Category Archives: Uncategorized

[Note: Yes, I’m on a roll with the whole ‘love letters’ theme. I’m taking requests now.]

Dear Beloved Parishioners Who Want to Be the Pastor’s Best Friend,

Bless your heart – and I mean that in the most sincere way. Pastors need friends and your desire to befriend your professional minister is heartfelt. Thank you.

Thank you for remembering the pastor’s birthday. Thank you for inviting the pastor to your home for dinner. Thank you for offering to babysit the pastor’s kids. Thank you for inviting the pastor to play golf/go camping/join your bowling league/have a beer/go running/be a normal person.

Be careful.

Be careful not to confuse time spent with the pastor as ordinary friendship.

• That conversation about the state of your marriage over a salad? That was pastoral care.
• That time you helped the pastor chaperone the church kids to Disney World? That was youth group volunteering.
• That time the pastor and family joined you and your family for a big graduation party? That was fellowship time.

Yes, pastors and parishioners can be friends. And also pastors need best friends who are not members of their congregations.

Pastors need best friends who are not members of their congregations. It’s worth saying twice.

The future of your church depends on it and I’m not kidding. If the pastor’s closest friends are members of the congregation one of two things happen when that pastor leaves: 1) the pastor now has no friends or 2) the pastor cannot separate from the congregation which means the next pastor will be impacted.

It’s also important to note that you – beloved parishioner – don’t get to be the pastor’s confidant, pal, or parent figure just because you want to fulfill that role. Maybe that was your role for a previous pastor. Maybe you long to have that kind of connection with your minister. If your pastor doesn’t take you up on offers of friendship, it means your pastor has good boundaries.

As a young woman long ago, the church I was serving included other young women who perceived that we were close girlfriends. The truth is that while church members were sharing the details of their sex life, medical life, work life, and home life, they hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t sharing comparable information. I might say that I was going on vacation to the beach but that’s not the same as sharing “my boyfriend and I got in a big fight on vacation at the beach and here are the photos.” Not the same.

I once served a congregation in which my predecessor had been very close friends with the members across the street. They even vacationed together. When it was clear that I wasn’t going to have that kind of relationship with them, they considered me to be rude or unfriendly.

It’s okay not to be best friends with those who befriended previous ministers.

It’s important to have friendly relationships between church staff members and church members. And it’s also important to remember our roles for the sake of healthy leadership. I have deeply loved the congregations I’ve served and yet, they couldn’t be my closest friends. Again – I loved them and relished our relationship. But I was still their pastor first.

Please encourage your pastor to have friends who are not part of your congregation. It will benefit everyone in the future.

Your sibling in Christ, Jan

P.S. The image of Pope Benedict XVI with a friend and a beer was taken on “Buy Your Priest a Beer Day” which is apparently September 9. Roman Catholics and some Anglicans apparently celebrate this. I know other denominational leaders who’d be up for it.

Dear Pastor Colleagues,

You know how we sometimes quote 1 John 1:8 before Prayers of Confession?

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Yeah, I like that verse too. And I am also a champion self-deceiver in areas of sin, perceptions, and so many other things. (I still think I look like a middle-aged mom. I often think I’m not racist. Truth: I look like a grandmother. Racism is and will always be in my bones.) As an Enneagram 3, I continue to learn how my 3-ness helps me deceive myself and others.

So how do we tell each other that we are deceiving ourselves?

For our particular context, how do we help each other understand that self-awareness is essential to being a successful pastor? Friends – I wrote earlier this week about the importance of being teachable. This means we need to be on a constant journey to learn the truth about ourselves.

One of the ongoing issues that come to me from church members is: how do we help our pastor be a better pastor? We pastors deceive ourselves in terms of:

• Listening only to our biggest fans. (“I love it when you tell stories about your dog!”) Truth: Lots of people are done with hearing about your dog.
• Avoiding conflict. (“They’ve never liked me anyway.”) Truth: You clearly have a hard time receiving constructive criticism.
• Taking credit for things that – frankly – anybody could have achieved. (“500 new members have joined since I became pastor.“) Truth: We happened to in the right place at the right time – when new construction was booming around here and there were no other churches within a mile.
• Believing we are still as fresh and energetic as our younger selves. (“I’m still an excellent preacher. People love my accents and anecdotes.”)
• Believing we have nothing left to learn. (“Why would I need to attend a conference on stewardship when I’ve been leading stewardship campaigns for years?”)

Beloved Colleagues: please hear and believe me when I say – with deep compassion – that we might be deceiving ourselves.

I personally do not love it when people tell me that I need to change some things about the way I do my ministry. And yet, my calling is not about me. It’s about what makes Jesus happy. If I’m doing anything that 1) makes Jesus unhappy or 2) is damaging the very church I love, I need to know – even if it hurts.

For the last 15 years, I have had a group of four people in my life (4 in my last congregation, 4 in my last Presbytery, 4 in my current Presbytery) whose job it is to tell me hard things. I picked them myself because I trust them to tell me the truth. My current team’s job is specifically to tell me when it’s time to retire, in the event that I am not paying attention. They also have permission to tell me I’m spending too much time ____ and not enough time ____. They also have permission to tell me I talk too much or I am an idiot or I handled something really poorly. Whatever I need to know, they have promised to tell me.

I need this because it’s too easy for me to deceive myself. The spiritual journey is about knowing ourselves in light of being the person God has created us to be. I can be a thoughtless fool and so can you. This doesn’t mean we are failures to the universe. It means we can do better and it’s a good thing to know we can do better.

Colleagues, we don’t have to be stuck or make our congregations feel stuck. It makes Jesus – the most self aware human being ever – happy when we allow the truth to be revealed.

With love and empathy, Jan

Image is Hope by George Frederic Watts and associates (1886)

I am a Myers Briggs Introvert but I regularly Extrovert for Jesus. This means that naps are essential and quiet time between meetings makes me a better leader.

A professional minister has a daily pinball routine whether serving as a parish pastor, a chaplain, or a denominational leader. As a parish pastor one might go from a pastoral call about a brain tumor to a phone call about budget deficit to a phone call to recruit volunteers to a lunch meeting about a mission trip to preparing for Bible study to a phone call about church insurance claim to a phone call after surgery to preparing for a funeral to coffee with angry person to an in-person training for Presbytery committee. The next day might look similar but with a slot for sermon preparation or meeting someone at the ER or writing thank-you notes. The shifting gears from one thing to another thing can be exhausting.

For a denominational leader in middle-judicatory ministry the routine can be similar. From staff meeting to phone calls to reference checks to preparation for a Zoom meeting to the actual Zoom meeting to another Zoom meeting to in-person meeting to sermon writing for the church whose pastor is retiring.

Hello 9 PM Bedtime.

But here’s a little secret about this particular Introvert: I can extrovert for Jesus all day long when I see the activity’s impact on expanding the reign of God. Here’s a day that is not in any way exhausting:

Phone call with a pastor who has A Great Idea to pitch. Morning staff meeting as we mention the impactful things happening in our Presbytery. Coffee with a candidate for ordination who has a gleam in her eye. Checking in with two pastors who are finding success in a joint effort to offer an after-school program. Writing a sermon that feels like the Holy Spirit is in the room.

Of course there will always be pastoral care and administrative and other responsibilities, and done through the lens of transformation makes even the most ordinary responsibility feel life-changing. If God is with us in each moment, there are opportunities for shifting the culture to look more like heaven.

According to this article, 75% of Google’s senior leaders are introverts. This article offers excellent points too. It occurs to me that deep relationships often happen best during one-on-one conversations. Extrovert or not, successful pastors love their congregations and – if very, very fortunate – like their congregations.

And what’s especially fun about serving The Church while being an introvert is when we see the Holy at work. Sometimes it makes us so excited that we appear to be extroverts.

Image source. (Although I believe introverts can make good pastors if we are willing to practice extroverting for Jesus.)

Dear Pastor Colleagues,

If you’ve been professional ministers for over ten years, I consider you “seasoned.” You’ve had enough time to experience what pastors get to experience eventually – from glorious newborn moments to excruciating deathbed moments, from the absurdities of what some people believe about God to the Holy Spirit moments that make us weep with joy, from soul-draining meetings about things Jesus didn’t die for to majestic acts of forgiveness. Thank you for sticking with this peculiar calling. Quite of few of us don’t last more than five years after ordination.

What I also need to share is how hard it is sometimes to teach seasoned pastors anything new. Yes, some of us relish coaching, spiritual direction, therapy, and continuing education. And some of us do not.

It’s really hard for our elders, including our personnel committees to share constructive criticism with us. People – especially church people – tend not to love conflict and it feels uncomfortable to tell pastors who’ve been preaching for 10+ years that they need to taking a preaching class. (Ouch.) It’s even harder to tell pastors that they need to work on their leadership skills, their staff management skills, their pastoral skills. (Ouch, ouch, and ouch.)

No pastor is perfect and I’m not talking here about taste preferences. (“I wish our pastor had a deeper voice.“) I’m talking about universally approved good practices like:

• Address conflict as soon as possible.
• Tell your staff when they are doing a good job.
• Stand up to bullies in the congregation.
• Have your colleagues’ backs.
• Share any information your team needs to know to do their jobs well.
• Keep confidences.
• Love your people.

[Note: I’m not even addressing spiritual practices here. My sacred assumption is that you have a relationship with the God who created you and called you.]

If you don’t know how teachable you are, ask around. Ask your co-workers. Ask your spouse. Ask your personnel committee. And then listen to them. If they hesitate or give you a “sometimes” answer, take it to heart and ask for specifics. Be the kind of pastor that people can approach with constructive criticism.

What I’m not saying here: that it’s okay for people to use you as a punching bag. No.

Every pastor deserves to be treated with respect and grace. Every pastor deserves to be paid fairly. Every pastor deserves every second of their day(s) off, vacation, study leave, and sabbatical time.

And know that every pastor can improve how we do what we do. I love you. Be teachable.

In Christ’s Service, Jan

Quote is from leadership educator Todd Whitaker, the author of Shifting the Monkey (and over 40 other books)

Dear Congregations Seeking a Part-Time Pastoral Leader,

First of all, please know that you deserve an excellent minister. It’s the role of the Presbytery (or other denominational entity) to give you the best options possible which means that we want your future pastor to be equipped spiritually, theologically, and ecclesiastically. My role is to offer suggestions and I will only suggest candidates who have proven leadership chops and can pass a thorough background check. You deserve healthy, gifted leadership.

There are a couple things you need to know as the Holy Spirit helps us with this:

• You will have a limited pool of candidates- Part A. Almost no one will be willing to move to this geographic area for a part-time position. They will not uproot their families to serve in a position that will not cover their living expenses, and because this PT position is almost certainly a contracted position (as opposed to a settled pastor who is installed) there is no certainty that this position will last more than a year. It’s not financially savvy to move here for a position that is insecure and low-paying. This means you will be not be doing a national search.
• You will have a limited pool of candidates – Part B. You will possibly need to consider candidates who are female, LGBTQ, immigrant, differently-abled and living in differently-colored skin. You might be looking at trained Commissioned Elders. You might be looking at not-yet-ordained seminarians. This could be God’s amazing way of helping your congregation stretch a little. (See: God Gets Everything God Wants.)
• You will need to pay this pastor accordingly – Part A. The Presbytery I serve will require salaries of $23/hour (or $20/hour for rural congregations) by 2024. If you cannot afford this minimum requirement, you cannot afford even a PT pastor.
• You will need to pay this pastor accordingly – Part B. It’s unfair and unfaithful to expect a PT pastor to work Full Time. I actually hear church folks comment out loud that they will get a FT pastor for half the price. This is not true. The average pastor in my denomination is expected to work about 50 hours/week. For 25 hours/week you get a worship leader who does emergency hospital visits plus a Bible study. You don’t get someone who attends every meeting, creates a stellar outreach program, and starts several new mission projects.
• Your PT Pastor will most likely have an additional vocation/job. You will need to share this leader with another church, a hospice, a hospital, a school, or a Starbucks because few of us can live on a PT salary. This will help keep you honest in that your PT Pastor will not be available to work FT for you even if that’s your expectation. Also: sharing a pastor with another church is a blessing. It helps us break out of our understanding of congregations as lone rangers in closed systems.

Church, you are not alone is finding yourselves unable to call a FT leader. Both before and “after” COVID, congregations have become smaller and institutional giving has become splintered. Church tithing used to be the most popular form of charitable contributions in this country, and now the requests for our philanthropy range from school candy fundraisers to alumni organizations to political candidates to charities for everything from sick children to sick whales to this kind of thing.

Retired pastors might be exactly what best serves your congregation. Keep in mind though, as you are saving money not having to contribute to their retirement or medical benefits, that retired pastors will most likely not be on the cusp of new possibilities for your mission. Or maybe that suits you. If you are happy with the way things are going and your mission is primarily to serve your current members, a retired pastor might work very well.

We will help you find the best available leader, Church. But keep in mind that availability is the operative word.

In hope and faith, Jan

Last Wednesday I had an overwhelming craving for sweet tea. I grew up drinking sweet tea and at family reunions, there was special sweet tea made by aunts who had particular recipes. Aunt Rena’s sweet tea was especially lemony. Aunt Virginia’s sweet tea had less lemon but no less deliciousness.

Because sugar is now frowned upon, I only drink sweet tea on special occasions these days. Last Wednesday was hardly a special occasion, and yet I needed the comfort of a happy childhood and warm memories.

As a pastor and cousin and sister and observer of Memorial Day, I encourage all readers today to find something that comforts your soul. For those who remember a soldier or sailor who died in war, for those whose hearts are heavy because of the state of our gun-loving nation, for all who feel nothing because we are numbed by statistics, for all will spend this day enjoying picnics and sales – I ask you to find something that brings you comfort. Maybe it’s sweet tea or maybe it’s fried chicken or maybe it’s a photograph of someone you have loved.

Yesterday, I had a Sunday off – as in there was no place I needed to be to teach or preach or recognize a church milestone. And so I chose comfort food: worship online with my home church and then another worship online with my former General Presbyter. Both were blessings that fed my soul.

May you seek whatever comforts you today finding hope in the presence of all that’s holy.

I’ve been thinking – for obvious reasons – what makes us better humans? Here’s my off-the-top-of-my-head list:

• Respond to feelings with feelings. (Don’t follow a feeling with a fact.) When I say, “I’m really sad because of what’s going on in the world,” you say, “It makes me feel so sad too. And angry.” You don’t respond by saying, “That gunman was mentally ill.” And please don’t follow my feeling with silence as if I didn’t say anything.
• Show up for people. Go to the funeral. Remember the death dates as well as the birthdays. Send the sympathy letter (preferably with remembrances of specific things you loved about the person who’s gone.)
• Send flowers or some other signs of beauty. When things are tough, it’s comforting to be in the presence of beauty.
• Don’t try to fix things. The hardest things in life cannot be fixed – unless someone needs money. If you can share money, that might relieve an immediate burden.
• Don’t should on people as in “You should have ____.” Never do this.
• Don’t make life all about you. It’s not always your party, your story, your moment.
• Care about people who are not in your family or friend groups. All people were created in the image of God. Even the dirty ones. Even the mean ones. Even the gunmen.
• Be teachable. I tweeted something thoughtless yesterday and someone was kind enough to let me know. Thank you N.

This is a starter list. What would you add?

I wrote a different post for today, but it will wait.*

Our FBC teaches high school in Alexandria, Virginia and one of his students was stabbled to death yesterday during the lunch period. But nobody will remember this tragedy because of what happened in Texas on the same day. I have nothing else to say.

*There was a typo when this was initially published. I’d typed “wail” instead of “wait.” It was probably more true with “wail.”

I’ve been writing some hard posts about the Church lately. Maybe all of them are hard, but the truth is that I say hard things in hopes of moving this Church we love to change. The world craves joy and relief. We can be a Church that offers that.

The world is so deeply troubled (did you see this in the news yesterday?) and yet I see the Church as a way out when we let God be God. I continue to delight in the fact that the Spirit of living God continues to move through human beings. Sometimes it takes floods, fires and wandering for 40 years, but the God of love will always win.

Let’s look at times when love has won. Call this post a spiritual palate cleanser.

Katie Hays pinpoints such Behold Moments from scripture in her book (here.)

• That time Cornelius the Gentile (aka Not One of God’s Chosen People – or so some assume) gets baptized by Peter after Peter has a vision that no food is unclean and no person is unclean.
• That time Paul (who used to terrorize Christians) was baptizing formerly unclean people which is really strange since Paul is usually such a rule keeper.
• That time the rules on circumcision changed which seems to defy everything it says about circumcision in Genesis.

People of faith sometimes refer to “God Moments” as in those times when something holy happens in the grocery store parking lot or during book group. Yes, to God Moments, but there are even holier, more amazing things that go unnoticed or underappreciated every day. Katie Hays calls these “Something, Something Holy Spirit.” They are the moments that blow us away as God reveals something unexpected and unspeakably gracious.

“Everybody Jesus ever met had a story to tell,” writes Hays.

What are your stories? Here are a couple of mine from fairly recently:

• That time a Transgender woman visited a church for the first time and the congregation got to know her and love her to the point that an elder told me that his friendship with her helped him understand his Transgender granddaughter who’d been estranged from the family.
• That time a church took a chance on a young clergywomen (after saying they had no intention of interviewing any women) and found their dream pastor who has changed the mission mindset of their whole county to look more like Jesus.
• That time a church gave all the money in an underused scholarship fund for church members to the children of Muslim refugees so that they could attend community college.
• That time a pastor left an emotionally abusive situation that was killing her soul only to be called to a new position that fills her soul to the brim.

I’ve seen these things and more. In every situation these stories are a result of people letting God do God’s thing. In the thick of the world’s hot messed-ness, let’s remember that if we let God be God, amazing things happen.

An elder once told me as a new pastor that ____ (a leader in the congregation) would be an essential person in my ministry. “We couldn’t live without her.” Turns out that leader became one of those saboteurs I wrote about the other day.

If you are a Church Person, you know that there are certain sacred cows in every congregation: the beloved retired pastor, the historic preschool, the cemetery, the annual fundraiser, the choir director, the memorial windows, the 9:30 Sunday School, the Big Givers . . .

The list is endless.

Those who try to tip over those sacred cows are often vilified. The ones who try to prop them up again are accused of not moving forward. What we need to do is work together – the traditionalists and the change-agents – to faithfully serve the Church we are called to be. Not the Church we once were. Not the Church we wish we were.

We must be the Church God is calling us to be right now. And we can’t be that Church if we are afraid.

So what if the very thing we value most is what’s killing us/keeping us from being the Church we’re called to be? Examples:

• We loved Pastor Joseph so, so much and under his leadership we grew like we’d never grown before. We will never find another pastor like him. (The Killer: Every subsequent pastor will fail when compared with Pastor Joseph and this makes it impossible to move forward. Times are different from when Pastor Joseph led us and it’s time for noticing that this time calls for a different kind of leadership.)
• We long to have young families join us to help relieve tired volunteers and regenerate the congregation. (The Killer: Yes, young families are wonderful and they are also overwhelmed these days. Chances are that young parents will not be able to volunteer like 1970s stay-at-home moms. And there are members who are not “young” but they have much to offer if we will allow them to lead.
• We love our history and must continue to cling to it. Our cemetery includes war heroes. Some famous people have preached from our pulpit. We were the first church to _______. (The Killer: Notice that the oldest churches in Christendom are long gone. If we allow ourselves to become a museum, we will die. What is God calling us to be and do now? The world is craving Good News.)
• We can’t live without this wealthy widow/this energetic deacon/this longtime treasurer/this beloved organist. (The Killer: That Very Important Person can hold the church hostage, threatening to leave if things don’t go their way.)
• Our sanctuary is not to be touched because we love those pews, those windows, that organ, all the plaques. (The Killer: A huge sanctuary built for 500 but looking empty with our congregation of 75 feels cavernous. The whole set up might be unfriendly to people in wheelchairs, people with nursing babies, people with hearing issues, people who don’t listen to classical music on the radio.)

Let’s say that the congregation calls a new pastor and everyone’s feeling great about the future, agreeing they can never return to their (glorious?) past. That’s just the first step. There will be challenges because, when a church agreed to changing some things, they didn’t imagine they would be asked to change their favorite things.

Sometimes the very thing we value most is also the thing that’s killing us.