A Church for Starving Artists

I’m at the 220th General Assembly of the PCUSA and am reminded that God so loved the world, God didn’t send a committee.  And yet working with committees/groups/teams is crucial for including multiple perspectives,  sharing the responsibilities,  and holding each other accountable.

Whole books have been written about Getting Things Done.  But here are some thoughts I have after just a couple days at GA.  If you want a team or committee to get things done, try this:

• Do not fill a committee or council with people who represent specific demographic or interest groups. Albeit all racial/ethnic/age/special interest groups have passionate ideas to support and achieve their vision.  But we need people with passion for the whole vision – not just the vision of disparate groups with individual agendas. For example, we want people with a radical passion for new church development because they all believe that Jesus commissioned us to make disciples of all and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Note:  I also believe it’s a mistake to have a congregational council/Session made up of the Chairperson of Mission, the Chairperson of Christian Education, the Chairperson of Stewardship, etc. because it makes the elders push their individual ministries rather than the ministry of the whole church.
• Expect the best of volunteers because God deserves no less.  Yes, people are not getting paid to study issues, attend meetings, read articles, listen to stories.  But it we are going to serve, we need to serve with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love – like we promised.  (Even those of you on the Review of Biennial Assemblies Committees.)
• Make it fun.  My colleague B. joyfully ordered personalized water bottles for our commissioners.  Some of us wore green wigs to a party last night as a tribute to another friend for a job well done. (It made sense to us, but maybe you had to be there.)  Make it a party.  Or at least finish with a party.

This is the Mother of all meetings every other year in my denomination.  I am praying that many faithful things get done.

Photo by Erin Dunigan.  See more here.

I head to Pittsburgh today to join my PCUSA brothers and sisters for the 220th General Assembly, which is part denominational Congress/part family reunion. It’s my first GA as a Presbytery Staffer and I’ve been told that my role is to connect with people.  Excellent.

While the Commissioners vote on everything from a new moderator to overtures on divestment, I will be having lunch with a favorite theologian, coffee with someone interested in Third Place Ministries, and wine with friends celebrating the ministry of the current Moderator.

What I expect to happen:

• The press – if they cover General Assembly at all – will cover same sex marriage and divestment (because those are the most controversial and ostensibly the most interesting topics) but barely mention the election of the new moderator or changes in the Board of Pensions policies.
• Presbyterians will geek out on things that nobody else in the world cares about.  In other words, we will enjoy a sentimental journey connecting with old friends and colleagues, some of us knowing each other long before denominations had become culturally diminished.
• The usual party favors will be handed out in the convention cent, but – due to the economy – there will be fewer water bottles and more pencils.
• The Spirit will be present.  Theological enemies could leave at the end of the week as friends.  Scales could fall from eyes.  Trust in God could be bolstered.

This last expectation is my favorite, but it’s easier to get pumped up by free water bottles.  It’s easier to sit with our favorite people and demonize our least favorite people.  But I ask for your prayers today for lives that will be changed this week.  And I’m not just talking about the elders who will be elected as Moderator and Vice Moderator who will spend lots of time on planes in the next two years.

Peace be with us.

I like my neck just fine.

But apparently a day will come when I won’t.  I remember a church lady tell me one Sunday how fortunate I was that I could still wear blouses that reveal my neck, so it really must be true:  something terrible will happen to our necks if we live long enough.

Here are other truths:  1) I actually prefer turtlenecks and 2) I am a middle-aged woman who is slowly dealing with the whole aging process.  The aging is not happening slowly.  I’m just dealing with it slowly.

I was reading this review  by Scott Mendelson of the movie Ted– the one with the talking Teddy Ruxpin – and this line made me feel old, and a little annoyed:

“Our generation defines itself not by the historical events of our lifetime but rather by the entertainment we consumed as we grew up.”

Really?  Scott Mendelson is 31 years old which means he was born at the end of Generation X and on the cusp of the Millennial Generation.  He was about 14 when 168 people were killed by a truck bomb in Oklahoma City.  He was about 16 when the Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland.   Yes, there were memorable entertainment offerings along the way – but is his generation really more defined by Jurassic Park and The X Files than 9-11?  Maybe, but I don’t think so.

One of the things that makes me feel old is when younger generations claim to be the first to do or be something when that’s not necessarily the case – unless you were born before the early 1990s and you have always been digital.   Those people really do have different brains from the rest of us.

This also made me feel old yesterday:  I had a Mean-Lady-Neighbor-Moment on the way to the train station when I got all bent out of shape seeing candy wrappers dropped along the sidewalk by  – I suspect – young menaces. There was a trail of individual Starburst wrappers all the way to the train.   (See?  I sound like one of those cranky old ladies who shakes her fists at kids chewing gum as they walk past the house.)   Somewhere in my neighborhood, there is a kid who polished off an entire sleeve of Starbursts and refused to use a trash can for the wrappers.  This makes me feel old and snarky.

Finally, I’ve noticed that I am increasingly invisible to the world.  Mid-50s.  Average looking.  Basic clothes.  No flashy jewelry.  In a way it’s fine to be invisible.  But sometimes it’s annoying.  I’ve been in shops with my 20-something kids or friends and no one acknowledges my presence.  I don’t need them to believe I’m attractive; I just want to pay for my drink.

I share all this in preparation for my travels to Pittsburgh on Friday.  Along with hundreds of my church friends and colleagues, I’m headed to The 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA.  My hope is that everybody there will be generations younger than I am.  It’s one situation in which I would love to be among the oldest ones.  The irony is that – when I am the youngest person at church functions – I feel especially old.

Note:  I didn’t love the book pictured above, but this is a good one.  Excellent Key Lime Pie recipe.

In life and in death, we belong to God.

One of my brilliant colleagues suggested yesterday that – if we are trying to shift to a Belong-Behave-Believe orientation (from Believe-Behave-Belong) then maybe we should ask those preparing for leadership in the church to write A Statement of Belonging before writing A Statement of Faith.

New church members, confirmands, seminarians, those seeking ordination, and other church leaders are familiar with writing our own Statements of Belief.  The Apostles Creed in our own words, if you will.

But I’m intrigued by the notion of starting our affirmations with A Statement of Belonging.  How do we belong to our faith community?  Why do we belong?  To what do we belong?  This kind of statement would clarify several other questions:

• Are we connected only to the pastor?  If so, then can we really consider ourselves part of the community?  Will we expect the pastor to be our primary spiritual mentor (because honestly it’s impossible for the pastor to be everybody’s spiritual mentor in a church.)
• Do we understand who we are in The Body of Christ?  Do we have a sense of purpose in our community?  Are we appreciated for who we are?  Have people noticed and encouraged our gifts?
• How do we see membership?  Is it about having our names on a list or roll, or is it about something else?
• Does this community nurture us spiritually?  How are we fed or connected to the Holy or loved unconditionally?
• How do we live out our commitment to this community?  And how does this faith community show its commitment to us?
• Do we trust this community enough to be vulnerable?  Am I willing to share my failures and hurt along with my successes and joys?  And do I disclose these things only to the pastor?
• Are we willing to allow the community to hold us accountable? Do we trust at least one person in our community to let us know when we are being mean/stubborn/fake/selfish?

Image source: Words of Belonging and Exclusion

I left the house at about 10 am Sunday and returned at 5, having attended a church worship gathering and then a congregational meeting.  After the meeting, there was a Session meeting, and then I took some time to talk with concerned parishioners.  Like hundreds of other Sundays in my life, I arrived home barely able to speak another word.  I was done.

Myers-Briggs introverts, of course, might be able to stand up and speak before a crowd, schmooze throughout coffee hour, shift to focus on a youth project, and then lead lead an adult Bible study, but the way we re-fuel is to be alone.  We read.  We sleep.  We sit and stare into space.  We prefer one-on-one conversations.

Some say that clergy tend to be Myers-Briggs introverts.  Others say that The Top Three Personality Types for clergy all include extroversion.  The truth is that both introverts and extroverts can be church leaders.

One way, I believe, the church is changing and will continue to change is from loud, ringing, aggressive spirituality to a more reflective, devotional, conversational spirituality.  That’s not to say that we won’t sing with verve.  There will still be moments of noisy exuberance.  It just means that the needs are different now.  In order to nourish souls, the church needs to focus on meeting people’s spiritual needs.

Yes, we might offer a fabulous coffee hour, flawless worship choreography, and superb youth programs in terms of popularity and programming.  But if we aren’t feeding people’s souls, the church will become just another social or community organization.  In some cases, the church has already become merely a social, community organization.

But as our world continues to be filled with noise – from sirens and elevator music to talking and more talking – our culture will increasingly need space for quiet.

As I commute into the office on the train every day, I always look for The Quiet Car.   Absolutely no talking.   People even squirm when somebody sneezes.

Quietude is a treasured commodity, and the church can offer this like no other community.

So, here’s my question:  How would you compare the number of “loud ministry offerings” against the number of “quiet ministry offerings” in your church?  We in the church have the unique opportunity to offer a space for quiet devotion and reflection in a culture starving for time to process the meaning of our lives in the universe.

Some of our worship services include zero minutes of silence.  Perhaps we are so used to constant noise, that we don’t even know what to do during moments of quiet.  But we have got to figure out how to offer space for pondering the meaning of our lives and our suffering and our purpose.  The church is called to be this kind of community in the 21st Century.

Interesting read:  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

24/7 Wall Street – a financial news website – annually predicts the brands that will be extinct in the next 12-18 months.  They correctly predicted the demise of Blockbuster Videos in 2010 and Saab in 2011.

The original Talbots Store in Hingham, MA from where I ordered my very first pencil skirt in the 9th Grade.

Here are their predictions for some of the Top Brands that will go under in 2013:

• American Airlines (Sorely inefficient.)
• Research in Motion (As Adele might say, “They could have had it all” but they blew it.  So glad I ditched my Blackberry.)
• PacSun (Maker of bathing suits that apparently nobody buys)
• Avon (Even though Skin So Soft is an excellent bug spray “there is so much to fix.”)
• The Oakland Raiders (There will be Raiders, but the won’t be in Oakland.)
• Salon (Lost it’s top leaders.)
• Suzuki  (Their cars apparently suck.)
• Current TV (Called “a network with no future.” Ouch.)
• Talbots (Kill me now.  I first wore cute Talbots clothes in high school when you had to order via catalog from the store in Hingham.   But the truth is that the clothes are dated these days.  Except for the pencil skirts.)

Talbots is part of my sartorial history and it pains me to think that I might have to find pencil skirts someplace else.  I remember the cute shoes I bought in high school.  I remember shopping there with my Mom when the stores moved south.  My husband always gives me something from Talbots every Christmas for old time’s sake.  Oh Talbots!

So, this is a churchy blog and there is a church connection here.

The 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA meets in Pittsburgh in just over a week, and rumors of our denomination’s demise are a perennial topic of conversation.  Many are saying, for example, that if the GA passes the overture regarding same sex marriage, the denomination’s ultimate doom is sure.  Honestly, I am less concerned about this prediction than the fact that many of our congregations are stuck and – in some cases – dying.

My concern is not about avoiding extinction.  God will always have a church and The Church has shifted and changed dramatically through history.  Congregations – like denominations – have their seasons.

But if we are interested in generative congregational life, I suggest that we not go the way of the doomed brands identified by 24/7 Wall Street:

• Efficiency in ministry is good.  Do we really need 10 committees for a church of 100 members?
• Keeping up technologically is important.   Is our technology dated?
• Are we offering something that nobody wants anymore?  (Note:  A sanctuary for peace and restoration will always be in demand. A religious club doesn’t interest most people these days.)
• Avon had a long-term leader who drove the company into the gutter, at least according to business journals.  Do we have pastors who need to leave but won’t?
• The neighborhood is key.  Does our congregation need to move?  Or – even better – change FOR the neighborhood?
• Talented leadership – both paid and volunteer – is essential.  Are we equipping new leaders?  And if we like our leaders, we need to value  them and tell them (with words and financial compensation.)
• Churches do not sell a product.  But we offer healing, hospitality, spiritual nurture, community, and opportunities for education and service.  Is what we offer excellent? Because God deserves our best.
• Many of our congregations are stuck in the past.  How do we see our future?  Can we see a future beyond our own funerals?
• Fresh, thriving, lively communities of worship beget new fresh, thriving, lively communities of worship.  Are we simply dated?  When was the last time our congregation did anything fresh?

Many people love to talk about the death of the church.  And it’s true that some brands of the Christian faith could be extinct in the next 12-18 months.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Now that I’ve been gone from my former congregation for about a year, I found recent wisdom from my friend Bruce Reyes-Chow who left his congregation about a year ago as well.

Check this out.

I am now the former pastor of two congregations.  I left the first church in 1989 – the year that Microsoft Office was first released and Nintendo sold their first Game Boy.  I left the second church in 2011 – the year that Facebook hit 500 million users and 175 million of us had Twitter accounts.

When I left my first church, the rules were to cut off all contact and that meant no phone calls or unannounced visits between former parishioners.  This was fairly easy since I moved four states away.

When I left my second church, the rules were more complicated.  Nobody was going to call me to ask about scripture suggestions for their wedding.  I accurately did not expect that someone would contact me for pastoral care or advice.  But I did ask about the common wisdom regarding staying connected with former parishioners through social media.

Is it okay to stay “friends” with former parishioners, even if you still consider them friends?

I was told to be smart about it.  Don’t talk about church life on Facebook.  Don’t cyberstalk your former church’s website trolling for news.  Don’t allow former parishioners to pull you into conversations about the new pastor.

After a year of staying friends with former parishioners, I’ve decided that it’s healthiest for me to de-friend my church FB friends.  This is legitimately sad because I love seeing the photographs of family.  I love hearing news of school and jobs.  But this continuing love expressed through social media makes it very difficult for the church to move on – especially after long term pastorates.

Even with this realization, there are other questions.  It’s not easy navigating boundaries when we can be connected 24/7 without picking up a telephone or hopping in the car.  But in my new position, part of my responsibilities involve helping teach what healthy boundaries look like.

I’m not sure the boundaries can be healthy if I’m still digitally connected to former parishioners.  What have you found to be healthy in terms of saying “Farewell” in a digital age?

I’ve shared with some of you that early on in my current position, someone called me and we had the following conversation.  (Note:  I serve as an Interim Presbytery Staff Person.)

Caller:  I’m calling to ask permission to give our pastor a $5000 bonus.  She’s done a really good job during a difficult situation.  Who do I have to talk with to give her this money?

Me:  You can just give her the money.

Caller:  No, you don’t understand.  This extra $5000 is not in her regular Terms of Call.  Aren’t we doing something out of order?

Me:  No really.  Just give her the money.

Caller:  Don’t we need the Presbytery’s permission to give her this extra income? 

Me:  Nope.  She’ll need to report it to the IRS, but – really – you can just give her the money.

Presbyterians are law-abiding people.  We have rules.  We know the “shalls” from the “mays” in our constitution, and we increasingly love the word “ordinarily” because it infers a loop hole.

I find that many life-long church people have been programmed not to do what might be great for the church because it’s never seemed possible according to widely accepted rules.  Examples:

• Worship can happen on Thursday nights.  Or Tuesday mornings. Or whenever you wish.  There is no rule that worship has to be on Sunday mornings.  (Our Roman Catholic siblings get this.)
• Bible Study can happen in Denny’s.  Or on a playground.  Or in a circus tent –  if that space is available and convenient.
• You can greet church guests in the parking lot.  You don’t have to wait until they get inside the building.
• You don’t have to pass an offering plate during worship.  You could have a box at the exits.  You could invite people to mail it in.  If offering time is when your choir sings an anthem, you can actually pick a different time for them to sing the anthem.
• You can give your pastor a $5000 bonus.  That would be fine.

If all these ideas are obvious to you, that’s reassuring.  My hope is that this means your congregation is indeed doing some of these things.

The job of denominational “Middle Judicatories” (e.g. Presbyteries, Synods, Districts, Associations, Regions, Dioceses) is not to be permission-givers but to resource, equip, and entrust ministry to our congregations.  At least this is true in traditions without bishops.

So, get out there and do something wacky like offer Sunday School on Saturdays, or offer Bible Study in a bar.  God has given us all permission, especially when shaking things up enhances our ministry.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.  Ecclesiastes 3:1

In the fall of 2006, a group of six church people met weekly to discuss Velvet Elvis together and dream of a church for people who would never come through the doors of our traditional sanctuary.  Several of us had been talking about this for a while.  The two rules for our planning were:  1) this wasn’t about us and the kind of church we wanted and 2) God could do whatever God wanted to do with this community.

On the first Sunday in Lent 2007, Holy Grounds was born.

While I was recovering from knee surgery, a team that included a submarine contractor,  a former Christian Educator, her boyfriend who wasn’t a part of our congregation, a decorator for Starbucks, a local musician, and assorted other volunteers built, painted, and organized the space that would become the gathering place for Holy Grounds which would meet in the lower level of a traditional PCUSA church building.  It was providential that I was incapacitated for the final preparations because I didn’t want this to be my thing as the pastor of the traditional congregation.  If it was really going to happen, we needed buy in.

Holy Grounds  shifted and changed over the next five years.  We started with a worship experience that used the same sermon as the 11 am service albeit with images on a screen and a more laid back ambiance.  We sat on sofas found on the side of the road, but our espresso maker was state of the art.  We occasionally enjoyed potluck dinners on Sunday nights – our regular worship time.  Worship was varied:

• conversations in a circle with one person leading the content
• prayer stations
• book parties
• film clips
• music clips
• a first year anniversary concert
• a fundraiser for Haiti
• commissioning people to go out and do ministry in faraway places

The group was always small and transient.  Exhibit A:  one of the services provided was moving friends from one apartment to another on Saturday mornings.  It was done so often that we had our own moving equipment.  The nature of DC is that nobody stays for long.  We sent people to Jordan, Germany, and Thailand, to Iowa,Texas, Ohio, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Illinois.  We came to perfect the notion of offering multiple portals into the community.  In fact several communities blended together occasionally.  Holy Grounds connected with Common Table and Convergence and Simple Way and the DC Community of Communities and the Community Coalition for Haiti.

But alas, the Sunday night gathering became smaller and smaller.  A paid staff member was not replaced after leaving in 2009. The rest of the community – filled with exceptional leaders – could not make the plans and the relentless connections needed to keep replenishing a community that lost people when they moved away.  The decision was made last weekend that HG will no longer meet on Sunday nights by the end of the summer.  This is not about blaming at all; it’s about the changing of seasons.

Personally speaking, I’ve never known a community of faith quite like this one.  Some of the Holy Grounders had been wounded by previous church experiences.  Some had no former church experiences.  Some had MDiv degrees.  Some were missionary kids or pastor’s kids.  Some just wandered in and wandered out again.  We even had people who are considered part of the community who rarely – if ever – came to the Sunday night gathering.

It was a community based on vulnerability and you can’t have community unless you are vulnerable.  (Do yourself a favor and watch this.)

Someone from the traditional congregation (the upstairs church) once expressed a concern that I spent too much time with Holy Grounds but the truth was that I spent 90% of my time with the traditional congregation.  It’s just that the 10% with Holy Grounds went a long way.  Worship was shared and so I rarely led worship.  No one worried much about appearances and so, if the candles had been moved or someone spilled a little coffee, it was not a problem.  When our content included lessons on how to care for someone when he/she is grieving or how much money should we be contributing, nobody got offended.

I remember one night when a new couple attended for the first time and the talk was about contributing money to the church, and somebody said, “They’ll never be back” but they did come back.  And they became leaders.

I remember the night two Holy Grounders got married and as we were all dancing at the reception, I looked at Matt and said, “Look what God did.”  The most wonderful feeling.

I remember baptizing Joanna in the Potomac River, which was so gross and yet magnificently beautiful.  (Note:  we had to walk halfway to Maryland through the muck to get to deep-enough water.)

I remember sunrise services on Easter with communion on that same spot at the Potomac.

I remember hilarious White Elephant Christmas parties.

But mostly I remember relationships.  That’s what a church is about really.  And those relationships will continue globally.

So, here is my long-winded message to all church people:  don’t be afraid to start something new.  Even if it “fails” it won’t be a failure if even one person was transformed.   By that measure, Holy Grounds has been an enormous success and blessing.

The dictionary defines “target” this way:

Even the name of the (wonderful) retail discount store was chosen to differentiate that chain from the other more expensive retail chain of the Dayton Dry Good Company.  In other words, they wanted to “target” people who desired upscale retail for less expensive prices.

In the church, we need to stop thinking of people as targets, as if we are aiming at them, zeroing in on them, firing at them, fulfilling goals through them, or – certainly – abusing them.  Let’s not do that anymore.

When I think of negative church experience people have shared, it often comes down to the fact that we Church People have seen visitors and guests as targets:

• The single middle-aged woman who was invisible to church members for the first three Sundays she visited because she didn’t fit the targeted demographic (i.e. young family with children)
• The person who attends worship rarely – often with a better known spouse or friend – who is greeted with “We sure don’t see you very often” (interpreted to mean that he/she is being judged for irregular participation and/or lack of commitment, faith)
• The young family that is pounced upon as if someone has yelled “Fresh Meat!” because they are everybody’s #1 Most Sought After Demographic.
• The unfamiliar “others” who don’t look like the rest of the congregation and are basically ignored.  (e.g. inter-racial couples, people of different skin tones, pierced and/or tattooed people in a congregation of unpierced/untattooed people – or visa versa, people not dressed like everyone else)
• People in wheelchairs, or families with disabled children.  (Too much trouble; what if they expect special treatment?!  They are totally not our targeted audience.)

What if we welcomed people just because they are present with us, regardless of what they look like or how they are dressed or if they happen to have a pierced eye-brow or a partner of another race or a partner of the same gender or rowdy kids or a reclining wheelchair? Do we realize how hard it is for some folks to walk into a church building, especially if they have not done it lately – or ever?

Imagine if we saw guests as people like us – with issues similar to our own.  Imagine if we simply said, “Hi, would you like something to drink?  Or maybe a cookie?”  Imagine if we saw them  – not as targets – but as people who are trying to figure things out and hoping against hope that God and a community of people might help.

There is a huge difference between “targeting” people and being a missional church that reaches out into the community no matter what that community might be.  Let’s be a missional church.