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. . . especially in church.

I’ve started referring to this as The Chewing Gum Story.   Along the same lines, I remember listening to Christian radio in the car one summer, specifically to a talk show about abstinence.  As a variation of The Chewing Gum Story, what I heard was The Cherry Pie Story.  A mom was talking about how she taught her daughter the importance of abstinence by using a freshly baked cherry pie.  “Look how fresh and perfect it is,” the mom said to her daughter (and into the radio.)  “But if we take a piece out of it, it’s not fit to give that pie to someone else as a special gift.”  I remember thinking,”That was random.”  But looking back, that mom was basically trying to send the same message as The Chewing Gum Story.

According to Elizabeth Smart, she was taught by a teacher – she doesn’t say if the teacher was from school or church – that those who engage in sex before marriage – any kind of sex including the non-consenting kind – was like a piece of chewed gum.  And, of course, nobody wants a pre-chewed piece of gum.

This is why she didn’t run for help after being kidnapped as a teenager in Utah. She thought no one – including her parents – would want her anymore.

Elizabeth Smart’s words:

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

I pray that no Sunday School teacher, no Scout leader, no school teacher, no coach, no nurse, no parent ever tells a person that he or she has a life without value.  No human being is like a chewed up piece of gum.

This is the opposite of the message of Jesus.  Do we believe Jesus can redeem even the violence committed against a kidnapped teenager?  Do we believe that Jesus can redeem the violence against those women in Cleveland or other victims of human trafficking or pedophilia or other physical abuse?

We cannot allow these lies to be shared ever again, especially in a church setting.  Jesus was not out to shame us.  Jesus came to save us from shame.

Stop what you are doing right now and listen to this.  Or this.  Or this.  Honestly, these stories could change your life.

People rarely say that about sermons.

Church Consultants have been saying for years now that standing up in a pulpit and preaching a sermon is passe.  We are a visual people.  We like multi-media presentations.  We have short attention spans.

Even screens don’t always help.

Churches are finding that, even if our preachers are entertaining, charismatic, and silver-tongued,  people still will not “come to church.”   Sermon, by definition, equals boring to most of the world.

A Pastor Nominating Committee, in considering their idea of a dream pastor recently, described “good preacher” in their job description.  But then someone asked, “What do you mean by that?”  For some a good preacher is entertaining.  For others a good preacher is bookish.  For others a good preacher moves and inspires.

We can’t even agree on what makes a good sermon.

So why do thousands of people clamor to watch TED Talks (Ideas Worth Spreading)?  Why do people so love The Moth (True Stories Told Live)?  Why is Chicago Ideas Week increasingly popular in the Windy City?  And why do people subscribe to podcasts?

(Some of our favorite podcasts are actually sermons.)

If listening to sermons in church is on the decline,  why are live story-telling and live idea sharing on the rise?  I’m not talking about collaborative conversation here; I’m talking about people who will pay thousands of dollars (TED Talks) to hear interesting people stand up and talk about what’s on their mind.  There are increasingly people who will pay good money to attend Moth Story Slams and Pecha Kuchas.

Why are sermons not like other ‘talks’?

• Are church buildings intimidating?  Do they scream “intolerance” or “irrelevance“?
• Does “going to church” feel like too much of a commitment when going to a story slam feels like an easy in and out?
• Do we prefer to pick our own topics?
• Do preachers sound fake?
• Do high pulpits give the impression that preachers believe we are superior, while stages with spotlights are clearly just for the accoustics?

I wrote a doctoral project years ago about preaching as group spiritual direction and I continue to see how the very act of preaching has shifted from Dogmatic Teaching to Spiritual Reflection intended to be discussed in community.  But I also want to discuss what I hear from Brene Brown and Eboo Patel.

Can you help me dissect all this?  (Thanks.)

Images clockwise from top left:  Brene Brown, Rose George, Sarah Jones, Peter Sagal, .  None of them are preachers.

Is it okay for a pastor to hire a member of her church to paint her house?

Is it appropriate for me to send a birthday card to a former church member?

Is it wrong for you to be the keynote speaker at your former congregation’s Men’s Retreat without being invited by the current pastor?

Everybody knows that clergy are not supposed to have sex with their parishioners, right?  (Right?!)

But every day I deal with different, ostensibly more innocent situations between churches and pastors/former pastors and I am honestly at a loss.  I’m still trying to figure out my own boundaries with former parishioners for heaven’s sake.

Part of our issues are generational:  In the 1950s, young male pastors regularly married women in their congregations.  In the 2010s, it’s considered clergy malpractice even to date people in your congregation.

Part of our issues are geographical:  If you now serve a congregation on the north side of town, but the last congregation you served is simply on the west side of town, it’s easier to meet former parishioners randomly or socially.  Maybe you still go running on the same trails.  Maybe you still frequent a restaurant in the old neighborhood.  It might feel like “the old pastor” never left.

Part of our issues are familial: It’s one thing for the former pastor to keep his/her distance from  the former church, but what about the spouse and kids?  Can my kids go to church camp with kids from my former congregation?  Can my husband play golf with old friends from our former church?  Can my wife have lunch with her church lady friends?

Part of our issues are based on maturity and security:  Am I afraid that the church loved my predecessor more than they love me?  Why do I get that uneasy feeling when the former pastor makes a comment on the church’s Facebook page?  Do I joyfully invite the former pastor to church celebrations knowing that many parishioners would love to see him?  Am I retired and free from all the stresses of work, and therefore don’t really care how the current pastor feels when I invite myself to church functions?  Do I insinuate myself in the business of my former church – because I can?

Here’s the essential question:  What’s behaviors best serve the people of God?

What allows our brothers and sisters in Christ to flourish and grow?  What chains them to the past?  What sabotages current and future relationships?  What shames people?  What honors people?  What honors God?

All this has come about because these are some of the issues I’ve already dealt with this week:

• A pastor was not happy when he ran into the former pastor who then said, “Tell __ (an elder church member) ‘Happy Birthday’ from me when you see her.”
• A pastor visited a parishioner in the hospital only to find her predecessor at bedside in prayer with that parishioner.
• A pastor is upset because the former pastor’s wife wants to continue to participate in her ladies group in their former church.
• A former member of a church wants to know if it’s okay for him to apply to be the next pastor.

It’s practically impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all policy.  So what do healthy boundaries look like where you come from?

As you read this, I’m on the road driving from Charlottesville, VA to Chicagoland after celebrating TBC’s 21st birthday.  I am a mother.

Nevertheless, Mothers’ Day has always been fraught with sadness because I miss my own mother very much.  Like every day.  This loss explains the whopping majority of my pathological issues.

I had a mom for 32 years.  I’ve been a mom for 25 years.  Therefore my let’s-celebrate-Mothers’-Day-as-a-daughter trumps my let’s-celebrate- Mother’s-Day-as-a-mother by seven years.  I semi-hate Mothers’ Day . . .

which brings me to a creative business idea:  cards for people who miss/dislike/avoid/pray-they-aren’t-like their mothers.

Several of my friends are motherless for the first time this Mothers’ Day and my insides ache for them.  It’s fairly miserable. And in the effort to find just the right “I-wish-I-could-help-soothe-your-sadness” Mothers’ Day card – even at those cute, anti-Hallmark card shops, I realized that such cards do not exist.  Or at least I haven’t found them yet.  The closest I came to victory is the image shown in this post.

So, motherless ones, would you like to help me come up with pithy card sentiments?

• “Thinking about you on Mother’s Day”  (too bland?)
• “Mother’s Day Sucks”  (too sharp?)
• “Let’s get together for Mother’s Day & eat key lime pie”  (like it)

Your thoughts?

This post is dedicated to those who’ve lost their moms since last Mothers’ Day.  Love to you.

I shared in a recent post that TBC used to play church in her room by singing hymns in front of the mirror.  I’ve had parishioners tell me that their preschoolers “play church” by pretending to preach to their dolls and stuffed animals.

I wonder how most children play church.  Do they pretend to be preachers?  Choir directors?  Organists?  Sunday School Teachers?

Or do they “play church” by pretending to make casseroles for their neighbors?  Do they “play church” by pretending to stock food pantries or driving someone to the hospital or praying with somebody?

As some of our faith communities are shifting from a worship-focus to a mission focus, I’m wondering if our children are noticing.  How do the children in your life “play church”?  Or do they?

Image source.

I’ve told this story before about the church member who phoned me late at night – almost every night – to review her day, when I was a single pastor.

Me (waking up to answer the phone after midnight):  Hello?

Lonely Lady:  Hi, Pastor Jan.  How are you?

Me:  (still technically asleep)  Ok.  How are you?

LL:  Well I just watched Citizen Kane again and it’s really excellent.

Me:

LL:  When was the last time you saw it?

Me:  I don’t remember.            Are you ok?

LL:  Yes, I just wanted to chat since you were available.

Me:  Actually I was asleep.  I’m happy to talk in the morning.

LL:  But you have to talk with me.  You’re my pastor.

Me:  If you have an emergency, you can contact me any time.  But if you are calling as a friend, this can wait.

Here’s one of many problems with that conversation:  I am really NOT available 24/7, even in the event of an emergency.  Sometimes I’m driving a car.  Sometimes I’m on vacation.  Sometimes I’m with someone else during her/his own emergency.

We pastors (and other self-claimed “heroes”) need to stop giving people the impression that we are always available.  The beautiful thing about The Priesthood of All Believers is that all of us can be equipped to sit with the frantic, pray with the anxious, hold the hand of the dying.  In fact, if I am the only one doing this, I am a failed pastor.

How can we make this Biblical shift?

• When you hear someone say, “Our pastor is never available” don’t automatically believe it.  Every pastor gets at least one day off a week.  Every pastor works away from his/her office.  In fact, if your pastor does not answer the phone on the first ring, it means that – at that particular moment – he/she is probably doing ministry with someone else.  Or taking a much-needed nap after working late the night before.
• If you need “a pastor” consider who else could help you – A Stephen minister?  A Deacon?  An Elder? A person in your spiritual community with obvious gifts of compassion who is not an official officer of the church?
• Remind your spiritual leaders to keep Sabbath and don’t grouse when they do.

I used to lie in bed at night after a long work day and recall all the things I didn’t accomplish that day.  But we need to change this culture.  We have done enough, if we have done the best we can do.

Image Source.

I’ll be honest with you:  I’m feeling a little traumatized today.

Yesterday, I said “goodbye” to our home of 24 years.  Although I didn’t live there regularly since June 2011, I was there often enough to be a legal Virginia resident.  Part of that was because Cindy was sick and I popped in to check on drink wine with The Moderator.  And part of it was because our kids still officially lived in that house.  We did what had to be done to keep in-state tuition.

Last Friday morning, we said goodbye as a family, thanking God for our lives in that house.  One of the kids recalled in prayer, “The house was falling apart, but it didn’t matter.”  We loved each other in that house.

My Dad found the house shortly after Mom died when HH and I learned we’d been called to a church there.  Dad needed something to do after eight years of watching cancer ravage the love of his life,  and he randomly met a hoarder at the Rite Aid in Alexandria who sold us her house.  And then my Dad died of cancer.  We foolishly thought we’d be exempt after losing one parent.  I became an orphan at 34.  In that house.

My grandmother – who rarely left her county, much less the state of NC – visited when HH and I were installed as pastors.  It was in that house that I  entertained MV and CB and KB.  All of them are gone now.

This was the house where two of our children came home from the hospital.   This was the house where FBC marched to the theme to Inside Washington every Saturday night.  This was the house where SBC saw angels who literally saved his life.  This was the house where TBC played “church” in her room singing “Holy Holy Holy.”

This house is where the neighborhood kids divided their Halloween candy every year on our living room floor, where the high school kids met to watch episodes of “Lost” on snow days, where we celebrated 22 Christmases and countless birthdays.

This is where I recovered from cancer surgery.  This is where my brothers drew a (lame) portrait of Coach K on the wall when they were helping us paint the living room.

This is the house where the kids did their homework at the dining room table, where we buried a pet goldfish in the back yard, where we planted bulbs in the yard and played “horse” in the driveway.

This is where we had baptism parties and confirmation parties and Thanksgiving dinners, and one particular Easter dinner for people with no place to go – which was nuts considering the fact that we were also pastors and already had full schedules on Easter morning.

This is the house where I taught the kids how to bake.

And so I drove away from our house yesterday and stopped one last time at my neighborhood Caribou – which will become a Peet’s Coffee in 2014.  And the barristas came from behind the counter to give me hugs and I wept.

The other customers were amazed that these barristas were so kind to the crying middle-aged lady. Little did they know what all of us had experienced there together.  Those barristas had watched me sit with parishioners in that tiny coffee shop – one sharing the details of her divorce and another confessing his love for other men.  They’d watched me fire a church staffer there.  They’d watched me pray with people sitting right there in that crowded seating area, in that Caribou a mile from my house.

I was very young – 33 – when we moved into that house.  And now I am much older and living in a wonderful place in the Midwest, but my heart will always be on the Virginia side of Our Nation’s Capital.

Our house happened to be in a neighborhood filled with Peace Corps alums and Foreign Service professionals and wild-eyed NoVa liberals from all over the country and lots of mutts from the pound.  The schools were so diverse that our kids grew up with friends from Peru and Italy and Jordan and Ethiopia and Paraguay and Guatemala and Thailand.  I am forever grateful to – and I’m naming names here – Doris Jackson, Erin Sonn, Meg Tuccilo, John Word, Lisa LaBella, Kelly Carruthers, Amy Shilo, Loren Zander, Colette Fraley, Nancy Mohler, Joe Spencer, John Clisham, Denis Babichenko, Doug Burns, and the magnificent Mr. O’Donnell.

Yes, I’m getting personal here, but I don’t care.  Thanks be to God for friends who had nothing to do with our church lives.  I will love L & B forever.  And thank you to J. who came over when I went into labor and took the boys.

One of the truths of moving to a new part of the world as a middle-aged lady is that no one knew me as the mom of three kids under four.  No one remembers me as a soccer mom or a lacrosse mom or a chaperone mom.  No one remembers when my hair was long and my waist was tiny.

All of those wonderful times happened in a simple Cape Cod house in South Arlington with a cracked foundation and a single working bathroom.

And now new memories are happening on a lovely street in Chicagoland.  But it’s a loss.

And now  – I’m proud to say – I totally live in Illinois.

You may remember that a “dues plus” plan was introduced by the Board of Pensions of the PCUSA last winter and the Board received quite a bit of feedback.  Now there are three options being considered with a final decision to be made this summer.

Here are of couple of my naive questions:

– How much of the issue of “The Health Care Crisis” is about greed – the greed of healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, etc.?

– Is the Board willing to consider pay cuts for their own highest paid professionals?  Are they willing to shave some of their expenses?  (Meeting at the Ritz Carlton is not helpful.)

– Are we in the best paid positions with the most time in the system willing to make sacrifices for the youngest pastors with the most dependents?

Your thoughts?  And which option would you choose?

I wrote last month about our little churches and the paradigm shift needed for those congregations to have a thriving future.  My denomination is not governed by a single bishop who makes decisions – as our sisters and brothers in Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, and United Methodist have.   My denomination is governed by “corporate bishops” sort of like the U.S. Senate, which begs the popular retort:  “For God so loved the world, God did not send a committee.”

Decisions are made s-l-o-w-l-y. 

Sometimes – honestly –  I’d like to be the bishop, solely because I could move things along a bit faster.

I feel an urgency about ministry.  The world is craving hospitality, healing, forgiveness, and spiritual peace.  We don’t have time to waste.

So here we are with many tiny churches – under 50 members – and some (all?) of these churches need to close.  But we in the Presbyterian tradition do not close churches in a vacuum.  We might advise churches, coach them, and try to equip them for redevelopment.  But we are unlikely to close a church without that church’s members agreeing that this is the healthiest choice.

Nevertheless, I’m being asked more and more to come up with A Check List for Pulling the Plug.  In other words, there is a movement towards pushing our very small congregations to take a hard look at their ministry together and discern if their ministry is about God and expanding God’s kingdom – or something else.

If you were creating such a check list, what would you put on it?  I have some ideas but would love to hear from you too.

Jan’s Check List for Congregation Viability and Effectiveness:

(Please check all that apply to your church community.)

___  Our congregation meets regularly for worship, the celebration of the sacraments, study, and fellowship together.

___  We have at least four different leaders who serve as the worship/music leader, the treasurer/financial secretary, the clerk/secretary, and the pastor.

___  We have the capacity to cover all monthly financial expenses including utilities, insurance, salaries and benefits, supplies, etc.

___  We make a difference in our neighborhood by: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

___  We make a difference in the lives of our members by: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

___  At least ten members can articulate why our church exists.

___  Our neighborhood would notice if we were gone.

I would hope that a viable church could check off at least six of these items.

Again, what would you add to the list?