A Church for Starving Artists

Rob Bell and Carlton Cuse are now friends.  (I wrote a few years ago that I believed RB was the 21st Century’s Billy Graham and I still believe this.  CC wrote Lost, one of the best television series on TV – even that last episode.)

I love it when creative people get together.  Cuse is considered a pioneer of transmedia storytelling – telling stories using different digital forms.  Bell does this too via Nooma.  Cuse speaks at Comic Con events.  Bell tours college campuses and urban theatres.

And so there’s going to be a TV show – if the way be clear – called Stronger, loosely based on Rob Bell’s life.  I can see the tweets now.  Very exciting.

This is a feature of the church for the 21st Century: spiritual creatives reaching out to inspire people to talk about their spiritual lives.  Yes, there’s a lot of confusing muck out there.  But I’m expecting something interesting – and holy – here.

I’m on my way back to Chicagoland after a wonderful wedding celebration in Our Nation’s Capital over the weekend.  After happy nuptials, a wedding feast, and many hours of dancing, a friend asked me to write a blog post about marriage.

Note:  I’ve learned through the years that when parishioners have asked me to preach a sermon about a specific topic, they usually hope I will express what they already believe about that topic. 

But when asked to write a blog post on the subject of marriage, the asker genuinely seemed to want to know why marriage is important.  “Why get married?”  she asked.  This was not a commentary on our friends whose wedding we had just witnessed.  It was more for herself.  She was honestly wondering.

Within the Christian faith, there have been several historical, Biblical reasons why marriage is a good thing:

• God wants us to have a helper in life.  (Genesis 2:18-24)
• God doesn’t want men to treat women like property (Ephesians 5:25-33)
• God wants us to have (healthy, religiously sanctioned) sex lives.  (Hebrews 13:4)

Jesus went to at least one wedding but the celebration at Cana is more about the miracle of turning water into wine than the miracle of two people falling in love with each other at approximately the same time and deciding to spend their lives together.  Still we often mention this miracle of turning water into wine as proof that Jesus blessed marriage.

After officiating at over 100 weddings over the past 25+ years, I have known people who married:

• to have sex
• to gain property or financial security  (“She has a nice condo.”  “He has a good job.”)
• to please parents
• to show the world that “someone wanted me“
• to escape something or someone
• because they didn’t know what else to do after college
• for the presents and the attention

These are not good reasons to marry.  In some cases, they are terrible reasons. 

I also worry when someone tells me “I can’t live without her/him.”  A more mature sensibility is that “I can live with him/her; I just don’t want to.”  Herein lies the best reason to marry, if you ask me.

We marry someone we love and like because we want to make a life together with that person.  The Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner who – interestingly enough – never married wrote that every couple who marries creates a new little church.  Domestic New Church Plants, if you will.

A healthy church is a community that worships together, serves together, makes sacrifices together, celebrates together, prays together, cries together, and laughs together.  A healthy church has a mission and relationship of give and take.  Sometimes people take care of you.  Sometimes you take care of them.

If we marry with the expectation that it’s about the wedding, we are doomed to live a lonely life – albeit with matching towels and nice wine glasses.

If we marry assuming someone will always take care of us and make us happy, we will be disappointed.  Marriage is about taking care of each other.  And happiness is an ephemeral thing.  Contentment, joy, and deep peace are not.  Gratitude and spiritual maturity – which grow in community – nourish that contentment, joy, and peace.

So, my sweet friend who asked me to write about marriage, here it is.  It is a miracle – as surely as turning water into wine is a miracle – when two people fall in love, build a life, and devotedly stay together for the rest of their lives.  Many factors make marriage difficult – if not impossible: illness, addiction, selfishness, boredom, etc.  We have no idea what the future holds, in terms of the twists of life.  There are cruel turns and unfair challenges. 

But it’s better to go through such trials with someone we love, with someone who loves us.  And the special intimacy is the frosting on the cake.

So, I was talking with a guy who tells me his congregation has 350 members but they have less than 100 who gather together regularly for worship and service.  Obviously, the congregation does not in fact have 350 members.  They have 75 or 22 or 60 or 14 members. 

The numbers don’t matter as much as the commitment.  And there are not 350 committed disciples in that good pastor’s church.

Membership. Smembership.  Really – the days are long gone when merely having our names on the rolls of the church meant anything.  As I and others have written before, the church is not AMEX (“membership has its privileges“) as if ensuring that we have a place to marry, baptize our babies, and bury our dead is the point of church.  As if “being a church member” is about privileges and not service.  As if membership will save us.

All of us have members who remain on the church rolls even though their commitment to serve is nonexistant.  So, here’s my grand, crazy-making plan:  Annual Membership.

What if – each year, perhaps on The Baptism of the Lord Sunday which is usually the second Sunday in January or maybe on the first fall Sunday of the new program year in September, we ask everyone to re-affirm their commitment for the coming year in a renewal of membership.  If we choose not to re-affirm our commitment, it’s fine.  But it also means that the church will not expect anything from us in terms of participation, financial support, or service.   The hope is that this would be a spiritual practice that reminds us all that discipleship is more about daily commitments than names on a piece of parchment.

Potential craziness:

• What if our officers (serving 2-3-year terms) don’t re-commit and we have to replace them mid-term?  If they aren’t committed, they should not be serving.  It would be better to have fewer officers than have uncommitted officers.
• What if someone is in a coma or can’t be present due to illness, military service, etc.?  Obviously concessions could be made.  Home visits.  Skyping.
• What if people find this too evangelical or overtly religious for their ecclesiastical tastes?  Oh well.

Yes, it would alter all the statistical reports, but they need to be tweaked/overhauled anyway.  Anybody with me?

As I mentioned Monday, I’d like a needlepointed pillow that says, “All the churches Paul started have closed.” 

I’d also like a pillow that says, “In a healthy church . . .” 

How would you finish that sentence? 

I write this from a retreat at the lovely Cenacle Retreat Center in Lincoln Park, Chicago and we have pondered this a bit.  What makes a healthy church?  How would you, the other leaders of your church, and the assorted people in the pews answer this? 

• In a healthy church, people don’t gossip in parking lots.
• In a healthy church, leaders don’t sabotage each other.
• In a healthy church, volunteers rotate so you don’t get into a rut.
• In a healthy church, it’s not about sitting in a pew and then going home.
• In a healthy church, innovation is encouraged.
• In a healthy church, elders and/or deacons do most of the pastoral care.
• In a healthy church, people trust each other.
• In a healthy church, people hold each other accountable.
• In a healthy church, people laugh and enjoy each other.

I haven’t even gotten started in terms of  spiritual growth, fruits of the Spirit, baptism of new believers, transformation of the neighborhood, etc.  But before much of this can happen, a church has to be healthy.  The alternative is death, which could actually be an excellent thing.   Sometimes it takes death to create something healthy.

So, how would you describe a healthy church?

And how would others in your congregation describe a healthy church? 

PS No church is completely healthy.  If you happen to have Pulpit Envy or any variation of that malady, know that even the healthiest churches have their own allergies, viruses, common colds, hang nails, blisters, etc.

Image source.

. . . especially if you are seeking a new job and most especially if you are seeking a job in professional ministry.  (Yes, I know it’s more than “a job” but hear me out.)

Although this is not a new book, like the Lencioni books it’s interesting in terms of figuring out how we work together best.

Interesting:

“In every culture we have studied, the overwhelming majority of parents (77% in the US) think that a student’s lowest grades deserve the most time and attention.)”

Yep.

I grew up wanting to be one of the Supremes.  Big problem:  Singing is not my talent.  I could have taken voice lessons.  Practiced my moves.  Trained and trained for years.  But still singing would not be my talent.

So here’s the jarring note from Tom Rath which seems almost anti-American:  “You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.” 

This is the task of the Commission on Preparation for Ministry or any organization charged with developing people for professional ministry:  helping people discern their strengths rather than “work on” their deficiencies.  Check out yesterday’s post. Maybe their strengths are pointing in a different direction.

If you want to be a doctor, there are several concrete steps one must take: med school, boards, etc.

If you want to be a lawyer, there are different steps: LSAT, law school, etc.

If you want to be a professional pastor, there are completely different steps and those steps vary by denomination or tradition.  But here’s the thing:  any individual can check off . . .

• required college and seminary degrees
• required field education
• required psych tests
• required ordination exams
• required random hoops

but still not be called to professional ministry.  We used to call professional ministry The Ministry of the Word and Sacrament in my denomination.  Now it’s called Ministry as a Teaching Elder. 

[Personal pet peeve:  when people refer to “ministers” and they mean the ones who graduated from seminary and were ordained as Teaching Elders.  Please stop doing this.]

If we really truly believe in “The Priesthood of all Believers” and that line on the back of the worship bulletins that says, “Ministers – The Congregation” please don’t refer to your pastor as “the minister” anymore.  It ruins it for all the other ministers in the world who feed strangers, knit prayer shawls, serve up lasagna casseroles in shelters, love stray animals, teach little children, rock crying babies, paint run-down living rooms, repair broken fences,  and every other countless act of compassion that scripture includes in “ministry.”  Really.  Please stop calling your pastor the minister.

Everybody’s called to ministry.  But not everybody’s called to professional ministry including The Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

In our give-everybody-a-trophy culture, we’ve become excellent at encouraging each other, but we are not so accomplished at telling people what their gifts are not.  How do we explain to someone who truly believes he is called to professional ministry that we do not see him as a professional minister – but we see his gifts and affirm that he’s called to a different kind of ministry?  How do we explain how one candidate is so clearly called and everyone sees it, while the community just doesn’t see it as clearly in another candidate?

It is a mystery  – this call to serve.

When a commission  – or a bishop – charged with discerning a candidate’s call says, “no” it feels soul-crushing like an absolute rejection of our very selves.    But this is not about rejection for all ministry.  It’s about being true to God’s calling for a specific ministry. 

A call – any call – from God never involves a sense of entitlement, personal  aggrandizement, or parroting responses we think people expect to hear from us.  It’s about a real, God-whispering-in-your-ear, humbling, irresistable, ineffable, shocking, unexpected summons to do what is messy and upheaving.

How do we help those who want to serve in a certain way, but what they see as their calling is not actually their calling according to the faithful team of people who reflect theologically with them in conversation, work, and wonder?  I believe that we who have the responsibility to help with this discernment need to be authentic and speak the truth.  Be loving.  Be compassionate.  Say yes to ministry but not to every ministry.

Ruins of the Church of Mary in Ephesus

I’m thinking of needlepointing this on a pillow:  “All the Churches Paul Started Have Closed.” 

This comment was made by someone at an event I attended on Saturday and it was exceptionally appropriate considering what I did on Sunday: I worshipped with a PCUSA congregation on their penultimate Sunday.  After almost 50 years of faithful ministry, they will close on October 2nd. 

What I experienced with this soon-to-be-closing church was this:  about 40 people in worship, lively (pre-recorded) music, colorful banners on the wall, about 5 children including a newborn, ethnic diversity, and faithful preaching.  It was clear that they really love each other.  But it wasn’t enough.

According to one charter member there were too few who took discipleship seriously and too many who saw church as an organization primarily created to take care of them.  When they heard talk about serving the world in the name of Jesus, it wasn’t what they signed up for.   This is a very simplistic explanation to a much more complicated situation, but the systemic issues boil down to discipleship and an understanding of what church is supposed to be imho.  All of us are at fault for missing the point.

The 21st Century Church is about signing up for servanthood, hospitality, obedience to God.  And even when we try to live into these things, still there are seasons.  Even the churches Paul started eventually closed only to have new communities rise up.

Really.  Anybody have ideas on this?

And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him.  Mark 1:17-18

How do we – who serve churches –  shift congregational paradigms that no longer work without losing our jobs – or worse – our minds?

And what support is there for pastors and other church leaders trying to make these changes?

We in the institutional church have response teams to support congregations hurt by financial or sexual misconduct.  We have disciplinary procedures to help congregations dealing with toxic interpersonal relationships.  But there doesn’t seem to be much support for churches with this particular problem:

– There are members who are happy with the status quo.  The same music they’ve always sung.  The same programs, sermons, furniture arrangements, faces.  They have their favorite events and traditions.  But things are different now. Long time parishioners refer to a time when there were hundreds on the membership rolls and now there are less than 100.  Maybe less than 50.  Bt they refuse to consider changes to The Way Things Are.

– There are members who are restless.  They imagine a different kind of church.  A church that cares about the people who aren’t there as much as they care for those who are.  A commitment that goes beyond Sunday morning.  A church that is less about membership and more about discipleship.

What do we do to support those churches?  There’s been no misconduct – unless it’s the misconduct of demonizing those who disagree with us.  There’s been no clear break in relationships, but something’s brewing.  Ugliness lies in wait. 

How do help churches that need to make a shift even though some in the congregation either don’t see the need for a shift or fear the loss of familiar spiritual traditions?  It’s an old question but I haven’t discovered many answers.  How do we love congregations in such a way that they make healthy, faithful choices in light of a changing church.  Are we satisfied to:

1) Lose a chunk of the congregation who feel like their old church has been taken from them?

OR

2) Lose a chunk of the congregation who feel that the status quo is slowing killing the church they love?

Anybody seen this done well?

Image is Happy Jesus by Fan Pu (2007)

“I believe that both humans and institutions are sinful.”  (from a candidate for ordination’s statement of faith shared recently in Chicago)

“Americans don’t look to institutions to solve their problems” (Newsweek p.38 9-19-11)

Yes and yes.

This is not to say that all institutions are ignoble or unhelpful.  But as a person who has served The Institutional Church professionally for over 25 years, I’ve seen my share of sinfulness and snafus.  And you have too.

– When fulfilling God’s call is blocked by internal spats that have nothing to do with the one seeking to serve.

– When fear rules over faith and it  shows up in decision-making and procedures.

– When we trust policies more than people.

These kinds of things ruin the church and make many stay away at first whiff.  We are a community of people.  Institutions are people.  We are sinful and get caught up in our own stuff.  But – after lots of searching, believe me – I see that the best way to nourish people and get things done is with an organized community.  And this is what my new job is all about.  Really cool.

Image is the public Picasso in Chicago.  Institutions can provide gorgeous art.