A Church for Starving Artists

It’s been a long time since I felt expectations laid upon me as a Pastor’s Spouse. Gone are the days when I might be expected to direct the choir or teach Sunday School by virtue of being married to the Pastor. And yet, I still hear comments about The Pastor’s Spouse.

It’s still weirdly true in many church circles that opinions expressed regarding the Pastor’s Spouse are okay:

• “She doesn’t seem to like us very much.”
• “He’s never here on Sundays.”
• “She spends a fortune on clothes.”
• “He seems to be a good father.”

Yes, people talk about each other in congregational settings but conversation about the Pastor and the Pastor’s Family seem not only common. It’s routine.

Those of us with spouses are grateful that “the role of our spouse” is no longer part of our annual review (seriously, this was once a thing) and yet – across all professional and private roles – what Spouses do can impact our own reputations. Exhibit A: Ginny and Clarence Thomas. It feels hugely inappropriate for her to have business/relationships/opinions that bleed into his role as a Supreme Court Justice. A Pastor friend of mine shared a while back that her spouse’s letters to the editor of their local newspaper expressing views on everything from abortion to immigration were impacting her own ability to be a Pastor. People assume she has the same opinions as her spouse. Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t.

But this has me thinking: Our spouses are their own people. And yet . . .

• What are spouse boundaries in terms of their personal activism?
• How do my spouse’s relationships impact my own professional life?
• Are spouses obliged to keep their opinions to themselves for the sake of the Church?

I was once asked in an interview (when I was a young single female pastor), if you moderate the Session, who will bake the brownies for the meeting? True story. I’m glad those days are over. And if they aren’t over where you live, I hope you address it.

HH and I are a team. And yet we are our own people.

What are your thoughts about spouses and boundaries? And this is not just a question for clergy families.

Two quick stories:

1. As HH and I were recently landing at JFK from our travels, the flight attendant came on the intercom and asked all passengers to remain in our seats for fifteen minutes before disembarking. There was a medical emergency and the aisles would need to be clear so that EMTs could board with a stretcher. As soon as the plane landed about half the passengers stood up, retrieved their carry-on bags from the bins and stood in the aisles. Had they not heard the flight attendant’s request? Then the captain took the mic and asked everyone to who was standing to return to their seats so that the medical personnel could get a stretcher down the aisle. Nobody moved. Seriously. No. Body. Moved. The EMTs boarded and made their way down the aisle around the passengers with their carry-ons and then escorted parents with a sick child who was in their father’s arms because they couldn’t get the stretcher down the aisle. This happened on August 2nd on Delta Flight 235.
2. When I was a parish pastor, I was told that one of the Sunday School teachers had tossed the curriculum and was teaching her students etiquette instead of Bible lessons. Her own daughters were in the class but the etiquette was needed for the other students, she later told me, because they had not been raised right in her opinion. None of their parents attended our church which – she explained – was probably why they didn’t know how to dress or eat their snacks properly. Her concern was that “they didn’t really belong” in our church. (Her words.) This was in the early 1990s.

Meanness, rudeness, sadness, and loneliness are not new in our culture. And yet it’s getting worse.

Please read this 2023 article by David Brooks. I don’t always agree with him, but he rightly notes that our culture is a hot mess. According to Brooks, we can blame:

Technology  – “Social media is driving us all crazy.”

Sociology: “We’ve stopped participating in community organizations and are more isolated.”

Demography: “America, long a white-dominated nation, is becoming a much more diverse country, a change that has millions of white Americans in a panic.”

The Economy: “High levels of economic inequality and insecurity have left people afraid, alienated, and pessimistic.”

Actually, though, Brooks says the true reason for our moral demise is this:

We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.

I would put it another way:

We have utterly forgotten that every human being has been created in the image of God.

Do we need lessons in etiquette, emotional intelligence, regulation of our own emotions, morality and cultural awareness? Probably. But mostly we need spiritual maturity and by that I mean that we need to learn – and this is lifelong learning – about loving our neighbors simply because they bear the image of God. I include in this list kids who don’t dress well or know which fork to use, sick children on airplanes and their exhausted parents, rude people, Donald Trump, and people who criticize the Barbie movie even if they haven’t seen it.

This was once a role of the Church but – honestly – there are so many examples of how the Church has failed here. It’s no surprise that most people (and the numbers are increasing) don’t look to the Church for teaching what the love of God looks like.

We in the Church are often too busy covering up misconduct, keeping bullies happy, or perpetuating an institution rather than deeply loving God and neighbor as (we think we are loving) ourselves.

We are not loving ourselves when we are greedy, self-centered, clueless, and disdainful. And yet I actually hear people boasting about how the meaning of life – for them – is about:

• Looking out for me and mine
• Clinging to grudges
• Destroying rivals
• Taking advantage

Church People: I have no answers about how to get more people to your congregation’s Rally Day (aka Sunday School Kickoff) in September. But I will ask another question:

Look at the DNA of your congregation and note what about your church’s programming, mission, worship, and hospitality teaches mean, rude, sad, or lonely people how to be different?

Image of Hot Mess Barbie. She’s everywhere.

Warning: Spoilers. Sort of.

I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know but I’m not sure now
What I was made for
What was I made for?

From What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish from the Barbie movie.

We are not our jobs no matter how important they might be. We are not our houses or our cars or our vacations no matter how impressive they might be. We are not our relationships. We are not what somebody paid for.

We were made because . . . God.

And we don’t always have to be on our toes.

One of the reasons I’m not a fan of complementarianism is because God created us for different purposes that are not always gender-specific. Even in Scripture, women can be prophets, entrepreneurs, judges and spiritual leaders. I believe that while we have different particular purposes, all of us share at least two:

• We are called to be the person God created us to be.
• We are called to treat others as God created them to be.

Valued. Loved. Honored – just for being us because that’s how God created things.

Image of Margot Robbie from the Barbie movie.

P.S. I love this article in The New Yorker that includes the fact that “Gerwig presented (film) executives with a poem in the style of the Apostles’ Creed“ when pitching her idea for the film. I hope somebody still has that poem.

Some sabbaticals have themes. For my first sabbatical (2002) the theme was “recover from cancer surgery.” A sabbatical had been planned but it was replaced by 12 weeks of recovery from surgery, most of which I don’t remember. #Percoset

My second (really my first) sabbatical, was just a couple years later when the theme was “places where churches thrive but followers of Jesus are in the minority.” I spent time in a couple U.S. cities known for their lack of churchiness and several Muslim countries, thanks to the Lilly Foundation.

This year’s sabbatical had no set theme except to rest. I rest by reading and writing and drinking coffee in lovely places and staring into space looking at wondrous things like ancient ruins and turquoise seas and rocky cliffs. I finished reading Awe and realized that this is actually a sabbatical about wonder. Thank you God.

And this brings me to the spiral staircase. HH and I rented a place with an awesome view. That’s pretty much why we chose this place. It’s not fancy but the view is spectacular. And it has a spiral staircase.

A spiral staircase is one of those home features like a fire pole or a canopy bed that I always wanted in my home as a child. A spiral staircase is a space saver but – after about 3 minutes – I was over it And yet, a couple weeks living with the spiral staircase have worked well in terms of slowing down.

You can’t run up or down a spiral staircase. Really, you can’t.

Also you can’t carry many things on a spiral staircase. It’s tricky carrying a load of laundry much less a piece of furniture. But it’s kind of growing on me – not to the extent that I need one – but in terms of appreciating the requirement to move slowly especially upon approach. We’ve banged our heads more than once just walking up to it.

And so this is sabbatical 2023. I am in awe of so many things I’ve seen, conversations I’ve experienced, foods I’ve eaten, people I’ve observed. Dacher Keltner says that “awe awakens the better angels of our nature.” Yes, and it does more than that. Future posts.

I’ve needed this. Actually all of us need it.

I’ve been keeping my boundaries in terms of “not working” during sabbatical but one thing keeps gnawing at me and it’s something I hope to do when I return in September. How can our Presbytery make it possible to gift sabbatical time/funding for church professionals who ordinarily do not receive one (i.e. transitional pastors, temporary supply pastors, part-time pastors, pastors in validated ministries, musicians, educators, administrators)? And how can we assist their congregations in making sabbatical possible?

We have a few more days at this location with our spiral staircase. I’m going to miss it, but not as much as I miss our view of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I’m thoroughly drenched in privilege and I hope to share it.

One of our family’s favorite stories is about the Beatles Walking Tour we took in London in 2007. The five of us joined about 10 other tourists and an entrepreneurial Londoner who led us through the neighborhoods where the Beatles and their friends once lived. It was very entertaining. Near a flat John once rented was a bus stop and our tour guide offered that “This is the place John and his mates could have caught the bus.” Or not. We stood outside Jane Asher’s townhouse and our tour guide noted that “This is the place where Paul might have entertained his friends.”

As HH and I finish our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I’ve thought about that Beatles Tour and how entrepreneurship even impacts our religious sites (although many would consider a Beatles pilgrimage to be holy.) Overheard by tour guides and seen on road signs:

• “This is the actual Jerusalem Thorn bush used to create Jesus’ crown of thorns.” (Note: most of these bushes do not live for 2000+ years and it was not our guide who said this.)
• “This is the place where Jesus body was prepared for burial.” (In The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.)
• “This is the place where Jesus body was prepared for burial.” (In The Garden Tomb.)

My favorite discovery this trip was the road sign that pointed to “The Good Samaritan.” Keep in mind that The Good Samaritan was not an historical person and there was no historic “inn” where the G.S. took the man robbed on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Jesus made up parables to explain what God is like (much like Aesop wrote his fables to teach life lessons.) It’s one thing to venture a guess where Jesus was buried based on scripture and tradition and science/archaeology. It’s another thing to point to a place where an imaginary person spent time. Imagine seeing a roadsign in Kansas pointing to “Dorothy’s house” or a German map marking where Rumpelstiltskin lived.

Our guide said that there’s an inn off the Good Samaritan exit that tells about the life of Samaritans (who were real people) and posits what it might have been like if someone had been mugged on the highway and needed an inn.

Jesus – the rabbi – told shocking stories about prodigal sons and lost sheep and unforgiving servants as a literary device to explain theological truths. There was no literal Good Samaritan and yet the story is true theologically. Some believe that the Hebrew story of Jonah is also a parable explaining the lengths God will go to get us to obey our calling.

As our wise leader of this pilgrimage said the other day, it doesn’t really matter where it happened. It matters that it happened. Amen to that. God is bigger than our human tendencies to want to control and own God’s story.

We worship and revere God is different ways and those varieties of practices are in moving display throughout the Holy Land. Some of us wear a hijab or long skirt. Some men wear skull caps and/or side curls. Some of us build magnificent mosaics with thousands of tiny tiles. Some of us tend to simple gardens. Some of us sing 19th Century hymns. It’s all beautiful and holy and good.

The difference between a vacation and a pilgrimage is that one is intentional about seeking God’s direction. And yet vacations can also include moments when our hearts are full and our minds are curious about holy things. This is the true place – our hearts, our minds, our bodies – where God shows up.

The opportunity to read with total abandon (i.e. I’m not reading for a sermon or class) is so sweet. I’m reading/have read:

• The Song of Significance by Seth Godin (thanks Landon Whitsitt)
• Sustainability Through Soccer: An Unexpected Approach to Saving Our World by Leidy Klotz (thanks Leidy Klotz)
• Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder by Dacher Keltner (thank you Sandra Smith)

Each is mind-blowing in its own unique way but they have common themes about life’s purpose and transforming the world. Some of my favorite things to ponder.

As I head into the second month of sabbatical, traveling as lightly as possible, I’m obsessed enough with Awe to carry it in my backpack even though it weighs a solid three pounds. I love this book. The author, Dacher Kelter was a consultant on the Pixar movie Inside Out and he teaches “meaning of life” classes at Berkeley. I strongly recommend this book.

Wonder, the mental state of openness, questioning, curiosity, and embracing mystery, arises out of experiences of awe. In our studies, people who find more everyday awe show evidence of living with wonder. They are more open to new ideas. To what is unknown. To what language can’t describe. To the absurd. To seeking new knowledge. (Chapter 1)

As I sit in the sun and read, I’m noticing new awe-inspiring things. The hummingbirds have returned to our balcony – even though we haven’t put our feeder out this summer – and they seem to hang in the air longer, sometimes right in front of my face. The other birds seem more interesting too. There are five bunnies that live in the woods where I walk our dog every evening and they are beautiful as they freeze in place, hoping Spense doesn’t notice them. (He doesn’t.) The view outside my favorite coffee shop is alive with conversation and a most beautiful diversity of humans that either Harvard or UNC Chapel Hill would be delighted to matriculate.

All these books and thoughts speak to what I’m writing too. (It’s a book.) If you are so inclined, I ask for your prayers as I write this summer. Short blog posts are less intimidating.

Blessings to you as you consider the wonder that awe produces. More later in August.

Hi there. I’m Jan and I’m an evangelical Christian even though some people don’t include me in that cohort. I wrote about this in 2015 but would like to elaborate now that our siblings in the Southern Baptist Convention have removed our sister – the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham – and her congregation – Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky from their denomination. I feel deeply sorry about this – mostly for the Southern Baptists.

According to the National Association of Evangelicals website:

Evangelicals take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The term “evangelical” comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “the good news” or the “gospel.” Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the “good news” of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ.

• Evangelicals take the Bible seriously. Check. I take it so seriously that I even read the less familiar parts – in Greek and Hebrew.
• Evangelicals believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Check. Jesus has saved me, is saving me, and will save me.
• The term “evangelical” comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “the good news” or the “gospel.” Check. Again, I can read the Greek. My denomination requires it.
• The evangelical faith focuses on the “good news” of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ. Amen and amen. I am a sinner in need of a merciful God and so are you. Also – if you read the Bible – you know that God doesn’t rank sin. My gluttony is no better or worse than your adultery. And yet we are called to confess, repent, and try to do better. Here’s the tricky part: when we do better then we invariably sink into the sin of Pharisee-ism. Dang it. We can’t win.

Do I believe in conversion? Absolutely. I’ve watched the hard hearts of mean people melt. I’ve seen people broken by addiction continue to recover. I’ve watched estranged family members come back together. We are drenched in sinful behavior and God makes it better. I want that for all people. I need it for myself.

Do I believe in Biblicism? Sure, but I also want to be clear. We don’t worship the Bible. The Bible is more than “the words of God.” We don’t believe God recited all the words (that would be Islam, my friends) and we acknowledge that humans wrote it (often using only consonants back in ancient Hebrew) and so there is room for interpretation. Also, there are no “original scrolls” that we can check to be sure we’re correct about abominations and how everybody was feeling about animal sacrifice. The oldest scrolls look like this and they were written on papyrus during the Second Temple Period (about 516 BCE–70 CE.) If you don’t know about the Second Temple, please read your Bibles. (Note: Moses didn’t write the Torah. If he did, there’s that tricky part in Deuteronomy when Moses died.) And I believe that the Bible is true – even inerrant in that it always points to the Truth. But it is not always scientifically or historically true. And – this is a serious suggestion – if you believe in scientific and historic inerrancy – please read your Bibles and note that the mustard seed is in fact not the smallest seed and Judas historically died in two different ways. This is not a problem. Jesus told parables which are stories he made up because he was a rabbi and that’s what rabbis do: they explain who God is through stories. (This also means there wasn’t a real Good Samaritan or Prodigal Son even though those stories are totally true. See?)

Do I believe in Crucicentrism? Yes, although I don’t ordinarily use that word. My theory of atonement is that God loved us so much that God would die for us and be raised for us. Because Jesus lives, so do we. And do I believe that people who don’t claim Jesus as Lord and Savior are doomed? Not. My. Role. I believe in a loving God (see above) who is just and I’m very glad I don’t get to judge who’s in and who’s out. Not worried.

Do I believe in Activism? Definitely. We are called to actively seek God’s will so that it will be “on earth as it is in heaven.” We are supposed to be like Jesus who touched lepers and bleeding people and even dead people. And the Spirit moves us to baptize eunuchs and heathens and include them in leadership.

A couple other things:

I am pro-life. I believe that the life of a minor child who’s pregnant is at least as valuable as the embryo or fetus growing inside her. I believe that children in refugee camps are at least as valuable as the unborn. I believe that women and non-binary people were created in the image of God, along with men. I believe that God not only loves us; God calls us to serve and lead.

How do I know this to be true? The Bible. And if God wants to call a murderer, a cheating twin, an adulterous king, a tax collector, multiple women shamed by their community, a blind beggar, or any of us – God gets to do that. Because only God is God. I trust that God calls all kinds of people we would probably not expect in leadership. It’s in the Bible.

So when anyone in the Church excludes those who don’t fulfill their own human understanding of who God is, who God loves, who God calls, it makes me nervous. I thank the LORD for having mercy and grace beyond measure. And I pray we’ll do better.

God bless the Southern Baptist denomination today. I think you got it wrong, though.

Image of the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham and this post is dedicated to Jeff and David. Happy 9th Anniversary, brothers.

Less than two weeks into my sabbatical, I see themes that pull these days together in holy ways. One can plan a sabbatical, a vacation, a wedding, a life and – as we all know – the unexpected always happens. I’m leaning into that.

After reading this article by Tish Harrison Warren, I discovered Andy Crouch who works for an organization I want to know much more about. They sound like my people.

Chapter 12 in Crouch’s new book is The Chain of People and he quotes my own worship professor from seminary – Horace Allen – who was so brilliant and lovely. (Horace lived in a train car in Boston.)

Each of us is only a couple chain links away from huge historic moments in world history. Only four generations/chain links before me were family members engaged in the U.S. Civil War. Just a few chain links before that were ancestors who took a ship from Ireland to Philadelphia who would later die in battle during the Revolutionary War.

But Horace Allen – according to Andy Crouch – taught that . . .

“all of us who read the Bible are just one generation away from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we read the Bible, we are hearing of his life and the first-century church from those who were at most one or two steps removed from the ones who could personally describe, with the writer of the first letter of John what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.”

Yes. We are connected more closely than we realize.

I didn’t plan this, but my sabbatical thus far has been about connecting with the people in the long chain of those who have made me who I am today. I had a meal with TBC’s best friend from age 8 and there is something about spending time with a young adult who grew up before your eyes that’s particularly special.

Today I zoomed with a couple whose wedding I will be honored to officiate in September and – when the bride was a toddler – I watched her and her sister in Arlington, VA while her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother (who was a member of the church I served) had a ladies’ lunch. The connections to this bride’s family will be with me for the rest of my life.

I spent a day in the Augusta County Historical Society offices in Virginia reading sermons that my 5th Great-Grandfather – David Turk Edmiston – would have heard sitting on a hard wooden bench in a church he chartered with several other settlers from Ulster, along with his wife and six children.

I’ve spent quality time with FBC and his oldest friend as we thanked God that they were raised in such an extraordinary place (Northern Virginia) with friends and neighbors from all over the world.

I’ve got other plans coming up to spend time with college friends, cousins, clergy colleagues and of course HH – who is the most essential link on my chain of people. God is teaching me how to help us thrive as the Church in these conversations – whether I’m planning for that or not.

We belong to each other. At least this is what God intends.

For all the missteps and heinous acts of the Church through the years, I still don’t know a better way to be a community than being The Church – at least as God calls us to be the Church. Although we have conflated “church” with stained glass windows and choir robes and even Bible studies, the Church – as God intends – is about defeating dehumanization and showing what God’s love looks like.

These are priceless days to relish such ponderings. Our connections make us who we are and there are so many other connections to make.

That’s all for now.

Image of a sculpture created with bike chains by Drew Evans.

I might be writing a couple posts this summer and I might not. Blessings to each of you and thanks for reading. In the meantime, check out blueminding.

Congregations flourish when we love people and use things.

Congregations die when we use people and love things.

I wrote those words in 2016 in this post and as I leave for sabbatical, I’m mindful that the Church I love often confuses what we are suppose to love and what we are suppose to use. People are created in the image of God. Things are created as tools for ministry. Jesus died for people. Jesus didn’t die for things.

[Note: I thought I made up that quote about loving people but using things but actually lots of folks from Drake (the rapper) to Spencer Kimball (the LDS leader) to these people said it too.]

Ministry is exhausting when we love things more than people, and I’d love to tell you that This Never Happens In Faithful Churches. However, I’ve known too many congregations who loved their cemeteries, windows, steeples, pews, church playgrounds, communion sets, rose gardens, fencing, front doors, pulpits, choir robes, parlor furniture, and history more than they’ve loved people.

Please believe me when I tell you that thriving congregations are the ones who love the people. All. The. People. The broken ones. The pale ones. The brown and black ones. The poor ones. The ones who don’t smell good. The ones with addictions. The ones with dementia. The ones with cancer. The ones with crooked teeth. The ones with no teeth. The ones with perfect hair. The ones who get around in wheelchairs. The ones who drool. The ones who don’t speak our language. The ones who snore in worship. The ones who swear. The ones who are terminally cranky. The ones we hate.

Some of us are confused. We use people instead of love them.

• We use the one or two people of color in our white congregation to show that we are diverse.
• We use the wealthy members who bail us out when there’s a financial shortfall.
• We use the young families who are burdened with “our survival.”
• We use the church staff to do the things we’re all supposed to do (e.g. pray, visit the sick, study the Bible.)
• We use nice people to perpetuate our bullying behavior. (They’re too nice to stand up to us.)
• We use weak people to maintain our control. (See above.)

I’m profoundly grateful for the privilege of taking a sabbatical this summer and I hope to return with a fresh soul. In the throes of summer, I hope we’ll find our love for God’s people fills our souls. Because loving things more than people leaves us empty and exhausted – especially in church.