A Church for Starving Artists

In my first parish, one of the local funeral directors used to call me on January 1st and ask me who I thought might die that year.  Really.   He wasn’t kidding.  This wasn’t about his preparing for a potentially busy year; it was just casual wondering.  And creepy.

While we don’t know what the new year will bring, we have the opportunity to make 2013 about something good, no matter what happens.  This could be the year that our churches rethink their purpose (i.e. it’s not about us and what we like.)  This could be the year that more of us are set free (from anger, addictions, overwork, regret, bigotry, selfishness.)  This could be the year that bullies are conquered and the bullied are empowered – not merely in the confines of our congregations but in our neighborhoods and communities as well.

This could be the year that The Church comes closer to what we were created to be.  We have been given the power to make 2013 about God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. I’m pumped.

Note:  The idea for this post is from the creative and talented Joe Morrow, from a comment he made in a previous post.  I can’t wait to see where God calls him – and the other inquirers and candidates for ordination I have the privilege of serving in 2013.

I kind of hate the term “Bucket List” in general because 1) it reminds me of that lame movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and 2) it sounds like a late-in-life thing (i.e. stuff to do before we ‘kick the bucket’) when actually we need to enjoy our lives and do what we are inspired to do now.  Believe me – any one of us could find out in the early weeks of the new year that we have cancer, then spend the following months being poked and prodded, losing our hair and our energy, and finally succumbing before Christmas next year.  As many of you know, it just happened to someone I love.  So let’s get moving, people.  This is urgent.

Every Church has one or more of the following:

• Official Goals sanctioned by officers, most likely compiled at a leaders’ retreat  (e.g. re-carpet the nursery, add a new worship service)
• Unspoken Goals sitting in the heads of those people in the pew (e.g. get the officers to paint the sanctuary a color I like; hire a preacher I like; nudge That-Person-I-Don’t-Like off the governing board)
• To-Do Lists (e.g. send financial giving documents for 2012, schedule liturgists for the new year, start Lenten plans)
• This-Is-Always-How-We’ve-Done-It Expectations (e.g. “If we could just survive another year . . .”, gear up for another exhausting, soul-sucking church year)

What if we thought of our congregation’s ministry as an adventure?  

What if our church resolutions for 2013 looked more like our personal resolutions for 2013?

Imagine a “Bucket List” (a must do list) for our spiritual communities in 2013. I’d call them New Year’s Resolutions, but we aren’t very good at keeping “resolutions.”

Ideas for your Church’s Bucket List:

• Spend a Saturday morning (as a church) hanging out at a local laundromat or a local Jiffy Lube and pay for everybody’s laundry/oil change that morning.  (Yes this will take some cash from the Random Acts of Kindness line item in your church budget.  Having this line item in your church budget should also be on your Church Bucket List.)  The purpose of doing people’s laundry/oil change is to serve in a random and generous way.  The purpose is NOT to invite people to your church or to hand out glossy flyers about your Sunday School.  If anyone asks why you are doing this you say, “We are part of the same church.”  Make them ask you the name of your church, if they really want to know.  Believe me, if they are looking for a spiritual home, they will seek you out.
• Take a cooler full of popsicles to a ball field when the weather gets warmer during a Little League or soccer game.  Just hand them out to anybody who wants one.  Again, don’t wear church t-shirts or share a church flyer with the popsicle.  Just smile and love them and feel great about serving them.  And if they ask you why you are doing this, just say, “We know each other through church.”
• Challenge every person in your congregation to do some simple act of compassion or generosity for their next door neighbor.  Invite them to share what they’ve done – again out of love, not out of “let’s save the neighbors!” or “let’s target them as potential new members!”  Ideas:  bake them cookies, rake their leaves, invite them to dinner.
• Schedule at least one regular church event (a Bible study, women’s meeting, small group, Christian Education meeting, etc.) in a public space on a monthly basis.  Get out of your church building.   Hang out in a diner, a bar, a public library, a park, a coffee shop.

None of these ideas are particularly fresh.  But they’re a start.

What ideas do you have for something new for your church that would be fun, gracious, inviting, fresh?   What would shake people up, encourage them to relinquish their fears, remind them they are loved?

Happy New Year Everybody!  May we kick that bucket full of dreams down the road in 2013.

One of the reasons Jesus needs new PR is because his followers are not helpful.  People who self-identify as Christian have been known to kill non-Christians, spew hate speech, and ignore Jesus in real time.

And so, with humility, I suggest these resolutions for followers of Jesus (aka The Church) in 2013:

1. Let go of dated buildings and/or designs.  We update our kitchens at home.  We update our bathrooms and living rooms.  Why wouldn’t we update our worship space?  Sometimes our buildings are unsafe or would cost a ridiculous amount of money to refurbish.  It’s both okay and faithful to let those buildings go.  (Note that the original buildings of The Early Church – the ultimate in sacred spaces – are no longer standing and we continue to function.)  Take that massive sanctuary and reconfigure it for a 21st Century Church.

2. Remember that Jesus did not come to establish a a self-serving Christianity (e.g. I don’t like drums in church.  The color of the sanctuary carpet annoys me.  The church doesn’t have as many potlucks anymore and I love potlucks.)  Jesus established a movement so profound that it’s supposed to reflect heaven on earth. (e.g. Love your enemy.  Pray for those who persecute you.  Return violence with healing.  Share your stuff.)

3. Be a good neighbor to the people who literally live next to us – as well as those who live far away.  (Note:  I confess before you and God that I am a terrible neighbor.  I’m like the plumber who doesn’t take time to repair her own drippy faucet.  I work such long hours for “the church” that I don’t take/have the time to comfort my grieving next-door neighbor whose mother recently died.)  There was a church in Bethesda, MD searching for a new pastor and one of the references they requested of candidates was a letter from the candidate’s next door neighbor.  They wanted to know – essentially – if their Christian neighbor /pastor actually looked anything like Jesus.  Did she scream at her kids?  Did he kick the dog?  Was she attentive to the homebound neighbor across the street?  I love this idea for pastoral references.  Do we ignore our newly divorced next door neighbor while sending money to IJM?  Do we fail to check on our sick across-the-hall neighbor while taking a mission trip to Haiti? 

4. Be a pastor to a pastor.  I serve the Presbytery of Chicago, specifically staffing the Commission on Ministry and the Commission of Preparation for Ministry.  Period.  But people often identify my job as being The Pastor to Pastors.  Actually, no one has that specific role in our Presbytery, although several of us serve this role de facto.  Pastors need pastors.  Sometimes it’s as simple as praying for a pastor who is going through a terrible time.  Sometimes it involves visiting a pastor in the hospital or taking someone out for coffee.  I remember parishioners who prayed with me when I was their official pastor and I’ve never forgotten them.  (St. Evelyn Morgan followed every prayer I prayed for her with a prayer she prayed for me.)  Today each of us can be someone’s pastor.  (Note:  It has to be authentic.  Don’t march up to someone and announce ‘I’m going to be your pastor’ when your relationship doesn’t warrant this.)

What resolutions would you suggest for The Church in 2013?

Image of the 132 year old St. James Roman Catholic Church building in Chicago which will be demolished in 2013 because of unsafe conditions.  A new building project has been planned.

One of my favorite Christmas presents is a used book.  SBC happened to meet the author of this book in NYC and he mentioned that – in spite of the fabulousness of the Captain Underpants series – God Bless the Gargoyles was his mother’s favorite Dav Pilkey book.  To my surprise, Dav Pilkey then sent me an autographed copy from Japan.  

Christmas is wonderful.  Except when it isn’t.  How profoundly kind that a person would send one of his books to a fan while he’s visiting family in Asia.   And yet, so many people don’t get this level of kindness – ever.

A lot of people are suffering this season with unspeakable pain:  families in Newtown, Mobile, West Webster, and my own backyard in Chicago.  The last place we want to be during the holidays is with people whose hearts are broken, people who cry all the time, people who moan in pain.  But this is why God came to be with us, to help release us from suffering, from loneliness, from despair.

Dav Pilkey nails the message of the Incarnation in a prayer he wrote as part of the story of the gargoyles who are loved by the angels even though some people consider them beastly.  Gargoyles were created to guard and protect church buildings, but through the years, their noble purposes were forgotten.  People were simply afraid of them.

We do this all the time.  We stay away from the ones who are sad on Christmas because they are poor company, the ones who are considered ugly even though they were created for noble purposes, the ones who are broken because they remind us of our own brokenness.

Part of the prayer from God Bless the Gargoyles goes like this:

“God bless the hearts and the souls who are grieving

for those who have left, and for those who are leaving,

God bless each perishing body and mind,

God bless all creatures remaining behind.

God bless the dreamers whose dreams have awoken,

God bless the lovers whose hearts have been broken,

God bless each soul that is tortured and taunted,

God bless all creatures alone and unwanted.”

 This is what Jesus came to teach us:  sometimes our calling is to be in the last place we’d like to be.

Image is from The National Cathedral, Washington, DC.

I served a congregation in Our Nation’s Capital for many years and found Christmas Eve to be a disappointment in terms of what I’d experienced as a child.  Because almost everyone in the congregation was from Someplace Else [Note: most people who live in the DC area are not from the DC area] they returned home to Nebraska or Ohio or South Carolina for the holidays and so either the pews were semi-empty or they were filled with strangers visiting from out of town.

Unlike the Christmas Eve services throughout the nation, there was no children’s choir (they were all visiting grandparents in other states/countries), there was no adult choir (most of them were with their families of origins in the ‘home churches’) and there were no crowds.  I almost forgot was it was like to have full pews for Christmas.

Now I live in a small town south of Chicago where everyone comes home for Christmas and home is here.  On the fourth Sunday of Advent, there were two children’s choirs and two young adults (in high school or back from college) playing a viola duet.  The pews were packed and it’s not even Christmas Eve yet.  On Christmas Eve, there will be three services and all of them will be full.

But back to strangers.  No matter where we live, there will be “strangers” in our pews on Christmas Eve.  Maybe they’ll be the family members or the significant others of family members.  Maybe they’ll be people who walked in off the street curious about this cultural phenomenon called Lessons & Carols.  Maybe neighbors who ordinarily don’t do church will be invited for this one night, to be followed by eggnog back at the house.

But the most important people in the room on Christmas Eve will be The Strangers because Jesus was once The Stranger, so different from everybody else.  So strangely obedient to the Truth of the Gospel.  So unlike others in his own faith tradition.  If nothing else, Jesus taught us how to treat The Other.

Look out for the strangers on Christmas Eve.  If we don’t welcome them on Christmas Eve, we never will.

On the last Sunday of 1999, I preached a sermon called TEOTWAWKI (pronouced TAY-o-ta-WAH-ki) – The End of the World As We Know It.  Of course, the world didn’t change that much, any more than the world as we know it will end tomorrow with the Mayan calendar.  But tomorrow – being the longest night of the year – reminds us that the world as we know it changes forever when great loss occurs.  The longest night is followed by the commencement of increasingly longer days and – Lord – we need more light.

There are several memorable events that have changed my world forever: 

• The day I met HH in Warrensburg, NY  – my future family began
• The day my mother died of cancer – my family of origin would never be whole again
• The day HH and I moved to Northern Virginia – where we would meet the best friends of our lives and raise our children
• The day my Grandmother died – no more Saturday morning phone calls
• The day FBC left for college – our family dynamics were changed forever

Some of our losses are minor in a cosmic way and some blast a hole through our gut.  I cannot imagine the staggering changes in the lives of families whose loved ones die from violence.  Here is a story from a member of Fourth Presbyterian Church about her own experience and it gives us a glimpse of the despair.  But we cannot know unless we’ve been through it.

God, please don’t let any more of us go through it.

This is a good day to remember in prayer all those who have lost a family member, a best friend, a home to natural disaster, a part of their own body, their dignity through unemployment or financial despair.  As the snow promises to fall in Chicago today, it’s an especially good day to pray for those whose worlds  – as they knew it – ended in 2013.

Image from candlelight vigil in memory of  Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the weapon that killed the Sandy Hook children and adults is the best-selling semi-automatic rifle in the United States.  Dick’s Sporting Goods in Newtown recently announced that they were suspending the  sale of these weapons “out of respect for the victims and their families, during this time of national mourning” but they will return to the shelves in due time.  They bring in too much profit to remove them from the shelves forever.

Walmart, JC Penney, and Kohl’s make clothing at the factory in Bangladesh that burned to the ground, killing 110 workers.  In the past six years, 600 workers have died in Bangladesh in factory fires like this one.  Why does this happen?  Because making clothing in Bangladesh is cheaper for the companies and safety requirements in Bangladesh are lax.  Is it worth the profits that those companies earn if poor people do not have safe work conditions?

Greed is a spiritual issue.

We are all greedy in our own ways.  We want what we want, whether we need it or not.  We covet our neighbors’ cars/clothing/homes/toys even if our own possessions are more than sufficient.  We want more.  For some, it’s a game.

Whether somebody makes $131 million a year (John Hammergren of the McKesson Corporation) or a mere $15.36 million a year (Richard K. Templeton of Texas Instruments, some of our most admired business and entertainment leaders have more money than any human being could possibly need.  This is a little nuts.

But, again, we are all greedy in our own ways.  And we all tend to worship financial security and financial success.

I believe that Jesus made sacrifices for love. What sacrifices do we make to bring about everyday justice and show compassion for other human beings?

• Are we willing to pay a little more if it means that somebody gets health care?
• Are we willing to make less money if we know that our colleagues are  working in safe conditions?
• Are we willing to stop shopping at stores that refuse to pay fair wages to those who make their goods in faraway lands?

One way to fight greed is to practice everyday justice.  Especially in this holiday season, it’s good to remember that we make choices to be just or greedy every day.  (A good holiday read or re-read:  Everyday Justice by Julie Clawson.)

As we continue to mourn the horrible events in Newtown, I can’t help but wonder what part greed played in that tragedy.

We’ve heard the stats:

• For the first time in modern U.S.history,  the majority of all Hispanic, Black, Asian, and Mixed Race births reached 50.4 percent of the population.  (Source)
• The median age of worshipers in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is 61.  (Source)  In the Episcopal Church the median age is 57.  (Source)  In the United Methodist Church it’s also 57.  (Source)  For Southern Baptists it’s 49.  (Source)
• Only 5 percent of Protestant churches and 15 percent of Roman Catholic churches are multiracial in the U.S. (Source)
• The number of American mosques increased 74 percent since 2000 and Islamic houses of worship tend to be ethnically-diverse (Source)

I could go on and on in terms of stats that show both our diversity in congregations and our lack of diversity.  When a congregation describes themselves as “diverse” I have no idea what they mean.

• Do they have a percentage of non-white members in a predominantly white church, or a percentage of white members in a predominantly non-white church?
• Do they have a mix of gay and straight members?
• Do they have a variety of ages?
• Do they have a variety of political perspectives?
• Do they have a variety of socio-economic backgrounds?

One of the most unexpected sources of diversity in congregations, from my experience, is theological  – although most members are basically unaware of the breadth of their heterogeneity.  Church people tend to believe that the person sitting beside them in worship generally agrees with them on matters of heaven, hell, and salvation.  They might find it shocking to learn that some of their brothers and sisters in Christ at table with them at the monthly potluck have ideas about ordaining GBLT members that are the opposite of their own.

Churches are finding that they don’t know who they are, what they stand for, or “what they believe.”  It’s all part of the postmodern struggle to replace the importance of “right beliefs” with  belonging to a community and behaving according to the expectations of that community.  In this realm, we are quite diverse.

What are you finding in terms of congregational diversity?  Is it hidden?  Is it obvious?  Is it absent?

Diverse images of the Nativity can be found here.

I’ve heard the following comments at Funerals Past:

“I didn’t know the deceased at all, but I understand he died of a heart attack.  I had a heart attack once and it was the best experience of my life.” – Protestant Pastor preaching at the funeral of a non-member

“_____ never uttered a cross word to anyone.  He was a saint.” – Daughter of the deceased ignoring the fact that her father was a bully to everyone who crossed him including his own pastor.

You get the picture.  I’ve been to funerals that erroneously lionized the dead.  I’ve been to funerals that never mentioned God.  I’ve been to funerals that were joyless and faithless.  Perhaps you have also been to these funerals.

Over the weekend I had the privilege of attending my spiritual sister Cindy Bolbach’s funeral.  Many of us will miss her for the rest of our lives.  You can read more here and here.

This was perhaps the most powerful, joyful, and faithful funeral I have ever attended and it’s because 1) it was led by people who really knew Cindy from a variety of perspectives (work, church, friendship, family) and 2) the focus was Jesus.

My own call story involves a time when – although I knew I was loved by my family and friends –  I felt totally alone in that they did not really know me.  They knew sides of me, but they didn’t know the depth of my pain, the breadth of my doubts, the width of my existential loneliness.

Then something happened.  On a dark of the soul when I had reached the pit, I felt an overwhelming and all-consuming sense that  – because of Jesus – God was the only One who truly knew me.  And I was going to be alright.  And my calling in life would to share this truth with other people who feel alone and unknown.

Christianity is the only religion in which a person is the “decisive revelation of God” in the words of Marcus Borg.  The decisive revelation for Jews is the Torah and Moses revealed it.  (He is not himself the revelation.)  The decisive revelation for Muslims is the Koran and Muhammad revealed it.  (He is not himself the revelation.)  Jesus is the Word made flesh, God in human skin.  Jesus is the revelation.

I believe that because God came to earth, that even though Jesus was a Jewish male person living 2000 years ago, I am known in a complete and holy way.  The intimacy of being known is an unspeakable treasure . . .

. . . which brings me back to Cindy.  There were things she knew about me, things I knew about her.  Through Cindy I got to know other precious friends.  It was a close and joyous friendship, and a huge part of it was about God – that ongoing conversation about what God was calling us to do and be.  We talked about it in our homes and on vacations and at bedsides and over wine and we laughed a lot.  It’s terrible to lose that friendship but who could wish her back to endure more?  I also believe that now Cindy knows fully, even as she was fully known – only by God.  So grateful.

The photograph is of Cindy Bolbach’s Moderator’s Stole and Cross taken at her funeral service on December 15, 2012. Cindy was the Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA.

In life and in death we belong to God. 

I’m taking a break from posting for a couple of days.   What will we do without our Cindy?  We will be a better church, better friends, better children of God because of her influence.

[Note:  Ruling Elder Cynthia Bolbach died Wednesday, 12-12-12.  She was Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA 2010-2012.  You can read more here.  I have long loved this woman.]