Church Planting Central

For all of our sakes, would you please sit?

Stephen Pressfield writes the following:

"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write."

Stephen is describing resistance - the same "resistance" that many of us encounter when we try offering our corresponding art forms, like ministry, leadership, mentoring, innovating and even "companioning." Such a high holy art form that is - that of companioning each other into courageous acts of compassion and generosity. Oftentimes, this shows up as mentoring leaders but sometimes it's just about companioning our partners, spouses, children or better yet, ourselves!

Often, rather than deal with my own resistance to producing that relationship art - that hard work of co-creating new possibiities, I'd rather blog about it, or read books on it, or theorize about why the changing context of "companioning ministries" is calling for new paradigms or models or theories in action. (At this point, I remember an episode of "arrested development" that featured an attorney by the name of Bob Loblaw! Feels like that, at this point! I mean, how many books and blogs and speakers tours and conventions do we need before we explode with the profundity of it all?)

I really like Pressfield's scoop on "resistance." Rather than moralize or totalize, he just "presents a rogue's gallery of the many manifestations of Resistance (as found in the Preface). "You will recognize each and every one, for this force lives within us all—self-sabotage, self-deception, self-corruption. We writers know it as "block," a paralysis whose symptoms can bring on appalling behavior."

Ellen deGeneres does a fantastic bit on procrastination (or the mismanagement of resistance) in one of her DVD releases of stand-up routines. Seth Godin walks us through managing resistance in "Linchpin" - a provocative primer on releasing the art you are here to produce.

After re-reading Pressfield's work on the the WAR of ART, I am provoked. The provocation is to be clear about when I am giving in to the resistance and when I am courageously offering the best I have to "ship out" in that moment. It's like I need the Zen Master to sneak up behind me and thunk me with the reed to wake me up out of my stupor - languoring in tasks that don't match my strengths, don't embody my recent "Yes's" to Spirit, don't leave me motivated to try on even more courage.

Here is what I would ask you! What is your equivalent to sitting down to write? I'm not asking, "What is your equivalent to writing?" The question really is, "What is your equivalent to sitting?" What does it take for you to show up, pen/brush/knife/scalpel/trowel/text/pastel in hand, fully awake and present to the future that may be longing to be birthed in you?

For all of our sakes, would you please sit?

There!

Kindly, gently sitting here, as well . . . may I ask, "Would you please share with

us the art you were born to create?"

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

(from Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing by Jalal al-Din Rumi translated by Coleman Barks)

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)

Bridging over to a more honest approach . . .

As always, anyone can create a huge following with righteous indignation or rage against injustice or decrying social ills. Problem is . . . the energy is so virulent -- it acts like a tumor. After a while, even people who are "on the same side" start consuming each other -- righteously of course! Matthew Fox (drawing from Meister Eckhart) refers to this as energy deriving from the Via Negativa. Theologians refer to it as an "apophatic approach." In short, it is describing your outcomes in negative terms. Examples might be, "We want a government that won't sell the average person short." or, "We want clergy that don't compromise on the orthodox faith once delivered to the Saints." or, "We want a church that doesn't practice any form of racism." or, "We don't want the Episcopal Church to decline in Sunday morning attendance any further."

OK, now you've told us what you don't want. Great. Can you share with us your dream for _______ (fill inthe blank)? I mean, can you tell us, in positive declarative terms, what it is for which you are willing to give yourself? What is your Via Positiva?

When the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King jr stood up on that incredible morning and announced his own visions, he did not start out with, "I have a strategic plan!" or, "Here is a list of all the social injustices that need to be addressed right now, by God!" He started out by announcing that he (and all those who worked tirelessly behind the scenes) had a dream. He then went on to describe that dream in such powerful and compelling terms that we are still harvesting the fruits of that speech (and his life) today! He relayed the details of his dream in visual terms, in aural and kinesthetic terms -- in other words, in terms that appealed to all of the learning styles. He laid out his longings in such hopeful and compelling terms that this many years later, I cannot find a more lush description of the Beloved Community.

So, where are the dreams that the people of God hold out as compelling calls to action for all of us, today? Who is following in MLK, jr's example? Who is willing to lay down their life to announce those dreams so clearly and so compellingly that there is no "Maybe"response available?

So compelling that there are no "Maybe" responses . . .

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. 

 

---

[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)

Does this describe your ministry? Then let's talk!

Over here is a working definition of Fresh Expressions, as offered by Bishop Graham Cray: http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/about/introduction

"A fresh expression is a form of church for our changing culture established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.

• It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.
• It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context."

Would you help me out by letting me know of ministries that you think are living into this definition? I often receive inquiries from folks around the Episcopal Church (and increasingly from other denominations!) -- folks wondering where they might find evidence of new hope in our churches.

Here is what I promise.

This will not turn into a "Who's in" and "Who is out" directory.

This is not about finding the perfect "Fresh Expression."

It is about highlighting our neighborhood churches committed to ministry that benefits those who are not yet members of any church. It is also a way of gathering together the pieces of a US conversation that might lead to a culture shift in our ministry conversations.

Questions? Call me at 646-203-6266 or e-mail me at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

In the meantime, if you are leading one of these Mission-shaped ministries and you'd like to connect with others leading Mission-Shaped ministries, come join us on first Fridays on our Monthly VideoConference call. It's casual and it's free. Here are the directions for joining us: http://plantingcentral.typepad.com/bench/1st-fridays-at-4-a-gathering-for-those-leading-fresh-expressions-or-emergent-ministries.html

Tom

Reflections on our "3rd Thursday @ 3" gathering with the Presiding Bishop

July 17, 2010

Dear Leaders of new ministries (as well as those of you who support them),

Thank you for participating in our VideoConference call with Presiding Bishop Schori this last Thursday at 3:00 PM via WebEx. Frank Logue and I agree that it was great to see you on our list of participants, even though we could not interact with you personally. This was a great call and we hope that you will join us next month – same time and same place. http://plantingcentral.typepad.com/bench/monthly-gathering-for-church-planters-and-new-ministry-developers-in-the-episcopal-church.html

This Gathering focused on our Presiding Bishop's vision and hopes for new ministry development in the Episcopal Church. We also worked our way through topics like financing the new ministry, growing acceptance of innovative practices, future models of self-sustaining ministry and learnings from elsewhere in our Communion. We also took several technical learnings away from this experience and we’d like to share those with you (in the hopes that you might benefit from these in your own conferencing practices).

 We learned that it takes time to get used to this new technology and that it’s good to be patient with the process.

 We also learned to . . .

Turn off the announcement that rings out every time someone joins the conference or leaves it.

Post “Joining via audio or video” instructions on the front page so that participants can follow those as soon as they sign on.

Find a way to offer streaming video from WebEx for the participants who cannot sign on because WebEx has reached its limit. (We had almost 70 people who could not join in because this E-venue was limited in size.)

 Keep the conversation going, both on a church-wide basis, as well as on the local level.

 On that note, if you have a group of leaders (lay and/or ordained) in your diocese that would like some focused training around new ministry development, or ministry redevelopment, or leading new forms of ministry (emergent or Fresh Expressions), please let me know. I’ll gladly coordinate the platform, training and great content from leaders around the church, as we discern what might be helpful ­for you!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions at 646-203-6266. I also welcome your feedback and suggestions at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org.

With grateful heart,

Tom

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).

Some brief observations regarding Spirit-led Innovation . . .

Note: In this series you will note that  I mix the the language of "New Ministry Development" with "Ministry Redevelopment," because in the Episcopal Church, both are offered within Hospice Ward settings. (For more on that, you might read this post.)

 

 

Spirit-led innovation – what is it?

 

In my recent experiences I’ve determined that this is not just a concept borrowed from the business equivalent – “continuous process improvement” – in which you make a lot of little improvements in issues of liturgical style and taste, or maybe shared leadership. It is also not just “product or service innovation,” in which you create new offerings to attract new parishioners, but leave the existing ministry model in place. From what I’m learning from vital ministries around our church, “Spirit-led innovation” may include both of these, but at its best, involves tracking the work of the Spirit out in the world through uncharted territory.

 

I find it helpful to keep in mind that ministries can experiment with Spirit-led innovations without changing much of their present ministry, initially. However, in the Episcopal Church, because we come from such a staid culture (one that often prides itself in staidness) to follow the Spirit through change is to challenge the traditional misunderstanding of tradere.

 

To understand the scales of ministry innovation, envision a spectrum of safety traded for the sake of predictability. Put hymnal revisions and visitor welcome programs on the left end. Maybe put sermon seminars and public church in the middle. Put Spirit-led innovation on the right end. At the left end, changes are small, cheap and quick; results are fairly predictable. At the other end of this imaginary continuum, change can take an unknown amount of time and money, and then those initial innovations may not work, at least not initially. However, strategic innovations led by the Spirit (hopefully!!) offer greater potential for growth, especially the “nonlinear growth” that transforms ministries. Unfortunately, leaders with experience on this end of the continuum are sort of scarce in many of our religious institutions. I’ve been interviewing several here in our Episcopal Church and I’d like to offer the following observations.

 

Some observations regarding Spirit-led Innovation

1. In all vibrant ministries, the original vision or the original Idea is merely a starting place – a hunch. You’ve probably heard a Bishop announce that, from now on, things are going to be different in the Diocese of Utopia. She’s got a God-given Holy Spirit-inspired and world-changing idea.  She studies, plans and organizes (maybe even calls in a consultant) and then, almost imperceptibly shifts her focus away to other matters. Everything withers because she’s bought one of the great myths about innovation – that it is all about the great idea. It’s not – a great idea is only the start. Unsupported, even the best idea will die. For innovation to succeed, at least one Leader must protect the idea by generating funding, resources and support without a lot of managerial involvement, and by helping the Church or the Diocese learn quickly from the trial steps in developing the idea.

 

2. To lead Spirit-led innovation within established (or inherited) Church, it is imperative to remember that organizational memory springs from powerful sources. What are they? Songs, Rituals, Architecture, Vestments, Smells, Signage. If you would redeem them, recognize the challenges involved.

 

When you lead an Episcopalian ministry that looks unlike anything previously Episcopalian, expect an internal “auto-immune” response.[1] For many of our leaders in traditional settings, it is actually much safer to repeat the behaviors with which we are already comfortable and just put a fresh face on them. That isn’t Spirit-led innovation. When you commit yourself to following the Spirit, you cannot follow some prescribed process. Instead, we read and reread John 3 and ask, “Where is the Spirit blowing today? That’s what will shape us in this moment!”

 

You might consider trying on the following four questions as a way of getting at some new practices and the accompanying fresh awareness.

1.)    How do you smell the Spirit at work?

2.)    What are the principles by which you allow your encounters to shape the music and ritual offered to the gathered community?

3.)    What are the theological “starting places” for these principles and practices?

4.)    Are the “Fruits of the Spirit” enough evidence that it is God at work and not an overactive imagination?

 

Eventually, once it gains momentum, new ministries gather to themselves a fresh sense of identity, but from the beginning, the leaders are helped to recognize that they are called to the work of co-creating a new future. In fact, Otto Scharmer would assert that the new ministry’s primary responsibility is to allow the Spirit to birth the future that is longing to emerge.[2] To engage this process probably means shifting our focus slightly away from the way that the Episcopal Church has historically defined itself, its core competencies and even its ministry model. At the same time, this new ministry wants to “borrow” expertise from Inherited Church, and to design itself so that it is constantly learning. To consciously set Inherited Church habits aside, start fresh with new systems. Gather new people (creators, not implementation experts), organize them differently (a flatter structure, not a hierarchy), and breed an independent culture that is open to risk, and that emphasizes fresh experimentation and Holy learning. To maintain a balance between revering what was and focusing on what is emerging, you might consider exploring the practical and theoretical implications of what the Church of England refers to as the “Mixed Economy” approach to a “both and” way of offering ministry. You can learn more on that, here.

 

3. In our present context, starting new ministry with Diocesan support can make matters much easier or much harder. Usually it’s both.

 

4. Strategic experiments face critical unknowns. It has to be that way. The way through the Wilderness of Zin was a two week journey. It just took forty years for Israel to get comfortable with this point. They had to “relearn” the nature of God from their cultic roots.

 

Primary focus? Learning!

To survive, emphasize learning. Your greatest learning task is to address these unknowns through better predicting and functioning, even though an innovative ministry can’t use formal prediction tools or intuitive rules of thumb. Instead, you must learn through “trial-and-error” as you engage in repeated experiments. Make your experiments clear, repetitious and speedy (as soon after one another as possible, so they stay fresh in your memory). Determine what you think will happen. Plan, execute, measure your results.

 

5a. New ministries in new contexts are best if started with as few assumptions as possible.

 

5b. New ministries in existing settings are best when built from scratch, with new choices in staffing, structure, systems and culture.

 

Forget, Borrow and Learn

The three core challenges in establishing new ministry within the Episcopal Church are:

forgetting, borrowing and learning.

 

Forget: Try to purge the spirit of your ministry from the Institution’s anxiety and tendency toward self-preservation – forget about it. Diffuse it.

 

Borrow: Which “areas of expertise” does this new ministry need to borrow, and in what proportions? Where can you use predictions and where do you have to deal with uncertainty? How should you evaluate leadership performance in a project that requires risk or could even collapse? Institutional memory might lend you the core beliefs that let your new ministry react quickly to challenges, but if you don’t forget the old responses, you are doomed to fail. Borrowing Tangible and Intangible Resources only when they support the innovation. Do not borrow culture. Invent culture as needed. You want to forget Mother Church’s constraints and staid culture, but you also want to borrow resources from Her, as needed. This often creates tension, turf wars and divided loyalties. Such tensions accompany any new project, because as the new ministry succeeds, it may seem to consume Inherited Church’s resources and depict it as seemingly obsolete.

 

To lead redevelopment of an existing ministry in severe decline, gather a mix of experienced and inexperienced individuals for your core team. Set up new behavior models of mutual learning, especially in accountability and emerging relationships to authority. One tough challenge is deciding when the new ministry needs to show itself as self-sustaining. Balance that pressure by pointing out how many of our ministries in big buildings and downtown properties are reliant on diocesan subsidies and they offer no new learnings, whatsoever. Too often new ministries are held to arbitrary demands that they demonstrate sustainability, when, in reality, we need to expect them to require support at first (they are experimental, after all) and give them grace periods.

 

6. Managing tensions between the new and the old is “Job One” for the leadership of a ministry redevelopment.

 

7. “Competing interests, outside influence, internal competition and Diocesan politics are the enemies of community learning.”

 

8. Contract with Diocesan Leaders for an accountability around learning as well as results measured in attendance and pledging numbers.

 

9. Ministries find their connection to that which the Spirit is birthing via strategic

Innovation (Lots of intentional Trial and Error).

 

To innovate strategically, we seek not so much to do things differently, as much as to accurately track the birthing of the Spirit’s new life. We start with very different questions and hoped-for outcomes.

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[1] Social Autoimmunity is the failure of an organization to recognize its own constituent parts as “self” and necessary to the well-being of the whole, thereby blocking the potential healing and direction offered by its own “prophetic” leaders.

[2][2] You might explore Dr Scharmer’s approach by downloading Chapter 21 of his text, Theory U.

How do you “smell” God at work?

 

In the eleven months that have passed since my visit to the UK, I have spent hours and hours interviewing lay and ordained leaders in the Episcopal Church on video. The question I start with is so quirky and I know it! I ask, “How do you ‘smell’ God at work?” which quickly becomes, “How have you learned to recognize when it is God at work that you are witnessing?” (I intentionally use this language to avoid rhetorical and theological pontification.) I have to tell you that, believe it or not, the answers have been breathtaking! It takes only a slight shift in attention to move from our usual church banter to the question on which this essay has focused: “How have you learned to come alongside and bless the new life that the Spirit is birthing in the world around you?” After a few minutes of this heart-to-heart conversation, I often hear these words: “Why can’t I make this midwifing ministry my everyday calling?” That question is music to my ears.

 

As I come to the close on this series of posts, I wonder aloud with you, “Have you heard the Spirit’s call to distance yourself from hospice ministry, incredible and noble calling that it is? Do you wake up in the night with a longing to return to your first love for ministry, to glimpses of God’s daring hopes for all of us?”

 

It may well be time to head to the Spirit’s birthing center, because I believe now, more than ever, God’s dreams are longing to be birthed here in our midst. All that the Spirit quietly asks of you today is that you say “Yes” to God’s hopes emerging. Oh and one more thing, if you’d like to join a monthly gathering of midwives to the Spirit, come on over and join our monthly call. In the meantime, call or e-mail to let me know how we might more effectively support you in your ministry, whatever it may be. You can reach me anytime at 646-203-6266 or via e-mail at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

 

“ . . . midwifing the new life of the Spirit in a world longing for reconciliation . . .”

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 4

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?

 

For this reason, compassionate, loving and respectful hospice ministry for our churches is essential. In particular, those who care for parishes in long-term decline point out that institutions struggling with their own death and dying process exhibit a strong need for routine, predictability and a controlled environment. It is important to tell the “right” story – to preserve the sacred memories of the parish in its golden days and to maintain their structures. As a result, a key offering of this ecclesiastical hospice ministry is to appreciatively celebrate and preserve memories of the community at its best. In fact, faith communities (and even denominations) in this stage of their life cycle will often choose to carefully archive their memories, rather than creating new high points in their life together. One of the leader’s roles is to graciously and kindly midwife the community from the life they have loved into that community’s next life.

 

One may wonder why I have devoted such attention to this hospice ministry, when ultimately my reflections are offered for those who feel the Spirit’s call to midwife fresh expressions of all that She is birthing into our world. The two ministries often live side by side. In fact, birthing new ministries that emerge from within the inherited church could be likened to setting up a birthing center in the middle of a hospice ward. Some of the more powerful examples of this reality can be found in the homeless ministries sponsored within Episcopal churches. For the lack of funding and their own worship space, many of these fledgling ministries set up their services in the undercrofts of our downtown parishes, where there is public transportation available and accessibility for people with disabilities. As the more formal service upstairs is going out in peace to love and serve the Lord, helpers downstairs are setting up chairs in circles, with a table of fellowship in the center and musicians getting ready to lead worship with music from Africa, the Caribbean and from God-loving musicians who live on the street. Many are surprised to see folks who used to attend the earlier “upstairs” service. They now come to the later downstairs service because they also sense that the Spirit is birthing something new.

 

On any given Sunday, life for these upstairs/downstairs communities can get chaotic. Nicely dressed churchgoers on their way out may encounter musicians rehearsing more earthy and soulful music in the parish garden. Some of those musicians may be homeless; some are professionals grateful for the opportunity to come alongside a ministry that invites them to get real with issues seldom addressed in our more refined Sunday services. It is that sort of “mixing it up” that a birthing center in a hospice ward may require.

 

I was recently asked, “Do you think that it is possible or advisable to open such a birthing clinic in the center of our hospice ward?” My answer is, “It depends.” I think it depends on whether we can take responsibility for our real motives for tackling such a challenge. As many observers can attest, it produces a nasty case of cognitive dissonance when an “emergent” church planter claims to be midwifing new ministries of the Spirit, but their real motivation is to keep our denomination from dying by starting new churches with good form. At that moment our sneaky institutional narcissism emerges from the underbrush of our own marketing. With all my heart I believe that keeping the denomination alive is one ministry and midwifing the emerging work of the Spirit is another. Much of the time, we struggle to stay clear about the difference between the two.

 

Here, then, is the rub. It may be that many of us are trying to offer a midwife’s presence in the Spirit’s birthing clinic (the whole world), even as we are guided by hospice theology and Christendom practices. In other words, we get excited about the new work of the Spirit out there in God’s world, and then we try to bring it back to church so that we can label it, own it and then civilize it to match our culture. As a result, we may be missing the incredible beauty of our call to midwife the work of the Spirit in a world longing for reconciliation with God, humanity and all of creation.

 

I welcome your responses!

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 2

One of the gifts of my March 2009 visit to leaders of the Fresh Expressions initiative was the movement back and forth between interviews with remarkable thought leaders and visits to ministries on the ground. One of the first such ministries I witnessed in the Liverpool area was Oaks Church in Tanhouse, Skelmersdale.

 

Early on in my conversations with the remarkable couple serving this new ministry is that, before making any strategic plans, Reverend Duncan Petty and his wife Ann took their time to get to know the community they felt called to serve.[i] Via their commitment to deep listening over many months, they discovered that there was a “need for building small, relational, supportive, stable groups with some sort of security for people whose lives are all over the place.” Instead of planning a traditional new church launch that gathered the community on Sundays, they felt the call to be a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week community center of healing that offers hope to this largely unemployed and emotionally struggling community. In their words, they purchased “through sacrificial giving of … members plus finance from sending church and elsewhere, a community house for blessing the locals through a variety of small groups.” Ministry in this unique neighborhood called for the service of a house manager and a youth and children's worker for 20 hours a week each. The diocese pays the rent on their home in the center of the community, and they are as embedded in this intentional community of outreach as a family can be.

 

My time with Duncan and Ann repeatedly brought me to joy and gratitude – joy over the incarnational presence they are offering and gratitude for the way they called me to reexamine my understanding of what it means to be a sacramental presence in God's world.

What might be happening here with the Pettys? What is so different about the shape of this ministry? In Duncan’s words, they had to “leave behind their stereotypical ideas on what it means to offer ministry in community.” I could see clearly that what they were doing was best likened to a kind of spiritual “midwifing.” Here's what I mean: they went into the grinding poverty of that housing project to search out what the Spirit is birthing – one could say they walked around their new neighborhood as “archeologists of hope.”[ii]And they pledged to be present to that birth, to honor whatever the Spirit might be bringing to life.

 

At this point, some of you will need me to announce that I do recognize the cultural differences between the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, and I am aware that my perspective has been shaped by some very thoughtful leaders both within and outside of our Episcopal Church over the last 20 years. And yet, the Petty’s journey is a unique example of what I believe to be the future of midwifing ministry for all of us. I offer in these brief reflections an urgent invitation to the Church to midwife the work of the Spirit in a world longing for reconciliation.

 

My prayer is that you will respond to the Spirit's call with a hearty "Yes!" and join us!

 

(to be continued, tomorrow)

---

Reference

Jürgen Moltmann, 1977, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, London: SCM Press.

Notes

[i] The ministry is referred to as Oaks Church in Tanhouse, Skelmersdale. More information can be found here: https://lccsecure.lancashire.gov.uk/ACS/findExtOrg/view/details.asp?intServiceID=504.

[ii]This is a metaphor used extensively to explain a way of being called for in the practice of Narrative Therapy. For more on this topic, see Gerald Monk, 1997, Narrative Therapy in Practice: The Archaeology of Hope, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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 . . .)

Accidental midwives?

In some of my recent interviews with leaders in mainline American Christianity, I increasingly hear the claim that "I am a permission-giving Bishop" or, "This is a permission-giving Diocese." There seems to be a real sense of pride in the idea that the leaders are in the business of setting others free to take the BIG risks and try new things.

At the same time, what I'm sensing is that what we need, more than ever, is midwives to the work of the Spirit -- out there -- out in the world beyond our red-doored church entryways. Yesterday I was in conversation with one of these "permission-giving leaders" in the Episcopal Church. We were talking about how to manage an innovator who was making waves in their very tidy organizational structure. My mind was wandering . . . I was wondering what it would be like to be a mother in labor whose attending midwife was there to "give her permission."

What about that idea leaves me so cold? Permission giving? We need Presence! We need risk-taking leaders not afraid to fail. We need our leaders to be slightly nuts -- a little "over the edge" even! When we interview them, we need to look 'em in the eye and ask, "What have you midwifed?" and, "Have you ever been a part of a venture that flopped and how did you learn from that?" We need leaders that share all of the risks of birthing new ventures, of opening new space for the Spirit's future to emerge in and through us! It's messy, sometimes scary, a little unnerving but exhilarating, to say the least! We need intentional midwives, not accidental . . .

By the way, I think we've done a real fine job with the whole "non-anxious presence" thing. It's even become sort of fashionable, in my humble opinion! A little more exuberance and emotional investment might not hurt, if just for this (short) season?!

Oh! Here's an idea! Maybe we need to give newly ordained clergy some fresh gloves and a stethoscope on their ordination, in addition to the usual . . .

Accidental midwives? I hope not!

Tom

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