A Church for Starving Artists

I find myself questioning some of the standard practices of professional pastors.  Today:  length of service in a particular congregation.

When I was in seminary, we were told that ten years was the preferred term of service for pastors.  I did not comply:

First Call – 5 years

Second Call – 22 years

My United Methodist friends don’t seem to move as much as they used to.  As a child, my friend A’s family moved every five years until her father became an official in the denomination, and the family could plant themselves in one place for longer than the time it takes to get through elementary school.

I observe pastors who stay too long which damages their churches, sometimes to irreparable points.  This happens, especially, in a tight economy when available pastors outnumber open churches dramatically.  Pastors also stay too long when they “can’t afford to move” financially or they are too close to retirement to seek a new call or they don’t want to disrupt their children’s or spouse’s school and work lives.

I’m hyper-aware of the boundary problems involved with staying too long in a single congregation to the point that it becomes “your church” in an unhealthy way.  After 22 years in one congregation, this especially troubles me.  Did I stay too long?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Context is everything.

All I know is that being uprooted sucks.  I considered it an enormous gift from my parents to grow up in a one town all my life.  They could have moved when I was in junior high but chose not to “for the kids.”  To be honest, they didn’t really want to move either.  They had roots after decades in Chapel Hill.

In this particular Presbytery where I now live,  many pastors move from church to church within the Chicagoland area.  This allows families to plant themselves in one neighborhood for the entirety of a child’s life and develop deep roots.  The biggest problem, though, is that pastors don’t live in the particular neighborhood where they serve which makes ministry a bit more difficult.  It’s optimal, I believe, to live in the neighborhood where your church lives.  This is how missional church happens more readily.

So, what’s been your experience as a pastor or a parishioner in terms of length of pastorate?  Are there any standard guidelines anymore?

Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

Sunday Worship Usher:  Have you met the Muslim woman from Turkey who was visiting today?

Me:  You don’t mean the Rumi Forum guys?

SWU:  No, this was a woman.  You need to meet her.

I was planning to travel to Turkey at the time and the usher was more interested in the fact that Z. was from Turkey than the fact that she was Muslim.  Z and I became friends – more because she was Muslim than because she was from Turkey.  One day over brunch she said, “I think I want to be baptized.”

“Would you say that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?” I asked and she said, “Not yet. I will always be Muslim culturally.  But I want to live my life like Jesus.”

Herein lies the very interesting issue of personal spiritual identity.  I just read a very brief novel (a novela?) by Brian McLaren called The Girl With the Dove Tattoo which is a prelude of sorts to his new book  Why Did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?, due out – very intentionally – on September 11, 2012.  And the tattooed title character – like so many young adults I know – is grappling with what she believes.  Her basic identity, however, is Christian – whether she toys with Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, or even atheism.

Can my friend Z. be a Muslim follower of Jesus?  Can Islam be her cultural identity while she seeks to follow the way of Jesus?

What do we mean when we say Jesus is the only way to the Father?  Does this mean that I pray the Jesus prayer?  Does it mean I profess my faith in front of a congregation of Christians?  Does it mean I alter my life in a radical way to live my life as Jesus lived his life? 

There was a scene in the Gandhi movie where Om Puri plays a Hindu who has killed a Muslim child because Muslims killed his child. When he repents and confesses it to Gandhi, Gandhi tells him to adopt an orphan Muslim child and raise him as a Muslim.  This confused me as a Christian (and probably would be confusing to a Hindu person as well.)  What if we encouraged people of other faiths to be the most faithful Hindu/Muslim/Buddhist/Sikh/Jew they could possibly be while modeling to them what a faithful Christian looks like in hopes of sharing what love really looks like through Jesus?  What if we really loved “the other” in the likeness of Christ who clearly loved (but didn’t overtly preach to) the Syro-Phoenician woman, who saw Jesus as a prophet and healer but was identified as a Canaanite? 

This is the stuff of interesting conversation. 

A dear friend of mine who grew up Roman Catholic and now considers herself Buddhist (although she is still pretty Catholic whether she likes it or not) often says, “All religions are the same.”  I totally disagree with her.  Each faith has its own identity and culture.  But God uses all faiths – when practiced truthfully – to point to the Truth that is Jesus, in my humble opinion.  My identity is Christian.  I believe following Jesus is absolutely the best way to live – and none of us does it very well.  But sometimes people who self-identify as Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh (and no faith) seem to do it better than I.

Thoughts?

Things that make me feel older:

• Photographs of myself (Do I really look that old?  Actually, yes, I do.)
• Being called a crone (I know it’s supposed to be a compliment, but it doesn’t feel that great.)
• Having young adult kids.

Things that make me feel younger:

• Having young adult kids.
• Being asked by people my age and older “Can you tell me why my young adult kids don’t join a church?” (Apparently I look like I have this information.)
• Eating quinoa

I’ve asked my young adult kids recently what they loved about growing up in the church.  (I already know what they didn’t love.)  They are double PKs who were often the first to arrive and the last to leave the building on Sundays.  Church members often talked to them in a way that they didn’t talk to other kids, for better or for worse.  They were watched, talked about, and basically better known than other church kids.  And today, they rarely cross the threshold of a church building. And yet they still self-identify as Christian.

Me:  So, what did you like about growing up in the church?

Them:  The community.  

Really, all three of them say this.   Because of the church, they know people they never would have known otherwise (people of different generations, political proclivities, cultures, faiths, and family types.)  Because of the church, they witnessed random people (often people they didn’t know very well) bring casseroles to our house when we needed them.  Because of the church, they watched me take food to other people’s homes, visit them, drive them places.  And sometimes they were given the opportunity to do the same for people they barely knew.  (Fun family memory:  The fender bender in which the boys “lost the cobbler.”)

One of my kids told me he has every intention of raising his own family in the church.  But for now, our kids’connections range from zilch to occasional.  Their identity, though, remains with Jesus.  (And more about that tomorrow.)

Image Source.

I don’t think so.

But as one such church I love “closed”  and others have closed or teeter on the brink of closing, I wonder what we are doing wrong.  Or are emerging congregations simply more provisional than other churches?

Characteristics of these congregations seem to be:

• Location in urban/suburban neighborhoods with extraordinary transience (i.e. the neighborhoods people move into temporarily because they are fresh out of college or just starting out professionally)
• Predominantly comprised of people who like multiple options for everything – including spiritual nourishment (i.e. they have more than one spiritual community)
• Predominantly comprised of overtly broken people (i.e. addicts, church refugees, etc.) who readily share their brokenness, although they are broken in different ways
• Predominantly comprised of young professionals, non-profit workers, artists, and dreamers (although my former church also included people with higher education degrees in medicine, engineering, national security, etc.)

Many Emerging Churches struggle financially.  They cannot afford to call a FT pastor in the traditional sense:  someone with a seminary degree, a FT base salary with housing allowance, health insurance, and retirement benefits – although that’s the model most churches have used.  And traditional sponsoring churches do not always consider Emerging Communities to be “real church” anyway.

The kinds of churches that will be planted in future years will be more varied than we’ve ever seen before.  Many will have bi-vocational pastors, as we’ve predicted.  But there will also be missional communities that need and will pay for FT spiritual leaders.  And still, those communities will be very different from traditional churches.

I thank God today for Holy Grounds, Neighbors Abbey, The Portico in Charlotte, and all the others communities that have tried to be something new.  We are still learning how to do this.

Breaking News!

Let’s call James and Chapin the guest bloggers today.  Easing into the day . . .

At a recent church meeting, someone complaining about the lack of commitment among her church volunteers summed up her frustration with this proclamation:  “And we can’t exactly fire volunteers.”

Actually, we not only can but should if:

• They are serving in an area in which they are not gifted (e.g. The Sunday School teacher who hates kids)
• They are killing the program/event/activity they are supposed to be supporting (e.g. Their attitude sucks the life out of everybody’s energy and passion.)
• They are not committed, enthusiastic, or aware that what they are doing is ministry.  (e.g. The choir member who blows off practice or the Usher who offends people instead of welcoming them.)
• They have established for themselves a little fiefdom, even if they complain  (“How long, O Lord!“) as they serve.  (e.g. The Treasurer who has controlled the church financial records for as long as anyone can remember.)

In these days of giving kids “Certificates of Participation” even if they missed half their Little League games or awarding everybody a “Hurrah You Read 3 Library Books” trophy, it’s at least as important to tell people that something is actually not their gift.  Or even if it is their gift, it’s a disservice to the church for the same person to volunteer to chair something or run something for decades.  It’s important for the church offices and other roles to be shared so that more than one person is “an expert” in each position.

God deserves our very best.  And this includes offering the most excellent ministry possible to God’s people.

How exactly do we fire volunteers?

Sometimes the best way is to keep them from volunteering in the first place for specific ministry positions.

• Don’t pick mere “people with pulses” to serve.  Do we really want to have to beg someone to watch our babies in the nursery?  Do we want slackers to run our congregation?  Do we want immature, irresponsible people to be our spiritual leaders?
• Not everybody is called to do everything.  God bless the volunteer who says “yes” to baking cookies but “no” to singing in the choir – or whatever he/she simply cannot do.
• If nobody volunteers to staff a specific ministry, don’t offer that ministry.  If it’s really important to the congregation, someone will step forward to serve.  If it’s not important and nobody volunteers, let it go.
• If someone wants to be a volunteer, and you know he/she would not be a good match for a particular position, the best thing to do – especially if you are the pastor charged with equipping the saints for ministry – is simply say, “This is not your gift.”  If they leave in anger, let them go.  The purpose of volunteering is not for us, to satisfy our own personal egos.
• If someone seems miserable in her/his volunteer position, give that person a way out.  Meet privately and ask, “Are you loving this?  Because it doesn’t look like your calling at this time.  You’ve got other things going on.”  Or – “I think you’d be great at ______.”  The person might be extraordinarily relieved to relinquish this job.
• If worse come to worse, pull the volunteer aside and say, “This is not working out.  This is not your gift.”  It could be the healthiest thing you say for the sake of both the volunteer and the congregation.

Yes, we can fire volunteers.  But we need to consider call, gifts, and pastoral care as we manage our volunteer staffs.  God deserves nothing less.

Back from vacation and headed into the office this morning with – undoubtedly –  mounds of work to do.  But first this . . .

We just returned in the wee hours this morning from our annual beach week with the Edmiston side of the family.  It was our 20th consecutive vacation together, and I am profoundly grateful.  I’m thankful that we all want to be together, that we can afford to rent a house big enough for all 21 of us (although one of the 21 was in a graduate program he couldn’t miss – hence the gap in the cousin line-up.)  I’m grateful we were all healthy.  Heck, I’m grateful we are all alive.

One of the blessings of this trip together is that we are all related by blood or marriage, but not by politics.  This article reminds me that good people can differ on their world view and life philosophy.  I am frustrated when those of us who were fortunate enough to be born in the U.S., get a good education, and live a prosperous life don’t recognize that we started on (at least) Second Base.  When someone believes that a family is poor because they are bad or lazy, my blood heats up.  We can probably name some rich people who are bad or lazy, for the record.

But we, in our family, generally tend to agree on how grateful we should be.  Who gets the credit for a wonderful vacation?  The drivers performed safely.  The cooks excelled.  The kids were (practically) perfect.  But we had little to do with the roads that took us there, the food someone grew, the providence of healthy children.  Spiritual maturity is all about acknowledging that we are interdependent and imperfect humans created by a perfect God. We don’t get credit for most of the good that has come our way. I like how David Brooks put it.

Now, off to work.

I am so, so happy to be leaving on vacation this morning and this is my last post until August.  But, in addition to seven days at the beach with family, I can hardly wait for these fall events:

• The World Premier of Becoming Calvin, a play by the lovely and talented Ann Timmons, for all you DC people (or those traveling to Our Nation’s Capital) in September.
• The release of Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time by MaryAnn McKibben Dana, also a friend and the person most responsible for the creation of this blog.  You can pre-order it right now.  Excellent choice for group study, just in time for fall classes.
• The release of Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?  Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World by Brian McLaren.  September 11 is the release date and Brian will be traveling all over talking about this timely topic.  Again, you can pre-order.
• The North Carolina State Fair October 11-21.  I finally get to go this year and re-live my childhood.
• Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which looks amazing.  To premiere this November.  In the meantime, read the book if you haven’t already.

Hope you all get a vacation sometime this summer or fall.  See you in August.

We all get stuck:  in traffic, in bad relationships, in unhealthy patterns, in institutional malaise, in soul-sucking jobs.

On the cusp of my vacation, I’m pondering how to get unstuck.  What helps in inspiring/forcing a decision for people and institutions?

For people:

1. Take a vacation.  (Thanks be to God.)
2. See a spiritual director or therapist.  Be honest with them.
3. Yell until somebody hears you.  (The Psalmist suggests starting with God.)

For institutions:

1. Take a sabbath  – from meetings, from the usual worship/Vacation Bible School/Sunday School routine.
2. Wait until a crisis occurs.  (The roof literally caves in, the pastor dies, the bank account runs dry, the renters bolt.)
3. Choose to make it not about you.  (New perspective: what does the neighborhood need?)
4. Pray.  (See # 3 under Individuals.) And then do what God is moving you to do.

Moving, listening, choosing, praying, yelling – all good ideas for getting unstuck.  But deciding to do nothing is also a decision, of course.  And sadly, this is what we decide to do too often.

“You’re the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we’ve ever had!”     Harry Potter (about Remus Lupin, pictured below)

Among the subjects seminarians study are Hebrew, Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, church history, administration, Christian education, leadership, worship and sacraments, preaching, and theology.  There is precious little time for Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, although I increasingly believe they should be required. 

God bless the Revs. Jerald Borgie and Greg Hoffman who have both been identified as the home pastors of alleged Aurora shooter James Holmes.  The Rev. Borgie – who last talked with James Holmes about six years ago – remembers him as a shy, bright young man.  He says that, while he sometimes engaged James Holmes in conversation, Holmes didn’t initiate conversations with him or mingle with other parishioners.

Usually, troubled people approach pastors, not the other way around.  They might seek us out for counseling or to volunteer for something.  Or we might literally find them hanging out in our church buildings or parking lots.

The darkness manifests itself in a variety of ways.  As a parish pastor, I have dealt with:

• People with bipolar disorder and psychosis (who don’t take their meds)
• Bullies
• Domestic abusers
• Pedophiles
• The Demon-possessed
• Trauma victims
   
  In spite of taking four units of Clinical Pastoral Education (including one in a mental hospital) I was not equipped to deal with issues that many church pastors deal with in one way or another.  Perhaps those enslaved by darkness will be among your flock or maybe their loved ones or victims will.  In pastoral episodes I never imagined would become a part of my resume, I have been asked to cast demons out of parishioners and – in one memorable moment in the church parking lot – was taught how to offer this ministry after a stranger from Texas saw a vision that I would need this kind of training.  Long story, but true.
   
  What Defense Against the Dark Arts training have you needed in your ministry?  And is on-the-job training the best way to prepare?