Author Archives: jledmiston

I listened to Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime and Tiffany Haddish’s The Last Black Unicorn during last weekend’s roadtrip and was struck by the level of childhood trauma they each experienced.  Oprah also talked about childhood trauma over the weekend and Bruce Perry’s books on the topic have become bestsellers.

So, it occurs to me that – whether we are teachers, police officers, social workers, secretaries, pastors or any person whose work involves other people – we all relate to human beings who have experienced at least one of the following adverse experiences – as children:

• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Physical neglect
• Emotional neglect
• Intimate partner violence
• Mother treated violently
• Substance misuse within household
• Household mental illness
• Parental separation or divorce
• Incarcerated household member

Children who endure four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) often find that their adult years can be more difficult in terms of their physical, emotional, and social health.  Educators and health professionals are now being trained to ask students and patients, “Tell me about your childhood” in hopes of uncovering experiences that might have been traumatic and subsequently helping to explain adult issues.

As a parish pastor, I once looked out at the congregation each Sunday and was aware of some of their traumas.  I often knew who had been sexually abused by a parent or sibling, who had lived with an alcoholic father or mother, whose family member was in prison, and who had witnessed domestic violence.  Many of these parishioners were in therapy.  Many were also dealing with adult issues related to their childhood trauma.

This is not something I learned about in seminary, but there are many resources out there to help us better understand the people in our pastoral care.  Both Trevor Noah and Tiffany Haddish have obviously risen out of both poverty and abusive situations.  Adverse childhood experiences do not condemn people to lifelong sorrow.  In fact, healthy communities can counter the impact of ACEs.

A healthy church offers belonging, purpose, and deep comfort.  There are so many many people seeking exactly these things – but they don’t believe they can find it in a church.

Can they find it in your congregation?  I hope so.

Image source.  Trauma care professionals suggest that we ask, “What happened to you?” rather than “What’s wrong with you?” when discussing behavioral health issues with both children and adults.

The Rev. SPM was ordained yesterday and I got to be there.

We are all called into ministry by virtue of our baptisms, and some of us are called into professional ministry.  SPM is now a card-carrying, sacrament-leading, all-rights-and-privileges Minister of the Word and Sacrament.  I hope the congregation she’s serving has a flicker of understanding how blessed they are.

So, here’s the thing:  young male clergy are a blessing, over-40 second career female clergy are a blessing, Gen X/Boomer clergypersons are a blessing.  But being a clergywoman under the age of 40 still has it’s particular challenges.  Double those challenges if the clergywoman is a Person of Color or an LGBTQ pastor.

Most large congregations with multiple pastors in the United States have a male Head of Staff/Senior Pastor and so calling a young female associate pastor is not particularly risky for traditional congregations.  She adds balance.  He can teach her some things.  Maybe her voice won’t be too high.  It could be inconvenient if she gives birth while serving. If she’s single – all the better.  I have heard each of these comments from search committees seeking an associate pastor and open to calling a young clergywoman.  Calling a young clergywoman because she is maleable or helpful in completing a staff demographically is problematic.  Calling her for who she is  – period –  will make everybody happier.

Very small congregations are often open to calling a young woman to be their solo pastor, but it will be lonely.  And exhausting.  Even young male clergy tell me that “the church ladies” volunteered for them quite a bit in their first small-church call – from bulletin printing to tidying up the sanctuary.  I was asked to bake brownies for the first Session meeting I moderated as a 28 year old new pastor.

Medium to large congregations tend not to call young women right out of seminary, although they might call a young man the same age – especially if he’s married.

There are exceptions to these generalities, of course, but young clergywomen will recognize some of my observations.

The Young Clergywomen’s Project was founded in 2007 by the Rev. Susan Olson with a grant from The Louisville Institute to offer support for the youngest clergywomen among us.  Today the organization is called Young Clergy Women International.  Members are ordained clergywomen under the age of 40 from a variety of Christian denominations. 

I thank God for this group of colleagues who are a fountain of support.  They remind each other that they are not alone, especially when they feel like they are doing “everything” all by themselves or when they haven’t had a date in years or when parishioners won’t stop talking about their hair.  They have been a support to me  (an older clergywoman) too.

If you are reading this and a young clergywoman is serving your congregation, please recognize that . . .

• Not only does she have a lot to learn from you but you have a lot to learn from her. (Read about Co-Mentoring here.)
• It’s not a good idea to touch her hair, face, or (if expecting a child) belly.  Her body is her own.
• Commenting on her hair, shoes, legs (please don’t) diminishes her role as your spiritual leader.  Ask her instead about what she’s reading or if she’s taking her Sabbath day off.
• She deserves a personal life as much as you do.  If she’s single, it’s none of your business who she’s dating.  If she’s married, encourage couple time.  Don’t ask when she plans to have a(nother) baby.
• Remind her that she is gifted in pastoral care, preaching, teaching, and leadership.  That’s why your congregation called her, right?  Give her feedback beyond “nice sermon” or “I love your earrings.”
• Pay. Her. Fairly.  Could you live off her salary?

I loved being a young clergywoman long ago.  But it can be harder than it needs to be.

Image is from The Young Clergy Women’s Project. I dedicate this post to the newly ordained SPM who has always been my first cousin once removed and is now also my clergy sister.  She preached the best sermon I’ve ever heard yesterday on the Mark 14:32-42 text.

I am thrilled and inspired about the opening of the New Hope apartment complex a few blocks away from my home in Flossmoor, IL.

It’s a newly built facility with six apartments for special needs adults, approved unanimously by the village board in 2016 and encouraged by their immediate neighbors who include some personal friends.  While there were a few initial NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) whisperings, the overwhelming attitude in our community was actually Yes Please – in Our Back Yard.

New Hope Apartments offer a much-needed housing option for all our communities, although it’s currently the only one in Illinois.

It’s conveniently located near the train station, the public library, and our little village center (shops and restaurants) where residents can navigate their lives conveniently and in a good and safe neighborhood.  Why wouldn’t everybody want this in their community?

This article by Emily Badger from January 2018 spells out the history of NIMBY sentiments and the notion that owning a home = having the right “to shape the world beyond its boundaries.”  Some home owners are concerned that their own properties will lose value.  Others simply want to control who their neighbors are.  The origins of these sentiments begin – not surprisingly – with race.

White people have historically left neighborhoods when Black or Brown people moved in and this continues today in many urban and suburban neighborhoods.  As a White person, I would love to hear from other White home owners the honest reasons behind this.  What do “Black Neighbors” and “Brown Neighbors” mean to you?  (I know the answer, but I’d like you to say it out loud.)

• Bad schools?
• Crime?
• “A taco truck on every corner“?

The truth is that diverse neighborhoods are rich neighborhoods.  Do I really need to say that every Black or Brown neighbor is not – by definition – uneducated, unlawful, or unneighborly?

It’s also true that many urban and most suburban neighborhoods in our country are racially segregated.

And it’s thirdly true that all of us want to live in safe neighborhoods.  All of us.  We all want convenience and good schools.  We all want community.  And – if we profess to be followers of Jesus – we all want everyone to have the abundant life Jesus promises, right?  This is what true evangelism means.

For today, I am evangelically grateful that the good people of my state, county, and village all agreed that special needs adults are a blessing in our back yard.

Images of (top) the New Hope apartments and (bottom) some of the memes shared after Marco Gutierrez’ statement on September 1, 2016.

Many readers of this blog are in the non-profit world.  We are involved in Church, Interfaith Engagement, Refugee Resettlement, LGBTQ Civil Rights, Anti-Racism Education, Anti-Poverty Work, Gun Control, and other change-the-world efforts.  Non-profits are busy organizations with a lot going on.  Churches, in particular, are often so program-centered that it’s become our predominant culture, as if a full calendar equals an active and faithful congregation.

But what if being busy does not actually equal effectiveness?

I recommend The Stanford Social Innovation Review and specifically this article by Kathleen Kelly Janus is a reminder that outputs (busy programming/activity) is not the same as impact (actual transformation.) It’s important to assess our ministry in terms of results.  What difference are we making?  What measurable good is coming from our efforts?

One of the points that The Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival makes (and Liz Theoharis makes it in Always With Us: What Jesus Really Said About the Poor)  is that – if we are still providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, etc. – we need to ask ourselves: why there are still homeless and hungry people in our midst?  Do we believe that there will always be poor people?  And if so, why do we believe this?

• Because Jesus said so?  (Note:  we are misreading the text if we think so.)
• Because human beings perpetuate systems that keep people poor?

In all the busyness of our ministries and service, what actual impact are we making?  Are there fewer homeless neighbors?  Are there fewer hungry children? Are there more poor high school students going to college or learning trades?

Is our point that we are busily serving and we subsequently congratulate ourselves?  Or are we trying to shift systems in hopes of institutional change?

Kathleen Kelly Janus calls for us – as institutions – to measure our work in new ways.  Instead of merely taking attendance, we need to be more curious and creative:

• Worry less about “impressive numbers” (e.g. “We served 1000 breakfasts to the poor last year!“) and assess individual relationships that move people towards having their own homes/kitchens.  Who are we connecting to available services?  How transient is our population?  Have we been serving the same people for five years?
• Track “longer term outcomes” in the lives of those we serve.  Follow up on those who have “graduated” from our programs.  (Again, this is about relationships.)
• Tell the truth about our programs.  We who want so much to do good and are dependent upon the donations of others need to be honest about what’s working and what is not working.

The institutional Church has enormous power to transform the world for good in the name of Jesus.  Or we can perpetuate busy-ness which is often about appearances more than transformation.

It’s a topic for our leaders to consider as we hope to do more effective ministry.

Image of student protesters outside the Florida State House which resulted in the first gun reform legislation in over twenty years this past week.  It’s a start.

I’ve always liked Secret Santas & Layaway Angels.

It’s one of the things I also love about ministry. There are countless opportunities to have a covert relationship with someone in terms of our prayer lives.

• The older parishioner who regularly receives money from the clergy emergency fund to pay her utilities while no one else is aware that she is in financial distress.
• The young woman who tearfully discloses that her father sexually abused her throughout her childhood.
• The young man you met at NA.
• The teenager you bailed out from jail.
• The waitress you tipped a twenty dollar bill to after she shared that she was saving money to buy a cell phone.

Does the leadership of your organization look like its members?

I once moderated a congregational meeting during which someone bemoaned the “fact” that they were now required to “go find homosexuals” to ordain as elders according to their understanding of changes in the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA.)  They were mistaken.

My denomination’s constitution says that our leadership must “express the rich diversity of the congregation’s membership and shall guarantee participation and inclusiveness.”*  In other words, if there are no LGBTQ people in your congregation, then you do not have to elect an LGBTQ person to office – because there aren’t any.  And if you have no women in your congregation, you also do not have to ordain any women.

Sadly, however, I’ve known wonderful congregations with new immigrant members, former refugee members, unicorn members (adults under 30) and People of Color in predominantly White congregations who are never asked to serve in positions of leadership.

Take a look at your congregation.  Do your officers express the rich diversity of your church?

More often than not, our predominantly White leaders over the age of 60 look exactly like our congregations because our congregations are basically White people over 60.  This is a multi-faceted issue, but I wonder if our demographics perpetuate themselves because:

• We do what we think “the young people” want without asking them.
• We are the kind of church that makes us feel comfortable but we are an uncomfortable congregation for anyone outside that over-60 White demographic.
• We have no idea how our brand of “hospitality” is actually offensive to those who are not yet with us.
• We have become irrelevant to our communities.

A “rich congregation” doesn’t necessarily have a lot of money.  A truly rich congregation is about diversity, and I’m talking about all kinds of diversity from theological to gender to skin color to age.

Seeking diversity is fundamentally selfish – not because it’s about institutional survival or coolness quotient – although those are selfish reasons too.

Seeking diversity is selfish because we are poorer without it.  If everybody looks and thinks like we do, we are missing out on the voices of our neighbors.  We are missing out on what is really needed in our communities.  We are missing out on our own personal growth and a broadening of our perspectives.

My denomination requires representation of all kinds of leaders above the Session (i.e. the governing board.)  It’s our own in-house constitutional inclusion rider.  But there are many governing boards – not to mention event leaders, educational leaders, hospitality leaders, etc. who exclude certain kinds of people from holding important responsibilities.

It would be a good thing – as we look towards Easter and new life – to assess this in each of our churches.  Do our leaders look like the diversity of our members?  And if there is not much diversity, why is that?  Does our village/neighborhood/suburb look exactly like we do?  And if not, what are we doing to make connections?  (Nothing is not the right answer.)

*From the PCUSA Form of Government G-2.0301

Image of Frances McDormand two nights ago when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.  She ended her speech with two words: Inclusion Rider.

Heads up:  this post is for White people.

“I don’t really have any Black friends.” 

Someone said to me recently and when I asked, “Why not?” she said that they live in different neighborhoods.  They go to different churches. She said that she rarely sees Black or Brown people in her professional circles.

“Do you want to change that?” I asked.  And she said yes but she doesn’t know how.

I don’t know how either except to invite her to get out more, to notice people who might be invisible to her, to educate herself on racism and White supremacy.

We (White people) can educate ourselves about race by reading a number of good books.  We can watch excellent documentaries like these.  And certainly we can befriend actual human beings of all skin colors.

But I also recommend watching Lena Waithe’s amazing show The Chi on Showtime.  It’s one of those special series that captures the drama, humor, love, beauty, ugliness of real life in a neighborhood on the South side of Chicago. What the writers do is amazing in terms of making us care about and even love the characters.  Among the ones I care about most are Emmett, Ronnie, Brandon and Kevin.  (I once tweeted Lena Waithe and asked her not to kill Kevin – ever – and the fact that she didn’t reply is worrysome.  Not that she and I are friends or anything, but please . . . not Kevin.)

My point is that authentic relationships are everything in the 21st Century Church and although television characters are obviously not real relationships, getting to know the fictional characters of The Chi might be a start. It offers a small slice of the intersectionality of race, violence and urban life.  It’s excellent.  It will make you care for people you don’t know yet.

Image of (from top right) the actors Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Alex Hibbert, Jason Mitchell, and Jacob Latimore who respectively play the roles of Ronnie, Kevin, Brandon, and Emmett on The Chi.

Changing a congregation’s culture is exhausting.  But it’s not impossible.

In the 1990s when I was just getting started thinking about What The Church Could Be (and no longer is) I registered for an Easum and Bandy event at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Maryland – the church that Brian and Grace McLaren started in 1982.  I asked my friend and colleague AP what she knew about Easum and Bandy and she told me that the last time she’d taken a group to one of their events, she had to pull the car over on the way home because everybody was crying.

It happened to me too.  I took a group from my church to hear about The Emerging Church and had to pull over to tend to crying parishioners.  One person was kind of drooling.  “We could never do that.”

Culture changes are hard.  And if your congregation is predominantly comprised of people over the age of 60 who have been Christian for at least 40 years, and have been a member of that particular church for at least 20 years, your congregational culture is fossilized.  (This is known as George Bullard‘s 20-40-60 rule.)

Survival mode kicks in. We go to workshops.  We read experts.  We have those awesome Mountaintop Experiences at The Best Conference Ever.  We go home to introduce new ways of doing/thinking/being.  And one of the following happens:

• Our people immediately offer reasons why We Can’t Do That.
• Our people roll their eyes.
• Our people threaten to withhold money.
• Our people decide we are no longer their pastor and they turn against us.

It’s foolish to believe that we can turn a congregation’s fossilized culture into a festival of creativity in a single day/season/year/decade.  Such fools become frustrated and depressed.  (Note:  I have been one of those fools.)

Tiny steps are required.  Even fossils can take tiny steps if we move them. 

Before introducing The Big New Thing that will overturn 50-150 years of The-Way-We’ve-Always-Done-It, think small.  Think tiny even.

What are some tiny steps that we can make even in the company of fossilized church people?

• Start every board meeting with a prayer for the church’s transformation.  Are you praying for “young families”?  “More money”?  Ask God to transform your congregation to look more like Jesus.  And then (this is the hard part) go around and ask each person at the table to share a time they’ve observed someone or something looking like Jesus since the last meeting.  If they can’t think of one, let them pass.  But make this a practice at every board meeting.  You might find that people become trained to look for Jesus out there.  A tiny step.
• Walk the neighborhood two by two.  Ask your board to meet 30 minutes before the next meeting.  Divide them up into teams of two (or three) and send them out in as many directions as you have teams to walk – without speaking – in search of something out in the neighborhood to bring to the meeting to pray about/for: A playground where children play.  A parking space for a disabled person.  A boarded up building.  A mom pushing a baby in a stroller.  Kids playing soccer.  After 15-20 minutes of walking, gather back at the church building and then ask each board member share what they want to pray about based on what they noticed.  (Wild and crazy idea: have each person pray individually, one-by-one, about the things they saw.)  A tiny step.
• Go on a mission tour of your own church building.  Start in the parking lot and enter through the door where most people enter. What happens in every corner of that building?  (“This is where non-perishable food is left to take to the shelter.”  “Here is where the choir stands during worship.”  “There is where bulletins are folded.”)  Stop and connect each room/corner/entranceway to ministry.  Discuss those corners of the building/yard where it’s hard to make a ministry connection and ask how we might make that connection.  “What can we do to make this classroom, office, hallway, closet about mission and ministry?”  Remind your people that the reason we have church buildings is to use them as tools for ministry.  Pray at the end of your tour that you will embrace sharing your building as a tool for ministry for the sake of God’s love. Then do this again six months later to note if there are any changes. A tiny step.

Even the most rigid leaders can take these simple steps.  The point is to get ourselves out of the way for fresh thinking.  It’s the first step to shifting a culture that can become a 21st Century Church.  We can do it.

Anybody out there feeling stressed out?

This article makes me wonder what the Church’s role will be if Andrew Sullivan’s premise is true:

Are Americans increasingly seeking opioids and other brain-numbing practices in order to avoid the life we find ourselves living?  In Sullivan’s words “This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.”

Addiction rates are overwhelming – from alcohol to heroin to fentanyl.  Many of us are addicted to nicotine, shopping, and our cell phones.  Post traumatic stress issues are the daily burden of everyone from military veterans to gun violence victims to children who have endured multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Just as medical students are being trained to ask their patients about their childhood experiences, I wonder if seminarians will soon be trained in asking parishioners the same questions in hopes of discerning the best way to offer spiritual care.  In deepening relationships with parishioners, will we be looking for evidence of childhood  . . .

• Physical abuse?
• Sexual abuse?
• Emotional abuse?
• Physical neglect?
• Emotional neglect?
• Household violence?
• Substance misuse in the home?
• Household mental illness?
• Parental separation or divorce?
• Incarcerated household member?

Clergy and other church leaders are usually not equipped to handle serious health issues.  We sing about a balm in Gilead that can heal the sin sick soul.  But we don’t generally know much about maladies of the body or mind.  And yet our congregations suffer with all the above.

How will we partner with nurses, doctors, social workers, teachers, and law enforcement officers?  The point is that 21st Century ministry indeed requires such partnerships.  The sooner we consider ourselves to be on the same team, the sooner we will serve our communities more effectively.

Jesus promised abundant life  while plenty of thieves still try to steal away our lives.  21st Century ministry is no joke. No longer is it enough to plan worship, visit parishioners in hospitals, and lead a Bible study.

We need emotionally intelligent, energetic, imaginative souls willing to love even those who are not very loveable because that’s who Jesus loves.  And I find this exciting actually.

It means that we in professional ministry are increasingly dependent upon the Holy Spirit to help us figure it out.  It’s a crazy world and we can’t save it ourselves.

Image of Papaver Somniferum which is the source of opium.

Church Leaders: when was the last time you took continuing education without having a leadership position?

As I prepare to return home after the National Gathering of NEXTChurch in Baltimore, I feel replete with so much good information now crammed into my head. Next comes the fun part: processing what I’ve absorbed.

• Worship ideas
• Church development ideas
• Mid-council ideas
• Relational ideas

My brain is stuffed full of them, not to mention the unspeakably joyous feeling of being with both birth/marriage family and chosen family.  Sharing stories and updates is soul-enlarging.

I was asked to co-lead a workshop at NEXT because of my role in the denomination.  And while that was a satisfying experience, what was more satisfying and life-giving was hearing from so many amazing people whose wisdom I need to hear again and again.

Sometimes we reach a point when we don’t want to play/participate if we can’t be in charge.  At this point in my life, I have been blessed to be the leader many times in a variety of venues.  And that’s a great honor and privilege.  But I have come to love attending events when I am not in charge.  There is so much I have to learn and I love that.

Some (many?) of our congregations resemble Zombie Land.  The living dead roam the halls of our church buildings perpetuating programs that are also dead – although we don’t realize it.  There is no evangelical spark in their voices.  There is no excitement about resurrection in their faces.

These congregations tend to have leaders who either

• get no study leave funds or time (because they are part-time with no benefits) or
• they do not take their study leave to learn new things or
• they spend their study leave looking inward – preparing worship or strategic plans for the next year without any beyond-the-walls influence.

I have colleagues who do not take advantage of continuing education unless they are in charge and while I agree that preparing to teach something is itself a great education, we really need to step out on a ledge and allow ourselves – even our erudite, brilliant, super-experienced selves – to learn from people who are younger, browner, and closer to the secular world than we are.  (I’m talking to you, Baby Boomer sibs.)

NEXTChurch consistently offers an array of brilliant material in the form of worship experiences, workshops, talks, blog posts, publications, and conversations.  And they are not the only ones.  Wild Goose and The White Privilege Conference are two other events where I’ve been stretched and inspired by people beyond my usual circle of influencers.

What if we – clergy types and especially stuck clergy types – intentionally chose a continuing education event in the coming months that made us a bit uncomfortable and less rigid?  What if we registered for an event that pulled and pushed us spiritually?

Note to congregations and boards:  please be as generous as possible with Continuing Education funds for your leaders.  You need to give them at least $1000 to attend an out-of-town conference.  It would be better to give them $2000.  If you want to reward staff members for an excellent job, add to their continuing education line item.  (If you give them a raise, they pay taxes on it, although raises are good too.)

The old Church is dying.  We won’t know what the new Church looks like without being nudged to consider the possibilities.  Also Pastors:  you don’t have to be in charge.  Just sit and learn.

Image of the Rev. Billy Michael Honor, the first preacher at NEXTChurch National Gathering 2018.