A Reconciling Conversation

On Sunday following worship with the congregation of Chestnut UMC, we're gathering for a "Reconciling Conversation" -- the first step in a process as we consider a proposal to join the Reconciling Ministries Network and declare ourselves a fully inclusive church, particularly in welcoming the gay and lesbian community.

This process was initiated by a conversation at a visioning gathering that we held last month. At that time, with unanimous approval and enthusiastic support from everyone in the room, one of the goals we set was to pursue becoming a Reconciling Congregation. I'm looking forward to this first conversation with a widened circle, and whatever the outcome, I'm praying the process will be prayerful, respectful, and Spirit-led.

A couple of weeks ago, Sara and I had an opportunity to participate in an event at Portland High School sponsored by a student group called the Gay-Straight Alliance, affiliated with the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. The event, called "Claiming our Sexuality and our Spirituality," brought together students, adults, and leaders of faith communities for sacred conversation. Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire (a truly amazing person!) was the keynote speaker, and then each of us spoke briefly about our faith traditions, extending a welcome to the students in the room, whatever their sexual identities. Then students were invited to circulate among the room to talk, ask questions, and make connections. Sara and I felt honored to be there. (See Sara's post, "A Sacred Night.")

When the advisor for the sponsoring group called, she said, "The most commonly asked question when I'm alone with a student is, 'Does God hate me?'" She said, "It breaks my heart every time I hear a student ask that."

I think it breaks God's heart, too.

So please, dear readers, join me if you will, in praying for the church -- the church I serve in particular as we engage in this process, if you'd like, but more specifically for the church universal, that we might more faithfully communicate the all-embracing, all-inclusive, full-of-grace and longing-for-relationship, reconciling love of God to those who feel like God must hate them because of who they are. They are everywhere, and they are beloved children of God, our brothers and sisters.

Walk on Water!

I'm on the planning team for this event - WOW: The School of Congregational Development for The United Methodist Church in New England - coming up November 6-8 in Bloomfield, CT.

I just created this blog with a lot of the information, as well as a link for online registration.

Paul Nixon is our keynote speaker. Other presenters include Safiyah Fousa, Bishop Peter Weaver, Gwen Purushotham, Kwasi Kena, Larry Homitsky, Cookie Santiago, Doug Ruffle, Kent Millard, and a number of gifted pastors and laypersons from our own Conference.

It's going to be a great event with uplifting worship, dynamic speakers, more than 30 workshop options, a great Cokesbury bookstore, and plenty of opportunity to connect with sisters and brothers from other churches around New England and beyond! Hope you can join us!

Learning from HopeSpring

Yesterday we participated in worship at HopeSpring in Winter Garden, FL -- originally a new church start that began as a daughter church of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Orlando, now considered an extension campus of St. Luke's. That may sound like an insignificant distinction, but actually it represents a huge and challenging change in identity for the people of HopeSpring, resulting from concerns about sustainability based on projections for worship attendance and financial solvency.

Our visit to HopeSpring provided some helpful learning:

• Hospitality, hospitality, hospitality! We were warmly greeted -- in the parking lot, at every entrance, in the worship service -- and afterward, we were treated to a tasty lunch, complete with little buckets filled with treats with our table settings.
  
  
• Holding worship in a school is challenging. They shared that with only one morning a week in the space, and no permanent "home base," it's very difficult to cultivate a sense of identity among people in the community. Additionally, they talked about the incredible commitment of resources -- time, energy, and finances -- it takes: about $20,000 a year in rent, plus all the equipment and the movable units for storing it; and human resources for transporting everything in a big trailer, schleping the stuff in and out, and setting it all up and taking it all down week after week. Add to that the challenges of working with school administration, time constraints, and difficulties with consistent air conditioning (a particular problem in Florida!), and it hasn't been a breeze. In a few months, HopeSpring will be moving into a more permanent home for worship and mission: 10,000 square feet of an old Winn-Dixie supermarket, which they're converting into ministry space.
  


• Mother-Daughter relationships between congregations aren't easy either. Lead pastor Gary Shockley planted a church in Pennsylvania before -- a parachute drop -- and he went into this one naively thinking that it was going to be a piece of cake with the energy and passion of a large team of people already on board and significant financial resources to invest. Even with two years at St. Luke's building a culture of invitation and hospitality and nurturing a core group to prepare them, before the church plant even began, and even with significant funding from the mother congregation, the district, and the Conference, he's found it incredibly challenging to navigate all the dynamics. Particularly with the recent change from daughter church to extension campus, and all the resulting changes in budgeting and staffing relationships, it's been complicated.



• Planning is an imperfect science. When they made their plans to plant HopeSpring in Winter Garden, the housing market was booming. They specifically targeted this community because there were plans for 60,000 new homes and a town center to be built. They did their homework, studying demographics and designing their worship and ministry to meet the needs of the people with whom they expected to be neighbors. However, only about 12,000 homes were built, and with the economic slump, everything has come to a screeching halt. The school is literally in the middle of nowhere -- a stark reminder that projections are only projections, and lots can change without fair warning.



• In spite of all the challenges that accompany any church planting project, God is faithful! HopeSpring leaders are genuinely excited about this new venture, and lives are being transformed by the grace of Jesus Christ. I suspect HopeSpring will be successful, even if it's not exactly what those who began expected, and even if it's not according to the timeline they originally developed.

Notes from Orlando, Day Three

Wow! Today was the best day by far. Honestly, some parts of the School of Congregational Development have been a bit disappointing, because I feel like a lot of what we're receiving is based on an older model of congregational development that isn't likely to engage younger generations or those in progressive cultures like Portland -- but today was really good.

First, we heard from Carol Howard Merritt, a young Presbyterian pastor from Washington, D.C. and author of The Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation. She started out by telling a story about one of her parishioners, a member of the church council (or whatever they call the governing board in Presbyterian churches) who arrived late for a meeting, apologized for her tardiness, and explained that she'd run into a friend on the way there. When it accidentally slipped out that she was on her way to church, she'd felt the need to explain... to clarify... "No! It's not what you think it is! My church isn't like that!" And Carol confessed she finds herself doing the same thing, all the time, when people learn that she's a pastor.

Oh, man! Does that sound familiar?!

"Yes, I'm a pastor, but it's not like that! My church isn't what you think it is. We believe in peace and work for justice, and we don't reduce faith to moralisms, and we aren't homophobic or sexist or narrow-minded, and we don't think you have to be a Republican to follow Jesus!"

Yes, all too familiar!

"Church can be very scary," Carol says. "If you go to church and you still dare to admit it, you have some explaining to do."

As a young adult in ministry (although getting less young all the time, I must confess: I turn 38 tomorrow!), I found it fascinating to hear Carol's presentation. So much of it rang true, from my experience, both personally and with others from my generation. A few things to hold onto:

• Six million people who used to go to church no longer do -- they're under age 45. They are "The Missing Generation." Six million!
• Too often, we in the church think in terms of life cycles. We celebrate a child's baptism, we raise them in Sunday School, and we celebrate a big "graduation" when they complete confirmation. Then we send them off, expecting they'll come back when they have kids of their own. Then we plan ministries for Mom-and-Dad-and-the-kids, but we don't offer much for those in between. The problem is, only 25% of households have Mom and Dad and kids. 51% of women in our society aren't married. When the single young adult comes to worship for the first time, the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) message we convey is, "You are not what we're looking for."
• Misunderstandings about young adults:
  - Employment: that young adults quit their jobs if they don't fit in with their yoga schedules. Truth: many, many young adults are in temporary employment because it's the only work they can get. They work long hours, and their productivity is higher than previous generations. Because they're in temp jobs, they have few benefits, and they are often the first to be laid off. 30% of people ages 19-29 have no health insurance -- particularly troubling when you remember that this is the time period when people have typically had babies... today many young adults can't even get a doctor's appointment!
  - Finances: that young adults prefer to "mooch" off their parents. Truth: young adults find themselves in terrible financial hardship because of the tragic combination of enormous student loans, the high cost of housing (particularly in urban areas, where young adults can find work), and stagnant wages. She described college students with whom she works who hold down four jobs while taking a full course load, and then celebrate that they've been able to keep their student loans to $50,000.
  - Commitments: that young adults are "commitment-phobic." Truth: marriage rates are lower (often because of financial insecurity), but among young adults who are married, divorce rates are lower, too. And commitment to a job can't be measured fairly, since so many young adults find themselves forced to work temp jobs.
• Young adults aren't looking for entertainment in church: they find contemplative prayer and labyrinths to be incredibly engaging. Often the parts of worship that appeal most to this generation are times of silence.
• Gen X (ages 25-45) is the most innovative generation ever in our nation. Young adults are eager to start new things. Gen Y (under age 25) is huge -- bigger, Carol says, than the Baby Boomer generation. At the same time, Gen Y is more institutionally minded than Gen X. So what if, she asks -- what if we allowed Gen X to develop new communities of faith to engage Gen Y? Wow! That question is rocking my world right now. It sounds to me like a recipe for the most incredible transformation of the church... the next Great Awakening, yes?

And then from Marcia McFee, the coolest stuff ever about music and worship! If I had come just for this seminar, it would have been worth it. Just a few snippets, because it's late and I'm tired:

• One size does not fit all. Use the full repertoire: jazz, traditional hymns (including with new arrangements and even new melodies), bluegrass, old and new contemporary (which really is not an oxymoron), global, Taize, blues, Iona, popular songs...
• Question: Is this the right song for this moment, to evoke the feeling I'm trying to create? It's not just about using the right genre.
• Question: How do we create an environment in which to experience the Holy? ... for this message... for this place... for these people?
• Think like a filmmaker: create a "score" or "soundscape" for our experience of the Holy. Use music for transitions. Let it be the glue for the layers of worship, connecting the verbal, the visual, and the visceral.

Good stuff today! Lots to process! Lots to utilize!

Notes from Orlando, Day Two

Greetings from steamy Orlando -- day two of the School of Congregational Development.

The day began with Mark Beeson, senior pastor of Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana, whose talk was called "Innovate or Die." His presentation was very inspiring. A few nuggets:

• Most of the people in our churches are underchallenged. Our churches are full of what Beeson calls "high capacity" people, and we ask them to do things like hand out bulletins, when they are capable of so much more.
• If you can do your ministry by yourself, your vision is too small.
• The most dangerous person on your team is not the person going backward while everyone else is moving forward, and not the person going completely in a different direction -- everyone knows they're completely off. The most dangerous person is the one who's just a little bit off, who claims to be on the same page when you confront him/her. This person will wear you out, Beeson says. You need to deal with it.

I'm a little confused about Granger Community Church, though. Apparently they're a United Methodist congregation -- at least that's how they were presented today -- but I get conflicting information when I do a Google search. Their own website says "nondenominational." What's the deal?

I went to two excellent seminars: "Creating a Discipleship System," with Claudia Lavy (formerly of Ginghamsburg Church, now part of the consulting team Deepening Your Effectiveness); and "Leadership in the Wesleyan Spirit" with Lovett Weems of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Both were very helpful.

A few nuggets from Lavy:

• The church is called to the ministry of life transformation. We get so caught up in the day-to-day stuff of the church that we forget our calling: life transformation.
• Lavy's workshop included a quick run through some excellent stuff about the stages through which people develop a deeper and deeper trusting relationship with God. I recommend the book Deepening Your Effectiveness: Restructuing the Local Church for Life Transformation by Dan Glover and Claudia Lavy, which provides an in-depth look at these steps and how they ought to impact the ministry we develop.
• Particularly helpful: at stage 3, the new or rededicated believer is asking the question "How can I help?" Be careful! When we take energetic new believers and invite them to serve before they are spiritually developed, we push them on a road to burnout and cynicism. The real question they're asking is "How can I fit in?" So how can we invite them to deeper spiritual development? The question for us: Do we want actively serving believers or spiritually developed servants? Lavy says our churches are full of actively serving believers, but they're drying up on the vines because we're not providing the spiritual nourishment they need to become spiritually developed servants.

A few nuggets from Weems:

• In 1784, Methodists were called "the most insignificant religious body." Eighty years later, in 1864, Methodists were the largest denomination, and 50% larger than the next largest denomination. How did that happen?
• We should develop "so that" statements for everything we're doing -- i.e. "We offer Vacation Bible School so that..." Everything should be organized to accomplish the mission.
• Thousands of churches across the country have said, "We love our traditions more than our children." We refuse to change, even if it means we are failing to pass on the life transforming message of God's love to the next generation.
• In the early days of a church, that church will be very responsive to the needs around them, but gradually that changes. Instead of looking upon the world as our parish, we begin to look upon the parish as our world.
• "Leadership is helping God's people take the next faithful step." -- Scott Cormode
• An alarming statistic: from 1980-1990, there was an increase from 1.8 million to 4.3 million people who claim prison as their primary residence. From 1990-2000, that number saw another 70% increase.
• A district superintendent is not the steward of the United Methodist Churches in his or her district -- pastors do that. A district superintendent is, rather, the steward of the United Methodist witness within that geographical territory. This is an important distinction.
• The primary question a district superintendent should be asking: How do I improve the quality of pastoral leadership for the pastors in my district?

Leadership

As I think about my ministry as a pastoral leader, one thing is abundantly clear to me: there's a big difference between being a leader and being a manager.

It's a tension in ministry that almost every pastor I know faces. So much of day-to-day ministry demands effective management: keeping track of all the finer details of ministry, day in, day out; making sure tasks are completed, worship is developed, a sermon is prepared, people are cared for, records are in order, budget numbers are reviewed, phone calls are made, e-mails are read and composed, and all the required forms are completed and submitted according to deadline. These are important aspects of ministry. Each of them helps to ensure that ministry continues, and yes, ministry is about impacting human lives.

Most of the time I'm able to stay on top of the management responsibilities -- sometimes very well, sometimes adequately -- but I'll confess that in my less effective moments, I can feel like little more than a machine churning out ministry, without passion or conviction and with hardly a nod to God. I note that I've used the passive voice to describe these tasks, and that's significant because there are days when I can check all the boxes on the task list and still remain fairly passive. Too often I get caught up being a manager and find there's little time for the real stuff of leadership.

Management is important for any effective organization, but the church calls out for leadership! There's the old expression, "Leadership is doing the right thing; management is doing things right." It seems to me if our primary focus is on doing things right, we might easily manage our way into extinction.

If management is about reducing risks, leadership is about pursuing opportunities. If management is about managing tasks, leadership is about leading people. If management is about seeing the present clearly, leadership is about articulating a vision for an improved future. If management is about tracking progress, leadership is about initiating change. If management is about reacting to perceived needs, leadership is about taking a proactive stance. I'm convinced it takes both effective management and visionary leadership to enable the healthy, growing church God calls us to be.

My prayer: God, help me to grow in my leadership abilities, and kindle in me a passion to pursue opportunities, to lead people, to articulate a vision for the future, to initiate change, to take a proactive stance, to lead with my head and my heart, for the sake of your church and your Kingdom!

Day Four in Kansas City

Here it is almost midnight on Tuesday, and I can't believe how quickly our days in Kansas City have been flying by!

Over the weekend we celebrated worship with The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, First Light, Revolution, and Jacob's Well -- four very different worship gatherings, but each inspiring in its own way. I hope to have time to share reflections and observations more fully in the days ahead.

We also got to meet with Steven Blair, lead pastor at First Light, who was incredibly helpful in sharing his own experiences and insights as a church planter; and with five different staff persons from Church of the Resurrection, who shared their expertise around discipleship formation, leadership development, incorporation of newcomers, and community missions, among other topics.

The icing on the cake was going to be the opportunity to attend a dinner gathering of the "Leadership Community" (I just have to say, that is much cooler than a Church Council or an Administrative Board or even a Leadership Team!) at Jacob's Well, but we got there to find out that the meeting had been canceled. Major bummer. But no complaints -- we have found everyone to be so helpful and generous in sharing what they've learned, and for that we're grateful!

In between all these incredible experiences, we've been having a great time with our new friends Andrew & Nicole. Thanks, you two, for making this such an awesome trip for us!

Rachel hasn't completely adjusted to the time zone change, so she's been waking up at 4:30 most mornings. Anticipating that, I think I better head to bed!