Co-creating a life…

I got started blogging as a way to share my sabbatical experience. It got me hooked. This blog will have less focus than the sabbatical blog. I’ll be musing on current events, personal experiences, and whatever comes along.

I’d enjoy your comments when you agree, disagree, or when my thoughts bring something to mind you would like to share.

They say that we create our lives by the stories we tell. I happen to believe that God creates our lives by the story God is telling, and that our lives are real to the extent that our stories connect with the one God is telling. That is really what this blog is about – my struggle to discern how my story, and our story, might touch on the story of God.

Living Metaphor

The way we lead can be powerfully influenced by the metaphors that shape how we understand the communities that we lead. These metaphors are usually shared by whole generations of leaders who seldom, if ever, pause to think about them.
For most of its history church leaders viewed the church through the metaphor of the supernatural. Everything observed was seen as evidence of the actions of invisible, intentional beings. That is how people could be more afraid of witches and demons than they were of germs. That is why leaders of churches tried to solve their problems by dealing with witches instead of germs. It is why John could write to the angels of the seven churches and it is why healing was treated as primarily a matter of casting out demons. It matters what our metaphors are.
During the Enlightenment a very mechanistic metaphor began to supersede the super-naturalistic metaphor that had preceded it. As the industrial revolution reinforced this mechanistic metaphor people began to see the world and their churches as more and more “machine-like.” Leaders began to behave as though their churches were things that could be “built,” “maintained,” and “repaired.”
For many decades we have understood the church more and more as a kind of elaborate machine. We understand the relationships in a church through flow charts and organizational diagrams that resemble schematic diagrams. We elect leaders to limited terms and assume that they should rotate through various offices as though leaders are like interchangeable parts in a great machine. We describe the purpose of the church in terms of its output (for the purpose of any machine is the production of something else – the product). If a church is not “functioning” then it requires “fixing.”
I would like to argue that we are in a time when a more accurate and powerful metaphor is growing. It is the metaphor of the ecosystem. This metaphor says that a community of people is more like a living being than it is like a machine, but that it is even more like an ecosystem – a whole community of living beings that live interdependently in a web of complex relationships.
Ecosystems are made up of many living species and individuals. Each of these species has its own particular role in the ecosystem as a whole. Each of the individuals has its own personal intentions and purposes, but they also fit into the whole in ways that transcend their own particular purposes. Even while ecosystems may produce something that is meaningful or useful somewhere else they must also be providing for the various organisms within them. The purpose of an ecosystem cannot be divided into what it does for itself and what it does beyond itself. These two functions – internal life and external product – are inseparably linked. To focus on one only is, ultimately, to destroy the ecosystem.
Churches are ecosystems, not machines. Churches are living entities, and their development (or history or story) is dependent upon the complex interactions between all their parts, each with its own little will and necessity. Leaders who understand the church through this metaphor will behave more like foresters or ranchers than they will like engineers or mechanics.
This ecosystem metaphor is, in some ways, more like the super-natural one that the first Christians lived within. It focuses, as they did, more on intention and on meaning than the mechanistic metaphor does. It also shares the conviction that the relationships between the parts matter at least as much as the parts do.
But it shares with the mechanistic metaphor the idea that what we observe and what we do are important. In the machine image we are in control of the machine (we have dominion!), so we are responsible. In the ecosystem we are still responsible, but we are also part of the ecosystem, the way a forester or rancher lives in the forest or on the ranch. In the church as ecosystem we leaders are part of it and our life depends on its life.
In coming weeks I will share with you some stories of the woods behind my house and about church leadership that are intended to help you begin to appreciate the power of this way of understanding the church and our role as church leaders.

“Fireproof”

Joanne and I rented “Fireproof” last weekend (along with two other movies). Mostly rented it because people in the church have started asking me “what I think.”

By 20 minutes into the movie I was prepared to just tough it out. The acting by supporting actors was grade “C”. The scene with the wrecked car on the railroad tracks had me frustrated. (Really? They wouldn’t think of just pushing it off the tracks with the fire truck? They’d decide to pick it up instead?)

But, eventually the story hooked me. Just by way of rating, I’d say it was one of the best bad movies I have ever seen.

The story about the marriage, which is the core of the film, fits quite realistically with my own experience of marriage and with what I have seen in the marriages of many others around me. The strains, the fears, the mis-steps are very believable.

There is one scene where significant explicit theology is spoken. It is a conversation between the husband and his Dad, who tells his son that he deserves to go to hell and that he can only be saved from that if he gives his life to Jesus. I find this explicit theology inadequate – even wrong. There is also a painful scene in which a very well-meaning Christian lady does the kind of intrusive interference that has inoculated so many people against Christianity.

The explicit theology offended me. But the movie is filled with implicit theology that is much more true and redeeming. The implicit theology of the story moved me and reminded me of what is glorious and good about the consequences of the faith in my life.

What is the implicit theology? Well, the story reveals that God gives us second (and third and fourth) chances; that love is stronger than fear; that faithfulness is fundamental; that doing the right thing, to paraphrase Len Sweet, has a very long fuse; that promises are meant to be kept. The story celebrates that the values of Christianity (selflessness, service, love, hope) really do redeem people and make something of them that is glorious and lovely.

The story regards a marriage, a relationship between a man and a woman, but the values celebrated in this story are the ones that hold the power to redeem any relationship, including the one between us and the God who created us.

If you are in the difficult work of a significant relationship, I recommend you see this film. It is worth the translation that may be needed to “apply it to your situation.” Just keep reminding yourself to listen less to what people are saying about Christianity, and to pay attention instead to what values (Jesus’ values) they are struggling to live out in their real lives.

The Revitalizing Spirit

By the time I was a teenager I was far more compelled by the promise of the church than I was by the church as it was. I began then to see the church as a community of people who could and should be changing the world. I felt a tug to go into ministry so I could help make that happen, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted I had any idea what I could do to renew the church. In those days, it was still controversial to suggest using a guitar in worship (don’t even mention a drum!). How could we possibly talk about curing our obsessive consumerism and individualty and insecurity so that we might begin to build the blessed community that Jesus called the Kingdom of God?

Eventually I wore out with resisting the call to ministry. I couldn’t leave the church, and I couldn’t settle for it as it was. Leadership seemed to be the only option left. It’s been a humbling journey since then.

Yesterday I listened to a lecture on Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel movement, by his great grandson, Paul Raushenbush. Paul quoted someone who said, “Tradition is not wearing your grandfather’s hat, it is begetting children.” Yeah. That is why I am always restless with the church. Jesus created something that is about constant renewal. The values of Jesus haven’t changed, but the context in which we must struggle to apply them are constantly changing.

After 26 years in ministry and serving in six congregations I have enjoyed the privilege of serving two that have experienced significant revitalization. The first time I had no idea what I was doing, but assumed that the revitalization was the result of the things that I had done there. So, I tried those things in the next congregation I served and they didn’t work there.

So I studied vital and revitalized congregations for 15 years. What I learned was that they all had their own story about how to build or rebuild a vital congregation. I also learned that it was hard. I also learned that their stories were all different. The recipe from one place to another was different. In fact, these revitalized congregations were not just different recipes for the same dish, they were completely different dishes, even different courses.

Jesus said, “The Spirit blows where it will. You cannot see it. And you do not know where it comes from or where it will go.” Fundamentally, revitalization is the work of the Spirit – and the Spirit just refuses to say, “how high?” when we say, “Jump!”

But there is a caveat. The Spirit is more ready than we are. While the vital and revitalized churches I studied, and have lived in, all had different programs, theologies, and numbers they did have some things in common.

They all believed that Jesus was the best news in the world and that the Spirit would lead them if they let it. And they believed that following the Spirit in the way of Jesus was worth almost everything they had in them. (Wesley called it staying in love with God.)

They all believed that faith in Jesus would change their lives for the better, and that it would also bless their communities through them. Not one or the other, but definitly both. (Wesley called it personal and social holiness.)

They all believed that they should expect to be constantly surprised by what the Spirit was doing with them, that God’s will for them was too big for them to box up and figure out. (I think Wesley thought he could figure it out! But that was then, and this is now.)

I think that I believe that the Spirit always shows up if we are willing to let it. I think I believe that God is ready to revitalize every congregation that has become tired, or discouraged, or luke warm. Most of the time when we feel like that we think we know what God ought to do to make us feel alive again. Usually we’re wrong, so unless we are willing to be surprised, we’ll just miss it.

I still find the promise of the church far more compelling than the church as it is. I have some ideas now about how we can move into that promise, but check with me again in a few years, I will probably have changed my mind. God is full of surprises.

Facing Disability

On Tuesday morning, February 10, I woke up to find that my left arm and hand were not functioning well. It was the third day of a nasty cold that would last for three weeks. I was taking anithistamines, which make me really loopy, and I thought, “It must be the effect of the cold, the medicines, and probably I slept on it wrong.” By mid-morning the hand was even less coordinated and I decided to call my doctor. Long story short, it turned out to have been a very small TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack), a very small stroke.

Thankfully, the many tests that have been performed have determined that I have no discernable underlying circulatory disease. The hand and arm symptoms have almost completely resolved. That means an aspirin a day is probably all I need to do. (Oh yeah, and in case my doctors hear about this – I am supposed to get regular exercise and lose weight).

Lots of my friends and family have expressed significant concern and compassion for me in the midst of this little tribulation. I suppose we all have a lot more people who care for us than we really appreciate until occassion arises for them to express it.

The weird thing is my own reaction to this experience. I have never been much afraid of dying. Somehow I have been blessed with a deep trust in the goodness of God, and the unshakeable conviction that whatever it is that follows this life, it will be fine. At no time during this experience was I struck by an unpleasant awareness of my mortality – not even when the possible diagnoses included MS, ALS, brain tumor and so on. I considered that I could die, but that was not frightening. (TIA turns out to be about the most benign diagnosis when your body stops connecting to your brain!)

That is not to say that this experience has not been life-altering. What I did find myself struggling with was disability. Just having a left hand that would not respond to my directions was unimaginably upsetting! I found myself wondering how I would do ministry – which for me is primarily communication. How could I type?! Even working my iPhone was almost impossible. During those three days of uncertainty when the diagnosis was unclear and my hand was worthless, I wondered if I would have to go on disability, and if I did what would my life be about? I thought about what it would mean to go back to tablet and pen (since I can write just fine – well reasonably legibly at least – with my right hand). Everything about these possible changes in my life was frightening!

I tend to think and act and plan as though the important things in life are the big things, the stuff that shows. The first Sunday of my disfunctional hand no one in my church knew about my paralyzed hand and no one noticed! It was easy for me to cover this disability from others, yet it was making me wonder if I could continue to do ministry. It turns out that little things can matter a lot.

Joanne and I have a funny little kind of tradition. When one of us is home on a weekday evening, and the other one is out, often the one that is out will bring home a “treat” for both of us. Yes, it is usually ice creamy in character. Last evening I was out and she was home. On the way home I thought to bring us a treat. I briefly considered it, and quickly moved to thinking that maybe it should be a sugar free treat. Then I immediately thought, “but the only decent sugar free treats are high in fat.” I ended up coming home with nothing and it wasn’t even a difficult decision. As soon as I entered the house, Joanne said, “Where’s our ice cream?”

A life-long struggle with my weight and dozens of commitments, programs, and efforts to increase my exercise and decrease my intake have honestly added up, to now, in a slow but steady increase in my weight. Maybe something has changed. Five days without my left hand – who would have thought it could make me scared? Not me.

Reason and Revelation

For several months I’ve been reading Jeroslav Pelikan’s book, The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300). My goal has been to explore the theological distinctions that became apparent in that time period between dominant Roman Catholic theology and underground Celtic Christian spirituality. There are many aspects to this divergence, but one interests me as I near the conclusion of the book; the issue of reason versus revelation (which is also theologically cast as grace versus nature).

Much effort was exerted by Medieval theologians and philosophers to understand the relationship between reason and revelation. Orthodox theology repeatedly asserted the primacy of revelation over reason in humanity’s attempt to know God, and through that to understand themselves and their place in the world. Others, branded heretics by the Roman Church, asserted that reason was sufficient to know God (using Romans 1:20 and Genesis 1).

There were a variety of middle grounders, most of whom held to some form of the argument that human reason could discover a certain amount of truth, but that the full knowledge of God (and salvation) required obedience to revelation.

Here are some things they all agreed upon no matter what they felt about reason and revelation.

1. Reason and Revelation were two distinct things; mutually exclusive sources of knowledge (one belonging to spirit and the other to nature).
2. One had to be primary and the other secondary, because all the world is organized hierarchically.
3. Revelation is that which is found in the ”authoritative testimony” and is “handed down” from these authorities (Scriptures, Apostles, “The Church”, Greek Philosophers, Augistine, Aristotle – take your pick). To stay true to a revealed truth meant to accept the testimony of an ancient authority, since Truth never changes. You can argue about who the authorities are, and what they actually meant, but that’s it.

The Protestant Reformation, which succeeded the primacy of Medieval theology, simply replaced the Roman Church with the Bible as the authority about revelation. I’m pretty certain that Luther and Wesley both felt that eventually everyone would agree about what scripture actually said, and then we would all be at peace.

Five hundred years have demonstrated without question that their hopes were unfounded. The authority of the Bible as revelation has done nothing to unify Christianity. In fact, it has provided the occassion for the fracturing of Christianity into more little pieces than ever, and often in ways that have resulted in terrible oppressions, wars, and atrocities – all in the name of a hypothetical scriptural orthodoxy that no one has been able to finally establish. And by the way, those scriptural interpreters have ranged all the way from David Koresh to Shelby Spong. The way Christians understand the Bible exhibits more diversity and disagreement among serious and devout interpreters than ever. “All reasonable men” will never agree on what the Bible says and means.

But all the while that Christians have been openly arguing about the true content of revelation as it is to be found in the Bible, there has been a revolution going on in how we understand ourselves. Especially in the past 100 years or so the amazing expansion of the understanding of the science of the human body and mind has changed completely the question human beings have about reason and revelation, about grace and nature.

I would submit that we can no longer sustain any pretense that reason and revelation, that grace and nature, that body and spirit, are two different categories. Our view of ourselves as human beings and of the world assumes that we are “in the world” in a way that utterly eliminates any notion that there is a piece of us that is “not of this world.”

This dawning awareness is extremely threatening to many people. Fear drives us to various “neo” conservative religious movements. The ”neo” movements hope to put the genie back in the bottle – to restablish the idea that revelation can be clearly recognized and comes to us from outside “the world.” But the genie won’t go back in the bottle. Some of these movements even try to be “scientific” (like Scientology, and Christian Science)! But they still resort to revelation and authority as distinct from reason and experience.

The post-modern world-view is based in our increasing conviction that everything we know comes “in the world.” Our dreams and visions happen not only in a mind, but in a brain. Our love and hate are known to us not only as virtues, but also as hormones and dopamine levels. Little boys are not “bad” they are ADHD, and alcoholics are not “bad” they are sick. If revelation (a recognition of truth, an attraction to beauty, a conviction of goodness) comes through our bodies, then nature and reason are all that matter – right?

This may sound like the end of religion, of faith; but it is not. The thing is - we still love, hate, chose, believe, hope, strive. We human beings experience these realities, and they change things in our lives and the lives of those around us. All the things that we once attributed to some distinct category called “spirit” are still there. Ignoring them, as some streams of science try to do, doesn’t make them go away. And science looks ridiculous when it says things like, “love is just hormones.”

It’s just that the question has fundamentally changed. People still experience conviction, faith, hope, love, hate, generosity, greed – all the same things that folks did when Thomas Aquinas tried to sort it all out. The question used to be, “Should we listen to reason or revelation in order to live true, faithful, good lives?” The question that drove philosophers and theologians for 1000 years was, “Where should we look for the answer to a blessed life, grace or nature?”

Now that we cannot separate grace and nature, reason and revelation, but find them unconquerably intertwined in our daily existence, there is a new question. How do revelation and grace happen within reason and nature? The whole world becomes scripture, searchable for evidence of the character of the driving force of being (call it God) and  of blessing and beauty. And at the same time all our interior experience of intention and choice and hope becomes data for a fuller scientific understanding of human being. How is it that we are what we are, want what we want, and do what we do?

The religious quest of the 21st century will be the reintegration of grace and nature. It is in the Eastern Church and Celtic Christian spirituality where we find the most help in this quest. These streams of our great religious tradition never quite accepted the dichotomy of body and spirit, of nature and grace, of reason and revelation that have afflicted the western church. And especially Celtic Christian spirituality never consented to the notion that the world is fundamentally a heirarchy, but rather held to a deep respect for community – even a community of grace and nature.

Blogging Slogging

Blogging is easy when you are traveling around Scotland for the first time, or when you are building a wooden boat full time without any experience. There is something about novel experience that stimulates thinking that seems like it is worth sharing with other people.

I suppose that is one reason that young people (meaning people who are younger than I am) are the ones who invented blogging and who are great at it. Everything is a new experience to young people! Old f**ts like me? We don’t have anything interesting to say – at least it is hard for us to consider that what we have to say might be interesting. After all, we’ve heard it before.

There is a great legend about Thomas Aquinas. He wrote the Summa Theologica (sum of all theology) in the 13th Century. It’s 52 volumes. He pretty much explained everything you can know about God, plus a lot of stuff that you can’t. The legend is that, before he died, he said of his grand theological writings, “They are all nothing but straw.” That is the curse and the wisdom of maturity. The author of Ecclesiastes expressed the same intellectual weariness when he said there was nothing new under the sun.

But, of course, there are new things under the sun. So the challenge of maturity is to figure out how to keep the mind and the heart as open to experience as possible. The snow falling today outside my window cannot possibly have the exciting impact on me that it would have when I was eleven years old. I still remember vividly the snow day when I was in middle school that I spent with my buddies horsing around our neighborhood.

But are there experiences still awaiting me that DO have the power to highlight life in the vivid vitality of that day?

Yes.

Last spring  I sat on his porch on a beautiful sunny day with John Day www.cloudman.com. He was 94, I think, at the time. He was explaining to me that he had written the last of his weather columns for our local newspaper. John had been writing a weekly column about the weather for 25 years and he was giving it up. As he told me this I was thinking, “It’s OK, John. When you’re 94 you’re entitled to retire from creative efforts. You deserve to sit on your porch in peace without deadlines.” But before I had a chance to say it he finished the point of his story.

“I just accepted a project to co-author a new college text book on weather with a professor from Massechusetts, and I just can’t keep up both projects at the same time.”

Oh yeah! 94 years old and undertaking to write a new college text. There is always something new under the sun.

Here’s what I can share with you younger folks that you might not know. It makes all the difference in the world what kind of attitude toward life you cultivate when you are young. If you cultivate openness, curiosity, irreverence, and humor you will always be able to see the new things in life, like John Day did. If you seek logical certainties, simple moralistic boxes, and well defined categories in which to put all the people and ideas you run across – it will kill you. You may still be walking around, but you will stop growing and changing, and every kid knows that life means growing and changing.

It is not thrilling experiences that make life vital, it is a practiced openness to real experience that does the trick.

I want to see us enter a new age. I am hopeful at the optimism and energy of a new generation of Americans who are saying yes we can. I may be over the hill, but I want to join with them in making a better world than the one we have.

Hope is the word that describes that set of mind that keeps me open to new experience. Hope you have it.

Upstaged Again

In June of 2008 we became aware that there was a serious shortfall coming in the Church budget. Lots of reasons, not the topic of this rumination. The staff of the church together offered up about $35,000 is reductions in their own compensation in order to help with the situation. One person took a 25% reduction while keeping her full job description. Another took about a 10% cut by reducing her hours (but she volunteers the hours that used to be paid). The two pastors each gave up about 10% of their compensation. We all felt pretty good about our devotion to the church.

This week I heard that the President of Washington State University asked the Board of Directors to cut his pay by $100,000! Wow, we’re pikers when it comes to commitment to our institution! Washington is having tax troubles due to the downturn in the economy and he wanted to make a contribution to the solution. The news item took note of how impressed the Board of Directors were at his devotion to the school and his magnanimity in making such a sacrifice. It wasn’t until the end of the news item that they mentioned, oh yeah, now he would be making only $638,000 per year now. I hope (pardon the sarcasm) he is able to keep food on the table.

A couple of relevant numbers… He makes more than 6 times as much as the professors who teach students – even after making his “sacrifice.” He makes 12 times as much as anyone in the church I work for – even after his sacrifice. There are a lot of people here in my town (and in Washington) whose sacrifice to the troubles of this economy is ALL of their income, since they are losing their jobs.

I appreciate his gesture, and I am certain (really) that he is a good guy; but I don’t think what he is doing qualifies in any way as a sacrifice. It is called making a tiny little symbolic stand with the institution he serves.

The sad thing is, what he is doing is RARE.

I haven’t heard of any of our State University head football coaches offering up any salary cuts.

I haven’t heard about any of our big bank executives offering up any salary cuts.

Finally, I don’t care of the high and the mighty keep their wealth – well, not much anyway. What really bites me is that we just don’t hear admiration in this society for ordinary hard working people who provide real services and make real products for us everyday, and who get paid practically nothing for it. Why isn’t that worthy of the admiration of the Board of Directors? Why aren’t the Directors at Washington State university saying something more like, “Well we’re grateful, of course, that our president is willing to give up a little of his more-than-adequate compensation to help with this crisis; but what we are really amazed by are the hundreds of teaching and administrative assistants who work hard here everyday and barely make enough to keep body and soul together. Now THAT’s commitment!”