Church Planting Central

With high hopes for the future of the Diocese of Washington!

My address to the Clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington

The parable of the crude little life-saving station, known to few even after 57 years of circulation, is a remarkably adept appraisal of the tendency of faith communities to turn insular and artificial. The reasons I find it so appealing (as the Episcopal Church Center’s Officer for Church Planting and Ministry Redevelopment) are as follows:

 

1.)    It was written by one of our own, the past president of the House of Deputies to General Convention.

2.)    It uses “parable” format to explore what is, as well as what might be.

3.)    It skillfully critiques the tendency of religious communities to move toward a “Club” mentality.

4.)    It asks us to evaluate the “real time” contribution of faith communities by the actual difference they make in the lives of their surrounding community.

 

In the parable, there is a moment when what was a life-saving station turns into a Club. From there forward, the primary reason for joining that club was the benefit of membership. Previously, the primary motivation was that of serving the souls who normally would have been lost to shipwreck on that rocky seacoast. The impact of that shift is that, eventually, those rescued (now by independent contractors) were no longer welcomed into the Clubhouse. They first had to be cleaned up and made respectable!

 

 

Painful as that sounds, it is a remarkable depiction of the challenge facing religious leaders in the Christian movement today. That “Club” identity has been to known to society for so long that many of our finer churches are viewed by the large community as “a sort of club.” I personally want that to change, and in my lifetime!

 Apparently, that challenge is not the exclusive domain of the Episcopal Church. Leaders in our Mother Church (the Church of England) have been naming this as their reality for years. On page 11 of Mission-shaped church, Reverend Gordon Bates (then Bishop of Whitby in the Church of England) is quoted (from the Church Army News, April 1998) as claiming the following for his Church:

The consequences for a national church, used to operating among people and institutions on the assumptions of Christendom, are acute. The Church of England bases a significant part of its identity on its physical presence in every community, and on a ‘come to us’ strategy. But as community becomes more complex, mere geographical presence is no longer a guarantee that we can connect. The reality is that mainstream culture no longer brings people to the church door. We can no longer assume that we can automatically reproduce ourselves, because the pool of people who regard church as relevant or important is decreasing with every generation.

 The Church has got to realize its missionary responsibilities. We live in a society, whether that be urban or rural, which is now basically second or even third generation pagan once again; and we cannot simply work on the premise that all we have to do to bring people to Christ is to ask them to remember their long-held, but dormant faith. Very many people have no residue of Christian faith at all; it’s not just dormant, it’s nonexistent; in so many instances we have to go back to basics; we are in a critical missionary situation. (The text may be found, in its entirety, here: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf)

 I think the irony of Bishop Bates’ words is primarily lost on the Insider and the members of our exclusive Clubs! To the rest of the world, that irony is crystal clear: “We live in a society . . . which is now basically second or even third generation pagan once again” and that shift took place during centuries when we had a church in every neighborhood, offering Church-approved sermons and teachings and ministries every week.

We often hear sociologists and religious pundits proclaim the woes of postmodernity and their impact on congregational vitality. I have recently realized that my heart is hardened to such explanations. I’m convinced that the real problem is not the relativism of postmodernity. Nope, it’s much simpler than that. We have a near Pagan culture today primarily because we clergy have, for generations, managed clubs, not life-saving stations! Their sermons have reinforced the public’s growing sense of the church’s irrelevance. We have developed “club theology” that makes reverencing of the liturgical lifeboat a matter of personal and corporate piety. We have created high standards for membership which have little to do with the original values of the crude little life-saving station. We have placed burdens upon those recently rescued which we ourselves could not bear (to quote that crazy Rabbi from Nazareth). We have hired independent contractors to do the life-saving work and we wonder why the surrounding community would rather give to UNICEF than to support their local parish!

How did we come to the place where, both here and abroad, Church has become so irrelevant that families and couples and singles of all ages and orientations are more attracted to Yoga, “Sweat your Prayers” and Reading Rooms than to the somber tones of the local cleric proclaiming the glories of years past and the moral virtues of the privileged?

Bad theology and vending machine meals, I say. First, bad theology.

For a long time we've known that conformity is the obsession of religious institutions. It is the impulse behind credal confessions and our present rites of initiation, as well as our “Holy Orders process.” Institutions lose their power (or so they believe) when they give it away. They have less authority if they make it too easy to join the ranks of the elite – the clerics and insiders that manage ritual practice. (For more on that, read Peter Berger’s Noise of solemn assemblies.)

 The insistence on Conformity is also the impulse behind our fascination with orthodoxy. The institutional battles faced by each of our American Christian denominations are not concerned with how best to feed the poor or alleviate suffering or how to bring the greatest amount of hope and joy into “pagan” communities as Bishop Bates referencess them. Instead, we fight to retain franchise rights – who’s “in” and who’s “out” of the franchise – the One True Church. In reality, to misquote Forrest Gump, “orthodoxy is as orthodoxy does.” To whom does it make the greater difference whether or not a community member believes correctly regarding the “of one substance” controversy? Is it the rescue worker “hanging ten” on the rocky seacoast, poised to pull one more shipwrecked soul out of the storm? Or is it the Club manager concerned to maintain the purity of the membership’s rolls?

In reality, theology is relationship language that needs to be rescued from the grip of academia and philosophy. The formation of theology is, at its best, indigenous – that is, locally formed and tested in relationship. It cannot be reified any more than manna could have been stockpiled for peoples of another culture, or another time. It cannot be “fixed” or established or codified. Jesus must have known this since we have no record of his having turned to a scribe (anywhere or anytime in his ministry) to ask that he correctly record his teachings so that the movement would get started on the right theological footing. We also have no record that Jesus ever baptized any of his followers into the right movement!

Now to my point on vending machine meals. There is nothing more dull than going forward to receive “a crisp and a shot” from robed holy people, in my humble opinion, though we have made it desirable and “holy” through many years of tradition and back-pedaled theology. Those of you Insiders who love the Eucharistic celebration as it is, please block your ears and bear with me! The Liturgical Lifeboat is still a means of grace for you and I honor that.

 

In reality, most of the outsiders who might come to our Eucharistic Celebrations are actually looking for the Johannine “Feeding of the 5000” rather than the “Last Supper.” And, if you show up longing to share meals around a new family table because your life is spinning out of control or because you just found out that your birth family isn’t the family you always thought it was or because you don’t have the resources to buy your own next meal, a “crisp and a shot” just doesn’t quite do it. Instead, it feels sort of like punching a button on a machine owned by a Pepsi distributing franchise.

 

Based on all of that, I ask myself constantly, “What would it take for these ‘pagans” to try out a community of faith, once again?” Before I can even get to that question, I have to ask, “Why would a community of faith want to reconnect with the ‘pagans’ in their community?” (I have well-earned misgivings about clubhouse Christianity’s tendency to mimic Procrustes’ bait and switch hospitality!)

  

That was the very question that Jesus addresses when, against his followers’ better judgment, he feeds everybody present, not just the true confessing followers! He offers them a meal so exuberantly generous that there are 12 baskets left over! There’s no vending machine mentality here! There’s a sense of Divine wastefulness that draws even the most curmudgeonly among us to give of our best, and freely!

 

What might Jesus have been offering his followers? A Divine call to repentance, I’d say! Repent, not of sins that the “holy” fuss and fume about, from their pulpits! Those are symptoms of brokenness, not the cause! Repent of the cause – that of living a life based on Fear – the human dynamic most diametrically opposed to love. Fear that they  would run out. Fear of dying. Fear of failure. Fear that would keep us from trusting the Spirit so totally that we too might give up our lives for the sake of finding Life.

 

Now here is the hard part. I serve an anxious institution – the Episcopal Church. It is being served and led by some really remarkable people who struggle to address these questions, faithfully, these days. It is not an easy calling or vocation to offer, mostly because it is really hard to sort out the Club practices and values from those of the crude little life-saving station. Much of the time, we live in the gray realm between those two. But I, and others, constantly ask, “How would we behave and what would we do differently if we really got over our fear and moved to a deep and passionate love for the world that the Spirit loves so dearly?”

 

Here are my quick answers. I welcome yours.

 

1.)    Invest our material resources (our buildings and property and bank accounts) in developing new communities of faith that are contemporary embodiments of the crude little life-saving stations described in the parable.

2.)    Give up our need to define and control orthodoxy. Get rid of club membership rolls.

3.)    Bless (whether you call it “ordination” or not) all those offering ministry of any kind.

4.)    Start conducting ourselves as if we really believed that “we are the stories that we tell.” Start trusting the indigenous nature of “doing theology” and better develop the capacity to “sense” the Spirit at work.

5.)    Learn what it means to become “Birthing Centers” for the midwifing of new ministry.

6.)    Get comfortable with recycling clubs back into life saving stations, where the focus is on the outsider, more than on the needs of the insider.

 

Let me offer, in closing, that I feel quite vulnerable in sharing this publicly. I know that it may not be seen as in keeping with the Scripture, Tradition and Reason stool that we pride ourselves in as Episcopalians. But, as a friend of mine recently asked, “What are we supporting with that stool we love so much?” My motivation is not to critique our denomination and its traditions so much as it is to provoke us to get back to the mission and practices of the crude little life-saving station. My dream is that we (presently, members of clubs) might long for the rewriting of the parable. My dream is that, in my lifetime, or in my daughter’s lifetime, a new leader would reflect on this Kairos moment and rewrite the parable, “History continued to repeat itself, but if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of crude little life-saving stations as well as clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people are pulled to safety. Oh Happy Day!

 

 

Let us pray: “Oh God, open our eyes to see Your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” Amen

 

(from Eucharistic Prayer C, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer)

May we talk candidly, here?

This last Saturday, I heard myself explain to a group of relative strangers that, in my lifetime, I have already survived 4 significant church splits, from the inside. By "from the inside" I mean that I experienced the incredible pain of broken relationships and schism, personally. I'm pretty sure that no pain was ever so acute as that of showing up on a Sunday morning and discovering that "theological differences" now separated me from those whom I have long loved. One morning, we are discovering God together and the next, we are strangers, cut off from sharing our hearts.

The Psalmist put it this way,

"It is not enemies who taunt me—
   I could bear that;
it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—
   I could hide from them. 
But it is you, my equal,
   my companion, my familiar friend, 
with whom I kept pleasant company;
   we walked in the house of God with the throng."

Is not this insane behavior, especially, in the name of God? Has it not always been insanity? I confess that, for thirty years, these splits and their fallout have been the greatest sources of pain in my life!

Please know that I am committed to supporting the development of new ministries in our Christian tradition but that I especially long for faith communities that take seriously the call to live into the fruits of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5: " love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." 

This morning, a friend sent me a link to Jonathan Sacks and Krista Tippet working their way through "The dignity of difference." I was especially struck by the candor with which England's Chief Rabbi claims that the future of civilized society depends on us getting this right. I was reminded of Ken Wilbur's claim that only religion can uncork the fundamentalist pressure cooker that threatens all of us.

There is a popular bumper sticker around Asheville that states "We still pray" (in reaction to the local moves to separate church matters from state matters). If ever there was a time to pray publicly, it is now. The prayer that I would offer is one that has been with me for 20 years.

"Spirit of God, open our hearts to hear the words you would speak to us and open our spirits to reflect on their meaning.  But most of all, we ask that You would open our arms and our lives to each other that we might discover your Presence, right here in the broken bread of our lives."

My fervent prayer is that we commit ourselves to a generous orthodoxy that prizes a new fidelity to the faith once delivered to the saints. This would be the kind of orthodoxy that remembers the humble claim of our founder, "Greater love hath no one than this, than that one would lay down their life for that friend." That kind of love is why I am here today!

Referenced:

The Dignity of Difference (November 11, 2010) as aired via "On Being" which can be found here: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/dignity-of-difference/

K. Wilber's Integral Spirituality

Psalm 55

Galatians 5

Shuffling deck chairs . . . ?

 

Critics of organized religion seem to observe a perennial return to the sinking of the HMS Titanic 98 years ago as metaphor for the failing of American denominationalism. The conversation where this pops up is usually about some seemingly banal aspect of the organized part of organized religion. The retort often goes like this, “They’re shuffling deck chairs on the fantail.”[1] The lore says that, right up until the last second (before the Great Ship went under), the band was playing and the revelers were moving deck chairs around for a better view. In other words, the implication is that the leaders of organized religion are so oblivious to the realities evident to everyone else that they are still shuffling deck chairs instead of heading over to the lifeboats, along with the rest of the band.

Lately, I’ve been rethinking the slur, but in a surprising way. What’s dawned on me is the question, “Why would we compare ourselves to the Titanic in the first place?” Certainly no expression of faith communities would intentionally compare themselves to a luxury liner whose privileged passengers rode nearly 75 feet above the realities of the ocean. Or, maybe it is the myth of the invincible Titanic that encourages the comparison – I don’t know. In any case, I’m pretty sure that the comparison between the Titanic and institutional church are not helpful.

But . . . followers of the Rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth have never ridden (for long) in any luxury liner unassailable by the realities of the average person. Those committed to rescuing the drowning certainly would not attempt to offer help from ten stories up! I’ve come to think that it’s actually these images of faith communities (and their hierarchies) that need to hit the iceberg of our current realities. By the way, if you’re into nautical metaphors, you might try on a far more helpful metaphor known as the “Parable of the Crude Little Life-saving Station.” You’ll find that right here. 

 

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[1] Actually means: actions taken solely for the feeling (or the appearance) of doing something about an unavoidable situation; actions that not only accomplish nothing but *blatantly* accomplish nothing. (Found at the Urban Dictionary online on October 18^th, 2010 at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=it's%20like%20shuffling%20deck%20chairs%20on%20the%20titanic)

Welcome to our “3rd Thursdays @ 3” gathering for church planters and new ministry developers!

 

Your hosts for this call are Frank Logue and Tom Brackett.

 

Here's how you join us via WebEx at 3:00 Eastern on July 15th:

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I invite you to look over my shoulder at this exchange ...

... because it typifies the ambivalence we struggle with regarding the fresh leadership we seek. With permission (and considerable "Scrubbing"), I am excerpting from an exchange between an Episcopal institution and a soon to be ordained transitional deacon. The institution is clearly looking for an entrepreneurial leader who will boldly go where most cannot yet imagine and they see that this Candidate is clearly qualified for the work, but there is that "2 years' experience" piece.

I invite you to witness the interplay here between traditional protocol and new possibilities. What do you imagine might be the "third way?" Here goes . . .

An email dialogue between a soon-to-be-ordained ‘transitional’ deacon and the search committee chair for a campus chaplaincy

APPLICANT:  I noted that that one of the things you’re seeking is someone with 2+ years of ordained ministry experience.  While I can’t offer that yet (I’m being ordained to the ‘transitional’ diaconate in June), I do bring a strong array of Episcopal Church leadership, ministry, and pastoral experience (parish, diocesan, and national); university student affairs experience (including at a large, prestigious university like XYZ) complemented by directly relevant professional experience in high-profile program/forum development; and broad life experience having lived and worked in a number of interesting places in my forty years on the planet.  If we mutually discern a good fit otherwise for this role at your university, I bet that with the help of our bishops, we can arrange for a timely ordination to the priesthood (God willing and people consenting, of course).  Perhaps this is a matter of kairos and chronos needing to dance together creatively (grin).

CHAIR: As you saw, we are asking that applicants have 2+ years or ordained experience, and we do take that seriously.  We put that there because we believe that the chaplain will need to work independently right off the bat, and that most new priests strongly benefit from a first call in which there is an on-site mentor of some kind.  While this position has several supportive colleagues, its work flow isn't designed for the learning curve that most new priests experience. However, all that said, if you feel that God is calling you to be the next Episcopal chaplain at our university, then you certainly need to apply.  If that is indeed how you feel, we are happy to review your materials as we would any other candidate's.  As to ordination status, again, while it is important to us that our chaplain would be able to celebrate the Eucharist upon beginning his or her ministry here, if our committee believes strongly that you are called to serve here, then indeed perhaps our sense of chronos will have to adjust.

APPLICANT:   The shorter-term challenges of coming into this role without benefit of two years of ‘ordained’ experience are outweighed by confidence in the strength of the leadership experience that I do bring and the longer-term vision of a mutually rewarding ministry opportunity for years to come.  I do appreciate the wisdom in and rationale for seeking a candidate with 2+ years of ordained experience.  And, I realize that this position lacks the mentored guidance and support that curates and associates sometimes have (when things work well).  Some of the other emergent and mission type work that I’ve been considering also present a similar challenge – immediately serving as the primarily liturgical and pastoral authority without having a more senior priest immediately at-hand. I also acknowledge that dynamics (expectations people have of you, your own self-perception, need to maintain different boundaries, etc.) are different once you begin ‘ordained’ ministry – one can only come to know this by experience with it.  Given all these realities, I’m reminded of biblical stories of leaders being called before they appeared to be totally ‘ready.’  Sometimes, such situations that appeared irrational initially, with time, begin to reveal the beauty of God’s work unfolding in ways that surprise and delight.  Without minimizing the real challenge here, let me offer some thoughts about how I will approach this:   

1. I’ll approach this with a humble heart, beginner’s mind, and a faithful disposition.  While I will be often working independently (and long hours, I expect), I also know that I don’t labor alone - God is at work with us, there is a network of others (peers and mentors) who I can call upon for advice and guidance on occasion, and there are colleagues there on your campus with whom I’ll be collaborating.  Also, I do possess the basic skills we need in order to celebrate study of the Word and worship at Christ’s table.
2. I’ll leverage the unique blend of study and practice through which I’ve been formed - practical preparation for ordained leadership received in my recent seminary program as well as real-life experience over the last couple of years in a parish in which I’ve supported both a retiring rector, and now a new interim, in ways that would otherwise have been fulfilled by a deacon or associate had we had them on our team.
3. Because I’ve faced steep learning curves before when taking on high-profile leadership roles, and because I’ve worked before in demanding and sometimes unpredictable student services positions (including at a similarly large and prestigious university), I’m not as anxious about those aspects of this opportunity and can therefore redirect constructive anxiety toward additional preparation for and practice around the ‘ordained’ responsibilities.  
4. Lastly, my intuition is that the XYZ University community is predisposed to utilitarian practicality and experimental, iterative learning.  So perhaps, initially, my being just a few critical steps ahead of the group with regard to providing helpful structure and information as Chaplain, rather than presumptions about my possessing everything we need from the beginning, might be a helpful platform from which to invite and build mutual trust and the collective sense that we’re really “in this thing” (read: church, body of Christ, etc.) together.  My institutional knowledge and priestly know-how will increase year after year to the benefit of our chaplaincy presence at XYZ University.  And, it will be important for me to continually rekindle the originally heightened awareness and potentiality of my beginner’s mindset when cultivating fellowship and leadership through the program there with each new entering class of students.  I.e., memories and stories from the challenges of my first year as Chaplain at XYZ University can be used creatively with each new generation of student leaders and seekers.

CHAIR:  Thanks for your email and your reflections on how you might approach this ministry as your first ordained call.  I find that very helpful, and we will share this email with the committee as we review your file.

CHAIR (two weeks later):  On behalf of the entire discernment committee, I want to thank you again most warmly for your willingness to participate in this process with us.  We've been blessed by the interest of many talented, dedicated clergy people in the future of our ministry here, including yourself.  Through your materials, it has been a pleasure to come to know a little bit about who you are and the gifts you have to offer in ministry to the people of God. At this point, though, our discernment process has led us in another direction, and we do not expect you to be among those we will be calling for an interview.  Once again, we are very grateful to you for entering into this conversation with us, and we wish you every blessing in your future ministry.  Please keep our discernment committee in your prayers, as we do you. Warm regards.

Can we learn from this -- might this be relevant for us in communities of faith?

Harvard Business Review Magazine, April 2010

 

Column: Why Businesses Don’t Experiment (by Dan Ariely)

 

A few years ago, a marketing team from a major consumer goods company came to my lab eager to test some new pricing mechanisms using principles of behavioral economics. We decided to start by testing the allure of “free,” a subject my students and I had been studying. I was excited: The company would gain insights into its customers’ decision making, and we’d get useful data for our academic work. The team agreed to create multiple websites with different offers and pricing and then observe how each worked out in terms of appeal, orders, and revenue.

 

Several months later, right before we were due to go live, we had a meeting about the final details of the experiment—this time with a bigger entourage from marketing. One of the new members noted that because we were extending differing offers, some customers might buy a product that was not ideal for them, spend too much money, or get a worse deal overall than others. He was correct, of course. In any experiment, someone gets the short end of the stick. Take clinical medical trials, I said to the team. When testing chemotherapy treatments, some patients suffer more so that, down the road, others might suffer less. I hoped this put it in perspective. Fortunately, I said, price testing household products requires far less suffering than chemo trials.

 

But I could tell I was losing them. In a sense, I was impressed. It was a beautiful human sentiment they were conveying: We care about all customers and don’t want to treat any one of them unfairly. A debate ensued among the group: Are we willing to sacrifice some customers “just” to learn how the new pricing approaches work?

 

They hedged. They asked me what I thought the best approach was. I told them that I was willing to share my intuition but that intuition is a remarkably bad thing to rely on. Only an experiment gives you the evidence you need. In the end, it wasn’t enough to convince them, and they called off the project.

 

This is a typical case, I’ve found. I’ve often tried to help companies do experiments, and usually I fail spectacularly. I remember one company that was having trouble getting its bonuses right. I suggested they do some experiments, or at least a survey. The HR staff said no, it was a miserable time in the company. Everyone was unhappy, and management didn’t want to add to the trouble by messing with people’s bonuses merely for the sake of learning. But the employees are already unhappy, I thought, and the experiments would have provided evidence for how to make them less so in the years to come. How is that a bad idea?

 

Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies. And yet, companies won’t experiment to find evidence of the right way forward.

 

I think this irrational behavior stems from two sources. One is the nature of experiments themselves. As the people at the consumer goods firm pointed out, experiments require short-term losses for long-term gains. Companies (and people) are notoriously bad at making those trade-offs. Second, there’s the false sense of security that heeding experts provides. When we pay consultants, we get an answer from them and not a list of experiments to conduct. We tend to value answers over questions because answers allow us to take action, while questions mean that we need to keep thinking. Never mind that asking good questions and gathering evidence usually guides us to better answers.

 

Despite the fact that it goes against how business works, experimentation is making headway at some companies. Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, tells me he’s trying to create a culture of experimentation in which failing is perfectly fine. Whatever happens, he tells his staff, you’re doing right because you’ve created evidence, which is better than anyone’s intuition. He says the organization is buzzing with experiments.

 

And so is that consumer goods company. A group there is studying consumer psychology and behavioral economics and is amassing evidence that’s impressive by any academic standard. Years after our false start, they’re recognizing the dangers of relying on intuition.

 

http://hbr.org/2010/04/column-why-businesses-dont-experiment/ar/pr

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

 

Written By

Dan Ariely (dandan@duke.edu) is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational (HarperCollins, 2008).

Challenge #4: Let go of our insistence on conformity

 

The idea of midwifing the work of the Spirit may seem more comfortable now. You might even be a church planter starting out on your first walkabout to explore exactly what God might be doing in your new neighborhood. You commit yourself to openness and a genuine sense of curiosity. You pack up your clipboard and camera and head out into your world to spot what it is that you may be called to midwife. As you walk down Main Street in your neighborhood, a question occurs to you: “Might it be that the Spirit arrived here before I did?” After that initial query, others follow: “What kind of work might the Spirit have been doing in this community, prior to the arrival of my church planting initiative? Might it be that God was out here reconciling the world to himself before there were any church-sponsored faith formation classes or evangelism or discipling going on? How, then, might I come alongside and simply be present to and then celebrate the Spirit’s work?”

 

 

    A key step in that direction would be to acknowledge that all theology is, in reality, indigenous. That is, theology springs up from the community in which it is experienced. It is formed in community and tested in relationship. In fact, we might say that theology, outside of philosophical pursuits, is relationship language – language that reflects the relationship of the individual and the community to the divine. If we take that claim to heart, we might loosen our ecclesiastical control mechanisms enough to make space for a community to design and lead worship and construct an organizational life that matches their culture and their theology.

 

 

    Consider the following example of what such a process might look like in practice. Recently, I was contacted by a community organizer who had served on her diocese’s Executive Council for two terms. She and a team of friends had identified a neighborhood with particular unmet needs and had pooled their financial resources to start an after-school drop-in program for Latino and Hispanic children, as well as a weekend club for the Asian youth in the area. They opened their doors two and a half years ago and now have an average of 130 families attending their weekly parenting classes.

 

 

  Recently they asked the parents, one by one, whether there was interest in starting a worship gathering based on the Book of Common Prayer but shaped by the community’s creative responses to the Spirit’s work in their midst. With the exception of two families, the response was an enthusiastic “Yes!” For the last eight months, they have gathered. They start each of their service planning sessions with the sharing of a meal and samples of people’s favorite spiritual music playing in the background. They then share stories of encounters with God at work in the world, and then explore participants’ best experiences with God, identifying common themes that consistently emerge. The evening session ends with prayers offered by the participants, often written for that evening’s gatherings.

 

 

    This team of service planners has named their goal as “the creation of indigenous ritual that honors an Anglican way of being in the world by adhering to the shape of the Book of Common Prayer’s forms for worship.” Everyone has always been welcome to attend and participate in this process. They are now gathering commitments for a “First Sunday in Advent” launch date for this new worshipping community. The community leaders set the goal of having 250 people attend their first service. During the Prayers of the People, they will show video clips of stories from those present – stories of the ways they have encountered God in their everyday lives. They are planning to have translators for three languages in each of their services.

 

 

    But then comes the risk. Recently, the two co-leaders approached their diocesan leaders with a rather novel request. They asked the bishop to help them find a priest who would contract with them to fulfill a priest’s sacerdotal responsibilities in their weekly service, and no more. They specifically requested a priest who would honor the order of service as the community had planned it (and as the bishop had pre-approved it). They will handle all of the other pastoral care responsibilities with lay leaders trained via the Diocesan School of Ministry. The priest will be “called” permanently, though contracted six months at a time and paid weekly for his or her Sunday ministry. The rest of the ministry will be managed by non-ordained leaders, primarily on a volunteer basis. They are still waiting to find that priest.

 

 

    This is one of the more exciting examples of a creative response to a community’s real needs. It also offers a model of ministry midwifery where the priest is a member of the team, but not necessarily the leader. If we can let go of the need for conformity, indigenous ministries like this one could truly flourish.

Midwives, Midwifing and, "What's emerging, anyway?" Challenge #1

Lately, I've come to believe that the Spirit has been birthing aspects of the future that She has longed to make known from before time. I also sense that the Spirit longs for partners in that holy process of making all things new. Our highest calling may be to discover, midwife and then celebrate all that the Spirit is birthing in our midst as well as out there in the world. To take this new model for ministry seriously, though, we must face some daunting challenges.

Challenge #1: Make the transition from leaders prized for institutional expertise to leaders skilled in midwifing new forms of ministry

One trainer of midwives explained to me that, by the very nature of their work, midwives offer a covenant for presence, that is, they commit to being fully present to the one giving birth, to that which is being birthed, as well as to the actual birthing process. This wise woman impressed on me that the midwife cannot offer any guarantees, only a covenant. This is also a covenant for purpose: to offer every resource available for the sake of a complete birthing process. Finally, in her own words, the trainer insisted that this is also a covenant between the midwife and the whole family to fully participate in whatever happens.

Speaking practically, when an experienced midwife walks in to work with a mother about to give birth that day, her initial concerns are around some very specific issues. She asks the mother about the timing of her contractions. Her sensors are discerning the suitability of the environment; the supportiveness of the family, the mother’s mood and whether or not the baby about to come into this world is experiencing distress. In other words, she is pacing the process of this delivery and coming alongside. Unlike some of the busy doctors in our large hospitals, most midwives can afford to let the mother’s process set the pace of their interactions. This is an incredible model for new ministry today. If we were to adopt this way of being in the world – if we were to take on the role of midwife to the Spirit – we might be called to move into unfamiliar environments to sense exactly what it is that the Spirit might be birthing out there.

    Would it not make a tremendous difference if we were to train our church leaders in the art and science of midwifery, as well as everything else we think they need to know? Imagine if we asked our clergy to consider the high calling of midwifing that which the Spirit is birthing in their respective communities? To speak of ourselves as incarnational communities would take on a whole new meaning. Instead of our rice paper communion wafers held up as the ultimate symbol of God’s presence, “that which is being birthed” might call us to prepare a sumptuous meal intentionally shared with strangers-now-guests. We might even hold up the stories of the Spirit’s in-breaking presence outside of church as evidence of Emmanuel, proof that “God is with us.” Such a shift would ask us to consider story-listening as an advanced level of evangelism – listening for evidences that God is at work, that the Spirit is birthing new life, that God is alive and well.

    It is this very sort of evangelism that set up the birthing station known to many around the world as “Common Cathedral.”[i] When Debbie Little-Wyman encountered people of the street loitering around the steps of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston in the 1990s, she eventually sat down next to them and listened deeply for their stories of hope and for signs of grace. Eventually, Debbie realized that not only was there a growing number of homeless people eager to join a community of faith – she also realized that she was being called to midwife that emerging reality.

It was initially a stretch for church leaders to recognize Debbie’s call to the priesthood or to see her gathering at a fountain on Boston Common as a viable congregation. Little did she know it, but Debbie was actually midwifing a ministry that would eventually become the birthing station for dozens more street ministries around the world. Today, when seminarians from various denominations visit her “Come and See” weekends to learn the nuts and bolts of this birthing station ministry, it is common to hear remarks like, “I only wish that this is what I was learning in seminary, right now.”

The Church would be a different place if our seminaries taught these skills of community organizing, deep listening, transformational interviewing and action/inquiry. Within a generation, we might value birthing stations like the one Debbie Little-Wyman and Duncan and Ann Petty and many others have created every bit as much as our fine Cathedral ministries!

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[i] For more information, consult Common Cathedral’s website: http://www.ecclesia-ministries.org.

Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit, part 3

From Hospice Ward to Birthing Center

On my return to the United States, I immediately gathered a group of leaders in the Episcopal Church, as well as staff at the Episcopal Church Center. The point of our six conversations was to explore practical responses to my learnings in the United Kingdom to our US context. These leaders helped me reflect on my day-to-day encounters with both innovative and declining ministries across the Episcopal Church. I began to notice an awakening of sorts among many of our church’s leaders. There seems to be a new impatience with the old models of church and church leadership passed to us from the “inherited church.”[1]

 

Many of our church leaders are realizing that, for most of their careers, they have been offering a kind of hospice ministry to their congregations and dioceses. It is not just the flagging attendance and the graying of our denomination’s membership that push them to acknowledge the ennui of our beloved institutions. It is also the noted absence of fresh visions and dreams that would normally bubble up from our younger members. There seems to be a fresh hunger for the Spirit’s promise to give above and beyond anything that we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21).

At the same time, there are also many leaders who are eager to maintain our structures and habits just a little longer. Many of them left their seminary experiences years ago confident that, if they just offered excellent ministry and relevant preaching, there was hope of reversing the declining trends, at least on a local level. Today, they faithfully and persistently make up for declining offerings and pledges by working harder and longer towards a balanced budget and for their stipends. Their best-attended services seem to be those remembering the good old days – the High Holy Golden Days of the Church of Yesterday. There are others who are convinced that only a return to orthodoxy will secure God’s blessings on our ecclesiastical ventures.

    It is not so difficult to understand how the Church arrived at this state of affairs. Even today, most of our seminarians are trained to coordinate the ministries of churches whose identities were cast in a pre-modern era, the earliest days of Christendom. (By “Christendom” I refer to the offspring produced by the official marriage of the early Christian movement to the Roman Empire.) Furthermore, most of our mainline denominations were assembled on a theological framework cobbled together at a time when the Church’s authority was granted by the state and the Church operated from the center of society. In those halcyon days, the leaders of our churches were seen as the keepers of all that is good and whole and Godly. It was their calling to bring God to the world – to introduce the Christian life to the “lost” out there. The world changed, but the calling has yet to be recast. And so, many leaders find themselves engaged in hospice care for denominations and churches in their latter days.

Rest assured, I am convinced that hospice ministry to declining congregations is desperately needed today. It is a challenging and significant ministry, primarily because it calls us to face our own mortality, as well as our (as yet unredeemed) addictions to certainty and insured outcomes. We all want to think of ourselves as resurrection people. Sadly, many of us are so eager to arrive at Easter morning that we skip over the trauma of Good Friday – primarily because we dare not look into the face of death, especially the death of our church, our diocese or our denomination.

Friends of mine who make a living as hospice chaplains tell me that, when a patient dies, the most difficult family member to engage is the one who hid away from most of the patient’s dying process, acting as though their loved one would eventually get better. Though perhaps not in such a morbid way, I believe many of our theologians and church leaders struggle with that same urge. It is simply easier to turn away from the death and dying process in our midst, to pretend we are still at the center of society and that the world still cares deeply about our educated opinion. The alternative – facing the loss of roles that once defined us, loss of control, loss of what might have been – is too much to bear BUT, is that not exactly what we need, at this moment in our life together?

(to be continued, tomorrow)

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[1] This is a term used in the “Mission-shaped Church” report issued by the Archbishop’s Council in the Church of England. A downloadable version can be found at www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf.

Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit, part 1

At 2:00 p.m. on March 23, 2009, I began a journey of discovery with a remarkable group of leaders in the Church of England. It started when Reverend Chris Jones picked me up at the Liverpool Train Station and invited me to join several clergy for an afternoon training. For the next three weeks, I witnessed the Pioneer Ministries sponsored by the Church of England’s Fresh Expressions agency, the Church Missionary Society and the Church Army. Via the hospitality of leaders in three dioceses, I witnessed transformative ministries in five metropolitan areas, as well as several in more rural areas. During this remarkable tour, I plied nearly everyone I met with a question: “If you knew twenty years ago what you know now about the impact of secularization on the relationship of English culture to the Church of England (and vice versa), how might you have prepared the institution differently for those emerging realities?” Most of the leaders I interviewed understood that I was not asking a rhetorical question, that I came to them eager to explore a perspective that might inform our leadership in the Episcopal Church. Of the 76 people I queried, I filled a notebook with the highlights of 42 conversations.

 

Here is the gist of what they shared: “Twenty years ago, we were unintentionally pushing our young people out the back doors of our churches – mostly through indifference to the gifts they tried to offer. The long term impact of that benign neglect is that we traded a generation of young leaders and artists and prophets for various attempts to maintain the status quo. Today, we are working on bringing new young leaders into our churches, but that’s not the same as nurturing the prophetic voice in community – training new leaders to cultivate community with a hoe instead of directing with the verger’s mace. That takes time to develop. It’s an art of ‘being in community’ that very few have ever experienced, nonetheless mastered.”

 

I pressed my conversation partners further and asked, “So then, how would you recommend that we Americans might respond to this hard-earned wisdom you’ve offered?” Their answers were straightforward: “Start now – don’t wait until you have this all figured out. Experiment joyfully and publicly with new forms of ministry that match the cultures in which you find your ministries. Fail early and fail often until you learn what works. Learn to trust the young prophets in your midst and don’t be afraid when the visions they share are out beyond your comfort zones. Be daring and be bold!”

 

(to be continued tomorrow . . .)

What Innovators (in both ministry and industry) taught me in 2009

Ministry Innovators who thrive are those who are aware of institutional dynamics that inhibit innovation, as well as organizational strengths in the institution on which they can build! Two sources: Orbiting the giant hairball and Kawasaki's Art of the start

 

If you lead (or hope to lead) a ministry within the Episcopal Church that is shaped by a response to the real needs of the local community, create a core group of leaders who understand what it is to “borrow” the best wisdom and practice from the inherited (traditional) church but find ways to minimize tensions between the two. (Look at the Church of England’s fresh perspective on the “Mixed Economy” approach for more on this!)

 

If you’ll be sporting the Episcopal Church brand while innovating new ministry, innovate strategically. Gather to yourself (and your leadership team) strategic thinkers who understand what it means to innovate, as well as what it means to work strategically. Strategic ministry and the discernment processes are often counter-intuitive to leaders expected to maintain the status quo.

 

Fail early and fail often in order to discover what works. Remember that the cost of failure is the sum of two factors: 1.) the probability of failure times 2.) the cost per incident of failure. We want to raise the first and lower the second. (Read, Here comes everybody for more on this.)

 

Get comfortable with the idea that the outcomes of truly innovative ministries in our mainline denominations are hard to predict and budget. Inevitably, they lose money (think “investment”) and few denominational leaders know how to evaluate their merit in the crucial first years. For institutions in decline (like our own Episcopal Church), the value of sponsoring new and innovative ministries is the learning they will offer us about the shape of ministries to come, NOT on the profit they turn or the immediate sustainability issues that tend to dominate these conversations.

 

Engaging strategic innovations usually requires the leader to “make the path by walking.” For leaders, this means “living on the edge.” Most of us are good at taking action; some of us are good inquiring into what is working and what might work better. Doing both simultaneously is not as easy as it sounds. (Read Action inquiry for more on this practice.) Leading such innovation (especially in the assumption-rich world of organized religion) requires emerging clarity shared with fresh language, symbols and stories matched up with nurturing a core team that knows to ask two questions, CONSTANTLY. Question 1: “What did we do well, just then?” Question 2: “What might we do better, next time?”

 

One of the key indicators of vital and ongoing innovation (which includes lots of failures, lots of learnings, lots of adjustments, lots of successes and lots of learnings) is a perennial joy. (That’s right – it’s not a typo – “joy.”) Best advice to the innovator from other innovators: Keep the joy; lose the institutional anxiety!

 

I like that! Keep the joy; lose the anxiety!