Remembrance of Morning Rituals

For many years my "summer office" was filled with the relaxing sounds of water moving and trickling, the songs of an aviary's chorus of birds, gentle breezes carrying the fragrance of honeysuckle, roses, hints of herbs and fresh grass. All this enlivened by the alluring warmth of the morning sun. All this was at my disposal; not in some mountain get away, not a pilgrimage to secluded monastery, nor to a luxurious vacation get away.

Just my backyard.

For the past few weeks I have been coming to this place again. A small table, cheap white plastic chairs. A cup of coffee. At the back porch of my abnormally plain suburban home.

While I sit sipping coffee, I read through the Bible, write out some hopes and fears and "recreational theology", acknowledge that God is hearing everything as my prayer. God "hears" my choice of location, my posture, my awareness of what surrounds me, and my thoughts. God hears what I am doing, thinking, and seeing.

One of the thoughts that keeps coming back is one of remembrance and loss. Now I attend this little sacred getaway most mornings each week. It used to be nearly everyday. I used to enjoy this as my "summer office" for hours at a time, now for only minutes. My work office is elsewhere behind walls and a narrow window through which no fragrances nor breezes pass. So I grieve the loss of my summer office, remember the goodness of it and perform this daily ritual of prayer and hope.
Sent from my Blackberry, in other words, I'm out and about wandering in the wild world...

Fram Wisdom

“You Can Pay Me Now, or You Can Pay Me Later”

There’s s a certain bit of irony: thinking intently about the importance of certain actions when you have no intention of actually doing them. Like watching a gourmet cooking show while eating fast food; watching the PX90 infomercial while in the midst of junk food splendor. There are always commercials we watch advertising certain important actions. Often we are about as likely to heed their call as we are to sprout wings.

Specifically? I’m thinking about weekend television I watched as a kid. I remember watching baseball, basketball, NFL, occasionally NHL, and “spanning the globe…the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat…Wide World of Sports.” On weekends, that’s when you would have the opportunity to get: a) lots of chores done; or b) watch a lot of sports. And for the most part choice a) and choice b) were mutually exclusive. Usually choice b) wins.

With marketing to men during sports programming, I remember the classic Fram oil filter commercials with the tag line, “you can pay me now or you can pay me later.” What struck me as odd or ironic was that there were these guys on the TV telling us to do some simple maintenance on our cars, but we were watching TV sports and we not likely to get up off the couch. Sure, we might have some fresh oil and some filters out in the garage, but that didn’t mean we’d do anything with it. At least not now.

We’d get around to it…eventually.

Fortunately, I had parents who got things done. I remember being raised with a sense of timely intervention. Little problems were dealt with so that they would not become bigger. Small disciplines were carried out daily in order to prevent a pile of work needing to be done later. I think I was raised with a Fram sensibility, i.e. “you can do a little now that is simple, or you can wait until later when it will become a hassle.” However, as I consider my screen door needing repaired, the long to-do list on my car, and the work on the lawn, I realize I have not fully incorporated the wisdom of Fram.

Getting Around to It

The Fram wisdom came to mind over the past couple weeks. I have worked with superintendents, bishops, conference ministers and presbyters. I have worked with congregations in transition, in conflict, and contemplating growth and mission. In most of these cases, I have had the privilege of helping them chart passages and identify hurdles along their way. Most of these churches were not in all out danger of collapse; they just needed some maintenance, attention to aspects of their life together that had gone unaddressed. However, with the experience of the Great Recession, most of the independent church consultants I know have not had a lot of work. Many of us have landed in other jobs. The reason has not been a lack of need, but a perceived lack of funds or lack crisis from our former clients. There are always opportunities to help congregations learn new things, engage in meaningful self-reflection, to prepare for difficulties, and create lead time for new opportunities.

One of the heart breaks I have witnessed both as a pastor, and simply as someone trying to see what’s going on, there is sometimes a sad recognition: when a problem is noticed, it may already be too late. Counselors and therapists know this. They often speak sadly of the couples ending in divorce whose relationships are beyond repair. “If only they had come in earlier.” There are the cardiac surgeons who would love to tell patients, eat right, exercise, get regular checkups. But by the time they come into a hospital with chest pains, it is too late and the bypass surgery is just around the corner. Most of the time, people know they are in jeopardy of destroying their health, their relationships, their businesses, but they feel hemmed in by limited budgets of time and money.

Over the past month, I have been contacted by former clients and been informed of congregations in crisis. Some have to do with conflict, many of the issues arise out of faulty discernment practices, there has been poor communication, and accountability has been skewed from sharing burdens to seeking blame. What a mess. While I never would want to tell them, “I told you so,” many have noticed that if they had worked on these problems earlier, this crisis would not exist now. Or, more realistically, if these problems were really inevitable, then at least one could have been more prepared for them.

Changing Filters

Changing filters is easier than changing an engine. Changing congregational practices and creating lead time is easier that changing entire boards, committees, clergy, and other leaders. Changing practices may be tedious, your knuckles might get scraped and your hands get dirty, so to speak. But the results are longer lasting. They are less prone to be quick fixes with a short shelf-life. They are less likely to be focused on problem-solving limited by a narrow, though painful, focus. Rather, simple practices, third-party consultations, learning new discernment practices are more fruitful when the engine is still working well. What kinds of investments are needed in your community to make the whole, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later,” warning more meaningful?

Let’s get to work!

Institution And a Movement

From David Bosch:
"We cannot have it both ways, then: purely and exclusively a religious movement, yet at the same time something that will survive the centuries and continue to exercise dynamic influence. Our main point of censure should therefore not be that the movement became an institution but that, when this happened, it also lost much of its verve. Its white-hot convictions, poured into the hearts of the first adherets, cooled down and became crystallized codes, solidified institutions, and petrified dogmas. The prophet became a priest of the establishment, charisma became office, and love became routine. The horizon was no longer the world but the boundaries of the local parish. The impetus missionary torrent of earlier years was tamed into a still-flowing rivulet and eventually into a stationary pond. It is this development that we have to deplore. Institution and movement may never be mutually exclusive categories; neither may church and mission".

From, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, pg 53
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Life-Giving Fear

I recently read this fine piece from Barbara Brown Taylor. It is an excellent Lenten meditation.

by Barbara Brown Taylor

Barbara Brown Taylor teaches at Piedmont College in Demorest, Ga. This article appeared in the Christian Century, March 4, 1998, page 229; copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
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When I was a hospital chaplain, the calls I dreaded most did not come from the emergency room, the psychiatric ward or even the morgue. They came from the pediatric floor, where little babies lay in cribs with bandages covering half their heads and sweet-faced children pushed IV poles down the hall. One day I received a call to come sit with a mother while her five-year-old daughter was in surgery. Earlier in the week, the girl had been playing with a friend when her head began to hurt. By the time she found her mother, she could no longer see. At the hospital, a CAT scan confirmed that a large tumor was pressing on the girl's optic nerve, and she was scheduled for surgery as soon as possible.

On the day of the operation, I found her mother sitting under the fluorescent lights in the waiting room beside an ashtray full of cigarette butts. She smelled as if she had puffed every one of them, although she was not smoking when I got there. She was staring at a patch of carpet in front of her, with her eyebrows raised in that half-hypnotized look that warned me to move slowly. I sat down beside her. She came to, and after some small talk she told me just how awful it was. She even told me why it had happened.

"It's my punishment," she said, "for smoking these damned cigarettes. God couldn't get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick." Then she started crying so hard that what she said next came out like a siren: "Now I'm supposed to stop, but I can't stop. I'm going to kill my own child!"

This was hard for me to hear. I decided to forego reflective listening and concentrate on remedial theology instead. "I don't believe in a God like that," I said. "The God I know wouldn't do something like that." The only problem with my response was that it messed with the mother's worldview at the very moment she needed it most. However miserable it made her, she preferred a punishing God to an absent or capricious one. I may have been able to reconcile a loving God with her daughter's brain tumor, but at the moment she could not: If there was something wrong with her daughter, then there had to be a reason. She was even willing to be the reason. At least that way she could get a grip on the catastrophe.

Even those of us who claim to know better react the same way. Calamity strikes and we wonder what we did wrong. We scrutinize our behavior, our relationships, our diets, our beliefs. We hunt for some cause to explain the effect in hopes that we can stop causing it. What this tells us is that we are less interested in truth than consequences. What we crave, above all, is control over the chaos of our lives.

Luke does not divulge the motive of those who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices. The implication is that those who died deserved what they got, or at least that is the question Jesus intuited. "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?"

It is a tempting equation that solves a lot of problems. (1) It answers the riddle of why bad things happen to good people: they don't. Bad things only happen to bad people. (2) It punishes sinners right out in the open as a warning to everyone. (3) It gives us a God who obeys the laws of physics. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Any questions?

It is a tempting equation, but Jesus won't go there. "No," he tells the crowd, "but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did." In the South, this is what we call giving with one hand and taking away with the other. No, Jesus says, there is no connection between the suffering and the sin. Whew. But unless you repent, you are going to lose some blood too. Oh.

There is no sense spending too much time trying to decipher this piece of the good news. As far as I can tell, it is meant not to aid reason but to disarm it. In an intervention aimed below his listeners' heads, Jesus touches the panic they have inside of them about all the awful things that are happening around them. They are terrified by those things -- for good reason. They have searched their hearts for any bait that might bring disaster sniffing their way. They have lain awake at night making lists of their mistakes.

While Jesus does not honor their illusion that they can protect themselves in this way, he does seem to honor the vulnerability that their fright has opened up in them. It is not a bad thing for them to feel the full fragility of their lives. It is not a bad thing for them to count their breaths in the dark -- not if it makes them turn toward the light.

It is that turning he wants for them, which is why he tweaks their fear. Don't worry about Pilate and all the other things that can come crashing down on your heads, he tells them. Terrible things happen, and you are not always to blame. But don't let that stop you from doing what you are doing. That torn place your fear has opened up inside of you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life.

Depending on what you want from God, this may not sound like good news. I doubt that it would have sounded like good news to the mother in the waiting room. But for those of us who have discovered that we cannot make life safe nor God tame, it is gospel enough. What we can do is turn our faces to the light. That way, whatever befalls us, we will fall the right way.
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Temperaments and Expectations on Leadership

The nature of leadership is fluid. Styles of leadership, as well as the focus and expectations of leadership need to be responsive to the different phases of a community's shared life. While there are many ways to define leadership, it is nonetheless still an abstract concept, in part because of the many ways in which takes shape, depending on the needs of the organization at any one time. And it may even be flexible enough to be exercised in multiple ways, by the same people, at the same time, in different parts of the organization. Thus, the idea of "leadership" as one thing with a hard and fast definition does not match with experience.

Thomas-Kilman Axis on Leadership Styles

One way to depict the changes in leadership by the context in which it is being exercised in by referring to the Thomas-Kilman Axis. This tool is usually used in relation to defining approaches to conflict, but it also is instructive on identifying five types of leadership. Each of the styles is appropriate, but not for times and situations.

The Thomas-Kilman Axis looks at leadership in relation to "Issues" (the vertical axis) and "Relationship" (the horizontal axis). Together, the axis of issues and relationships can be easily laid over Ephesians 4:15, which states, "speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ."

Looking at the types of leadership, five positions can be elaborated. Actually, these five types could be more finely defined with more distinctive positions all over the map. However, these exiting five set up parameters defining edges and the center.

First, in the upper left corner is "forcing" in which the issue is important and relationship has little of no impact in consideration. It could be a simple decision to buy a certain light bulb of copy-paper, or as vital as a decision to call 911 in an emergency. The point is that there is freedom to act because the issue is clearly not impactful on the quality of relationships (e.g. office supplies), or because it is of the vital importance calling for appropriate action in the midst of an emergency.

Second, in the lower left corner is "avoiding" leadership. By nature of its name, this does not even seem like a leadership quality. However, it is an "editing" kind of leadership. That is, there are times when issues are of little importance and almost no impact on relationship. These issues don't need to be dealt with and can be set aside for other more pressing concerns. Avoiding may be necessary to stuff away esoteric theological controversies, or even practical local issues, but still has to make the discernment that these are not issues vital to the community.

Third, in the middle of the map is "compromise". I chose to use a chicken as the icon for this position, only because compromise is too often misused. When misused, compromise demonstrates a lack of willingness to pursue some very difficult issues that actually need reconciliation and definition. On the other hand, it may show significant leadership to hold something in balance for a time. There are issues that are polarizing, yet neither side may have adequate information or understanding, making any action inappropriate. Compromise may work best then as a holding cell for a time.

Fourth, "collaborating" becomes a crucial leadership skill in settings of high relationship and high concern for an issue. For some, this is a default position because everything is important or because every relationship feels vulnerable and thus must be highly valued. As a default position, it may restrain leaders from taking immediately responsive steps or hinder healthy delegation and the empowerment of others to act independently in a permission-granting environment.

Fifth, "accommodating" although there is nothing wrong with highly valuing relationships, there are times when this leads toward an attitude of anything goes. This position can step over the line from creating a permission-granting environment to becoming a permissive environment. Eventually, an ideal will be violated, or a cause not championed, for the sake of relationship. Then, over time anxiety builds and implicit conflict may emerge, often in passive-aggressive ways. However, accommodation is a crucial capacity when the issues can be accurately assessed as of minor importance.

Thomas-Kilman in Action-Reflection

Read over the above mentioned types of approaches to issues and relationships. For each:

1. Consider the positive qualities of the approach.
   
   1. How does this build up the community?
      
   2. How is this capacity seen in action?
      
   3. How might these qualities be passed on to others?
      
2. Each of these approaches have a history:
   
   1. Tell stories of when these different approaches became apparent.
      
   2. Consider which, if any, has become a default. When did that occur?
      
   3. Which if any of these approaches has been especially helpful in the past? Which has been problematic?
      
3. Each of these approaches assumes that a community and its leaders can make clear discernment about issues and relationships. How do you ascertain the "high" or the "low" of the relationship or issue?
   

Next Steps

As a community becomes more familiar with its approaches to issues of relationships and issues, there can be greater clarity in the way choices are processed. Eventually, trust will build up within the community, due to the clarity and shared understanding of how things are discerned. To make aspects of this analysis a part of meetings and working sessions can provide needed reflection and ongoing accountability.

Within the Quaker tradition is the process of discerning the "spirit of the meeting." At the conclusion of a meeting for action, a designated person, known for the impartial discernment, is asked to describe how the spirit of the people in the meeting functioned and how the Spirit of God moved among them. Reflecting on these approaches and how they may have emerged in a meeting may be instructive.

Desperation Scripts (Re-Written)

Somewhere scripts were written in our collective imagination that has led so many of us to have sought speculation for rapid growth of our resources. Now that those speculative hopes have been dashed by the recession, what will we imagine when recovery comes?

Bernanke Saw His Shadow

Somewhere in New York, or maybe Washington D.C., the Federal Reserve Chairman arose from Penn Station, or the Metro, and like Punxsutawney Phil, saw his shadow.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that “the recession was ‘very likely over,’ as consumers showed some of the first tangible signs of spending again. Mr. Bernanke, who had become cautiously more upbeat in recent weeks amid signs of third-quarter growth, said for the first time that forecasters agree ‘at this point that we are in a recovery,’” (reported, WSJ, 9/15/09).

Today

According the Associated Press (1/3/10), “Some analysts worry that the Fed, which has held rates at record lows since December 2008, could be fueling a new speculative period and potentially a future economic crisis…Bernanke suggested the Fed might have underestimated the full force of the recession, which struck in December 2007…There's concern about how vigorous the recovery will be once government supports are removed later this year.”

As an economic thaw may be approaching, churches may now begin to reflect on their future and begin looking seriously at the things that may have been unattended over the past year and a half. Maybe the recession is winding down. I certainly hope so. Many churches and non-profits have been hiding out and holding tight. For some, difficult issues have been left unaddressed and organizational and missional problems grew. In many congregations, issues of conflict were set aside to help meet the immediate needs of members and those suffering through lay-offs, work reductions and foreclosures.

We’ve had important ministry taking place, meeting needs and dealing with the brokenness the recession has revealed. Yet some deeper and systemic issues continue to grow unaddressed.

How long will it take for the desperation scripts to be re-written? What are the new imaginaries the will give serve as templates to our views of jobs, economy, and community?

More on this later...

Yellow Feels Like Summer

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Finding the Center

“There can be no knowledge of the center without the simultaneous knowledge of the furthest horizon for which this center is the center. ‘Loss of the center’ is the dominant characteristic of a church that loses itself the time. ‘Loss of the horizon’ is the mark of a church that seeks to preserve itself into eternity. But center and horizon will always be lost or won together.”
Church in the Power of the Spirit, Moltmann
Pg 133