A Church for Starving Artists

Do you remember
The 21st night of September?
Love was changin’ the minds of pretenders
While chasin’ the clouds away

The song “September” makes everyone want to dance. It was written by Maurice White (pictured) and Allee Willis – and although it was released in 1978, it continues to be played at countless wedding receptions. Eian Rivera dances to it in airports, parks and through the aisles of Walmart.

I was thinking about this song today and wondering what “love was changin’ the minds of pretenders” meant to the writers. It’s about romantic love and love’s ability to alter the minds of people who pretend like they don’t need it.

Obviously we all need love. We need authentic, unconditional love. It’s what gives life meaning. It’s the foundation of the teachings of Jesus, even though many followers of Jesus seem to believe that his teachings are more about exclusion, judgement, and transactions. (If we do this, God will do that.) Obviously there are consequences for bad/cruel/selfish behavior. But the God I believe in has created a world in which grace trumps sin. (Sorry.)

As many of us – from journalists to psychologists to politicians to regular folk – try to process the actions of our current President, my ongoing theory is that he has never experienced unconditional love. He has never experienced the grace of being loved just because he exists. I’m not sure his parents, his wives, his children, his business partners, his fans have ever loved him beyond what he could give to them or withhold from them.

I pray for that guy every day and not because I’m a good person. I pray for him because only the love of God can change him. In spite of all the power and the money and the women and the bluster, he is a lost child of God.

It really ticks me off. But Jesus taught that we must pray for our enemies and those who persecute us. And not only pray for them. Love them. Ugh. It’s infuriating.

So today – on the 21st day of September – I’m remembering that God loves Donald Trump. Dammit.

A friend gave me Sarah Longwell’s new book about how we as a divided nation might move forward, especially as elections are closely upon us and then – probably immediately – we’ll be looking at the 2028 elections. I’m already exhausted.

But please read this book.

I encourage you to read it if you feel despair about the politics of these days. And because I might be retired but my brain still filters everything through a Church lens, it’s also informative for the Church.

Sarah Longwell spends most of her time listening to people in political focus groups which must be endlessly fascinating and often frustrating. I’m not sure I could keep my mouth shut when people express views like “the Muslims are trying to bring sharia law to our state.” But she does. She listens to people who love our current President, people who voted for him but do not love him, people who loathe him, and people who don’t really care.

One my favorite comments she makes is this: ‘if it were a drinking game every time focus group participants said they were voting for “the lesser of two evils,” everyone would be dead.’ No matter what your political proclivities might be, our political system is clearly broken. Both political parties are broken.

So . . . how can we who love this country but feel exasperated/infuriated/disgusted/heartbroken over what’s happening in our nation – no matter where we land on the political spectrum – find hope? Sarah has learned things from talking with a wide variety of our neighbors and we – in the Church – could stand to learn these things too and then act upon them.

[Note to Church Book Study Groups: we pride ourselves in staying informed and then we go home feeling smarter but nothing ever changes. Imagine if – with every novel, Bible story, or non-fiction book we read – our behavior changes a tiny bit for the better.]

Lessons from How to Eat an Elephant:

• “The easiest way to build community is to be a community.” We talk about our “Church Family” and yet we are so busy and distracted that we might miss it when people in our chosen family are hurting. We treat prayer lists more like gossipy news sources rather than reaching out with practical support. We ignore certain family members when they annoy us. We give the stink eye to non-conformists. We treat those dealing with certain traumas as if they are contagious. The blessing of being in community is that we are not alone in our traumas, our doubts, our very bad days. (Yes, God is with us but also we are called to be with each other.)
• We need to retire people and programs that are keeping us stuck. I’m not just talking about chronological age here. I know some 40-something pastors who will not let go of the annual church BBQ even though everyone hates doing it. I’m talking about being A Bake Sale Church in an AI Fundraising World. I’m talking about being able to share clearly and succinctly why we do what we do as followers of Jesus. The average age of a pastor in my denomination is 54, and again, chronological age is not the issue. If our leaders are not connected to “modern life, modern challenges, modern communication” God’s people are missing out on opportunities to be the Church.
• “What would you do if your life depended on it?” This is the question one of Sarah Longwell’s mentors asked her when she went to him with a problem. Our calling is urgent but we don’t act like it’s urgent. But people are starving for hope and connection and authenticity. This is the season in Church when we are starting a new program year. For our Jewish neighbors, it’s literally a new year. Do we look upon the upcoming season with dread or disinterest? Or are we excited for the possibilities? What would we be willing to do to protect immigrants, mentor someone seeking guidance, feed people who are having a hard time affording groceries? Political people want to restore democracy. Christian people want to expand the Reign of God. Life is short. We have work to do.
• Are we feeding “The Good Wolf” or “The Bad Wolf:? Sarah shares this Cherokee parable:

One evening, a grandfather sat down with his grandson. “My son,” he said, “Inside us all, there is a battle between two wolves. One is good: It is joy, peace love, hope, serenity, kindness, empathy, generosity, compassion, faith, and truth. The other is evil. It’s is anger, envy, jealousy, sorry, regret, greed, resentment, superiority, arrogance, self-pity, and lies” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked. “Which wolf wins?” The grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

How do we feed The Good Wolf in our spiritual communities? Be The Church. Know why we exist. Be confident in our mission to love God and our neighbor. Worship, pray AND actively serve. Don’t be fake. We are not supposed to be “Christian Influencers” who share our awesome and amazing spiritual lives while – behind the scenes – we yell at the kids and drink too much and depend on a team of therapists and meds to keep it going. Claim who we really are and admit that we need a Savior and each other.

Read Sarah’s book, both for the political tools and for the spiritual connections. And have a great week.

Some are probably tired of hearing about it. Some were not yet born. Some are living with physical symptoms from breathing the air. Some still weep.

The article below showed up on my feed this past week from the first anniversary of 9/11 (2002) when the church I was serving at the time lit 3000 candles on the front lawn and in the sanctuary to remember that we shared a trauma and were also united in working towards healing. It’s a day when our church, our community, and our nation were united in empathy. May it be so again – but please God – without the tragedy.

HH and I sat with a beloved parishioner in her apartment many years ago as she was preparing to move into an assisted living facility in another state. She had once lived in a spacious custom built home with a spectacular backyard large enough to host the entire congregation. “This is what my life has become,” she said, surrounded by boxes. “I can pack my whole life into just a few boxes.” Clearly she didn’t have dementia. She knew she was saying goodbye to her former life.

HH and I have now moved four times in our marriage and with each move I have increasingly donated or tossed more possessions. Our current home is a 1031 square foot apartment with dramatically less closet space than we had in Charlotte.

I am the heartless one. “Who needs six pie plates?” But I live with someone who has a memory of every pie plate.

(That’s an exaggeration, but not by much.)

This post is about two things: saying goodbye to our stuff and saying goodbye to institutions we’ve loved.

About the stuff: Dr. Yolanda Pierce says that the difference between treasures and trash is that treasures have a story. Those pieces of broken glass might look like trash, until we realize that they came from the stained glass windows of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama the day white terrorists set off a bomb that killed four little girls. They are forever treasured, now displayed in the Museum of African American History and Culture in Our Nation’s Capital. But the broken Coke bottle from a family reunion in 1982 probably doesn’t need to be saved.

It hurts to give away items with a story. Even though the clock is broken, we remember who gave us the clock. Even though Grandpa has been dead for 40 years, it hurts to throw away his moth eaten brown sweater because we remember when he wore it. If the sweater is in good shape, someone else could wear it (i.e. give it away.) If the clock cannot be repaired, nobody will need it (i.e. throw it away.) Note: if you don’t have the heart to do this kind of gleaning yourself, invite someone like me to come over.

I’ve noticed that we lie to old people moving into smaller spaces. “Sure, we’ll donate this mini-fridge” we tell them, but then it goes into the dumpster. But they can rest easy believing someone will use it in the future.

We all know that saying goodbye to our stuff is about grief for times that have passed. How wonderful that we have those memories though: when we won the trophy, spread the tablecloth, read the book in high school. If we are lucky, the memories remain clear and we can thank God.

About the institutions: I am in a never-ending furor these days about institutions that I and tens of thousands of others have loved and appreciated in Our Nation’s Capital that are being defaced and/or torn down for no good reason. I remember our young children’s faces when Tinklebell flew over the stage at The Kennedy Center. I remember getting everybody up early to see the cherry blossoms before the crowds every spring, and telling our children that they were a gift from Japan. Word has it that on this very day – September 4 in the year of our LORD 2026 – a team of people are examining the roundabout between The Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery in preparation for erecting a massive arch that only one person seems to want. It makes me feel sick.

I’ve also known church buildings that were once the site of weddings and baptisms and funerals being torn down after decades of unaddressed maintenance issues. Money pits that haven’t had proper heating for years get bulldozed for affordable housing. Or the little church in the country with less than ten members, now worshipping in a tiny classroom because the sanctuary roof leaks so badly that the walls are covered in mold. And because of the location, nobody buys the property and the building deteriorates until it collapses along with all the memories.

We all know that saying goodbye to institutions is about grief for times that have passed. It makes us angry when it didn’t have to happen. Different decisions in the past could have opened possibilities for a different future. Or – in times of war or political narcissism – we rage against unnecessary violence. Still we thank God for what was.

I have no easy answers about saying goodbye to things. Usually, it’s not about the things; it’s about the people connected with the things. I have a good cry (a really ugly one) and then I toss the box of love letters between my parents. I don’t need 50 of them. I only need one, and that single love letter will one day be tossed or lost. And then I thank God for my parents and friends who have passed and children who have grown up. This is life. Being thankful helps.

AI image of Marie Kondo being sad to say goodbye to her stuff.

“Last time I hired you, it was for all the wrong reasons. This time, I absolutely wanted you for the right ones.” Rebecca to Ted Lasso, Season 4

Every organization has a culture and I’ve been obsessed with the culture of religious institutions for a long time. Although it’s usually the Head of Staff, the CEO, the President, or the Chief of an organization who sets the culture for an organization, I’ve seen powerful culture shifters among – in a church context – a single elder, a Christian educator, an organist, or an Associate Pastor.

I’ve witnesses church cultures in which:

• There was no energy (because the lead pastor had no energy)
• Everybody walked on eggshells (because the church bullies might unexpectedly explode if they don’t get their way )
• Office doors were rarely left open (because the staff didn’t speak to each other)
• Door slamming was the norm (because everybody was angry)
• People loved “coming to church” (because the leaders were clear about the mission and the mission was lifechanging)
• Staff members regularly help each other when somebody’s plate is too full (because they were a team more interested in building the Kingdom than tending to egos)
• Generosity was the standard (because people saw the concrete difference their generosity made)

Many of our congregations are hiring/calling new leaders these days. For the love of God please hire/call them for the right reasons (vision, energy, imagination, joyfulness, collaboration) and don’t hire them for the wrong reasons (appearance, special relationship with a church member, pedigree, resume, in order to sabotage the mission.)

Rebecca hired Ted originally to sabotage the mission. She hired him the second time for his ability to create a life-giving culture. We can still learn from Ted Lasso in Season Four.

Yes. We have good reasons and not-so-good reasons.

According to Merriam-Webster, lying is “the act of saying something you know is not true to trick someone else.” It’s the definition of disinformation.

Misinformation is sharing information that we believe is true which might not actually be true. (Note: People who say that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or the sin at Sodom was about homosexuality might honestly believe those statements, but neither is Biblically true.)

There are lies that ruin lives. There are lies that save lives.

It feels like lying is more rampant these days, but that’s probably because we can track lies almost instantly using digital media. Fiction would be less interesting – from Odysseus to Mayella Ewell – if characters didn’t lie.

Nevertheless it also feels like a spiritual crisis these days.

• Political leaders declare under oath that they will or will not take a specific action, and then they break their word minutes after swearing in.
• Aspirants think nothing of padding their resumes.
• (And I’m intentionally offering a partisan view here) The so-called “leader of the free world” told a documented 30,573 lies during his first term, according to The Washington Post.

Jimmy Carter ran on this pledge in 1976:

“I’ll never tell a lie, I’ll never make a misleading statement, I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you has in me.”

Historians have a hard time pinning down a lie Carter might have shared, but – ironically – some religious leaders perpetuated lies both before and during the Carter Administration. It wasn’t the beginning of political disinformation and it obviously wasn’t the end.

Is there any hope for bolstering our willingness to tell the truth? How do we share The Truth of our faith while also deceiving each other in Church World? Pastor Nominating Committees withhold conflicts from candidates they interview. Pastoral Candidates always tell Search Committees that they lead “collaboratively” whether they do or not. We advertise that “all are welcome” but we don’t truly mean everyone.

There are quite a few lies told in church.

Nevertheless, the feeling that happens when we are told the truth – by political candidates, by Pastoral Nominating Committees, by preachers feels inspiring. Telling the truth often brings growth and positive change. (“You seem unhappy in this volunteer role. What do you sense God is calling you to do next?”) I increasingly love it when leaders speak difficult truths. I’m finding that I lose patience when friends and family withhold truths from each other.

What I’m not saying: Bring a hammer to a family/office/community meeting and take no prisoners.

What I am saying: We must speak the truth in love to each other. It’s healthier in the long run.

• Don’t marry the city person when you’re secretly a small town person.
• Don’t accept the call to a church that won’t accept your LBGTQ+ child.
• Don’t call a pastor who looks good on paper but one of the references shared that they don’t work well with women.
• Don’t avoid sharing hard but essential information with loved ones because they will eventually find out and then they’ll wonder what else you kept from them.
• Don’t keep the church office volunteer who sabotages the mission, but you fear that nobody else will do it.
• Don’t let the bullies rule for fear they will take their money and leave.

All of us tell lies about ourselves and each other. But we can do better. We can expect more of our leaders and each other. And I am so ready for it.

Image of liars who changed history in devastating ways, from center top clockwise: Carolyn Bryant Donham, Anna Anderson, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, Kim Philby, Bernie Madoff, Theodore McCarrick, James Watson and Francis Crick.

“Everyone has something. This is yours. Each life has a defining crisis.” from Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

I waited until a public library copy of Belle Burden’s bestselling memoir was available instead of ordering it on Bookshop . Ordinarily when I really want to read a new book, I order my own copy. Impatience.

I didn’t really want to own a copy of Burden’s book although I wanted to read it. I loved her 2023 Modern Love essay. And her story said so much about the choices and assumptions about men and women, husbands and wives. But Burden’s privileges (multiple homes, vaunted family tree) made me wary that most of us could relate. It’s a quick read and especially interesting, perhaps, because of her privilege. Gwyneth Paltrow will be playing Ms. Burden in the Netflix series.

Nevertheless, it’s true that every life has a defining crisis and I’ve spent my professional life sitting with people in theirs: the sudden death of loved ones, the long slog of death from terminal diseases, betrayal, violence, poverty, defeat, abandonment, self-destruction.

For some people their defining crisis might be something seemingly less catastrophic like the death of a nonagenarian parent or knocking out a permanent front tooth. (Seriously, I remember an acquaintance who told me that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to them – losing a front tooth at summer camp when they crashed into a diving board.) For other people, their defining crisis smacks of an Alexander Hamilton childhood. Pain is pain.

My hope, like Belle Burden, is that my children and grandchildren “will move toward people who are in pain, rather than away.” This is how we become community. This is how we become Church.

Our nation is in a state of overwhelming discombobulation right now. Legal residents of the USA are being detained and held in substandard facilities without their constitutional rights. Both political parties conflate partisanship with the common good, and everybody seems to be out for themselves.

Many of our families are in a state of discombobulation for all the usual reasons. You know them.

Retirement can feel like a state of discombobulation, at least at first. Today marks Retirement Day 158 and I only know that because I have a countdown app that hasn’t been updated.

I’ve known newly retired men who died suddenly months after ending their professional careers, possibly because losing their identity became their defining crisis. And I’ve known retired people who never look back. Personally, I’m still trying to figure it all out and I thank those who’ve retired before me whose advice was:

• Don’t make any new commitments for at least a year.
• Be gentle with yourself. (Naps are our friends.)

[Note: Retirement is an enormous financial privilege. According to The National Council on Aging “45% of older adult households (more than 19 million) lack the income needed to cover basic living costs.” In other words, they will not be able to stop working. Ever.]

Feeling disoriented impacts everything from our appetites to our energy levels to our mental health. When talking with my adult kids, I often ask them – at the end of a phone call in which we’ve reviewed all the ways our world is a hot mess -“Where do you see hope?” At least once, they’ve had to ask me the same question.

Looking for signs of hope is a spiritual practice. And when we don’t have the strength to even attempt to look for hopeful signs, there’s usually someone out there who is feeling hopeful, who can share hope with us. It’s good if we are not all feeling hopeless on the same day.

We need each other. If we have the capacity, one of my hopes is that we will practice gravitating towards people in pain instead of distancing ourselves. Imagine living in a world defined by our shared discombobulation instead of our human isolation.

Image of osprey chicks photographed by Andy Morffew. If you read Belle Burden’s book, you’ll know why I featured confused-looking ospreys.

William Sloan Coffin once said that he set apart one day of the week to read when he was Head of Staff of Riverside Church in NYC. A whole day.

Two truths about this Reading Day goal:

1. Bill Coffin never had to wait for the boiler repair person to show up or print the church bulletins. (I once worshipped at Riverside on a Sunday off from my rural church in NY and I burst into tears when I realized there was a team of greeters in matching outfits stationed at every door to welcome people. That’s all they did. But it was one of 40 things I did on a given Sunday morning.) Of course he had time to read books.
2. When I shared with my rural congregation that I too would like to have a Reading Day – after they stopped laughing – it never happened because 1) some parishioners seemed to delight in having emergency needs like “where are the light bulbs?” on my Reading Day and 2) why should their pastor get “another day off” to read when they don’t get that in their jobs? and 3) there were actual emergencies on almost every Reading Day.

Now that I’m retired and can read all the day long and sometimes I do.

I have time to read non-fiction with no obvious connections to Church World. I have time to read novels. I can read without writing in the margins that a particular story or quote would make an excellent sermon illustration. Honestly, this is one of my favorite things about retirement.

So, here is my question: Do you read books? Do you read whole books? And are you currently under the age of thirty and and reading whole books? Do you have an occupation that requires you to read whole books? (Kudos to all the engineers who read Ann Patchett.)

A 2024 article in The Atlantic tells the story of a Columbia literature professor whose students couldn’t keep up with the reading. One student confessed that in high school, they had never been assigned a whole book to read. They had read excerpts or chapters of books, but never the whole books.

Was this your high school or college experience? (And I’d love to hear from you educators about whether or not you assign whole books to read.)

And – Boomer siblings – this is not the place to share how you were assigned Remembrance of Things Past over fall break in the 10th grade and kids today are slackers. Stop it.

I wish that young pastors were given the time to read. I wish that congregations understood that their clergy and educators not only need to read all the Andrew Root books but also poetry and fiction and children’s literature. I wish that all parents had the time and inclination to read whole books to their children. I wish we all loved to read.

What are you reading these days?

Image of a favorite writer’s study that I surreptitiously photographed when my preaching group visited their home a couple years ago.

For the record, I’m an equal opportunity offender in terms of my own personal politics, mostly because our political system (both major parties) are brimming with cronyism and Potomac Fever. Power can be a dangerous drug. It’s exhausting to observe.

I’m heartened however by this article noting that in recent elections, successful candidates have been less about the “hostile spending” of millions of dollars and more about inspiring voters. Just like in spiritual communities, all of us – all of us – are looking for authenticity and action.

“If you’re knocking on a door because somebody paid you to do it, there’s just no real force behind that. But when someone freely of their own volition signs up to get out there” — especially in the summer heat — “you, the voter, will never forget that encounter.” Beto O’Rourke discussing grassroots campaigning

It’s about an encounter.

I had never heard the term “hostile spending” but apparently many of the millions of dollars that political action committees contribute to candidates are dedicated specifically to this kind of political priority. Drench the airwaves with false information. Erroneously identify rivals as “communists” or “radicals” or “crazies.”

It’s one thing to share facts regarding criminal prosecutions or provable misdeeds for example. It’s another thing to share disinformation, misinformation, and blatant lies. Successful campaigns inspire hope, not hostility.

Now for the inevitable Church Connectiont:

Imagine how it would feel if all church spending intentionally focused on hospitality: supporting homes for the unhoused, food for the hungry, community for the lonely, welcome for the searching. Intentionally focusing on hospitality might be as simple as asking – before we spend chunks of money – “How is this expense offering hospitality to our neighbors?” Church staffs are agents of hospitality. Buildings are tools for hospitality. It matters when we make those connections.

And now imagine how it would feel if political campaigns intentionally focused on what’s best for our nation and world? Health care for the uninsured. Justice for the falsely imprisoned. Shelter for the refugee. It’s also important to remember that government workers can be agents of promoting the essential tenets of our nation. Infrastructure is a tool for health and safety and peacemaking and service. Global support has long term impactful benefits for our nation and other nations.

I long to be inspired: by the Church, by political candidates, by educators, by health professionals. I refuse to sink into despair (although I have my moments.) I truly believe that most of us long to be inspired and to let go of the hostile spending of both money and breath. You?

“Where do you go to church?” is a question people asked their new neighbors in the 1960s or maybe the 1970s – at least in the South and the Midwest. We all know that physical church attendance in 2026 has not risen to pre-COVID levels. People either watch online or have forsaken the practice of weekly worship altogether. According to Gallup:

In the four years before the pandemic, 2016 through 2019, an average of 34% of U.S. adults said they had attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days. From 2020 to the present, the average has been 30%. The recent church attendance levels are about 10 percentage points lower than what Gallup measured in 2012 and most prior years. Source (2023)

So . . . what are HH and I doing for “church” since relocating to Northern Virginia and moving into the rhythms of retirement. We are asked this on a regular basis by family and friends.

We have so many options: PCUSA congregations we have previously served between 1989 and 2010. Other PCUSA congregations. Other denominations. Non-denominations.

A couple of things I’ve noticed in the processing of retirement after 42 years in professional ministry:

• Many (most?) retired professional clergy don’t do church anymore. Are we burned out? Judgey? Worried about being asked to fall back into a pastoral role?
• “Churches Without Walls” all seem to have buildings. I get that “going to church” and “being the Church” are very different things and we don’t need a building to be the Church. But in my cursory research of congregations named “Church Without Walls” they all have buildings. Some have multiple campuses.
• Many of us (active clergy, retired clergy, church members, once spiritually curious non-members) simply feel weary about Church World especially when Church World involves battles for power, passive-aggressive members (“I won’t make a financial pledge until the pastor comes to my house and begs“), and adventures in missing the point (i.e. more concern about flower arrangements, dress codes, generational disappointment, paint colors, music, protecting bullies, shielding abusers, annual fundraisers than serving “the least of these.”)

So this is what HH and I are doing for church these days. We’ve worshipped with congregations we’ve served at their invitation. (Loved it.) I worshipped with a Church I knew many years ago and they continue to be awesome. I pray with random people (my own Church Without Walls.) And I meet with Church People I Love over coffee while we dream about changing the world in Jesus’ name.

It’s Primary Election Day today in Virginia and I volunteered this morning between 6 and 9 to support a particular candidate. I asked people at Precinct 109 if they were registered to vote and told them that 1) we have same day registration in Virginia and 2) please consider voting for my guy and here’s some information.

Not only did I meet some cute dogs, admire hard core joggers and relish in the diversity of my home town, I talked with a young graduate of Georgetown who was also volunteering. She is amazing. I was obsessed with hearing about her dreams and hopes and “if you were the queen of all things, what would you love to be doing in ten years?” was asked and answered. And in the course of getting to know each other, we exchanged contact info and I was blessed to be a connector for her. She might like to serve in a prison justice ministry? I know someone she could connect with. She might be interested in legal support for trafficked women and children? I know someone she could connect with.

This is my new call.

We retire with a wealth of experience and still-valuable information. And our next calling/our next church involves 1) getting out of the way for the next generations and 2) connecting them if they wish to resources that will open doors.

I love my new church. It literally has no walls. It might involve visiting congregations with buildings. I will definitely involve online Bible studies with Charlotte friends and theological studies with international friends and phone praying/Lyft praying/bench praying with people who may or may not identify as Church People. For now, this works. I love the ongoing journey to meet God’s people who turn out to be my people too.

Image source.