A Church for Starving Artists

After reading this article about a woman who lost her husband, her friends, and her hair I said, to nobody in particular, “This lady needs a church.”

By that, I don’t mean she needs to visit her local sanctuary this Sunday.  She doesn’t need to sign a pledge card or join a committee.  She needs a church.  More specifically (and theologically true) she needs for somebody to be her church.

So, on this All Saints Day – one of my favorite days of the year – be a saint to someone who needs the church . . . which would be all of us.  In spite of all this business, scripture calls anyone who follows Jesus a saint.  Let’s be that today.

Image is All Saints by Vasilii Kandinsky (1911)

There was a fascinating program about genetic testing and Ashkenazi Jews here yesterday during which one rabbi shared that – when he was a young man – all the men and women in his community were tested genetically and the results were kept securely for the day when those men and women started dating.  Apparently, when the day came when you were interested in dating someone, you made this request known to the spiritual leaders, and then someone checked each member of the potential couple’s genetic tests to determine if this was or was not “a good match.”

It was, literally, a matter of life and death.

Matches between clergy and congregations are not exactly a matter of life and death, unless we are talking about the spiritual life and death of a clergyperson and a congregation.  Bad matches wound churches and pastors.

Recipe for bad matches:

• The Search Committee fails to share with the potential pastor the proverbial skeletons in the closet, the reality of the congregation’s willingness to grow and change, the difference between what they (the Search Committee) wants and what the rest of the people truly want.
• The person who is interviewed and newly loved by the Pastor Nominating Committee fails to show up.  (“Who is this person?”)
• The candidate looked like a perfect match, but in fact was not, because looks can be deceiving (and nobody asked the right questions.)

This is where God and – by God’s grace – the Commission on Ministry (or whatever you call the group that oversees such matches) comes in.  The COM is not God, but sometimes we might have a thoughtful question to ask like:  Did you tell your candidate about that sexual misconduct thing that happened a couple years ago?  We might ask clarifying questions like: Have you noticed that your three finalists have nothing in common except that they are all the same height?  We might make suggestions:  Please ask why she left her previous position after only one year.

Good clergy-congregation matches are like gold.  The pastor grows.  The congregation grows.  They get each other.  They challenge each other in all the good ways.

Obviously the Holy Spirit must be consulted and heard.  But God also speaks through the community.  The search for a new call and/or a new pastor is not a race (“We must have someone by the end of the summer!”)  And it’s not about pleasing an anxious congregation.  It’s better not to have a permanent pastor than to wish you didn’t have one.

And honestly there is nothing more fun than a good fit.

One day – God-willing – I’ll be a 60-something pastor.  The median age for pastors in my denomination is about 55 according to this 2011 study.  But we have a large number of 60-somethings serving every size congregation and, increasingly, pastors are waiting until they are 70 to retire because there are substantial financial benefits to working past 65.

There are issues for pastors and congregations involving clergy 60 and over.  Several examples in my denomination (i.e. one without bishops to move clergy around):

• What if you are 60 and ready to seek a new call because you’ve got some good years left to serve, but you are finding that most churches want a 40-something pastor who can “bring in younger members”?  So you stay where you are, realizing that  – in your heart – you are basically done.
• What if your pastor is 60 and, after 8-10 years of faithful and effective service, the church is ready for a change?  Unfortunately, however, all indications are that your current pastor is planning to stay until retirement in another 10 years. Everybody recognizes that the energy is low and you wonder if your congregation will be able to recover if the pastor stays too long.
• What if you are a 60 year old pastor and you know it’s time to go but you still have a mortgage and not nearly enough money to retire, and you don’t think you can be called to another church?
• What if you are a 60 year old pastor who has served small congregations – sometimes part-time – and you are looking for a new call, but your experience with small (dying) churches seems to hinder your search.
• What if you are a second career pastor just starting out at about the age of 60, hoping for a first call and it’s taking longer than expected because search committees want someone with more experience?

In the next 10-20 years, 70% of our clergy will retire, but in the meantime, what will happen with those pastors who still want to work to 70 or beyond?

My hope is that we will be courageous – and faithful – enough to seek what is best for the congregation.  But then again, retired pastors have to afford to live – perhaps for another 20+ years after retirement.

What’s the answer?

I honestly don’t know.  But we who are closer to our retirement than our ordination will have some tough decisions to make in the next few years.  One of my hopes is that at least we will try to learn all we can about the 21st Century Church.  Paradigms are not easily shifted.

Image is Henry Raeburn’s Skating Minister.  (Let’s not skate towards retirement folks.)

At the risk of sounding like a multiculturalism/diversity hater . . .

I’d like to talk about church staff diversity.  I’m having problems with it.

My basic theological and managerial assumptions are that 1) God calls all kinds of people to serve, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and age;  and 2) our leaders should look like our community.  In other words, if I serve a congregation full of biker dudes, our leaders should include biker dudes.  If we have no women in our congregation, we don’t need to call women elders and deacons.

But there are some disturbing trends I’ve noticed recently as congregations long to become more diverse:

• We call pastors and other staff who balance out what people see, rather than pastors and other staff who are genuinely called to serve our churches.  We want to look like the United Nations only for the sake of appearances.
• We congratulate ourselves when we hire a person of color (or some other ‘minority’) and then use that person as a trophy, congratulating ourselves for being so incredibly open/diverse.
• We happily call the pastor who expands our diversity while simultaneously refusing to allow this person to expand our horizons/ teach us something that might make us uncomfortable.
• We look at who is on staff (e.g. two women pastors) and proceed to look only at the opposite demographic to fill an opening (e.g. a male pastor) without considering whom God is calling to fill that position.  Note:  For 2000 years, our churches were staffed by men.  If we had three pastors, they were all men.  Seven pastors?  They were all men.  It’s not the end of the world to have an all-female staff . . .

. . . nevertheless, I’m a fan of diversity on a church staff – not just in terms of gender, race, etc.  but also in terms of touchy-feely AND erudite, goofy AND serious, extroverted connectors AND introverted spiritual guides.  Just as the world is increasingly diverse, so should our congregations be more diverse.

My big beef:  churches that look nothing like the communities around them geographically.  You know the ones.  Everybody inside is over the age of 60 and white while the neighborhood is filled with brown kids.

I never want to be called to a position because the search committee was looking for a middle-aged white lady (although, honestly, who is looking for this demographic?)  I want to be called because the Spirit of God has led me and a church/organization to each other in God’s great wisdom and creativity.

If you are part of a church search committee right now, please – literally, for the love of God – listen to the Spirit, and call the person whose name God is whispering into your ear.  Believe me.  If God is involved, your leadership will be quite diverse.

Image is a mosaic of some of the staff of the truly wonderful and authentically diverse Church for All Nations in Columbia Heights, MN.  Check them out here.

The days of our life are seventy years,
   or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
   they are soon gone, and we fly away. Psalm 90:10

I heard yesterday that Harry Hart died just days short of his 100th birthday.  He was related to me by marriage (my uncle’s wife’s brother) but I always knew him as Uncle Harry.  He was a war hero, the second of eight children.  I had been praying he would make 100 years because I heard he had wanted that.

I suppose that when life is suddenly – or not so suddenly – limited to sitting up in bed and occasionally sipping water, living to reach a special birthday is one of the few things we have to look forward to.  His beloved Mildred passed away in 1995.  Most of his friends have passed away.

Harry Hart is survived by just three of his seven siblings.  (Please God, don’t let me survive my siblings.)

Another friend of mine – one of my heroes – has a freshly altered leg compliments of surgery to remove melanoma.  I love this guy and he deserves this not at all.  He writes that it makes him feel old which is funny to me because he’s in his 40s and yet I get it. Circumstances age us.  But this is not the worst thing that has ever happened to him and he has already aged more than most of us deeply in his soul.  And he is a better pastor for it.  Or is that just something stupid we say when we try to make sense of things?

Aging sucks.  Really it does.  And yet if we are really, really fortunate, we get to live 70 or 80 years – or more – with extraordinary experiences and unspeakable joys.  If we are really fortunate, we sustain a few crushing blows that miraculously do not paralyze us.  Post-retirement can indeed be The Third (and most important) Age as Gwen Wagstrom Halaas suggests.  But it’s not easy.

If we are really fortunate, we do not mind the eyeglasses or hearing aids or monthly trips to get the gray out.  If we are really fortunate, there are more awesome days than not-awesome ones.  If we are really fortunate, we stop living in the past and look to the future trying to figure out how to live well if we can’t walk as briskly or jump on one leg anymore.  If we are really fortunate, we figure out how to love life from a hospital bed, if that’s what the future holds.

Is that really possible?  I’m naive/optimistic enough to think so.  It can be holy but when it hurts – a lot – physically and emotionally to grow older, it probably doesn’t feel holy at all.

Hang out soon with a person who feels old and ask about that.  The guy who fixes my car randomly asked me to visit his wife’s great aunt in a nursing home recently and I thought it was a strange request.  But I think I might do it.

I’m starting to believe that everybody’s addicted.  Everybody.  We are simply in different places in terms of handling these addictions.

There are the familiar ones (alcohol, tobacco, porn, narcotics, food) but everyone’s brain is wired to light up upon doing something – it could be eating a chocolate donut or buying new shoes – and we like the lightening, sometimes too much.  Obviously these are tame activities for some of us and monsters for others. Check out this story about addiction as a reflex.

For example,  alcoholics experience a reflexive moment of euphoria when drinking.  Gambling addicts feel comfort at a slot machine.

Here’s an excellent story about the reStart Center in Seattle – a detox facility for young men addicted to technology to the point of having mostly virtual friends and not knowing how to cook a basic meal. I don’t play video games but this story made the study of addictions click.

We all have comfort habits:  a glass of wine, a bowl of ice cream, a trip to Nordstrom, a long run, a joint, a lottery ticket.  They relieve our stress and restore our lives for but a moment . . . unless the wine, food, shopping, exercise, weed, or gambling begin to control us because we aren’t dealing with the stress at its root.  The stress mounts; we turn to comfort habits faster and more often.

How does the church respond to the stress/crazy/need for comfort?

For starters, we need to acknowledge that most pastors and parishioners alike are addicted to our own substances/activities.  May God have mercy, but some of us are even addicted to Church Power (e.g. we have been in charge of Coffee Hour for a decade, we have been Church Treasurer for 20 years, we have The Pastor for 30 years. We experience a peculiar euphoria when standing behind that coffee urn, that financial report, that pulpit.) Honestly, we are these people.

But . . .  back to how church can engage with our addicted culture:

• ·         Are our spiritual communities healing places where we are loved and accepted in spite of our inability to control ourselves in certain corners of our lives?

• ·         Do our churches teach us how to relax in healthier ways?  MAMD reminded us at OASIS that the church has much to offer here: Sabbath, liturgical seasons, prayer, meditation, spiritual songs.  Now more than ever, our culture needs these practices.

• ·         Are we paying attention?  Do we even know that we live in the meth capital of the state?  Do we know that binge drinking is the favorite weekend activity of our local honor roll students?

• ·         Do we serve the 12-Step Groups meeting in our church buildings beyond giving them space?  Yes, they are anonymous, but we can connect with them in non-threatening ways.  My previous church set up espresso machines in the lobby to serve made-to-order coffee drinks to an NA group of women who came from a prison to attend a meeting.  Believe me, if you give free lattes to a group of people who get sub-grade coffee in prison, they will connect with you.  We just wanted to express the love.

But then again coffee is addictive too.   This is why life is so complicated and grace is so amazing.

MaryAnn McKibben Dana continues to help us rethink how we ponder and use our time, as a lovely crowd of Mid-Americans gather here in Kansas City at an event called OASIS.

When MA says that she’s stopped (or is trying to stop) using the terms “super busy” or “crazy busy” to describe her life, I remember that I’ve used those terms to describe my schedule about a dozen times already that day.

Instead, how about saying that life is full, life is abundant, life is . . . complicated even.  What if we shift our thinking to imagine that we are luxuriating in time.

So . . .

I didn’t take my Sabbath last week because there was a training I was expected to attend – and I didn’t even mind that (much.)  My Sabbath is Friday and this event was only offered on Friday, so there you go.  That would not have been a problem except that Saturday and Sunday were also booked solid.  Very. Abundant.

One of the things I spent my time doing Saturday was to sit and listen to individuals who are elders in a conflicted church.  We scheduled individual time for each to sit with me and say whatever they needed to say.  Without my tongue in my cheek, I can honestly say that I luxuriated in that time.  Undivided attention – if we recognize that’s what’s happening – is healing.  Yes, it takes time, but it is unadulterated pleasure – looking at someone’s face, listening to their frustrations/questions/anger, connecting with them as my actual brother or sister in Christ.  We are all on the same team, loved by the same God.  Even undivided attention touched by conflict can be nourishing.

But then we need to rest our brains.  Often this is the part we do kicking and screaming. Or engaging in something “restful” that feeds an addiction.  More about that tomorrow.

I had never heard of Cat Cora until Tuesday at The Chef’s Table talk for Chicago Ideas Week.  Where had I been?

Cat Cora‘s basic skills involve food but to say she is simply a chef would be erroneous.  She was the first female Iron Chef.  She is executive chef for Bon Appetit.  She is a UNICEF spokesperson.  Her voice is featured in the Iron Chef video game.  She recently created a food app.  She operates a restaurant at Disney World.  She just opened a restaurant in Singapore.

She is a model for 21st Century ministry.

Many of us who serve as professional ministers have one job.  We are The Pastor or The Chaplain or The Theology Professor or the Middle Judicatory Executive or The Bishop. But the future of 21st Century professional ministry might well involve an assortment of “calls” all juggled, more or less at the same time.

I’m not talking about traditional bivocational ministry (if we can even call bivo ministry ‘traditional’).  I’m talking about serving smaller churches, creative projects, community endeavors, teaching gigs, and social media outlets as a cornucopia of ministries that support us financially and spiritually.

I’m talking about the pastor who supports herself by serving a congregation 15 hours a week while serving a community ministry for LGBTQ homeless kids a couple hours a week while teaching occasional social media for churches while offering spiritual direction to 3-6 individuals.  Yes, it sounds exhausting, but I’m wondering if it isn’t our future.

When a pastor has One Job, it’s easy for our professional identity to wrapped up in that One Job to the point that – when we leave it – we are fairly lost.  As you read this, I am probably in our Presbytery’s Boundary Training talking with pastors who need to watch out for this.  Retired pastors with no identity beyond their former church are boundary-problems-just-waiting-to-happen.  Active pastors who work sacrificially All The Time for “their people” have boundary problems too.  I’ve been one of those people.  Still am in some ways.

“What if,” you might ask, “a professional minister isn’t really talented enough to have opportunities like writing, speaking, teaching, or counseling in order to supplement his part-time church income?”  Then maybe we can do something truly bivocational like serve as a pastor and a car mechanic or a pastor and a lawyer.  And there will – perhaps – always be churches that want and can afford full-time professional ministers.  But increasingly more and more will not.

If we have several projects going at once, there is no way we can experience our sole identity through just one.  It keeps us self-differentiated.  It keeps us from living and breathing a single job.

A gifted pastor’s basic skills involve church but to say she or he is simply a pastor would be erroneous.  The 21st Century Pastor spends less time on building maintenance and more time on a variety of creative ways to share our belief that following Jesus is the best way to live, that loving our neighbors is the best way to spend our days.

I find this more exciting than exhausting.

Sometimes we just want to feel fluffier.

No real world Church People – male or female –  have hair like Sofia Vergara but we, too, can visit one of the Dry Bars popping up in cities all over to get that blown out look.  These hair salons don’t cut your hair.  They don’t color your hair.  They just fluff it and maybe put a glass of chardonnay in your hand.  It takes just a few minutes and then tah dah – you are fresh and new.

This article has some not-so-new-but-still-we-need-to-pay-attention ideas about who we are as Followers of Jesus.  Hint:  most of us are not good at it.

Yes, there are lots of cultural Christians, many congregational Christians, and many fewer convictional Christians, but – I agree with Steve McSwain  – that many followers of Jesus have left the church to try to save their faith.  They are not satisfied with a simple blow out.  They want water and color.  They don’t want to appear fresh and fluffy.  They want to be turned inside out.  They don’t want a brief moment of respite.  They want a life of peace.

I’m not sure the institutional church will ever again look anything like it did in the 1960s.  But it’s not going to look – at all – like a dry bar much longer.

There are people that share interesting ideas.

And then there are people that spark us to come up with interesting ideas.  It’s a holy thing actually.

I adore Chicago Ideas Week for the ideas shared by so many interesting people.  Danny Schuman, Tig Notaro, and Catherine Hoke are among those whose ideas have made me happy this week.

But yesterday I heard ideas that sparked my own.

Love.  These.  People.

When we are inspired our lives change forever.  My top three Life Inspiration Moments – not counting the days I met Jesus, my husband, and our children –  happened at a bus stop in London (had just finished reading Crime and Punishment), DAR Constitution Hall (at an Aretha concert), and today at the “At the Chef’s Table” Talk for Chicago Ideas Week featuring Melissa Clark, Cat Cora, Graham Elliot, Mollie Katzen, and the others I already mentioned.  [Note to self:  read everything Josh Kilmer-Purcell has ever written.]

I have a new life plan today.  So many new ideas.  So what inspires you with life-changing ideas?