Up to my eyeballs in stuff for Annual Conference... +...trying to get ready to be gone to said AC and then to the ATL for memorial day...+...80 year old men testing the fire alarm system with matches without telling anyone at church...=...No time for the bloggy. I am sure you have been wondering.

Just one question that I have no where else to ask...

The space shuttle Atlantis took off Monday to go fix The Hubble telescope. News outlets made a big deal of the fact that Shuttle Endeavour was also on the launch pad ready to go up and rescue the Atlantis crew if their craft was damaged during liftoff (like a small piece of foam screwing up the heat shield panels or whatever it was that happened to Colombia.)

But what if Endeavour was damaged during lift off? What then?

Huh?

Huh?

Who would rescue them?

We only have so many shuttles and so many astronauts, or so I understand. (not counting the secret military shuttles, of course) Are you going volunteer to go up if the third or fourth shuttle is too damaged to return? Or do we say.."sorry no more shuttles. Take your chances and come home. Cross your fingers!"

Not a very good "fix" if you ask me.

Not that you did.

Or anyone would.

retinkin

Last Saturday I went to a training event regarding our new denominational media campaign "Rethink Church." As much as I dislike Saturday training events (though I was able to take my coffee into the Sanctuary, thanks to a gracious colleague) there were some stimulating moments in the day.

A new important part of the campaign is the idea that in the 8 year old slogan "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" the word "open" is no longer considered an adjective, instead we need to think of it as a verb. So we are "opening" hearts, minds and doors. Or you can think of it like a command: our task is to open hearts, minds and doors. While this revision is more exciting than the old concept for those inside the church, (and some of the videos to communicate this idea are actually GOOD) I do wonder how it sounds to those outside the church. Would it come off as patronizing? "hey! We want to open your heart and mind and front door!"


Oh wait. It might be our hearts and minds and doors that need to be opened. I guess that is closer to the truth. "Hey world! We are trying desperately to pry open our small hearts and tiny minds and locked doors so there is room for you!" Yes, that might be closer to the truth.


The other key revision of the campaign is the concept that churches have "ten thousand doors." Seems we have focused rather exclusively on worship being the one "door" for newcomers. It might be more effective, campaign creators say, for the first "door" into the church to be a small group or a service project or a special class or a Vacation Bible School or a block party. In those other settings relationships are formed that then become a bridge to participation in the worship life of the chruch.

I like this, because it helps us think fully about the entry points of our church, nothing is for "members-only," everything we do is a chance for hospitality.

The problem is (you knew there was going to be a problem, didn't you?) in how the "trainers" expressed this idea on Saturday. They asked, "Who has vital and passionate worship?" And they asked it in a way that showed they expected few hands to go up. They went on to say basically, "We know worship stinks at your church. So don't invite people to worship. That's boring. Invite them to something fun, like a bar-b-que or a work project. " The implication is that when they know you a little more they will be able to tolerate the boring worship like you do.

Anyone else think this is a little backwards? If worship isn't vital and passionate...FIX WORSHIP! And realize that while not everyone is going to feel comfortable stepping into the Sanctuary as their first contact with a church, most people are still going to use that as the primary entry point. Hence the need to FIX WORSHIP!

Realizing I have ten thousands doors to my church does not mean I should ignore or shut the biggest and most obvious door I have (namely 10:30 worship on Sunday morning.) It just means I need to make sure all available doors are unlocked, open and ready to welcome whomever wishes to walk through them. (Metaphorically speaking of course. This is the big city).

Enough rant. Best learning point of the day came from a line in the campaign's signature video:
"the smallest step through one of our doors is an act of courage."

That seems like truth to me.

reading the obituaries

I, like you who listen to the news, have been hearing continual updates about the health of American car companies, or ill-health, as it were. Chrysler might go into bankruptcy this afternoon. GM's deadline is a month away. Although I have, in my life, owned a GM ('77 Chevy Malibu), a Chrysler ('94 Jeep Cherokee) and a GM ('04 Pontiac Vibe). I think overall this intense pressue to change or die is a good thing. These companies have had a flawed business model for a long time and, it seems to me as a very uneducated outsider, have been ignoring it. They can ignore no longer. They will emerge, or not, from this crisis ready for business today and in the future. Necessary growing pains, that's what this looks like to me.

I really have little stake in the car companies, someone will keep making cars for me to buy. But the thought keeps occurring to me that the United Methodist Church is GM. We are a bloated and inflexible institution with too many stakeholders and too many reasons to keep the status quo instead of doing the hard work of change. I'm not saying anything new here. I, like you, can read the same analysis the denomination over. My question is...what will be our bankruptcy filing? What will be our recession? What will be the cataclysmic event that forces the change we cannot manage to create on our own? I don't know. Perhaps I should pray for that. For the United Methodist Church's bankruptcy filing. Would that be a heretical prayer?

Or maybe we are better understood as the newspaper industry. United Methodists are print newspapers who are struggling so mightily to figure out how to package our important content (the news) in a world of new media. People are not subscribing like they used to. Nor will they ever again to the same old delivery system. Our revenue model (print ads) is headed down a dead end road. Other people are innovating around us, but we are staring institutional death in the face. What will be our digital revolution?

This morning I was reading Paul Nixon's "I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church" which includes this paragraph about choosing to be a bold church over a mild church...

The milder the vision expressed [by a church], the more [their] energy is
diverted to fellowship, childcare, and building renovation, to entertainment
activities, parties and trips. The mild church is a religious Elk's Lodge except
for about an hour a week, when we sit quietly in a room decorated to my
grandmother's tastes and try to think (and even sing) nice thoughts about Jesus
and loving others, as our leaders run around down front in sixteenth century
costumes. Indeed there is a place in the world (and a market) for fraternal
organizations such as the Elks. But the Elks total membership is headed in the
same direction as the Episcopalians.

Or the United Methodists. He could have said, as the United Methodists. That paragraph stings, because it fairly accurately describes my work life.

This seems like a problem to me.

I do not want to be GM.

I do not want to be a print newspaper. (no offense to my many friends in the newspaper business).

I don't need to be the new "hotness" full of all things cutting edge either.

I just don't want to lead a dying church.

Overheard in the church office:

“Jim, what was that place down on south Washington...
that you took me to that one time…
when we was looking for…
something or another?”

The best part is the question got answered.

It’s a wonder we get anything done around here.

small and holy

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you must do big things to be important.

Tuesday: pre-martial counseling: We are working on getting to know one another because, like most young couples, these two don’t come to church.

“When did your parents get divorced?” I ask, and two minutes later the tears have started.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” she says. Because it still hurts, I think, but I only say, “The kleenexs are right in front of you, and crying is always okay in here.”

“It might be important to think some more about your parents' divorce as you prepare for your own marriage,” I say, “and if you can, find a way to talk about it with them because you experience the grief differently as an adult than when you were 14.”

She nods. And the quiet that follows shows we both know she has shared something deep.

Wednesday: evening prayer: I give my 5 minute, off-the-cuff meditation on the passage in Acts 4 where the church shared everything in common and people sold their private possessions so that there was no one in need.

After we feast at the table, a favorite 80-something approaches me and says, eyes pleadingly serious…”You don’t know how I’ve struggled with that scripture and others like it.”

I am surprised to her say she struggles with scripture at all. She is a doer. She wastes little time on theology talk or overt spirituality. She does, and does, and does. Her compassion and generosity are rarely equaled inside or outside the church but, she reveals to me, her spirit is never quite settled. Her eyes can always see more in need, her heart questions if she had taken too much for herself.

“Those are good questions,” I say, “they keep us from holding too tightly to our things.”

She nods. And the quiet that follows shows we both know she has shared something deep.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you must do big things to be important.

Sandwich Artist Philosophers

Overheard in line at Subway:

Vegetable Specialist: You should read this new Danielle Steele book.

Cashier: I don't like Danielle Steele

VS: You'll like this one, I can't put it down.

C: No thanks.

VS: No, really. You should read it.

C: Isn't Danielle Steele one of those romance books? I don't read romances.

VS: But it's soooooo good.

C: No, because life isn't like that. Those give you false hope.

VS: You should read it.

C: Cause it makes you think...Oh, maybe I'll meet someone just like that...or my life will maybe be like that. It give false hope.

VS: You should really read it, you'd like this one.

Thinking the Subway cashier was a wise and sensible young woman, I sat down to eat my lunch and pulled out my current reading, Thomas A Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ." I flipped the page and read:

Love often knows no limits; its impetuous fire leaps across every boundary. Love feels no burden, makes light of toil, strives for things beyond its strength. Love never tries to make out that anything is impossible; everything, in the eyes of love, is both possible and lawful. Love, then can do everything; many a task there is that love can fulfil and many a wish it can make effective, where the man who does not love is powerless and fails.

Love is ever on the watch; it rests, but does not slumber, is wearied but not spent, alarmed but not dismayed; like a living flame, a blazing torch, it shoots upward, fearlessly passing through aught that bars its path...'My God, my love, you are all mine and I all yours."

Hum. Devotional literature as Romance: false hope? Or spiritual insight?

Physical Therapy

Second of two posts previously posted on 7 villages website

Tuesday was tense. A reminder of how messy it is to be a part of people’s lives. Leaving church at 7:00pm I was stunned to see the sun had emerged from a week of clouds while I was ensconced in the office. And it was calm…barely a breeze…in Kansas…in March.

Slowly the realization dawned: there was still light left for a bike ride. Home. Quick. Grab the cycling clothes, helmet, shoes. On the bike…the wheels turn…and the day shifts.
Within minutes I know that what I need is speed.

I hammer the pedals.
Legs burn.
Heart thumps.
Breath is short.
Jars of Clay pounds on the radio in my mind:

Sometimes I cannot forgive
These days mercy cuts so deep
If the world was how it should be
Maybe I could get some sleep…

Sometimes when I lose my grip
I wonder what to make of heaven
All the times I thought to reach up
All the times I had to give…

All the cries of thirsty children
This is our inheritance
All the rage of watching mothers
This is our greatest offense

Oh my God
Oh my God
Oh my God


I slide home at dusk,
Knowing the day has been left on the path behind me.
And ministry calls me back, tomorrow.

Open Doors

The following post originally appeared on a site called 7villages, a mostly failed social networking expereince fostered by the United Methodist Church. I have shut down my 7V profile but wanted to save two pieces I had written there by posting them here.


She got stuck in the elevator yesterday.

Thankfully the custodian was still in the church building and knew where to find the door key. I waited outside the elevator until the doors were open, as helpless there as she was inside, watching for something to happen.

With a turn of the key the door opened to reveal her, 84 years old, standing in her cabled cardigan and knitted beret, as calm as could be. She looked as if the elevator had been stopped for 10 seconds, not ten minutes.

As she launched into a conversation with the custodian about how the key worked, I left and went back to my meeting. It wasn’t until hours later that I realized I had offered no pastoral care. Not a single word of encouragement or consolation, no, “I’m glad you’re out” or “thanks for your patience.” I guess it was the look on her face that showed me she didn’t need it.

She’s unflappable. Not completely, already in four months at this appointment I’ve seen pain and grief on her face. But really, she’s unflappable. And she’s not the only one. This place is full of bedrock members, with faith as deep as the ocean, with commitments to the church longer and stronger than I can imagine.

Today I am thankful for them. For their quiet, consistent, presence. For their witness to life as shaped by the rhythms of church. For the stories they hold in sacred memory, stories I want to hear.

Okay, that sounds like a lot from one moment outside the elevator. But sometimes you get a glimpse of who you want to be in 50 years. And that makes for a good day.

spring

I biked to work this afternoon. This means it is officially spring. I would have ridden this morning but I was afraid that the 47 degree start to the day would have left my fingers and toes too cold.

I live 3 miles from work and think I should be tough enough to bicycle commute in all kinds of weather. But I'm not. So I have to be satisfied with being eco-friendly for half the year, when the weather is warm. To my credit last year I did manage to ride a few times a week even when it was Kansas hot-hot summer last year. I anticipate doing so again.

Considering I have a desk job, bicycle commuting is a great thing. It gets me up and moving in the morning, gives a mid-day break and gets me home satisfied that my body accomplished something in the day, not just my mind and fingers. Assuming I go home for lunch, that's 12 miles just to and from work. That's good for body and soul.

I haven't yet made pastoral visits or trips to the hospital on my bike. But I should because most of my members live close enough to the church. Bicycle commuting is still enough of an oddity in Wichita that I worry a little what my parishioners might say if I rolled up to their house and unsnapped my helmet. Actually they would probably love it. Something else quirky for them to know about their pastor.

I've been thinking a lot about a sticker I saw two weeks ago at a lecture. It was made by "the simple way," an intentional community in inner-city Philadelphia. It said, "Dream Big....live small." I fail at that a lot. I use conveniences much more than I need to, especially convenience foods. But when my car stays in the garage and I get to my destination on two--no emission--wheels, I feel a little victory for small living.

morning dilemma

I like coffee. A great deal. I always drink it in the morning and often in the mid-afternoon and sometimes even in the evening as the day draws to a close because I like it that much. And even though it is now all, always decaf, because it turns out my digestive system cannot, in anyway, handle caffeine (a sure sign I am becoming an old woman) I still love coffee as much as I ever have. Maybe I love it even more now because I drink it without having to worry about staying up all night (see comment above re: old woman).

So you can imagine my disgust, really there is no other word for it, when I showed up at First United Methodist Church at 9:00 am on Saturday morning to discover that I would have to immediately abandon my coffee. I was there for an all day workshop on being “fired up” in my spiritual life and the fact that I was at some other church at 9:00 am on Saturday for an all day event was disgusting enough. But I was there, coffee in hand, ready to learn something, thinking God would help me set my 9:00 am attitude aside with a little time and help from the morning cup of joe.

Until I realized that, though we were going to be in the Sanctuary all day, and though they had church coffee set up in the foyer for those who were not snobby enough to bring their own vacuum insulated Starbucks cups with Starbucks coffee (which I am snobby enough to do), NO DRINKS ARE ALLOWED IN THE SANCTUARY. None. Nada.

Granted their sanctuary is decorated in almost white carpet and lightly colored pews and granted it is First Church so you have to expect some sort of prudish attitude. But this ban on drinks in our meeting space, this denial of the coffee in my hand as the workshop was about to start was almost more than I could take. I debated. Should I break the rule and sip discretely while sitting in a pew toward the back? That would be arrogant, satisfactory but arrogant. And considering this was a workshop on spiritual vitality, an act of brash rule-breaking didn’t seem a good way to start the day.

Should I stand at the doorway drinking my coffee in obvious protest of having to decide between the sweet black nectar and the workshop session? I did that for a few minutes but I am a sipper and it can take more than 45 minutes to finish off my tumbler. So standing at the door seemed a very awkward and impermanent solution. It would be obvious to all that I was a poor girl, an addict even, who could not relinquish her morning coffee. Which I was but I didn’t need the pity.

Should I toss the rest of my coffee and go into the workshop humbling myself to this ridiculous and false barrier constructed between coffee and the worship of God? Finally that is what I did. I went out the front door (into the 11 degree weather, which, mind you, was not the kind of atmosphere that encourages one to throw out perfectly good, hot, coffee) to toss my remaining liquid in the bushes. Only I didn’t want the door to close behind me lest I be locked out so I stretched and aimed my throw toward the bushes but fell a little short and managed to make a large coffee splat on First Church’s nice clean sidewalk. I only felt slightly sorry. The coffee colored reside felt like a silent memorial to my protest.

Note to all organizers of 9:00 am Saturday meetings. Hold them in rooms where coffee is allowed. It’s the Christian thing to do.