Ridiculous church story: I once heard a sermon based on John 11 and the story of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha and the preacher – with a lovely Scottish brogue – mistakenly referred to Martha as “Margaret.” “Perhaps they called her Peg,” he said. “Perhaps you need to examine the text more closely,” I whispered to myself. His scholarship was lazy at best.
Soon to be Dr. Libbie Schrader is not a lazy scholar. If you have heard all the ruckus about the great Diana Butler Bass’ sermon preached at Wild Goose last month, you have heard about Libbie Schrader’s extraordinary scholarship. Today’s post is basically a strong recommendation that you watch this. If you love meaty Bible study, this will be a feast. Enjoy.
Aisha Brooks-Johnson preached for the Presbyterian Urban Network gathering last week and she (almost) sang the theme song from Green Acres, a 1960s sitcom about a couple who move from NYC to the rural town of Hooterville. Oliver believes “farm livin'” is the life for him and Lisa adores a penthouse view. Hilarity ensues.
Aisha’s point was that God reigns in both urban and rural landscapes.
By the mid 70s, television executives had canceled most comedies and drama series in what networks called “the rural purge.” Out came programs about farm families and small town life (The Andy Griffith Show, Lassie, Green Acres) and in came programs featuring urban and suburban families (Sanford and Son, Seinfeld, Full House.) Although today, the vast world of television offers a variety of families and settings, but city life is featured most prominently.
Although most people in my denomination are part of large congregations in urban and suburban settings, most Presbyterian congregations are small. According to Leslie Scanlon’s article here 20% of the congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) have 25 members or fewer. About two-thirds of our churches have 100 or less members.
These small congregations can be found uptown, downtown, in the suburbs and small towns, and in rural areas. But it’s rare to find a large congregation in a rural area. Our rural congregations are almost always less than 100 members and many have less than 50 members.
They can rarely afford a full-time pastor and if they can, that pastor is most likely earning the minimum required salary. What can we do about this?
One thing we must do – as Mid-Council Church Leaders – is avoid a rural purge. We cannot cancel these congregations. We cannot ignore either the needs or the gifts of small town and rural neighbors. One of the actors from Green Acres, lamenting the cancelation of that show said, of CBS:
“They canceled everything with a tree in it – including Lassie.”
As long as most employment is found in more populated areas, small towns will be unable to attract young people seeking industrial, professional, and skilled trade jobs. Pastors with a working spouse might hesitate to accept a call with no employment options for their spouses. Pastors with young children might hesitate to accept a call where the schools cannot attract teachers to move to their county.
But there is hope for our rural congregations:
If working from home continues to trend and people can work from anywhere – at least in some fields – this will help lure people to beautiful, affordable places with lots of fresh air.
If local officials honestly want their communities to grow, there are many tools available for shifting the culture of our farms, small businesses and manufacturing industries. Great example in Mooresville, NC: Carrigan Farms was once a regular family farm with row crops and cows. It has evolved into a different kind of farm with pumpkins (and the requisite pumpkin patch), fruits for self-picking, hay rides, haunted trails, and quarry swimming. They are now a venue for weddings, proms, and corporate events.
If urban and suburban churches partner with rural congregations, there could be opportunities for shared preaching and teaching, and invitations for farm VBS, etc.
If you are interested in this kind of creative ministry, don’t just look for it in wealthy city congregations. Calls to rural churches make for some opportunities that would never happen in the city. (I learned how to hypnotize a chicken in my first call in Schaghticoke, NY.)
Here’s the problem with having had a really easy time of it growing up: when you do finally experience tragedy, as we all inevitably do, you are totally unprepared for it. Amanda Held Opelt in A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
35 years ago today at University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, HH and I got married in a service with four officiants and over 30 clergy present. It was a lot.
Little did we know that in the first five years of marriage we would experience the death of both my parents, two miscarriages, and – thank goodness – the birth of our three healthy children. Again, it was a lot. At the age of 36, I was not the person HH had married at 31.
Amanda Held Opelt has written a raw and real book about grief with twelve chapters of information about spiritual practices that have historically helped. They don’t fix things. But they help.
One of the things they don’t tell seminarians is the fact that there will be deep grief in Church World – in addition to the deep grief of our regular human lives. We will bury children. We will sit with treasured elders as they say goodbye to the person who’s been the infrastructure of their daily lives. We will sit with women praying their fertility treatments will work. We will grieve with parents whose teenagers are lost.
Even as a Mid-Council Denominational Leader (it sounds so boring, doesn’t it?) I am both privileged and burdened with being with people when life as we know it ends. Church staff members lose precious children in accidents. The best of church ladies and church gentlemen bury their spouses. Longtime saints die.
God calls us to love each other and when we do, it’s going to hurt. But it’s still so worth it.
Opelt shares this thought as she holds her small daughter in her arms:
The reality is that if I don’t lose her, then she will lose me. I will die. Either way, this ends in grief. Sometimes the thought of it is just too much to bear.
When HH and I were considering children, I used to say, “Let’s have three because if one dies, we’ll still have two.” And he would say, “What if we have three and two die? Or they all die?” Yes, this is ridiculous thinking, but I’d been a chaplain in a NICU and pediatric oncology ward before we got married and I saw children die every day. There was a month I’d officiated at 23 baby funerals.
Life is crazy and terrifying and nonsensical and unfair. I wouldn’t want to spend it with anyone other than my HH.
Beyond thankful today. Also, read Opelt’s book.
Image of the newly published A Hole in the World by Amanda Held Opelt who will be introduced for a long, long time and perhaps for the rest of her life with these words: she was Rachel Held Evans’ sister. Please pray for all who grieve today.
[Note: My wise colleague Jeff Paschal, upon reading my Love Letter Series, commented on the need for a Love Letter for EPs. I invited him to write it and it’s worth our attention. Thank you Jeff.]
This is me (Jan) doing executive work, but I really want you to notice the pillow.
Dear Executive Presbyters,
Thank you!
Thank you for the long hours you put into the ministry. For helping congregations and pastors reach their God-given potential. For comforting grieving churches and hurting pastors. For leading and sharing leadership with presbytery staff. For challenging the entire presbytery to be more faithful. Thank you!
I’ve never been an executive presbyter or served on a presbytery staff. So, I’m unqualified to write this love letter, but Jan offered and I accepted.
I was ordained in 1990, and I’ve served various congregations for more than 30 years as a Head of Staff or a solo pastor. I’ll share my idiosyncratic views. Facebook friends may complete or correct what I write. Executive Presbyters, here goes.
Love begins with the work of attention. You cannot love what you ignore.
Execs, try not to play favorites, even though we all do to one degree or another. Do your best to be just as responsive to the tiny church as the huge church, and just as available to the pastor who is your good friend and the one who isn’t. Regularly pray for your pastors and other clergy members by name. Pay some attention to your pastors and other clergy, because you are their pastor and how well they function with the churches or chaplaincy positions will determine in large part how well the presbytery functions.
Here are some questions you might ask yourself as you seek to build up the Body of Christ.
How are clergy received by the presbytery? With suspicion? By being ignored? Or with true welcome? When I was a young pastor serving my first church more than thirty years ago, it meant the world to me that my executive presbyter took the time to call me one day just to check in.
Are clergy within the presbytery actually friends with each other? Do they truly reach out to welcome new pastors or chaplains in their area (lunches, phone calls, etc.)? How can you teach and model this?
How are clergy encouraged as they do joyful, heartbreaking, exhausting ministry year after year?
How do clergy retire? With some sort of recognition? Or by being disregarded?
Does the presbytery play favorites in choosing commissioners to G.A., sending some people multiple times over people who have never had the chance to go? Do Executive Presbyters support G.A. decisions, even when they don’t agree with them, or do they undercut those decisions?
We live in a time when many pastors are leaving the ministry, and unhealthy church conflict often has something to do with it. So use your power and let your response be quick and assertive when pastors are unfairly attacked or when pastors are unfairly attacking. Folks who study church conflict say the most important factor in helping pastors and congregations weather destructive conflict is having someone outside the congregational system, someone with authority (such as an E.P. or COM representative), step in and require fair treatment by all parties. Do it sooner rather than later, because later will probably be too late.
Yes, it’s playful, but reconsider calling some pastors “superstars” or “rock stars.” There is only one superstar–Jesus Christ. The rest of us (even the best of us) are muddling along as the Spirit works through us. Some of us are pretty good at helping congregations grow numerically. Some are better at preaching or doing pastoral care or helping people develop spiritually. But we’re all doing many of the same things—leading worship, preaching, teaching, pastoral care, administration, helping churches search for God’s vision, etc.
Speaking of vision, can people in the presbytery state what the presbytery’s vision is in a few words? And as various social justice issues arise over the coming months and years, how will the presbytery lead? Does the presbytery have a justice committee?
Heaven knows, being an Executive Presbyter is a tough ministry. You’re in our prayers. And I end where I began. Thank you!
Some Museums of Failure are monuments to trying new thingsfor the sake of the Gospel/reaching unserved neighbors/being faithfully creative. And some are monuments to being stuck in TWWADT (pronounced tow-WAD-ti The Way We’ve Always Done Things.)
The original Museum of Failure is in Helsingborg, Sweden but now their exhibits travel throughout the world. Among the failed items featured: the plastic bicycle (“it was unstable and it broke“), the Twitter Peek Phone (“it only tweets and people had smart phones for that“) and the DIVX disposable DVD (“to replace rental DVDs but consumers hated it“.)
One of the differences between a thriving church and a dying church involves what their Museum of Failure looks like. Every church has one. What does yours look like?
The Museum of Failure in a Thriving Church might look like this:
The closet full of 200 plastic flamingos once used for fundraisers by the youth. The youth raised money when Person 1 paid to “flock” Person 2’s yard in the night. Person 2 woke up to find a sea of pink birds in their yard with a sign saying “You’ve been flocked.” Flamingos were removed by same youth the next night to recycle for the next flocking. Hilarious.
The Starbucks-esque set up in the church basement once used to try a coffee house for Sunday evening worship.
The box of leftover “I Spent the Night with Dave” t-shirts which had once been given to volunteers who took turns sleeping in a reclining chair in front of a church member’s memory care room door to keep him from wandering the halls each night. This saved the family having to hire a 7 pm to 7 am nursing assistant.
The Museum of Failure in a Dying Church might look like this:
The church parlor that no one is allowed to use because there’s fear someone will spill coffee in there and the church ladies want to keep it pristine as a memorial to Miss Myrtle. She taught a Bible study in the parlor for 27 years and the furniture was given by her family after she died.
The Peach Festival that everyone hates but we’ve been doing it July 4th Weekend for 32 years so we have to keep doing it. People know our church – not because we show our community what the love of God looks like but – because of our peach ice cream. Without the Peach Festival, we are nothing.
The Music Room that contains files and files of four-part music, choir robes for every age, and handbells event though our congregation hasn’t had a choir – much less a handbell choir – for over ten years.
We teach children that failure is a bad thing but if we fail after trying something new, we’ve learned so many things: what works and what doesn’t work, how to improve on our idea, what’s needed and what’s not needed.
If our congregation hasn’t failed lately it could be because we haven’t tried anything new. Fun summer activity: do a failure assessment of your church this week. And then toss a few (hundred) things.
HH and I have been watching one of those semi-mindless streaming dramas involving crime and secrecy. You know the shows. We are watching one now involving two grown men befriending each other in prison. Both of them had traumatic childhoods that impacted their adulthood. Both tell the other that things were pretty great, that their parents were loving, that they have mostly good memories.
But we also see the characters’ backstories and the truth is horrible. Parents who swore at them, left them alone for long hours, hit them, emotionally devastated them, used them. As a pastor of almost 40 years, I have met these children. They come from all kinds of backgrounds. Their families might have no money or lots of money. I’ve seen countless examples of parents whose first concern has been themselves instead of their children. They make decisions based on what’s best for themselves sometimes because of addiction and sometimes because of their own emotional immaturity.
I also know miracle people: those who were unloved as children, castigated – even by their families – for being different, for being born. And yet, they had at least one person who loved them unconditionally along the way. A teacher. A pastor. A neighbor. A sibling.
They still bear scars and unhealed wounds. But they are also capable of showing unconditional love. And they are remarkable friends and parents themselves.
I think about all these things as our political leaders declare that bodily autonomy is not a given. You can carry a child without consent. Even birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies is being questioned.
For all the pro-life talk, the truth is that we are not a nation of pro-lifers by any definition of that term. We – as a nation – do not value school teachers, do not offer equitable health care, do not treasure undocumented children, do not treasure queer children. This is the most heinous of sins – especially if we call ourselves pro-life.
I’m talking to both “liberal” and “conservative” grown ups here. What child will we tutor? What child will we house? What child will we feed? What child will we send to college – who is not our own? What child will we welcome into our lives who is not already part of our family/community/house of worship?
This is for all of us – especially if we believe there should be no abortion and no birth control. And the irony is that most of the people of faith I know who believe abortion should be an option and birth control should be a given are already committed to loving – unconditionally – children who are not “their own.”
This is about human lives. Who are we really loving out there?
I knew them first as Cheesehead in Paradise, Clever Title Here, Listing Straight, and St Casserole. I was inspired by Reverend Mother and Spooky Rach and NotShyChiRev. Although I wasn’t a founding member, I joined RevGalBlogPals in 2005 and I’m still here writing because of these colleagues.
The board of RevGalBlogPals will be winding down the life of this non-profit on August 31, 2022 after 17 years of offering support and resources for clergywomen and people who support clergywomen. It’s been lovely.
From churches to colleges to small non-profits like the RevGals, sometimes it’s most faithful to close shop and allow for new endeavors to be born. RevGalBlogPals was once the blogging ring for several dozen clergy and it grew to several hundreds. We wrote a book together. We went on trips. I was privileged to be one of the speakers a while back – my first and only cruise.
Thank you for everything. Some of you who read this blog have never heard of them and others of you are my good friends because of them. Thanks especially to leaders Jemma Allen, Julia Seymour, Teri Peterson, Marilyn Pagán-Banks, Libby Spence, Jennifer Garrison Brownell, Rebecca Holland, Sarah Howe Miller, Jia Starr Brown, Angela Shannon, Mary Austin and Martha Spong. You have blessed us.
You changed my life.
You can continue to check out RevGalBlogPals through August 31, 2022 here.
The world is a hot mess and everybody seems ticked off. And it’s steamy outside. And politics are making us a little insane. What can be done to bring a splash of relief?
I got to be a “Very Important Reader” recently at one of Charlotte’s Freedom Schools and it was a 30 minute long responsibility. (Note: all it takes to be a VIR is a book and the ability to read it out loud.)
I read Horace and Morris But Mostly Delores to a group of about 40 children and they responded with Freedom School choreographed cheers and songs. I’ve never been welcomed, introduced, and thanked with songs before and it was lovely. They were special, lighthearted somebodies for me on an otherwise heavy day. I needed them.
Today you will come in contact with somebody who needs somebody. Maybe they need somebody to notice them and say ‘hi.’ Maybe they will need somebody to offer friendship for a few minutes. Maybe they will need somebody to help them in some small way.
Or maybe we are the ones who will need somebody to notice us or sit with us or check in with us.
These encounters are holy and when the world is a hot mess, these encounters are life-giving. We can’t solve the world’s complicated divisions and troubles, but we can be somebody for somebody today.
Art has the power to calm us, inspire us, and in some cases disturb us. After writing a more poignant post yesterday referring to God’s Creative Hand – among other things – today’s post is more upsetting.
Artist Manuel Oliver is the father of Joaquin Oliver who was murdered at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2008 along with 3 staff members and 13 other students. This week Oliver created the art installation above near the home of Senator Ted Cruz. You can read about it here. He calls it NRA Children’s Museum.
From the painter Edvard Munch’s The Scream to the photographer Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl (her name is Kim Phuc) to the Holocaust survivor Samuel Willenberg’s sculpture of 19 year old Rut Dorfman before she was murdered at Treblinka, art can be hard to look at. Some art is meant to be provocative.
What does it take to change a culture from being cruel to becoming less cruel? How many children and other innocent people will die before we shift from a gun culture that’s okay with civilians carrying automatic weapons to a gun culture that’s content with selling and buying only hunting and self-defense weaponry. (I’m not naive enough to believe the United States will ever be a culture that gets rid of The Second Amendment.)
I have questioned why we don’t allow images of shooting victims publically believing that – if people saw what an AK-15 did to a human body – we would surely ban them. The families of victims rightly remind me that sharing these images re-traumatizes them and infringes on their tender privacy. Please read this. And the truth is that legislators have already seen images and it hasn’t made a difference.
So maybe art will influence us. Consider the Creative Hand of God once again. If we take in the colors and textures and brilliance of God’s handiwork, it changes how we see the world.
The art of humans can anger us or make us turn our eyes away. But if we look closely and consider the details imagined by human beings, we might indeed be changed.
Again, please read about the NRA Children’s Museum here. The details are important.
My friend M lay dying of cancer in 2006 and in one of the many conversations we had at that time, I remember her telling me some of the things she would miss the most. Yes, she would miss meeting her future grandchildren. Yes, she would miss being with so many friends over holidays and other milestones. And she was angry that she would miss finding out what happened to Harry Potter.
M was a librarian and The Deathly Hallows would not be published for another year.
The Southern Nebula Ring as seen via the James Webb Telescope this week
I love the word “nebulous” because it describes so much of human life. Yes, many things are certain. Many things are clear. But many more things are hazy and ill-defined. Nebulous.
My friend M increasingly embraced randomness in her last months in a way that disturbed me. As a person of faith, certainty is supposed to be my modus operandi but M – as a person of faith – was increasingly okay with randomness. She was going to die too young – or at least too young for us. But she had been blessed with a wonderful life, she said. And she was okay with not knowing exactly what would happen next. She continued to believe in God. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes a little.
This week I have wept four times.
As someone who oversees 92 congregations and about 28,000 souls, my life intersects with so many lives and this is a tremendous gift. But two young people I know only as treasured parts of The Body of Christ died suddenly this week. They died too young – at least for us. One was in his twenties. One was a child. I have cried over these losses and my heart breaks especially for their mothers.
I also wept after a conversation with a pastor who’s recently endured a double lung transplant. He is alive and laughing and talking and eating and (sometimes when possible) sleeping and it thoroughly takes my breath away. How is this resurrected life possible?
And finally I wept when I saw the first images of the James Webb Telescope. There are no words to fully capture their majesty, but I’ll attempt a few. The image of the Southern Nebula Ring looks like a glimpse into another world. A heavenly world.
I don’t know exactly what happens after this life, but I am going to continue hoping that it’s at least as extraordinary as an organ transplant or a distant nebula.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. I Corinthians 13:12
It’s God who opens worlds and shines light. It’s God who gives us breath. It’s God who is with us when everything falls apart. It’s God. Sometimes we have a hard time believing. Sometimes we believe a little. Sometimes we believe a lot.
And just as God is with us, God asks us to be with each other in these nebulous times. God asks us to sit with each other when we believe and when we don’t. When we grieve what we will miss and when we remember with gratitude what we have experienced.
I’ve also found that it helps to stop and stare at that amazing photograph of The Southern Nebula.
A Church for Starving Artists 