A Church for Starving Artists

As we prepare to buy a house in our new hometown, the number crunchers tell us that our local property taxes will be approximately the same as our actual mortgage.  Yikes.

HH and I are blessed with two jobs in an economy that guarantees no jobs – especially for a couple of English majors with graduate degrees in something as unmarketable as “Divinity.”  And so – with our two jobs – we can afford to live here and pay our taxes.  And we will do so happily.

Among the comments I’ve heard from helpful acquaintances:

• The taxes are high because the schools are really good.  But you don’t have kids in the schools.  Why would you live there?
• You know your gas taxes are the highest in the country, right? (Actually we are third, behind California and NY.)

All of us pay taxes on things we don’t like (e.g. war.)

All of us pay taxes on things we find helpful (e.g. snow plowing, street lights.)

Tax collectors were hated in First Century Palestine and we are not happy with them in this Century either. And of course nobody likes irresponsible spending and waste.  But what if we considered the paying of our taxes as a spiritual practice?  For the most part, our taxes take care of us and our neighbors.

In today’s political divide, can we who call ourselves followers of Jesus agree that this is one way that we – as a larger community – can care for each other?  I am happy to pay taxes that serve the greater good.  You?

Today is my first Sabbath in a while, in terms of having “nothing” to do.  It is glorious.

Part of the joy of Sabbath involves remembering: 

• Remembering all I’ve been able to do this week and not worrying about what didn’t get done.
• Remembering the week’s funniest stories.  It’s one of the bonuses of my job.
• Remembering where I was this time last Friday and then remembering that God still resurrects people.
• Remembering that God resurrects people even when we don’t get to witness it on this side.

The Message of the Day comes from my colleague DL who has witnessed resurrection first hand.  As people ask him what they can do for him, his response preaches:

1. Pray for A’s recovery.
2. Learn CPR.  There may be a moment in your life when nothing you have ever done is more important than this.
3. Take a dance class.

The Lord of the Dance deserves all of these tributes and more.  Now go enjoy the holiday weekend.

I wrote yesterday about “dancing with the ones who brought us” – my metaphor for moving cooperatively with the church entities that oversee our ministry.  In my case, that middle judicatory is called The Presbytery.

Presbyteries  – in my tradition – support congregations, help them in times of crises, celebrate with them in times of joy.  We grant money for special church projects, assist pastors in financial trouble, offer pastoral support to pastors, and shepherd congregations in pastoral transition.  But sometimes we screw up.

Someone rightfully suggested yesterday that Presbyteries (and Bishops, District Superintendents, etc.) need to be transparent, honest, and supportive – and sometimes we are not.  Part of this is a result of living in a litigious culture.  Examples:

• A pastor is incompetent and needs to go, but he threatens to sue if he is fired.  And we make the mistake of fearing this pastor more than God.
• A church leader is falsely accused of misconduct and – while never formally charged much less found guilty – the Presbytery is so terrified of being sued by somebody that we fail to support this innocent leader.
• A congregation is never told why a pastor has left their church because the pastor has asked that the truth not be told.  The truth is that the pastor is suicidal or addicted or going through an ugly divorce or sick with a brain tumor.  But The Presbytery simply says that “the pastor had to leave” because that pastor has threatened legal action if the truth comes out.  Rumors abound, but we can’t share the truth.

In addition, Presbyteries and other overseeing leaders drop the ball occasionally.  We inadvertently give erroneous information to Pastor Search Committees which slows down their process.  We lose forms.  We abuse our power – such as it is – because we are weak and immature.  We insist on procedures that make no sense.

I am fortunate to work in a healthy church institution – or at least it’s as healthy as any I’ve known – but we still make mistakes.  We forget that relationships are more important that regulations.  We show favoritism.  We are clumsy.

And we will try to do better.

Image of Elaine Benes dancing.

My life’s work is often associated with everything from The Death Star to “The (oppressive) Man.”

So  . . . I was grateful to witness a recent conversation  in which The Presbytery (for you institutional church geeks, that’s the Middle Judicatory of my denomination) was actually credited – not blamed – for something good.  In reviewing a particular church’s history at a church meeting, someone who didn’t know what he was talking about had blamed The Presbytery for the way a previous pastor had been treated.  But a sage of the congregation said that – actually – it was The Presbytery who had helped the elders resolve a difficult situation while respecting the wishes of the pastor.  (He had left his parish abruptly because he was sick with AIDS.  It was the late 1980s.)

I find that it’s easy and common for congregations and individuals in our congregations to blame The Presbytery for everything from why it takes so long to be ordained to why they can’t call the pastor they really want, even if the desired pastor is a (take your pick:) trouble-maker, serial adulterer,  criminal, bully.  Trust is at a new low, and yet, I’d like to share some of “the secrets” of the Presbytery (and why we are considered mean/out-of-touch/untrustworthy.)

• The Presbytery won’t let a church begin the process to call a new pastor.  Perceived reason why:  We “want their building.”  We “can make money off of them by putting condos on their land.” We don’t care about them.  We want their church to die. Real reason why:  They don’t have enough money to pay their utility bills much less pay for a pastor.  Or They have serious issues that need to be resolved before bringing a new pastor in.
• The Presbytery is asking a candidate for ordination to slow down his/her ordination process. Perceived reason why:  They were essentially hazed during their own processes, so now they are hazing me.  They are bullies.  They are inferior pastors/elders themselves misusing their power to control my life.  They are nit-pickers.  Real reasons why:  You turned your papers in late/with numerous typos/after obviously writing them on a bus on the way to the meeting.  You act like you are unteachable and all pastors must be life-long learners. You have issues after your family of origin died in a fiery crash and you have avoided counseling.  You roll your eyes at us when we ask honest questions about theology.  You act defensive as if we are challenging your theology when we are actually making sure you can articulate what you believe clearly – because some day a ten year old might ask you what The Trinity is all about.
• The Presbytery won’t give money to help us.  Perceived reasons why: Because you are a conservative congregation/a liberal congregation/a small congregation/ a rural congregation/ an urban congregation.  Because The Presbytery pays big bucks to support their staff.  Real reasons why:  Several of our partner churches give zero money to shared mission giving and so we don’t have the funds to help you as we would like.  It’s up to churches to at least try to raise most of the money for their own mission and building projects.  You want to use the money to install a new church sign and a new sign won’t change the culture of your congregation – which is what’s really needed.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that some of our churches and church leaders refuse to dance with the ones who brought them along.  When a suspicious elder recently asked me, “What are your intentions for our church?” I said, “We want you to make disciples of every person in this neighborhood.  We want you to thrive and grow and help broken people.  We want you to be a haven of hope in this community.”

We also want:

• The best trained, healthiest pastors on the planet.
• The best equipped disciples possible, so that God’s kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.
• Lively, thriving, faithfully mature congregations that bless the city and beyond.

Sometimes this is not what our congregations and leaders seem to want in their heart of hearts.

Image Source.

[NOTE:  due to the sad events in OK yesterday, it feels too lighthearted to be writing about popsicles and summer.  But tragedy always reminds us that we need to care for and laugh with each other every chance we get.  Text PDA to 20222 to donate $10 to support disaster response where needed most, through the Presbyterian Church USA.]  And now today’s post:

In the spirit of yesterday’s post, I was thinking about ideas for love bombing unsuspecting neighbors this summer.  What if we loved people randomly this summer with simple offerings of care and refreshment?  It’s time to make some plans!

Here are some of my favorite summer love bomb ideas:

• Take popsicles to a park on the hottest day of the summer and hand them out to the neighborhood kids.
• Serve ice cold bottles of water on a busy sidewalk at the end of a work day in your city/town.
• Pick a laundromat in the area – preferably in a place with fairly beaten up washers and dryers- and pay for everybody’s laundry that afternoon.  Bring cookies and lemonade.  Hang out together. [Note:  idea comes from this congregation.]

The point of these activities is not to get new members or promote your church or target the neighbors.  It’s just about loving people in simple, fun ways.

Mark your calendars.

What love bomb ideas do you have?

I’ve shared the story before about a non-profit organization that asked our church if they could put a bin to collect clothing in the church parking lot.  We said, “Yes.”  But then the organization put the bin in another church’s parking lot across the street.  Same street.  Different church.

One of our elders was not happy.

Unhappy Elder:  That was supposed to be our mission project.

Nonplussed Elder:  Who cares where the bin is located?  Clothes will still be collected and it’s convenient for both our members and the members of the church across the street.

UE:  But we won’t get the credit for doing it.

NE:  ?!

All too often we in the institutional church serve because we will get something out of it.  In worship yesterday, there were two ways to give money to the special Pentecost Offering.  One could text “YOUNG” to 20222 and send $10 directly to the denomination.  Or one could put a check or cash in an envelope in the pew.  The church and subsequently the Presbytery only gets credit for donations in the envelopes, and I’ve heard leaders criticize giving via texting for this very reason – even though it’s much easier to give with a text message.

Every year, our congregations host community fairs and other neighborhood events  in hopes that we will attract new members.  We individually serve on boards and committees so that we will get our own way in church world.  We live “good lives” so that we will get to go to heaven.  We might even claim Jesus as Savior primarily for this reason.

But – as Rick Warren famously said – life’s not about us.  When we truly serve, it’s about someone else – preferably someone not connected to us.  (Note:  if we are only serving our friends and family, that’s actually about us.)

I’m wondering how a church teaches the crucial lesson that serving is not about what we get out of it.  Yes, maybe we get a “good feeling” when we serve.  But do we also expect to get holy credits?  How do we teach that following Jesus is not about benefiting ourselves?  It’s about the Kingdom.

My job description doesn’t include teaching classes on sex or marriage, but this is what I was asked to do for a congregation pondering Biblical teachings on these ubiquitous matters last weekend, especially in light of this.  They wanted a Biblical interpretation of same sex marriage from a progressive point of view.  The previous week they’d received the same lesson from a more tradition point of view, taught by a friend of mine.

Marriage equality is not going away.  And here’s my Big Confession:  I believe that marriage equality is a holy thing, sanctioned by God because God is all about Covenant Relationships.  Not this.  Not this.  Not this.

But this.  (Sorry for all the links.)  As I was studying this topic anew, a couple of things occurred to me for the first time.

Remember these verses?

• Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’
• Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

What I realized about these verses – that so many use to prove that marriage is about a man and a woman – is this:

• The word for “helper” here (‘ezer עֵזֶר) is actually a male noun. I’m not saying the helper for the man must be male.  But this is interesting.
• At no time in ancient history or even today in some cultures, did the man leave his father and mother.  It has always been the woman who left her parents.
• And for that matter, Adam didn’t have a mother and father.
• The word for woman and wife – throughout all the OT – is the exact same Hebrew word (ishshah אִשָּׁה) which is also the same word for a female animal.  

Were Adam and Eve really even “married”?  When I looked for passages about “traditional marriage” in scripture, I found that there aren’t any.  Yes, there’s the marriage at Cana but that’s about the party after the marriage ceremony.  And if the ceremony was anything like most ceremonies in those days, it would have involved the husband and the bride’s father signing a contract.  There were no vows, unless we count the promises made to pay a dowry.

The first time “marriage” is used in Scripture (Exodus 21:10) it’s about taking a second wife (or “woman.”)  She was literally “taken” as in fetched, snatched, procured.   It’s the same word in Hebrew:  לָקַח laqach .  

[Thank you Carole Fontaine and Krister Stendal who taught me Hebrew and Greek.]

I would encourage everybody to pull out your Strong’s Concordance and check out the marriage passages in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.  Could someone please find a verse that illustrates the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman that is not figurative?  (Serious question.)

Image is an icon of Jonathan and David.

2 Sam 1:25-26

I randomly decided to look – really look – at people I passed by on my way into work yesterday.  From the commuter train to the pedway to the CTA to the station to the block before our office building’s front door, I would try to catch eyes and smile at random people.

For many cultures – in East Asia and most Muslim countries – looking into the eyes of someone, especially someone of the opposite sex – is considered disrespectful or forward.  But for me, I was hoping to acknowledge people who are often invisible:  the lady beside me on the train, the security guard in the pedway, the ticket taker, the subway minstrel.

And then someone tripped me as we were getting on the subway.  It was an accident as he was trying to sidestep a guy with a rolling suitcase.  But I crashed to the ground – eyeglasses knocked off my head – and, of course, people stared.  Two skinned knees but all was fine.  Except for one thing:

The guy who accidentally knocked me down never looked at me.  He never looked at me in the face, much less in the eyes.  If he had to identify me five minutes after our little collision, he wouldn’t have been able to do it.  Was she white? Black? Wearing a purple coat?  Short?  Old? Freckled?  He wouldn’t have been able to say.

At the risk of creeping people out, I consider it a spiritual practice to look each other in the eye.  It makes us real.  It acknowledges people.  We can even thank them with our eyes.  It reminds us that we are all human beings with lives and stresses and work to do and people to love.

That’s all.

Image source.

. . . especially in church.

I’ve started referring to this as The Chewing Gum Story.   Along the same lines, I remember listening to Christian radio in the car one summer, specifically to a talk show about abstinence.  As a variation of The Chewing Gum Story, what I heard was The Cherry Pie Story.  A mom was talking about how she taught her daughter the importance of abstinence by using a freshly baked cherry pie.  “Look how fresh and perfect it is,” the mom said to her daughter (and into the radio.)  “But if we take a piece out of it, it’s not fit to give that pie to someone else as a special gift.”  I remember thinking,”That was random.”  But looking back, that mom was basically trying to send the same message as The Chewing Gum Story.

According to Elizabeth Smart, she was taught by a teacher – she doesn’t say if the teacher was from school or church – that those who engage in sex before marriage – any kind of sex including the non-consenting kind – was like a piece of chewed gum.  And, of course, nobody wants a pre-chewed piece of gum.

This is why she didn’t run for help after being kidnapped as a teenager in Utah. She thought no one – including her parents – would want her anymore.

Elizabeth Smart’s words:

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

I pray that no Sunday School teacher, no Scout leader, no school teacher, no coach, no nurse, no parent ever tells a person that he or she has a life without value.  No human being is like a chewed up piece of gum.

This is the opposite of the message of Jesus.  Do we believe Jesus can redeem even the violence committed against a kidnapped teenager?  Do we believe that Jesus can redeem the violence against those women in Cleveland or other victims of human trafficking or pedophilia or other physical abuse?

We cannot allow these lies to be shared ever again, especially in a church setting.  Jesus was not out to shame us.  Jesus came to save us from shame.

Stop what you are doing right now and listen to this.  Or this.  Or this.  Honestly, these stories could change your life.

People rarely say that about sermons.

Church Consultants have been saying for years now that standing up in a pulpit and preaching a sermon is passe.  We are a visual people.  We like multi-media presentations.  We have short attention spans.

Even screens don’t always help.

Churches are finding that, even if our preachers are entertaining, charismatic, and silver-tongued,  people still will not “come to church.”   Sermon, by definition, equals boring to most of the world.

A Pastor Nominating Committee, in considering their idea of a dream pastor recently, described “good preacher” in their job description.  But then someone asked, “What do you mean by that?”  For some a good preacher is entertaining.  For others a good preacher is bookish.  For others a good preacher moves and inspires.

We can’t even agree on what makes a good sermon.

So why do thousands of people clamor to watch TED Talks (Ideas Worth Spreading)?  Why do people so love The Moth (True Stories Told Live)?  Why is Chicago Ideas Week increasingly popular in the Windy City?  And why do people subscribe to podcasts?

(Some of our favorite podcasts are actually sermons.)

If listening to sermons in church is on the decline,  why are live story-telling and live idea sharing on the rise?  I’m not talking about collaborative conversation here; I’m talking about people who will pay thousands of dollars (TED Talks) to hear interesting people stand up and talk about what’s on their mind.  There are increasingly people who will pay good money to attend Moth Story Slams and Pecha Kuchas.

Why are sermons not like other ‘talks’?

• Are church buildings intimidating?  Do they scream “intolerance” or “irrelevance“?
• Does “going to church” feel like too much of a commitment when going to a story slam feels like an easy in and out?
• Do we prefer to pick our own topics?
• Do preachers sound fake?
• Do high pulpits give the impression that preachers believe we are superior, while stages with spotlights are clearly just for the accoustics?

I wrote a doctoral project years ago about preaching as group spiritual direction and I continue to see how the very act of preaching has shifted from Dogmatic Teaching to Spiritual Reflection intended to be discussed in community.  But I also want to discuss what I hear from Brene Brown and Eboo Patel.

Can you help me dissect all this?  (Thanks.)

Images clockwise from top left:  Brene Brown, Rose George, Sarah Jones, Peter Sagal, .  None of them are preachers.