A Church for Starving Artists

I almost called this post “When We Love Our Church So Much We Are Inadvertently Killing It.”

Every day of my life I hang out with people who love their church. ”Their church” is where they remember sitting in the pews as children. ”Their church” is where there are stained glass windows or pew cushions or baptismal fonts donated by their grandparents. ”Their church” is where they were baptized and married, where their parents’ and grandparents’ funerals were held. ”Their church” is about fond memories of Vacation Bible School and mission trips and choir.

Lent is just a week away and some of our congregations will gather for Ash Wednesday services where they might hear this traditional reading:

Isaiah 58:6-9 (The Message)
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

The message (and The Message) are clear and yet – if we are honest – we just don’t want “our church” to be this kind of church.

There is a huge spiritual difference between identifying “my church” as

• The place of my ancestors and memories and power base and
• The community that serves together to break the chains of injustice, eliminate workplace exploitation, free the oppressed and cancel debts. The community that shares our food with the hungry, invites the homeless into our own homes, clothes the ill-clad and is always available to our own families in the name of Jesus.

Many of us (most of us?) just don’t want to that second part that Isaiah talks about.

Sometimes we have pastors who are on fire to step in and lead their congregations to be an Isaiah 58 congregation. But their congregations love “the church they’ve always been” and their pastors find themselves frustrated.

Sometimes we have church members who are on fire to shift their congregations from focusing on “getting new members” to being the kind of congregation described in Isaiah 58. But their pastors have no energy to learn how to lead that kind of church. And members leave in frustration.

Let’s get serious: what kind of church is “our church”? Many of you will say “we are both a church that treasures our tradition and reaches out into the community.” Maybe. But which is dominant?

The truth is that “our church” actually belongs to Jesus. How does “our church” look like Jesus and how does it not? This would be a good conversation to have during Lent.

Two year-olds are not always good at sharing. On our way to Montreat Conference Center when FBC was about two, he was holding a globe-of-the-world beach ball in his car seat while watching the scenery outside. ”My truck,” he said of the truck that we passed. ”My cows,” he said of the cows grazing in fields. And finally, “my world” as he held onto his beach ball. 

That’s about right for a two year old. Or anyone who acts like a two year old.

The possessive pronoun “my” factors into our spiritual lives on a regular basis. I often hear church people refer to “my congregation” or “my committee.” I hear pastors say “my organist” or “my elders.“ This could be a word that denotes affection or it could denote a subtle form of ownership.

I am currently reading Mark Elsdon’s book Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition and I cannot recommend it more enthusiastically. The notion of ownership impacts everything about Church World from who legally owns the church building to who is the de facto owner of the tea towels in the church parlor.

In the Presbytery I serve, there are more African American Presbyterians than in any other place in the world because of slavery. And in many cases – after Emancipation – the first land that former enslaved people owned was church property. 

And Mark Elsdon points out that . . .

Essentially all land that churches sit on in the United States was at one point home for Indigenous peoples. Jim Bear Jacobs, church leader and citizen of the Mohican Nation, traces the legacy of sin made manifest in the doctrine of discovery that remains in play today when churches buy and sell property (in Chapter Six.)

Imagine the confusion when native peoples who had lived on their property for generations watched European settlers plant flags on their homeland and proclaim that they now owned it. Spiritually speaking, most Indigenous peoples believed that only God could “own land.” How preposterous that men from Spain, France, and England simply showed up and claimed that their human kings and queens now owned it.

The congregations in our Presbytery gather on real estate once the homeland of the Waxhaw, Sugaree, and Catawba tribes. How about your church?

This week I’m thinking about how “owning it” negatively impacts what it means to Be The Church. Dissertations could be written about this phenomenon, but I hope to spark some ideas about how shifting what we believe about ownership might help us be more faithful. Stay tuned.

One of the most stunningly ignorant things I’ve heard from a smart person recently was this. 

A few months ago, I was talking with a lovely 90+ year old white church lady who is generous and bright and has traveled a bit in her life. And now she is rather confined but she watches and reads the news. And she asked me about racism. 

“Do you believe that people in America are still racist?” I did not scoff at her. I did not write her off as an ignorant bigot. I told her – plainly – that, yes, people in our country are still racist. And she asked me for some examples. 

I shared with her some experiences I had as Co-Moderator of my denomination’s General Assembly while serving alongside a woman of color in that I had a front row seat to both microaggressions and macroaggressions. I heard comments with my own ears that were shockingly racist. I shared with her comments that white church members have made in my presence while serving in my current role including calling one of my Black colleagues the N-word to his face “in a friendly way” in a church fellowship hall, including discussing with one of our pastors while his church cannot host the Sons of the Confederacy for monthly meetings, including the request to remove the little Confederate flags from their church cemetery.

She listened and I believe she heard me. She’s at a point in her life when she probably will not have similar experiences. And yet she was willing to listen. She was curious to learn more.

We can probably all name people in our families, our work places, our neighborhoods who are not curious to learn about current-day racism, much less about the racist history in our country. They roll their eyes and complain about “wokeness” as if being open to conversations about racism are comparable to being open to conversations about worshipping Satan.

There are literally acts of Congress that hurt people of color in our nation’s history. To deny this is to be intentionally ignorant of facts. There are no alternative facts. 

If you tell me that you have never witnessed an act of racism – from White children not inviting Black children to their birthday parties to Black families not being able to buy homes in White neighborhoods – you are either clueless or an amnesiac.

This does not mean we hate our country. Imagine that I had an addicted great-grandfather than caused mayhem because of a moonshine habit and I wish he had stopped drinking but I still love him. Imagine that my neighbor painted her house pink and I wish she’d not done that, but she is still my neighbor. Imagine that I serve a Church that has a history of not allowing Black Christians to learn to read and yet I still love my Church.

I love my country and I know my country can do better. And I love the Church of Jesus Christ and know that we in the Church can do better.

So – friends who complain about “wokeness” or “libs” or “haters”: what would it take for us to have a healthy conversation about racism in our present days and in our history? This is a real question.

Maybe it won’t happen in 2024 or even five years from now. But I can tell you for sure that there are decisions congregations will make that will eventually close their churches.

I don’t have the authority to close a church in my role with our Presbytery. I wrote about this previously. But I’m noticing that congregations continue to make decisions that will result in closing their churches sooner than later.

Note: Sometimes closing a congregation is the most faithful choice a congregation can make. Hope to see some of you at the January 17 conversation with Mark Elsdon, editor of the book Gone for Good: Navigating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition. Maybe there’s still time to register here.

Churches: Please Make Good Choices

Congregational leaders make decisions every day. Their governing boards exist to make decisions on behalf of the congregation. Here are some choices that are – actually – decisions to close:

• The decision to hire available retired pastors instead of available fresh-out-of-seminary pastors because retired pastors don’t require medical benefits (and are subsequently cheaper.)
• The decision to sell church property to support the current budget rather than using the funds to serve the community/expand the congregation’s community outreach.
• The decision to ignore the disabled members of the congregation because “there are only three of them.”
• The decision to cut funding to the food bank instead of the paid choir members.
• The decision to shut down the church preschool because all the students were Muslim and “their parents were never going to join the congregation which is why we started a preschool – to get young families.”
• The decision not to install an elevator in the new construction “because we don’t have any people who use wheelchairs.”
• The decision for leaders to cling to their roles without recruiting and training their replacements claiming “no one will do it if I don’t.“
• The decision to keep the same “mission projects” year after year even though they have zero impact in the community.
• The decision to look down on neighbors who don’t have our education or our status.
• The decision to tolerate church bullies.
• The decision to ignore deep conflict.
• The decision to delay essential building maintenance.
• The decision to refuse Cost of Living Adjustments for church staff.
• The decision to serve ourselves and ignore the needs of our neighbors.

A point comes – after we’ve been making bad decisions for too long – when we will not have the capacity to recover. And then the healthiest choice might be to discern what life-giving legacy we can leave for others to come after us.

It’s January, folks. A new beginning. What choices will we make that help us be a healthier church in 2024?

President Reagan was shot in an assassination attempt while I was in seminary. And I remember that when a classmate of mine (who often expressed her disagreement with the President) picked up her first grader at school that day, her daughter said, “We’re glad that President Reagan got shot, right?”

My classmate was mortified. ”Of course we aren’t glad. We disagree with the President but we would never want him to be hurt.”

I grew up in a culture that seemed to believe that if we disagree with someone then we also hate them. I thought it was A Southern Thing. But I’m fairly certain now that it’s A Thing for Everyone – a widespread and destructive thing.

If you are a church person, think about a time you very much disagreed with a person on a church committee or in a Bible study. In every congregation there are “sides” in terms of worship preferences or political differences or theological contrasts. And it’s so easy to see “the other side” as an enemy – even in church. Maybe especially in church.

The often violent divisions in the world – especially in our nation – are based upon the belief that if we disagree with people we also hate them. This is unholy at the least and insane at the most. 

Imagine a world in which we hear someone express an opposing “side” and nevertheless we love them. 

Remember when Jesus challenged the Pharisees? Keep in mind that Jesus loved the Pharisees. Jesus died for the Pharisees. Jesus spoke the truth in love to the Pharisees and sometimes his words were fierce. In the end – even from the cross – Jesus exuded love.

Imagine a world in which Trump voters disagreed with but obviously wanted the best for Biden voters – and visa versa. Imagine a world in which “liberals” and “conservatives” agreed to disagree while still loving and respecting each other. Imagine people genuinely loving their enemies. Maybe we don’t like them, but we still love them.

Imagine a world in which we say, “Bless their hearts” and we mean it. It’s not just a Southern thing. It’s a universal thing.

If they know we are Christians by our love, how is that going?

Happy New Year! Let’s talk about money.

22 states increased their minimum wage effective January 1, 2024. Sadly my own state of North Carolina continues to require only the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. 

In the Presbytery I serve, we now require a minimum for churches to pay their contracted pastors after learning that some of our pastors were being paid the same hourly wage as a starting employee at Subway. For the record, our required minimum salary per hour is now $23.00 for urban and suburban congregations and $20.00 for rural congregations. Still it’s less than the U.S. average hourly pay of $34.10 for office work. The average retail hourly wage is $23.85. Both of these stats are based on The Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And here’s the thing: if a church cannot pay their part-time pastor $23.00/hour for 20 hours/week of work, they will contract for their pastor to work only “10 hours/week” knowing full well that more than 10 hours of work will be required. Often it’s the pastor who agrees to this, knowing that the church cannot afford to cover more hours or pay more per hour. But the pastor is willing. 

The problem is that this choice – to pay for only 10 hours of professional ministry per week while getting many more hours of service – is a decision to close that church eventually. It will be impossible after the underpaid pastor leaves/retires/dies to find another pastor willing to serve those same hours with that same hourly wage. (Another post is coming this week on choices we make that unwittingly close our churches.)

Catherine Neelly Burton has written an important article – The Future of the PC(USA) is Pastor-Less, and That’s OK for The Presbyterian Outlook – and she makes excellent points. In my own experience I’ve found that equipped church leaders who haven’t gone to seminary can be especially adept at pastoral care and mission responsibilities in their congregations. 

(Note: we don’t have “lay leaders” in the PCUSA since all baptized believers are considered part of the priesthood even though many Presbyterians continue to use that term. It’s not found anywhere in our Constitution.)

I’ve personally found that church leaders without strong Biblical and Theological training can perpetuate erroneous interpretation of Scripture (which can also be true for seminary trained leaders.) I’ve heard untrained leaders preach that the Curse of Ham is true, that Sodom and Gomorrah is about sex, and that the lesson in the Mary and Martha story is that some of us are supposed to be busy bees and some of us aren’t. Preachers without theological and exegetical training can mess with vulnerable people in that they are assumed to be authoritative when they are sharing long-disproven myths – like calling Mary Magdalene a prostitute. There’s nothing in Scripture that identifies Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.

Again, I know many seminary-trained leaders who have also perpetuated those myths. I’m a big fan of preachers being able to study the Bible in Hebrew and Greek in preparing a sermon. This is still a requirement in my denomination.

The truth is that Catherine Neelly Burton is right. The truth is that churches which cannot afford a pastor still deserve strong leadership. The truth is that congregational giving trends continue to fluctuate depending on many factors. The truth is that Jesus Christ will always have a Church. How we will pay for it financially will continue to vary in the future.

Check out Mark Elsden’s new book Gone for Good for more ideas.

Sometimes it feels performative. Sometimes it feels like humble-bragging. I’m certain I’m guilty of both, but mostly it’s for diarizing because I want to remember. (This is definitely the only reason I use Yelp. I want to remember where we had those perfect tacos.)

Among my favorite annual lists are this one and this one. But I newly love this list of The Best Sentences of 2023 by Frank Bruni. (Note: Bruni wasn’t talking about judicial judgments)

I started to ponder my own favorite sentences of the past year and what I learned from them that informs my life’s work. Several came to mind.

MY FAVORITE SENTENCES OF 2023.

• “I love you but you are not serious people.” Logan Roy to his children in Succession. I haven’t said this to anyone, as far as I can remember, but as we are blessed with this life and are created to enjoy it, life is serious business. Yes, we get to relish it, treasure it, enjoy it, and delight in it. Fun is essential. Laughter is the best. And also we were made to make it better for vulnerable people. Too many of our congregations have forgotten that making earth more like heaven is serious business.
• “It’s a deficit of joy.” Frank Bruni (again) about a presidential candidate who was supposed to be the one to beat this election season. When observing perennially cranky people or people whose cynicism has taken hold of their lives, I see a deficit of joy. There is no existential joy that undergirds their souls. A harsh assessment, maybe, but deep joy is crucial for God’s people. Yes, this global agony experienced throughout the world is enough to paralyze every one of us. And yet that peace that passes all understanding is no joke. Pastors especially: hold fast to this.
• “Jewish life is portable.” Malachi the dancer in The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride says this when a mezuzah is found by State Troopers in the first chapter of this delightful novel. “Don’t these things belong on doors?” the troopers asked. Malachi shrugged and noted the portability of his faith. I laughed out loud and thought – yes – our faith must be portable. It’s not just for whatever Sabbath we remember and keep holy. It’s for every day in every place.
• “Yay space.” While Barbie is driving through Barbie Land in her pink convertible, she sees her astronaut sister Barbies floating in the heavens and cheers, “Yay space!” It makes me laugh out loud every time. (Yes I’ve seen this movie more than once.) Sometimes “yay” is the only expression needed.
• “Hospice care is not a matter of giving up. It’s a decision to shift our efforts from shoring up a body on the verge of the end to providing solace to a soul that’s on the cusp of forever.” The great Robin Givhan wrote this in February about President Carter’s decision to enter hospice care. (I confess that this is one of the sentences Frank Bruni first chose as one of his favorites of 2023.) What I learned from this and remember as we begin 2024 is that we truly don’t know what the new year will bring. A tired servant decides it’s time to prepare for the end and little does he know he’ll not only survive the rest of the year, but he will outlive his beloved.

This year will bring new relationships and unexpected losses, unspeakable cruelties and gut-busting laughter. There will be new books and new songs and several clever people will write the best sentences. And God will be with us whether we acknowledge it or not.

Bless you in the New Year. Let’s do our best.

A couple weeks ago something happened in my kitchen that has haunted me. Actually it didn’t happen, but it could have.

I was feeding the dog when I got between Spense (the dog) and his dinner which is a dangerous place to stand. Spense jumped hard onto the back of my knees causing me to lose my balance and – almost – fall backwards onto the corner of the dining room table.

I once buried someone who died from falling backwards into a dining room table. (Note: much of my parenting involves this scenario. When our kids asked if they could ride a motorcycle, climb the side of a building or play with a pack of wild dogs, I usually responded, “I just buried someone who died doing that.”)

I caught my balance and didn’t hit my head but my heart was pounding and I shuttered a little and – for the rest of that day – I considered how different life would be if I had actually experienced a head trauma and my family spent that night discussing whether or not I would have wanted life support. Christmas this year would have been very different.

When people say, “It couldn’t happen to me” I find myself not only knowing it could happen to them, but not being surprised when it happens to any of us – “it” being the random fall, the fiery crash, the wayward tree branch, the out-of-nowhere terminal illness. We who are pastors have seen things. Trauma happens and it can happen to anyone. It often happens to the best people.

And so as we pray for those who’ve endured unspeakable traumas this year – and there are millions of those people – let us also be thankful for the traumas that could have happened . . . but they didn’t. We caught our balance. The crash was avoided. The falling branch missed us. The tumor was benign. Even if we have indeed suffered mightily in 2023, it could have been so much worse. In the throes of our actual traumas, it’s possible that we also had people who love us, work that fulfills us, creature comforts that soothe us.

I thank God today for the traumas that didn’t happen. And yet that’s not good enough. If we are fluent in the language of gratitude, may it fuel us with the energy and desire to walk alongside those whose traumas actually did happen. Merry Christmas, friends.

Feel free to sing along to this tune. I don’t care that it’s not really a Christmas carol. And thank you LORD for another year.

New York Times food app and Kristen Scott Thomas

Books by Cole Riley and streaming Brit dramas.

Traveling to places with beautiful scenes

These are a few of my favorite things.

(insert waltz music here)

Driving Amalfi and podcasts with women

Barbie and Ken and some sweet tea with lemon

Crunkleton tastings and babies who sing

These are a few of my favorite things.

When the dog barks, when the church frets, when I’m feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel so bad.

Also among my favorites in 2023: happy progeny settled in their for-now homes, organizations and people who invest in other organizations and people, Pink Turtle cookies, Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, Katie Porter, The Walled-Off Hotel, Crema Di Caffè, Fun Guy empanadas, the Dutch guy in Season 3 of Ted Lasso, our electric composter, homemade focaccia, Villa Rufolo, Fred’s birthday camel ride, the ordination of RME, the people who married my children, and The Word Made Flesh.

And in 2024 I look forward to the release of Evan Gershkovich (and all those imprisoned unjustly but his imprisonment is personal.) May God bless you and all in the New Year.

In my tradition (the Presbyterian Church USA) we call ordained clergy either “Ministers of the Word and Sacrament” or “Teaching Elders.” A wise pastor (thanks BW) said to me this past week that he was constantly reminding himself that as a Teaching Elder, his role involves constantly teaching people. The teaching never ends. (Also the learning never ends.)

Often our teaching involves correcting misinformation. Correcting Biblical misinformation (e.g. the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not about homosexuality; Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute), theological misinformation (e.g. the pulpit is not elevated because the preacher is the most important person in the room or because the acoustics are better but because The Word of God is to be elevated), and polity misinformation (the richest person in the congregation doesn’t automatically get to serve as an elder) is often difficult. If we’ve always believed something, we assume our beliefs were correct, especially if we haven’t done any Bible study since the third grade.

If we’ve always done things a certain way – from always worshipping on Sunday mornings at 11:00 to always having a member of The ____ Family on the preschool board – there might be pushback when someone says, “You know, we could worship at 10:30” or “Let’s elect a new church member to the preschool board.”

Correcting God’s children – especially in these days when authority figures are not always considered trustworthy – is not for the fainthearted. Obviously it’s more effective to teach in ways that don’t shame or slam people. Now more than ever, our spiritual leaders need people skills. 

It’s a joy to teach curious, interested humans. But what if God’s children in our particular context are not only incurious or disinterested, but they are unteachable? What if we serve a people who have always believed X and plan to always believe X – whether it’s true or not?

I don’t have an answer for this. But I believe this is at the crux of our political and theological divides. If we have no interest in learning beyond what we already know, it’s impossible for us to grow spiritually. The God we learned about as children is different from the God revealed to us today. The world we knew as a child is different from the world we know today. Or at least, it should be.

Something to ask ourselves: How teachable am I? How willing am I to change my perspective? How willing am I to consider something I’ve never considered before?

I believe our ability to grow closer to God and each other depends on our answers.