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In reviewing some of the comments made about this post, it’s clear that many congregations are anxious. And this is why so many pastors are indeed expected to “bring in the young families.”

Aging buildings, declining attendance, and budget deficits add to the anxiety.  And so these church leaders often contact denominational leaders or consultants for some coaching on How To Transition. They may not like it, but they realize that shifts must be made to be a thriving congregation in the 21st Century.

And then there are the churches with no energy or no capacity to make these shifts.  What do we do with those congregations?

One of my brilliant colleagues and I sometimes discuss this and we have (especially he has)  come up with a few ideas. These ideas would not work in every denomination or situation, of course.  In the PCUSA (my denomination) we tend not to close churches unless the congregation itself wants to close.

But what if . . . 

• The church cannot afford even a part-time pastor? (Translation:  They hire someone to preach on Sunday but no one necessarily provides pastoral care, educational support, administrative guidance, vision casting, or missional leadership.)
• The church leaders are landlords rather than spiritual leaders? (Translation:  They rent out their church building space to all kinds of organizations to cover their basic costs.)
• The church is isolated and isolating.  (Translation:  They do not reach out to partner congregations, their denominational resources, or anyone else for assistance.)

Yes, there are congregations who exist to survive long enough for their own funerals.  Honestly, some have said these very words to me.  And are we – as denominations – being faithful if we perpetuate a survival model of ministry?

My own denomination has had congregation choose to close with great faithfulness.  They have realized that their congregation’s ministry is over but – if their church closes – the resources left behind can serve future congregations.  This, my friends, is resurrection.  And that’s what we who try to follow Jesus are about.

What if – denominational policies allowing – we closed congregations that:

1. Have been served only by a supply preacher each Sunday for at least the past two years?
2. Funded over 50% of their budget from resources apart from congregational giving?
3. Do not effectively manage their finances as displayed in the lack of a regular review of their books?
4. Have no ministry relationships with anyone outside their congregation.  (Note:  Writing checks to an organization ≠ a relationship.)

God deserves our best.  We who gather in Christ’s name are called to love our neighbors as ourselves and to make disciples of all nations.  All of us can do better and most of us try.  But when we cannot try any longer, it’s a holy thing to let go.

Image from a church building we see on vacation every summer.  Yes, every summer for the past six years.

We love kids and babies.  

Twice in the life of this blog, posts have gone viral much to my surprise.  Both of those posts have been about kids and/or babies.  We love kids and babies.   And we in spiritual communities want and need them.

But there’s something we need even more than children in our congregations. We need to be clear on why we exist as a church.

I regularly ask congregational leaders why their church exists.  The answers include something like these:

• This church has been important to my family for generations.
• We have a meaningful history.
• The Presbytery believed that a Presbyterian presence was needed in this part of town.
• We need to preserve our traditions.
• Our building has architectural significance.

God didn’t call us to be the church for the purpose of perpetuating institutions, serving individual families, creating attractive edifices, or establishing certain brands of theology.  God calls us to make disciples, to reach out to broken people in the name of Jesus, to love our neighbors, to be equipped to minister in the image of Christ, to be spiritually formed in community.

I believe that congregations that do these things, that are these things will thrive. Are we interested in being this kind of church?

Image source is unknown.

Almost every church I’ve ever known has wanted to Attract Young Families.  The reasoning behind this includes the following:

• If we don’t regenerate, everyone will eventually get old and die.
• It’s energizing to have young people around.
• Younger members can do the work that older members can’t/won’t do anymore.
• Older members tend to be on fixed incomes and younger working members are needed for their pledges.
• Young families (i.e. mom, dad, and kids) remind us of church when we were (or wish we were) part of young families.

There are a few things wrong with this reasoning, including the fact that “attracting” people in general feels manipulative – as if people are “targets” to be used for our own purposes.  Yuck.

Let’s be honest about the “why.“  Are we saying that we want these rare and valuable Young Families for what they can give to us?

What if  – instead – the “why” of this demographic quest was about feeding souls and sharing authentic community?  I always hoped – as a young mom – that church would provide adults that could help me nurture my children.  I always wanted to know that – if my kids couldn’t come to me or HH with a problem – they would have other trustworthy adults to whom they could go (and they did.)

Young families are great.  Old families are great.  Families made up of child-free couples are great.  Families of single people are great.  Imagine if every church simply wanted A Pastor Who Could Bring In Broken People.  Now that’s a church.

Also, the days are gone when Young Families were present in worship every Sunday.  The statistics are in about how the definition of “regular worship” has changed since the 1950s.  (“Regular” used to mean weekly.  Now it means once or twice a month.)

Instead of seeking a Pastor who can bring in those vaunted Young Families, we need to call a Pastor who knows how to shift congregational culture.  The culture in which we live and move and have our being has changed, but we are killing ourselves trying to maintain a dated congregational culture.

News flash:  Most pastors will fail at “Bringing in Young Families.” Families of every kind are drawn to communities that are in touch with real life.  For example, check out Carey Nieuwhof’s recent post about why even committed Christians do not worship as regularly as they did in previous decades.  At least two of his “10 Reasons” specifically impact cultural changes connected to Young Families.

So how can we be the kind of congregation that welcomes Young Families for more than their energy and wallets?  We can:

1. Be real.  Deal with real issues in sermons, classes, retreats, conversations, prayers.
2. Listen to parents’ concerns.  Listen to children’s concerns.
3. Ask how we can pray for them.  And then pray for them.
4. Allow/encourage messiness.  Noses will run and squirming will ensue.  There might be running.  There will definitely be noise.
5. Check our personal Stink Eye Quotient.  Do we grimace when a baby cries?  Do we frown when the kids are wearing soccer uniforms?
6. Refrain from expecting everyone to be the church like we have always been the church.
7. Help parents, grandparents, and all adults become equipped to minister to children and youth.  How can we learn to offer such loving hospitality to the younger people in our midst that they will always experience church as home?
8. Do not use children as cute props.  Yes they say the darndest things during children’s stories, but they are not there to entertain us.
9. Give parents a break.  Really.  Help struggling parents get coats and hats on their kids.  Hold an umbrella.  Assist in wiping spills.
10. Give parents a break administratively.  Make it easy to participate. Minimize the unnecessary.

It’s also okay not to have Young Families in our congregations depending on the context.  Some neighborhoods have very few young ones living nearby.  But there are still people who crave some Good News.

I want a Pastor who can minister to whomever lives in the neighborhood in the thick of these cruel and beautiful times.

Image is a popular one that shows up in lots of random blog posts.

Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

[Note:  Thanks to my brilliant colleague BC for the insights that contributed to this post.]

Losing is different from giving.

My parents lost their lives to cancer.  I have lost exactly two (expensive) fobs to get into the Presbytery Office building.  I have lost my mind on at least one occasion.

Kayla Mueller gave her life for Syrian victims.  She didn’t lose her life.  She gave it.  Yes, technically a building fell on her after a bombing or maybe someone personally killed her.  Either way, she chose to give up her life in a global way for the sake of the suffering in Syria.

Deah Barakat gave up his time to offer free dental care to Syrian refugees.  (But then someone took his life, which is different from losing or giving, but that’s for another post.)

Many of my my colleagues have given their lives for the institutional church. (Or we think we have.)

A fine preacher pointed out last Sunday that Jesus said we can save our lives by losing them, but then she wondered if he wasn’t really talking about giving rather than losing.

Nerd alert:  The Greek for for “will lose” is ἀπολέσει which means something like “utterly perish” or “cause to be lost.”  In other words, Jesus isn’t talking about “losing” as in losing our keys.  Jesus is talking about an action more akin to giving up something or allowing something to die.

Jesus didn’t lose his life for the sake of love.  Jesus gave his life for the sake of love.  Huge difference.

So, this makes “giving up something for Lent” different too.

I get the spiritual discipline of loving something so much (chocolate, coffee, bacon) that refraining from it for 40 days might remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice. But give me a break.

Jesus doesn’t much care if we give up our favorite food.  Jesus cares if we give up our lives.  And I’m not just talking about who or what we’d take a bullet for.

I’m talking about who or what we’d give up our personal dreams/goals/habits for.  Giving our lives for what Jesus gave his life for seems like our only choice, if we hope to be serious disciples.

This sounds much preachier than I expected.  But Lent is serious business.  And I confess that I’m pretty terrible at it.

Image source here.

^” You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Genesis 50:20

This quote is from the Bible story about Joseph, the son of Jacob meeting his brothers for the first time after they’d (tried to) ruin his life. In spite of the fact that his brothers sold him into slavery, lied to their father that he’d died, etc. God used this tragedy for good.

I have long stopped believing that God’s finger is on every trigger and every steering wheel. People hurt people because we make choices (except in those situations when mental illness takes those choices from us.)

It’s yet to be seen whether or not Craig Hicks was officially insane when he executed Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha in their own home. But what has happened in the aftermath can only be described as holy:

• While UNC School of Dentistry student Deah Barakat’s goal was to raise $20,000 for a mission trip to Turkey this summer to offer free dental care to Syrian refugee children, over $400,000 has been raised at this writing. You can make your donation here.
• A school clinic for refugee kids has opened in Reyhanli, Turkey named for Deah Barakat – less than three days after his death.
• Another clinic will be opening in Jordan in his memory.
• And another clinic will offer dental care to the homeless in Raleigh, NC bearing the names of all three victims.

This is not much of a Mardi Gras-ish post today, is it? But – on the cusp of Lent – we are reminded that our God brings life even out of death.

Image of Syrian refugee children in Reyhanly, Turkey at the opening of their new dental clinic.

In the wake of last week’s tragedy in my home town of Chapel Hill, at least one person tweeted:  

I need to hear from my president.  The shootings occurred on Tuesday and – to be fair – the world didn’t know much about the victims until Wednesday.  But President Obama didn’t talk about it until Friday.

We don’t elect the President of the United States to be our spiritual leader.  And yet there are moments – Ferguson, Sandy Hook, Katrina, 9-11 – when we expect our highest government leader to speak of lofty things.  Sometimes I want my President to declare/remind us in the wake of unnecessary violence that This Is Not Who We Are as human beings.

Yes, individuals can be broken, dark, mistaken, insane, and randomly evil.  But that is not who were were created to be.

The President of the United States’ task is not to pastor the people in times of tragedy.  We elect the President “to execute the Office . . .”  and “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”    But sometimes we need to hear a prophetic or comforting word.

As a follower of Jesus, my faith teaches me (Hello Incarnation) that we are called to stand with those who suffer.  Kayla Mueller was apparently trying to live out her faith in this way.  Some have called her foolish, but she was trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a place of terror.

As a pastor, I have answered this vow four times now:

Will you be a faithful minister, proclaiming the good news in Word and Sacrament, teaching faith, and caring for people? Will you be active in government and discipline, serving in the governing bodies of the church; and in your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?

My hope is that all my clergy friends are off today for Presidents’ Day because we need the break before Lent begins.  But, just as we remember what Presidents do, it’s a good day to remember what pastoral leaders do.

Years ago, during a particular difficult issue in the congregation I was serving, the leaders were discussing how to move forward.  I remember one elder saying, “All I know is that I want my pastor back.”  I had been so entrenched in the administrative matters at hand that I had not been free to be the pastor I’d been called to be.

We clergy have been called to speak – as well as to be the hands and feet of Jesus. I’m grateful for pastors who speak up.  There is a great deal to speak about.  It’s our calling and our responsibility.

Sometimes we want to hear from our President.  And many people no longer want to hear from a Preacher.  And yet, this is a huge piece of our calling:  to speak up – if not with our voices then at least with our actions.

Image is George Washington by Roy Lichtenstein (1963)

Please stop what you are doing right now and make a donation for Syrian Dental Relief – offering free dental care to Syrian refugees in Turkey – in memory of Deah Shaddy Barakat, age 23; his wife of less than two months Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

That’s all I have to say today.

We were first encouraged to Take Our Daughters to Work  in 1993 
so that they could experience the working world. Obviously taking our daughters to work was difficult if we neurosurgeons (“Look Honey, this is how we remove the bone flap”) or letter carriers (“Here, you take the even numbers on the street”) or window washers (“Don’t look down.”)  By 2003, we were also encouraged to take our sons to work.

We clergy take our children to work at least once/week. [Note: Imagine the gossip if we didn’t take our children to church with us on Sundays.]

I can’t think of another vocation which expects professionals to take their children with them to the work place where their children will be present during what many consider to be the highlight of the pastor’s week.  Imagine if advertising execs took their children to ‘the pitch’ they’d been working on for several months or if tech consultants took their kids to the sales presentation they’d prepared for a big client.  My children went to work with me almost every Sunday for 20 years.

It was not easy.  To be perfectly honest, some parishioners made it easier.  And others made it more difficult.

Some congregations would love to perpetuate a 1950s model of parenting when the (male) pastor never worried about his children seven days a week, because his wife was home all day raising them.  The man who baptized me decades ago shared that his wife singlehandedly raised their children, including a son who died of a childhood cancer so that he would be free to Follow God’s Calling.

I, too, have tried to Follow God’s Calling, but as half of a clergy couple, it never looked like the 1950s at our house.  Or in our churches.

The palpable stress of those Sunday mornings has faded now that our kids are grown, but there are things parishioners can do to hurt or help:

Things Not to Do When Your Pastor Has Small Children:

1. Expect them to keep watch on their own children while leading worship.
2. Criticize their parenting/their children to other people. (“Can you believe she lets her kids run free in the balcony?”)
3. Offer constructive comments in inappropriate moments.  (Someone once asked me to tell my child to stop running in the Christian Education wing while I was greeting guests.)
4. Confuse professional and personal lives.  (“That was a good sermon but I wish your children wouldn’t squirm during worship.“)
5. (There are about 100 more things I could say here.)

Things to Do When Your Pastor Has Small Children:

1. Hire a nursery worker who arrives when the pastor (and her children) arrive  – even if it’s 7 am.
2. Recognize that the future spiritual lives of those children will be positively or negatively impacted by the way they were loved (or not) by the congregation that hired their parent(s).
3. Recognize that the church didn’t hire the pastor’s children.  Yes, you wanted “a young pastor” but check yourself if you liked the idea of a pastor with children more than the reality.
4. Remember that the church necessarily controls your pastor’s child’s schedule. Some parishioners stay home for a few years after the birth of their children so as not to disrupt nap schedules on Sunday mornings.  Your pastor’s children have to adapt to napping  around worship and church school times.
5. Treat those kids (and all the children of your congregation) like gold. Don’t talk down to them.  Ask them about their lives and listen to their answers.  This will connect them to God more than the Sunday School lessons.
6. Remember that when you expect your pastor to attend a church meeting at night or on Saturdays or at 6:30 in the morning, they will be paying for childcare.  It will cost them money.  If you have a clergy couple, offer to cover babysitting when you ask both of them to officiate at your wedding or your loved one’s funeral.
7. Give those kids a break.  Yes, they are cranky. They were the first to arrive and they will be the last to go home.

I love the idea of Taking our Daughters & Sons to work, but most of us do this as a special event once a year – if that.  Professional church work is unique.  Please don’t make it difficult for our young pastors.

Image of a clergy couple with their FBC their first year as co-pastors.

Gretchen: That is so fetch!
Regina: Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It’s not going to happen!*

[Note:  This post will make no sense unless you’ve watched Mean Girls, preferably multiple times.]

It occurs to me that much of the conflict in our churches is a result of forcing fetch.  This is  true for secular life as well.   We sometimes try to make fetch happen.

“Fetch” could be anything from Trying to Make A Call Happen (we want so much to be the pastor of a particular church even though there are clear indications that it’s not right) to Trying to Make a Relationship Happen (we can’t make someone fall in love with us) to Trying to Be Something We Are Not (it’s simply too exhausting and sad.)

Creative, visionary pastors – especially those called to “help the church grow” – try to make fetch happen all the time.  We try to make changes in worship, organizational structure, mission, and culture but our people aren’t ready or they don’t understand the why behind the what or we fail to love our people and they know it.  We try to force the fetch and we fail, and the church often suffers for it.

So how do we indeed lead change that helps our congregations grow in post-Christendom?  How do we love our neighbors and make followers of Jesus in a 21st Century Church?

We refrain from forcing fetch.  Instead we pray, we discern, we collaborate, and we depend upon the Holy Spirit to lead us.

We cannot Save the Church.  We cannot Fix the Church.  We can’t make fetch happen.  Regina was right.

*From the movie Mean Girls (2004)

A man who represents a huge chunk of of my life passed away over the weekend. Many – including his rivals – have called him A Class Act. His funeral will be a festival of inspiration.

Those are the best kind of funerals: the ones that inspire and make us want to be better people. The most inspirational funerals are usually not for those whose passing is reported on the national news however. Among the most influential I’ve ever attended have been the funerals of a music teacher, a postal worker, and a lawyer turned denominational moderator. You don’t have to be famous to be a class act.

So what about Church People? Class Act = Image of Christ, if you ask me. And how are we doing with that?

This is one of those posts I am writing to myself, just like there are sermons I write for myself. I could do a better job trying to live in the Image of Christ.

People watch us for signs of authenticity if we say we are Christians – especially when we are leaders. If we claim to follow Jesus and then act like divas, jerks, trulls, and @#*!s our behavior destroys more than our own souls. But enough preachiness. How can we aspire to be not so much like Mike, but a little more like Jesus?

It’s not enough to excel at our job responsibilities. Being a Class Act includes:

• Speaking the truth without fearing repercussions. Example: ‘Dean Smith appeared at a clemency hearing for a death-row inmate and told then-Governor Jim Hunt, right to his face, “You’re a murderer. The death penalty makes all of us murderers.”‘
• Living a life that includes the excluded. Example: ‘When (Smith) was still an assistant coach, (he) walked to the restaurant with (his pastor)and a theology student . . . who happened to be black. Then they did something radical for the day: The three stood by the door waiting to go inside. “The manager looked through the door and saw that we were there. There was a look of consternation, but the door finally opened and we were served like everybody else.”‘
• Looking out for each other even when there is no benefit for ourselves. Example: ‘I thought I wanted to coach, so I coached Chapel Hill High School for a season and then I went to Virginia Commonwealth. He was very much involved in helping me get the job,” Dick Grubar (’67-’69) said in 2011. “Then I went to Florida for another job and he had his fingerprints all over it.”‘

For more leadership tips from Dean Smith check this out.

Even pastoral ministry sometimes seems bereft of authentic leaders. But every once in a while, we see someone who inspires us and we remember what A Class Act looks like.

Thanks be to God for the life of Dean Edwards Smith (1931-2015)