Tribal Church

I just finished the Webinar, which was pretty surreal. I was talking into the phone and clicking through a power point on my computer. Meanwhile there were about 80 participants that I couldn’t see. There was no interaction, no facial expressions (except for emoticons. Surreal, I tell you). Then, we had five minutes for questions. There were about ten questions… and you know how wordy I am. So, I didn’t come close to answering them.

For the sake of ongoing discussion, let’s talk about them here. I’ll tell you what I said, what I meant to say, and what I should have said. And, we can gather the wisdom of the ‘nets. How would you answer them? What questions would you add?

How do we get young adults in our doors?

Well, the front door for most young adults is actually your website. If you’re going to put money and energy anywhere, you’ll probably need to put it into your site. Try to get an online presence, with blogging, Yelp, and things like that. Mac makes it really easy to build sites.

If there’s a college or university near by, you can begin there. Western received 15% of its membership directly from the campus ministry. And 10% of its attendance comes from students.

But… the best advertising for churches is word of mouth. (Here’s a post on it.) So, if you can get people talking about your church, talking about their own spiritual journeys, then you’re in good shape.

Basically, you need to get a few young adults in church, give them some substantial power, let them begin their own things, and let them tell their friends.

Good preaching’s pretty important too. Post your sermons on the web, so people can email them to one another (amazingly, this actually happens).

What about in rural settings? Web sites are okay, but what about rural communities?

When I was in Abbeville, I hung out in the local coffeehouse, put flyers up for events there.

Oh! Interesting letters to the editor work well in rural communities. Or sometimes you can get articles in the paper.

In a rural community, you actually have an advantage when it comes to word of mouth. People talk about things. Word gets around quickly.

I can’t get the different generations in our congregation to be in the building at the same time. How do you build intergenerational community, when you can’t get them in the same place at the same time?

That’s a struggle. Retirees can make it during the day, and young adults at night. Families? It’s always hard for families to find time…. We can always count on young adults on Sundays, but it’s hard for them to make it at other times. Worship is central, and then build your other interactions around worship.

We also have a men’s group (Wednesday 7 a.m.) and a women’s spirituality group (Sunday 8:30 am). Both are intergenerational.

Usually when people talk about churches for Generation X, they are churches only for Generation X. Why do you talk about intergenerational connection?

Right. That’s what I read about a lot. But it hasn’t been my experience. Intergenerational ministry is what’s always worked in the churches that I’ve pastored. And in the churches that my friends pastor. So, I felt like there was a missing voice in all of this. Our society needs intergenerational understanding. And, I know many young adults and college students who really appreciate the community.

There were some questions on worship styles. Maybe I’ll try to get the original questions from Alban… Stay tuned. And what would your answers be? What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? What would you ask?

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I can’t post this morning, because I’m getting ready for the Alban Webinar. I should get something up later….

A quick apology for those who look at old posts. We updated WordPress, and it messed up a lot of the punctuation… Until I get it fixed, sorry about that.

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Ira Glass is pretty much amazing, in my book. There are certain people who inspire me to preach better, even though their work has nothing to do with preaching. Glass is one of them. Sarah Vowell. David Sedaris.

Wait there’s a running theme here…. Hhmmm… is it great story-tellers with nasally voices? Maybe… oh no. It’s that they’re all on This American Life.

Anyways, this week, Ira outdid himself. He hit a nerve with this episode on power. A really weird nerve. It’s just in the first four-minute prologue. (How did he do that in four minutes?)

It’s worth a listen, but I’ll try to sum it up. Glass meets with a couple of friends, missionaries who work in Chicago, with at-risk kids. They had just seen Schindler’s List and wanted to talk to Ira because they felt they understood Jews better. They knew about the Holocaust, but movie somehow made the horror and devastation sink in.

The part of the movie that struck them the most was at the end, when Schindler was so distraught that he didn’t save more Jews. And so the couple says, “That’s us. That’s our lives.” They explain how at the end of their lives, they’re going to regret all of the time that they did paperwork when they could have been saving kids. Or, they watched a football game, when they could have been bringing people to God.

What’s interesting about the four minutes, is that Glass holds their story very gingerly at this point. I was cringing, waiting for him to point out the latent anti-Semitism, or for him to talk about when they tried to convert him. The point where Glass mocks them and says that they have an over-inflated sense of their work. But he doesn’t. He says that he understands them for the first time. He says that they have the power to bring people to God, and with great power comes great responsibility.

I easily related to this couple. In my fundamentalist past, I could have met them. I could understand their sense of responsibility, and the idea that it was up to them to save those lives. That was one of the heaviest burdens I gave up when I became Reformed–I finally realized that it wasn’t up to me to do the saving. God would draw people. I could help, but it would be God. It wasn’t up to me to make a church survive. Pastors came before me. Pastors would come after me.

But I do wonder if there’s a bit of this idea left in me. Perhaps it lurks about in all of us… Is that why pastors often work too much? You know, when people are upset and call late at night, and I (of course) answer the phone. Or when I work on my days off because there’s been a tragedy.

I tell myself it’s because I want them to know that the church will be there when they’re distraught. I want to do what I can to help. I don’t want to abandon people when they need the church the most. I do it because I care. But, I also wonder if it’s an over-inflated sense of my own power. Or is it just what Glass says (and of course, Jesus says it too)–that with great power comes great responsibility?

Oh, and I’d love to know. Who’s the story-teller, writer, fictional character who inspires your preaching? The person who’s not necessarily religious, but motivates your art the most?

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We had dinner with some friends last night. F-R-I-E-N-D-S. Our kids became friends first, but then we had an immediate bond over Mexican folk art. Strange, but true. We both have homes filled with masks, hammered metal, woodcarvings, and books. She walked into our oddly familiar living room, looked at me and said, “What are you doing Friday night?”

That’s what I miss the most about being a pastor. Having friends.

My husband and I are very social people, and over the years, we’ve made a lot of our friends at work or at church. Now that our church is our work, we don’t do that so much. I have friends in my congregation, of course. I mean, the church’s pretty amazing, filled very fun and interesting people. But I usually don’t hang out with them on my days off.

Since we often need to be available when others are done with their business hours, between the two of us, we have meetings almost every night, and we work on weekends. Our house is rarely clean, so other than a constant stream of neighborhood kids, we don’t have people over very much.

We have wonderful clergy friends, but they have the same nutty schedules, and it’s impossible to get something on the calendar with them.

And then we have to move a lot. And if we’re not moving, then our clergy friends are moving. So just when you find another pastor who’s not utterly work-oriented, and can squeeze in a movie every once in a while, then they move away. Or you have to move. And the whole friendship-making process starts all over again.

Our lives get so busy, and we’re public figures, we’re surrounded with people, and so we hardly realize that we have… no friends. Pastors are usually introverted and being around people takes a lot of energy. But we can easily slip from that comforting solitude to distressing loneliness.

So, in every place we’ve moved, we’ve had to figure the friend-thing out. We have friends who are far away, but we need friends who are close by. It’s important. Otherwise we become isolated, our view of reality becomes distorted, and we start living in that really strange church-bubble.

We’ve found friends in our neighborhood and in art communities. Now, most of my friends are at my daughter’s school. Other moms and dads. I actually didn’t realize that they were that close, until I got in a bind one day. Someone died and I had to have a babysitter. So I called about ten other parents and neighbors, explaining the situation to the various cell phone answering machines. And then, when I was in the shower, my answering machine became flooded:

“Of course.” “No problem.” “Bring her right over.” “That would be great.” “Anything for a friend.” “Anytime.” “Please, call me if you need anything else.” I let out a deep sigh of relief. Because it’s just so much better when we have some friends around.

So, what do you do? Do you find it difficult to make friends? How do you stay connected?

photo’s by m o d e

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So, I’m working on this Alban Webinar, and I’m stealing lots of photos from Jim Bonewald. (Thanks again, Jim!) I have this bent-up, scribbled-upon copy of Tribal Church in my lap, and my first-grade daughter walks in, picks up the book, and says:

“That book AGAIN? Mo-om, you’ve already read that one.”

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So, I’m standing at the display of glasses, trying on frames. None of them look right, for some reason. My husband’s not with me, and I can’t see myself clearly when I look in the mirror. I need help.

Thank God, a matronly sales person, who has a knack for truth-telling, walks over and saves me. “Those don’t work. They’re too big for your head.”

She quickly begins to check the sizes of all the frames (I had no idea that frames came in sizes), and she ends up with two pairs in her hands, but quickly dismisses them. “Nope, these won’t do.”

Then, she goes into the back, retrieves a dozen small boxes, and begins unpacking. “These are all your size. We should be able to find something here.” And she puts the glasses on me, without poking my eyes, or even my ears, and gives me a tepid evaluation of each pair, until she smiles broadly. She hands me the mirror, and says, “Here they are. These are perfect.”

I look, and they are. “Thanks!” I say, hardly believing that I have my very own eyewear fairy godmother. But then, I take the glasses off, look at the side, and say, “Oh. I can’t buy these.”

“Why not?”

“They’re Prada.”

“So?”

“I’m a pastor.”

“Ssssooo?”

“The DEVIL wears Prada. I can’t wear Prada.” She laughs. And then I add, “They cost too much. It just wouldn’t be good.”

Then she assures me that with my insurance, they would cost the same amount as any other pair of glasses. I look down, and think Shane Claiborne makes his own clothes, and I wear freaking PRADA glasses. What kind of hard-core, social justice, urban minister am I? Then, it occurs to me, I have a dremel. I could scratch out the brand name. I might not even ruin them.

But that would be ridiculous. So I assure myself that no one will notice. It’s a tiny five-letter word etched into the side of metal. My anti-materialistic pride shouldn’t keep me from buying the most logical pair of glasses.

Yet, that’s the world I live in. The balancing act I’m often in the middle of. I’m a public figure in a city where most professionals dress in a certain way. A place where people expect you to have a decent haircut, and a decent haircut can cost hundreds of dollars.

So, I take my fashion advice from an unlikely source: Martin Luther King, Jr.

During the civil rights movement, he told people that they needed to put on their Sunday best when they gathered to protest. And if we look at those black and white photos, the ones with the dogs and the hoses, it’s startling on so many levels. But the one thing I always notice is that the men wore ties, the women wore gloves. Down to their fingertips, they preferred dignity over comfort.

I broke down. I bought the glasses. And then the first thing on Sunday morning, one of the college students raised her eyebrows at me and said, “Hhmm. Prada, eh?”

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I had a meeting a few months ago with a group of clergy and the counseling center on campus. They wanted to make sure that when students had serious psychological issues, that we knew where to refer them. “Clergy are often the entryway for long-term treatment.”

So true.

(As an aside, I asked if the counselors ever refer students to the clergy, and I got a blank stare. Finally, the confused counselor asked, “Why would we?” I explained that many students have spiritual crises that a student intern in a MSW program may not know how to handle, but we do. Sadly, she wasn’t convinced. But she did allow me to give her some referrals for a couple of certified pastoral counselors.)

The meeting was another realization that there are many, many things that cannot be taught through a seminary textbook, but they’re things we need to know. And they’re usually things we figure out quickly after placing our books on the study shelf.

When an addiction is destroying a family.
When someone suffers from long-term depression.
When an anxiety seems to be overtaking a person’s ability to function.
When sexual abuse has occurred.
When a child is high-need.
When a teenager cannot adjust.
When a couple can’t have a child.
When a caretaker needs to be taken care of.
When a spouse is having an affair.
When a person is going to die.
The list goes on and on….

Church leaders are often the ones with the first clues. We’re the ones that people can go to without having to call their insurance provider. Our meeting won’t show up on the permanent medical record. We won’t show up as a red flag for security clearance. We’re often the gatekeepers.

When I began as a pastor, certain people intimidated me. They were so successful, so together, I didn’t know how I could be their minister. But it didn’t take long before I realized just how broken humans are. How broken we all are.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming when we’re invited into people’s lives. There are many things that I’d rather not know. I have intuitions that I hope and pray are not true, but our intuitions become very sharp in this profession. With so much knowledge, you just can’t help notice some patterns after a while.

And, unlike a counselor, we’re in it for the long haul. I don’t mean that pastors should engage in long-term counseling. I mean that the session doesn’t end after an hour. We still acknowledge the person in the grocery store. We’re still involved, from that quick gasp at baptism to the slow last breath at the deathbed.

It is our wonderful, difficult job.

photo’s by gardenchien

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In our churches, we often act like everyone has grown up in a congregation. In fact, we act like they’ve grown up in our particular tradition. For instance, we use really strange words. We toss them like everyone ought to know what they mean, but you actually have to spend a lot of time in a church to understand them at all.

Vestibule
Narthex
Parament

Sometimes we use them every week, but never stop to explain them.

Doxology
Benediction

And there are other words that most people understand, but they would never use them outside of the church doors.

Fellowship
Guild

Then, there are the really wonderful words, ones that we use in our liturgy. Words that don’t have a good translation, and nobody knows what they mean.

Sheol
Selah

There are beautiful words, with rich imagery that have taken on some weird meanings in our culture.

Born again
Testimony

Aahhh…. and then there are the polity words. We’ve got millions of them, and we use them frequently (come to think of it, is “polity” one of them?). They’re like a secret handshake in our club. Here are the Presbyterian ones.

Session
Synod
Presbytery
Amendment (particularly B)

I’ve used words that I thought everyone knew, and then I’ve found that what I was talking about something particular to a church context, and people from outside of church had no idea what I was saying.

Discernment

What words do people use in your church/tradition that utterly confound people? What word only gets a workout in church–and nowhere else? What word would you love to get rid of completely? What word do you hate hearing? What should we do about the words? Is it simply part of educating people in our tradition? Or do the words exclude people too much? Should we quit using them? Or, should we keep expecting that only the people who grew up in our church ought to be able to understand what we’re saying? What words do you love? What’s worth saving?

the photo’s of a church door by kritta

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I once knew a professor–a brilliant man–who taught in the Ivy League. He was the sort of person who was particularly groomed for his post. Since he was a young boy, he was going to prep schools and skipping grades.

When I spent time with him, I always wanted my notebook handy, so I could scribble down quotes, because he was always saying something interesting. Though he was a department chair, he never published anything outside of a slim volume. He was tenured before the time when publishing was essential to those posts.

His wife explained why he could not bear to be published. “He was afraid,” she said.

“Afraid of what?” I asked.

And my memory gets fuzzy at this point, because I think my own fears take over a little bit, as they were mingled in with his. But, as I recall, she said he was afraid that if he wrote anything down, he would be proven wrong. He would regret what he had written.

I had always admired his stellar education, the people around him who anticipated his greatness, expected him to succeed. They made room for his brilliance–large, ample room. He was surrounded by exceedingly practical people who allowed him to play in the theoretical all day long, without having to worry about feeding himself, or doing his laundry. His experience was so foreign to me.

But now I see how it could have been difficult. Though his students were his legacy, and they learned a great deal from him, it makes me sad that he couldn’t be a part of the larger conversation outside of the classroom, that his contributions were limited.

It is true that when one’s words are written down, they take on a life of their own. I often hear authors using a birth analogy when finishing a book. I’ve never written a book quite difficult or beautiful enough to compare it to childbirth. But the metaphor of motherhood is good in a sense, because once those words are on the page, they’re separated from you. There’s no way to erase or delete what’s been published. Then, the words can be easily misunderstood, or misquoted, or taken out of context. And you can no longer be there to defend them.

Sometimes you read what other people do with your words, and you think, “No, that was not the intention. You’ve got it wrong.” But there’s nothing that you can do other than just let them go.

And I guess it makes me thankful for who I am. A practical person, who writes about the nuts and bolts of what church is, and often dreams about what it could be. There’s not a whole lot of pressure on me.

I’m thankful because once I got over those fears a bit, I could enjoy watching my words take a life of their own. The words are still vulnerable, but they also have power that I didn’t expect. And, now, I’m deeply moved by people who write me and tell me that I have spoken for them, or when I read my words in other people’s sermons, or when people tell me that their church is studying my book.

I’m working on my next book right now. And I still have the same fears when I sit down at the keyboard. But I’m also honored to be a part of the larger conversation. This is an incredibly exciting time to be writing about ecclesiology. And I feel deep gratitude that I get to write about what I know about and what I love.

the photo’s by the trial

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Text: Romans 8:18-25

I went to visit my friends, Jesse Quam and Grace Davenport, in their beautiful home in the mountains of North Carolina. Brian and I have been friends with Jesse since we were teenagers. We’ve kept in contact for twenty years. Now, they live in Black Mountain, outside of Asheville, where the ground almost looked fluid. As we drove, it seemed to roll around us, changing different shapes as we moved along the roads, keeping us in constant wonder.

It was a good time for us to take a vacation, but a terrible time for our friends. Grace was nine months pregnant and weighed down by her ample belly. We stayed in a cabin, tried to respect their space, while accepting any invitation to catch up.

While we were there, we learned more about Jesse’s work as a therapist, counseling teenagers in a wilderness setting. It’s a high burnout profession, but he’s been doing it for years. Actually, for over a decade now. He watches his friends come and go, but he keeps working with confused teenagers.

Even though Jesse works with the adolescent who’s in trouble, as most good therapists do, Jesse doesn’t just look at that one member of the family. He looks at their environment. He looks at the whole family, how it’s working and not working. How much the parents are away from the home. He wants to know if the teenager is in a context where he or she can grow. He’s concerned about the child’s attachment.

He says, ”You can have a beautiful rose, but if it’s stuck down in the basement, it’ll die. It needs to be in a healthy environment to thrive.” And he believes that all teenagers, all people, are the same way. We need healthy environments to thrive.

Jesse’s use of the word “environment” is intentional. Because he’s not just talking about parents and the siblings, he believes that the natural environment has an important effect on a person’s spiritual, emotional, and psychological health. And so he works with teenagers in the beautiful wilderness of North Carolina, hoping that they will develop some attachment, and have some grounding to the earth so that they can grow and thrive.

It is this notion throughout Scripture, and throughout some of our most important spiritual works–that attachment to the earth is vital for our spiritual nourishment.

There is an idea that somehow heaven and earth are connected. We pray, every week, “on earth, as it is in heaven,” and in the book of Revelations, those strange, prophetic scriptures, the writer communicates a vision of how there will be “a new heaven and a new earth.” And there, in Romans, there is an idea that the earth is groaning. The earth is moaning, as if it is in labor, waiting to be redeemed from destruction, waiting to be set free from the bondage of decay, waiting for new life.

There are some words of scripture don”t seem to make a whole lot of sense two thousand years later. Outside of their original context, they”re confusing. But this passage–this passage that John read this morning, the one from Romans, it makes so much more sense now than it must have thousands of years ago.

I often feel like I am wrapped in this bondage of decay that the ancient words speak about. Earth Day is coming up this week, and it is always a reminder that we have much to do to slow the effects of global warming. We will need to look at our personal habits, our practices as communities, and our national policies.

I know personally, we do what we can, buying our food from local farmer’s markets, growing what we can ourselves, relying on public transportation, cutting our energy use as much as possible. But, we are limited by time and by money, so that we can’t do everything that we wish we could do.

When I look at the businesses that surround us, (here, but also in South Louisiana, where there are so many companies that pollute) and realize the drastic changes that we will need to make before so that our corporations begin to act in a responsible manner, we know that it will take time, and it will take a lot of money. There will need to be a huge shift in priorities and sometimes it feels hopeless.

When we look globally, and we see the industrial and population expansion of countries around the world, then the problem gets too big for me. I’m not sure what can be done. I just know that the earth is groaning.

And, sometimes, it’s overwhelming. Often, my husband and I wonder if our grandchildren will be able to enjoy the earth in the same way that we have. And I become gripped by fear and sadness when I contemplate that answer, because I cannot automatically say yes. And that’s when I feel the bondage of decay.

The earth is groaning, and we are bound to destruction. The words, the words, I wish they weren’t true, but they are.

It’s so strange, but the church-at-large has not always done such a good job in caring for creation. Even though on of our first commands from God was to take care of the earth, in some religious movements, we have cut ourselves off from the earth, creating a separation between physical and the spiritual. From sciences and religion. I have seen it, over and over again from both sides. I have been in churches where they belittle science, and I have been saddened by their ignorance. And as a theological student, I have heard scientists berate me as ignorant.

I can understand the tensions, as people of faith have fought against stem cell research and theories of evolution in our country. People of faith have laughed at global warming theories. There is a growing home-school movement in our country dedicated to keep children away from the evils modern science. In some parts of our country these groups have done some significant damage in education. And they have certainly widened the rift between the spiritual and the natural, religion and the sciences.

Yet, I know what my friend Jesse says is true–that our spiritual, emotional, and environmental health is all wrapped up together. There’s no way to disassociate the Creator from the created. We cannot separate heaven from earth, and we cannot sit by and watch the divide between science and religion keep getting deeper and deeper in this country. We need to find bridges.

After all, it’s through hearing the birds that my eyes look up and focus on something beyond myself, it is through the pulsing streams that I have found so much peace and healing. There have been places in my life that are holy. And they are almost always among the jagged rocks, the flowing water, and the fine sand. It is when I look at the detailed texture of each shell that I know that we have an amazing God.

As we look around us, we can begin to understand our connection to the earth, as a part of creation that flows from God. And we can realize that what we do personally affects the earth, when we care for it and when we abuse it. Even though we’ve created shelters against the storms, air conditioning when it is hot, and heating when it is cold, and it seems that we have conquered so much of nature that we are no longer subject to it, we cannot become deaf to its groans.

For the groans have become louder and louder. We are hearing the reports of global warming. We are just beginning to understand its effects on our lives. The earth is heading toward destruction, and we need every available imaginative resource that we can muster up from religion, science, literature, economics, business, technology, and the arts. Every creative and created being, needs to hear the moans and begin to respond in their own way. And perhaps then we can begin to understand that along with the groans, there is also hope.

George Washington Carver was a botanist and educator who spent many of his years teaching former slaves farming techniques so that they could become self-sufficient. A former slave himself, Carver lived from 1864 to 1943, and in the South, he is widely recognized as a man who helped the transition from cotton crops, to sweet potatoes and peanuts. The cotton was being decimate by boll weevils and it was depleting the soil of its natural resources, so the transition was extremely important for the South.

Carver was a deeply spiritual man, and since his lab notes were sparse, I think now, his contribution was almost as much spiritual as scientific. Carver said that if you love anything enough it will tell you its secrets. And that seemed to be his attitude toward nature. He would paint plants, capture their beauty, as well as study them. He said, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

In 1924, the New York Times wrote an article entitled, “Men of Science Never Talk that Way” about George Washington Carver”s claim that God was leading him in his scientific pursuits. And he asked God every day, every moment, that God would give him wisdom, understanding and bodily strength so that he might convey what God was saying through the animal, mineral and Vegetable kingdoms. He wanted to communicate their relations to each other, to us, our relations to them, and to the Great God who made all of us. And he explained that he was asking and receiving at all times.

I grew up, hearing a lot about Carver. He’s a legendary figure in the South, and he continues to be a giant figure in my mind. Most often, I heard how he asked the God, “Dear Mr. Creator, please tell me what the universe was made for.”

The Great Creator answered, “You want to know too much for that little mind of yours. Ask for something more your size.”

Then he asked, “Dear Mr. Creator, tell me what man was made for.”

Again the Great Creator replied, “Little man you still are asking too much. Cut down the extent of your request and improve the intent.”

So then he asked, “Please Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?” And with that, Carver began to create hundreds of peanut products.

This morning is a morning of baptism. In this sacred time, we remember that our spiritual lives are marked by water. Clean, flowing water. And may this be a morning when we remember that our material lives are marked by water as well. They are bound together. Both our material and spiritual selves flow from God.

In this crucial moment in history, when we can hear the earth groaning, we can realize our connections. We can understand how our emotional, spiritual, physical and psychological health is bound to our environment. And in this crucial moment, we will need to pray for imagination and hope, so that we might find freedom from these bonds of destruction. So that we might have the strength and endurance to change our ways. So that we might work on a personal, communal, and political level to reverse our current trends. So that we might love this good earth enough, that we can hear its secrets. So that we can begin to understand how we can save it. So that our grandchildren might enjoy the beauty of the world as we know it.

The time for that spark of hope is now. We can hear the groans. We cannot wait any longer. We must act,

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

the photo’s by Romoletto

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