A Church for Starving Artists

Lord, to whom can we go?  John 6:68

So what would you do if a parishioner told you that the only reason that he is part of his church is because he needs a venue for his funeral?  He is closer to 90 than 60 and so he is planning ahead.

And while he’s been a member of that congregation for most of his life, he has neither the energy nor the interest in committing himself to the mission and ministry of his church in the community.  And yet he asks, “Where would I go if this church didn’t exist?”

It’s come to this:  The church exists – for that particular gentleman and for many we know and love – for them . . . until they die.

A missional church exists, of course, for those outside its walls.  Yes, there are people within the walls to serve too, but the church gathers to be equipped to serve out in the world.  Remember?

Older generations who have been part of the same congregation for most their lives wonder where they would go if their church didn’t exist.  Younger generations can think of all kinds of places they would go if the church didn’t exist.  (And so they indeed go there.)

As churches shift to Millennial Leadership in the next 10 years, we are going to see some creative and fantastic models for ministry.  I personally can’t wait.

Where will we go?  Even as a Baby Boomer, I’m excited about the answer to that question.

We will go everywhere there are broken people who want life to be different.

Is it possible that sermons can be ruinous to our spiritual lives? And I’m not talking about bad theology.

I’m talking about the primacy of The Sermon.

We in the Reformed tradition would say that the primacy of the sermon  is – in itself – good theology.  But making the sermon the center of all things also causes theological confusion in that:

• Most pastor nominating committees are seeking – first and foremost –  “a good preacher” rather than a strong leader who can equip the saints for their own ministry.
• When Sunday morning worship is considered the most important hour of the week, we can become self-satisfied.  I heard a sermon, so my spiritual ponderings are done until next time I hear a sermon.
• When we invest most of our energy, money, and ‘church time’ in that single hour of Sunday morning worship – if we go to church at all – we forget that following Jesus is a way of life rather than single hour commitment.
• When we receive all our theological training from sermons, we forget our own calling to study the Scriptures and reflect theologically in other venues.
• If we expect the sermon to be educational, entertaining, comforting, and compelling – and then we go have brunch and forget about it – there is no spiritual transformation or visible impact.

The sermon – to me – is dessert. If we consider it the main course we are going to die of theological malnutrition.

Yes, many of our preachers are elegant and brilliant and excellent at interpreting Scripture for daily life.  But excellent pastors are also Walking Sermons, modeling what discipleship looks like and offering spiritual reflection in every meeting, class, and conversation.  We’ve all know Good Preachers who are rarely confused for Jesus.

It’s a common joke that pastors only work on Sundays.  But the joke also lets parishioners off the hook.  If “the pastor only works on Sundays” then maybe this means that parishioners only have to practice their faith on Sundays.

The 21st Century Church offers multiple portals for entering a faith community.  Yes, there is a corporate gathering on Sundays.  But if there is something different everyday in a variety of places with a variety of practices, there are more ways to enter the community.  What if small congregations partnered with other small congregations so that individual staff members don’t burn out?

I love a good sermon.  But if it’s the only time I ponder holy things, I’m missing out on the holy stuff that happens every day.

I remember a denominational leader once advising our Presbytery:

If you like your pastor, please treat her/him well.  A spiritually nourished pastor = a spiritually nourished congregation.

What we clergy do – at its best – is spiritually nourishing work.  But it’s also lonely, unrelenting and – at its worst – soul-sucking work.  How can we support all our church staff members:  clergy, educators, music leaders, and administrators when they are serving at their best?

• Do:  Give them honest feedback – both constructive and positive.
• Don’t: Give your pastor a Hallmark Card on the 2nd Sunday in October.  Seriously, it’s kind of a scam.

• Do: Give an extra week or weekend of vacation, if  – in spite of excellent leadership – you cannot afford to give your church staffers a cost of living increase, much less a raise.
• Don’t: Forget to do annual performance reviews for every paid and volunteer member of your church staff.  Everybody gets a review.

• Do:  Surprise your church staff with random acts of appreciation.  A gift card.  One of those random cut-out fruit bouquets.  Cupcakes.
• Don’t: Make them ‘pay to work’ – e.g. paying for their own music (musicians), art supplies (educators), and conferences (clergy.)

• Do: Recognize that most of their work is unknown to you.  The average church member has no idea what we do all day long. Somebody should write a television series.  (Oh, wait.)
• Don’t:  Assume that – when you call – they are sitting at their desk just waiting to hear from you.  They have quite a bit going on.  So please try to refrain for phone calls asking for other people’s phone numbers (look it up yourself) or asking what day of the week Christmas falls on this year (again – look it up) or complaining about last week’s coffee.  Please don’t.

• Do: Encourage them to take their days off, all their vacation, all their study leave time, and – if at all possible – a sabbatical.  Your congregation will be better for it.
• Don’t: Call them when they are on vacation just because you can’t find the light bulbs or the name of the roofer.  Don’t interrupt that holy vacation at all unless it’s a catastrophic emergency.  (e.g. death, near death, something that will make the evening news.)

One of the greatest things our Presbytery was able to do this year was award 33 $1000 grants for clergy to be used for something that refreshes their souls. (Note to applicants:  the last 11 haven’t been awarded yet.)  Gym memberships, painting classes, a canoe, a weekend trip with a son/daughter, date nights with their spouses.  This might seem extravagant, but it’s actually a beautiful and subversive way to nurture our colleagues in ministry.

As church budgets are being created for 2015, my hope is that those of you who do such things will consider beautiful and subversive ways you can  nurture your own spiritual leaders.

Faithful readers:  I’m wondering what your institution’s policies are about Study Leave.

In my denomination, Study Leave is required for all pastors.  The minimum requirement is two weeks and $700 in my Presbytery, but those terms are common nationally.  As a spiritual leader’s experience increases, the church might offer the same time (2 weeks) but more funding (at least $1000.)

According to assorted manuals I’ve researched, study leave is not vacation.  There is an educational and spiritual refreshment component.  Among the common study leave practices are:

• Long-range planning and preparation for worship, Christian Education, and mission.
• Meeting with established clergy groups who share sermons, spend time with a theologian, and/or pray together.
• Taking a class in an area to broaden skills in a particular area – either for a degree or certificate or for one’s own enrichment.

After over thirty years of professional ministry, I’ve been blessed with an array of solid Study Leave opportunities.  I’ve taken specific courses on preaching, for example.  I’ve earned a Doctor of Ministry in Christian Spirituality.  I’ve attended conferences.  I’ve hidden in a cabin to chart out the upcoming year.  I’ve met with The Preaching Roundtable – a group of 16 clergywomen for 13 years.  While I’ve always reported my study leave activities to the board of elders, I’ve never asked permission to take a certain course or make a certain plan for those two weeks.

So, here are my questions for you.  (I’m asking both clergy who take Study Leave and church members who are impacted by your pastors’ Study Leave):

• Are two weeks and (about) $700 sufficient for your needs?
• Do you tend to take classes/attend conferences/workshops close to home?
• Do you run your plans by the personnel committee before Study Leave?
• Is Study Leave the same as Professional Development (i.e. can your Personnel Committee assign certain activities for your Study Leave?)

I would love to know your experiences.  Thanks.

It’s not uncommon for congregations to be business partners with their parishioners and/or paid staff members:

• The church that hires members to serve as administrators, sextons, choir directors, educators.
• The church that loans money to their pastor to cover a home downpayment.
• The church that hires a church member’s firm to paint the sanctuary, re-roof, pave the parking lot, fix the boiler.

If everything goes perfectly well:  the church staffer is excellent, the pastor pays her money back, the paving company does a stellar job – then all is well.  But what if:

• The organist – who is also a church member – is not working out.  It could be anything from addiction issues to tardiness issues to doesn’t-play-well-with-others issues.  Maybe he just isn’t a strong organist?
• The pastor is in arrears in terms of paying back the loan.  Some parishioners want to forgive the loan out right and others want the pastor to keep up with the payments.
• The paving job was botched and now it will be even more expensive to pave and correct the previous company’s work.

Now what?

We can all be adults here and talk seriously about Making Changes.  But too often feelings are hurt.  Blame is declared.  And people leave their church – either physically or emotionally, often causing congregational mayhem on the way out.

There are pros and cons to hiring members as staff or as business partners.  But mostly there are cons.  (I know these are fighting words for those who happily serve their own congregations and are compensated for it.)

There are pros and cons to serving as a bank for church staff.  But mostly there are cons.  (Yes, most pastors do not have 20% down payment for a home when they move into a new community.  But neither do other people.)

Very few congregations do this well.  If a church member is on staff, they lose their pastor to some extent.  Their pastor becomes their boss.

What are your congregations’ experiences and best practices on this issue?  The healthiest I’ve seen:

• Parishioners working for other congregations in their community. They might be active in their own congregations and so they know Church World, but share their knowledge with a church that is not their own.
• Parishioners working very PT for their own churches so that their primary salary is not from their congregation.
• Pastors borrowing money from banks rather than the church coffers.

What healthy processes have you experienced?

Image source.

Yesterday, I wrote about “good matches” between congregations and pastors or between people looking for spiritual community and those communities.  But – to be honest – sometimes saying “It wasn’t a good match” is another way of saying “This person/church/community wasn’t ______ enough.”

Another way of putting it, in a most personal way:  “You aren’t the right fit.”  Yes, we take it personally.

Maybe this code for:

• “You are too old.”
• “You are too young.”
• “You are too black.”
• “You are too white.”
• “You are too female.
• “You are too male.”
• “You don’t look like our next pastor should look.” 

I get it that Pastor Nominating Committees – for example – are looking for someone who will “fit” into an existing context.

Let’s say that all the other pastors on a church staff are all male.  Chances are you are especially seeking a female – at least if we are talking about a Mainline Protestant congregation.

Or what if you are trying to expand the racial diversity of your staff and you don’t need another white person?

Or what if your staff is comprised of several people over the age of 50 and you really want to hire someone under 40 for some age diversity?

Or what if everybody on staff is an extrovert or a Type A personality or a Myers-Briggs “J” and you badly need an introvert/laid back/”P.”

It hurts to hear “You just weren’t a good fit” or “You weren’t what we were looking for.”  Ouch.   We can’t exactly change who we are.  And we live in such a litigious society that we can’t exactly say, “We didn’t need another white, female 60 year old.”

Consider, though, that we in the Church are in the Holy Spirit business.  We need to recognize that the person we are looking for is not always the one God is guiding us to call.   

But in the meantime, here’s some unsolicited advice to those who interview candidates for church jobs – or any job:   Please don’t speak in code when turning someone down for a position.  Please don’t say, “You were not a good fit” or “You were not what we were looking for.”

Gentle readers:  What would be a better thing to say when a church nominating committee has decided to say “no”?

“It just wasn’t a good match.”  

I find myself saying this fairly often in Church World to explain to curious minds why a pastor left without a new call, or why an educator suddenly decided to move on, or why a family of new members joined a different congregation across town just months after joining our church.

Sometimes . . .

• What we expected didn’t align with what we actually experienced.
• The call of the pastor/musician/secretary/educator changed.
• The needs of the congregation changed.

Sometimes it simply isn’t a good match and that’s okay.  It’s certainly not the end of the world.

But we can avoid the pain and trouble of poor matches with these basics:

• Be your authentic self in interviews.  Yes, this economy and the dearth of good jobs might tempt us to portray ourselves falsely (“I love working with toddlers!“)  But it’s soul-sucking to work in a position that is not a true call.
• Ask hard questions and expect real answers.  Does this church exist to serve the people who are already here or to reach out to those who are not yet with us?  What are the skeletons?  What would you say that some people in the congregation love more than Jesus?
• Acknowledge that none of us is perfect.  And don’t expect perfection.  (I thought they were Christians in that church, but I heard two women gossiping in the church parking lot.)

Because we don’t have time to waste, because we were born to make a difference we need to discern – prayerfully –  The Right Match.  The Holy Spirit, of course, plays a part guiding us in the right direction.  The community plays a part in affirming us (or not.)  But it’s worth it to take the time to get it right.

Image is by Kandinsky.

When RevGalBlogPals – the blog ring – was getting started almost ten years ago, I regularly read You’ve Really Got to Love Your People – a blog written by Sarah who now writes here.  As a young adult, whenever I would complain about cranky people or selfish people or infuriating people – especially as a new pastor – my Dad would say, “Just Love ‘Em.”  It was his answer for everything.

I felt like Sarah was channeling my Dad who had passed away before I started writing A Church for Starving Artists.  (Thank you Sarah.)

Loving your people is huge, especially in the Church.

It’s possible to craft excellent sermons, create meaningful worship experiences, organize strong programs, and teach intellectually stimulating classes, but still fail as spiritual leaders because we don’t love our people.

Believe me, it’s easy to become cynical and sarcastic in Church World – even (especially?) as a leader. We hear people complain about the brand of creamer used during coffee hour or the bulletin cover art.  We receive repeated commentary on the way things used to be.  We are criticized for not juggling all duties equally – so the sermon might be weak this Sunday because we aspired to orchestrate a meaningful funeral on Thursday, or the mission trip details were shaky because it was also the week a new class was starting.  In a small church the same people are often doing more than one Big Job and we simply can’t do everything equally well.  But it’s okay.

If we love our people, the social and pastoral capital such love builds will minimize the drama of creamer brand debacles or the criticism over weak sermons.  If we authentically love our people, we can share difficult truths with parishioners that can be heard.  If we deeply love our people, we can move them into new paradigms less painfully.

Sadly, though, there are many pastors who do not seem to love their people.  And here’s another truth:  some people are excruciatingly difficult to love. They are impossible to please.  They ooze meanness.  Some of them seem to forget that church is About God and not about them.

Even love the bullies if at all possible.  It always helps me to try to imagine bullies the way God must see them.  Instead of seeing them as mean-spirited and cruel, God can melt our feelings into compassion.  Mean people are often broken and they need unconditional love.

It’s one of the first pastoral responsibilities: to love our people.  Just love ’em. And if they won’t let us love them, we then need to move on.

Maybe I’ll make a pillow.

In my little 21st Century Church Road Show, I ask this question of pastors and other leaders:

Are you more afraid of God or members of your congregation?

Fear is maybe the wrong word here, in terms of how we define it these days.  But the truth is that we sometimes try to please other people more than we try to please God.  You know what I’m talking about:

• The Church Lady who threatens emotional mayhem if we do not keep her as Moderator of the Deacons.
• The wealthy member who will withdraw his pledge if the worship hour is changed from 11 to 10 am.
• The Senior Pastor who will give you the silent treatment if you don’t agree to chair the stewardship campaign again this year.

Who has power in your congregation?  It might not be the Pastor.  Who is it?

• The ‘best friend’ of the pastor who seems to honcho The Inner Circle?
• The church administrator who controls everything from the calendar to the thermostat?
• The Associate Pastor who is a better leader than the Head of Staff?
• The two people who count the donations every Sunday?

Or is it possibly God . . .  in that the question before every meeting, decision, or activity is:  Does this please God?  Does this transform our community so that we are more on earth like it is in heaven?  Does this alter our relationship with God and each other in a positive way?  Does this bring healing and wholeness?  Does this make more faithful disciples?

If the answer is “No” we are doing this for ourselves.  It’s about us – or the person with the power.  So who has the power in your congregation?

Image from Bruce Almighty.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

Psalm 116:15

Remembering with gratitude.