On Sabbatical: Back to Blogging

As of tomorrow morning, I will officially be on Sabbatical. A Sabbatical, for those not familiar with previous sabbatical, I'll be blogging fairly regularly.

The cleanest the office has been in years...

the term, is a lengthy period of rest, refreshment, and re-formation afforded to clergy and professors. Clergy Sabbaticals are not intended simply as a long period of rest and relaxation, but a time to step out of day-to-day church life, have some new experiences, learn some new things, and return to church rested, refreshed, and bearing new ideas and/or new perspectives that will assist in both congregational and personal ministry. As I did in my

My hopes and plans for this Sabbatical are threefold:

1. Technology. I'm really eager to explore the world of blogging, video blogging, and social media in general more deeply. It seems like this is an emerging evangelistic medium and, as I am not a big fan of door-to-door evangelism, it also seems like it would be a great option and opportunity for me. I'll be attending the eFormation conference at Virginia Theological Seminary (my alma mater!) to get a taste of the possibilities. I'm also hoping to take some seminars on video production.
2. Spirituality. One of the great ironies of professional pastoral ministry is that running the "business" of the church can often crown out time for deepening one's spiritual life. Since my last Sabbatical, I've been intrigued by Benedictine spirituality and will be doing some research on, and experimentation with, that. I'm also going to be attending a retreat at Mount Calvary Benedictine Monastery in Santa Barbara.
3. Family and Household. The world runs really fast, and this is also true of pastoral ministry. I'm hoping and planning on doing a lot more focusing on my family and taking time to be with them. I'm also hoping to get some long-postponed projects completed around the Rectory, so we can more fully live here and make it completely our own.

That's pretty much it for now. No church in the morning for me--but lots of church this week!

Leader or Nutcase? Time and followers will tell...

I'm in the midst of a challenging period in my ministry. Challenging in a good way, but challenging nonetheless. The challenge is that I've gotten what I've prayed for--a parish eager to grow and knowing that there is a clear choice between growing and thriving or shrinking and dying. Many churches, though they say that they want to grow, are perfectly happy just the way they are. St. Edward's, thankfully, is not one of them.

That's not to say life is without difficulties. We're ending the time of transition between the former Rector's tenure and where we hope to be in the near future. This summer is a turning point, a tipping point, between the old St. Edward's and the new St. Edward's. As we end the transition and look towards the future, we also are spending money previously thought of as inviolate--walled off from being touched and, in some ways, a part f the parish's identity. We're having to let go of that identity a bit, without any real assurance about the future. To add to that, we're discovering as we go that, much like when one renovates a home, as we explore further we discover issues that need to be addressed, sometimes requiring more funding than originally anticipated. While I'm sure of our direction, such discoveries nevertheless give me pause.

My seminary classmate and Bishop of Texas, The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle (Andy to me) passed along the following to Episcopal Café. I think it is really an interesting commentary on leadership:



This was personally a revelation to me in a number of ways. The biggest is that it takes almost more courage to he a "first follower" than it does to be a leader. You can be a leader and be a nutcase. However, as a follower, you have the choice to follow or not to follow a given leader. Once someone gains a few followers, it is no longer about the leader.  I'd really like to get to that point, though we're still early in my time at St. Edward's. One challenge, of course, is that the priest is the identified leader and there is a continued differentiation between the priest and the lay leadership (vestry, ministry leaders, etc...) It is only when you get a large enough group to actually obscure the priest that such a person simply becomes nothing more than a rather specialized ministry leader. Food for thought about how I can become such a person.

Besides dancing with my shirt off, that is. No one wants to see that. Trust me.

Dying and Rising, Death and (Re-)Birth

I ran across the following quote, thanks to my friend and colleague Leslie Nipps:

"When we focus on things that are passing away we get scared, we get anxious, we get depressed, we lose hope; and when we focus on things that are being birthed and are coming newly into creation we get excited, we get imaginative, we get optimistic, we feel drawn closer to one another, we feel as if we have meaning and purpose in this life, and we have joy." -- Bishop Jim Kelsey (1952-2007)

There seem to be a lot of things passing away just now. Perhaps even using the word that often gets translated "passing away"--dying--might even be a better way of saying it. Things are dying. Ways of being are dying. Even ways of being and doing church are dying. I've seen commentaries from the Alban Institute, from Archbishop Rowan Williams via Episcopal Café, and from a host of bloggers about the changes that need to happen and/or are happening in churches and seminaries throughout the church. Outside the church, political discourse has reached an all-time low with the radical fringes holding power and capturing the headlines. Death or threat of the death of a way of being or doing, and the fear engendered by it, seems to be the dominant theme these days.

I've blogged before about how we might turn our churches from hospitals or restaurants to birthing centers. The feeling of a hospice is much different from that of a maternity ward! Yet it often seems as if the church is forced into, and rewarded for, helping people pass through the gate of death more easily into the afterlife rather than midwifing the seed or spark of new life. As my friend and colleague Dylan Breuer notes, it is quite expensive to do the theological education work necessary to nurture faith from birth through adulthood. The answer, while simple in concept is challenging in execution: congregations and denominations must place a high value on lifelong Christian formation and be willing to literally put their money where their mouths are.

This will mean finally burying the idea (and the ideal) that people arrive at the doors of a church basically Christian and simply need a tweak or a touch-up and then be invited to "take a seat" in the nearest pew--whereupon they will instantly tithe and naturally gravitate to joining the Altar Guild or other vital group for maintaining the church's current program. Rather, it assumes that people arrive at the door of a church, if they even get that far, utterly unprepared and perhaps even bewildered by the myriad of sights, sounds, books, and other accouterments if Episcopal Christianity. We will have to invest time, money, and patience with folks and know that we are planting seeds that we hope and pray God will grow. Gardens or maternity wards are much nicer than parking lots or funeral parlors, aren't they?

Update: The Baptists are looking for answers, too! (link courtesy of Episcopal Café)