Author Archives: jledmiston

The story of Roger Self – a father and grandfather dealing with severe depression – has shaken me.  The Self Family had worshiped together in church last Sunday and were eating dinner at The Surf and Turf Lodge in Bessemer City, NC when Roger left the table, got into his car, and drove the car into the restaurant.  The crash killed his daughter and his daughter-in-law.  Three other family members were injured.

Once again hearts are crushed and lives have changed forever because of serious mental illness.  Mr. Self has been charged with first degree murder and it’s yet to be seen whether or not his depression will factor into his defense.

A troubled young man in Santa Fe, Texas murdered ten human beings at his high school on Friday, May 18.  It was the 22nd high school or college school shooting in 2018.  

Not all of those shootings involved mental illness necessarily, but most of the shooters dealt with issues ranging from grief to depression.  Mental illness affects 43 million Americans but 56% of those Americans do not have access to mental health services according to Mental Health America.  You can read their entire 2018 State of Mental Health in America report here.

If you are a Bible reader, note that Jesus healed both physical and mental illness.  We now know that mental health is also a physical issue involving body chemistry.  Bonus disclosure for those of you who have kept reading to this point: I am one of those people who takes medicine for depression.  I thank God for that.

What can we in the Church do to address the enormous needs in this area?

1. Instead of asking difficult people in our lives, “What’s wrong with you?” ask “Tell me about your childhood.”  Learn about ACEs and be the kind of community that works to love the hard-to-love.
2. Become certified in Mental Health First Aid.  All pastors, educators, and community leaders need this training.  Our people in church pews as well as the people outside our church walls are dealing with things.
3. Teach about, talk with, and pray for people struggling with mental health issues.  Make it part of normal conversation and ministry.  If nothing else, people are stressed and we in the Church can contribute to that stress or offer sacred relief.

God loves Roger Self, who is identified in the press as “a church-goer.”  And God loves all of us who are grappling with everything from situational stress to paralyzing depression.  We in the Church are called to minister to those who suffer in mind and in body.  How are we doing?

Image is Old Man in Sorrow by Vincent van Gogh (1890)

I know preachers who print the worship bulletins.  I know church sextons who serve coffee to visitors.  I know Christian educators who repair copy machines.  Most of us do work beyond our job descriptions.

“Going the extra mile” shows dedication and commitment to an organization.  Until it doesn’t

Over-functioning causes all kinds of trouble from feeding burnout to creating a congregation of slackers.  If people assume that the pastors will take care of everything from mowing the grass to recruiting nursery volunteers to ordering candles, those pastors will be expected to keep it up.  And I can tell you right now that the church that expects their pastor to mow, recruit, and order things is a dying church.

There’s a fine line between “so dedicated” and “so imposed upon.”

There will be times when people complain that:

• “Our pastor never visits people unless they are in the hospital.”  (Maybe it’s because home visitation is the job of the deacons/Stephen ministers/other pastor.)
• “Our senior pastor never comes to our Mission Committee Meetings.”  (Maybe it’s because someone else staffs that committee.)
• “Our Presbytery Staff never sends our pastors birthday cards.” (! – Seriously, I just heard that one.)

It sounds flippant to say, “Not my job” when folks complain about what we are not doing.  But a better response might be, “That’s right. We are trying to equip everyone for ministry and so the deacons/elders/sexton/administrator/parish associate/financial secretary/____ have been trained to do that job.”

A good question for the pastor to ask:  Can anyone else besides me possibly do this?

My colleague Rev. CL has a rule that if there are any elders in the room, he never opens or closes a meeting in prayer or offers the blessing at a church meal.  That’s the job of one of the other spiritual leaders of the church.  If there’s no one who can lead a prayer besides the pastor, the pastor is not doing her job.

Can you think of one thing you do in your ministry that you could train someone else to do?  Note: Is there anyone out there who would like to send birthday cards to all the pastors in my Presbytery?

Image of church flowers if this pastor was expected to arrange them.

I heard someone teach recently that every successful meeting requires three things:

• Relationship-building
• Information-sharing
• Action-taking

We’ve all been to meetings that included relationship building to the point that someone will invariably complain about Kum Ba Yah moments and say, “This is a waste of our time.”  We’ve all been to meetings that offered information we could have received in an email.  And we’ve all been to meetings where nothing happens and maybe “nothing ever happens.”

My new goal is to promote these three things at meetings.  And it occurs to me that there are also three things I need – personally – every work day:

• At least one future-oriented conversation with someone about the way things could be.
• Tasks I can check off – preferably a long list of emails, snail mails, and/or phone calls.
• Something active – for both my brain and my body.

What do you need for a successful work day?  And what are your work meetings like these days? Do you find that meeting facilitators and moderators are providing what’s needed for you to move your organization’s mission forward?

Leadership training is one of my favorite things.  How about you?

Image is from the Exploding Light Bulbs collection by photographer and chemist Jon Smith.

Most spiritual communities require electrical power.  We like our coffee makers  and AC.  But spiritual communities also require the kind of power that makes transformation happen.

Community organizers teach us that the power to change things comes when we:

• Organize people towards a common focus.
• Organize money towards a common mission.

Many wonderful organizations haven’t yet learned that Power Is A Good Thing, and we get more of it when we organize people and money.  Charlene Mack, Director of National Organizing Initiatives at Leadership for Educational Equity points out that the National Rifle Organization has done an excellent job organizing both people and money.  And some of our finest affordable housing organizations, homeless shelters, and feeding programs have inspiring goals but are not organized well enough to make anywhere near the same impact as the NRA.  Some of us believe that homeless and hungry people need at least as much protection as gun owners.

This is one of the reasons I believe that Community Organizing Training is one of the skills 21st Century leaders need.

Our power tools in the Church are indeed Organized Money and Organized People.  But we also have access to a third power tool:  The Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not magical.  The Spirit of God is not like voodoo or karma or superstition.  I have experienced God’s Spirit in both everyday revelations and broad strokes of history.  As the Rev. Denise Anderson preached at the Charlotte Presbytery gathering Tuesday, this is the Spirit that can separate waters and revive dead bones.  This Spirit is the ultimate Power tool, but we cannot control it.  We cannot buy it.  We cannot organize it. We can only pray for it.

This Sunday the Church celebrates Pentecost when the Spirit of God transformed the lives of “devout Jews from every nation.”  This is a good day to pray that the Spirit transforms us so that we might work with God for a world as it should be – according to what Jesus said – and not stand for the world the way it is.

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’  Jesus in The Gospel of Luke 4:14-21

Image source.

We wore red stoles for my installation yesterday which is the traditional color for clergy installations and ordinations.  But under my red stole, I wore the clergy tartan stole my mother made me when I was ordained.  I was told that Scottish clergy wore that particular tartan because in times of war in the Highlands, it marked the clergy as neutral.

I wanted my mom there yesterday but she died almost 30 years ago.  So I wore the stole she made.

After lunch which was after morning worship and the installation service, a woman I’d never seen before came up to me and handed me three photographs of my mother.  “You don’t know me, ” the woman said, “but I was a friend of your mother and these are from a trip we took to Wrightsville Beach when we were teenagers.  I found them over the weekend and thought you might like them for a late Mother’s Day.”

Yesterday was so meaningful. But what made it miraculous was that my mom got to be there too.

I’m being installed today into my new position in ministry – like an appliance only much more meaningful.  Will let you know how it goes.

It’s one thing to be installed and it’s another thing to get plugged in and that’s what happens after today.  God is good.

Many folks are excited that the United Kingdom will have a biracial princess later this week, but she won’t be the first one.

My new city – Charlotte – is named for Queen Charlotte the wife of King George III (Remember from Hamilton?) who was previously Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.  She married George six hours after meeting him at the age of 17, and she was personal friends with Johann Christian Bach and Marie Antoinette. And she founded a variety of orphanages and hospitals.

And she was of African descent.

Queen Caroline was a descendant of Alfonso III and Ouruana, a black Moor.  The artist Allan Ramsay who knew the Queen depicted her skin color as a lovely cafe au lait and her hair as very curly.  This also means that Charlotte’s granddaughter Queen Victoria was also blessed with African genes, as is Victoria’s great-great granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II.

So there’s that.  Next time I hear someone described as “whiter than the Queen” I’ll be thinking “not so much.”

We human beings are all connected if we go back far enough.  Remember that race is a social construct invented to separate people. “Whiteness” and “Blackness” are not fixed.

So, while it’s interesting to say that Ms. Markle will bring “racial diversity” to the royal family, it was already there, and it’s part of our heritage too.  This is our story.  It includes love and violence and division and ties that bind.

To quote historian Nell Painter: “Race is an idea, not a fact.” And from Ta-Nehisi Coates:  “Race does not need biology. Race only requires some good guys with big guns looking for a reason.”

For all those with big guns (or microphones) out there: “racial purity” is not a thing.

Top image is the official engagement photograph of Prince Harry and his betrothed Meghan Markle.  The lower image is Queen Charlotte (1744-1818) painted by William Ramsay in 1762.  It hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

In busy times, I chunk up my responsibilities.  If I can get past Presbytery Leader Formation . . . If I can get past my installation . . . If I can get past General Assembly . . .

This strategy helps to a point, but I miss out on the present.  I wanted to relish the green that was all around me during PLF.  I want to take in every minute when I’m officially installed into my new call Tuesday.  And I definitely want to absorb every beautiful second of my last moments as Co-Moderator of the General Assembly.

Mothers’ Day Moment: I remember my mom telling me not to wish away my children’s childhood.  She only lived two months into FBC’s life, but I probably said something to her like, “I can’t wait until he can sit up” or “I wonder what his voice will sound like.”  There would be time for all that.  Relishing each moment sounds trite, but it’s healthier than rushing through moments.

What are we hoping to get past?  What are we working on now that will be over soon?  What deadlines are we dreading? Those days up until The Day are kind of wonderful too.  We don’t want to look back and realized we missed the good parts.

Happy Mothers’ Day everyone.  If we’ve ever mothered anyone or anybody’s ever mothered us, we get to celebrate.

Image of a path in the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center outside Austin, TX.

What’s the meaning of this?

Those words could be said in outrage:  WHAT’S THE MEANING OF THIS??!!  Or they could be spoken in wonderment.  It’s a Pentecost question:  What does it mean?

If we are very fortunate, our lives have profound meaning.  We find deep and gratifying meaning in our relationships, in our work, in the world around us.  I believe that one of the reasons that increasing numbers of people stay away from the Church is because it has no meaning for them.  Church doesn’t enhance their life’s meaning.  Church doesn’t offer meaning.

I once led an adult Christian Education class years ago called The Meaning of Life and we talked about everything from “what was the most important thing you did today?” to “what gives you energy?”  The best songs, the best films, the best books, the best plays offer deeper meaning beyond the obvious.

Childish Gambino’s This is America is brimming with global, life-changing meaning – which is why it will transform people.  It is a masterpiece of meaning.

Imagine if the Church was a masterpiece of meaning.  Imagine if our boards and committees were focused on bringing deep meaning to the people in our flocks/neighborhoods/communities.  Imagine if our preachers sought to provide a message of profound meaning to hearers.  Imagine if teachers planned their lessons with the intention of offering some glimpse of life’s meaning to their students.  Imagine if officers and other volunteers were equipped to be loving tour guides for this life’s journey pointing out the meaning all around us.

There is so much going on.  Important things.  But there are also many things going on within us and it’s hard to make sense of it all.

A thriving Church is a community addressing the meaning of it all.

Image of Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) from his song and video This is America which you can watch here.  It will take countless viewings to make sense of it.  And even then, we’ll need to watch it again.

I’ve been in Little Rock all week at Presbytery Leader Formation and on our free afternoon yesterday, several of us visited the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.  In these #MeToo days, I felt a little queasy to be perfectly honest.  I believe the women who say that he assaulted them and/or harrassed them before and during his Presidency.  And although I do not believe we should judge people based on the worst thing they’ve ever done, most of us haven’t forgotten that Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice.  Yes, he was acquitted on all charges.  But we remember.

This post is not intended to be politically partisan.  There are good things that each President of the United States has done regardless of party affiliation.  Obviously every President’s library will highlight the good things, including quotes from supporters, and successes in the eyes of their own party.

But what struck me about this library were the world leaders whose words were played on video lauding this President for specific actions that benefited the world:  Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, Ehud Barak.  There was Clinton with other Presidents at the dedication of the George H.W. Bush Library.  There was Clinton at President Nixon’s funeral.  And there were numerous legislative highlights that – whether you agreed with them or not – were intended to benefit the poor, the uninsured, the refugee.

As my colleagues and I watched the videos, read the letters, toured the Presidential timeline, each of us felt the special impact of observing it all through the lens of 2018.  We wondered aloud what our current President’s library might look like.

Again – I am not seeking partisan comments or snarkitude here.  I simply wonder if there will be respected world leaders who laud this President.  Will there be highlights of legislation that benefits the poor, the uninsured, the refugee?  Will there be photos with other Presidents that exude mutual respect and dignity?  What quotes will be featured on the walls?

I long for leaders who display good character.  I crave leaders who visibly honor each human being’s value, whether those human beings are family members, business partners, political colleagues, or international neighbors.

This is my hope for our President – no matter who he is or – one day – who she is.  Our country is too important, too special to expect anything less.  We deserve leaders that our children can admire.

A good Presidential Library – like a good sermon – inspires us to be better.

Image from the Clinton Library that mentions his impeachment in his Presidential timeline.  There is a single mention of Monica Lewinsky in the entire facility. (right)