Tag Archives: change

I am so over your sensitive ego

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You know I’m not a dick, right? I have listened to your concerns. We have talked things over. I’ve even come up with ways to accommodate you.

I’ve done my part.

And having had your concerns heard, talking things over, and been accommodated, you have one small part to play.

To quit whining.

I don’t think this is too much to ask. I’m not being unreasonable. This is the art of compromise and I feel as if I have. The question is have you? Because I certainly can’t tell.

This isn’t a personal attack, though I’m certain you will take this personally. Nor am I trying to make you feel bad. In any way. Though I am certain you will.

It’s just…you react to everything.

I talk about the need to update our fellowship space and you flip out. Or we consider your recommendation, but choose not to go along with it and you cause a scene. And really, if you are reading this, you might even think this blog is about you.

This is to say that I’m done with this. You haven’t earned my attention, I’ve given it to you. And you, for your part, have chosen to abuse my time, my focus, and my energy.

My job isn’t to make you feel better about yourself. It isn’t to repair your sensitive ego and low self-esteem. That’s not my job.

Nor is it to dance around your hot-button issues; never daring to speak prophetically or challenge your precious serenity.

Besides, that never works. Especially with you. My dances all end up in brutal battles for control.

I hope you hear this and trust me when I tell you that I love you. That I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t. It is much easier to ignore a problem than deal with it. It is much easier to ignore someone you don’t care for than to confront a loved one. I. Love. You.

But I don’t love your sensitive ego. I think that thing sucks.

The Scandal of Lent

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cross of ashesEvery year I struggle with Lent. I struggle with what we are really called to do. Certain things are different, and yet we don’t really live all that differently. We fast or we take on new things or we mark our worship differently. But something doesn’t ring true about it for me. As I wrote in my article for St. Paul’s seasonal newsletter:

Personally, I have found a certain hollowness to these acts. Not that preparation isn’t important, or that our call to fasting is somehow negotiable. But sort of…Pharisaical.

If you remember the story of the Pharisees criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, for instance, you recall that Jesus criticizes them for not really getting The Law. There’s a subtle nuance to what Jesus was saying. The Pharisees and church leaders cared so much for The Law that they wrote a whole bunch of laws to help people better understand The Law. Somewhere along the line, however, those laws became a barrier to The Law–they became necessary in themselves, without regard to what they were intending to do.

I can’t help but feel that all that discipline and self-regulation, all the self-help and new insights we force on ourselves during this season are worth absolutely nothing if they don’t help us better connect with GOD and what we are called to do in this world.

In yesterday’s liturgy for Ash Wednesday, we hear the call to observe a holy Lent. This year, I heard it anew.

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

It seems to me that we are severely underselling what we mean by penitence and fasting. Eating fried fish on Fridays or giving up chocolate for a few weeks seems lame next to the three aspects of our historic faith practiced by this season:

  1. Preparing for a total conversion from and rejection of the ways of the world.
  2. Reconciling those grievously hurt or perpetrating horrible evil to the community.
  3. Turning the entire congregation’s mind toward forgiveness and mercy–in others and themselves.

My petty little self-help issues are nothing compared to this–what is truly expected of us during this season.

Taking an honest accounting of Lenten discipline leaves us focused on the hard questions. Mortality, life, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, transformation. And these become the focus, not whether or not we can go without putting something in our bodies for a few days.

What actions of transformation, reconciliation, and mercy are your next steps for Lent?

As this season of self-discovery continues, I’ll hopefully be able to flesh out these ideas in myself. I’d love to hear what bubbles up in you!

 

Saul or Paul?

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a Sermon for the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle
Text: Acts 26:9-21

From Saul to Paul

In the story of the Conversion of Paul, we have perhaps the ultimate Christian example. Paul speaks of his old self, a conversion, and a transformation.

Before he became Paul, he was Saul: a self-proclaimed zealot. He was Jewish and Roman: an unlikely and unusual combination as each is a status usually conferred upon one through birth—as opposed to belief and conversion. This dual status gave him huge advantages in society and in his ministry. It is no doubt for both of these identities that Saul gains significant notoriety in the region as persecutor of Christians.

In that story we heard from Acts, we hear Paul describe this stunning reversal. Saul, the “SuperJew” and persecutor of Christians is blinded, thrown from his horse, and is called by Jesus to become an apostle. In Acts 9, when the conversion itself occurs, we read that he is left blind for three days and is healed through Jesus’s direction of another. But here we learn that Saul is being invited to become an apostle. Not just another follower, or part of the crowd, but an Apostle—counted among Peter, James, and John.

Like Simon, renamed as Peter, Saul’s conversion leads to a name change. He becomes Paul. And he turns his zeal from persecution of the early Christians to evangelism.

It is in that moment of conversion that we might see Paul’s greatest gift.

English: Conversion of St Paul

The conversion

Paul said:

…I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, when at midday along the road…I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions.

He is blinded by an intense light and it is there that he encounters Jesus. The radical theologian, Peter Rollins recently spoke in a public lecture that Paul’s encounter with Jesus is not a moment based on seeing the light, but confronting the darkness caused by blindness. For three days he loses his sight. It is the light itself that prevents him from seeing and it is Jesus’s words that, for the first time, compel him to observe himself.

Rollins says that in this moment, Saul is forced to confront his belief, his own darkness. Paul’s conversion from persecutor of Christians to one expanding the Body of Christ doesn’t come from sticking with his childhood faith, but in confronting what it had made of him.

The example for us in Paul’s conversion then is not flowers and rainbows and a moment of transcendent joy—nor is it a faith built by hard work and weekly synagogue attendance with his family. His conversion comes through confronting what he has done while he is cast into total darkness.

The new thing

Paul’s example is particularly challenging to those of us raised in the church. It exposes the possibility that despite baptism, many of us hold our faith as Saul does, rather than Paul. That our zealous support of our faith is not directed by Jesus but in reaction to what we perceive as threats to our our childhood faith.

Yet Jesus gives even Saul a chance to become Paul. Jesus gives even the most satisfied and zealous among us the chance to examine ourselves and be converted. To relinquish our childish hold on an unexamined life and an ignorant faith. A chance to repent for the evils we have done and chart a new course. To dispense of our anger and hatred of others and embrace the joy that comes from loving others as GOD loves. And perhaps, most importantly, do a new thing based on the skills we have.

For Paul was converted from Jew to Jew who follows Christ. And the new thing he is called to do is to proclaim the Good News to non-Jews. This is totally unheard of and a huge departure for a tradition that was more concerned with maintaining family identity than bringing outsiders into the tradition. I hope this sounds familiar.

Listening for a new thing

For St. Paul’s the conversion reminds us that GOD operates by changing course; by forcing us to examine ourselves; and by giving us new work to do. St. Paul’s is the second incarnation of the Episcopal Church in St. Clair. First born as Trinity Church in 1846, and after a fire in 1873, the congregation continued to meet irregularly and became a mission in 1881. It was reborn as St. Paul’s in 1885. Since then, we have changed many times over. Each time, reflecting the work GOD has given us to do.

As we move once again into our new era, our new life, we are doing so not as St. Saul’s, zealously devoted to preserving the past by persecuting the present, but as St. Paul’s, eager to use our gifts in the new thing GOD is giving us today.

We are making new commitments to lifelong Christian formation, to providing a safe and nurturing environment for children, to new efforts of spiritual discernment and practice, to new avenues for evangelism, and to holistic approaches to mission, worship, and stewardship.

The gift GOD gives Saul is darkness: a moment of self-examination and discernment from which Paul is born. May we recognize our own gift before us.

Every Hill Made Low (Eating Scripture)

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Eating Luke 3:1-6

Back in the recesses of my mind I recall a lyric:

Second verse

same as the first!

A little bit louder

and a little bit worse!

We ended Year B talking apocalyptic and we begin the new year, Year C, by…talking apocalyptic. Personally, I love it. We just aren’t that used to it. Here’s what I said a few weeks ago when the text was the beginning of Mark’s “Little Apocalypse”.

Advent is not just the beginning of the new church year or biding our time to get to Christmas. It is a time to examine what it is that GOD is doing by sending Jesus among us–the very purpose of the incarnation–and that is to transform the world.

Now that’s a feast!

Eating Scripture is a short video series in which we explore the juicy and the crunchy in this week’s gospel in four minutes or fewer.

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When GOD Gives Conflicting Instructions

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On her blog yesterday, the Rev. Susan Russell announced a Celebration of Equality.  It is a really special event in the life of her Pasadena congregation and I’m sure is going to be an awesome sight.  In the midst of this celebration is a “sneak preview” of a new documentary about the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, whom she describes as “the first openly gay bishop in the high church traditions of Christendom”.  The film is called Love Free or Die.  It says on the poster:

LOVE FREE OR DIE is about a man whose defining passions the world cannot reconcile: his love for God and for his partner Mark.  Bishop Gene Robinson will not give up on either.

I for one am eager to watch what is certain to be an engaging documentary with a subject that is so close and relevant to our recent Christian history.  But the film brings up a greater question to me than simply how does Bp. Robinson reconcile what he has been taught with what he feels, which makes for an engaging film, but there is something more fundamental than that.  How do we reconcile being taught things that are in conflict with each other?  In this case, the specific teaching by modern churches of the incompatibility of homosexuality with the conviction of loving anybody generously as demonstrated frequently in the form of loving those we’re taught (often by society, but also often by our church) to despise.

The wholly inadequate response of “love the sinner / hate the sin” shows neither such a clear division of action or any of that supposed “love”.  Similarly, the drive on the part of many to ignore one teaching while supporting the other rings hollow and false to most people, Christian and non-Christian alike.  In my own sandbox of Christianity, the supposed “listening process” that was begun in the late 1990s to determine the mind of the church on homosexuality was a farce.  Not because there weren’t a large number of Episcopalians and other Anglicans wrestling with the theology of homosexuality (as many did), but because this was a political attempt to sweep it under the rug and stop the rising tide of support for equality; and therefore not listen.

My own views on this have evolved over the last decade, and thankfully continue to evolve. But this can only happen if we engage the challenging bits of our faith.  Like not necessarily reconciling two teachings that are at odds with one another.  Perhaps one of our teachings is wrong.  Perhaps one of them is less right than the other.  Perhaps one is for us to worry about and the other is for GOD.  Perhaps we should take a more mature reading of Scripture than we normally take.  Perhaps Scripture shouldn’t be used as a dividing line in any event.  Perhaps it isn’t GOD that screwed up, but us.  Perhaps current teaching is based not in good exegesis but in faulty human tradition.  Perhaps Scripture never actually said what we think it says.

That is where Christ meets the world, after all.  In those spaces of human abuse and rejection of our brothers and sisters is the place where Jesus appears, feeding, clothing, comforting, liberating.  And where we, in our ivory towers of certainty, erected by a self-righteous belief in our own systems of separation find ourselves further and further from those in greatest need of Christ like a Babelish tower reaching toward GOD and departing from the people GOD calls us to serve.  From this spot, we wrestle.  Wrestle with these great questions of our faith.  Or like Jacob, we wrestle with the very figure of our God.

 

On Creating More Hassles

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In today’s blog post, “On creating a hassle,” Seth Godin writes:

To quote Merlin Mann, “You don’t let the guy with the broom control how many elephants are in the parade.”

Harsh to say, but the fact is that great storytellers and artists and ruckus makers manage to insulate themselves from the people they’re going to hassle. And the job of those that are being hassled by the commotion is to be hassled by the commotion. No commotion, no job.

English: The eye of an asian elephant at Eleph...

Image via Wikipedia

Perfect words for the church to hear.  Particularly its leadership.  I’ll add to it only this.

We are far too eager to be the one with the broom and far too eager to complain about the numbers of elephants.  If more of us put our efforts into making a better parade, the voice of the pooper scooper wouldn’t seem so loud.  Besides, how many people complaining about the number of elephants do we really need?

The New Authority: Trust

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Deutsch: Polizeihauptmeister MZ (mit Zulage) a...

Phyllis Tickle, in The Great Emergence, outlines our past, describes our present, and previews our immediate, swirling future into what she calls the Great Emergence.  The book is now over three years old, but as astute as ever.  In it, she tackles the question of authority as I raised in a previous post about the Anglican Communion.  I wrote that the source of our biggest conflicts are around the nature of authority and that, as Tickle suggests, we battle every 500 years or so over the who/where/what/why/how of authority.  Specifically, how do we resolve issues in which  there is no discernible structure or force that has jurisdictional punishment over bad actors?  Or, how do we deal with conflict without either a person or a system that has authority to punish?  My response is simple: our punishment simply matches our source of authority.  We just have trouble seeing it yet.

The specifics of conflict are actually pretty common: the kid that gets away with bullying because he does it online or because she isn’t physically seen by a teacher; the youth that gets away with stealing from his neighbors because his Dad is a police officer; all the way up to the president who simply ignores the law on torture or war powers.  Each is a case of someone who gets away with a crime because there is seemingly no mechanism for curtailing the behavior.

Well, Tickle outlines the last two battles each yielding a new sense of authority that made sense for the age.  With the Great Schism in the 11th Century, the answer of who has authority was to put it in the hands (or the seat) of a single person: the pope.  Therefore one person can be the final judge on all things Christian.  Which was great, until there were more than one person claiming to be the pope.  And the pope didn’t seem to have all of the answers.  Or he had the answers, they were just inconsistent.  So in the 16th Century, through the Great Reformation, authority shifted from a human to a book.  Sola Scriptura! they shouted!  And suddenly all authority rested in an inanimate object.  All of the answers could be found there…until they couldn’t.  Until there were too many ways of reading a “plain reading” of the text.  The great revolution that put the Bible in the hands of individuals, led to the downfall of Scriptural authority, because individuals came to different conclusions without the structure of the church.  The Great Reformation worked almost too well!

How Tickle describes the current age, the beginning of the Great Emergence, is to argue that authority will be found not in a person or in a book, but in the network.  That the collection of people, not as a structure, but as a loosely affiliated network, would come to agreement more organically.  I loved the idea when I read it three years ago, but I haven’t been able to quite see it until now.

The problem is that we are dependent on those other means of authority, institutional structures, individual decision-makers, irrefutable texts, and we lazily understand our own part as imbibing what the smart people say and following along.  But the new sense of authority rests in how we come together and upon that which we can agree.  This is to say, not in ignorant cultural beliefs necessarily, but in active attempts to wrestle with questions and problems.

What this means for my specific question is that these individuals get away with criminal behavior because we collectively allow them to.  We don’t stand up to it, either as individuals or as a group.  We allow others to deal with it (or not).  This isn’t a call for vigilantism, far from it, but collective action. It is us who ignore the bully, relying on teachers and principals to act, rather than step in as a class.  It is us who allow a youth to be protected by his place in society.  It is us who allow a president to carry out heinous acts in our name or perhaps more disgustingly, in the name of freedom.  Our action opportunities are plentiful.

Emergence

Image by hybrid756 via Flickr

It comes down to trust.  Our current behavior demonstrates that we don’t trust the system, we simply rely on it and expect it to function.  Then when it doesn’t, we condemn it.  Sometimes we even argue that the system can’t do it.  And even then we still don’t hold the community responsible for cleaning up the mess.

Perhaps this is why there is so much confusion about the Occupy movement, as it is not about political expediency but method and consensus-building.  The way it functions isn’t just a political tactic, but a vision of new community.  Community without a singular figure-head and decision-maker.  No Scripture to hold up as an idol.  No specific confession to demand adherence to.  No institutional hierarchy that demands allegiance.  It is people standing up and taking care of each other.

And that is also a vision of trust.

Mike Friesen: The Science of Forgiveness

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In a quick read, Mike Friesen describes the scientific underpinnings of why some are so easy to forgive and why others are so challenged by it.

I remember a Sunday School teacher threatening my class with a verse when I was a little boy, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” I remember him teaching that if you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven and you will be eternally separated from God. Forgiveness is at the heart of Christianity. It is at the heart of all soul work and social justice (because it is the product of the social injustice). I frankly get scared by some of the Christian teachers who teach you to will yourself to forgiveness. You just need to manage/control/forget what you feel, what you think. And, while this may be true of your mother eating one of your Sweedish Fish, it’s not true of someone who has say been abused or raped.

Keep reading here.

Changing the Church is Like Changing Diapers

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For many, the idea of change in the church is like being asked to change diapers. It is…unpleasant. They are messy, stinky, and unpredictable. Sometimes the odor is unbearable. And sometimes the entire exercise gets you covered in it. Not to mention the times in which the baby pees directly on you!

Even those that have never changed a diaper know the problems and rightfully fear it. It is not only messy, but the diapers themselves are a challenge to operate for the first time. Do you have to put cream on the baby’s bum, too? Did I do it the same way you did? For many of us, the first time changing a diaper was a time of true fear.

That and it took, like 10 minutes.

Changing diapers is inevitable, however. No matter what you want to do about it. As a parent or a babysitter, you’ll not only have to change a diaper, you are going to have to change a lot of diapers. Many times a day, every day. Over and over again. For just one kid. Have a second kid? Way more diapers. Continue reading →

6 Keys to Engaging Seniors in Church

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The lighthouse located in Alpena Michigan

Image via Wikipedia

Growing up, my favorite people in church fell into the “senior” category.  They were the most engaged in my life and were so happy to see me.  I wasn’t a nuisance, even when I was incredibly embarrassing to my parents.  I was so profoundly loved by the seniors at Trinity Episcopal in Alpena, Michigan.

This category, for our purposes may be considered retirement age (whatever that is today).  AARP sends you stuff at 55.  Sam Portaro in his talk, started it at 60.  Like everything else, you know it when you see it.  I also hear that you know it when you feel it, but that is something else.

With the rising average age of Christians in the United States, it is pretty easy to consider that the average member of a church on any given Sunday is actually a senior.  For many, this is wonderfully homogenous.  We might hear:

This is so much easier when we’re all the same!  We all have the same needs and expectations!

For others, this is absolutely terrifying.  We might also hear:

Oh crap!  Everybody looks like me!  How can we have a future when I don’t have a long one!

Excuse my caricatures, but you get my meaning.  There is both comfort and discomfort with having the most numerous group in church being older.  There are also real assets.

Calmness

Portaro highlights the primary benefit of aging is a sense of calmness.  Seniors have seen everything already.  They have survived turmoil and thrived in boom times.  Their entire lifetimes serve as a history book that informs their next steps.

Continued Service to Others

Perhaps its wisdom or experience, but many seniors have developed a strong sense of service through that individual (and shared) history.  And, in retirement, new-found time and opportunity to express that service.

Portaro also considered adding an additional grouping.  His original model was 60-80 was named (less falteringly) “old age” and 80+ was “advanced old age”.  But for our purposes, as he did for his talk, it seems appropriate to consider all of our seniors together.

6 keys to engaging seniors in church:

  1. Seniors are still learning.  Perhaps  it is wisdom and calmness, but many seniors take real pride in “not being done yet”.  One of my favorite people in this group really only engaged his faith in any demonstrable way in retirement. Many discover along the way that the only true way to learn is through teaching.
  2. Encourage teaching.  Just like Mid-Lifers, Seniors need to be mentors, teachers, and guides.  But seniors have the added advantage of no longer being so “in it”.  There is less risk and much greater reward in sharing those life lessons, particularly to generations that have grown up away from grandparents.
  3. Be surrogate grandparents.  One of the generational differences we are living into is the Silent Generation (approx. those between 65-80 today), along with the WWII generation were the first generations of Americans to not live in the same place as their kids.  Boomers left when they could or Silents and WWII parents retired in sunny Arizona or Florida, far from their kids.  Gen Xers and Millenials have, as a generation, grown up without grandparents nearby.  This means we have a whole bunch of children, youth, and young adults that need grandparents to spoil them on Sunday mornings and invite them over for brunch after church.
  4. (Don’t) Take advantage of the free time.  Let’s face it, seniors are the only ones with the free time.  At least as a whole.  Yes, I’ve heard many seniors tell me that they were busier in retirement than they were the entire decade before.  I buy that.  But a big part of that busyness is church stuff.  Here’s the cutting edge.  Because seniors are the only ones with any real free time, they are called upon to do the brunt of the work.  But they also feel as if they are always doing all of the work.  We need to find a solution, which I will tackle in a near future post.
  5. Help seniors share the church’s future.  One of the challenges of having a majority senior population is dealing with catering to the needs of those that are in the pews and those that we wish were there.  We often don’t think we can do both.  It is incredibly important that we move immediately toward a model of shared responsibility.  The wisdom of seniors is an asset, only when it is not the dominant voice.  Each generation needs to have a seat at the table, and seniors are in the best position to send out those invitations.
  6. Challenge seniors to keep it up.  Perhaps this one actually scares us the most, but we need seniors to find value in numbers one through five.  We all know those, who upon retirement, actually quit everything.  They stop supporting the millage so that schools have running buses, stop leading formation programs because they’ve “done that” and “had their turn”, and sometimes stop showing up to anything at church at all!  It is far too easy for all of us to lean on the wisdom of age as a replacement for honest Christian discipleship.  Seniors need to be pushed to keep moving and growing.

This is the final age-group post in my “Engaging” series, but I have another one planned to summarize with an eye to the future and another tackling the issue of “enough time”.

When those are written I will come back and add links in this post.  For links to the other posts in this series, find them in the post: “Engaging Everyone In Church“.

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