A Church for Starving Artists

I’d like to write something about this, but I have no idea what to say. Some relationships look perfect-ish. Some appear to be difficult. But we just don’t know, do we?

As I’ve sometimes said in wedding homilies, it’s an underrated miracle when two people fall in love with each other at approximately the same time and craft a life together that’s happy and satisfying for a lifetime. I pray today for those who have never experienced that miracle and those for whom their plans didn’t turn out the way they expected. For the broken hearted and the estranged, for the disappointed and the hopeful, we pray to the LORD.

Portrait of Melinda and Bill Gates by Jon R. Friedman in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC (2018)

She was between 20 and 30 years old and she died in approximately 1 BCE. For many years archaeologists not only assumed she was male; they thought she was a male priest considering the markings on her sarcophagus. She was between five and six months pregnant and her burial accessories included “a rich set of amulets.” And although she was Egyptian, she now resides in Poland. You can read about her here.

Turns out she was placed in a sarcophagus which was not her own. This happens 10% of the time says Archaeologist Wojciech Ejsmond. Interesting. (But that’s for another post.)

We in the Institutional Church ofter refer to the Church being dead or dormant somewhat like a mummy.

• We are God’s Frozen People.
• Carey Niewhof has identified “7 Subtle Signs” of impending church death here.
• Revelation 3:1-6 (The truth about dying churches goes way back.)

And during this Eastertide, we might remember that Jesus himself was embalmed by those who loved him. But he was apparently never a mummy because . . . Resurrection. (Again, the conversation about bodily resurrection is for another post.)

So, here’s my point:

Some of our congregations are in the process of preparing for death because of what Carey Niewholf talks about:

• No passion from leaders.
• No innovation.
• Management over leadership.
• Maintenance over mission.
• Fixation on being “my church.”
• No permission-giving to young leaders.
• Weak relationship with God.

Some congregations have unwittingly embalmed themselves with relics and they don’t even know it. I know congregations with more money in their cemetery fund than their mission fund.

Some congregations have died even though there was new life there than never had a chance. Cue the wise and wonderful MaryAnn McKibben Dana : “The Church is not dying. It’s pregnant.”

The kindom of heaven shall be like a fertile royal who gives birth again and again to a new generation of the faithful. Truly I tell you, even the embalmed will reveal new life.

Image source.

When people don’t stay in their lane, crashes happen and sometimes those crashes stop all movement forward.

One of my coaches taught me that Clear Roles make all the difference in healthy organizations. As I work with congregations, I see this is true.

Not healthy:

• Church Treasurers who believe it’s their role to determine if the pastor deserves to be paid that week.
• Clerks of Session (in Presbyterian lingo this is the keeper of board meeting minutes, etc.) who believe they have the authority to veto the Pastor or make plans without the Pastor.
• Pastors who believe it’s their role to decree what the congregation believes.
• Parishioners who believe it’s their role to keep Pastors in their places.

I appreciate my colleagues in that we are constantly checking in with each other about boundaries. Am I in your lane? Is this something I should be doing or is that on your plate? Is this project something you have time to do, or would you like us to hold off until summer? Do we need to change your position description to add that responsibility?

The worst is when the Christian Education Committee is doing the work of the Mission Committee who is stepping on the toes of the Worship Committee who interferes with the Flower Committee who doesn’t care that the Pastor won’t allow flowers on the communion table.

In a healthy church, colleagues can talk with each other about who does what and it’s not about power; it’s about good boundaries and effective ministry in the name of Jesus.

Just a little reminder for a Thursday afternoon.

“As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love.” M. Scott Peck

• There’s the congregation that would rather settle for a low-energy, ineffective pastor rather than go through the process of calling a new leader.

• There’s the Pastor Search Committee that would rather pick the organist’s cousin George who is “available right now” to be their Pastor rather than go through the process of finding a really good match for who they are and what they need for this moment in time.

• There’s the Nominating Committee who picks the same people for the same roles over and over again whether those people are still the right ones for that position or not because it’s too much effort to discern who else might be called to serve who’s never served before.

• There’s the Pastor who knows the congregation needs to re-boot and re-think their purpose, but he’s close to retirement and doesn’t want to stir the pot for his last years in professional ministry.

• There’s the Personnel Committee who knows that they need a different kind of youth leader who knows how to make LGBTQ kids in the neighborhood feel welcomed, but they dread the pushback from the congregation, so they go for the “safe” candidate.

Long, long ago in a culture far, far away long – before Brene and Nadia, long before Oprah was Oprah – “everybody” read a book by M. Scott Peck called The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth. It’s worth checking that book out again.

Dr. Scott Peck pitched that our most common sin was laziness. Humans are simply lazy. We are too lazy to care about our neighbors, too lazy to do the work that will make the future better, too lazy to be who we were created to be. We just don’t want to make the effort.

I see this every day in The Church. [Note: I also witness great acts of service, breathtaking moments of generosity, and impressive feats of grappling with hard situations.] And I see lots of laziness.

Everybody’s tired. Yes.

And everybody wishes things could be different but we don’t want to do the work.

Signs of heaven:

1. A Pastor Nominating Committee wrestles with who they are now and what their church and community need now and they not only do the work to call the right pastor; they are also willing to back up their/God’s choice when other folks complain that the new pastor is too young/old/white/black/female/queer. The truth is perhaps that the naysayers don’t even want to take the time to consider why this new pastor – who doesn’t look like what they expected – is clearly the person God chose.
2. A Church strives to include voices not usually heard when discerning the next chapter of their contributions to the neighborhood.
3. The Big White-Steepled Church on the Hill that’s doing just fine in terms of their mission goals and finances chooses to risk conflict by confronting their uncomfortable past which includes founders who were slaveholders and former pastors who were segregationists.
4. The Church struggling to thrive in this culture makes the courageous choice to do what’s best for the community (rather than what feels safest for themselves) and allow their church property to become something new to serve the neighbors.

You’ve already read my Signs of Laziness.

Fortunately, I see more Signs of Heaven than Signs of Laziness – but there are too many signs of laziness out there and what The Lazy among us don’t realize is that lazy choices kill congregations.

Lazy choices kill congregations.

The easy way out. The easy hire. Don’t do it. Show me one time God ever took the easy way.

Love is the antithesis of laziness. Love does the work because it’s not about us. It’s about figuring out what God might want to do with us and our community to fulfill the best and highest Plan for this world.

I stayed up late last night to watch The Academy Awards mostly because it was fun watching people get dressed up and sit face to face fully vaccinated at a party. Frankly, some of the choices were not my favorites (Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were robbed) but comparing the different roles of – say – the five Best Actor nominees is like comparing apple and oranges and grapes and pears and pomegranates. All delicious but so different.

I was thinking about some of the stellar performances of my colleagues in ministry which involve drama, comedy, animation, and editing – not to mention best sound tracks and costume design. For example:

Best Directing goes to those pastoral leaders who lovingly move their congregations from a Constantinian model of ministry to an Entrepreneurial/Disciple-making model of ministry.

Best Performance in a Drama goes to the elders and deacons who keep ministry vibrant after a congregational trauma (e.g. the pastor is struggling with terminal health issues . . . or runs off with a liturgical dancer.)

Best Soundtrack goes to the music leaders who create a Christmas Pageant using lyrics from Hamilton (First Presbyterian in Brooklyn did this a couple years ago and it was amazing) or the youth leaders who write a play about Amos re-working lyrics by H.E.R.

I witness extraordinary performances by the priesthood of all believers every day. And then it occurs to me that these are not “performances” at all. They are authentic acts of service and love.

I’ve known professional ministers and other leaders of faith who were acting the part. God help us.

There are the pastors who preach one thing and do another. (The #ChurchToo movement has stories that rival anything Emerald Fennell could create.) There are elders who perform acts of respectability but privately they are gaslighters and bullies. There are teenagers who pretend to be pious for their parents but they are hiding secret lives. And there are church members who threaten to “stop giving” to the church if they don’t get their way, only to find out that they don’t make any financial contribution. These are performances.

True ministry is about God and living an authentic life that shows what God’s love looks like. True ministry happens when pastors offer selfless pastoral care to the families who slander them behind their backs. True ministry happens when the church nursery workers are as respected as the Senior Pastor. True ministry happens when people are spared shame. True ministry happens when “people who don’t deserve it” are blessed with a safety net.

True ministry is not about performance. It’s about spiritual leadership in a broken world. As much as I like watching actors act, those performances are a distraction. The stories in our actual lives are just as rich and disturbing and funny and colorful. And every day we are given the opportunity to dwell in those stories in a way that makes the world the way it was created to be. It can be real. Or it can be a performance.

It’s so much better when it’s real.

Someone burst my bubble over the weekend and it was not comfortable. I was holding forth on something and a person refuted my position with some pretty good facts and her personal experience. She had some good points.

The lovely thing about bubbles is that we can create new ones easily.

Yesterday at about 5:00 ET many of us felt like bursting. And then maybe we did. The Chauvin verdict burst that bubble that says that Black people killed by White police officers will never get justice. But keep in mind that it took watching the murder of a Black man by a White man live in real time and then on video for justice to prevail.

And keep in mind that millions of people in this country did not care one way or another. They did not feel like bursting. They were probably walking the dog or cooking dinner and the verdict had no impact on their mood or emotions.

It’s so easy to stay in our bubbles and never be exposed to what’s outside our safe floating orb. This article by Shira Ovide points out that

“Online services like YouTube, Netflix and TikTok digest what you have already watched or its computer systems infer your tastes and then suggest more of the same. Websites like Facebook and Twitter expose you to what your friends like or to material that many other people already find engaging.”

We don’t need more of the same. We need to get exposed to different voices.

This goes for those of us who watch Fox News and those of us who watch MSNBC and those of us who “don’t watch the news anymore.” This goes for those of us who read the WSJ and those who read the NYT and those who read The Mooresville Tribune.

In my own bubble, I’m looking ahead to pondering how we in Charlotte will remember the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre knowing that most of the White people in Charlotte have never heard of the Tulsa Massacre. I’m writing an article on White Supremacy knowing that many people I love believe White Supremacy is only about the KKK. To be perfectly honest, I’m trying to bring you into my bubble and I need to explore yours as well.

Breaking bubbles and breaking barriers will never happen as long as we believe we have The Truth on our side. Wherever you are today, I hope you have the opportunity to talk with someone who disagrees with you about something.

May our bubbles burst today. It might not feel good. But we need it.

I would be happy to never again hear the term, “Think outside the box.”

What is this proverbial box and where did it come from?

Actually we are the ones who built the box. At any given meeting about church growth/outreach/community engagement/evangelism meeting, these are the suggestions I hear church people make (with my personal response):

• Let’s have a neighborhood Open House. (Nope.)
• Let’s have a “Come as you are” Sunday. (Nope.)
• Let’s open our doors to the homeless. (Nope.)
• Let’s have a bake sale. (Nope.)
• Let’s knock on doors in the neighborhood. (Nope.)
• Let’s hand out flyers at the next community event. (Nope.)
• Let’s build a Family Life Center to attract the local kids. (Nope.)
• Let’s have a Bring-a-Friend Sunday. (Nope.)
• Let’s create a Five Year Plan for growth. (Nope.)

These events are not only part of that box we built; they also illustrate a dated, ineffective way of being the Church today. Note that most of these ideas reflect a “come to us” rather than a “go out” mentality. Note that each of these ideas imply a quick fix that conflates having events with being in relationship with.

[Note about The Five Year Plan: Five years ago we had no idea there would be a pandemic. Five years ago, Trump had not yet been elected President. Lots of things change in five years. Strategic plans are meaningless without 1) knowing what the culture is and 2) being extremely fluid and willing to edit the plan.]

A better way seems to be reverse engineering. Let’s say that our mission goal is to serve our neighbors who are residents of the men’s shelter near our church property.

Instead of starting with the usual “how to begin?” we start with what we hope the end result will be;

Instead of this:

1. We want to serve our homeless neighbors.
2. We go to a shelter and hand out invitations to come to worship and after we’ll have a one-time meal.
3. Those who come (assuming some shelter residents show up) are welcomed warmly and we enjoy a meal together.
4. We might or we might not ever see those folks again.

Try this:

1. We want to make a positive sustainable impact for our homeless neighbors.
2. We contact the men’s shelter nearby by and ask how we might serve these neighbors.
3. They suggest that our church volunteers serve dinner on the first Friday of each month because that’s their current need.
4. We sign up to do what they need: serve dinner on the first Friday of each month.
5. We are intentional about doing more than serve food; we introduce ourselves by name and we remember the resident’s names. Volunteers are trained in how to do this, if necessary.
6. We authentically get to know the residents and hear their stories. We nurture relationships to the point of including residents in ideas for menus. We ask them what they need as the months get warmer. We listen to what they say.
7. They say it’s really hot on the streets in the summer and they basically are looking for cool places to spend the day.
8. We give gift cards for McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, or DQ to each resident the next first Friday.
9. We continue to build relationships. We ask the residents and the staff of the shelter how else we might partner.

See the difference?

With the first way we begin by offering something easy (handing out invitations) in hopes of a transaction (they come to our church.) How much we would congratule ourselves if they joined!

With the second way we begin with the why. Why do we want to connect with our homeless neighbors? Then we ask what’s needed. We don’t make assumptions. We are not in the business of pitying “the needy.” We are in the business of making earth look more like heaven.

Future options might include attending a local job fair, learning what jobs are in need, finding grant money to pay for training for those jobs. One of our churches in Charlotte Presbytery did this. They learned that there was a need for trained forklift operators at a local job fair. They offered grant money from the denomination to train 32 people in forklift operation and all 32 got fulltime jobs as forklift professionals with benefits in 3 months.

Start with a mission goal and work in reverse. What do we need to do to make ____ happen?

And toss the box.

Robin DiAngelo was one of the keynote speakers at last week’s virtual White Privilege Conference and her address “Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm” pierced my soul. She told the story of a conversation she had with brand new Black friends many years ago in San Francisco.

Her first inclination as a White person with very few Black friends was to establish that she was not racist. In fact, she was so determined to display her lack of racism that she actually displayed her racism in full glory. She started by sharing “how racist her family was” by repeating their jokes and comments about Black people, not noticing how uncomfortable her dinner partners were.

She wasn’t showing them how anti-racist she was. She was showing them how oblivious she was.

Hello, I’m Jan. Been there countless times.

When I say things like “My daughter-in-law is brown” or “My white children were the minority in their public schools in Virginia” or “We lived in a very diverse neighborhood” or “I have Black friends” it shows that I am not “woke.” I’m just ridiculous.

Of course I’m a racist. And I am going to get things wrong as I learn how to be anti-racist. And it’s my job to figure it out and do better.

Our SBC will be marrying a brilliant and kind human of Indian descent later this year and it’s uncomfortable not knowing the cues. (Again – hello. I haven’ had to learn Indian cues because I’m White and exist in the dominant culture every day.) I haven’t had to learn about Vrats or Upvas. I haven’t had to put Divali on my calendar.

My father grew up on a dairy farm and while those Guernseys were sacred in terms of providing milk to sell to customers in North Carolina, I’m not familiar with how cows are sacred in India.

And the wedding customs. I want to have a spirit of learning and respectfulness when I can already tell that my deeper spirit can be snarky and disrespectful. There are different customs about everything from who buys the wedding dress to who can give presents. This is new territory for me. O Lord, help me not be an idiot.

I am ignorant in many things outside of Being White. I haven’t had to code switch much. Or ever.

And the reason I bring all this up is that I hear from White friends and family that they are afraid they’ll say the wrong thing and so they say nothing. They don’t engage with People of Color. They don’t want to show their ignorance. But then they/we don’t take the time to learn.

I have been ignorant and I will continue to be ignorant in the future (but I hope less so.) I cringe thinking about the time I touched TDA’s hair. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Forgive me, Lord, for exhausting my friends.

And I am exhausted for Black, Brown, and Golden people. Not only do they deal with the daily ignorance of White people like me who haven’t had to learn about cultures beyond Whiteness but in addition to this, Black, Brown and Golden people are subject to daily indignities and the distinct possibility that they or people who look like them could be shot, pushed to the ground, or generally dismissed. That was a really long sentence. And yet it illustrates the exhaustion I’m talking about.

Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility was a good place to start for some White people. Her next book Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm will be especially edifying for those of us who consider ourselves so woke. And please mark your calendars: The National White Privilege Conference is in Charlotte, NC next March 2022. Hope you’ll come learn with me.

Pre-order Robin DiAngelo’s new book here.

One of the things I love about Church World is that I am introduced to people I would never have the opportunity to know if we didn’t do Church together. Some of the finest people I know exemplify the love and strength of Jesus. They share their wealth sacrificially – and by “wealth” I don’t necessarily mean they are wealthy. But they make decisions on purchasing a new car or going on vacation based on needs over wants so that they can fund projects for those in need.

I say this first and foremost because this could sound like a bummer of a blog post. Bear with me.

In every church I’ve served, someone has told me early on about a leader or a family or a neighbor that the church “could not live without.“

• The retired pastor who is willing to help in any and every situation.
• The amazing family who can trace their church membership back five generations.
• The preschool director who is so generous with her time that she is always in the building.
• The church elder whose financial contributions always get the church out of a pickle when the boiler dies or the roof leaks.
• The sweet lady who lives next door who volunteers to polish the furniture and organize the closets.
• The church administrator who is the only one who knows where everything is.

My friends, we might be able to name individuals we know who are like these examples, and they are faithful servants who ask nothing in return for their contributions of money, time, and wisdom. Without these pillars of the Church, everything would crumble. Or so we fear.

But this might not be the whole story. Because of my ministry in the Church, I often learn that:

• The retired pastor is interfering with the authority of the current pastor.
• The amazing family who can trace their church member back five generations believes that the building belongs to them.
• The preschool director who is so generous with her time has no boundaries.
• The church elder whose financial contributions always get the church out of a pickle is unintentionally sabotaging their congregation’s future.
• The administrator who is the only one who knows where everything is has control issues and is trying to solidify her power.
• The sweet lady who lives next door preserves the property and records in a way that perpetuates a culture of Church as Institution rather than Church as Disciple-Maker.

Healthy congregations allow the pastor to serve as they’ve been called to serve, recognizing that the Church belongs to Jesus, healthy boundaries are essential for everyone, and a culture of shared giving, shared power, and making disciples of Jesus Christ is the goal.

I can’t tell you how many congregations are being destroyed by the very people whom “we can’t live without.” They are not pillars as much as they are unwittingly preventing the Church from growing.

They love their Church but they are getting in the way. They are “good people” but Church has become about them, not about expanding the reign of God.

I write these things as a love letter to Church Pillars and all who love their own churches Please ask someone you trust, “Am I helping move our congregation into a Body of Christ that serves others? Or am I honestly about transactional ministry? (I give you money, time, wisdom and you give me what I ask for/demand.)

This is a question for each of us.

Image is of the Pillars of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Worrying about what other people think about us is a heavy burden. Seriously. Worrying about the disapproval of others can literally kill us.

Long before Instagram, The Church was a major contributor to the myth that “I have my life together.” If we belong to a church that thrives on image over reality, we have a problem. If our Insta-feed shows a perfectly curated existence, we are basically deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Or so said John the Evangelist.

First of all, worrying about what others think is going to make us so tired. Secondly, that whole Abundant Life thing Jesus talked about will be fairly impossible to experience.

Assorted comments I’ve heard in my travels:

• If my child doesn’t get married in the sanctuary, our church friends will believe we haven’t passed down our faith to them.
• If I leave my marriage, people will think I wasn’t a good husband/wife.
• If my people find out my child is gay, our church friends will shame us.
• If my Bible study group knows my husband/wife is an alcoholic, they will look down on me.
• If we don’t have the retirement party at the country club, people will think we have money problems.
• If I miss a single family event, my extended family will shun me.

Oh good grief.

Age helps with this because many of us learn not to care what other people think. And it’s not that we don’t want to be liked or valued; it’s that we want to be liked and valued for being our real selves. Abundant life comes when we know we are loved and valued because God created us and not because of the kind of car we drive or what college our child got accepted into.

The bottom line is this: if we want to put our beautiful cakes and patios on Instagram, do it. If we want to put our hot mess photos on Instagram, do it. We are loved in spite of our poor choices and dirty hair.

And I like pretty cakes and sunsets and happy family photos. Bring ’em on. But that’s not why we are loved.