Back to blogging: Ecclesiastical Antibodies

After essentially taking the summer off from blogging, I'm back with fingers to keyboard. As Summer turns to Fall, I've been thinking a lot about change. At St. Edward's, where I continue to serve as Priest-in-Charge, we've absorbed more than our fair share of changes in my almost two years here. What is interesting is looking at corporations who also are confronted with such changes.

In an article today by Philip Elmer-Dewitt, he talks about a recent podcast by Horace Dediu. In the article, Elmer-Dewitt quotes Dediu as saying the following:

There's a phrase I like to use: "the corporate antibodies." These are things inside the company, as an organism, if you will. These are entities -- be they people or budgets or processes or rules in binders. These are things that are designed to eat up innovation. To eat up changes to the core business. Not because they are stupid. But they see this newcomer, this entrant, as a pathogen. As something that's damaging the organism. So they act, sometimes even collude, to destroy it.

Dediu goes on to draw a contrast between computer giant Hewlett-Packard (which recently gave up on its tablet computer and signaled that it is getting out of the PC market as well) and Apple (maker of the most popular tablet computer). Dediu's point, reiterated by Elmer-Dewitt, is that for innovation to take hold in an organization, the people promoting it have to be protected from the "corporate antibodies" that are out to destroy them, preferably protected by the CEO him/herself. Jobs tried to do that with the Macintosh, and was forced out of Apple by the "Apple II" forces. As fascinating as this is, one quote of Dediu at the end of the article really caught my eye:

[A certain innovation needed] this kind of champion at the very highest levels, someone who could endure the gestation for a long period of time. And that type of person is so rare as a CEO. Which is part of the mystique and magic of Steve Jobs. He's the only one that we know of  really that is able to do these types of schizophrenic things -- like maintain a sustaining business and its disruption within the same organization.

"Maintain a sustaining business and its disruption within the same organization." When I read that, it suddenly struck me: "That's what we are trying to do in the church!" We're trying to respond to the needs of a post-Christian world with new and innovative things that, more often than not, get "killed off" by "ecclesiastical antibodies" trying to preserve our "sustaining business." Developing something new alongside that, often referred to as "parallel development" is, in reality, trying to "maintain a sustaining business and its disruption within the same organization." That's really hard to do! The fact that one of the most compelling images of the church is the Body of Christ makes this metaphor even more apropos!

What this says to me in my ministry is that if I want to be a church leader that fosters and nurtures innovation, I have to be willing to protect it from ecclesiastical antibodies. I also have to be willing and strong enough to at least make the attempt to maintain what is and what may be its polar opposite in the same organization, the church. I think I'll sit with that for a while. This is even more timely on the recent news that Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple.

Is it well with my soul?

As the church program year winds down and makes way for Summer, time and permission are given to all of us for a bit of reflection. Since this Fall will mark two years of my tenure as Priest-in-Charge of St. Edward's, and since we're in the midst of both a diocesan and parish strategic planning process, there have been reasons stacked upon reasons for such reflection. While I've begun the parish part of that reflection on the parish blog, it seems like at least some account (on this blog) of my personal reflections is warranted.

In my daily Facebook trolling, I came across this list of 10 Ways to Boost Spiritual Health. I recognize a number of spiritual disciplines--personal worship, journaling, prayer, personal (rather than simply professional) bible study--that I recall doing with much more faithfulness when I was in college and had newly discovered a more personal relationship with God in Christ. Like getting enough exercise and eating right, sometimes living life accidentally or on spiritual inertia can sneak up on a person. A good reminder.

As I read that "fitness list," I recalled another bit of wisdom shared by Brian McLaren, author of "Naked Spirituality" in his address at the 187th Commencement of Virginia Theological Seminary (my alma mater). He strongly encouraged the graduates (and, by extension, we alumni and friends) to guard and grow four friendships: with ourselves, with soul friends, with non-Christians, and with God. As McLaren said "it is sometimes difficult for those of us who are paid to be good to simply be good for nothing." Sometimes being a "professional Christian" gets in the way of simply being an intentional follower of Jesus Christ.

As I move through this summer of discernment, a big piece of my discernment is to look at where I have allowed my professional life to take over my personal life--in my relationship with my family and friends but also in crowding out hobbies and other things I do just because I like doing them. A good discipline for anyone, I'd say.

If love wins...share it!

Nearly two months since my last post, I'm finally crawling out from underneath the pile of tasks on my plate (the pile of stuff on my desk is another matter...!) and have been giving some more serious thought to the shape of the twenty-first century church. There have been several items that have come across my screen lately that have caused me to pause and think more deeply. As you will note on the "Blogs I'm Following" list on the right, I follow the blog of Rachel Held Evans,  a self-proclaimed "writer, skeptic, and Christ-follower" whose reflections I've really enjoyed reading she recently appeared on an episode of Darkwood Brew, a "groundbreaking experimental web television program and Christian worship service" located in a coffeehouse in the Midwest.  After listening to that interview, and then going to the Darkwood Brew web site, I also happened upon an interview that they had done with Diana Butler Bass, who happens to have just come to the Diocese of El Camino Real a couple of weeks ago to talk about twenty-first century spirituality. Having recently published a book entitled A People's History of Christianity, she talked about the blend of spirituality and religiosity that is coming to dominate church and society in this second decade of the twenty-first century.

Both Rachel and Diana's interviews were a part of Darkwood Brew's series based upon Rob Bell's book Love Wins. The questioning title of the series is "If love wins, what now?" In both interviews, the point is made that the "orthodox" concept of, and concentration on, hell as a fiery place of eternal torment  is actually one born out of the Roman Emperor Constantine's fascination and obsession with the power of God to vanquish his enemies. Prior to that time, the Christian church was primarily focused on visions of heaven. If they even spared it a thought, hell was simply the place that was not heaven. It is when God's power is bound to earthly war and violence that hell becomes a punishment for enemies and unbelievers.

All of this is swirling around in my mind this morning as I contemplate this Sunday's lesson from the book of Acts, where (among other things, including ""It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.") Jesus says "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." That power is not presented as the power to coerce belief, but the power to witness to God's work in the world.

I'm also conscious, as I click from one thing to another online, that people have plenty of opportunity to find out information about Christianity, of whatever flavor. I found all of the above from initially being directed to Rachel Held Evans' blog via (I think...) a Facebook posting. From there, I found Darkwood Brew, and from there I found Diana Butler Bass, who I had just seen in person and who had greeted me almost as an old friend, though we had only been Facebook friends until then. It strikes me that the "witness" that we bring is not primarily a witness of information, but a witness of re-creation and restoration--that God is constantly in the midst of re-creating and restoring this world in partnership with us. That sort of witness is worth sharing!

"Contempervent" Worship

Many months ago I saw a video poking fun at so-called "contemporary worship" and have been searching for that video ever since. Today, it crossed my Facebook page, so here it is:



I do like songs that I hear on radio stations like K-LOVE, but I recognize the temptation to let the means of conveying the message of the Gospel become the Gospel itself. This is no less of a danger for more liturgical churches. Everyone has the temptation to say "It isn't worship if ____ isn't included." So, enjoy the humor but also get the point.

Government Involvement, Personal Freedom, and God's Purposes

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here and post something more political. Fee free to skip if you wish. I'm one of that rare breed: a moderate Republican. Even rarer, I'm a Republican for Obama. I'm certainly not rare in that I'm (obviously) a Christian as well as a Republican. I do believe in limited government and that, in many cases, government has overstepped its original mandate to "establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, [and] insure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..." (constitutional preamble). Just because a law can be passed or a program can be funded doesn't mean that it should.

That being said, I'm increasingly feeling like my fellow Republicans are using the current state and federal fiscal crises as a "license to kill" any program that they've wanted to do away with for years for ideological reasons, regardless of its costs and benefits. A perfect example is the program whose board I sit on--Live Oak Adult Day Services. It is a program that provides care for seniors who would otherwise need constant care from relatives or would be relegated to nursing homes. From a fiscal point of view this is a complete no-brainer: the support that government entities, foundations, and individual contributors give to this program is infinitesimal compared to the amount of money saved by allowing caregivers who would otherwise need to stay home with these folks the opportunity to work, by keeping these seniors out of (often Medicare-funded) nursing homes, and delaying the need for (often expensive) in-home care. If you look at the cost/benefit analysis, this program work and has good "bang for the buck". Yet cities that are strapped for cash are having a hard time finding even the limited funds now used to support the program. The key words here? It isn't a mandated program.  Other things are.

The whole problem with the personal freedom vs. government involvement debate can be illustrated on any public school playground. Left to themselves, people will generally act in their own short-term self interest. They will spend money now rather than wait and perhaps have to spend less later. They will not think about what they might need 5, 10, 20, or even 1 or 2 years out. Government exists, then to "promote the general welfare" by mandating that we take care of each other and of the instituions that will (God willing) take care of us when needed. Government funds alternative energy not because it is cheaper now than fossil fuels (although we're getting there, on both sides of that equation) but because it is in our long-term interest to develop alternative sources of energy. Government mandates energy efficiency (like increasingly efficient light bulbs) because we cannot sustain our current rate of energy consumption over the long term. Government funds programs like senior care, schools, and other service not because it has nothing else to do with the money, it does so because we need those institutions, either now for ourselves, our children, our parents, or our friends, their children and/or parents, or for us when we get to whatever stage in life that requires such services.

On the flip side, my fellow Republicans appear to have absolutely no problem continuing, even expanding, tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations, some of whom have even said that they don't need them! If "no government involvement" is good policy for social services, why isn't it good policy for corporate subsidies and tax breaks? The double standard is stunning.

OK, enough ranting. My hope and prayer (and it seems like more of a prayer than a hope) is that we will elect (and re-elect) those folks who are willing and able to rise above partisanship, to cut spending on or fix programs that are ineffective, to "promote the general welfare" by taking care of the most vulnerable folks around is (and, equally important, help them to help themselves), and "insure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (i.e. future generations)" by tackling and solving major problems before our entire social and governmental fabric collapses--which seems increasingly likely as the days and weeks go on.

What does all of this have to do with God, one might ask. God allows us to make our own choices in this world. God also works through both individuals and institutions to accomplish God's purposes. God is especially concerned with the plight of the poor and powerless and has very little concern for the rich and powerful, except to warn them that their wealth and power are fleeting and are to be used for good and not for selfish ends. To say a policy or law is "Christian" that does not align with that concern for the poor and responsibility of the rich means one is being extremely selective in their Bible reading. No, we don't have unlimited funds or unlimited energy. We do have to make choices. May they be choices that are both in our long-term interest and also reflect God's concern for those without a seat a the table.

Beautiful Music

As we finish out the week of St. Patrick's Day, I thought I'd pass along a particularly great video clip from Celtic Woman, the musical group made famous by their appearance on PBS. Sure, they're a little over-produced, but their voices are angelic and the songs are fabulous. So, enjoy!

Vunerability and Radical Welcome

Another colleague of mine (as one of my seminary professors used to say "I am not original.") recently highlighted the following talk by Dr. Brene Brown discussing the necessity for vulnerability in our lives. Take a look:



This dovetails with the talk about Radical Welcome from The Rev. Stephanie Spellers at our clergy conference a couple of weeks ago. At that conference, she invited us to share with one other person two experiences: an experience of being unwelcome and an experience of being welcome. In the midst of that, I realized that my entire ministry has been about creating and nurturing community--a place where people feel welcome and connected. A place, frankly, where people can be free to be vulnerable and admit their imperfections.

Frankly, and highly ironically, the church often makes this difficult. One would think that a faith tradition that is founded on the paradox of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ would be the most welcoming to imperfect, shameful, vulnerable people. Instead, we've put ourselves out there as perfect people who have it together and just need a little touch-up or polish on Sunday mornings. Our perhaps unintentional message is that you are welcome to come to church if you are certain of what you believe, your life is nearly perfect, and you can navigate your way around a church service pretty easily.

I seriously doubt anyone qualifies to come to church under those restrictions.

Few people are certain of what they believe, and the ones that are most certain are often the most resistant to growing in their faith and understanding. Few people's lives qualify as anything close to perfect, especially in the world we live in today. Few people who have not grown up in the church have any idea what to do and when to do it.

So where does that leave me as a pastor and priest and St. Edward's as a congregation? It means that we need to be intentional about creating a place where anyone, doubter, seeker, or curious visitor, can explore the Christian faith. We need to be explicit that our church is a  place where you don't need to be perfect to walk in the door. We need to be helpful to those people who enter our doors for the first time so that they can be participants and not just spectators in our services. Finally, we need to proclaim far and wide that we're doing this, we're going to repeatedly fail at it, but we're going to keep trying.

Ministry of The Word and Sacrament

One of my colleagues passed this along to me:



Walter Brueggemann is arguably one of the primary movers and shakers in the theological world today. His critique, sparked by a conversation with a rabbi, that we as preachers spend the bulk of our time engaged in everything but preaching or preparing for preaching, and end up devoting a few remaining hours in our week after we've exhausted ourselves with other things, strikes a little too close to home for comfort. My desk is currently strewn not with books, articles, and sermon drafts, but with catalogs, various pieces of mail, budget drafts, and various other items primarily having to do with administration and the day-to-day minutia of running a religious non-profit corporation that happens to be a church. And, yes, I generally do not get to serious sermon preparation until later in the week, occasionally even sitting in front of a computer screen on Saturday evening finishing up what I'm going to say the next morning!

That fact sparks in me a thought about the different names that we're called as ordained ministers: pastors (means "shepherd"), priests (not very much anymore), ministers (though much more ministry is done by the many church members serving in the community), and (in my case) "Father" (which places the priest in the role as "father" of the church "family", which is often less than helpful). I know if few, if any, times in which I've been referred to as "preacher"--and yet that is a key part of what I do each week: speak God's words to God's people. My ordination vows place as one my primary tasks the "ministry of Word and Sacrament", by which is primarily meant preaching and administering the sacraments. Those two tasks do not seem to have the same urgency during the week as the "running the shop" tasks do, nor are preachers generally rewarded or given points for reading and studying. If a church member or board member asks a pastor "What are you up to today?" and receives the answer "Well, doing a lot of reading and some prayer" it sounds almost as if he or she is taking a vacation! That is because most people work at jobs that not only don't require much study (and zero prayer) but often preclude study and prayer. Thus, the often unconscious reaction for most folks is "Wow, I wish that I could get paid to sit around and read and pray!"

The fact is, however, that we our primary calling is feeding the flock of Christ. Jesus' first post-resurrection commission to Peter was "feed my sheep." Putting aside the comparison of church members to sheep, as preachers and pastors we cannot give what we do not have. If we have not studied and prayed, we will give shallow, largely meaningless sermons that do not even come close to satisfying the spiritual hunger that God places in each one of us. Perhaps we need to take more seriously the rabbinical side of our calling--to be the teacher and the scholar.

One of the things that I hope and plan to do this year is to get a bit more focus on my preaching--both by setting aside more time for preparation and by focusing my continuing education funds and time on honing those skills. Preaching is one of my gifts. Administration is not. However, since others can do administration but not as many can do preaching, it makes sense to hone my strengths rather than attempting to shore up my weak areas.

2010: A Church Odyssey

As the first decade of the new millennium comes to a close, there will be innumerable "top 10" lists, retrospectives, and even a few forecasts for the future. For myself, 2010 saw me complete my first year as Priest-in-Charge of St. Edward's, move into the Rectory (cutting my commute from 40 minutes to 40 seconds, as I like to say), and launch our new two-service Sunday morning schedule. It also saw us make some significant beginnings in addressing long-deferred maintenance on both our buildings and our programs. Sadly, the year ended with a decision to close the preschool we've been sponsoring for more than seven years. In many ways if feels a lot like the Rectory looked in early August halfway through the renovation--lots of potential, but lots of mess and a lot of work to do!

I think that is perhaps my chief reflection on my own ministry this year--a sense of digging into everything, clearing away accumulated stuff, and really getting a sense of the challenges ahead for me and for this church. These challenges are by no means unique to St. Edward's! We recently completed an Advent series where we invited my colleague and former Interim Rector here at St. Edward's, the Reverend John Buenz, to talk to us about "What's happening in our world?" and to suggest some trends worth watching. While there are many, the bottom line is that the era of the Christendom-based institutional church that simply opens its doors and welcomes the hordes of people clamoring to enter is finally dead after decades of decline. Few people not already in church are waking up on Sunday morning with the idea "Hey, I really need to find a great church to attend this morning!" The beauty of our buildings and our liturgy is lost on those who would never think of walking in the door.

As I've been reflecting upon this, and upon the spiritual hunger that still permeates our culture, I've come to one conclusion that seems pretty obvious: It's all about Jesus. What I mean by that is that it is not all about the church for the church's sake, but the church for Christ's sake. The purpose of the church, if one cuts through all of the flowery and perhaps overly theological language, is to introduce people to a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, to facilitate the growth of that relationship by linking them with fellow spiritual pilgrims, and to equip them to express that relationship in the world in word and deed. Period.

That purpose is why I do what I do as Priest-in-Charge. That's why we gather on Sunday morning. That's why I just spent a couple of hours choosing hymns for our 8:30 a.m. service for the next two months. That's why we keep the lights on, the rooms heated, and the roof fixed. That's why we invest money in both buildings and programs. That's why we close down programs--not to save money per se, but because we believe that God is calling us in a new direction best served in a different way. It isn't all about the church, it's all about Jesus. In 2011, St. Edward's will no doubt focus on the question: "What can we do, as St. Edward's Episcopal Church in San Jose, California, to better introduce people to Jesus, disciple them to maturity in their faith, and send them out as witnesses to the world?" In working out the answer to this question, I have the able assistance of our new Priest Associate for Evangelism, the Reverend Julie Nelson. I look forward to that process of discovery!

As the church considers how to make real its own mission, I will also be thinking about what can I do as Priest-in-Charge to both model that and help it happen. Certainly one aspect of that will be to revive my own journey of discovery of Jesus, discipleship, and service in Christ's name. The institutional church often imposes a heavy administrative burden that can distract clergy from tending their spiritual life, and I have found that to be true for me in 2010. So, as St. Edward's discovers its spiritual heart, I will be re-discovering mine as well.  Stay tuned....

Church: Closed Castle or Open Community?

In this twenty-first century, post-Christian, post-modern world, the church is having to re-assess how it relates to the world around it. Phyllis Tickle wrote a book about this, entitled The Great Emergence, in which she advanced the idea that the church and the world go through these massive paradigm shifts every 500 years--in the time of Jesus at the turn of millennium, at 500 C.E with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, in 1000 C.E. with (among other things) the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity, in 1500 C.E. with the Protestant Reformation, and now in the post 2000 C.E. time with post-Modernism and the information age.

One interesting commentary on how we interact with the world is a recent article which asks the church to "stop policing the borders of Christianity." The author's point is that Christianity is more interested in maintaining purity than in growing community. This is the old "be in the world but not of the world" conundrum--how does one prevent becoming indistinguishable from the world while still following Jesus, who "took the form of a servant," literally incarnating God on earth? This is a significant challenge, as the prevailing attitude about Christians is that we're "not of this world" in all of the wrong ways--that we're more judgmental, rigid, and unloving than the world around us! Yet as the world becomes yet more polarized, we have a prime opportunity to express what Christianity is, not just what it is not. This risk-taking, get-your-hands-dirty, earthy Christianity is precisely what Jesus modeled for us. He ate with people with whom he shouldn't have been sharing a table, touched people who were unclean, and generally eschewed purity in favor of one-on-one interactive love for all people.

This does not mean that Jesus wasn't interested in how people lived their lives. He repeatedly points out sin when he encounters it, but he doesn't do so by shouting down from the ramparts of the holier-than-thou castle, he does so as he interacts with real people, with real problems, in real situations. In fact, Jesus has some rather harsh things to say about the religious authorities of the day who require high standards of purity from others and who, while ritually pure, have some serious problems with the "love your neighbor as yourself" commandment.

As we enter the twenty-first century, one of the biggest trends in the church is moving from a buildings-based, "mighty fortress" mentality of us against the world to a risk-taking, get dirty, work among folks, community-building mentality. It may not be as visually impressive, and it is certainly a lot more risky, but it is perhaps a truer version of the Gospel then all of the stained glass we have. The challenge is to turn these buildings from sanctuaries from the world for Christians into sanctuaries from the wold for everyone.

The Heart of the Church

Ever since the fire at the VTS Chapel a week ago, I've been thinking about the nature of this thing we call the church. Fr. Tim Schenck points out in his blog, the chapel was and is the heart of the seminary, so the heart of both the seminary and the people that have found a home there, is wounded. Adding to that thinking process has been the recent dust-up at Executive Council regarding the remarks of the Presiding Bishop regarding the need to change the way the church is governed. We are also in the very beginning stages of putting some flesh on the bones (perhaps appropriate for Halloween!) of the vision and mission that we have discerned for St. Edward's. Now, the question becomes: What do we actually want to do? What is the heart of who we are as a church and how do we communicate that?

Whether one is planting a church or re-planting one, as we are, there is the perennial question: What kind of church do we want to be and how do we live that out in what we do? I've blogged about those issues with respect to St. Edward's, but I'm also doing some personal reflection as well. I'm a 42 year old man, raised in both the church and in Silicon Valley, married for almost two decades, and with two children. In many ways, I'm exactly the kind of person that the church--any church--most wants to attract and keep. Somewhat ironically, my own position as Priest-in-Charge at St. Edward's is at least partially dependent on attracting and keeping people like me. The question then becomes, what do I want in a church and what would cause me to come, join, and stay at one?

Others are thinking of this as well. George Bullard wrote a recent article about the "back door" of churches, or why newcomers that are warmly welcomed at the front door, slip out the "back door" and leave the church within a year. He writes about the need for people to "make attendance a habit," by which he means attend between 39 and 42 Sundays a year (in this modern, mobile culture). He also suggests that people need to be given the opportunity to get connected with a small group or Sunday School class, to develop deep relationships (some of which hopefully have predated their arrival at church), and to "get to work"--becoming actively involved with a ministry of the church.

After reading that article and reflecting on my own situation, it strikes me that the biggest challenge I have with being a Christian is one that I'm sure I share with others my age--the fact that I have both very limited time and the fact that the pace of the world is frantic enough that it often seems to preclude opportunities for deep prayer, introspection, and relationship-building. I haven't personally been in a small prayer and sharing group for more than eight years, and while I pray and study the Bible as a professional, it is also true that I sometimes come to the end of the day without having had a personal time of prayer and study. Obviously, involvement in a ministry of the church is not a problem!

What it boils down to for me, and, I suspect, for my contemporaries, is that the church needs to both offer the opportunities for relationship-building (with God and with others), be very clear and obvious that it is doing precisely and intentionally that, and convince people like me that it is worth my time to set some aside in order to take advantage of those opportunities. We are not a service club, a college, or a restaurant. We don't simply offer volunteer opportunities for their own sake, teaching for its own sake, or serve food (unless you count either bread and wine or the occasional potluck!). What we do offer, at our best, is a relationship with God and others that is potentially transformational. Hopefully we can communicate that!

The Loss of the VTS Chapel

Today at 3:55 p.m EST (12:55 p.m. my time) the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary, my alma mater, burned to the ground. While it is true that it appears as merely bricks and mortar, the chapel  has been a special place ever since it was built 129 years go.  All of the usual things are thought and said--"it was only a building," they will rebuild," and "thank God no one was hurt." All are true. However, they do not lessen the sadness I feel on this night. Unlike some others, I was neither married nor ordained in that chapel. Yet I spent three years praying there each day in the fourth pew back on the right-hand side, looking at all of the memorial plaques from those who had gone before, listening to the organ, and allowing the decades of history to seep into my soul. The chapel is literally a shell of its formal self now, and I grieve its loss.

Visionary Leadership vs. Cult of Personality (updated)

UPDATE: I just ran across the following video presentation on Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. It has a lot to say about the cult of personality verses a culture of vision:



One of the things I struggle with in my own ministry is how proactive to be in my leadership. I've seen (mostly evangelical) churches where the pastor (or, sometimes, the pastor and his wife) are front and center in advertisements and promotional materials, and it is very clear that this is "Pastor X's Church." Among the many difficulties with that is that when the pastor moves on or, God forbid, has some moral failing, that loss has an incredibly huge impact on the congregation, much more so than it might if the pastor were just another staff member. How do you have Pastor X's Church without Pastor X? On the other side, it is quite clear that the pastor of any church has enormous impact in all areas of church life--spiritual, financial, programming, etc... Leadership does matter, and as much as we talk about delegating authority and broadening our leadership base, someone has to be the point person and say "We're going THERE!" Committees don't do that nearly as well as a single individual.

The other issue with a single leader versus a shared leadership model is the cognitive dissonance that people go through. On the one hand, people crave clarity and stability and so are often happy to follow a leader who is self-assured and at least appears to have a good grasp on things. On the other hand, there is a deep distrust in our country of people with any sort of power. We can see it at work in our national politics, with the warnings of people "taking over" or "ramming things through." We seem to be intellectually more comfortable with distributed power and shared leadership, but our hearts know what our brains often forget--there is no substitute for a clear vision and direction and a visionary leader to cast that vision and support it.

As we enter October, the church moves from the rush of the beginning of the program year to thinking about what is variously called stewardship season, the Fall Pledge Drive, or any number of other names. It is a time when we quite literally ask people to buy into a vision, to support it with both their money and their time. The more specific and compelling that vision is, presumably the easier it is to achieve such buy-in. Yet this is not my church, it is God's church and the congregation can do far more collectively than I can do individually. So we are back to the conundrum--do we make the pastor the focus in the interest of having a more focused vision or do we have a more distributed leadership in the interest of sharing power and inviting more participation? Like anything else, it is a delicate dance...

Keeping Balance in the Midst of Transitions

As many are aware, I'm in the midst of a family transition at the same time as my parish is in the midst of a programmatic one. Early this month, we moved in to church-owned housing from our temporary housing where we had been since October. On the positive side, my commute is substantially shorter, and we're all settling in to the neighborhood well. On the negative side, it still has that "this isn't our house" vibe, mostly because it is so new and we haven't moved all of our things in yet, much less put up pictures and done other things to personalize it. Ironically, it seems more temporary than our temporary housing seemed! I know that will pass, but it is nonetheless disquieting.

At the same time, St. Edward's has embarked on a new journey--a two-service schedule. At 8:30 a.m. we have a traditional Rite I (Elizabethian English) communion service with hymns. At 10 a.m. we have a Rite II (modern English) service with contemporary music. We have had great success with both so far, with a combined attendance last Sunday of 63 people! At the same time, there are always issues when something new comes about, not the least of which is that I'm needing to get back some balance in my own life as both my family and I settle in to our new house and the parish settles in to our new schedule.

Hence the reason I'm blogging on what used to be my day off--I've decided to take Mondays as an "Administration and Study Day" and make Fridays my day of the week off. Hopefully, that will mean more time and energy for my family as I close the door of the office on Thursday evening and don't re-open it until Sunday morning. With my office and home so much closer, maintaining boundaries becomes both much more difficult and much more important as well.

So, after this brief foray into personal blogging, my plan is to do some prayer and study for a while and see where God takes me!

Run-up to Fall: On the Lookout for God

I've checked this blog often (it serves as the "menu" for blogs I'm following) but haven't really felt moved to commit any thoughts to a post, and now summer is almost over and nothing has been written here since the beginning of summer! Perhaps that is appropriate, as summer is generally regarded as the season in which we step back from our hectic pace, take time to relax, and step away from the busyness of life.

That is decidedly not the description of my summer! Summer here at St. Edward's has been spent in a flurry of reorganizations, upgrades, and various events large and small. Our preschool is in the process of undergoing a re-start as "Roots and Wings Christian Preschool," the Rectory is in the final week or so of a complete renovation, the trees around the property have been cut back, and I am laboring in these final weeks of summer to finalize the selection of a worship leader in preparation for the launch of our new service schedule on September 5! All of this, while other more mundane things continue to happen--40 to 50 people show up and worship together on Sunday mornings, tithes and offerings come in, bills are received and paid, and the normal everyday business of church is accomplished.

It is in that context that I find myself keeping an eye out for God's presence. I'm finishing up Sara Miles' first book entitled Take This Bread, in which she recounts her experience of coming to faith in Christ through being offered a piece of bread at the communion table at St. Gregory of Nissa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, California--just up the highway from here. Though she takes a decidedly non-traditional route to faith, she makes some good points about looking for God in the mundane, the everyday, and especially in mundane, everyday, flawed human beings. So, I'm keeping a lookout....!

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.

Ministry Navigation in Uncharted Waters

As we continue in the beginning year of this second decade of the new millennium, it is becoming increasingly evident that we are beginning to embark on a journey into uncharted waters. Whether politically, socially, or even religiously, we are seeing institutions, the rationale behind such institutions, and the ability to fund them adequately, rapidly eroding in the face of a substantially more diverse and less duty-bound population. This is no less true in the church--we are rapidly losing the generations that felt it was their duty to attend church on Sunday mornings and those few newcomers that show up on Sunday mornings justifiably need a compelling reason to even stay through the service, much less come back again the next week!

As an Episcopal priest, I am by definition a representative of an institution. While I do not begrudge that fact, and appreciate the support and accountability that goes with it, it is sometimes like captaining a battleship an an era of fast patrol boats--as impressive as the hardware is, one increasingly wonders how useful and practical such institutional accouterments are. The church feels like it is increasingly in need of fast scout ships to chart out the road ahead, not massive battleships to withstand the secular onslaught.  We are launching out into uncharted waters with few, if any, markers to help us find our way.

It is clear that in the twenty-first century, churches will need to intentionally be places of formation, community, and service and they will need to be clear about what sort of Christian formation they are doing, why that is important, why it is important that it be done in community, and why service is both the thing that we attend and the work that we do afterward. This will be a tremendous challenge to both the church and to those of us who were trained under the old institutional paradigm. It will be an exciting journey, but not a comfortable one.

Scapegoats and Identified Patients

Diana Butler Bass just passed along the video clip below. While somewhat dated, it has immediate application to contemporary political and religious discourse, or the lack thereof:



In my own life, I've attempted to maintain what I call a centrist stance on many controversial topics, politically, ecclesiologically, and theologically. However, just like when one straddles the median on a highway, one can expect to get hit from both directions! The video on extremism really puts out there the idea that simply identifying a person or group as "the problem" is both a vast oversimplification and also lets us off the hook. We're all the problem, and we're all the solution. I am reminded that Jesus reportedly said "take the log out of your own eye and you will see better how to remove the speck from your brother's eye." We seem to have more than our fair share of "speck spotters" and very few "log removers."

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)

Institutional Death and Resurrection

As we enter another Holy Week, I find myself pondering issues of death and resurrection--not individual death and resurrection, but congregational and denominational death and resurrection. It seems to me that there are many signs that congregations and denominations that flourished in the twentieth century are finding it difficult to continue to survive, much less thrive, in the post-Christendom, post-modern, and post-Great Recession times of the early part of this century. Author and blogger George Bullard has some thoughts on exactly this:

The Columbia Partnership: The Coming Death of National Denominations

Among many other observations, he notes that:

...many national denominations believe that restructuring themselves or re-tasking national agencies is the same thing as renewing the spiritual, strategic direction of the national denomination. No consistent evidence exists that restructuring national denominations alone leads to the renewal of these denominations. Restructuring actually is a step in preparing for another restructuring within five to ten years. Restructuring fits in the same category as rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

Being raised in Silicon Valley and graduating from high school in the mid-1980s, I have some personal experience with the difference between large institutions who fail to innovate quickly and small, nimble companies who can adjust to changing demands and conditions quickly. For more than a decade, I've said that many aspects of mainline denominations resemble a battleship--slow, difficult to steer, but incredibly tough and resilient. There was a reason for the "battleship church"--it was seen as a source of stability, power, and consistency in a world that was anything but stable. Words like "sanctuary" and hymns like "A Mighty Fortress is our God" spoke of the church as an unchanging rock against the tidal waves of change sweeping the culture of the late twentieth century. That sense of the church a a guardian remains one of the main touchstones of many people's faith.

Yet we are now in the era where institutions must be more like powerboats or patrol boats than battleships. The Navy doesn't make or use battleships anymore. In the same way, we in the church must find ways of rediscovering that "nimble church" that is alive, vibrant, and perhaps a bit more vulnerable than the previous "edifice church." That is easier said than done, of course. Planting new churches, re-planting declining or plateaued churches, and not simply rearranging things but revitalizing the things we do is an incredible challenge. Yet the message of Holy Week and Easter is that sometimes things need to die before then can be reborn. The message of the cross is that to get to resurrection we must place our sins at the foot of the cross and die to an old life. How does that function on a congregational level? What things do we need to crucify in our congregations (without getting crucified ourselves, of course!) in order to make room for new life? Something to think about.