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.

dressing the altar

Thank goodness John Wesley was Anglican. If the Moravians had converted him I would probably never get the chance to change the paraments in the Sanctuary.

Not all of my colleagues understand the beauty of this. There are loads of pastors who delegate duties like parament changing to the worship committee or some good steward who likes to watch the calendar. Other churches have dismissed with paraments all together in favor of worship space that is more “contemporary” and lacks things like silly banners whose colors rotate according to an archaic code.

But the KS West Cabinet, in all its wisdom, appointed me to a church that still has paraments, carefully hung in a wall cabinet off of the Sanctuary, and to a congregation who expects them to be purple during Lent and white on Easter and red on Pentecost. It is one of my secret pleasures to change them myself.

I walk into the dark and quiet and cool Sanctuary and up onto the chancel where most of the congregation never goes. I move the Bible off the lectern and the candles from the altar and pull the bright and silky cloths from their resting place, neatly folding them over my arm while I hum some hymn or another. (in an empty Sanctuary, one is compelled to sing). At the sacristy closet I exchange one color for another and return to the chancel to restore what I have disturbed. With the new paraments hung, I step back to examine my work, pleased that I have once again kept sacred time.

It is a small and tangible moment of preparing the place for worship, for our worship, for our gathered praise to God. And it is an act physically more satisfying than the work I do at a static computer desk to get ready each Sunday. Changing the paraments is at once ancient and now, it is mundane and full of meaning, it is pastoral, it is prayer.

This afternoon I took down the white paraments of Transfiguration Sunday but left the altar and pulpit and lectern blank. Their barrenness is a sign of the stark nature of the Ash Wednesday ritual. No pretty cloths today. From dust you came, to dust you shall return.

Love letter

The following is part of a sermon I preached on January 18th. It still seems a little preposterous to write a letter on God's behalf. But in the preaching it seemed to touch people. So I only ask forgiveness for whatever hubris this reveals.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…and now faith, hope and love abide these three; and the greatest of these is love.” –1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13

What would it sound like if you and I received a letter from the one who loves us most in the whole wide world? What would a personal love letter from God sound like?

I’m not sure. I’m not at all sure. But it might sound like this…


Dear Woodland Congregation,

I am writing this to each one of you, personally, your name is on the envelope. I don’t mean, Woodland Untied Methodist Church, I mean your name. This is a letter meant for you, so take this personally. Don’t assume it’s for your neighbor or your friend or the one who has been here the longest or the one who is newest in the door. It’s not. It’s a letter for you.

I’m glad you’ve come today. I’m glad you’re sitting here reading this because there is something very important I want you to know. I love you.

That’s what I want to tell you. That is what I have been trying to tell you for as long as I have known you, and I have known you for as long as you have been you. I love you. That is what I have been wanting you to hear for as long as you have known me.

I realize this is hardly news. But you can never hear it too much, because you tend to forget. You tend to get wrapped up in the business of everyday life and you get bogged down with getting to work on time or keeping the dishes clean or having the energy to do life’s chores, and you forget how much I love you. You get tied up in stress that isn’t even yours to carry and you struggle with fights that aren’t yours to win and become distracted by trying to solve other people’s problems and you don’t have time to realize how much I love you.

But I do love you. In fact I love you more than anyone else you have ever known loves you. And I know what a powerful statement that is.

But I love you that much. And I do so knowing exactly who you are. There is no hiding part of yourself from me. That persona that you carefully construct for the world to see, the way you keep part of yourself separate from everyone around you, it doesn’t work with me. I know even the quiet thoughts of your heart, before a word is on your tongue I know it completely. And yet I love you. I know you work hard to protect yourself in the world but there is no need to cover up or cover over your mistakes with me. I’d like it better, actually, if you would admit them to me, come clean, be honest. It’s the only way our relationship can grow. Like I said it won’t be news to me, but it will help. It will help you feel my love.

Because even in the face of your biggest mistakes what I want to give you is forgiveness, the ultimate kind that only I can give. Forgiveness and mercy, those are part and parcel of my love. They come as a package deal.

I know it might be hard to believe, when I say that your honesty will help our relationship grow because you have been let down by love in the past. What you thought was whole and perfect love that would last a lifetime turned out not to be perfect. It turned out not to last. Over time and through your living your friendships have faltered, your family has been fractured and your romances have failed. But those are only partial loves. Those are only pale reflections of the love that I have to give. Even your biggest successes in loving are only a reflection of my love, and you have been far from perfectly successful. Don’t judge my love solely on the basis of what others have done or failed to do to you. The love I have to offer is whole and perfect, it is everlasting.

I don’t want you to think that this is easy for me, however. Real love, deep abiding love is always a costly affair. Love, though freely given, always requires something of the lover. To love is to give of one’s own self. And that is what I have done for you. I have given of myself, I have given all I have to give, for you. I have redeemed you because I want you to live in love with me forever. I trust you want that too. Tell me so, if you do.

I love you. I love you because it’s who I am. I am love. To know me is to know love and to know love is to know me. As I am present with you, and I have promised to be present with you always, my love is all around you. In fact you are surrounded by it right now, now and every single moment of your life, you are surrounded by my love. It is a basic fact of your existence that you are surrounded by my love. That should make a difference to you. It should effect how you live and what you do and how you treat those around you. Because it is yours, my love will never falter or fail, it is your eternal possession. That should make a difference to you.

I love you and I want you to grow, I want you to grow in my love. I want you to grow up, to mature and become more and more the person that I created you to be. You aren’t there quite yet but you are on the way. And with time and strengthened by my love there is no reason in the whole universe why you can’t continue to grow, in love with me. I look forward to watching what you will do, it gives me great pleasure to see you change and mature, to see you become the child I have envisioned you to be. And I have things for you to do. I have ideas about how you can make a difference in this world, how you can bring the truth and beauty and love that you know in me to places that need it. I am calling you, calling you by name to be a light for me, calling you to share my love.

I have already said that my love is yours, it is your eternal possession. Take that gift seriously but realize that it is not a static or stale gift. It is the kind of gift that I mean for you to give away. As I have loved you, so I want you to love others. Don’t worry that giving away your love will mean you have less. I am ready with an inexhaustible supply. Love is not a limited commodity. There is no limit in me, and there is no limit to how much I can love you.

So give it away. Give love away freely and without caution. Just as I have surrounded you in love, so I want you to love others. Surround one another with the same deep and abiding love that I have given you. Keep each others best interests at heart. Trust one another with your deepest pains and share your greatest joys. Be present for one another in times of need, keep track of one another. See gifts in one another and encourage their use. Celebrate one another and realize what a gift you are to each other. Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you.

And I mean all of you. There are a few among you who don’t always feel the full course of that love, there are a few who get left out or left aside in the love feast that you enjoy. Don’t forget a single one, for my sake, take care of all. I realize I’m asking you to do something difficult for you, for you can get crosswise with one another and end up annoyed, or even angry. But don’t let your disagreements tear down or block out the love that I have for you, for any of you, for all of you.

I love you. I’ll be telling you again because I know you will need to be reminded. You will feel close to me and distant from me, your perception of my love will ebb and flow. But regardless of how you are feeling, my love does not change. It surrounds you and upholds you and is with you always. Always.

Love,
God.

Amen.


Written by Rev Amy E Lippoldt.
Woodland United Methodist Church, 1100 W 15th St N, Wichita, KS