing in order to help the leadership become healthy. When the leadership is healthy the church can become an agent of healing in the world.

Faith Proxy

2009-03-03T13:28:00.002-05:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….to another faith by the same Spirit.”
--I Corinthians 12:7, 9

Gift of the Spirit: Faith

Everyone stared at the table and one by one each member of the church council muttered one lame excuse after another. It was a collective act of rationalization not to do anything. It was my first appointment and the congregation fit all the characteristics of what Lyle Schaller calls ‘The Passive Church’: nice people, treat their pastors well, discouraged by repeated failures, and unable to take the next step toward hope.

I had proposed that we host a spiritual renewal weekend featuring a prominent preacher, a workshop on prayer and a pitch-in dinner. It wasn’t original and, quite frankly, a little bit desperate. But we had to do something to refocus ourselves on Christ. No one could argue directly against the idea. Whose opposed to prayer? But you could tell from their body language that they were unwilling to try and do something. After forty-five minutes of hem-hawing around I gave up.

Then Larry spoke. An auto worker and certified lay speaker, Larry usually struggled with his words whenever he filled the pulpit for me. But that night he was inspired. He confronted their lame excuses and challenged them to take a risk. Then he led us in prayer, and by the time he said ‘amen’ it was unanimous that we would host the weekend.

And the weekend turned out to be a great success. The church was packed and everyone had a good time.

Larry had been given the spiritual gift of faith which served the common good of the congregation. It sounds a bit strange when Paul refers to faith as a spiritual gift. We usually think of faith as something that we bring to God, and we believe that everyone, not just a select group of leaders, must have faith in order to be saved.

It is true that everyone is saved by faith. But even for salvation, faith is a gift from God. The ability to believe, the various ways despair is held in check so that we can believe, and the countless opportunities to learn the faith from others are all gifts from God. None of us could trust in God unless God set it up for us to believe in the first place.

In First Corinthians, Paul is referring to a special kind of faith that goes beyond individual salvation. This is the faith that is needed to move the church to do God’s will in the face of countless obstacles, excuses and failures. Indeed, it is the faith that ‘moves mountains’ as he says in the next chapter. If anyone has ever sat in on a church council meeting you know that often it is like trying to relocate Mount Everest.

The church needs people like Larry who have enough faith to cut through the crap in those meetings and to show us that all things are possible if we believe. Those who have been given the spiritual gift of faith often become a surrogate of belief for the other church leaders who have become too discouraged. They cannot believe anymore because the pain of failure is too great and the doubts are too deep. Leaders like Larry have to be a faith-proxy in the decision making.

And pastors are dependent upon lay leaders who have the gift of faith. There is only so much that a pastor can do to lead a congregation. This is why churches never grow—or at least do not sustain growth—when the laity operate on the myth of the ‘super preacher’ who will do all things for them. In reality—the reality of the Holy Spirit who gives a diversity of gifts for the common good of the church—there is a symbiotic relationship between pastor and lay leaders. Pastors are useless without faith-filled leaders like Larry.

Air Conditioning the Church

2009-02-03T18:32:00.001-05:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit….the utterance of knowledge.”
--I Corinthians 12:7-8

Gift of the Spirit: Knowledge

Throughout 1999 the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. celebrated one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, an invention that changed humanity’s relationship with nature and yet so common that we take it for granted—until it breaks down.

What was the invention? Air conditioning.

At the National Building Museum’s Stay Cool! Air Conditioning America exhibition visitors passed through massive galvanized sheet metal air ducts to enter and exit each section. Photos, old television commercials and interactive displays told the story of air conditioning, but the center piece of the exhibit was a sampling of filters, grills and fans. In essence, this exhibition was a celebration of the power of technical knowledge.

If the Church is going to have any lasting spiritual effect it needs people with the ‘technical’ know-how to do a wide variety of mundane tasks. From typing to bookkeeping, taking a pulse to hanging dry wall, the mission of the Church is advanced through the knowledge of its members. The gifts of the Spirit are not limited to the so-called ‘spiritual dimension’ but they also include the gritty work of making the Church an effective organization. Yes, even preparing the bulk mailing for the newsletter can be a spiritual experience!

Knowing how to do something is not enough. The gift was not ‘knowledge’ but the ‘utterance of knowledge.’ The technical skills are acquired through study and experience, but if they are not shared with the congregation then they remain just skills. The Holy Spirit inspires those skills to be shared; in other words, the Spirit moves us to ‘utter’ our knowledge for the good of the Church.

Unfortunately, most congregations make one of two mistakes with this spiritual gift. One the one hand, we value knowledge without spiritual guidance. We select people as church leaders solely because of their technical skills in the workplace and never consider whether they can utilize their knowledge in ways that reflect the fruit of the Spirit. For example, we place an accountant on the finance committee because they know how to analyze a spreadsheet. But the accountant is mean and stingy and stifles the work of the other committees in order to save money. You balanced the budget but you ticked everyone off in the process. There’s nothing more disgusting than a church leader full of knowledge but has no soul.

On the other hand, we value spirituality at the expense of common sense and practical skills. We are easily taken by religious rhetoric but nothing is every accomplished. For example, the congregation is in the red but no one is willing to make the hard decisions of cutting programs that are ineffective or analyzing the giving statements for ways to increase giving. Instead, a member of the finance committee goes on and on about how we should just trust God and turn it over to God in prayer. No one ever stopped to consider that God may answer your prayers by telling you to stop praying and get back to work.

In the former, we are making secular skills into an idol. We are truncating the life and mission of the Church with secular values such as professionalism. In the latter, we are misusing religious rhetoric to cover up real problems and avoid making difficult decisions. Both problems arise from the same misconception about the relationship between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘flesh.’ Both assume that the two are completely separate and to mix them will weaken them.

The spiritual gift of the utterance of knowledge presupposes that the spirit guides the flesh and that the flesh assists the spirit. In order for the Church to do its mission you need both knowledge and spiritual sensitivity. You need a spiritual perspective to keep the mission central and the unity alive. And you need practical skills in order to express the mission and serve the unity of the Church.

Without the Spirit the Church becomes as cold as a refrigerator, but without knowledge our religious rhetoric is nothing but a lot of hot air.

Does your church tend to value skill over spirituality or spirituality over skill in the selection of its leaders and the decision-making process?

Googling the Spirit

2009-01-28T16:34:00.002-05:00

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom.”
--I Corinthians 12:7-8

Gift of the Spirit: Wisdom

In The New Yorker Anthony Grafton explains the lofty goals of digitizing all the books in the world. Leading the way is Google. Working with more than ten thousand publishers, Google Publishing is posting on the web information about books still under copyright protection. The Google Library Project is digitizing all the books it can get its hands on. But no one really knows how many books that may be. A conservative estimate puts the number around 32 million but Google thinks it could be over 100 million. The promise of digitization is that all the wisdom of the ages will be at the finger tips of anyone who can get online.

Throughout history there have been grandiose dreams of collecting all the wisdom of the world in one library. As far back as 300 b.c. Emperor Ptolemy I founded the Library of Alexandria which boasted being the greatest depository of knowledge. As ships came into port, all scrolls found on board were immediately confiscated and taken to the library to be copied.

Paul describes a more efficient way of gaining wisdom. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the “utterance of wisdom.” One of the necessary roles in the church is wise ones who share their divine insights with others.

What is wisdom? Wisdom in Paul’s letter is knowing and following God’s will. It was God’s will to come as a human and to be crucified. But this does not make sense from a worldly perspective. You fight fire with fire, you strike back, you our psyche your opponent. It is anything but wise. Wisdom from the world’s perspective comes from being the brightest in the class. Getting crucified by the Romans was stupid.

God operates by a different set of logic. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Through the cross God’s power of salvation was unleashed because Christ destroyed the powers of sin and death on the cross. The cross is the death of death, an implosion of the forces of evil. To use a modern metaphor, the cross caused the hard drive of sin to crash.

Go figure: God came as a Jewish peasant leader, got executed by the Empire in a backwater province, and this one incident transformed the cosmos. And then just to be even more outrageous, God chooses a bunch of nobodies to be the bearers of this wisdom, to “proclaim Christ crucified.” This is the amazing wisdom of God.

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge is refers to specific sets of skills and acquired information. You can be knowledgeable but not wise, especially if you do not use your knowledge to serve God. Wisdom gives direction and purpose to the use of knowledge.

Wisdom is a very precious commodity in running the church because there are a lot of things which sound good and beneficial but they are not wise decisions. There are ideas and programs which are touted as effective for church growth or stewardship but they reflect what Paul calls the “folly of the world” rather than the wisdom of God. There is a lot of worldly folly disguised as wisdom because it is dressed up in religious language. But “Christian” marketing is not the same as divine wisdom and every congregation needs a leader or two who have the wisdom to see the difference.

How do you become wise? It is not by reading every book that has been published. It comes through crucifixion. If the wisdom of God is the cross, then our access to God’s wisdom is by dying to our sins. In another letter Paul writes, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to sin (Romans 6:6).” It comes from a daily process of submitting your life to the Spirit of Christ who will take you through a spiritual crucifixion to sin and into the power of his resurrection.

The church leader must develop a process of spiritual crucifixion in order to be a channel of wisdom to the congregation. How often is the church hurt because the leadership had not died to their sins? A trustee offends others because he is a gossip. A Sunday School teacher does not reach out to a student because she is impatient. A visitor is not welcomed because we are selfish and apathetic. These core problems will never be solved by the latest church growth program. They require crucifixion. The church will experience growth when its leaders surrender to the crucifixion of the Spirit. Only then will they be able to point the congregation toward the resurrection that renews.

What sins do you need to die to in order to be a more effective leader?

Don't Drop the Font

2009-01-13T11:30:00.004-05:00

“I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

--Mark 1:8

Sunday was the Baptism of the Lord’s Sunday. As in past years, we celebrated it with a congregational reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant in which the baptized were invited to come forward and take a shell from the font as a token of their vows.

Our font is a heavy large glass basin in a wooden in a wooden base. The truth is, it is a sink we bought from Lowes a couple of years ago when we renovated the sanctuary. The idea was that, being a sink, we could drain it just like any other sink after the worship service. But the project was never finished so right now we have a pop-up stopper and six inches of pipe which are not attached to a drain or a tap. Instead, in order to remove the unused holy water you must remove the basin, walk outside and dump it in the grass (our front lawn looks immaculate ever since we started irrigating it with holy water).

Sunday night I emptied the water from our jerry-rigged font. I lugged the sink out to the frozen front lawn, but when I emptied the sacred brew the door closed locking me outside with a sink full of shells. No one heard me banging on the door (the youth group was deep in meditation in the basement) and so I had to walk around the building with font in hand.

Through baptism we are called into ministry and the font is a visible symbol of our ministry. Oh, the lessons you can learn about ministry from lugging the font across the church’s front lawn in the dark!

Lesson One: Finish your job. Be it converted sinks or converting the heathen, follow-through is a part of good ministry. Our missional effectiveness is hampered and relationships are damaged when we leave a job half-done. We may be sick of the task, burned out from the job or fed up with the people but God still calls us to complete the work.

Lesson Two: Ministry is a burden. Because our culture celebrates ‘self-fulfillment’, we no longer talk about sacrifice. There will be times when fulfilling our calling as church leaders means lugging the font around in the dark. It comes with the territory.

Lesson Three: Get some help. Being a leader in a church can feel like you are wandering in the night. God gives us partners for our ministry so that we can come in from the cold and work together. It is a lot easier if you have some help to carry the font—or at least open the door.

Just as Jesus launched his ministry on the banks of the Jordan, we begin our ministries at the font. Carry it in your heart throughout this new year.

Fear Factor

2009-01-07T12:32:00.000-05:00

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”

--Psalm 23:4

A 1960 study conducted by Johns Hopkins University reported that the five greatest fears of children were: 1. animals, 2 being in a dark room, 3. high places, 4. strangers, and 5. loud noises. Thirty years later, a similar study found that their fears were very different: 1. divorce, 2. nuclear war, 3. cancer, 4. pollution, and 5. being mugged.

What are your greatest fears about church leadership? Here are some of the ones I hear:
· Failure
· Incompetency
· Conflicts and Disagreements
· Innovation and Change

Fear makes leaders do crazy things. Consider King Herod when he heard from the magi that a potential rival had just been born. Herod’s anxiety permeated the entire city. He manipulated the experts, lied to the wise men, and ultimately killed innocent children.

Okay, so one will get killed on your committee but others could get hurt unintentionally if we do not get our fear under control. When we are afraid we might lash out at people for the tiniest things. Or we may be paralyzed with fear and our inability to get started or to finish a task leaves a mess that causes confusion and conflict. Or we may become overly defensive because of our fears and try to control too much instead of utilizing the gifts and time of others who could improve our ministries. Underneath our anger, passivity and impatience is fear.

God, our shepherd, gives us what we need as leaders to reduce the fear factor. “Thy rod and thy staff comfort me,” so sang the psalmist. The rod was a type of club with which the shepherd defended the flock. It represents the spiritual strength God gives us to defend our ministries from the myriad of things that threatened to hamper or destroy the work God has called us to do. When we are afraid that we cannot do it God gives us a rod to get the job done.

The staff was a long pole used to guide the flock—and to lean on when they were grazing or sleeping. The staff is the wisdom and direction God provides for our ministries. When we paralyzed by fear or worried about the future, God gives us a staff to keep on going. Also, it represents the comfort and assurance God gives us.

This week, face your fears, admit them to yourself. Then look around and within for the rod and staff that God has already provided for you to overcome them.

Grace Below the Surface

2008-12-30T14:45:00.002-05:00

“Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
--Ephesians 3:20

By 2010 the international Census of Marine Life will be complete. It is a ten year, 73 nation research project to create the world’s first census of the world’s oceans. Currently there are 230,000 marine species but scientists believe that there could be as many as a million new species discovered when the census is complete. Many of the new species are very small, since ninety percent of the living mass in oceans is microscopic.

And many other unexplainable phenomenon are being discovered. For example, a mysterious underwater ‘dead zone’ was discovered near the epicenter of the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean where silt destroyed all signs of life. The census is possible for the first time because of deep-diving robotic vehicles, satellites, and other new technology which are enabling researchers to explore plains miles below the surface and remote underwater mountain ranges.

If we took a census of God’s grace in our ministries what would we find? At first glance, we do not see very much. We are accustomed to seeing the shortcomings of our work. We are use to complaining about what we lack. In short, we are only looking at the surface of the water.

Our baptism calls us to look below the water’s surface for the depth of God’s grace. Paul reminds us that something deeper is stirring in our ministries. God’s power is at work in ways we do not always see.

God goes in front of us to prepare people and opportunities which did not exist a year ago. God goes behind us to clean up our mess and prevent damage from unintended consequences. God goes above us to give us hope so that we do not become discouraged. God goes beneath us to work in our hearts and the hearts of others. God goes beside us reassuring and guiding our decisions. Our ministries take place in a sea of grace that is wider and deeper than what we can comprehend.

One of the biggest temptations is to become narrow-minded in our thinking about what God can do. Paul reminds us that God can “accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” What have you been asking God to do in your ministry? When you look ahead one year from now to the end of 2009, in your best case scenario, what do you see? Just remember that whatever you ask for and whatever you dream God can do more in you, through you and with you. Our challenge is to learn to trust in the vastness of grace.

So, this New Year, stop treading water and just sink. Sink into the depth of God’s grace.

Re-Gifting Christmas

2008-12-23T11:27:00.001-05:00

[This one comes from our Bishop Mike Coyner. Merry Christmas!]

Have you ever re-gifted? Have you ever received a gift which was not something you wanted to keep, so at a future event you wrapped up that same gift and gave it to someone else? That is known as “re-gifting” and probably most of us have done it. Marsha and I attended a party last night which included “White Elephant” gifts, and I suspect all of those items were re-gifted, and that was part of the fun.

Some gifts are good candidates for re-gifting: that sweater from a distant relative who just never seems to get your size, color, or style correct; that decorative item which looks ugly in your house; that religious ornament which is, well, tacky. We all receive gifts which seem to be candidates – or temptations – to re-gift to someone else. There is one commercial on TV right now which shows a gosh-awful sweater being gifted and re-gifted around a full circle until it comes back to the guy who originally gave it. That is re-gifting.

But there are other gifts which seem to be good candidates for re-gifting because they are meant to be shared: that big box of candy which can be shared with family and friends; that family heirloom or genealogy book which simply must be passed along to a younger generation; or that photo which you took and enjoyed but you would like to share with a friend. There are wonderful gifts, usually gifts of the heart, which are meant to be re-gifted because they are enjoyed more when they are shared.

I have had several conversations lately with people who are doing well in this bad economy and they are struggling with what psychologists call “survivor guilt.” When everyone else seems be suffering or losing their jobs, how do you deal with your own success? When lots of friends are out looking for jobs, how do you respond to getting a bonus which you earned, but which seems somehow selfish to keep? The only answer I can offer is this: re-gift. Share your blessings with others. All of us have been helped in the past by someone, and that gift of help is meant to be re-gifted to someone else. Re-gifting can be a good thing, when we acknowledge that we have been blessed in order to be a blessing to someone else.

The gift of Christmas is meant to be Re-Gifted. The joy and love and peace and spirit of this season are meant to be shared. In fact, when we attempt to hoard Christmas, to recreate the experiences of a previous Christmas, or to isolate ourselves away to have a Merry Christmas, that never works. Christmas is always meant to be Re-Gifted.

I pray that you will receive the Gift of Christ this Christmas, and then … Re-Gift! Merry Christmas.

from Bishop Michael J. Coyner
Indiana Conference of The United Methodist Church

Jackass Epiphanies

2008-12-16T13:23:00.001-05:00

“The donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with a drawn sword in his hand; so the donkey turned off the road, and went into the field; and Balaam struck the donkey, to turn it back onto the road.”
--Numbers 22:23

While I was in college, the state diverted a new highway next to my parents’ home. Late one night I came back for the weekend and discovered that the road I normally took home was closed due to the construction. Instead of taking the recommended detour I found a side road which circled around to our house. Coming around the curve I could see our house in the darkness but I did not see the warning sign, “road closed.” I drove straight into an eight foot ditch. With our front porch light shining in the distance I had to get a tow truck to pull me out.

I didn’t have a donkey but I felt as much like a jackass as Balaam did. The prophet was under orders by Balak, ruler of the Moabites, to curse Israel, but on his way to the king God spoke to him through his stubborn donkey.

I have never had an epiphany—visual or otherwise—like Balaam, but God has spoken to me in stubborn ways. God’s preferred method of communication with me and many other church leaders is through silence. God speaks in the negative by closing doors of opportunity and restricting our possibilities. Contrary to popular belief, we cannot do anything we want to do or be anything you want to be. God has a plan for your ministry and your life but God may speak the loudest by telling you what you are not called to do.

Even more annoying God often speaks to us through our critics. In every ministry situation there will be a few people who have something negative to say. The majority will remain silent and a reliable few will always compliment you (often because they have been taught to be polite). But there will always be the naysayers. Some of them are just dysfunctional complainers that you can and should ignore. But among the critics will also be one or two whose criticism is the voice of God. Pay close attention to them, no matter how painful it may be. Learn to learn from the criticism, it is only way you will grow stronger in your faith to lead.

We would like to always have a green light but sometimes God gives us a red light in order to keep us from doing damage to ourselves and our ministry. We would also like to surround ourselves with yes-men, but God speaks just as loud through the critics as well.

Sarum Blessing

2008-12-01T13:53:00.003-05:00

[This is the 13th century blessing which we read yesterday. It comes from Salisbury, England. As I said in the sermon, I recommend that you use this as a part of your daily meditations this week. ]

God be in your head, and in your understanding.

God be in your eyes, and in your looking.

God be in your mouth, and in your speaking.

God be in your heart, and in your thinking.

God be at your end, and at your departing.

A 'Calling', Not A 'Choosing'

2008-12-01T13:50:00.001-05:00

“[Brothers and Sisters], do not be weary in well-doing.”
--II Thessalonians 3:13 (RSV)

I did not want to do it. There was nothing difficult about it. No one would object to anything I said. In fact, it was bound to be a crowd-pleaser (if you can give a sermon such a title). I just did not feel like preaching. It is not that I don’t ever want to preach, but it was just at that moment I did not feel like it. I’d rather be bowling.

And that was when I heard my mother’s voice, “Darren, there are things you are going to have to do that you do not want to do.” It was her mantra and I cringed every time I heard it. But she was right. There are some things in church leadership you are going to have to do that you do not want to do. If we leave our leadership to whim of our emotions then nothing will get done.

This is the temptation of a culture driven by “self-fulfillment.” If it does not fulfill me— in that moment, right now, immediately—then we assume that we don’t have to do it. Or worse, we assume that God is not calling us to do it. God forbid that God would want us to do something that we don’t want to do! But that is why they call it a “calling” and not a “choosing.” We do not get the right to choose when we will or will not serve.

There are times when we must remember that it is not about us. We may not always be fulfilled by the work we do. In fact, folks will find God through our leadership even when it drains us. This discontinuity between our experience and theirs tempts us to assume that we are not being effective. But we must remember that our emotional satisfaction is not a very good gauge of our effectiveness. If it was, Jesus would have pulled his hands off of the cross with the first swing of the hammer. God can use our teaching, leading, serving and preaching even when it is not very good or inspiring to us.

Sometimes you have to accept the fact that you, personally, will get nothing out of it in order for God to use you as a vessel that is poured out for others. Isn’t this what we celebrate in the Eucharist when we remember the words of institution Jesus said about the cup, “This is my blood, poured out for you and for many….” We participate in the Eucharist every time we are poured out in his service.

The best preparation for the sermon was meditating on the offertory song, which we sing every Sunday and was written by Scott Tyring, our former associate pastor:

You give me life,
You give me love,
You give me light shining down from above.
Oh, what a gift, to know the grace of Jesus Christ.
Oh, what a gift, to know this grace.
You paid the price. You took my place.
Oh, what a gift to know this peace.
Oh, what a joy.
What can I give?
How to repay the one who gave, it all away.
What can I give for such a love, my tribute to my God above?
Accept this gift,
Accept my life, I give to you.

Okay, surprise, surprise. It is not about me. It has nothing to do with me. Instead, it is about Christ and serving Him who served me beyond what I ever could deserve or imagine. Scott’s song put into perspective what is the real satisfaction and the true source of fulfillment that undergirds all our giving, serving and leading.

Tusemerwe Okukuroa Rukirabasaija!

2008-11-18T17:28:00.001-05:00

Christ the King Sunday

“Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth….[who] made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father…”
--Rev. 1:5

In the late nineteen nineties, Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV became the world’s youngest king of the Toro tribe in western Uganda. His coronation was an elaborate 13-hour affair for the three year old boy. He was awakened at 3 a.m. and blessed with the blood of a bull and a white hen. Then he led others in a mock capture of the palace while the sounds of drums and horns filled the air. The crowd shouted, “Tusemerwe Okukuroa Rukirabasaija!” (“Be welcome, you the greatest of all men!”)

On Christ the King Sunday we too can shout “Tusemerwe Okukuroa Rukirabasaija!” for Jesus. Yet, talk of Christ as King sounds as anachronistic and powerless as the ceremony for a three year old boy.

What does it mean for our ministries to say that Christ is King?

First, it is essential to remember the original context of John’s letter. At that time the church was not a part of the culture. It had an alien status and was periodically persecuted. John envisioned the fall of the empire and the second coming of Christ. The title “ruler of the kings of the earth” was actually a title reserved for the Roman emperor. John is making the claim that Jesus is the real authority and that Christians see reality from this perspective. Along with this, John envisions the church as a collective of people who see reality from this perspective and whose fellowship and ministry are shaped by this worldview. The church acts as the mediator between the world and God, which is why he refers to the church as a kingdom of priests. There is a cosmic and historical drama into which the church plays a crucial role.

At first glance all of this sounds like it has nothing to do with changing diapers in the nursery or making coffee for the fellowship hour. The seemingly trivial, grunt work of ministry seems far and removed from this alternative worldview of cosmic proportions. Yet, without this vision our ministries degenerate into a stale routine. Or worse, our tasks get sucked into the petty politics of congregational life.

If Christ is King over all of reality, then every task, no matter how small, works to bear witness to this alternative worldview. As mediators between God and the world, everything we do in the church should reflect the alternative values of Christ the King. It also means that our work is valued in the eyes of God because, unlike the values of our society, there is no task that is insignificant in the eyes of Jesus Christ who came in the form of a slave.

If we really believe that Christ is the ruler of all then we will submit our allegiance to him before anyone or anything else. On the practical level of local church ministry this means that we will resist the values of the world from shaping our ministry. It is very tempting to see the church as simply another business and to adopt the attitudes and practices of commerce. Our worship will not simply regurgitate the tastes and values of the dominant culture or consumerism or patriotism. Our church councils become little more than boards of directors. Our programs and ministries offer nothing more than commodities.

In everything we do let us shout “Tusemerwe Okukuroa Rukirabasaija!” to Jesus Christ.

Mapping Your Ministry

2008-11-11T17:23:00.003-05:00

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?”
--Luke 14:28

It began as a sketch on a napkin and took five years and two city administrations to start working on it. Now, over ten years later, it is still a work in progress. It is the NYCMap (pronounced ‘nice map’) and it is the first integrated, uniform, digital map of New York City. Actually, it is several maps layered on top of one another which plots out not only every building and street, but also every parking meter, airshaft and permanent awning.

Why create such a map? The idea began with Alan Leidner, head of the city’s geographical-information systems. Leidner was trying to solve very mundane problems which often stymie the effectiveness of city services. For example, if a water-main breaks there are five responding agencies who come with their own maps and none of the maps have anything to do with each other. To solve what seems to be a simple problem has taken years of research and planning.

If we are going to be effective in our ministries we too must take time to plan ahead and map out the future. Yes, God is in control of our future, but he has commissioned us as church leaders to be channels of his vision and direction. When planning is done right, God’s Spirit speaks to us through the process of discernment. God is honored by our attention to detail and accountability in the plans we make, and God will direct and empower us as we implement and evaluate those plans.

Why don’t we plan?

It takes too much time and energy and we are already tired and overextended
We assume that spirituality is the opposite of planning, “God will show us what to do, so why plan’
We are afraid to try something new
The absence of a plan helps mask the real power dynamics. Planning creates the possibility that people will lose power or will have to confront dysfunctional relationships
We fear that the plans will become too rigid or will be unfulfilled
Previous attempts to do long-range planning did not work

There is good planning and bad planning.

Good planning is marked by a clear vision of the goal to which we are striving. It affirms people’s calling rather than simply relying upon policies and job descriptions. It is flexible enough to allow the creation of new ministries and new ideas which were not a part of the original plans. It encourages risk-taking and a high tolerance for failure. It encourages scrutiny so that we can learn from our mistakes.

Bad planning is too rigid. It results in policies without vision, vetoes without affirmation, and responsibilities without the authority or resources to fulfill them. Or it is just the opposite. Bad planning is a wish list without measurable steps and strategies. It is nice dreams without being rooted in the core identity and history of the congregation. And it is all talk and no action.

Whether it is building a tower or starting a contemporary worship service, we must map out the future so that we can follow God.

Rethinking the Second Coming

2008-11-06T15:44:00.004-05:00

For more information about this Sunday's sermon, "Four Things You Need to Know about the End Times" click on the link "Notes on the Book of Revelation." It is a three-part Bible study which I led in the CHAOS adult Sunday School class last year.

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T11:22:00.003-05:00

“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”
--Romans 5:3-5

Last night we witnessed history being made with the election of the first African American President. What is significant is that racism was not a significant factor in the opposition to his campaign. Exit polls show that only 20 percent of voters said that race played any factor in their decision and almost no one said that it was the deciding factor. While racism and prejudice have not ended, we have begun a new era. There were many legitimate reasons not to support Obama but race was never one of them.

One hundred years ago Barak Obama would not have been allowed to vote. Two hundred years ago he would have been slave. In the intervening years countless ordinary citizens lobbied and legislated, protested and picketed to bring racial equality. An Obama Presidency would never have been possible without their courageous, prophetic work.

As Methodists we were a part of the Abolitionist and Civil Rights Movements. Some of our Methodist prophets are famous, like Harriett Tubman, and others are nearly forgotten, such as Rev. Will Alexander who help found the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in 1919. Their efforts echoed John Wesley who was a persistent opponent to slavery. The witness for social justice and racial equality are a part of our Methodist DNA.

This historic moment reminds us that social change is only accomplished through the dedicated efforts of ordinary people. It is not the result of the inevitable flow of human progress. And yet, far too many church going folks are passive spectators assuming that they have no responsibility beyond caring for themselves. Such spiritual apathy and selfishness has no place in the life of a true disciple.

President-elect Obama said it best last night,

“This victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other."

Leadership Insomnia

2008-10-28T09:50:00.003-04:00

“Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.”
--I Peter 5:7

The other night I dreamed I was climbing a tall tree and near the top of the tree was a very large branch which had broken off in the wind but had become jammed among the other branches. As I tried to dislodge the branch the tree started to sway. So I gave up on the branch and tried to climb down. But I could not step down onto the branches below. I began to fall and I woke up as I was trying to grab hold of the trunk as I was falling.

No need for Freud to interpret this dream. Several things have been happening in the church which requires me to “dislodge some broken branches.”

Resolving problems and managing conflict are inevitable aspects of the job of church leadership. We should not be surprised by it nor should we spend a lot of time complaining about it. Its in the job description. We certainly should not lose any sleep over it.

Still, for most of us we lose a few hours of sleep now and then because we cannot stop thinking about the problems of the church. We review the conversations, replay the situations, recount the dilemmas, and rehearse the possible solutions. After a while the problem becomes an annoying intrusive thought that is stuck in our brains like a broken branch. Our greatest strength is that we care deeply about our ministries, but the shadow side appears when our passion works against a good nights sleep.

Even prayer does not help. In fact, it may make the anxiety worse. It is possible to pray too much about a problem. This happens when our prayers become a vehicle for nagging God rather than an expression of quiet submission. Casting your cares on God is not the same as casting a fishing line that you can keep reeling back in.

By temperament, some people are simply better at compartmentalizing problems. For most of us it is a learned discipline. There are several things we can do to keep a proper perspective on our problems so that we can effectively address them without letting them nag us:

We need to maintain a rhythm in our lives of rest and work, serving and prayer, leading and devotional time so that our work does not degenerate into frenzy and make us more vulnerable to anxiety.
We need friends outside of the congregation who can help us refocus and see our situation from an outsiders perspective. This will reassure us that we are not the first to go through this problem and will help us reassess whether we are seeing it clearly.
Whenever possible, we need to pause before we respond so that we can second-guess ourselves. Before you send the email, make the phone call, or have the conversation it is usually best to let the dust settle in your mind so that you can “speak the truth in love.”
You need to do something completely unrelated to the church in order to give your mind a rest. Sometimes our minds need a distraction so that we can come back to the problem afresh.

First Peter tells us to “cast all our anxiety on [God] because he cares for you” and Peter is speaking to the church leaders in this chapter. God is ready to take on our problems and to work behind the scenes for a just and healing resolution. Indeed, God stays up all night so that we can rest in peace, “He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Psalm 121:4). Our moments of rest, whether spontaneous or disciplined, are expressions of faith in One who can clean out all of the broken branches.

Gossip and Feathers, Part II

2008-10-21T09:49:00.002-04:00

"They learn to be idle, gadding about from house to house; and they are not merely idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not say."

--I Timothy 5:13

It is unavoidable that the church leader will have to deal with gossip. So here are some rules for how to deal with gossip.

Rule number one: don’t listen to it. Sure, you will get cornered in the hallway so this is one of those times when you can pretend to be listening. Then say something like, “Thanks for sharing that with me.” This is easier than it sounds. We do it all the time with our families.

If they persist in sharing the gossip then you should redirect them to the appropriate people who are directly involved or have direct authority to do something about the problem. If there is a problem with the anthem, for example, don’t tell the trustees who can’t hold a note in a bucket. Go directly to the music director and express your concerns. One of the quickest ways to stop gossip is to ask the one spreading it, “Did you talk to that person about your concerns?”

Rule number two: don’t spread it. This requires that you examine your motives and intentions. Begin by asking yourself, “Is this any of my business?” Don’t be surprised if the Holy Spirit says, “no.” In that case, the most faithful response is to do nothing, to not try and solve a problem that is someone else’s responsibility in the congregation. This is what it means for the church to be founded on trust. You must trust the Holy Spirit to work through other church leaders to resolve those problems, and even if they don’t, you must trust the Holy Spirit to preserve the church from our indecisions and incompetence. Remember, we are saved by grace—as individuals and collectively as the body of Christ—and not by sticking our noses where they don’t belong.

It may be that you have important information to share for the well-being of the congregation, but purifying your motives will force you to think about how you share that information. Usually it will mean that you cut out three-fourths of what you have to say because it is pure dribble that no one needs to hear. Also, think long and hard about who needs to hear it. It should only be someone who absolutely needs to know it.

Rule number three: if at all possible talk to the other person first. Express your concerns honestly and humbly directly to the person who is the focus of concern. The only way the other person is going to grow in his or her faith will be through this kind of sharing.

These are the rules of covenant relationships. They may be tough but they are not as futile as chasing after feathers.

Gossip and Feathers, Part I

2008-10-14T17:39:00.001-04:00

“They learn to be idle, gadding about from house to house; and they are not merely idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not say.”
--I Timothy 5:13

There are many Yiddish stories that illustrate the dangerous power of gossip, and the stories usually involve feathers. Here’s one,

A man kept spreading terrible gossip in the village about the local rabbi. One day, he realized the harm he had caused to the rabbi and he sought his forgiveness. He asked the rabbi if there was anything he could do to make amends. The rabbi instructed him to go to the town square with a feather pillow, cut it open and scatter the feathers. The man did as he was instructed and the feathers blew into every corner, gutter, window and door. He went back to the rabbi to report that he had accomplished his request. And the rabbi said, “Now go and collect the feathers because your gossip has spread as far as those feathers.”

Gossip in the church is like scattering feathers in the wind. As Paul’s words to Timothy reveals, some things never change.

Gossip is easy to see when you are the recipient but near impossible to identify when you are the messenger. Everyone else spreads gossip, we think of ourselves as simply sharing important information. When we are confronted about spreading gossip we snap back, “Well, it’s true!”

What makes gossip so tantalizing and powerful is that there is usually some truth in it. But the truth is encased in stereotypes about the other person. We’ve got their number, we know their M.O., and gossip is our early warning device about this other person.

What also makes gossip so deceptive to the messenger is that our motives for spreading the gossip need not be completely malicious. Others frustrate us because they impede the ministry we so dearly cherish. Indeed, what we have to say about someone else is for the protection and well-being of the church, we assume, because that this person’s ideas or behavior is a threat.

Mixed motives turn information and concern into idle gossip. Yes, we are genuinely concerned about the mission of the church, but gossip makes us feel good because it expresses our irritation and disgust. The one motive you will never hear in gossip is genuine concern for the other person. The intention of gossip is never to help the other person and this is the core difference between sharing information and gossip.

Another distinguishing mark of gossip is the person with whom it is shared. There is a fine line between gossip and genuine concern. Genuine concern is expressed only to those who absolutely need to hear it. Most importantly, this often means addressing the person directly. One way to discern whether you are spreading gossip is to ask, Is the person I am sharing this with directly involved in this situation? If not, then they don’t need to hear it.

We gossip not only because it feels good but also because it is quicker. It is a faster form of information because we do not have to get to know that other person. Gossip allows us to work out of our preconceived notions or past experiences of that person. Gossip is efficient because you don’t have to second guess your stereotypes.

In the end, this efficiency ruins the church. No one supports one another or develops lasting bonds of trust. Vast amounts of energy are spent sorting out the shreds of truth from the hype. Worst of all, people are not put to work fulfilling their divine calling to serve Christ and the Church because we spend too much time guarding our turf. Gossip is the opposite of covenant relationships.

Charge Conference is Never Good Enough

2008-10-07T09:27:00.006-04:00

[Charge Conference, the annual meeting that all United Methodist congregations must endure for the sake of connectionalism and bureaucratic form filing, is coming October 28. Here is my report (a 'state of the church' report, warts and all), which probably won't make any sense to those of you who read this blog but are not members of Speedway. I only hope that those of you who are members understand what I am trying to say. --Darren]

Jim Collins author of Good to Great writes that "Good is the enemy of great." Speedway is a good congregation. Folks are genuinely friendly, willing to pitch in and help, and have always been grateful for my leadership. There are no major divisions or disagreements. We have a number of good ministries taking place from the continued growth in our special needs ministries to Mary’s lunch bunch. These are incredible examples of how the Spirit is working in and through our congregation. This is a good congregation.

But it may be that our goodness prevents us from moving into a deeper experience of the greatness of God’s grace. Like your temperature, the numbers indicate a deeper problem: this year our average attendance is down. Even after Scott’s reappointment and with it the end of a major expense, our giving is still hobbling along. There has been no major problem which has caused these decreases. There are no divisions, no mass exodus, no sudden onslaught of terminal illnesses or deaths to explain this.

It is just that we are settling for less. For a variety of reasons we feel that our status quo is “good enough.”

God is calling us to go beyond being good. God offers to each of us not just the “good life” but the “abundant life” in Jesus Christ (John 10:10). That abundant life is the peace of mind and purpose for living in his risen Spirit. It is a continuous process of deepening our love for God and one another. It is passion for Jesus.

God calls us to create a church that is passionate for Jesus. The contours of that passion are outlined in our vision statement in which we say, “God is leading us to become a growing church that is a home for all ages of disciples who share the love of Christ, care for one another, and provide ministries to help each other follow Christ in the world today.”

Wesley referred to this ever-deepening passion for Christ as “Christian Perfection.” It is a doctrine we don’t talk much about these days but it offers an alternative to settling for the mediocrity of the being “good enough.” By perfection he meant that one’s life—your actions, attitude, speech and desires—are oriented toward the love of God and neighbor, and the gift of grace is that the Holy Spirit will keep pushing us and prodding us toward this end.

But here is where Wesley (and Jesus) differ from Collins. The business-growth gurus (and their church-growth clones) premise their advice on a works-righteousness. If we would just try a little harder, focus more intently, and be more sincere then we can become great. Of course, the definition of great always includes quantitative growth--be it widgets on the assembly line or warm butts in the pews. In contrast, the way to Christain perfection is through surrender and renunciation to the will of God. The way of sanctifying grace is the way of the cross, of dying in Christ so that we can be raised in Christ. Part of the dying includes leaving behind the worldly measures of numerical success.

I guess what I am saying is that I want more out of our church--more than just the lukewarmness AND more than just numerical growth. We need the kind of fellowship that encourages you and me to seek this greater goal.

In 2009, are we going to be a “good” congregation or will we keep moving on toward Christian Perfection? If we settle for the status quo then we are grieving the Holy Spirit.

Your Ministry Partner

2008-10-01T16:35:00.001-04:00

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Making Disciples

2008-09-23T10:47:00.003-04:00

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
--Matthew 28:19-20

When my wife was pregnant with our third child and we were strapped for money I needed to buy a cheap second automobile. I found a pick up truck for three hundred dollars. It was a behemoth, which the previous owner used primarily for hauling wood. Even though it had dual-axel (What pastor needs that? For pulling church members out of the muck of sin?) it did not have a seat belt on the passenger side. Why in the world did I buy something that lacked a seat belt, protested my very pregnant wife, and she—rightly so—refused to ride in it. My only defense was that it was cheap and I was saving us money. Providence sided with my wife and unborn child and a month after I had bought it the transmission went out. I sold it for scrap.

Bonhoeffer is well known for his denunciation of “cheap grace,” the watered down expression of Christianity that saturates many churches. He the real thing “costly grace” which most congregations shun.

Yet, Dallas Willard reveals that even the cheap imitation will cost you more in the long run. In The Spirit of the Disciplines, he writes,

“Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).”

Consider how much it costs a congregation not to make discipleship the central focus and driving goal. How many of our churches do not have ‘abiding peace’ but are caught in reoccurring turmoil? How many of our churches cannot see their situation ‘in the light of God’s overriding governance for good,’ but instead suffer from the spiritual cataracts of self-preservation? How many of our churches have collapsed under the wait of discouragement rather than standing firm in God’s hope? And how many of our churches are so weak that they fail to speak out against social evils because they lack the spiritual power to do what is right? ‘Cheap grace’ is never cheap. It cost us the very soul of the church.

The role of the church leader, whether lay or clergy, is to constantly remind the church of this deeper cost benefit analysis. Jesus told us to count the cost before following him, and this counting includes taking inventory of what it will cost us if we do not make discipleship our central focus. Church leaders must avoid the temptation of giving priority to other things and of embracing the latest fad. Those other priorities and fads may seem productive and unifying but in the end you are just selling the church as scrap metal.

Discipleship is Job One

2008-09-08T22:25:00.004-04:00

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
--Matthew 28:19-20

Can you identify the companies of these slogans (answers--see below):

Reach out and touch someone
Fly the Friendly Skies
Don’t Leave Home Without It
The Ultimate Driving Machine
Absolutely, Positively Overnight
Leave the Driving to Us
Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful

Each one of these slogans tells you the essence of the company’s mission. A few years ago The United Methodist Church adopted a mission statement which says, “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Local churches provide the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs (¶ 120).” Duh! Of course, that is the mission of every congregation. This is the Great Commission, the last words Jesus left with us in Matthew’s gospel.

Why state the obvious? It is crucial to repeat it over and over again because it is so easy for a congregation to get side tracked. At any given time, there are dozens of little things going on in a church and it very easy to lose focus of the goal that should direct and unite all of those tedious, annoying, seemingly petty jobs. There are all sorts of outside forces—from crises in the community to cultural trends—which can blow us off course. Most threatening of all, there are human beings running the church! People full of limitations and sins tug and pull the church in all directions.

The mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. A disciple is someone who seeks to know and follow Jesus Christ. This is a life long process and goal. In the end, nothing else matters, either for the church or the individual.

Keeping discipleship the central focus holds in perspective the many tasks of the church. On the one hand, it prevents some things from taking on more importance than they warrant. The annual fish fry remains simply a means to the greater end of raising money for global missions. On the other hand, the goal elevates the meaning of other tasks so that we can see their significance. Keeping up-to-date records on members is more than a administrative burden, it is a vital tool for membership care.

What gives meaning and direction to all these tasks is the goal of making disciples. With the goal our work generates energy and reinforces unity. Without this goal the work becomes either drudgery or idolatry.

The role of church leaders is to constantly help the congregation refocus on the mission of making disciples. This begins by developing the right perspective as leaders. We must learn to see how each task, no matter how trivial it may appear, contributes to the goal of making disciples. Then we as leaders must help the rest of the congregation make the same connections.

We do this in two ways. One, we bless others in their work. We affirm their work by helping them see how it contributes to this larger goal. Two, we bring to an end those programs and projects which no longer contribute to the goal. Praise the workers and condemn the idols.

As a church leader, does everything you do fit with the goal of making disciples of Jesus Christ?

[1. ATT; 2. United Airlines; 3. American Express; 4. BMW; 5. FedEx; 6. Greyhound; 7. Pantene]

A Snake in the Font

2008-09-03T10:01:00.004-04:00

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
--Romans 6:3-4

One of the highlights of my first appointment was the baptism of eleven people in the creek. On a hot July Sunday afternoon we gathered on the banks of a nearby creek and one by one they went down with me into the muddy waters to wash away their sins. It was a good day. Everyone was filled with the Spirit and I didn’t drown anyone.

As we were leaving my wife whispered to me, “Did you see it?” Of course I had not seen it. There had been a water snake swimming in the creek while I was baptizing them.

Among the many things baptism represents is our calling into ministry. Whether you are an usher or a bishop, it all begins in the creek or at the font. Just as Jesus launched his ministry at the Jordan River, our ministry begins at the font or in the creek. Ministry is not reserved for those of us who are ordained. Rather, ordination is a particular way of reaffirming my baptismal vows which I share with the laity.

Is there a snake in your baptismal waters? Is there something that is hindering you from fulfilling the ministry of your baptisms. We can become discouraged by our failures and disillusioned by others who fail us. We can become distracted by other priorities and detoured into other more pleasurable activities.

But baptism represents more than our pledge to serve. It also represents our new life in Christ that enables us to fulfill our pledge. Paul reminds that our brokenness and sins are “buried with him by baptism into death” and by doing this we receive the power of his resurrection to “walk in newness of life.” He is outlining a spiritual process of relinquishing all those things that hinder our ministry so that the Spirit of Christ can empower us to serve in his name.

John Wesley described it this way, “In baptism we, through faith, are engrafted into Christ; and we draw new spiritual life from this new root, through his Spirit, who fashions us like unto him, and particularly with regard to his death and resurrection”(Notes Upon the New Testament, Romans 6:3).

In order to fulfill the ministry of our baptism we must be baptized into the new spiritual life of the Spirit of Christ. This requires a constant process of dying to sin and receiving new life.

In short, we need to get rid of the snakes so that we can experience the power of baptism once again. We need to be dunked into the deep, clean Living Water of Jesus Christ.

In the ritual for reaffirming our baptismal vows the pastor says, “Remember your baptism and be thankful.” As you remember your baptism, see it as God’s call to service and as Christ’s renewal for ministry.

The Road Map of Ministry

2008-08-26T17:03:00.001-04:00

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
--Ephesians 3:18-19

John D. Clouse holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the World’s Most Traveled Man. This seventy-plus year old attorney from Evansville, Indiana has set foot on more countries, islands, territories and atolls than any other person. The only places he has not been (to date) is the Kingman Reef, which is underwater at high tide, an island group in the South Pacific and two in the South China Sea.

All he has to do is set foot on it and he can mark it off his list. When he visited the Johnston Atoll, which is a dumping ground for poisonous gas, the stewardess would not let him off. When she was not looking he managed to run off the plane just long enough to touch ground. He has flown over the Atlantic 104 times and spent over one million dollars on his travels. His favorite place? Paris. His least favorite spot? East St. Louis.

Church leadership is like a journey, both as a group as well as a personal journey of the soul. How far are you willing to travel on your journey? What makes for good church leadership is when we are willing to keep on the journey of growing and changing together. As with any trip, challenges come and we must be open to trying new things. When we as leaders stop this process our ministries suffer because the vision for the ministry can only go as far as the leader is willing to take it.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is that they would continue to process of exploring the farthest reaches of God’s road map:

· “The Breath”—How far can your church reach out to others in your community? How far are you willing to reach out around the world through giving, advocacy and mission service?

· “The Length”—How long can we keep going in our ministry? Will is fizzle out in a few months or will it be sustained from one generation of church members to the next? Can we pass the mantle on to a new generation of leaders who may not do it the way we have done it?

· “The Height”—How high can we reach in the quality of what we do? Do we settle for less in how we get the job done in the church? Are we willing to take our ministries from good to great?

· “The Depth”—How deep are we willing to grow in our faith in Jesus Christ? Are we willing to let the Spirit examine and challenge the way we have been doing things and our attitude toward our church family?

The journey begins on our knees. Paul prayed that the Ephesians were willing to do the long distance together. We must pray for our congregation and ask God to lead us on this journey of ministry in exploring the full terrain of grace.

Brownie, R.I.P.

2008-08-20T11:04:00.001-04:00

“For the creation waits with eager longing for he revealing of the children of God”
--Romans 8:19

Our dog Brownie died Sunday afternoon. A beagle mix, she wandered onto our porch one cold morning nine years ago. I told the kids to shoo her away. By the time I arrived home for dinner she had been in the house all day. Of all the dogs I have owned she has been the most observant and the friendliest. She had a way of picking up on your subtle cues and watching your every move. She was especially attentive when you were eating in the hopes that something would fall off your plate that she could lick off the floor. She was always good with children and trustees who came into the back yard. She always barked to let you know when she needed to go out. Even her death was conveniently timed on an afternoon when I was not busy. She will be missed and our floor will never be as clean.

It is no insult to our faith or to our Savior to point out that ‘dog’ spelled backwards is ‘God.’ It would be a sign of successful discipleship if we were as obedient to God as many dogs are to their owners. Consider Brownie: always attentive and reading people’s cues, always willing to go on a walk when you are ready to go, always knowing her place to sleep in the house. Discipleship is a lot like dog obedience; it requires repetition and knowing one’s place in the pack.

Before I go one with this sappiness, let me remind you that there is a place for every creature in God’s salvific work. Paul alludes to it in Romans eight, “For the creation waits with eager longing for he revealing of the children of God” (verse 19). Our founder John Wesley envisioned the second coming as a day which included both people and animals, “But will the creature always remain in this deplorable condition? God forbid that we should affirm this” (sermon, ‘The General Deliverance’). Paul and Wesley envisioned a renewal of creation at the end of time. While there is no scriptural justification for saying that your pet will go to heaven, there is a big hope for all creation.

Therefore, we, the children of God who are at the top of the order of creation, should imitate God in caring for all creatures great and small. When the Royal Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals was founded 1824 they took their inspiration from Wesley sermon and reprinted it.

Often our work in the church is centered on people. We forget that part of our mission is to care for all of creation. We are also called to serve “all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful: the Lord God made them all.”

Spiritual Typhoid Marys

2008-08-05T08:49:00.003-04:00

“Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
--Matthew 18:17

In 1907 Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant, worked as a cook for wealthy New York families. One by one her employers became ill with typhoid and one died. Public health officials traced the disease back to Mary, who was a healthy carrier. She was quarantined at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island for three years and the press quickly brandished her as “Typhoid Mary” the sole cause of the fever throughout the city.

When she was released, she quickly took a pseudonym and started working as a cook again. By 1915 he was found working at Sloan Hospital and she was quarantined back on the island for the rest of her life. All told, she had infected 53 people, three of whom died, all the while she maintained that she was never infected.

The sad truth of church leadership is that from time to time we must deal with people who infect our congregations with their unhealthiness. Call it what you will—sin, dysfunction, meanness—they spread their problems to others in ways that threaten the well-being of the church.

One must distinguish this situation from most people who also need forgiveness and healing. I am referring to people for whom the brokenness is deep and has been controlling their lives for many years. In many cases, they have been sinned against and in reaction to the abuse they have suffered they develop unhealthy patterns and behaviors. The church is called to offer these persons healing. As someone once said, ‘The church is not a country club for saints but a hospital for sinners.’

But even a hospital as a quarantine policy so that the infection does not spread. Church leaders must never place these persons in positions of authority where they can spread their dysfunction. And yet this often happens because, at first glance, these persons can possess many desirable skills and traits. They are often the most willing and committed—but their reliability is driven by a chronic perversion rather than a mature faith. The church provides a forum to keep alive the melodrama to which they have become addicted.

After a while the truth comes out and the church finds itself with an epidemic of strife and gossip. In those moments, the leadership—both laity and clergy—must take action, first to help this person find healing and second if they refuse, to remove them from their position of leadership and influence.

At this point, the church can be its own worst enemy. We are fond of saying that the church is a place where everyone should be accepted, that God’s love is for everyone, and that we are one big family. That’s right, the church is one big dysfunctional family when it allows the language of love to be used against itself. We may appear to be loving when we tolerate someone’s unhealthiness but in reality we are accomplices in their brokenness when we allow them to continue to practice it through the church. Healing is a painful process and it may be that some people who are deeply broken will reject it and live in denial. There is no love in letting people live a lie.

One of the thankless roles of church leadership is to stop allowing people to use the church to perpetuate their dysfunction. When we say no then be prepared that they will leave. Let them leave because the well-being of the church for others should not be sacrificed for the sinful self-deception of one person. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “let them be as a Gentile and a tax collector to you.”

Jesus’ advice comes at the end of a long process of honest and personal conversation with that person. You don’t start at the exit door. You begin at the font. You begin by practicing covenantal relationships of both support and accountability, which goes beyond the banal politeness of middle class culture. If that does not work you include a few others in the conversation. But you never resolve it through the grapevine and the process is never moved along by passive aggressive tactics. It requires straight forward, long-term, painful conversations. Yuck! And when the person has left, it is over. Unlike Mary Mallon, you do not use that person as a scapegoat for all of the problems in the church. You don’t keep it alive through gossip or snide comments. Like a hospital, we are all patients, it just that some of us have to wear a mask and gloves.

Packing Heat

2008-07-21T14:30:00.003-04:00

“If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
--I John 1:9

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on a Baptist pastor in Mt. Airy, North Carolina who was arrested for carrying a gun into the pulpit. He had a previous conviction involving cocaine and possession of a firearm. Defending his actions by claiming that the pistol was meant to be a sermon prop, he said, “Once I pretended to be a blind man with a cane, glasses and can with coins. Why didn’t they arrest me for impersonating a blind man?”

He was "packing heat," but it was more than a six-shooter. He had carried his sins—both past and present—into the church and it hurt his ministry.

How often are we "packing heat" when we show up to a committee meeting or a worship service? How often do we carry our sins into the church and it hurts our ministries? We are our own worst enemy when it comes to making our ministries effective because we allow our transgressions to seep into our work. You may have the best idea in the world but if you do not repent of your sins you will pervert those God-given dreams. You may be the most talented person for the job but if your sins still control you they will distort your skills. Whether it is the scandals of a bishop or the annoyances of an usher, our sins are the greatest impediment to the church’s witness.

It is much easier to see the sins of others. It may be our pride that Prevents us from seeing our sins. Or it may be our insecurities which keep us from repenting because we are afraid to admit that we are not as competent as we would like to be.

Churches send contradictory messages to the leaders about repentance. On the one hand, we tolerate someone’s sinful attitudes. Consider the trustee chairman who has blown his top for years in meetings but no one calls him on it. Middle class politeness has a way of tolerating sin to the detriment of both the individual and the congregation. But, on the other hand, we criticize others behind their backs. This passive-aggressive piety keeps sin alive. In the end, the ministry fails, the leader is never challenged to grow spiritually and emotionally, and the congregation gets meaner with every wild rumor. The cycle of sin prevents the wheels of ministry from turning.

One of the first steps for effective ministry is for the leader to confess his or her sins. Confession means both asking for God’s forgiveness and developing a healthy awareness of one’s vulnerabilities. As the introduction to the prayer of confession says, “let us confess our sins before God and one another,” the leader must confess his or her sins to key people in the congregation. It is a sign of real leadership to admit ones mistakes so that the group as a whole can move on to achieve its goals. Only this twofold confession will break the cycle of sin in which the church is caught.

Because God has chosen to use us, God will forgive us and free us from those sins which get in the way of our ministries. God wants to get the job done and will get us into good working order. John described sin as “unrighteousness” meaning that everything is out of place. God’s forgiveness puts us back into the right place with God and one another, and included in that reordering is putting us in the right place with the right attitude for ministry.

This week, ask yourself, “What sins do I need to take out of the holster before I walk into the church?”

Stump Ministry

2008-07-15T09:00:00.002-04:00

“Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump.”

--Isaiah 6:13

For decades the abandoned house on Fillmore Street in Gary was an eye sore. Having gone through a series of tax sales, by the late nineties it was burned-out, trash littered and a haven for an occasional drug addict.

But Christopher Meyers saw something else in the house. A graduate student studying historic preservation, Meyers recognized that it had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was a rare example of Wright’s American System-Built homes, which had been a short-lived project of high-quality, pre-fabricated materials. It had been built for a life insurance president between 1915 and 1917 and is one of only fifteen from this experiment still in existence.

Sometimes in ministry we discover great potential in the dilapidated and abandoned. The church is filled with “abandoned property” from failed programs to ruined relationships, and it is easy to write them off as useless.

One of the greatest obstacles to the renewal of the church is myopic vision. Consider the way we talk about our small, rural churches. We see them as a burden to our system and with every new attempt at long range planning in the conference there are those who say that we need to bite the bullet and start closing them down. The folks in the pews buy into this despair. They assume that their congregation is not a real church if it does not fit the pervasive but often unspoken criteria of one hundred on Sunday morning with a choir and a youth group.

We pastors have the worst vision of all. We assume that ‘effectiveness’ is in the bodies, buildings and bucks we can measure. We cringe when appointed to a church that is in crisis.

How little do we realize that it is only when a congregation is in a crisis that there is the opportunity for radical transformation. It may just be that there is still something worth saving in those failures. There may be some idea or personal gift that can be reused and redirected toward a more successful end. The dilapidated house of God may be a landmark in the Kingdom of God.

At first glance, there was no hope in the situation Isaiah described. The message God gave to Isaiah will fall on deaf ears and the people will be punished. He compared it to a forest fire in which only the burned out stumps are left. This is the point of the entire chapter. But at the very end, there is a strange line: “The holy seed is its stump.” God was leaving a little bit of hope in the picture and Isaiah needed to see the entire picture if he was going to be a faithful prophet.

Like Isaiah, we need to see our ministries with the eyes of faith. We need to stop measuring our ministry by a human criteria of success and start looking for the divine potential in the worst situations. Lest we misread Isaiah, God did not tell the prophet to look beyond the stumps for the tiny samplings sprouting around the charred remains. Nore did he say that the seed is growing out of, in spite of, the stump. No, “the holy seed is its stump.” The new life is in the old, the new idea is germinating in the old tradition, the greatest ‘success’ is planted in the greatest ‘failure.’ That little congregation is the seed of hope, that lousy appointment is the place of God’s new vision, that abysmal failure you tried last year is the soil for this year’s best idea.

Enough Criticism

2008-07-08T09:34:00.001-04:00

“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ.”
--Ephesians 4:15

Which is worse: getting criticism or giving criticism? Neither is particularly pleasant but given our different personalities and personal histories we tend to feel slightly more comfortable with one over the other. For some it is easier to speak the truth without love and for others it is easier to speak love without the truth. But the combination of the two is a tough trick.

Beginning in fifth century, The Rule of Saint Benedict outlined how to deal with a monk who was in the wrong. He got two verbal warnings in private, one in public, and if none of that worked he was excommunicated for a duration that fit his sins. But even during his excommunication it was “the abbot’s responsibility to have great concern and to act with all speed, discernment and diligence in order not to lose any of the sheep entrusted to him. He should realize that he has undertaken care of the sick, not tyranny over the healthy.” Every effort was made to restore the monk and when that took place the monk would lie face down at the feet of his fellow monks as they left the oratory. At the very end as the abbot passed by he would say, “Enough,” and it was all over. When carried out the right way the process embodied speaking the truth in love.

It is a hard process that makes all of us feel uncomfortable so we shortchange one side or the other. At times, we are only willing to speak the truth. Even though it hurts it is much more efficient and we get the problem off our chests. At other times, we opt for only speaking love—not real love, but the mushy and cheap tolerance that polite society encourages us to fain. We would rather be dishonest than go through the uncomfortable situations of pointing out faults.

When we shortchange the process we only do damage in the long run. If we speak the truth without love eventually the unity of the congregation suffers from too much strife. If we speak love without truth then we defer the problems to a later date when they will be more severe and complex.

The only viable alternative is to do what was called in Wesley’s day, “smite me friendly.” In his sermon “Catholic Spirit” he describes the deeper, spiritual unity of Christians as a vital covenant of prayer and encouragement. But in those times when someone is not doing ministry according to God’s will, it is the duty of others to “smite me friendly”—a King James translation of Psalm 141:5 which says “Let your faithful people correct and punish me [CEV].” As much as we hate it, we need the correction of others and as much as we hate to do it, we need to correct others for their well-being. None of us will grow and mature in our faith and ministry unless we are shown the errors of our ways. None of us will be able to hear the advice unless it is said in the context of a committed relationship of affirmation.

“I know there’s a balance, I see it when I swing past,” sang John Mellencamp. Striking the balance between truth and love is the mark of true Christian leadership.

The Idiot's Guide to Ministry

2008-07-01T10:26:00.001-04:00

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
--John 1:14

A husband of one of our members wrote computer program books for the “Complete Idiot” series. The series has expanded beyond technical manuals to include all sorts of topics relevant to ministry. To date, there is the “Complete Idiot’s Guide to….
§ Jesus
§ Mary Magdalene (for viewers of the Da Vinci Code)
§ Prayer
§ God
§ Bible
§ Biblical Mysteries

There are several which address ministry issues, such as weddings in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to….”
§ Wedding Vows
§ Father of the Bride
§ Being a Groom
§ the Perfect Marriage

And if none of that worked out, you can buy another book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to….”
§ Surviving Divorce
Of course, ministry often involves administration, so you may need one of these, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to….”
§ Robert’s Rules
§ Managing People
§ Team Building

If you have had problems in your ministry, you can read, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to….”
§ Ethics
§ Overcoming Procrastination
§ Overcoming Bad Habits
§ Self-Esteem

There is no “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ministry,” at least not yet. But there are a slew of other “How-to” books on every aspect of ministry. There are “steps” and “guides” and “tips” and “techniques” for everything from church finances to youth ministry to evangelism. Ministry is reduced to a set of skills we acquire and actions we perform. And if you do them well, if you learn the right technique, you will be a good minister.

The more I do it the more I believe that “the doing of it” is not what it is really about. At the heart of all ministry—from being a bishop to a church secretary—is who we are. It is more about our character than our technique. “Being” a minister or “being” in ministry is more fundamental than the myriad of tasks we do or skills we master.

God designed it this way from the very beginning in the Incarnation. God came in human flesh and lived among us. The verb in John One is “pitched tent” among us. God in Jesus Christ shared our burdens, struggled in our limitations and died our death all in order to flesh out God’s life-giving Word. God did not send an instruction manual. God gave himself.

And yes, we are to follow his example. But more importantly, lest we reduce Jesus’ significance to the “ultimate role model”, we must understand that he offers us his presence in our ministry. He invites us to become participants in his Spirit in order to make us into his servants. He must live through us in order to animate our lives so that we can do the work which he wants us to do. In short, He lives through us in order for us to follow his example.

So being a good pastor, a good youth director, a good music director, a good child care provider, a good administrative assistant—whatever the title, being a good minister begins and ends with the character which Christ develops in us. The success or failure of our ministries has more to do with our temperament, our disposition, our integrity rather than what we know or can do. We have all seen, for example, choir directors who are technically brilliant but they treat people horribly. Complaints from the choir loft should come as no surprise when this happens. Or take a pastor who is brilliant in the pulpit but cannot control his temper in the hallway. In a thousand different ways, who we are jeopardizes the work we do.

Paul said that we are to be “fools for Christ” and anyone who is willing to do the ministry of Jesus Christ must be a darn fool to allow the Spirit of Christ to take control over his or her life and reshape one’s character for the Gospel. But Paul did not say that we were to be “idiots for Jesus.” You can only do that when you rely upon your own skills to do ministry.

Success Is In How You Keep Score

2008-06-03T18:18:00.001-04:00

The Flexibility Test

2008-05-27T09:59:00.002-04:00

“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
--John 3:8

Last week I completed my annual health exam. Among the poking and sticking and measuring was a flexibility test. The assistant instructed me to take off my shoes, sit on the floor with my legs straight and my feet pressed against a metal box. The metal box had a panel which my feet would push to register my flexibility, and the goal was to push it as far as I could without bending my knees. He gave me three tries, none of which felt very good or looked very successful at eight o’clock in the morning.

If God tested your flexibility in ministry how limber would you be? Jesus told Nicodemus that the Holy Spirit is like the wind. We can feel the Spirit but we cannot control the Spirit. Our ministries need the Holy Spirit to move through them in order to give them life, direction and challenge. With the Spirit our programs give life to others. Without the Spirit they suck us dry and don’t amount to a hill of beans.

Yet, the Spirit frustrates us precisely when the Spirit is at work. We like to plan—indeed, we must plan in order for our ministries to function well—but the plans must be shaped by the leading of the Spirit. At times, our plans do not match God’s will or we have tried to restrict God’s vision. Eventually, the Spirit comes along and pushes us in a new direction or blocks us from moving forward because it is not the right time.

Wouldn’t be a lot simpler to do the will of God without the Holy Spirit messing up our plans? It is easy to assume that we have every right to be frustrated with the Spirit. We put a lot of thought and effort into our plans. We have calculated the risks and weighed all of the factors and we assume that we know all there is. We can become so locked in on our plans that when the Spirit speaks to us through the challenging words of others we assume that they are working against God’s will. Even worse, when roadblocks and failures stymie our ministries we automatically jump to the conclusion that it must be the devil or some other diabolical force. We are too quick to equate our plans and ideas with the will of God.

If our leadership is truly Spirit-led then we will develop a flexible attitude. We will keep ourselves attentive to the new insights of the Holy Spirit which we will hear through other people. We will keep ourselves pliable to the new directions of the Holy Spirit which we will see in changing circumstances. We cultivate this spiritual flexibility through the constant practice of spiritual disciplines. Just like in sports, you have to stretch before you can play.

Taking the Long View of Ministry

2008-05-20T12:32:00.002-04:00

“The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.”
--Psalm 16:5-6

Adrian Targett, a school teacher in England, was surprised to learn that he is a direct descendant of “Cheddar Man.” Cheddar Man is the skeleton of a Stone Age hunter-gatherer who lived 9,000 years ago in the area near the modern-day town of Cheddar. Scientists from Oxford’s Institute of Molecular Medicine studied mitochondrial DNA samples taken from the skeleton and compared them to DNA samples of members of old Cheddar families. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited unchanged on the maternal side of families. Targett’s sample closely matched that of Cheddar Man, making him a part of the longest human lineage ever traced.

Every Christian today can trace their faith back 2,000 years to the original disciples. It is amazing to consider that for all of the mass advertising and communications of our contemporary society the Christian faith has been passed on from generation to generation one person at a time. Our faith is their heritage. Our ministry is a living legacy of their ministry. The DNA Gospel message was preserved in their ministries and is now being passed on to the next generation through our work.

What will be the heritage of your ministry? We tend to become focused on immediate deadlines. What affect will the ministry I do today have on this congregation 30 years from now? What repercussions will my decisions today have on the next generation of pastors and parishioners?

We have seen bad legacies. A good pastor can only do a limited amount of good in a short period of time, but a bad pastor can do a lot of damage in a short appointment. Bad decisions and sinful attitudes can shape a person’s views of the church and Christianity for a life time, and so Jesus rightly warns, “if any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea (Mark 9:42).” You may be right today about defending your turf or protecting yourself, but is it worth the price of disrupting the entire church and future generations of potential believers?

We have also seen good legacies. None of us would be serving the church if it had not been for the encouragement and example of others. Your legacy could be through a sermon, a song, a letter or a supportive word. Often you will never know the full effect of your ministry. The rare moments when you get to see the positive outcomes are gifts God gives us to encourage our service.

We struggle to do long-range planning and have a hard time conceptualizing where we need to lead the church in the immediate future. Taking a long-view at our ministry will help us escape our myopic vision. From time to time we need to assess what we are doing in light of the multi-generational consequences of our work. It is like setting a ship’s course on the horizon line. Seeing our present work in light of its potential future will help reshape what we do today.

The Ministry of Administration

2008-05-14T13:36:00.002-04:00

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
--Matthew 5:6

During the first nine months of 1942 the American navy suffered horrible losses in the Atlantic due to U-boat attacks. Sometimes referred to as the Eastern Pearl Harbor, the sinking of merchants ships went on unabated even though FDR had appointed one of the most brilliant Admirals in charge of Naval Operations, Ernest Joseph King, and was utilizing the most sophisticated detection equipment of the day.

However, the British were not experiencing the same casualties. The difference was the organization. The British developed a centralized operational system which allowed them to move their ships around the Atlantic faster and with greater ease in order to avoid the U-boats. In contrast, Admiral King believed in a decentralized management structure which prevented information and operations from being quicker and more efficient. After a year of failure, the Americans created a new system—the Tenth Fleet—and within six months dramatically reduced the loss of merchant ships. The Tenth Fleet did not bring in new talent or better technology. It worked because it was a better organization.

God offers us a better “organization” which the Bible refers to as “righteousness.” Righteousness is both the ordering and the empowerment of God. Righteousness is the “right ordering” of life in accordance with God’s will and it is God’s power to create and sustain that right order. Righteousness begins with the human being in right relationship with God and then extends into right relationships among human beings and between humanity and nature. Thus, the Old Testament often links righteousness with justice in so far as justice is the form of right relationships in society. The New Testament refers to Jesus Christ as the righteousness of God because he is the power to fix our relationship with God and others and he is the one who empowers us to participate in God’s right ordering of the world.

Our leadership of the church must be shaped by the righteousness of God. That begins with our personal lives being “rightly ordered” by God’s will. How we spend our time, how we care for our bodies and minds, how we plan our futures, and how we cultivate our spirituality is all a part of good church leadership because the leader must be in a right relationship with God before he or she can organize the church’s ministries.

Our ministries must embody the righteousness of God. The organization of our work is an essential part of our ministry. When your ministry is well organized it allows people to reconnect with God and to connect with one another. When our ministries are disorganized the disorganization gets in the way of people experiencing God; it annoys them and thus distracts them from experiencing God; it causes tensions among people rather than helping them be reconciled and supportive of one another; it is poor stewardship of the time God gives us to do more important tasks; and it prevents people from discovering and utilizing their spiritual gifts.

We tend to think of administration or management as dirty words in ministry, necessary evils, which are appendixes to “real ministry.” Yet, the biblical concept of righteousness pushes us to see how administrative tasks are a part of the overall goal of Christ’s will. They are the servanthood functions of any good leader.

This week, ask yourself: How well organized is my ministry? Does the organization of my ministry reflect the righteousness of God.

How to Vomit Like a Minister

2008-04-21T16:51:00.003-04:00

Lois Parker's Poster

2008-04-10T14:48:00.003-04:00

“My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ.”
--Galatians 6:1-2

Fruit of the Spirit: Gentleness

When I was in elementary school I got in trouble a lot for shooting off my mouth (no doubt a portent of things to come). The swift and fair punishment I received was usually administered by the principal, Ms. Lois Parker. Ms. Parker had been at Avon Elementary School since the Civil War. She stood 12 feet tall, had white hair with bangs, a square jaw and thin lips. I was convinced she was the devil.

By the third grade, for reasons which are still a mystery to me, my behavior had started to improve. I was no longer making weekly pilgrimages to the principal’s office. Then one day she came into my classroom and singled me out. As I walked forward, I knew I was in trouble. I just couldn’t remember what I had done.

Instead of punishing me, she put her hand on my shoulder and told the class that I had made incredible improvements. Then she handed me a poster of ships. I wanted to be a sailor and she gave me the most incredible gift. I cannot remember the countless punishments she meted out, but I will always remember that act of gentleness.

As leaders in the church we must deal with problems and conflicts. Denying these problems only postpones the inevitable and usually means that they get worse. Like a festering sore, they must be treated. It is thankless, nasty work but it must be done. Yet, Paul says that not only must you deal with the problem you have to do in a “spirit of gentleness.” In Second Timothy he advises his young colleague to deal with opponents with gentleness (2:25), and Peter reminds us that we should always defend ourselves but do it with gentleness (II Peter 3:15-6). On top of having to correct the problem and defend yourself you have to be like Clark Kent, “mild mannered.”

Gentleness is the oil that makes conflict resolution possible in the church. Paul advises neither passivity nor one upmanship. The goal is not to punish people or to win the argument. The goal is to restore the fellowship in order to make the mission of the church more effective. The person who is in the wrong needs the fellowship of the church and the church needs the gifts of that person. The person who is wrong needs to have their sins curbed in order to protect the mission of the church and to help that person grow in his or her faith. But the way we go about correcting and confronting them makes all the difference in the world. Gentleness helps prevent “blowback” weeks and months—and in some cases, years—later from hurting the effectiveness of the church. Without gentleness, you may make your point and win the argument but you will lose time, energy and credibility. With gentleness, the problem is solved and the damage is minimized.

Paul understands the tightrope we must walk as leaders. “Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.” We are tempted to veer off into one of two extremes. On the one hand, we are tempted to ignore the problem for the sake of keeping the peace—at least in the short run. But “peace mongers” aid and abet the sins of others with their acquiescence. On the other hand, we are tempted to go off on people for their mistakes. This is all the more tempting when we know that we are right and when we feel like we are vulnerable. In those moments it is easy for us to confuse gentleness with being a door mat and to overreact.

This week if you have a tough decision to make ask yourself: Am I being gentle in the way I handle the truth?

The Dog Days of Ministry

2008-03-18T11:17:00.003-04:00

“[Epaphras] is a faithful minister of Christ your behalf.”
--Colossians 1:7

“Your faithfulness endures to all generations….”
Psalm 119:90

Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness

Several years ago, David Lea walked out onto his back porch during a snow storm and fell. The eighty-eight year old widow was wearing only a light sweater when the accident left him unconscious for nearly twelve hours. By the time his son found him his body temperature had dropped to eighty degrees.

Lea would have died if it had not been for his dog, Benji. The twenty-five pound mutt, who resembles an English sheepdog, stayed by his side the entire time warming his body. According to the director of the county’s emergency medical services, it was the dog’s faithfulness that kept him alive.

Dog lover or not, it is no insult to compare Epaphras with Benji. Paul praises his coworker as a “faithful minister.” Paul had relied on him to carry his messages and follow up on his ministry is some pretty cantankerous and troubled churches. Epaphras was assigned the grunt work of ministry which he did with sincerity and reliability. Even though we do not have any of his words in the New Testament he earned a truly honorable place in Holy Scripture as a “faithful minister.”

Too often we feel like dogs in our ministries. We work like a dog. We are treated like a dog. Sometimes at the end of a long day at the church are dogs are barkin’ from all we have had to do. At the end of our lives will we be remembered like Epaphras as a “faithful minister” or as a howling mutt?

Faithfulness does not begin with our faith, it begins with God’s. The psalmist sings praise to the reliable God: “Your faithfulness endures to all generations.” The Bible is the story of God’s never ending loyalty to humanity. God takes the first step to save us and keeps on taking the first steps to save every new generation. Our ability to trust is a reaction to God’s fidelity. Because God is faithful, we have the capacity to be faithful.

Over time, God reshapes our desires, priorities and habits so that we become attuned to his will. This process of ‘spiritual breeding’ creates a disposition to want to serve God. It becomes our nature to want to be faithful to God. Over the centuries dogs have been bred to want to be close to people. Unlike any other species, dogs have a symbiotic relationship with humans in which their destiny is to serve humanity. Like dogs, there is something about being human that longs to for the divine and is fulfilled only in being God’s ‘faithful companion.’

And God remains faithful to us and our ministries. When God calls a person God will also equip that person. God will make a way for the ministry to be done. It is not up to our best intentions or resources to accomplish the task. Rather, our tenacity is a response to God’s commitment. To give up is nothing less than to reject God’s gifts for the ministry.

God is faithful to our ministries beyond our tenure. The psalmist said that God is faithful to “all generations.” This means that even though we may not see the full effects of our work God will take the seeds we have planted and cultivate them in the years to come. And it takes faith to see our ministries from this multigenerational perspective.

Like Epiphras, we must keep on keeping on. The Wesleyan Covenant Prayer says it best:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
Exalted for thee or brought low by thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
To thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

It’s a dog’s life being a minister. And dog spelled backwards is God, remember that God is faithful to keep the passion for ministry warm in our hearts.

Running Out or Running Over

2008-03-11T12:38:00.002-04:00

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
--Luke 6:38

Fruit of the Spirit: Generosity

Mary McGinnis lived in Philadelphia in a run down old house with a broken refrigerator and no air conditioning. She took the bus to the senior center where she ate free meals. When she died in 1996 everyone was surprised to learn that she had willed one million dollars to Our Mother of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church. This former secretary had fooled everyone in church. Her priest, Father Lawrence DiPaul, recalled, “I said, ‘How much money do you have, Mary McGinnis?’ She said, ‘Oh, over a million.’ But she said it like, ‘The Phillies are home tonight playing the Dodgers.’” After the funeral, Father DiPaul retrieved her tin box from an old cast-iron stove. It was stuffed with $33,000 in cash and $450,000 in government bonds. The money from the tin alone was used for scholarships for disadvantaged youth.

Giving sounds easy if we just had a million dollars to give away, but too often we are emotionally bankrupt. We give and give of our time, talents and energy until we are sucked dry. One more request or one more phone call is a giant sucking sound as if someone has hooked up a vacuum cleaner to our soul.

After a while, we try to hold on tightly to our time and energy in order to save ourselves from the great sucking sound of ministry. At first, that is a healthy strategy. Sometimes the most faithful thing we should do is say “no.” But over time this may become a disposition which infects all of our relationships in the church. Then we become grouchy and defensive, whining and suspicious. We fall into an adversarial posture and take out our frustrations on others. Our anger becomes a mask for our weariness.

First, you cannot give unless you have received. What we need to receive is the renewal that comes from being in the presence of God without any agenda or interruption. The Bible calls this “Sabbath,” a moment of rest in God’s grace. It is the discipline of letting go, temporarily, of your responsibilities and ambitions and just simply being in God. God so generous that He gives us the rejuvenation we need as well as the gifts we need to share with others.

It is God’s very nature to give. This is the logic of the Trinity: the Father, Son and Spirit exist in an eternal relationship of love. This is what it means to say “God is love” (IJohn 4:8). As Love, God shares the goodness of Himself with us. Richard of St. Victor once remarked, “But the fullness of goodness does not permit the supremely good One to keep those riches for himself.” It is just ‘second nature’, so to speak, that God wants to replenish us with divine goodness.

Next, you cannot receive unless you give. You must learn to give yourself to God in your quiet times of prayer and reflection. Then you give yourself to God in the work you do. You pour out what God has given you into your work so that God has room to put more back in. You do not need to hold back some “reserves” because your reserve is the vastness of God’s love. It is only in this kind of giving that our ministries take on a special quality that truly renews the church. Anything less is shallow and doesn’t truly transform the church.

The irony is that when we give—not out of the scarcity of our resource but out of the super abundance of God’s love—we are renewed as ministers. The word “lap” in Luke six means “bosom” or the fold in one’s garment. It is the image of someone holding out their garment in order to make a basket and to have it filled to overflowing with grain. The more you open your garment the more grain can be poured. We can only open the garments of our souls to others when we have opened them fully in the presence of God.

A Room Called Kindness

2008-03-04T13:45:00.002-05:00

“Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”
--Romans 2:4

Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness

Edie Lewis of Garland, Texas has touched the lives of hundreds of young people through her concrete acts of compassion. Over the past 30 years she has taken into her home over 200 teenagers who had no place to stay and nowhere to turn. She made space in her home for them to discover God’s direction through her kindness.

Two years ago the kindness was returned to her. When a sewer main got clogged it diverted the towns sewage into her home, destroying nearly everything. Because the accident was not covered by her policy, the insurance company would not pay for the damages and town claimed not to be responsible. But no good deed goes unnoticed and the folks at the Cotton Dairy, a local t-shirt printing company, staged a fund raiser for her. They sold t-shirts which read, “Let’s Give Edith Lewis a Flush” and “Something Stinks in Garland and It Isn’t Edith Lewis!” Her house got cleaned up so that she could keep on creating space for kindness.

Plutarch once commented that kindness has a wider space than justice. We live our lives in the space of God’s kindness, whose goodness keeps coming to us whether we can see it or not. We have seen it in the help we have received. We have heard it in the encouraging words other have said to us in a moment of discouragement. And God’s kindness allows room for our failings in ministry.

One of the essential tasks of ministry is to create a space for others to know and serve God. We create this space with our kindness. It is not enough to get the job done well, we must also get the job done good, meaning that the task of ministry should be saturated with goodness that reflects the kindness of God. Small acts of kindness may seem insignificant to us but to the recipient it motivates and affirms. Our ministries should create a lot of room for tolerating one another’s shortcomings.

If kindness creates more room, then justice operates in a much smaller space. We can do our ministries based on a strict sense of fairness. It may be more efficient but it is hardly helpful and it leaves little room for mistakes. After a while if the only thing we are concerned about is being right or being efficient then people will turned off

Maintaining space for kindness demands constant attention and the leader must take the initiative. We must learn the discipline of going out of our way to do acts of kindness for our fellow church members, especially those who are serving with us in various committees and projects. It is like cleaning a house. If you don’t stay on top of the trash and dirty laundry you will eventually have very little room to maneuver. No one wants to live in a stinky house and no one wants to serve in an unkind ministry.

Cockroaches and Clocks

2008-02-26T17:00:00.003-05:00

“Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.”
--James 5:7

Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

Several years ago, a man in Minnesota had problems with cockroaches in his apartment. He put out twenty “bombs” and left. The fumes became so bad that they ignited the pilot light on the stove and blew up his apartment. When firefighters arrived, cockroaches were seen crawling out of the bombed out apartment.

The man blew up his house because he had no patience—not to mention intelligence. We will blow up our ministries if we are impatient. We are impatient with others, wishing that they were more competent, more committed and more cooperative. We are impatient with ourselves, wishing that we had more time, more wisdom, more talent, and more resources. Our lack of patience seeps out in the tone in our voice and the actions we take. Even though we know better and wish we did not do it, we bark and bite at others because we are impatient.

Ultimately, we are impatient with God. Why doesn’t God make this situation work? Why doesn’t God give me the resources I need? Why doesn’t God give me a clear sign? We have our schedule and how dare God not conform to it!

God has a different sense of time. Past, present and future are all one in the presence of the Lord. The present is the space God creates for grace to work in us. In other words, God’s will is going to be fulfilled in what we call the future and what we call the present is simply the time in which God’s will is unfolding. As one hymn says, “In the end is our beginning, in time infinity.” What this means for our ministries is that God is working, often behind the scenes, in our ministries right now to bring them to completion. God’s ultimate completion is the Second Coming of Christ. We do not make the future; therefore, we do not have to rush the present. We are invited to join in God’s future; therefore, we can take our time in the present.

The key to patience, therefore, is keeping in focus the ultimate future of the Second Coming. This was James’ rationale for being patient. In the Second Coming, Christ will take all of our works of love, justice and mercy and bring them to completion in himself. All of our half-baked, feeble attempts to serve Him will not go to rot. God in Christ will use them, transform them, into the building blocks of the Kingdom of God. And so, the ultimate aim of our ministries is the Second Coming.

If the Second Coming is the goal and fulfillment of our ministries, then we can be more patient with ourselves and others. The success or effectiveness of our ministries does not stand or fall on human achievement. We should not measure success or effectiveness with a our clocks and calendars. We are working on God’s time clock So, stop worrying about the bugs in your ministry.

The Peace of Carpet

2008-02-20T16:50:00.003-05:00

“For [Christ] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”
--Ephesians 2:14

Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

In Deep South: Memory and Observation Erskine Caldwell recalls his father’s ministry in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in the South during the first part of the twentieth century. His father had been called to mediate a dispute which had split a North Carolina church. The issue was the carpet. One faction wanted to carpet the sanctuary in order to deaden the sound and improve the appearance. The other “anti-carpet” (or shall we shall we say, “pro-board”) faction wanted to retain the wooden. Sunday mornings became the battle ground during which the “pro-carpet” people intentionally tapped their feet on the floor. Neither side would give a dime and eventually they could not pay their pastor’s salary and the electric company threatened to turn off their lights. Caldwell’s father recommended that they close the church.

This is obviously not the church that Christ envisioned. Paul described the church as a vast diversity of people who are united in Christ through his death on the cross. If the cross is the only source of salvation, then it means that all other distinctions, which in Paul’s case was the rift between Jews and Gentiles, are meaningless. “Christ is our peace” because we are all saved by his grace.

If our task in ministry is to bear the cross then our ministries will reflect and promote the peace of Jesus Christ. One mark of effective ministry is reconciliation and peaceful relationships among the people we serve. People will not be on edge when planning events. People will enjoy each other’s company at committee meetings. People will discover through our ministries the deep healing and acceptance needed for reconciliation.

Sadly, there are many more examples of churches being in a constant state of turmoil. The stress level is high at every meeting. People have their guard up when beginning to talk about new ideas. They carry with them preconceived, negative impressions of others in the church.

One of the long-term goals of our ministries must be to create a climate of trust and affirmation. Christ wants to use us a vehicle to create that peaceful atmosphere in the church. When we, as leaders, are in tune with the peace of Christ we will not be draw into petty dramas and excessive debates. We will become the stabilizing presence which will enable the church grow.

There is a shadow side to all this talk about peace. It can be misused to cover over deep-seated problems in the church which prevent the church from moving on in doing its mission. There are a few people who are “peace mongers” who feel so uncomfortable with any form of conflict that they will thwart a healthy process of disagreements which can lead to positive change. At the opposite end, there are the “war mongers” whose only power in a church is to cast veto votes and spread rumors which undercut new ministries.

As a leader, you must avoid both. There is no sense in engaging in “conflict mediation” if the only purpose of the conflict is for the nay-sayers to stall the work of Christ. You must also avoid the temptation to rush too quickly to reconcile differing opinions. If the church is sustained and renewed by the grace of Jesus Christ, then let the Spirit of Christ work through the hard conversations which must take place in order for the church to discover a more effective way of proclaiming the Gospel. If a particular program is the will of God then the peace of Christ will eventually be reflected in it.

Dancing Around the Joy-Distracters

2008-02-13T09:43:00.006-05:00

“We are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in the faith.”
--II Corinthians 1:24

Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

In 1999 Marcelo started a dance craze in Brazil. His CD sold over three and a half million copies in one year and when the crowds came to see him they would dance and sway with his music.

Marcelo is not a rock star but a Roman Catholic priest. A former physical education teacher, Father Marcelo set the mass to upbeat music and dancing. Tens of thousands of worshippers came to his services to dance along with the father as they sung the liturgy together. As one parishioner described it, “The service here is full of life and joy, and all my prayers get answered.” Father Marcelo put joy into his ministry.

What gives you joy about your ministry?

Paul often described his ministry as saturated with and oriented toward joy. He prayed for the Romans that the “God of hope fill you with joy” and that the Thessalonians will be inspired with joy from the Holy Spirit. What gave him joy was the satisfaction of seeing the fruits of his ministry among the Philippians and the Corinthians. He reminded all of his readers that the ultimate goal of ministry is to experience complete and eternal joy of Jesus Christ.

What gets in the way of experiencing joy in ministry? Sometimes our joy dissipates because we are spread too thin. At times our joy is crushed because we have focused too narrowly on the success of one project and we cannot see the good in other endeavors. At other times our joy is ground down by the monotony of doing the same old thing. Our joy is crushed by the negative attitudes and harsh criticism of others.

The source of all joy is the presence of Jesus Christ. He is in our ministries, in spite of the daily grind, the many distractions and the occasional belly-acher. The real trick is to dance around the joy-distracters.

Jesus is your dancing partner in ministry. Out of everyone in the crowd, he walked across the dance floor and chose you. He takes you by the hand and leads you through the steps of ministry. And he just laughs when you get it wrong from time to time and step on his toes. And when you are tired, he holds you up. He takes the lead and shows you a few moves so that you won’t bump into the joy-distracters.

This week, keep on doing the work God has called you to do. Don’t sit this one out because you have a great partner who will keep you laughing.

"Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I'll lead you all wherever you may be,
and I'll lead you all in the dance, said he."

--Lord of the Dance, no. 26
The United Methodist Hymnal

How Not to Use the Scissors

2008-02-05T11:30:00.003-05:00

“If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
--I Corinthians 13:2

Fruit of the Spirit: Love

The following news story from Statesboro, Georgia was reported by the Associated Press soon after Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ opened:

“A couple who got into a dispute over a theological point after watching ‘The Passion of the Christ’ were arrested after the argument turned violent. The two left the movie theater debating whether God the Father in the Holy Trinity was human or symbolic, and the argument heated up when they got home, Melissa Davidson said. 'It was the dumbest thing we’ve ever done,’ she said. Davidson, 34, and her husband, Sean Davidson, 33, were charged with simple battery….after the two called police on each other….According to a police report, Melissa Davidson suffered injuries on her arm and face, while her husband had a scissors stab wound on his hand and his shirt was ripped off. He also allegedly punched a hole in a wall. ’Really, it was a kind of a pitiful thing, to go to a movie like that and fight about it. I think they missed the point,’ said Gene McDaniel, chief sheriff’s deputy.”

The deputy’s assessment could also apply to a number of church leaders. We too miss the point when our leadership lacks the love of Jesus Christ.

We usually associate First Corinthians thirteen—the “love chapter”—with weddings, but Paul’s intended audience was the Church. Because it is sandwiched in between an explanation of spiritual gifts (chapter twelve) and a discussion of church order (chapter fourteen), the “love chapter” speaks directly to church leaders. The early church had its share of leaders who were knowledgeable about scripture and in administration. But they lacked compassion and gentleness for those whom they lead and taught. Paul declared their ministries to be worthless without love.

It sounds so basic that we tend to forget its importance. If you do not love the people you lead then you cannot lead the Church in the way of Christ. Like the arguing couple, we have missed the point of Jesus’ ministry. Effective spiritual leadership begins with the Spirit of Christ saturating our lives—our thoughts, our motivations, our habits, our actions, our emotions—with his love. He implants his love inside of us which enables us to love others. His loving presence compels us to love. He loves others through us.

Our leadership, then, is a reaction to that divine love which in turn affects those whom we lead and they in turn share it with others. Our leadership should set off a chain reaction of love in the congregation that extends into the community.

But it is easy not to love. We can be impatient, unsympathetic, apathetic and just plain grouchy. Why? Because something else is in us making us react in negative ways that spills over in the congregation. It may be some deep wounds from the past or our worries about the future. It may be our sense of inadequacy or our selfish desires. All of which can take the place of the love of Christ in our hearts. Over time, the rest of the Church will feel it. It too will set off an opposite, negative chain reaction.

This week examine your leadership in light of I Corinthians 13:4-7:
“Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Does your leadership look like that? If not, you have missed the point of Christian leadership.

Stabbed in the Foot but Smiling

2008-01-21T09:42:00.001-05:00

“I do not mean to imply that we lord it over your faith; rather, we are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in the faith.”
--II Corinthians 1:24

In the fifth century, St. Patrick baptized King Aengus. During the ritual, Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and accidentally stabbed the King’s foot. When it was over, Patrick looked down at the blood and begged for forgiveness. “Why did you suffer in silence?” asked Patrick. The king replied, “I thought it was a part of the ritual.”

Some people assume that pain is a part of the ritual of being a leader in the church. They see it as a necessary evil, a chore to perform, and the language of bearing one’s cross feeds into the self-loathing. Over time it can become a form of self-righteous pity when we complain about how hard our jobs are but refuse to accept help. There is camaraderie in commiseration, but it is not healthy for the mission of the church or the spiritual growth of the leaders.

Instead, our work as leaders should be saturated with joy. To be sure, there will be moments when our ministries are a burden and from time to time you will need to let off some steam by complaining. But this should be the exception rather than the rule. Our standard mode of operation should be one of rejoicing, thanksgiving and praise for God giving us the work to do. If we are called to the ministry it will be a task that satisfies a deep longing in our souls. We were made to do it and the doing of it allows us to express who God wants us to be. The cross we bear, while it is a burden, wears a comfortable groove on your shoulder.

What brings you joy in your work in the church?

Do you rejoice in the work you do for the Lord? This is a spiritual discipline that sustains ministry. By practicing the discipline of celebration we prevent ourselves from sliding into cynicism, bitterness and despair.

A joyful attitude renews hope. It enables us to see reality from the perspective of God’s future. Even though we do not see the positive results of our work right now, we know that God will take our incomplete tasks and half-baked ideas and make something good come out of them.

A sense of humor about your ministry is a mark of grace. If you cannot laugh at your own ministry you are taking yourself too seriously, which means that you are relying upon your own intelligence and diligence to keep your ministry afloat. It is a clerical form of works righteousness and it leads to rigid thinking. Those who can laugh at their ministries are people who trust in Christ to make it work out right.

Your attitude—good or bad—will eventually saturate your service and infect those whom you serve. Whenever my wife eats garlic I can smell it that night and the next day. No matter how small the dose, I can smell it in her skin and taste it on her lips. If you have a joyful disposition in your ministry others will taste it, and if you complain about it, even behind closed doors, sooner or later they will get whiff of it and your bitterness will stink up the whole church.

What brings you joy in your work in the church?

Flowers for Protestors

2008-01-15T15:02:00.001-05:00

Spying on the Vision

2008-01-08T10:54:00.001-05:00

“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

--Philippians 3:14

In 1917 L.L. Nunn founded Deep Springs College in the desert of California. It is an all-male junior college which combines dairy farming, cattle ranching and philosophy. Nunn, who never graduated from college made his fortune in the early years of hydroelectric power with George Westinghouse. He envisioned a geographically isolated college where boys could be transformed by the great ideas of history. His vision was a combination of “Christian mysticism, imperialist elitism, Boy Scout-like abstinence, and Progressive era learning –by-doing*.” Deep Springs was not his first attempt at vision-building. He had tried unsuccessfully to create a similar school in Virginia (it was too close to town) and he funded a scholarship house at Cornell (too conventional). Ninety years later, Deep Springs still adheres to his original vision—and over half of its graduates go on to finish other degrees at Harvard, Yale or Oxford.

What is the vision that drives your ministry? Nunn had a vision that outlasted himself and Paul kept striving “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call.” We need a vision larger than ourselves to sustain our ministries. The goal must be broad enough to encompass the whole Church and deep enough to move us beyond our self-interests. Without a vision, not only do the people perish but we as leaders languish. We become bored by or burned out from the tedious grunt work of ministry. We develop bad habits that hurt ourselves and others. Ironically, we need to be a part of something larger than ourselves for the sake of ourselves. Chances are if it is a goal that you can achieve in your tenure or lifetime then it is too small a goal. It does not require a leap of faith.

The Greek word skopos (“goal”) is rare in the New Testament. In Philippians it means “the object on which one fixes the eye” or a “mark” as in an athletic contest. But the word can also mean a “watchman”, “a look-out guy”, a “scout”, or even a “spy”.

All of which are good metaphors for how we should be visionary leaders. The vision is a gift from God, who is constantly giving it to us as we do our work. We don’t create it so much as we receive it in bits and pieces over time and through a variety of people and events in the life of the congregation. The task of the visionary leader is to be on the look out for fragments of God’s vision refracted through the desires and events in the Church. We are to scout out those ideas. We are to do surveillance in the congregation for any positive signs of the Spirit’s direction.

Visionary leaders discern these fragments and put them together in a coherent whole. What made FDR a great President was that he was able to sense what the people wanted and put it into a concrete plan called the New Deal. In 1932 no one was asking for that specific set of programs, but there was a general sense in which the people wanted the government to do “something.” As a visionary leader he was able to tap into that desire and give it form and function.

A visionary leader can get too far ahead of a congregation when he or she comes up with an idea that is not connected with their desires. If the leader does not listen closely and pause for critical self-reflection, then he or she will resent the congregation. “Why don’t they get it?” and “They just don’t want to do anything!” become the mantras.

On the other hand, a leader can get too far behind a congregation. He or she can be so wishy-washy that the congregation spins its wheels in frustration because they have no direction. Like a car stuck in the mud, the church is like a bunch of kids in the backseat complaining and fighting with each other. Without a vision they have no where to direct their energy except against each other and the leadership.

What is your vision, the goal toward which your ministry is pressing on? Is it bigger than your ego? Is it deep enough to touch the passion of the congregation? Is it God’s vision?

* Dana Goodyear, “The Searchers,” The New Yorker, September 4, 2006.

Hunka Burnin' Love

2007-12-31T14:23:00.001-05:00

“For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.”
--II Timothy 1:6

During the last energy crisis in the 1970s the government gave tax credits for families, like mine, who bought and used wood burning stoves. My father’s goal was to heat the house throughout the winter with the stove insert in the fireplace. And it was my bounded after school duty to rekindle the fire each day. At three o’clock the house felt comfortably warm (and easily forgetten), but by six when Dad got home it would be pretty chilly. The first couple of times I forgot, I worked as fast as I could to get a fire going at five-thirty. You can’t reheat an entire house with a wood burning stove in thirty minutes. But you could have started a bon fire with my father’s anger when he got home.

Timothy’s passion for ministry had blown out. Rekindling our passion for service is more like a wood burning stove than a thermostat: it takes more than the flip of a switch to get us going.

What has dampened your original passion for ministry? Could it be that the initial infatuation has worn off and the reality of being married to the task isn’t sexy anymore? Is it the case that you have had one too many battles to fight, necessary struggles to be sure, which have left you shell shocked and afraid to risk yourself for people who do not seem to appreciate your leadership? Maybe you are just tired. You are physically drained and emotionally exhausted from the relentless grind of the weekly tasks? Do you have compassion fatigue—One too many needy people have sucked you dry? Every time the phone rings you can hear a giant vacuum cleaner being hooked up to your soul. Maybe you have brought it on yourself because of your lack of self-discipline and organization? Being a church leader is often like being a dog at a whistlers’ convention and you have not learned how to listen for your master’s call.

Whatever the reason, Paul’s advice to Timothy is the kind of rekindling our hearts need. First, he takes Timothy out of the present and goes back to the past. Paul reminds him that he gained his faith from his mother and grandmother and he recalls his ordination. All of this was an attempt to take Timothy back to the source of his calling in order to rediscover the original passion.

There are Sundays when I look out at the congregation—paltry attendance and lukewarm expressions—and I start complaining to God about having to preach to these people. What protects me from cynicism is remembering back to when I first felt a calling to preach and how in those early days I ached to have anyone to preach to. It makes me realize the rare privilege of being able to express my gifts instead of burning with the frustration of an unrequited calling. Then I feel deeply grateful to be allowed to preach to this lousy crowd.

Second, Paul points him away from himself. Often our burn out comes from relying upon our own strength and knowledge. Paul reminds Timothy that he is guided and empowered by the Spirit of Christ. Fatigue had made Timothy timid. “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice,” Paul says, “but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline (II Timothy 1:7).” What enables us to continue in our ministries is the Spirit of Christ living in us and ministering through us. It is the Spirit that animates our lives, the same Spirit which pushed and prodded us into ministry in the first place. When we are exhausted, the Spirit will rejuvenate us. When we can’t stomach being with the people we serve, it is the Spirit who will enable us to love them. When we are ranting and raving, spinning out of control, the Spirit will give us the direction we need to stay focused on what we should be doing and to steer clear of what we should never do.

The Spirit will use a variety of avenues to give us power and love and self-discipline. Here is how the Spirit has worked to renew my colleagues:
§ Time away—both physical and mental breaks—as an opportunity to temporarily collapse so that you can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit through the reading of scripture.
§ Remembering positive feedback from past accomplishments. One friend keeps a file of thank you notes and awards which he periodically reviews on a bad day.
§ Hearing the testimony of how God is working in the lives of others.
§ Listening to God through music.
§ Taking communion.
§ performing manual labor
§ A walk in the woods
§ Playing a piece of music
§ Doing arts and crafts
Whatever it takes, dry out the kindling in your heart so that the Spirit can reignite your passion for service.

The Sin of Filling Slots

2007-12-18T17:11:00.002-05:00

“Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people’s sins; keep yourself pure.”
--I Timothy 5:22 (NKJV)

On August 21, 1769 Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore set sail for America. They had been commissioned by the Conference of Methodist preachers to help build up and spread the movement in the colonies. The year before, John Wesley had no luck in getting a volunteer. Even though they went, Boardman and Pilmore were not well-suited for the task. Boardman rarely left New York because of poor health. Pilmore was a bit more successful but he preferred the urban comforts of Philadelphia to the countryside where he was most needed. As soon as the Revolution heated up, they headed back to Great Britain.

Wesley should have heeded Paul’s words to Timothy. “Don’t be in a hurry to lay hands on anyone.” The laying on of hands is a sign of ordination, and Paul’s warning rings true to those of us who must select leaders and volunteers. We should not rush the process of discerning the calling of each member.

Why do we get in a hurry to “lay hands” on someone? Sometimes it is because we are trying to fill a slot. Churches are notorious for creating mini-bureaucracies in which an arbitrary number of positions on a committee must be filled because “we have always done it that way.” Yet, the only thing it creates is low levels of commitment by people who never should have been put on those committees in the first place. Or worse, because they are misplaced they make bad decisions and their frustrations hamper the gifts of others who are called to serve.

Sometimes it is because filling a slot is less painful than leaving a position open. We are too comfortable with the status quo and it takes less energy to maintain an ineffective system or program or committee or ministry than it does to plan for transformation. If we do not rush to fill the position we leave open the possibility for the Spirit to give us new direction. But with this new direction comes new challenges.

Sometimes we are trying to fill a slot because we want to ensure diversity. While diversity of backgrounds and perspectives is necessary and persons are called by the Spirit to serve because they bring different viewpoints, diversity is secondary to the primary criteria: Does this person have the spiritual gifts to serve in this position? Ultimately, the calling of diversity and the spiritual giftedness are complementary because the Spirit who equips will also provide the pluralism that is needed. It is our lack of faith which short-circuits the process and we end up just filling slots for the sake of political correctness.

God sent Samuel to find a replacement for King Saul and he met all of Jesse’s sons. By outward appearances his oldest boys had all the qualifications, but none were called. It was the youngest and the smallest, David, whom God had chosen. “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’(I Samuel 16:7).” Samuel could only see it because he was using God’s criteria to determine who should be anointed king. It takes time for us to stop seeing as ‘mortals see’ and to adopt God’s criteria for selecting leaders.

Before we start filling slots we must develop God’s perspective. This means three things. One, we must adopt the assumption that everyone has a calling. Two, we must remember that no one is called to do any job; gifts and calling are not a “one size fits all” formula. Three, we must go beyond the superficial criteria of secular talents and experiences. Just because someone has an accounting degree does not mean that they should be the finance chairperson. The calling must be there; they must possess God’s vision for the Church and exhibit God’s grace in their lives. Indeed, it may be that what they are called to do in the Church is entirely different from their occupations because the Church provides a place for them to exercise their gifts and talents in ways that cannot be utilized in the workplace.

If you have looked through the eyes of God for someone to do a task or fill a position, and you do not see anyone then don’t worry about it. It means one of two things. Either it is not the right time for the Church to do that particular ministry. It’s God’s will to do something different. Or it means that there are persons who are called to do it and they are disobeying God. The Church will survive their disobedience. Either way, you are off the hook.

There are times when the most faithful thing we can do is to stop doing things the way we have always done them. It is okay to leave a position vacant if the Spirit has not called someone to do it. It may be that God is intentionally crating an absence in order to redirect the Church to go in a new direction. Our so-called “crisis” may be God’s opportunity.

People are often misplaced in the Church. They serve in the wrong positions, they perform tasks for which they are neither called nor qualified, they are hired even though they were never called. When people are misplaced they are more likely to exhibit their sins. When we do not put them in the right place of service we are “sharing in their sins” or at least leading them into temptation. So Paul’s advice is an apt remedy for keeping ourselves pure.

But what about those positions which absolutely must be filled? Look again through God’s eyes. Of those few necessary leadership positions (and there are a lot less of them than you think), God can call and equip someone who has no talent whatsoever. It is their willingness that qualifies them. That’s why spiritual gifts are called “gifts” because they come from God alone. The Church will survive their leadership. It has for centuries, and this is proof that the Church is truly saved by grace.

But you never know who is truly called until you pause to discern God’s perspective. Boardman, Pilmore and the other British Methodists whom Wesley sent over left when the War began. The only one who stuck it out was the least likely to become the driving force in the growth of American Methodism. It was a young lay preacher who hid from the British in a swamp for a year: Francis Asbury. He was not Wesley’s first choice, but he was God’s choice.

No Windmills or Lynch Mobs

2007-12-11T15:11:00.001-05:00

“The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.”
--I Samuel 3:8

Samuel heard it in the night. Moses saw it in the bushes. Isaiah felt it in the smoke. Paul got it when he fell off his horse. God calls people in a variety of ways. Some people realize it when they exercise their spiritual gifts and talents for the first time. The first time I preached I knew that this was what I was called to do. For others, it comes through the wounds they have received in life and during the healing process they sense God calling them to go and help other victims. In some cases, it is a long process of gradual awareness which may take several years. But for others it is instantaneous. Many will feel a sense of dread and just as many will feel a sense of relief when they first admit it.

Regardless of the details of one’s story, every calling is a twofold process. There is an internal awareness that develops and there is external confirmation. And it need not go in this order. For some, the external confirmation may come for a long time as the person keeps denying or cannot sort out what they feel.

The internal awareness was the voice in the night that Samuel heard. It was more than an hallucination; it was the voice of God speaking in the center of his being calling him to find and fulfill that which God had created him to be. “Deep calls to deep,” says the psalmist, “all thy waves and thy billows have swept over me (42:7)” The depth of God’s love calls us in the depths of our souls.

Now there is a fine line—perhaps too fine ultimately to permanently separate—between our heart-felt needs and passions and the voice of God. Indeed, God uses our desires to speak to us. Our task is to listen for God’s voice through the spiritual disciplines of prayer and scripture reading, worship and service, repentance and fellowship. These disciplines help us clarify what is sinful from what is sacred. They help us strip off the false self so that we can be who God wants us to be. It is a process of discernment that teaches us how to shut up and listen to God.

What you will eventually hear is God calling you to do those things for which you were created. These are the things that you cannot live without doing and still be who you are. They are the activities that you would do whether you got a paycheck or praise for them. Ask yourself in the presence of God: What is it that I cannot not do?

The external confirmation was Eli’s instructions. Samuel confused the voice of God with Eli’s and only the aging priest could guide the boy into God’s calling. Sooner or later, a calling has to “go public” and if it is genuine it will receive confirmation from others. The confirmation may be in the form of praise or requests for the person to exercise their gifts more often. Sometimes it goes public even when the one who is called does not realize it. They let it slip out and others can see their “secret.” When others confirm the calling, it takes the person by surprise and they may deny what they know in their hearts is the truth about themselves. It takes an Eli to confirm your calling.

Who confirmed your calling? What was your reaction?

The confirmation of the calling demands that the church be prepared to look for and affirm the calling of every baptized member. Too often the church has not done this because
§ It has limited the definition of a calling to a favorite few
§ It operates in a consumer mentality which does not expect every member to be a minister
§ It limits their understanding of the Holy Spirit with prejudice and discrimination

At times, the church has been more polite than honest with misguided people who are mistaken about their callings. The result is that people are misplaced in the kingdom of God and do damage to the church all because the church could not say no or was ill-equipped to help them in their discernment process.

At times the talent that can be used for a divine calling will be expressed in inappropriate ways. Maybe Samuel was a loud-mouthed kid who constantly interrupted Eli’s children’s sermons. The talent and passion come out before the calling can channel and discipline it. It takes patient and perceptive church leaders to see through a person’s shortcomings to the core of his or her calling

How well is the church confirming and helping individuals discern their callings? Every program, every ministry, every committee is an opportunity to help people discover their calling. One of the primary tasks of a church leader is to be on the look out for the callings of others and to encourage, nurture and guide their realization.

How well are we as parents and grandparents confirming and helping our children discover their divine calling? Here is a profound way to see the role of parenting. We are the stewards of our children's callings. Through our affirmation and discipline we enable them to find their place in God's will. Discipline without this goal degenerates into meanness and the the goal without the discipline will never be realized.

This is one of the meanings of infant baptism. The baptism celebrates that God has created this child for a purpose and that God will be at work in this child's life to fulfill that divine purpose. We, in turn, as parents and as a congregation pledge to nurture the calling of that child.

The two--internal and external--have to be there for a calling to be fulfilled. Internal awareness without external confirmation is like Don Quixote chasing windmills. External confirmation without internal awareness is a lynch mob of the soul.

Belly Buttons and Divine Callings

2007-12-05T09:34:00.001-05:00

“He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.”
--Matthew 10:1 NIV

Rose Alderson felt the call when she was ten years old. She was called to be a mother. She began a career as a teacher working with at-risk students but became frustrated because she wanted to do more. Soon after she and Loren were married, and before they had children of their own, she fulfilled her calling by becoming a foster mother. For the next thirty years they served as foster parents to more than fifty children—as well as raising five of her own. They had as many as a dozen children at one time, ranging from six weeks to eighteen years. In 1996 she retired from foster parenting and began the next phase of her calling as the director of family foster care at a United Methodist foster care program in Kansas.

Too often we mistakenly restrict the idea of a “calling” to pastors. We assume that there is a vast gulf between the clergy and the laity and that God speaks to only one side of the ravine. In our consumerist society, the clergy become the “experts” and the “service providers” while the laity are reduced to “consumers.” What a truncated view of God’s grace!

God is not an elitist and God’s work in this world demands more than a few so-called experts. One of the hallmarks of the Protestant Reformation is the idea of the “priesthood of all believers” which means that every Christian, clergy and laity alike, have a calling which is symbolized by our common baptism. If you have been baptized, then you have been called. Its like your belly button, everyone’s got one—it’s just that some are “innies” and some are “outies.”

The belly button was where your umbilical cord connected you to your mother’s womb. We discover our callings when we remain connected to Christ. “He called” them first to himself and then to do his ministry. Christ takes the initiative to call us into his Spirit and then reveals to us the work he wants us to do. We hear the call through a variety of means—an affirming word of a friend, a challenge in a sermon, an inspiration through a song. However, in order to hear it we have to stay spiritually connected to the one who is summoning us.

You don’t get to pick what God’s will is for you, that’s a modern illusion. The disciples did not pick Jesus out of a line up of would-be Messiahs. No, he picked them out of the crowd. When Jesus sent them out heal the sick and perform exorcisms he did not allow them to select from several options of locations or jobs. Either they went or they ceased to be his disciples, that was the only choice. Christ chooses us before we are even aware of it and Christ designates our role to play in building the Kingdom, not us. Indeed, who would choose to do this because the task is so overwhelming. That is why we call it a “calling” and not a “choosing.”

A calling is not the same as a profession or an occupation. It may develop into one, as in the case of most clergy, but it always begins prior to the pay check and it always goes beyond the job description. Your job can become the vehicle through which you express your calling, but like Rose and Loren it may be that your job provides the economic resources to fulfill your calling beyond the workplace.

It is more than a specific job or even the sum of our talents and skills. It is a way of life for which God has made you and to which God directs you. Just as each person is unique, every calling is uniquely suited to the individual by the One who made each of us in His image.

Like an ambilical cord, discovering and living out your calling gives life. It fulfills your life because you are doing what God has created you to do. And it gives life to those whom you serve, which was the purpose of Jesus sending out the disciples to drive out evil spirits and heal the sick. The hallmark of an authentic divine calling is whether it ultimately gives life. What is God calling you to do with the life he has given you?

The Professional Church?

2007-11-26T10:27:00.001-05:00

“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ.”
--Galatians 6:2

Our son Joe was born in the parsonage at Greensboro United Methodist Church. His birth went well but there were complications with the placenta. We called 911, which in a rural parish meant that you were calling everyone in town who had a scanner. The first one through the door was the Lay Leader, Ralph, and a half dozen men from the church who serve on the volunteer fire department. They put Ginny on a stretcher and carried her down the stairs, and Ralph rode with us in the ambulance all the way to Indianapolis.

All of us, clergy and laity alike, need someone to carry us from time to time. Paul told the Galatians to “bear one another’s burdens” and we bear the burdens of ministry when we help one another with the odds and ends of church programming. We also bear one another’s burdens when we help one another in our personal and family struggles, which can never be fully separated from our work as church leaders. Bearing burdens goes one step further. It also requires us to tolerate and compensate for each others’ shortcomings. Paul is telling the Galatians, and us, to “cut each other some slack.”

This week, how can you bear one another’s burdens?

Bearing burdens earns its title because it is an extra load to put up with the flaws of our fellow church leaders. We have enough problems on our own to have to work with someone else who is less than perfect. We live in a culture which prizes “professionalism.” “Professionalism” assumes that everyone should be a ready-made expert and will leave their personal hang ups and family problems at home.

Do you really want to work and worship in a “professional church?” It may be tempting to answer yes, but then where would you be a member? Bishop Woodie White often told us what his mother use to tell him when he was a young man complaining about the faults of the church: “Woodie, when you find the perfect church don’t join it because you will ruin it.” Yes, the “professional church” is very attractive but none of us can meet its membership standards.

Instead, the Church of Jesus Christ is made up of people who are being saved by his grace. Grace enables all of us to serve with our limitations and faults because grace is sufficient to make up the difference. And if the church is sustained and renewed by grace then God will use others to carry us through those stretches when we are less than proficient in being a means of grace to the congregation. Instead of following the “letter of the law” regarding your job descriptions or committee duties, you replace it with the “law of grace” which makes us more flexible to share the burdens of our fellow leaders.

The grace of Jesus Christ creates a spiritual bond which yearns for concrete expression. The Spirit of Christ is a gift that is in each of us and his Spirit is our common bond. When we bear one another’s burdens we are creating avenues through which the Spirit can express this unity in concrete ways and in turn nurture us.

The week after Joe’s birth I was in the credit union and a church member who worked there had heard it on the scanner, but the operator gave her the impression that he had been born in the church rather than the parsonage. She wanted to know which Sunday School room needed cleaning. Whether it is cleaning up a basement or carrying the minister’s wife on a stretcher, we become the means of grace when we bear one another’s burdens.

The Necessity of Self-Denial

2007-11-15T14:01:00.001-05:00

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
--Mark 8:34

When I am walking in the woods early in the morning I often come see a deer. Or rather the deer sees me first, stops to see if I am dangerous, and then lets me pass by. I can get within ten feet of a deer if I walk slowly but one step further and it flees into the protection of the understory. Self-preservation is a natural instinct in animals and us. When we feel that our reputations are threatened, our work criticized, our families attacked, or simply our time inconvenienced, we revert to our animal nature of fight or flight.

Jesus’ command of self-denial is counter-intuitive. On an individual basis, it does not make sense. Yet, the nature and purpose of the Church is preserved by the collective effect of every leader setting aside his or her agenda for the greater good. Just as Jesus denied himself in order to fulfill his mission, so too must each member of his present-day body deny him or herself in order for the Church to fulfill its mission.

A congregation loses its effectiveness when its leaders do not practice self-denial. She defends a pet project which has lost its usefulness but no one dares to criticize it. His opinion dominates the committee meeting. She has an ulterior motive for getting something done. He is a broken person who needs healing but instead expresses it in inappropriate ways. She cannot move beyond how someone offended her years ago. On and on it goes until the church grinds to a halt and the Gospel is no longer proclaimed.

Self-preservation is very tempting because there is always a kernel of truth at the core of it: at one time the pet project was effective; he had a good idea; she was right and the other person was wrong; he certainly is a wounded individual. The command to self-denial has a shadow side. It has been used to put the burden on members who are already overworked and shamed with low self-esteem. For some, the language of self-denial is twisted into an expression of self-pity or passive-aggressive self-glorification. Even worse for the church, self-denial can degenerate into an abusive relationship whereby the sins of the church are never confronted and the leader a scapegoat.

But self-denial is only the first step for the leader. Jesus gives two more commands in this threefold process. Step two is to take up “their cross.” We are not called to take up anyone else’s cross except our own. Each person has a specific task to perform and no one person can do it all. Remember: There is only one Messiah and you are not it!

Step three says that we are to follow him. As leaders this is a daily requirement to follow the Spirit of Christ into our own healing and discernment so that we can practice self-denial and discover our cross. We must follow Christ into our own healing so that we are not spreading our infections to others. We must follow Christ in our discernment so that we can know when and how to speak and act for the greater good of the church.

This three-fold process of church leadership flies in the face of our culture. We obsess over ourselves and assume that ‘self-fulfillment’ is the supreme evidence that it must be God’s will. Consider how we talk about the ‘purpose-driven life.’ Sooner or later our job must make us feel good. At best, sacrifice is a very temporary aspect of a narcissistic spirituality—‘No pain, no gain.’ This is cultural Christianity which cannot understand how self-denial is at the heart of true discipleship.

Make it a regular practice to ask yourself: What is the greater good of the church that comes before my own agenda and preservation? In what ways do I need to deny myself the opportunity to be right, to receive an apology, to be comfortable so that the church can do the mission of Jesus Christ?