A Church for Starving Artists

[T]he knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are bound together by a mutual tie . . .   John Calvin*

Late one night I was called to the hospital to sit with a beloved parishioner.  She was fine, but a frenemy of hers was dying and 1) she didn’t want him to die alone and 2) she didn’t want to be alone with him when he died.

I threw on some jeans and a sweatshirt and met her at his bedside.  He was already on the cusp of eternity and as we sat through the wee hours together K. regaled me with stories about what a terrible person this guy was.  Seriously, he was not a good guy.  But she was a really good person and she didn’t want his life to end without an advocate present.

After several hours, a hospital chaplain came into the room, took at look at the scene before her and assumed that K was the grieving soon-to-be-widow and I must be their grieving daughter.  She introduced herself but she didn’t ask who we were, how we were, and why we were sitting there.  She invited us to pray so we all held hands while she offered up to God some earnest requests that the Spirit would comfort both this devastated woman as she witnessed her husband’s death and their broken daughter as they said good-bye.  The whole time we were praying, K squeezed my hand so hard that I thought she’d break it.

The chaplain left, K and I burst into gales of laughter, and then we stayed through the night until the man passed away.  I always imagined tracking down that chaplain later to share what our experience had been versus what her experience had been.

What the chaplain might have thought:  “I’m so glad I could be there to bring peace and comfort to that grieving mother-daughter team in their hour of darkness as their much-loved husband and father died.“

What K and I thought:  “She had no idea how ridiculous that whole scenario went down.“

One of the most basic spiritual disciplines involves distinguishing between what we think is going on versus what’s really going on.  One of the differences between an effective minister and an ineffective minister (and by “minister” I mean anyone serving others) is genuinely knowing who we are and how we come across to others.  As I work with people preparing for professional ministry, being authentic and knowing ourselves is everything.

*From The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.1.2-3

Image source.

The Bible is an equal opportunity offender.  We can find verses to support our political views.  And we can find verses to support the opposite of our political views.

So what about the pastor who is “never political” or the pastor who “never makes waves“?  Some parishioners seek this kind of pastor.  Nobody gets offended.  Nobody feels uncomfortable.  I’ve heard church people boast that “nobody knows where our pastor stands on anything” as if that’s a good thing.

Note what I’m not saying here:

• I’m not saying that preachers should tell people how to vote.
• I’m not saying that God is a Democrat or a Republican.  (Or a Libertarian or a Whig or a . . .)
• I’m not saying that we preachers should ever presume that we know the full mind of God.

I’m saying that:

• Jesus said a lot about money (and his words convict us all)
• Jesus was shockingly provocative about how we are supposed to treat our enemies, the untouchables, the powerless.
• Jesus was a counter intuitive leader (e.g. the first shall be last)
• Jesus was killed because he preached radical love to the point of being charged with trying to overturn the powers.

I’m saying that if we aren’t preaching about the evils of racism, idolatry, misogyny, greed, and inhospitality then we are failing to convey the way of Jesus. It will make some of our people uncomfortable but God calls us to notice when our brothers and sisters are hurting.

Again, the Bible is an equal opportunity offender.  Some of us need to be comforted.  Some of us need to be unsettled.  All of us need more than entertainment or pats on the head from our spiritual leaders.

We who believe Jesus rose up from death are called to help others rise up. Where do we stand on this?  Where are our pastors on this?

My Dad awakened us – especially on Easter morning  – with a clear tenor voice singing a song I thought he’d made up.  It was a melding of theological and familial lyrics.  A family favorite along with “Is Everybody Happy?” and “Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug Come Get Your Butter Bread.”

Imagine my shock to be sitting in the preacher’s chair on Easter morning 1984 to hear the choir of my first parish sing it as the opening anthem.  I was almost too stunned to lead worship.

It was one of many moments when I would realize that – in fact – my family and I were not the center of the universe.

• Not everybody played Monopoly by the rules we played it.
• Not everybody made lasagna the way Mom made it.
• Not everybody got summer vacations at the beach.
• Not everybody was Christian (or even believed in God) aka The-Great-Debate-Dad-had-on-a-Train-in-the-UK-with-a-Young- Atheist-in-the-Early-1980s.
• Not everybody voted.
• Not everybody went to college.
• Not every successful person was American.  (Embarrassing but true: it was news to me when I realized that the Rolling Stones were from the UK.)
• Not everybody went to the dentist.
• Not everybody had air conditioning.
• Not everybody had a passport.

And my Dad didn’t write “Up From the Grave He Arose.”  Major shock.

So part of my resurrection discipline is to continue this process of opening my eyes to the world and acknowledging how little I know about it.  During Lent, I met White Christians who still struggle to get the Confederate flag out of their sanctuaries, Presbyterian sisters and brothers whose church property includes a slave cemetery, other Presbyterians trying to heal deep and horrible wounds in Jasper, TX.  I’ve watched my home state decide to restrict the rights of LGBTQ citizens.

Resurrection is about Jesus rising from the grave.  It’s also about us reaching out to other children of God so that they might rise up to live with the dignity and respect that Jesus never got.  Jesus died for them, as well as for me and mine.

Christ is risen indeed.

I had a friend who believed that her feet and everyone’s feet were ugly.  We vacationed many times at the beach and she never once went barefoot in the sand. She was adamantly opposed to flip flops and the toe peep shoe movement.

Only cancer moved her to show her feet in the hospital because she just didn’t care any more.  She was going to meet the Maker of her feet soon and it would be okay.

I’m curious about how many people either washed feet or allowed someone to wash their feet last night.  (Please share.)

Was the story about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet read?  Were children’s feet washed?  Did adults with freshly manicured feet allow the pastors to touch them?  Most of us feel queasy about having a stranger – or even a friend – wash our feet even if we have prettied them up.  Foot washing seems especially frowned upon in neat and tidy Protestant congregations.

How do we come clean on Good Friday and admit our complicity in evil and darkness if we were not able to reveal our own feet on Thursday?  The truth is that many of us have gnarly, bony, callused, lumpy, fungus afflicted, cracked and nasty feet.  Some of us are ashamed of our feet.  We don’t want anyone – anyone – to see them.

Good Friday is the day when we remember that the human Jesus died a hideous, ugly, shameful, terrifying death because of fear and injustice by powerful people. We are complicit in the world’s evil.  And it’s something we must confess.

My heart hurts as – even on Holy Week – my brothers and sisters in Christ (i.e. people who claim to follow Jesus) have stomped on people:  LGBTQ people. Muslim people.  Black and brown people.

We need to wash each other’s feet and allow God to wash away the ignorance and evil in each of us.  Me included.

Peter said to Jesus, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”

I often write about what we need to change in the church.  Yes, we get it wrong sometimes, but sometimes we get it right.  In my current work, I observe some lovely things that congregations have done for their pastors.  Here are some favorites:

• A personnel committee member asked me “if it would be okay” to give their pastor a surprise $5000 bonus.  That would be a big yes. Even better:  add it to her continuing education budget so that she won’t have to pay taxes on it and then encourage her to take a class in Paris.
• A personnel committee asked me if I might be on a conference call with all of them to share ways they can support their new pastor.  (You people are champions.)
• A congregation who couldn’t afford a raise for their pastor added an additional week of paid vacation.
• After a pastor’s mother passed away, the elders arranged for her and her family to go to a church family’s vacation home for an extra week of vacation.
• A church that knows its pastor loves shoes gave her a gift certificate to a shoe factory outlet in the town where she was taking parishioners on a mission trip.
• The parents of a young adult couple came to worship from out of town for the baptism of their grandchild and – after they returned home – they wrote a heartfelt letter to the pastor thanking him for being such a great spiritual leader for their “kids.”

It’s a very hectic week for most of our pastors.  Show them some love.

[Note:  Thanks SB]

(The Church) does not identify limited progress with the kingdom of God on earth . . . 

My denomination is 91% white, which is an admission that will make some of my brothers and sisters feeling pretty good about ourselves (“People of color make up 9% of our denomination!“) and others of my brothers and sisters to be embarrassed that – in a nation in which white folks will be in the minority in a mere four years – our congregations do not look much like our country.  Chances are – however – that we who are white don’t think about it much.

This Holy Week – as we move through the paralyzing physical and spiritual pain of Jesus into resurrection – is the perfect time to consider our own paralysis before we celebrate that Christ is risen.

• Are we overwhelmed with the notion of connecting with our neighbors – especially if they don’t look like us?
• Are we anesthetized to the evils of systemic racism?
• Do we congratulate ourselves when a person of color or two joins our church as if this proves we are not racist?

Yesterday and every day, I was/am struck by the need for deep story sharing. Larissa Kwong Abazia brilliantly addresses this here.  And then, shortly after reading Larissa’s article, I saw this article about a white police officer who was shot and killed by a 17 year old black man in South Carolina who then turned the gun on himself.  This is a familiar story that begs for details. Yes, a young officer is dead which is unspeakably heinous.  And yet it is also heinous that a black teenager would  run when two police officers tried to stop him “for a field interview” in the Nicholtown neighborhood in Greenville, SC.  He is identified as “confirmed and self-described gang member” in a neighborhood with a high crime rate in a lovely southern city.  The layer of issues here are complicated and difficult.

Imagine caring enough about the layers to uncover the stories behind these stories.  We seek them out not so that we can congratulate ourselves for reaching out.  We seek them out because we follow One whose story is not what it seems at first look.

Some saw Jesus as a rabble-rouser set on turning over the powers.  Some saw him as their rabbi.  Some were ashamed of him.  By Friday nobody was lining up to claim they knew him.  But the truth is that Jesus was the embodiment of love.

Call me crazy, but I believe that when we listen to each other’s stories we will find the same needs and hopes.  We want to be respected.  We want to be loved.

Loving The Other is not something to congratulate ourselves for doing.  It’s our life’s purpose in the name of Jesus (who was brown, by the way.)

The quote at the top is from the PCUSA’s Confession of 1967, 9.55.  The image is by Nyle Fort.

It’s Holy Week and we remember what God was willing to do to crack
open the cosmic reality that we are loved by our Creator to the death.

[What our clergy, educators, and musicians are willing to do this week is another story for another post.  Think: long hours and family sacrifices.  For those of us for whom spring break is always Holy Week, there will be no trip to Disney World.]

For many churches who wring their hands over The Future Of Their Congregations, there is more fear than faith, more over-functioning than equipping others, more self-limitation than experimentation.

What would you – stressed out church person – be willing to do for your church?  If it meant that your congregation would surely thrive . . .

• Would you, Pastor, be willing to step aside/retire early?
• Would you give up control of the church check book or the files or the coffee pots or the flower vases or the education program?
• Would you allow the endowments to be used to invest in the future (as opposed to using it to balance the budget)?
• Would you risk calling a pastor who doesn’t look like you?
• Would you be willing to open the doors to strangers who need to be fed/tutored/counseled/taught?
• Would you be willing to give a new generation a chance?

This is the perfect week to consider what we would be willing to do for the sake of the Gospel.  It’s not about propping up the church as an institution.  It’s about being the church in a way that shows the world what God’s love looks like.

Sometimes we might be the rock blocking the tomb.  Or we could be the one to roll it out of the way to help resurrection happen.

My denomination still requires churches to submit statistical reports. Chances are that your denomination requires this too and if your congregation is non-denominational, somebody’s still keeping track of membership, worship attendance, and financial contributions.

This doesn’t always make sense in the 21st Century Church.  For one thing, statistics do not describe impact.  (And we are not making an impact we are missing the point of the Gospel.)

First Church on the Hill might have 1000 members on the rolls and an average of 400 in worship.  But they might have less impact than Little Church on the Corner with 100 on the rolls, 50 in worship, and a community dinner program where 200 gather every Friday night.

• Imagine a church that has less than 50 on the membership rolls but they provide free vegetables to school children who live in an urban food desert.
• Imagine a church with “only” 120 members who tutor 300 children after school every day.
• Imagine a church with 150 members who have provided a free computer training program to over 1000 low income neighbors.

I know all those churches. They really exist and their impact far surpasses their statistical impressiveness – or lack thereof.

So how do we measure impact?  Increasingly, I measure impact (and – in turn – church vitality) through the stories that come out of that church.  I’m not talking about data stories – although that’s a really cool field.  You start with data and create a narrative that tells a story.

I’m talking about spiritual transformation stories.  You start with resurrection and track back to how that happened.

What story from your congregation’s ministry could you tell about . . .

• The transformation of a community from brokenness to wholeness?
• The shift from congregational anxiety to trust in God?
• The movement from being a person who was paralyzed with grief to a person who could minister to someone paralyzed with grief?
• The change from fear to faith?
• The evolution of a person tormented by shame to a person who has forgiven herself?
• The creation of a vibrant church from a dead church?
• The movement from a racially segregated corner of the city to an authentically partnered people?

If we cannot tell these stories is it because we have no such stories to tell?  Or is it because we don’t know how to articulate them?

Statistics tell stories.  But we are more inspired by stories of impact and growth. And who doesn’t prefer to be inspired?

Some of us look great on paper.  Others of us look mediocre on paper, but we happen to be quite impressive in person.

This is where the face-to-face interview becomes important.  And search committees need to be ready to discern who looks good on paper and who is actually a good match for them.  It’s a bit crushing to 1) interview someone who is amazing and then that person doesn’t show up and/or 2) have a pastor but wish you didn’t.  Pastor Nominating Committees are sometimes not prepared to call the best pastor.

Among the questions I have been asked in interviews:

• What would you do if your child threw a rock through the rose window?  (Note:  I was 27 years old, child free and single at the time.  My response:  “Call the insurance company?”  Apparently the former pastor’s young child had broken a stained glass window and the congregation didn’t think he had been properly disciplined . . . so this became an interview question.)
• Is there any way you could be a homosexual?  (Note:  I was being interviewed with my male spouse and baby spit up on my shoulder.  #BestBeardEver)
• Would you ever protest anything?  (Note:  I re-asked:  Are you asking if there is anything in the world worth protesting?  That would be a yes.)

Church Search Committees sometimes ask questions based on issues with the former pastor, fears, or not-well-considered generalities that might or might not shine light on political proclivities.  We can do better.

Some of my favorite interview questions between Search Committees and Candidates:

• Share a time when you transformed your church.  (Note:  It’s also helpful for a Search Committee to share a time when the congregation was transformed.)
• Describe a time when you were a resilient leader.  (Note:  I’d also like to hear church leaders share how the congregation was resilient.)
• What books did you read last year?  (Note:  Ask if the congregation reads books together.  #OneCongregationOneBook)
• What kind of things feed your soul?  
• What sucks the life out of your soul?
• What would your non-Christian friends say about you?

What questions would you add to discern who looks good on paper and who is actually a 21st Century leader?

Image source here.  Note:  Looking good on paper is not our goal.