Church by Design

I have been searching the internet this past week for pictures to go along with the sermon for World Communion Sunday--pictures of all kinds of tables, from basic to elegant and comfortable to awkward. The design of the table matters...but also those who are gathered around it.

But in my wanderings, I came across the following blog entry about students in an industrial design class at Lund University in Sweden. Sweden, if you didn't know, is international home of the place that has given us the functional, if not high end, designs of IKEA, which grace the apartments and homes of many of my friends and family. So I thought to myself--this would be interesting to see the inner thought processes of the people who one day may be designing furniture for my dreamt-of kids and grandkids.

The challenge to the students was, however, to design components for a chair without knowing what the other components might look like. Each chair leg, the seat and the backrest were all designed independently of each other. The kicker is that each of the 6 designers in a group was given the same word to use as inspiration for their component.

See the results here:

What Can You Bring to the Table?

Sometimes church (and more specifically, the United Methodist Church) feels to me like one of these chairs. We each are given a Word...and then told to come up with a component without necessarily talking to each other about how those components can and should function together. Some of the chair components in these pictures are just silly. But some of them would be perfectly functional and perhaps even lovely if they could be worked into an intentional design with component parts that looked and functioned in similar ways.

The problem is--who gets to decide which word gets used? The words that the students were given were highly diverse: vain, voluptuous, awkward, vicious, androgynous. It would be difficult to take component parts designed around voluptuous and vicious and place them into the same chair.

And so it is with the church--especially when we get into global levels. My local congregation can choose to construct a Chair with a more limited scope--but even then there will be competing understandings of the Word that we're reading. When we multiply that by the various local concerns and the breadth of the Word that we're given (as well as its interpretation!), I wonder if we'll ever come up with a structure that resembles something that the wounded and weary, sin-sick and sore can come upon and find the salvation and healing of God.

We're going to continue arguing over which words are important. Very few of them are unimportant. But which are good focus words for the structure that need to be built?

This is the question for my local congregation. It's also the question I have for the wider general church. What chairs might be brought to the Table of Grace from the four focus areas that we have as a church? Do they work together and allow for us to have the kind of Open Table that we proclaim in spirit (if not always in practice)?

Singing Together

I have attended a lot of meetings over the past couple of weeks. Since my life revolves around the church so much, these meetings have all involved:

1. church folk
2. eating
3. sung grace

Now, I am a singing person. I love the fact that I belong to a denomination with a sung theology. So you would think that when we sing thanksgiving to God for the food we are about to eat, I would be perfectly happy with that.

But lately I have found that I am not only dissatisfied, I'm downright worried.

Typically, when Methodists get together, when we sing the grace before meals it's a version of "The Wesleyan Grace".

Be present at our table, Lord
Be here and everywhere adored
These favors bless, and grant that we
May feast in fellowship with Thee. Amen.

Ignoring the controversy that has come up over whether "favors" in the third line should really be "mercies", this text and tune (OLD 100TH) have been linked together and to my entire history growing up in the United Methodist Church. I love gathering in a circle and singing together because the voices that are not as strong blend in and gain courage from the others. It always sounds like beautiful harmony as well, which is where, in the end, we get into trouble.

What I have noticed lately is that we start off strong with a good tempo. The words mean something and then we're proclaiming them with notes to go along.

But then we get enthralled with the sound of the harmony, self-involved with the sound of our own voices and we begin not proclaiming, but performing. I think it's indicative that by the end of the song, we've slowed down and are singing more for the sound of our voices in harmony than for the God who created the sound and our voices to begin with!

I was made aware of this the first summer I attended what is now the Church Music Summer Seminar at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas. Jane Marshall, whose sung theology is some of the best I know, told us to never let the tempo drag because it would drag us down into the idolatry of ourselves.

Even if it doesn't get into idolatry, I do wonder if it isn't an indication that we pay more attention to what's going on in the inside of the church...rather than what God is doing with the whole of God's Creation. Next time you sing thanks to God, it's something to think about.

Getting There

I do a lot of traveling in my car. 315,000+ miles on it--all in the last 10 years. It's showing the kind of wear and tear you get from that many years and that many miles, but it still gets me where I need to go, and I'm either frugal or stubborn enough not to get a new (or new-to-me) car!

But there are many people around me who worry on a pretty regular basis about the "getting me there" part. They worry that I'll break down in a remote location. They worry that something will go out unexpectedly and cause a horrible accident, hurting either me or someone else. They worry that "getting there" might not happen.

I worry about that a lot in the church. I think and dream about where we can go and see so many steps inbetween there and here--steps that are financial, steps that are spiritual, steps that are emotional and steps that are procedural. I wonder if all the steps can take place and in what order they need to come. I tend to think a lot about these dreams, and I sometimes forget that I haven't laid out the maps and the hopes and the possibilities for everyone.

Sometimes that's because my dreaming seems scary to me--I'm willing to entertain ideas that if they were put out on the table I feel might cut of discussion or the ability to dream in other people. Sometimes it's just because I "go with the flow"--and the best ideas occur to me on the spur of the moment. Sometimes I share those thoughts and ideas with only a few people and forget that they need to be more widely shared.

And sometimes it's because I fear rejection. I fear what will happen if I know that an idea is good and it would work, but the back to the past crew invades and insists that it will never work and that I'm just a bad leader, not worthy of the task that I've been given. Intellectually, I know that these crews are sometimes wise in keeping things in check--sometimes allowing the dreamers like me to see something better. As Joseph, the dreamer, tells his brothers--"What you meant for evil, God meant for good." I'm not implying that the back to the past crew means evil, but sometimes the route that we take to God's good need to be a circuitous route that involves the back to the past crew.

And, of course, sometimes the back to the past crews are just that--those who don't want to move forward because they fear where they will be and what kind of place they will have. They fear they will not be powerful enough or that their voice won't be heard. It's those motives that make me less inclined to wait until the back to the past crew is satisfied.

But today I was reminded that I cannot continue to allow myself to only entertain thoughts of having to "get there" despite the ways in which I feel I (and other dreamers in the church!)are being held back. A person from my church who has a lot of wisdom reminded me that sometimes when I feel like the church isn't wanting to go anyplace that the church is simply trying to remind me that they want to go someplace, but they want to get there *together*.

Eventually, we may have to leave a few behind--not all of the Israelites who crossed over the Red Sea got to cross the Jordan into the promised land. Not even Moses (another, though less literal, dreamer-leader)! But they all traveled together, wandered together, listened for a word from God together, argued together and ate together. I want to remember that sometimes I need to make sure others are invited to the ride, fully strapped in, and let in on the panic, thrill and joy of Getting There...

which is when the real magic begins.

U2charist playlist

Our U2charist service was a celebration--even in the midst of our sorrow at the tragedy in Haiti. Our offering was taken for both Haiti and Imagine No Malaria, our campaign to end malaria in 10 African countries by 2015. Join us for our next U2charist in April 2010! Watch this blog and www.stmark-umc.org for more news! You can also find us on facebook...

Here is the playlist and something about the worship!

Welcome to St. Mark United Methodist Church! We are so please that you could join us for this service tonight. We want to worship God by singing a new song--or maybe even older songs in a new way--and to learn about malaria and other opportunities that you might have to make a difference in the world.

(All U2 songs are in bold and are used by permission.)


MYSTERIOUS WAYS (prelude)
PEACE ON EARTH (prelude)

Greeting and Announcements

PRIDE (IN THE NAME OF LOVE) (processional)
Opening Prayer
MAGNIFICENT (this was where I brought the incense into the congregation and set us apart as holy for the purposes of worship...to the beat!)
Collect of the Day (a "collect" is a formal name for a type of prayer)

Old Testament Lesson: Isaiah 58:9-14
40 (psalm)
New Testament Lesson: Romans 12:6-13
ELEVATION (carrying the Gospel book into the midst of the congregation)
Gospel lesson: Luke 10:25-37
Sermon
WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME (response to the sermon)
Prayers of the People
Prayer of Confession and Absolution
WHEN LOVE COMES TO TOWN (celebration of forgiveness)
Passing of the Peace (before we come to the Table)

YAHWEH (offertory)
Great Thanksgiving for Holy Communion
Lord's Prayer
Sharing the Meal (Communion)
ONE
BEAUTIFUL DAY
I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR
Prayer after Receiving
Benediction
I'LL GO CRAZY IF I DON'T GO CRAZY TONIGHT (recessional)

WALK ON (postlude)
GET ON YOUR BOOTS (postlude)

Bringing on the Joy

"Ask not, doubt not. You have, my heart, already chosen the joy of Advent. As a force against your own uncertainty, bravely tell yourself, 'It is the Advent of the great God.' Say this with faith and love, and then both the past of your life, which has become holy, and your life's eternal, boundless future will draw together in the now of this world. For then into the heart comes the one who is Advent, the boundless future who is already in the process of coming, the Lord, who has already come into the time of the flesh to redeem it." (Karl Rahner, The Eternal Year)

This past week, full of its own ups and downs, has been less about the chronological time that my calendar and my schedule keep, and more about sending me headlong into the kairos that is all around me. kairos is the Greek word for "God time"--the "appointed time". It has always seemed to me that it is time outside of time...time in which all things good exist. I have wanted to live in this time, not to escape the mundane and sometimes even painful parts of the chronological, but to know and remember what Rahner admonishes me to do: to fight my own uncertainty with the joy of Advent. The one who is coming has already come and my celebration is a both/and.

Balancing the tension between the need to keep to schedules and plans and maps and the need to exist in the time appointed has usually kept me from fully letting go. This week, my preparations for the Christ-Mass will be filled with joy, and I will say into the void of clocks ticking my days away (and ticking the days of those I love away)--no more! For time is met headlong with the joy of knowing what has come to pass...and is now coming to pass...and will come to pass--all at once.

Bring on the joy.

Advent with Auden

I can't quite put my finger on it, but W.H. Auden really has Advent and Christmastide down for me. Those seasons are never quite as bright and shiny as nostalgia demands, but the joy for me when I truly catch hold of them is deeper than our secular holiday might proclaim. I think Auden's connection has something to do with the deep sadness and distress and longing of his own life...something that requires more than just bright, shiny, and happy to deal with. It requires actual deep joy, deep peace, deeper than the surface--penetrating to the dark places.

He "gets" why we need the Light so much because he has seen the darkness.

I came across this stanza from a poem of his, "Alone, alone" today:

"We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle."

Our very lives (and what we, as human beings have done with them) demand something deeper. There is some amazing thing that must happen to shake us from our complacency. Yet we have even managed to turn this Christ-Mass into a time of auto-pilot because there seems so much to do...cards to get out, services to plan, staff evaluations to do, house to clean AND decorate before the youth arrive for their party, "child" care to plan for when we go on vacation over the holidays.

I'm pondering this in the context of Auden because my "to do" list actually needs to be done--especially as it pertains to planning and carrying out worship and end of year things, but I think there is a holier way to do it, a way which tempers the manic joy of making sure that everything is done in order to fulfill my Victorian and administrative fantasies and simply asks, "What needs to be done in order that we all may experience the wonder of Incarnation again? What needs to be done in order to help my work and home function in such a way as is faithful to God's call in our lives?"

I hope that this year we are not required to save a parking space for the donkey and upgrade the accommodations so as not to offend ourselves (though the Occupant has never been offended thus). For the part of my life and the lives around me which don't want the smell of sheep dung mingled with our cinnamon and evergreen, I pray that God might know the depth of miracle we need.

Blood in the Water...and Plasma too!

Oh yeah. My first tendency is to be conflict averse. I'm getting over that. I've got good medicine.

It's called the Gospel.

I've been watching information and misinformation about the current health care reform debate. And I've watched the pithy status lines and polls on facebook, sound bites that sometimes wound. It would pain me less to see actual honest debate without spin. My first tendency is to not wade into these waters.

But I'm reminded that at the Pool, the way to be healed was to wade in--well...at least until Jesus showed up! But it's not just a superstition that we deal with by the water's edge. Jesus asks, "Do you want to be healed?"

Do we want to be healed?

I think we'd rather fear. Because fear is easier. It isolates us. It means we maintain control, or at least the illusion of control. It means we don't have to untidy our lives or entangle them with the lives of others. It means we can continue to feel more worthy.

It also means that we can go on fearing death in secret, though we proclaim that we are living even now our eternal life.

This caveat--I deeply desire to read information from each side of the debate. I also deeply desire to NOT read anything that can be said in 30 seconds or less. This reform is far too complex for 30 seconds or less. It's far too complex for single anecdotal evidence. I don't feel I yet know enough about this to comment specifically on what plan would be best for us to adopt. I am predisposed to have a desire that all people might have access to health care because I believe that the Gospel mandates that we care for each other, including the sojourner and the stranger. I don't know the optimal way to do it.

But I do know that this debate is currently more about our fear than it is our faith. And when we spend more time wounding each other than praying and discussing what it means to be people of faith in the midst of a time when we could influence the care of millions of people, it makes me wonder what is at the root of our fear. The wounds have left blood in the water and those who feed on our fears have sensed that we are much easier to manipulate.

I want to be healed. I desire healing for all. The vision of Isaiah 65 stands in my mind: "No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed." We cannot abandon the wealthy. We cannot abandon the poor. We cannot abandon children. We cannot abandon the elderly.

I know this may mean I have to sacrifice more. I may end up with less so that others might have enough.

I also believe that is the kingdom. I am ashamed that I might have to be "forced" into that. Maybe the time to start is now.

Watching our Youth

I have been acting as our youth director for the past 7 months, and I confess that sometimes it's the most stressful thing I've got going. But I've discovered lately that one of the reasons I've been stressed is that I've been underestimating our youth.

The youth at St. Mark don't just want to be entertained. They want a way to connect all their lives with the life of the Holy. They want to look in the Bible and see themselves, including their passions and failings.

On Sunday, I took what I thought was an "easy way out". I decided to have them work on retelling a Bible story--their choice. They had loved the dramatic retelling of David and Goliath that we had used in worship early this summer, and so I thought they might get a little creative with another story. Plus, they love it when we bring out the video camera with the thought of getting to be "on film".

The first thing out of one of their mouths was "how about the story where the guy raises an army of the dead?" I explained about Ezekiel and about the prophets and some of the context and we read the scripture and talked some more about it.

And then their brains and the Holy Spirit started to kick in. They started wondering what it might be like for the "Master of the Universe" to drop "Z-Man" onto the St. Mark playground. What bones, literal and figurative might be there? How would God bring them to life? And what's more, how could we film it and present it to the congregation?

I loved watching them pouring over the Bible to get ideas for the script...and cutting out bones and picturing what the bones of the church might look like. They didn't need me to entertain them with a game. They just needed to be let loose into the places where God has worked...is working...and will work always. And then know that those places were here. Now. With them.

Love it.

A Pastor's Work

At the end of every week, I try to look back and take a little stock of what I've done in ministry. Many weeks, I end up beating myself up mentally for the things I haven't gotten done, even though I usually end up working 50+ hours.

But this week, I'm thinking about the variety. Hospital visits. Calling on new guests in worship. Staffing concerns. Counseling sessions. Worship planning. Finance figuring. Theological reading. Pastoral calling. Hanging out with parishioners.

It feels like something caught this week, like I was in a groove. I prayed more. I had more fun. Maybe it started with this past Sunday, when my husband danced as David in worship. He came in (after we stayed up far too late trying to choreograph the sucker...I may owe him my first-born child for agreeing to do it!) to the strains of "Nelson Mandela's Welcome to the City of Glasgow. And the celebration just went on from there.

So maybe I have two things on my pastor's work list from now on:

1. Pray
2. Have fun

Because somehow all of it this week was fun, even the finance committee meeting when we found out that the church is at a breaking point money-wise. Even in the midst of hard conversations with people whose lives are out of balance. Even in the midst of not having enough hours in the day to get absolutely everything done.

And what might happen if every week, I find the fun part of what I do in every circumstance. Because the truth is that we are actually made to have fun with what we do. We're made to watch in wonder as God works...and marvel at what God does. And be ready to move, sing, pray, work, watch, ponder, and cry when God leads.

Yay! I get to be a pastor!

Watermelon Sunday!

Many people have been intrigued by the facebook comments on Watermelon Sunday! A few months ago, I was trying to think of something fun to do in July when churches in the Valley (not just mine!) seem to go into the doldrums in terms of programming and attendance. So I tossed around a few ideas and decided to go with a "Beat the Heat" month. First up--the Sunday immediately following Independence Day. How better to celebrate than with watermelons?

But how to incorporate them into the service? I put out a call on facebook, and many people responded with stories from their childhood as well as suggestions. Dropping the watermelon off our bell tower. Seeing how many people get scared if I eat watermelon and drink milk at the same time (apparently it has a superstitious reference). Rolling the watermelon down the center aisle.

I did get a great suggestion from Leigh Gregg to go find a bunch of different melons and then let the kids try to guess what color the inside is based on the outside of the melon. That worked so well because I was able to find Crenshaw and Canary melons (the outside of both is very yellow, but the inside of the Crenshaw is light orange like a canteloupe and the inside of the Canary is mottled green/orange), both a regular honeydew and an orange-centered honeydew (they look completely alike outside) and a regular watermelon and a yellow-meat watermelon. That last one was probably the most dramatic as it's something more familiar to the kids that they had never seen before--it was just golden yellow as I picked it up and showed it to them.

Still, what to preach? Did I want to try to incorporate the fruit?

Then I started doing some research on the watermelon. The earliest crops were actually grown in Africa over 5000 years ago. Seeds were found in the tombs of Pharoahs. And the people of Israel, while wandering in the wilderness, actually name melons as one of the things they miss about Egypt in Numbers 11:5 (when they are whining about manna).

One of the coolest things about watermelons is that they actually are an incredibly important source of water in the desert parts of Africa. In fact, some people have used them as their primary water source in dry times and cultivate them just for that purpose. And so I got to thinking about Isaiah 35:1-10 and the streams in the desert that God will bring about. This picture was a sign of hope at a time when Isaiah wasn't offering much hope. But there they were--the life returning to a place of dryness.

Now is a watermelon what I think Isaiah meant by "streams in the desert"? Nope. But I also wonder how many times we miss the streams that are provided for us to sojourn in the desert for awhile longer. Not the great stream and life overwhelming that Isaiah 35 (and Isaiah 65 and other texts of Zion) promise us, but a "foretaste" if you will. In sort of the same way communion gives us a taste of the feast to come--so watermelon will always remind me now of streams in the desert.

The second cool fact I didn't know about watermelon vines is that they require the presence of bees in order to bear fruit. They are inter-dependent. One of the lectionary texts for this day talked about Jesus sending out people 2 by 2. He was very specific in telling them everything that they couldn't take. In the end, I can almost hear the question of the disciples: "Well, Jesus, what can we take then?" And I can hear him replying: "Each other." We require the presence of God and each other so many times in order to bear fruit. We don't make it on our own very well. So we ask the question--who is on the Journey with you? Are they helping you bear fruit? Watermelon will always help me to remember that I can't go it alone if I expect to bear fruit!

Then we closed the service by serving some of the sweetest and juiciest watermelon around (I love roadside stands in the Valley!) to everyone as they left. It made me excited to see how something as common and as a part of our 4th of July celebrations might actually be able to point back to the Original Freedom Plan...and give us hope for our future.

In other news, the bread I used today was a recipe slightly modified from a Baking in America recipe attributed to Martha Washington. It was spiced with mace, nutmeg, cloves and rose water! Yummy! The original recipe used about a pound of currants, but obviously, since this is communion that would have been bad. I also added more flour (to give it less a "tea bread" feel...it still uses yeast though!) and baked it free-form instead of in a pan.

Next Sunday we're going to go for a Dip in the Pool (exploring the waters of baptism)! I love worship!