A Church for Starving Artists

I loved this comment in yesterday’s post from TheVeryHungry:

I’ve also noticed a recent trend towards accepting certain more fashionable kinds of “brokenness” (a big buzz concept right now) and I think it would be worthwhile for all of us, including the church to explore what kinds of unraveling we do not find comfortable or OK.

There are definitely different kinds of brokenness and some are more fashionable than others.

It’s increasingly okay – in some circles at least – to share that we suffer with addictions or difficult marriages or depression.  Some of us speak more openly about our brokenness.  It’s not fashionable to be a heroin addict, exactly, but it’s deemed okay to disclose that we struggle with it in hopes of receiving compassion and support.

There is unspeakable brokenness as well.  Exhibit A: Ariel Castro.  Even his family didn’t know the basics of his brokenness much less the depths of it.  It’s not fashionable/okay to be a pedophile or a person who beats his spouse and/or children.  People addicted to child pornography or torture videos keep that information to themselves.  People who eat people don’t share this as a prayer concern in Bible studies.

One of the ongoing issues for Church World specifically is accountability.  It’s one thing to love unconditionally all the broken people who come through our doors.  But it’s another to say “it’s not okay” when church people are bullies or abusers or haters.  Sometimes we confuse unconditional love with unconditional tolerance.  As followers of Christ, it’s our calling to increasingly seek to be Christ-like.

Years ago, an elder threw a hymnal at me on his way out of an Ash Wednesday Service, and I could “understand” him as an angry guy who got no respect at work, for whom the cultural shifts were disrupting his world.  (e.g. A woman had served him communion wearing pants which, in his world Is Not Done.)  Nevertheless, it’s not okay to throw things at people and he was told so.

So, are some forms of brokenness more fashionable than others?  Yes. Nevertheless even those of us who are not alone in our coke addictions or alcoholism or mental health disorders or abandonment issues would probably rather not have our particular brokenness if we could choose.  Even fashionable brokenness hurts.

As a new pastor in my 20s, I sat up one night with a 30-something mom of two young daughters whose husband had just died in a car accident. These were the first words out of her mouth after the horrible news sunk in: “I wish it was a year from now.”

This struck me at the time as a hopeful comment. She trusted that time would bring healing eventually. But then again, maybe she just wanted to numb out for a year and wake up when it was over.

As a victim of the latest upper respiratory bug floating around Chicagoland, I just wanted to sleep over the past four days, believing that when I woke up – poof – the sore throat and achy bones would be gone.

If only healing our other bugs were so easy.

Sometimes we crawl into bed in hopes of waking up better, after the pain of profound disappointment or shame or confusion or sadness or mental chaos. And if we can’t sleep, we can always numb out via other means.

This article was published in The Washington Post yesterday in response to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s overdose in particular and the global drug problem in general.  It explains some of the basics about this latest tragedy.

Many of us deal with various levels of mental illness. Some of our brokenness is situational, involving layers of personal grief. And some of us were born with chemically quirky brains, and worse.

All of us would like to go to sleep and wake up happier or more content or less anxious or totally healed. I wish we who are addicted could stop eating and drinking our feelings. I wish we didn’t turn so quickly to pills or needles when we are emotionally hurt.

But we like fast and easy fixes. And we don’t want to trouble others with our pain. And some people consider it more fun to deal with our pathologies pharmeceutically. It feels like “recreation” instead of hard work.

But our souls cannot be healed with sugar or alcohol or narcotics or hallucinogens. The world cries out to be loved in spite of our brokenness.

It kills me that the church has the reputation of being so judgmental and lame and irrelevant. Because the world could really use a worldwide community of people who unconditionally love each other and teach others how to love unconditionally.  If only.

“Chua and Rubenfeld contend that successful groups share three traits: a superiority complex, feelings of insecurity and impulse control.” (From The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld

I have a very clear memory of being about 8 years old on a Sunday afternoon in the kitchen of the NC homestead where my Grandparents and Great Aunt lived. We were “making a party” which is what happened on lazy Sunday afternoons after dinner. My Grandmother, Aunt Grace and I were assembling platters of cookies to serve whomever happened to have gathered that afternoon in the front sunroom.

While arranging cheese straws and merengues, my Aunt Grace leaned over and whispered into my ear, “Don’t ever forget: The Edmistons are better than everyone else.”

Me: ?!

Thinking back, I sometimes wonder if this really happened, but when I reported it to my Dad later that day, he just chuckled. Oh Aunt Grace.

Amy Chua would call this moment crucial in my development because it would ostensibly give me the necessary Superiority Complex one needs to ensure my personal success.

What was confusing about Aunt Grace’s secret wisdom to me was that we Edmistons were all Sober Presbyterians who had been taught to shun ostentation, sacrifice ourselves for our neighbors, and consider ourselves miserable offenders against God’s perfect law. Amy Chua would consider this helpful as well because it would give me the also necessary Inferiority Complex needed to succeed.

The Edmistons fell short when it came to the third piece of The Triple Package: Impulse Control. Hence our love of cheese straws and merengues. And cake, pie, ice cream, and – occasionally – more potent addictions.

As I posted elsewhere recently, I’d give good money to see a debate between Amy Chua (who infamously wouldn’t let her daughters have sleepovers as children) and Brene Brown (who calls herself a Shame Specialist.) The Chua-Rosenfeld daughters have both been accepted to Harvard, so hurray for them. Honestly, that is a worthy goal along with financial prosperity and healthy cholesterol levels. And I’m okay with families who choose to raise their children in intentional ways that are not like the way HH and I have intentionally chosen to raise our children. We are all trying to figure this out in our own ways.

Our family has a different Triple Package, I guess. We believe that our children (and yours) are created in the Image of God. We also believe that neither we nor our children (nor you and yours) are God. And I suppose the third characteristic of our child-raising was that following Jesus is the best way to live. So there you have it.

When our daughter was in Middle School and was invited to a young man’s bar mitzvah, several of us parents – whose daughters were all attending the festivities together – referred to this young man as “The Total Package” because he was smart, good-looking, and kind to his mother. It became one of those family references we would repeat often in the years to come: So and so is ‘The Total Package.’

In all seriousness, though, I would lift up this as The Total Package to which I hope our children and all of us would aspire:

• An understanding that we are each extraordinary and gifted Children of God, created in God’s Image,
• An acknowledgement that we are not the center of the universe and the world is not about us,
• A desire to make the world on earth as it is in heaven because that’s what we were created to do and be.

This kind of life leads to a different kind of success, if you ask me.

Apart from the ongoing comments about undeserving white rappers and Madonna’s cowgirl hat, apart from the Latifah-as-wedding-officiant talk, I’ve been thinking about something different re: Same Love by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis at the Grammy Awards. As I’ve read this and this and this, I’m struck by something different: the stage set. Clearly, it looked a little churchy.

I don’t think the church set was intended to mock followers of Jesus. Rather, I believe it was intended to create a holier atmosphere as 33 gay and straight couples got married. Getting married at the Grammys might seem a little cheesy to most of us, but let’s face it, weddings are often cheesy. (Ask your local pastor.) I once officiated at a wedding during which the bride came down the aisle to “I Love a Rainy Night” by Eddie Rabbit.

But here’s my point: people long for meaning. Pastors are called to be Meaning Makers (thank you NS) in their faith tradition and to equip people to be disciples. Jesus brings meaning to my life and I want others to have this. I want people to know that there is One who loves us unconditionally to the point of death. And if others do not believe this, there are many reasons why, but I don’t want it to be because I have been a terrible example of what a Christ-follower looks like.

The church is called to keep each other warm. We don’t have all the answers and we mess it up a lot. But this is who God has called us to be.

There was an interesting news report on the BBC yesterday about new ways to obtain stem cells – those miraculous, regenerative structures that have the power to correct birth defects, replace cancer cells, and work wonders against dementia, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis.

How cool would it be if Ecclesiastical Stem Cells existed?  (Note to Church:  they don’t.)

I’m becoming used to being the bad guy in Church World’s Middle Judicatory-land: making people follow procedures when they don’t want to, offering difficult truth when they don’t want to hear it, suggesting possibilities they don’t want to consider.  I usually don’t mind.

What’s interesting, though,  is when a congregation or its leaders want Immediate Miracles.  Perhaps their congregation has depleted all financial resources and they want a quick infusion of cash to replenish the coffers.  Or maybe a congregation once comprised of 500 souls now considers 30 to be a solid congregation on Sunday mornings.

Sometimes churches want Presbytery to Fix It.  And they get frustrated when we can’t.  We have no ecclesiastical stem cells.

Honestly, most congregations are not like this.  They don’t expect the impossible to happen, ecclesiastically, in the blink of an eye.  But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Maybe or maybe not.

I believe that some churches are called to close.  I believe that it’s good when we have to rethink the way we’ve always done something.  I believe that we can become too full of ourselves and forget that church is not about us.  I believe that, in failing, we become more dependent on the Spirit.  I believe it’s good that there’s no such thing as an ecclesiastical stem cell.

Our neighbors struggle every day.  And maybe it’s no accident that the Church is called to struggle too, as we figure out how to be more faithful.

Image of a neural stem cell.  Source here.

Fresh from the Presbytery of Chicago Clergy Retreat, I’m chock full of ideas and questions that will probably show up in the next couple posts here.

As my colleagues and I were listening to Phyllis Tickle talk about Emergence, one of our youngest pastors asked this question regarding the suburban congregation she serves:

I’m serving a church of people born into the church as a pastor who was born into the church. So what do I do as the culture is changing and I realize that what used to work doesn’t work anymore? (Note: this is my paraphrase.)

Do I:

• Keep serving the Church as it is until everybody dies?
• Serve two churches at once: one of those born into it and then start something new that’s emergent?
• Try to transition the born-into church into an emergence church?”

I loved this question.

This is what I spent over twenty years of my life trying to figure out a few years back. My young colleague figured out that This is the Question after being ordained less than a year.  May all our young pastors be so adept at reading church culture.

In the throes of relentless sermon preparation, pastoral care, meetings, and administrivia – not to mention random congregational triage – it often takes a retreat to help us recognize the bigger picture. I remember coming back from retreats as a parish pastor having a better sense of where we needed to go. But the challenge was figuring out how to convey that information to others in a way that helped them understand and then shift.

Many of our seminarians and new pastors grew up in large or large-ish congregations that have the capacity to continue Being the Church in ways they have Been the Church for decades before. And now, we see the need for change but we don’t know how to do it precisely because:

• People born into the church are basically content or don’t even realize that church could be different/more inspiring/more fun/more meaningful.
• We are exhausted at the very thought of being the pastor of two churches – one that is content to do what’s familiar and personally comforting and another comprised of people who find church to be unfamiliar, discomfiting and irrelevant.
• Seminary didn’t teach us How to Shift a Congregation into the 21st Century. And even if we are Master Shifters, most of our people don’t want to go there in their heart of hearts.

This is why so many seminarians and young pastors want to start new churches. (They won’t have to deal with people who want their church to grow but don’t want anything to change.) This is also why so many pastors leave professional ministry after less then five years. (They come in all fired up and filled with God’s Spirit but after a few years, they are crestfallen and weary of conversations about Things That Don’t Matter.)

I am so hopeful about The Church of Jesus Christ. As we figure out how to be the Future Church, we are doing what generations of believers have done before us in different contexts and cultures. I’m thankful that it won’t take my young colleague the next 20+ years to figure things out better than I did.

Photo of a toppled steeple in coastal NC we saw on vacation last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. They just don’t want to put it back up. Or they don’t have the money to put it back up. Or maybe they want to get rid of the steeple, but don’t have the heart to toss it. Or maybe they are just paralyzed.

One of the last steps in the ordination process in my denomination is the creation of a personal Statement of Faith. It’s supposed to be something like The Apostles’ Creed in our own words.

A friend of mine had two versions of his statement of faith. The first one conveyed what he actually believed. The second one conveyed what he believed his denomination’s Commission on Preparation for Ministry wanted him to believe.

This makes me crazy, and yet I get it.

Once upon a time, church officials were most interested in doctrinal orthodoxy, specifically tailored to a specific tradition and/or denominational theology. As Phyllis Tickle pointed out at the recent Chicago Presbytery Clergy Retreat, this book changed that a bit. Phyllis compares McLaren’s book to Luther’s 95 Theses. And yet most denominational entities are not crazy about their Lutheran students, for example, sounding too much like Anglicans or their Presbyterian students sounding like Baptists.

I see it more like this: Picasso demonstrated that he could be a classical painter before moving into his blue period and then cubism. The Commission for Preparation for Ministry wants to know that you can explain traditional doctrine about the Trinity or the theories of The Atonement before explaining a more generous orthodoxy.

What we also want in a professional minister is – in the words of some of my colleagues – the gifts that a seminary professor cannot teach: evidence of the Spirit of God and the ability to be a “Meaning Maker” (thank you NS).

I would rather have one new pastor who can articulate authentically what he/she believes than ten new pastors who can spout “what we want them to say.” I personally love progressive Reformed Orthodoxy. What do you believe?

Image from Papyrus 27 which is the oldest copy of the oldest statement of faith: Jesus is Lord.

If you are reading this in a free country, with sturdy shoes, shelter from the cold, and clean water just a few steps away, you – like me – are quite privileged. The levels of privilege are compounded depending on our skin color, education level, and gender.

Recognizing our privilege in terms of acknowledging that we won some kind of genetic lottery is different from acknowledging that it is a privilege to serve others. (Wordy but true.)

– One is about the advantages we’ve received by virtue of our birth & sheer luck.
– The other is about our perspective and how we see any given situation as an opportunity to serve.

A colleague recently told me that it’s her privilege to serve the mentally ill in her congregation. Another mentioned that officiating at funerals for the many 80-somethings in her church was a great privilege.

One example = personal advantage
The other example = servant leadership

Imagine a world in which we rethink privilege. It would change everything.

St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, IL

Yes it’s cold outside.  Finally, in my third Chicagoland winter, it snows almost every day.  Our annual Presbytery Clergy Retreat starts today through Tuesday  about 40 miles north of Chicago.  Attendance is reportedly down because of the weather, but Phyllis Tickle is the keynoter and who wouldn’t brave the cold for Phyllis?  Nevertheless, we’ve been warned by the retreat planners that our faces might indeed fall off during the three minute walk from the dorms to the cafeteria.

Brrr.

Many of us have not only felt frozen but we’ve seen Frozen – currently the favorite movie of families with children and Idina Menzel wannabees.  And yet, one Baptist professor (probably not an Idina Menzel wannabee) compares Elsa to Satan when she sings Let It Go.  (!?)

Brrr.

And finally, as many of us are mourning the loss of a beloved colleague’s spouse today.  Grief sometimes paralyzes us and makes us feel existentially frozen, as if we cannot move or think or live.  But David McDonald himself speaks beyond this life to encourage those of us left behind for now:

” . . . we are confident that God is at work with us and through us to accomplish God’s purposes in the world.  In our church we do believe in miracles, because we’ve frequently been part of God enabling us to do more than we could ever accomplish on our own.”  (from The Clayton, Indiana Presbyterian Church website here)

There is enormous comfort when the church comes together, especially in these days when we must let a loved one go.

Yes, it’s cold out there, but thanks be to God for warmth in all its forms.

[Note: We love you CM.]

As a gifted theologian mentioned to me as we commuted together into work this morning: Calvin never missed an opportunity to remind us how broken we are. All of us.

While friends and strangers alike deal with “having special needs” and “moving into assisted living” and “being on life support” – and I don’t discount the medical details of their situations – the truth is that:

• We all have special needs.
• We all require assisted living.
• We are all on life support.

This, my friends, is why we are the church. We encourage each other in the throes of our special needs. We assist each other. We support each other in this life.

And I believe we get to unite in the life to come as well. Thanks be to God.

Image is Two Girls in a Yellow and Red Interior (1947) by Matisse