Tribal Church

On one of the three television screens in the elevator that I used to get from floor two to floor one (all the stairs are marked “Emergency Only”), I saw the story about the cat that can predict death.

When I looked up the story in the NE Journal of Medicine, I realized it’s a bit more than that. Oscar, the cat, is attending to people in their final hour. He’s the ultimate, purring, unanxious presence, that can hop right in the bed with the person.

I’m visiting with a couple of friends in Nashville. One, CJ Sentell, just returned from hiking in Nepal and now he’s continuing the second year of his PhD program at Vanderbilt.

His mom, Beth, is a wonderful seminary friend, who decided to jump on a plane from Shreveport so she could visit us all at the same time.

Beth has been serving small churches in North Louisiana for almost ten years. For a while there, not long after she began her pastorate, she said she felt like the Angel of Death. People were passing, one after another, and she began to know when they were going to die.

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t know…it’s just the angle that their head is on the pillow…I don’t know. I can just tell.”

Death seems to come in waves in congregations. I went through the same thing in my church in Rhode Island. Sitting with people day after day, I could start to tell when death was imminent.

I visited the Steere House a lot, where Oscar the cat lives. One of my favorite church members lived there. Georgia was a fabulous artist who had about a dozen children, and was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Actually, she wasn’t suffering at all. She was having a great time with it. People around her may have been suffering, but she didn’t notice that either. The first time I visited her, she had eight unfinished watercolor paintings scattered about her bed. She looked at them and told me wonderful stories about being an artist and living in New York City.

Every few minutes, she looked up and said, “Now, who are you?” When I explained, she would scribble the details down in a small spiral notebook. “Okay, you’re the pastor.” Then she would look at me with surprise, “I’ve never met a lady minister before. And you’re so young.”

“Yes. I am. You know, they just make pastors in all sorts shapes and sizes these days,” I’d reply, and she’d laugh and laugh. Then she would tell me how she was an artist who lived in New York City. We would spend all afternoon on this verbal treadmill, talking and talking, but never quite getting anywhere. I hated leaving.

Georgia had to move out of the Steere House. I never got the details straight as to why. But after visiting so much, I’m glad Oscar’s there.

I wonder if the cat can smell death. Or maybe all animals are like those vultures circling in the sky. Maybe most of them know when someone’s about to die, and it’s just this animal instinct that clergy learn when they’ve been at bedsides so often.

Whatever it is, I’m glad the patients have a warm body, purring next to them, showing them the way.

the photo of Oscar came from the NEJM site

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My husband’s at an annual conference/business meeting. He’s PC(USA), but he serves an ecumenical church in the International Council of Community Churches (the I triple C). He loves this gathering, and I can’t blame him. These people walk around, hugging each other like it’s a big family reunion. The ICCC’s so cool.

I’m sneaking around with my daughter, enjoying the free hotel, and pretending like I’m not a pastor.

There are two really annoying things about the hotel:

(1) There are THREE televisions in each elevator. One has airport departure times, one has CNN, and one has an old movie. Two of them have the volume turned on. But here’s the strangest thing about it: There are only four floors in the hotel.

So, I advocated for a DVD player on a long trip with children…but I had no idea America’s addiction had gotten so bad.

(2) There’s a little girl beauty pageant here. One of the Conference rooms is bursting with a giant, pink castle/stage. Of course, I’ve read about the JonBenet Ramsey murder and I saw the Little Miss Sunshine movie, so I knew these things existed, but it’s nothing less than surreal to see these little girls in the flesh.

My daughter wanted to sign up.

I said, “Oh…oh no. No, no, no, no, no.”

“Daddy said I could.”

“Oh no, he didn’t. Nope.” (He didn’t.) I couldn’t help but ask, “Don’t you think it’s strange…a little bit…seeing those little girls with wigs and makeup?”

“I think they’re beautiful.”

“They are beautiful. I’m not talking about the girls. I’m talking about the wigs and makeup.”

“Well,” she thought about it for a moment. “It was kind of weird seeing that girl with two sets of teeth.”

“Huh?”

She explained that one little girl had her two front teeth missing, and so her parents bought her dentures for the pageant. She surprised C by taking out her “teeth” in the elevator.

I groaned.

C has her two front teeth missing. And, I’m telling you, there is nothing in the whole wide world that is more wonderful than seeing that toothless grin. Nothing.

This country has gotten really strange.

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We are, as I suggested in my last post, mooching off friends. One of our closest friends, all the way back from junior high, married a wonderful person and moved to Black Mountain, NC. Many Presbyterians know this territory well, because it’s the home of Montreat.

On this second day of my big vacation, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. A drive from DC to NC will do that to you, from the Shenandoah to the Blue Ridge, the serene views calm the stress of driving.

These mountains are not like the ones in the west (where I’m going to later this month). They’re not made up of that naked, stark grandeur that juts out of the ground and takes your breath away. Rather, they’re fertile and rolling. Each time we would round the corner, there was another vision of a hazy valley, inviting us a little farther down the road.

It was wonderful to arrive at the home of our long-time friends. The really amazing thing about knowing people for so long is that you really get the sense of how much has changed. Being in your thirties is an amazing time. We’ve shed most of the bad habits of our past. We’re in good jobs, or we’ve left them to take care of kids. Everything has changed now that we’ve become parents. Rumi said that when a child is born, a mother is also born. She will never be the same person again.

It’s true for the moms and the dads. We’re all attachment parenting, holding our children constantly, taking them everywhere, and breastfeeding the infants on cue (which seems unfathomable for so many people, unless, of course, you’re part of the cult). Our lives are all intertwined with these wonderful children.

I can’t help but notice that I’ve changed. And I have the pastorate to thank for the evolution. I grew up as a third child, forever the “baby of the family.” My siblings were seven and nine years older than me, which meant that I never won a game, a race, or an argument for the first seventeen years of my life. I had a lot to say, but it was all sort of bottled up inside of me, and I rarely had enough confidence to actually verbalize much.

But forming sermons helped me. I began to pray a little differently, listening and discerning more. I began sorting out my own opinions and feelings about things, first relying heavily on theologians and philosophers, and figuring out which ones made the most sense. I quoted a lot, and my sermons were like lessons on what so-and-so thought about the passage a hundred years ago.

Then I began to hear my own voice within the ancient discussion. I began to think about what God might have to say to us today, and realizing that God was using me to say it. It was shaky and weak at first, but now it’s growing clearer and stronger.

The church gave me this gift, in the form of fifteen uninterrupted minutes of speech (so rare in our society) each week. The church granted me the time and space to grow into a big job. The church allowed me to stand in the pulpit, at the table, and at the font, even though I was a young woman (something that I couldn’t do in the tradition in which I grew up).

As I drive through those rolling hills, and I spend time with my grown-up friends, I cannot help but have an overflowing gratitude for what we have become, and for all that the church has given to me.

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…or maybe it’s just in a Honda Civic.

I am lurching toward a Sabbath. I can tell, because there’s one tiny sparkle of energy that’s competing with the rest of my body, which wants to smother the life of that pathetic flame.

A committee member left me a lovely email last night saying that she expected me to do a bunch of work while I was on vacation. It’s assumed that I will be answering my email. But I won’t. I’m going to have one of those auto-response messages. I love those things.

Everything in me needs a rest, rest, rest.

Whenever a member of the congregation meets with the HOS and me about going into ministry, the HOS always says (very first thing), “You get four weeks of vacation and two weeks of study leave.”

I add, “And a book allowance.”

It may not be THE reason to go to seminary, but it is really nice. I’m taking it in one big chunk, for the first time. I never did that when I was a solo. Partly, because I (secretly) had that fear that it would all fall apart if I left that long (shame on me!).

So, while your waking up from your Harry Potter hangovers, I’ll be taking it on the road in the Merritt mobile. Here are four vacation suggestions:

Mooch off of friends as much as possible. I mean, who can afford four weeks in a hotel? Plus, let’s face it. Most church leaders spent their lives making friends in church, right? Now that the church is also the job, we don’t have that important source of social interaction. We have other ways of making friends, but many of us have to move often, and we’re always starting over.

So, I say mooch off your college and seminary buddies, until they’re ready to kick your sorry rear out the door. Stay more than three days, become bad fish. Most importantly, enjoy being able to talk and laugh with the people who think it’s outrageous that anyone would call you “Reverend.”

Stay away from the parishioner’s second home. It sounds great, right? A free place, on the lake, for a week? But, I tell you, it’s a trap! Don’t do it! Here’s the reason: You’ll spend most of your time wondering why their second home is ten times nicer than your only home.

Buy the freaking portable DVD player. If you have children, it’s worth the outrageous amount of money. Even if it breaks down in a month. Even if you spent your life (before children) cruelly mocking the crowd who owned the minivan/DVD combo. It’s time to swallow that pride. Because hearing Sponge Bob’s laugh for sixteen hours is just WAY better than hearing “Are we there yet?” for sixteen hours.

Read some trash. Magazines even. If you’re like me, and you find the most entertaining books are still a bit spiritual, that’s okay. As long as it’s entertaining. Like Sue Monk Kidd’s fiction or Anne Lamott (SMK is kind of chic lit. Lamott transcends genders, but what do the guys read?) I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love right now. It’s on the top of the NYT nonfiction bestseller’s list, but it’s very entertaining.

Okay. That’s it for now. Any suggestions for me as I head out? Eat, Pray, Love is not going to last long.

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You know how pastors end up with a pile of food after every potluck dinner? I guess, in the UK, they have an apt phrase for the phenomenon.

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John Wimberly, the HOS, sat down with me when I was on the job for about a week. I spent six years as a solo pastor, and I was just beginning my first associate position. I never imagined myself as an AP, but when I began to apply for HOS jobs, some older, wiser friends told me that I wouldn’t get them because I needed more time in a multiple-staff setting.

Plus, Western’s amazing. It really is. I felt a strong call to this church and it’s a great honor to have the position here. I’m learning a ton of important things, and it began with that first meeting.

The HOS said, “You need to find a place for all of your energy.”

I felt exhausted. I wasn’t settled from the move, there were so many things that I needed to get done. I responded, “I don’t really have any energy.”

“Not physical energy, intellectual energy,” he explained. “Now that you’re not preaching every week, you need to find someplace to put it, or you won’t last six months here. You need to find something outside of the church walls.”

He was right. I had a month of waking up on Saturdays, saying, “I’m free! No sermon to write!” I made pancakes for breakfast and went to the park with my daughter. But after about six weeks, I missed it. I was writing sermons in my head, frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to preach them.

My job’s demanding. There’s a lot to do. An awful lot. But it’s a departure from a solo position. I preach about once a month. I rarely do the weddings or funerals. Plus, we have a secretary, sexton, janitor, and security guard. I’m not multi-tasking a hundred different things.

Do I miss running off the bulletin while I shovel the snow? Well, no. But the AP job is different.

I’m a general associate. Every once in a while, I teach a class, but that’s it. I watch my wise and intelligent friends, frustrated because they feel like “cruise directors” in their AP positions, channeling people from one program to the next. I didn’t go to seminary to be a cruise director.

So, I began writing. I’m applying for a think tank (a benefit of living in DC). And, I’m looking into local Doctoral programs for the fall.

(That’s another thing I’m told I need to get for an HOS position. “People like to be able to call their pastor ‘Doctor.’” I’m not real excited about that fact. Don’t get me wrong, I love to study and I’d love to get a doctorate. It’s just that we recently sent our “last” check to Sallie Mae. Gheez. Why are pastors expected to have doctorates when we barely make enough money to pay off our MDiv’s?)

The HOS has been in his position for 25 years. It’ll be thirty when he retires. The congregation has flourished from his long tenure. They went from being a handful of tenacious people who fought off the vote to close, who couldn’t afford to pay their pastor from month to month, to becoming a vital mission in the heart of the city. The HOS even stayed after a major building project–a time when most pastors bail.

When I asked him how he did it, he said he learned to channel his intellectual energy. While serving the tiny congregation, he’s gotten a PhD and an MBA. Then the church started a breakfast program for the homeless in our basement, an art program for children in transitional housing, and poured the foundation for a health clinic in Ethiopia. He keeps actively engaged in starting new projects, and he transfers them off to able hands.

Being wise with our intellectual energy seems to be important in almost every position in the church. What sort of things have you done channel it?

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I spoke to a young pastor recently, someone for whom I have tremendous respect. He said that he thinks of his church of 250 members as a new church plant. His last church was a megachurch, and he expects his present neighborhood congregation to supersize in a couple of years.

I wonder if it’ll happen. I think it’s possible, but only time will tell.

My first rural church was made up of just a handful of people, and I thought of it as a new church start, with a building. But I learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t. There was a rich and long history there that I couldn’t ignore. The members didn’t necessarily want to grow. I mean, they wanted more people in the pews, more money in the plate, and more hands for the jobs, but they were a tightly knit body, and each new person took some getting used to.

I study a lot of church growth materials and I’ve always served growing congregations (even that first tiny one). I notice that some materials don’t address the growing pains when a congregation expands too quickly. Everyone says they want to grow, but what happens when they do? We can start seeing some ugly stretchmarks. They are real, and powerful, and can be blamed on the pastor.

Within a body, there are strong forces at work that fight to keep growth from happening, and I’ve learned to pay attention to them and respect them. I also realize that there’s only a certain amount of development I can handle as a pastor. As a church gets larger, my role changes, and I have to get used to it gradually.

I try to keep membership growth at 10 to 12 percent. That may sound absurd. It’s not like pastors have the power over exactly how much a church can enlarge, but when I set goals for the year, I figure that percentage. I think about the number, pray about the number. I sit in the empty sanctuary and imagine what the pews would look like with 12 percent more people in them. I work toward that goal. Most years it works.

One of the major pains come with a shift of loyalties. Often, a new person will join the church because s/he likes the pastor. A friendly congregation, good music, comparable theology, nice artchitecture, and solid programs are also important, but (let’s face it) the pastor’s often the deal-maker or breaker.

The people who are already in the church may or may not like the pastor. They might have had their heart set on another candidate, or they may have really wanted the church to hire a man, or woman, or mother, or father, or a childfree person, or anyone other than the present minister. Usually, they get over it in a couple of years, but sometimes the bitterness simmers for longer.

When the people who are dying to say, “I told you so” meet up with the people who really wanted to join the church “because of the pastor.” It causes a strange mixture. It takes a lot of time to build the bridge from the existing members to the new members.

So, what have you experienced? What sort of growing pains have you felt when new people join the church? Have you read any good books on this?

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I’m reading The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen. It’s interesting, but I haven’t dressed for the funeral yet.

Keen was in the heart of Silicon Valley business, the Founder and CEO of Audiocafe.com. Then suddenly, on an Internet guru camping trip, the Utopian vision that everyone else was seeing turned into a bad dream for Keen.

He said the camping trip was like the Internet itself, everybody was talking, but no one was listening. Eventually, the loudest bullies were controlling the conversation.

Now, he sees things differently. According to Keen, the Internet is no more than a roomful of monkeys, banging on a keyboard. Every blogger is someone who could never get published anywhere else, who sits in her pajamas (how did he know?) typing out rubbish that real culture would never deign to acknowledge.

Keen does not see a democratization of talent. For him, it’s mob rule dumbing down our artistic sensibilities. In effect, our paid writers are losing their jobs as people no longer buying traditional newspapers and magazines. While the contributors to even the busiest blogs don’t receive enough revenue to make any sort of living. With all the drivel on YouTube and MySpace, the movie and music industry is suffering.

He has a point with a lot of this, but his case would have been a lot stronger if he didn’t constantly assume that all users of technology are complete, blathering idiots. I’m not sure how exactly many times he uses the monkey reference in the introduction, but it felt like every paragraph (I kept thinking, Okay, okay, I have the IQ of a primate. Everyone’s a moron narcissist–except for you. I get it. Now, let’s move on…).

I don’t know much about music or acting, so I won’t discuss those. But I can talk about writing and blogging. Most of the blogs that I read regularly are not by amateurs. For the most part, I read professional blogs, written by pastors, about the struggles and triumphs of clergy life. They’re written by people who make an honest living from their communication skills. They’re not monkeys banging on typewriters.

Clergy blogs are not usually the sort of writing I can find in magazines either, but that’s why I like it. You know, I don’t want to wait for the “special” women’s issue of a periodical to find out what clergywomen are up to. And I don’t have to anymore. I just go over to revgalblogpals.

The point that Keen makes about the authors not getting money could be valid. I meet with a group of five wonderful writers. Three out of five of us have blogs. A fourth one is thinking about opening one up.

I’m quite new to the blogging business, but two of the women are not. They’re professional communicators who have been in the pastorate for many years. Their blogs are content-driven and they have a huge audience (I’d link to them, but one’s anonymous), but they don’t make money. As a group, we often wrestle with the question of whether we spend too much energy and effort on our blogs, as opposed to print medium.

But, their blogging has led to a regular practice of writing. And, instead of starting out their career by sending off article after article to be rejected by an editor, prominent editors call them and asking them to submit articles. For me, it’s led to good book sales, even before my book has been released. And I’ve found a creative outlet for the material I produce until I start writing my next book.

I guess I fall somewhere in between the Internet utopian visionaries and Keen’s assessment that the Internet is tastelessly destroying everything that’s right and good in our culture. Smart print media is figuring out ways to sort through the best of the blogosphere, and they use those writers to support their publications. While worthwhile writers are gaining loyal readership and getting calls from editors.

My hope is that the accessibility of the net can work in tandem with our publications to broaden the conversation so that we might have a richer culture.

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Text: Luke 10:38-42

My sister, Leah, called this week. She’s seven years older than me, and I’ve always envied her because she has a fabulous house in Shenandoah that sits on a half an acre of land, right next to a stream.

It’s close to the mountains, and I’m telling you, it’s a dream. A field of daffodils pops up in
the spring, and from that point on, it’s beautiful. There is an array of flowers for each shade of summer.

And it’s not just the garden, it’s the house too. Leah actually does the dishes as she cooks–it’s amazing to watch. (And, that’s usually what I’m doing. I’m just sitting down on my rear, watching her work.) Dirty dishes never touch the sink. She has a place for everything and everything is in its place. Her home is generous and comfortable. She recently added on to the fabulousness, increasing the size of the kitchen ten times. Now the back of her house opens up to the water.

Yet, when I talked to her on the phone, she explained that she was a bit stressed out.

I was surprised. I asked her what she was anxious about.

She told me it was the mulch. She had acres of mulch that she needed to spread. And she wanted to get it done in one day. “That sort of thing really puts a strain on me.”
I couldn’t really relate. After all, I could trip over bags of mulch for months at our house. So, I learned that the perfectionism I envy so much has a downside.

Now, when my sister visits my house, she usually has to get a prescription from her doctor beforehand so that she doesn’t die from the cat hair and dust. Clearly, I am not a better person than she is. But our conversation did remind me of the problem of household labor.

Housework is a modern complication in our society. And, as we read the Scriptures, we realize it’s been an obstacle for a couple thousand years.

Luke describes a very familiar scene. It would definitely be the scene if my sister and I lived together. Mary and Martha, these two sisters, are having company. And it’s not just any company, Jesus is over at the house.

Martha’s killing herself, finding the matching placemats, setting the table, cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes while she cooks, and being the perfect hostess. Mary’s on the other side of the room, kicking back, listening to Jesus.

I imagine that Martha asked Mary for help with a few things, and Mary did them, kind of half-way, and then went right back to talking.

Martha finally gets completely annoyed, and says, “Jesus, could you ask her to help me?”
And Jesus said, “Nope. Mary’s doing the better thing.”

Now, even though I relate more to Mary, I’m actually feeling for Martha at this point. I’ve been in her position too. Because you know what? Mary might have chosen the better part, but at the end of the day, somebody’s got to do those dishes. They are simply not going to wash themselves.

So there are two solutions to the household labor in this story: Jesus is a great feminist liberator who says that it’s better for Mary to be educating herself than cleaning up the house. He says to drop the housework, sit down, and start learning.

Of course Jesus is right. Martha had the greatest religious leader in the history of humankind sitting there in her livingroom, and she’s worried about getting through her tedious to-do list.
But, let’s say that Jesus Christ is not relaxing in our living room, then Martha has a point too. Martha stands up for herself and says that they should be splitting the household chores.

Housework is a real problem.

I learned that in graduate school, when my husband and I were taking a full load of classes, plus we were juggling eight jobs between us. And what was I stressed out about? It was not the exams or the papers. It was the fact that our apartment was not as clean as I wanted.

If you’re not a woman or you’re not married, please don’t tune out. Not yet. We all need to be in on this discussion: husbands, wives, partners, and those who are not married. It’s time to have a family meeting with everyone involved, because we’re not going to solve this problem with working women, sitting in a corner, complaining to themselves.

Women are well established in the workplace now. Women are excelling academically and there are more women in undergraduate programs than men. We have a lot of modern conveniences, so it doesn’t take three hours to make a pot of coffee like it did 100 years ago. We have dishwashers, microwaves, ovens, vacuum cleaners, and stovetops, so if we have a high tolerance for clutter, then we can do the housework in a shorter amount of time.

But we don’t have a high tolerance for clutter. Many of us work outside of the home, and yet our domestic hopes and dreams seem to be overwhelming.

Just turn on the television for a little while. With an array of home, garden, and food channels, we become inspired to do things that are really outside of the realm of reality. I flip through the stations, and see people tackling that jumbled storage space. I’m exhausted just watching them, haul out every single item, sorting it into two piles, having a garage sale. It takes them days to put the place back together again. And I wonder, “Why we can’t have a cluttered storage space? What’s so wrong with that?” I could have the straightened out that situation in about two seconds. I would have just closed the door. Problem solved.

I change the channel to watch how I can make a meal in only thirty minutes, and I think, “Are they really serious?” They are telling me that it’s easy to cook this meal, but I know that I couldn’t even finish cutting up the ingredients in a half an hour.

I change the channel again and watch an entire room transform with only two people, two days, and two hundred dollars. But I know that room would take me the rest of my life to complete.

Yet, we watch the shows and buy the magazines, and think that we ought to have the perfect home, when there are just so many hours in a day.

Plus, we need to realize that the household duties are making a big difference for women.
Right now, a man with a family is the most successful person in our society. Oddly enough, men who have sons get paid more than men who have daughters. Coming in second, is the single male. Third, the single female. Finally, dragging into fourth place, the married woman.

What makes the difference? We know from our educational institutions that women are just as smart and hard working. The disparity is the domestic labor. When men get married, they do less housework. When women get married, they do much more housework. (I didn’t make this stuff up, there are actual studies on this).

When I was in graduate school, stressed out about my domestic duties, I complained to Cindy Rigby, a theologian friend of mine. She gave me a wonderful gift. She echoed the words of Jesus. She said, “You’ve got to get over it. You don’t have time. If you and I have an extra hour in our day, then we ought to be reading about theories of atonement, not worrying about the housework. You’ve got to let the dust settle, and let it stay there.”

I changed after that. I took the advice of Jesus and Cindy, and have learned to ignore certain things.

But we can’t ignore everything. So, my husband and I took Martha’s suggestion too. We began working together, each doing our fair share. Now household labor is parceled out in excruciating detail in our family. After a decade of negotiating, my husband and I have figured out what we’re willing to do, what we enjoy doing, and what we have to do.

We’re intentional about making everything as close to fifty/fifty as possible. I’m responsible for childcare on Mondays and Thursdays. He’s responsible for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We split Fridays.

Even after all of our effort, it’s not always equal. At the beginning when we thought this through, we realized that we work in an economy and in occupations that require relocation. We figured that I would get the first job, he would get the second job, and I would get the third job. But it hasn’t worked out that way, and Brian has moved three times for my career. And he stayed home to take care of our daughter for a couple of years. Thank God, this last move was good for both of us.

Negotiating all of this is very difficult, but it has to be done. If women are going to thrive in the workplace, if we’re going to have equality in our society, we will need to figure out what to do about the household labor. We’ll need sort it out at home.

This is a very exciting time. Right now, in our culture, we are at the cusp of making a real difference. But the difference will not just need to happen in the boardroom, it will need to happen in the bedroom too. It will not just happen with women complaining to each other, it will happen with all of us talking about these things.

It will happen when we learn to hear the teachings of Jesus, when we learn what the better part is. When we stop beating ourselves up because we have weeds in our garden and a cluttered garage.

It will happen when we stand up for ourselves like Martha did. When we start the excruciating and tedious negotiations of ensuring a fair household.

Now there are huge issues that I stepped around and avoided in all of this, mainly because of the time. I didn’t talk about the people who feel drawn to keeping the house. There are many, many men and women like my sister, who find great fulfillment in cleaning, sorting, and doing dishes. There are many people who love a well-kept garden and a sumptuous meal. And it is an art to do it well, and I hope that art never dies.

I also didn’t talk about childcare, which I see as a much different issue than housework.

And I didn’t talk about the army of women who do the domestic labor in our homes. They’re the ones who are not thinking about upward mobility, because they’re often not even getting basic medical care. We can always think about them when we speak of women’s issues.

But, this conversation will not doubt continue, in our society, in our churches, and in our homes. For Gustavo Gutierrez reminds us that the work of Jesus involves liberating all of us from those things that limit our capacity to develop ourselves freely and in dignity.

And may the work of Jesus continue in this place.

To the glory of God, our Creator,
God, our Liberator,
And God, our Sustainer. Amen.

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So, I opened up my Inbox, and suddenly, I wanted to hide under my desk and reach for the shut down button. It was a nasty, passive-aggressive email from a member of the congregation. Actually, the passive was just barely coating the aggressive. I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought about sending it to one of my favorite blogs.

A few years ago, I would have let it stew for a couple of days, looking for meaning in every word. I would have called the person to try and set up a face-to-face meeting. Probably a week and a half would go by before there would be the beginning of a resolution.

Or maybe, I would swallow the complaint like bad medicine. Then when I ran into the person on Sunday, I would decide that the situation had smoothed itself out. Either way, it was a long, drawn-out process, and it fed into my worst tendencies to avoid conflict.

Now, I handle things a bit differently. When I got my first one at my current church, I went charging into John Wimberly’s office (he’s the Head of Staff) to complain about the harsh cyber-comments. I told him what had happened and why the email was unfair. He smiled at my rant and said, “Answer it.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

I thought, What? No brooding? No cooling-off period? No restless nights worrying about the situation? No agonizing home visit or pastoral confrontation? “Well…what should I say in the email?”

“Say exactly what you said here.”

“Okay.”

I went back to my office and typed up a response, answering every inquiry with a detailed explanation. I sent it to the HOS, and asked him to point out the parts that sounded too harsh. He struck a couple of sentences, and I pushed send.

And you know what? Within a few hours, I got an apology. It was over.

Since then, I’ve changed my mode of operation. If I get a complaint in email, I type up a response. I have a third party look over my email to find out if it’s appropriate. Sometimes it’s not, and the person tells me that it would be better handled over the phone. But, for the most part, the email response works.

Church communication is changing rapidly. In a technology driven, connected society, two things are most important:

(1) We respond. If we don’t answer, we can be seen as uncaring or not listening (after all, the member doesn’t know that we’ve had insomnia for a week over this). In a world where complaint calls are often answered by a machine telling us to “Press one,” our congregations need to know that we’re listening.

(2) We respond quickly. When there’s a complaint, and we’re in the wrong, we need to apologize. That very day. When there’s an unfair complaint, then we need to answer with the explanations.

If we don’t think that the email’s an appropriate way to respond, then we can reply, “Thank you for your comment. Is there any way we can meet to discuss it?”

So what do you think? What was your worst nasty email? How do you handle them?

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