A Church for Starving Artists

One of my fondest memories about church involved a meeting during which we were all waiting to be trained on the new copier.  We were waiting for the trainer, and I did what many pastors do:  I asked if there was anything we could pray about for each other:

– Person #1 (20-something)  “Please pray for my brother who’s run away from home and is addicted to crystal meth.”

– Person #2 (20-something) “Please pray for my parents.  My dad just retired and he’s driving my mother crazy.”

– Person #3 (20-something)  “Could we pray for my partner who is dealing with bipolar issues?”

– Person #4 (70-something)  “Everything’s okay.”

– Person #5 (60-something) “Everything’s okay.”

– Person #6 (70-something) “Everything’s okay.”

Perhaps it’s because of the Oprah generation, or the social media generation, or our chronological generations, some of us feel more comfortable talking about our real life issues than others.  I’ve known lovely church people with Serious Concerns who would no more share their personal issues than they would confess their most embarrassing sins to their straight laced Grandmothers.  Some of us are comfortable sharing our stuff and some of us are not.

I imagine a church in which we share our stuff.  I am tired of Mad Men Church in which we pretend that all is well, that “everything is fine” and  nobody needs anything.  I long for a church in which I can turn to the person beside me in the pews and – during the passing of the peace – I am free to say, “Things are not so great. Please pray that I get through this week.”  

This is the future of The Authentic Church.  It’s not about pretending to be who we aren’t.  It’s not about walking into a sanctuary, enjoying the worship gathering, and then having brunch.  It’s not about making ourselves happy while we pay people to Be the Ministers.

Can we really talk?  I hope so.  It’s a spiritual thing.

This weekend, read this book.  Pulling together analysis from Harvey Cox, Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle and others,  Diana analyzes the shifts in Christianity which explain – among many other things –  

• why faithful people in my denomination want to leave the PCUSA to join the ECO or EPC while other faithful people want to remain in the PCUSA
• why the “how” questions (“How do I believe?”) is a better question today than the “what” questions (“What do I believe?”)

I love this book.  It sparks ideas for theological education, sermons, liturgy, and endless grappling conversations over coffee.  Your brain, soul, and faith communities will thank you.

Part of yesterday was spent touring Inter Varsity Press in Chicagoland with one of my favorite theologians.  I, for one, believe that the business of publishing books is not toast – if we evolve and embrace change as a glorious adventure rather than a bitter shift.  Soon to be gone:  warehouses full of books waiting to be shipped off.  The trend:  Espresso Book Machines?

Espresso Book Machines are amazing.  Have you ever looked for a book in a bookstore and they don’t have it but a staffer says, “I can order for you.”  And you think, “Much easier to go home and order it on Amazon.”  The Espresso Book Machine makes a single published, bound copy for you on the spot.  Very cool.

While most people still read hardcover or paperback books, the scales will be shifting so that the majority of people will use Kindles, iPads, Nooks, etc. and the minority will want traditional books.  The IVP sage who spent time with us yesterday suggested that maybe the warehouses can be repurposed to house multiple Espresso Book Machines.  If somebody wants a classic copy of a classic John Stott book, IVP runs a single copy and sends it out.  No need to store lots of copies which may never be ordered.

We already have an assortment of paths in the publishing world.  Amanda Hocking  self-published several (enormously popular) ebooks and then got a fancy contract with St. Martin’s Press.  Tony Jones has several books published via traditional publishers and is now self-publishing digitally.  Whatever works.

I increasingly don’t want to lug books around and rarely read a book that’s not on my Kindle – although I was thankful to be given a copy of Amy Sherman’s Kingdom Calling yesterday.  Honestly though, I will sometimes turn down offers to be given free paper books. 

Have you totally shifted to digital books?  Would you buy a paper book if you could  sip espresso in a coffee shop while your very own, single copy was being printed and bound by a machine in the corner? 

Image is the warehouse at IVP.

Easter Monday by de Kooning

Easter brunch was thoroughly enjoyed.  Church leaders everywhere are recovering from the marathon of Holy Week events.  Parishioners have taken  lilies from their sanctuary chancels to their home mantles.  And now it’s Easter Monday.

There are many who attended worship on Easter Sunday for cultural reasons:

• It’s what we do with friends.
• It’s the institutional requirement before brunch with the family.
• We go for the extraordinary music and especially fine-tuned preaching and liturgy.

And there are many who attended Easter Sunday worship gatherings for spiritual reasons.  Some of us are part of the church year-round.  But why?  It’s not because we love committee meetings or political church fights.

I was touched by Rachel Held Evans’ post about why she has returned to church after being away for a while.  And I myself ponder why I am still part of the institutional church. One reason is because I’ve seen glimpses of resurrection in my church communities:

• The woman who found help for her addiction in a church basement and when she made the transition to “come upstairs” for a traditional worship service, people welcomed her and sipped coffee with her on Sunday mornings, even though she wasn’t dressed like everyone else.
• The widow who lost her husband and her son in the same year, who was regularly invited to dinner by church friends – especially holiday dinners – after her losses.  She went from a woman who could barely get dressed in the morning to a woman who laughed at Circle meetings with her friends.
• The twenty-something person with no family in town who moved from a studio apartment to a group house to a condo in the course of a year, and found church friends who happily helped her pack her stuff and haul them from one home to the next, and then took her out for pizza.

This is why I am still part of the church on Easter Monday.

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!

For Christians in the United States, today will probably involve:

• Easter Eggs
• Easter Lilies
• Spring-like clothing (and maybe even bonnets)
• A feast involving one or more of the following offerings:  lamb, ham, asparagus, coconut, jelly beans
• Exposure to bunnies, chicks, and Peeps.

And then on Monday, we will go about our business unless we have tickets to the Easter Egg Roll at the White House or we have the day off to go shopping.

Nobody grouses much about “The War on Easter” but it’s clear that pagan Easter/secular Easter has “won” in terms of the popular focus.  I’d love to know if you are part of a church community that does NOT have an Easter Egg Hunt  this weekend.

It’s The Biggest Sunday of the Year for our churches.   Some people will come for the cultural experience.  Some will expect superb music and elegant preaching.  They will love seeing little children bedecked in pastels.

Do we really need church today?  I’ve been pondering last week’s Newsweek story: Forget the Church; Follow Jesus (with the unfortunate white  Jesus on the cover) and have some things to say about it.  But for now, I am racing to preach in lovely Round Lake, IL for a congregation with no pastor.  And we will sing “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”  And we will once again tell the story of the first Easter.  And I will say, “Christ is risen!” hoping against hope that the congregation will know to follow with “Christ is risen indeed!”

But what will happen tomorrow – on the day I grew up calling Easter Monday?  Hope you’ll return to this blog so we can reflect on exactly that.

One of the conversations I’m having more and more often – which is about missional ecclesiology, although most people don’t think of it that way – involves congregational mission service.

Some churches – in their annual reports – have long lists of mission projects they serve.  Often they give $200 here and $400 there, which is nice but not life-changing.  We give money to projects we have been been giving money to for many years, even though most parishioners are not personally connected or even aware of those projects except, perhaps, in name only.

Other churches have compassion fatigue and zone out when appeals to give to various mission concerns are shared.

When outreach is tired and people are wondering “how to improve their mission work” I have been asking:  “WHAT BREAKS GOD’S HEART IN YOUR COMMUNITY?”

The answers I’ve received range from curious looks (“What do you mean?”)  to heartbreaking specifics (“Do you mean like teenager suicide?”)  We might think that offering a tutoring program in our community is a fun idea, but maybe the need is not tutoring.  Maybe we’d love to open a cancer support program but the American Cancer Society already does that.

What is the need that’s not being met – or even noticed – in your neighborhood/village/suburb?  What’s breaking God’s heart where you live?  It’s worthy of a conversation.

Perhaps this will become a weekly column:  “Overheard in Church in the Last Week.”  

This is what random people have shared with me in the course of doing professional Christian ministry in the past week:

• “I just want to come to church, sit in a comfortable pew, hear a good sermon, and go home.”
• “I’m preaching on the high holy days of Associate Pastors.”  (The Sunday after Easter)
• “Could you ask our pastor not to cry during the sermons?“

My place of employment now has new digs.  And with a new office comes:

• Re-potted plants
• New neighbors
• New view
• Cleared out files
• New coffee shops/restaurants to check out

My plants now have a cool ledge on my exposed brick wall with huge windows and they are so happy.  I might get cataracts – there’s so much sun in there.   Considering wearing sunglasses all day long to compliment the loft-esque qualities of our cool new space, since I’m feeling kind of hipster now.

Instead of being the only folks in the building, we now share space with assorted secular entities.  Our neighbors include a University of Illinois-Chicago office, a computer software company, and a pizza restaurant.  There are others too, but I haven’t met them yet.  On move-in day, I had the following elevator conversation with a guy named Steve:

Me:  Hi.  We are the new neighbors.

Steve:  Hi.  I’m Steve.  I work for UIC.

Me:  Hi Steve. I’m Jan.  I work for The Presbytery of Chicago.

Steve:  Hi Jan.  What’s the Presbytery of Chicago?

Me:  We work for the Presbyterian Church.

Steve:  ?

Me:  It’s part of the church.  The whole church.  Like a diocese, only Protestant.  And we don’t have bishops.

Steve:  So you’re Catholic?

Me:  No.  We’re Protestant.  Presbyterians.  The ones who protested the practices of the Church back in the 16th Century.

(We have now left the elevator and are standing outside in the wind.)

Steve:  ? So, you’re like a non-profit?

Me:  Yes, we’re like a non-profit.

Really.  This was our exact conversation.  (Note to friends:  nobody cares that we are part of the church.)

We now have a new view which reminds us every day that there is a big world out there that  doesn’t care that we are part of the church.

We have shredded literally tons of paper.  I read many of those files before they were shredded and now I understand – even better than before – why the institutional church has issues.

I have even more new friends to meet in the Greek Town eating establishments.  The people at Artopolis and Meli are among my new pals.  This is one of the most fun parts of being in a new space.

Just as Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, we have set our faces in a new direction.  We hope it results in resurrection.

Bette Midler sang about it.

During our recent Clergywomen’s Roundtable – the preaching group I’ve been a part of for over a decade – we talked about finding friends.  One clergy sister talked about trying to find a friend in her new position in a new town – someone with whom she can totally be herself.  She literally said to a fun person in town, “I need a friend.”  This worked, but it doesn’t always work.

(In the third grade PM awkwardly came up to me and announced that we would be Best Friends.  It was weird.)

Here’s what I’ve found about friends as a clergywoman:

– It’s hard to be friends with parishioners. Yes, I’ve had parishioners who were friends in a real way, but the truth is that I am always their pastor.  I’ve found that they really don’t want to hear about the pastor’s burdens.  I’ve also found that on my day off, I can’t hang out with parishioners with whom I am friendly because we always end up talking about church.

– It’s hard to be friends as The Pastor’s Wife.  With my real friends, I can share pretty much everything, but if I might be – in any way – disclosing information about my family (the pastor’s family) that feels private . . . well, I just can’t.  My spouse is still their pastor.

I can be friends with other clergy because we share a similar pastoral wavelength.  Someone can say, “angry elder” and the rest of us nod.  We’ve all been there.  Especially with clergywomen, we’ve had similar experiences in terms of comments on our hair and shoes, dating issues (when we were single), funeral directors who are Dirty Old Men, etc.

I can also be friends with non-church people who find the whole church thing to be an anthropological curiosity.  I treasure my friend LB with whom I’ve shared many clergy mistakes and stories I can’t tell anyone else.  Our commonality is our daughters rather than church.  It’s a tremendous blessing.

So, here I am in a new place and I miss the friends I knew after 22 years in DC.  The Divas.  The Lex Girls.  The Busboys Crowd.  I miss the HGers (okay – they were part of my church, but not in any traditional way.)  I miss yoga with S and S – followed by frozen yogurt in Georgetown.  I miss the soccer moms and dads.

New friends will be made here in The Prairie State.  But it takes time.

It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.

From “Stepping Backwards” by Adrienne Rich.

Thanks be to God for the poets of the world.

Image above is a photograph of Adrienne Rich reading her poems in Bryant Park,  NYC.