A Church for Starving Artists

I was listening to a replay of a Frank Langella interview last week about his role as Frank in Robot and Frank.  The screenwriter is in his 30s and both the actor and the main character are in their 70s.  Before Langella agreed to take the role, he wanted to spend time talking with the screenwriter – Christopher D. Ford – about what it was really like to be a 70 year old man.

It got me thinking about what it really feels like to be a 50-something woman.

Yesterday was the second annual “Jan’s Not Dead Yet” Day.  My mom died at 55 years and 19 days old, and I reached that age on April 1, 2011.  I’ve now lived exactly two years longer than my mother which makes me ponder things.

I often wish I could ask my mother questions like, “When can I expect to feel a little arthritis?” (because it seems like everybody does eventually) or “When can I expect these hot flashes to stop?”  My mom didn’t live long enough to deal with arthritis or menopause.

Actually the last eight years of her life were so chemo-fueled that the usual aging patterns did not apply.  How could she know if her hot flashes were about too much tamoxifen or too little estrogen?

I can’t speak for all Middle-Aged Women, of course, but this is what it’s like for me.  Not dead yet, but . . .

1. I’m invisible.  I was once only invisible to young adults when I’d go shopping with my daughter.  Now I’m invisible to everyone.  It’s not that I’ve ever been the kind of person who stopped time when I entered a room because of my breathtaking beauty.  But now I have a hard time getting the dry-cleaning lady to notice me.
2. I wear flats – always.  When I fell and broke my nose in January I  was wearing Birks which are not like wearing stilettos but it was just high enough a heel to trip and crash.  (Note to self: Most women who break their hips are wearing flats, so this will not guarantee anything.)
3. I wear glasses most of the time.  My vision was like an eagle’s until I was about 50, but I always thought wearing glasses was cool.  It’s occurs to me now that older people fall down a lot not necessarily because their hips go or their legs are weak.  They can’t see.  Wearing bifocals is really dangerous. Especially on stairs.
4. I can’t say words like “cool” anymore.  I hate it when people my age – or even twenty years younger – say words like “rad” or “def” or when people my age try to be something we are not (or we are not any more.)  This is really hard because I’ve actually always said “cool.”
5. I am not cool anymore. Oh, yes.  Once I was very cool.  But now it looks like I’m trying too hard.  And thermostatically speaking, I am usually freezing or burning up – never cool.
6. My sleeveless shirt days are almost over – maybe not this decade or even the next, but eventually.   I love sleeveless shirts on women.  I love sleeveless little black dresses.  I love sleeveless sundresses.  But women reach a point when we can’t do sleeveless anymore, even if our arms look like Michelle Obama’s.  Proper ladies wear sleeves.  Long sleeves.  Ugh.
7. I can’t hear.  No commentary here except that I actually need a hearing aid.
8. I’m increasingly unemployable.  While some churches and other religious organizations honestly want the best and brightest of any age, most of these organizations want a 30 or 40-something leader.  I get this and I was once this person – the thirty-something pastor, the forty-something pastor.  I was even the 20-something pastor for a few years. But now I encourage churches to give young pastors a chance.  I honestly love this and yet it also makes me feel a little wistful.
9. I just recently realized that I look old.  It’s really shocking to realize that I don’t actually look like I’m 40 anymore.   (Note: a man asked me in church recently how old he looked and I said “30” when actually he looked at least 50, but I could tell he thought he didn’t look middle-aged at all.  He did though.  So do I.)
10. I have an urgency about life because I could be dead any second.  My nonagenarian friends tell me this about themselves all the time, but since my parents died young, I’m slightly shocked that I’m still alive at 57.  To live to be 80 seems like a remote possibility even though it’s indeed possible. My point is that there’s a lot of work to do before it’s too late.  Most of this work involves Jesus and sharing the news that “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  In other words, how can we make our streets, our schools, our congregations, our neighborhoods more like heaven?  We need to get moving.

Today I begin my third year beyond Mom’s life span.  And while this post is more about me than I usually write, it’s on my mind this morning.

Rob Portman – and many others including myself – changed his tune about gay marriage once it affected him and his family personally.  Imagine how much more compassionate it would have been if he (or we) had been able offer liberty and justice to others without it being about us and ours.

I recently saw this garden plaque for sale, now that Easter is here and we are celebrating in our own gardens, and it really bugs me.  I have a friend who planted dozens of daffodils in her garden before she moved to a new home . . . so that the new owners would have a lovely garden.  It wasn’t about her.

In spite of Rick Warrens aha first line in A Purpose Driven Life – not to mention assorted ancient brothers and sisters in the faith – we still forget that following Jesus is not about us.

• We don’t obey God so that we can get into heaven.  (Really, this is why we keep the commandments?  So that we’ll get something out of it? So that we will avoid the fires of hell?)
• We don’t follow Jesus so that we will “be saved” – although that is a lovely bonus.  We follow Jesus because it’s the best way to live.  We follow Jesus because he taught us to pray that we are to make earth as it is in heaven and that’s about bringing justice to the whole world – even to our enemies. We follow Jesus because he was God in human skin.  It’s a beautiful thing to try to love as Jesus loves.
• We don’t “go to church” for our own pleasure – although it might be a pleasurable experience – especially yesterday with all the lilies and “special music.”
• We don’t belong to a church so that we’ll have an appropriate venue for our weddings, baptisms, and funeral.  (A lady back in Virginia joined our church for the stated purpose of “having a place for her family to have a funeral when she died.” Ironically, when she died, her family chose to have the memorial service in a funeral home in another state.)
• We don’t belong to a church because “it’s our church” and we like our respected leadership positions or we like that our family roots are  there or we like the color of the pew cushions – especially since they were given in memory of our grandfather.  We like that our mother’s ashes are in the columbarium behind the church building.  We like that the music brings us comfort.  We like seeing our friends.  We like going to brunch after worship.  We just like it. (Note: But maybe we don’t even like it as much as we used to.

Following Jesus is not about us.  And if we spend more energy in our churches serving ourselves rather than those outside our walls, we are misunderstanding the gospel.  “Christ is risen!” is not a one-day-a-year Call to Worship.  It’s a way of life.

So let’s get out there and build a garden – and a world – for other people, in the name of Jesus.

What if Jesus had used weapons?  Can you think of a Bible story that speaks of Jesus using some kind of weapon?

I remember having an epiphany in the Topkaki Palace during my sabbatical in 2009, seeing the sword of Muhammad (PBUH) and thinking, “I’m pretty sure that Jesus never had a sword.“

Today many are demanding action to end gun violence.  It’s also the day when we remember that Jesus healed the ear of the high priest’s slave when one of Jesus’ followers tried to defend Jesus and cut off the slave’s ear.

So, not only did Jesus not carry a sword, but he healed somebody violated by one.

What if Jesus walked among us today?  What would he say about carrying guns?

Christian tradition marks the Wednesday of Holy Week as Spy Wednesday – the day we remember that Judas agreed to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Betrayal continues to be a heart-wrenching human choice today.  What if each of us in the Church, everyone reading this blog post, everyone planning to remember Jesus’ crucifixion – and resurrection – this week shared 30 pieces of silver to an organization that serves those who have been betrayed.

At most, in US dollars at least, it’s a mere $30.  But nickels and dimes would be helpful too.

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. I Corinthians 1:25

What if we refrained from penalizing people who disagree with us?  What if we refrained from calling people “evil” or “bigoted” or “foolish” for having strong views that are the opposite of our own?

No one fully knows the mind of God.  And with that in mind, please read these two pieces:

• This transcript from an interview between Rachel Martin of NPR’s Weekend Edition and Jim Daly of Focus on the Family about same sex marriage.
• This post from my Writing Revs sister Ruth Everhart about the problem with making theological standards by voting.

The Supremes are talking about marriage this week.

I, as a clergy person, can choose not to marry a couple I cannot –  in good conscience  – marry.  Maybe they don’t seem serious about marriage.  Maybe they’ve shared with me that they plan an “open marriage” and that is against my theological beliefs.  Maybe I’ve learned that the woman is a victim of abuse at the hands of her future spouse.

I don’t have to marry them.  Someone else will, perhaps, but I don’t have to.

Many years ago, my denomination voted to ordain women.  Some people left the  denomination because they could not – in good conscience – ordain women.  They were okay if other pastors and congregations ordained women.  But they could not – at least at that time.  And that was not okay with our denomination, so those pastors left.

What if we had said, “You know what? That’s fine.  Don’t ordain women.“?  To be perfectly honest, I know – as a woman – that some Presbyteries are friendlier towards women pastors than other Presbyteries.  And I choose not to seek a call in those less friendly Presbyteries.  It’s my choice.  If there was a high incidence of people in a particular Presbytery who – I knew – were not going to support my call, I would probably not go there.

Things get dicey – legally – when we are talking about refusing to support something and a particular gender, sexual identity, race, religion, etc. is involved.

Jim Daly of Focus on the Family quotes a gay rights activist in the NPR piece who said:  ” . . . if I wanted to get married to my partner and a Christian person was working at the county courthouse, if they refused to do it – even politely and had somebody else come over to do it – she shouldn’t work or he shouldn’t work in the county courthouse. What about a doctor that wouldn’t do in vitro fertilization for a lesbian couple? Well, they should never be licensed by the state because they would be violating my rights.”

Honestly, if a clerk at the court house or a doctor couldn’t – in good conscience – sign a license or do an in vitro procedure for any couple, I am okay with them not doing it.  The county clerk – as a government employee – is a trickier situation.  The doctor, I believe, as a private business person, should have more say about what procedures she chooses to perform.

This might be politically and theological incorrect, but it’s sort of the same way I feel about women who are against abortion.  If you find yourself being pregnant with a child you do not want or cannot have, don’t have an abortion.  No one will make you have an abortion – at least in this country.

This is what it means to live in a free nation.

Yes, you can all run circles around me logically in terms of legal definitions of discrimination, etc.  But I am at a point when I am feeling libertarian-ish.

When I attended the first Evangelical Covenant Order event back in 2011, I sat with a group of good people who were concerned about the recent change in the PCUSA constitution that had removed the prohibition known as G-6.0106b in the church’s Book of Order.

One gentleman from a large church said, “Now we have to find homosexuals to ordain.  I know that, in my church, we don’t have any homosexuals, but now we have to go out and find some to ordain.”  I tried to explain that this was not the case.  There was no new requirement to find GBLTQ people and ordain them.  But – just as it had been required for congregations to ordain women – he assumed that his church would now be required to ordain GBLTQ folks.

(Note: Congregations in the Presbyterian Church USA must elect officers that are representative of their membership.  If there are no women in your church, you don’t have to ordain women.  If there is no one under the age of 50, you don’t have to ordain “young people.”  If you are part of a Biker Church, there should be some bikers in leadership.)

With matters of leadership standards – as well as the definition of marriage – people of faith can disagree because none of us has cornered the market on God’s Truth.  One thing I know for sure is that Jesus has told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

What if we agreed together that even if we thoroughly disagree with someone, we can let them believe what they believe and still love them.

What if we could really love our enemies?  It might seem foolish, but God is so much wiser than we are.

Image Source.

On the cusp of Holy Week, officials of the Chicago Public Schools announced Friday that 53 elementary schools and one small secondary school will be closing.  That’s 11% of the city’s grammar schools.

Most of these schools are on the South Side of Chicago in low-income neighborhoods, some bearing the names of African American or Latino-American heroes:  Mahalia Jackson, Marcus Garvey, Ana Roqué de Duprey, Benjamin Banneker, Mary McLeod Bethune, Jesse Owens.  It looks like this is a done deal, which begs the question:  what will Chicago Public Schools do with these buildings?

Leaving buildings  abandoned sounds like a particularly terrible plan.

After listening to this radio show on Friday, it struck me:  What if the Presbytery of Chicago – or any denominational body in the city – partnered to lease at least one of these soon-to-be empty school buildings and create something new?  This is why we have denominations – so that we can join lots of congregations together to do what a single congregation cannot do.

So, here’s my Big Idea:

• Choose a school, preferably near a Presbyterian congregation (or whatever kind of congregation is part of a larger body that wants to do this with the community.)
• Lease it with the understanding of the City of Chicago that this will be a non-profit center for service, education, and ministry.
• Invite the amazing Ashley Goff to come share with us what she’s learned about The Pilgrimage in DC and start by creating a Pilgrimage-esque facility (sleeping quarters, showers, kitchen, gathering space) in the former school – for youth and adults to stay for Urban Plunge Experiences to paint, clean, and serve in countless other ways to prepare this space for ministry.
• Find – among Presbyterian Christians in our churches or from other connections – contractors willing to donate HVAC, lighting, plumbing, landscaping, and other services to refurbish the school.
• Call a specialized minister  – or preferably a team of ministers – to be  Curators/Conveners/Pastors to organize the ministries of this new spiritual community.
• Talk with the neighbors – preferably in a community organizing style of relational meetings – about what they want/need in their neighborhood.  (Note:  This is about the neighbors, not about what we want to do.)
• Create a haven in this neighborhood with any combination of services depending on the needs/hopes of the community:  after-school homework and tutoring, adult education, computer lab, prayer chapel, music lessons, childcare, financial counseling and education, spiritual direction, video/multi-media classes, Bible studies, sex education classes, basketball games, yoga, community garden, cooking classes, movie nights, psychological therapy, basic medical care, job counseling, enrichment classes for children. Whatever.
• Hire a full-time grant-writer to help find funding streams.
• Hire a staff to manage the assorted ministries offered, including a volunteer coordinator who recruits, trains, supervises, and honors the volunteers.
• Hire security.  We want this to be a very safe place.
• Offer regular prayer throughout the day.

What if we could do this?  We churches don’t believe we are rich, but we really are.  There are ways to do this if only we want to do it – and if God wants us to do it.

Image of the Marcus Garvey Elementary School in Chicago, one of the schools selected to close after this school year.

This weekend marks the beginning of the holiest week for Christians- and the busiest week for my church friends serving parishes.  Multiple bulletins to prepare.  Liturgies to create.  Sermons to write.  Palm fronds, Easter lilies, and plastic eggs.  Special Music.

Pressure’s on.

It’s The Big Week . . . for clergy and other church leaders.  But most of the population will experience next week in a different way.  Some have spring break plans.  Others will park themselves in front of a television and suddenly care about college basketball teams that meant nothing to them last week.

The truth is that most of the culture will not be as into Holy Week as church people.

So, here’s my question:  is the focus of our Holy Week swirl about event planning or connecting spiritually to God and each other?  Do we believe that Holy Week events will make disciples?  Or would our time be better spent serving neighbors who have no plans to come through the sanctuary doors on Palm Sunday or Maundy Thursday or Good Friday?

A friend of mine shared yesterday that his church – which meets in a building next to a public school with a high percentage of kids who receive a free or reduced price breakfast and lunch  – is handing out grocery bags filled with a week’s worth of groceries to each student to take home.  Every kids gets a bag so the free/reduced meal kids don’t feel embarrassed.  Their spring break is also next week so most of those kids won’t get their usual breakfast and lunch.

This is a church that spends more time on providing services to the neighbors than providing services to those within their own walls.  Gutsy.

May this be a truly holy week for us all.

I remember – almost 30 years ago – hearing for the first time about a pastor making $100,000 a year in cash salary.  It was a stunning revelation that this was even possible.  At the time, I was earning so little income as a rural pastor that I qualified for government assistance.

Many pastors – especially of churches larger than 500 souls – earn a six figure salary these days, at least in urban and suburban parts of the U.S.  According to The 2008 Compensation Handbook for Church Staff, Presbyterian pastors are among the best paid in the country.  Christianity Today reported several years ago that “Presbyterian senior pastors earned the most in our survey—their average salary plus housing/parsonage was $78,000—while Baptist senior pastors earned next to last—$67,000.”

We all know that nobody goes into professional ministry for the money. Nevertheless, we all appreciate a just salary that pays for our basic needs as well as some basics wants.  I am sinfully proud of the fact that HH and I could pay for braces for our three kids.  I am sinfully anxious that our kids have student loans to pay off.  It would have been great to be able to cover more of their college costs but I’m grateful we could give as much as we gave them.

Part of my current job involves receiving the “Terms of Call” for all the installed pastors of our Presbytery,  and I am struck by the disparity.  I have a hard time believing that the Senior Pastor of a large, wealthy church really works three times as hard as the solo pastor of a tiny church in a less affluent part of Chicagoland.  But that’s the numerical difference in their salaries.  One pastor makes the minimum and another makes three times that – even if they have similar gifts and years of service.

Again, according to Christianity Today “the biggest single factor in determining any pastor’s pay is the church’s income. And among churches with senior pastors, Presbyterian churches have the highest-reported church income, so some of that gets passed along to their senior pastors.”

Ideas for creating a fairer system have been tossed around for years to no avail.  It’s not up to Presbyteries – in my denomination – to set up these regulations, I believe.  It’s up to the congregations themselves.

Imagine if a congregation intentionally committed to paying their Senior Pastor and their Associate Pastors more proportionately.  Yes, experience and education matter.  But most Associate Pastors have almost as much responsibility as Senior Pastors.  It seem unjustifiable to pay a Senior Pastor twice as much – or more – than the Associate Pastor in multi-staff congregations.

It also seems unfair to pay a solo pastor – who does everything from preaching each Sunday to leading the youth group –  a fraction of what a Head of Staff makes, especially when that Head of Staff never has to worry about unlocking the doors every Sunday or recruiting teachers or training the ushers.

We have many pastors who – no matter how hard they work, how creatively they try to lead their people, or how gifted they are – will never make more than the minimum salary.

I have no answers.  Do you?

Image source here.

A particularly smart colleague pointed out to me – after yesterday’s post –  that a Big Church is not necessary a Rich Church.

The average sized church in the PCUSA these days is (!) 187 members.   Three-fourths (75 percent) have 200 or fewer members. Eight in ten (80 percent) have 250 or fewer members. More than half (53 percent) have 100 or fewer.  So what is a “big church”?  250 members?  600 hundred?  1000?  The Top Ten congregations have over 4000 members.  So can we assume they are “rich”?

They might be rich in participation and real estate, but do they have financial resources in the bank? Maybe not.

Here’s the crazy thing:  some of our largest churches don’t have the capacity to fund new endeavors.   And some of our Small Churches have quite a lot of money in their endowments.  It’s possible that our “richest” churches – by some definitions  – are indeed the “little churches.”

An important point that Shawna Bowman made yesterday, is that small and large churches need to learn from each other.  It’s true.

Capacity for ministry might involve financial capacity.  Or it could be human capacity (participation).  But we need . . . capacity  – for ministry.

Survivalist churches don’t have any capacity for growth, spiritual development, making disciples of all nations.  And many of our congregations seem to believe that we are in a zero sum game.  Nope.

We have the capacity to do amazing ministry.  How have we missed this?

Would you say your church is rich?  Why or why not?

The minimum salary for a full time pastor in our Presbytery is $42,764 cash annually,  which is not a lot for someone with a Masters Degree who works 50+ hours a week living in an urban area.  

Quite a few of our pastors make the minimum salary, no matter how much experience they have or how hard they work or how gifted they are.

This has a lot to do with the size of the active congregation.  If a church has 50 active members, each and every member would have to donate $1,152.52 a year just to have a FT pastor, covering the cash salary and required benefits.  A church with 30 members would require each member to give $1,919.20 to have a FT pastor.  Needless to say, these congregations generally do not have FT pastors.

And this is what would be needed just for the pastor’s salary – not all the other necessities like building upkeep, utilities, property and liability insurance, other staff salaries (music minister?  secretary?  custodian?), and – oh, right – resources to serve the neighbors.  Churches also need to purchase things like postage, curriculum, office supplies, etc.

So what will happen to all the little churches?

We know the usual answers:

• Many will be gone in 5-10 years after spending their last resources. 
• Some will merge with other congregations and survive a bit longer.
• Some will be brave enough to close before all their resources are gone and they will resurrect by using those resources to plant a new church.

I have another idea, but it involves a serious paradigm shift:  from “this is my church and about pleasing me/my needs” to “this is God’s church and about making disciples of all nations.”

What if large churches called an associate pastor whose primary job is to plant a new church in an under-served neighborhood?  That associate pastor would have the resources and staff support of a large, established congregation but would equip the saints in a new neighborhood, with new people.

Or a large church could call an associate pastor whose primary job is to redevelop a struggling church in need of fresh leadership and vision.  The smaller congregation would become a satellite of the larger congregation.

We Presbyterians call ourselves “a connectional church” but we are not as connected as we could be.  It’s not about sharing common rules and regulations.  It’s about sharing a common mission to show our neighbors what love looks like in the name of Jesus.  I can imagine a network made up of many small congregations, connected by anchor churches with the vision to exist for the transformation of our city and beyond.

So who’s up for a paradigm shift?