meetings

I just have to say that I love meetings for the most part.

I love getting together with people over lunch, talking about their lives and how faith related to them. And how they relate to faith.

I even found a large-group meeting this weekend stimulating.

Long drives in the car, not so much.

These are all changes from when I was younger--back then, if someone had mentioned the thought of driving a lot on a regular basis, I would have taken that every time. I loved the freedom of the open road and the car and the getting to somewhere.

Now...I guess I like getting somewhere with someone else, instead of just by myself.

Connect

I've been pondering lately what it means to be "connectional." I currently serve on my conference's Order of Elders Advisory committee, and we have talked about "lone rangers" and the affect they have on the greater connection of our Annual Conference, both within the orders and within the whole body, as some churches are also seen to be "lone rangers".

When I say "connectional", I believe that it means that the health of my church cannot be sustained only by sacrificing the health of other churches.

When I say "connectional", I believe it means that when I am only concerned about my own self or needs in the system and how I can get ahead, I should be questioned.

When I saw "connectional", I believe it means that I play a vital role in something larger...and I must recognize that the others around me also play vital roles.

When I say "connectional", I believe it means that I should be urging all churches to faithful discipleship--not just one-upmanship.

When I say "connectional", I believe it means that there will be times when I carry someone else's burden...and times when I can feel free to ask for help carrying my own.

When I say "connectional", I believe it means that God is in the midst of the connection at all levels, and I ignore that at my peril.

When I say "connectional", I believe it means that the connection doesn't need me to imitate and create a McChurch...it needs me to discern and act in my local setting in conjunction with the movements of the connection.

When I say "connectional", I believe it means that I have a right and duty to speak and to be listened to, heard and considered by the connection...and to listen and consider in return.

Just some thoughts. I wish that this was more natural to us, but this Body of Christ finds it far more easy and personally rewarding to think congregationally instead of connectionally and individually instead of within the understanding of the Orders. I wonder if we'll ever intuitively move in a different direction.

The pioneering spirit

Last Friday, I did a graveside service for a 90-year-old. Yesterday, I went to the funeral of a colleague's father, who was 95. And then I went and sang at the bedside of a woman who is in hospice (last stages of Alzheimer's).

None of them did I know personally, other than what their families have told me about them. But I've been listening more and more to "Vista", by David Wilcox, and I keep going back to the title track:

The mountains were high from the valley below.
Back in those days, they didn't know
what was waiting for them over the divide
and who would be the first to see the other side.
But you led the climb up to the cracks,
seeing it all ahead of the rest
Your expression showed the wonder of the place
Looking westward with the sunlight on your face

And the wide open vista...the wide open sweet Someday
Climbing over the ridgetop to finally see the view
that none of us ever have known
Crossing over to home...and the vista.

The flowers were bright here at your side
All of us came to say our goodbyes
Light of morning shines strong into the room
Your breathing changes, time is coming soon
I speak my love, I say my words
You squeeze my hand to say that you've heard
But in your eyes I saw the twinkle in the blue
Looking over the ridge, out into the view

Of the wide open vista...the wide open sweet Someday
Climbing over the ridgetop to finally see the view
that none of us ever have known
Crossing over to Home...and the vista
The wide open sweet Someday
Climbing over the ridgetop to finally see the view
and all of us go there alone
Crossing over to Home.

I love that juxtaposition of the pioneering spirit and the journey to a heavenly home. And it seems like a lot of our "pioneers" are beginning to go--the pioneers of civil rights, of various industries, of women's rights. I wonder if that pioneering spirit will be a factor in my generation. I wonder if anyone, when we go, will call us brave and those who moved forward into a more faithful place.

What mountain lies before me, and what will I do to climb it? I feel like so many times, I watch myself and others content to set up camp at the foot of the mountain. Are we so scared to see God, the great Someday...Home? I think there are a few climbers. Oh, that I might just leave the safety of the camp and just climb.

Busy

I'm not doing well in 2009 with keeping up the blog.

Things seemed to have spiraled here in the church, between the various organizations I have responsibility in and my calling as a pastor and wife.

But I wonder how much of that I choose.

I choose every day to be my husband's wife. Some days more graciously than others.

I choose every day to be a pastor. Some days more graciously than others.

I have tried to discern what God has called me to beyond the local church.

The choices I make have effects, not only on me, but on many others. My family, my congregants, my peers and colleagues, but also on myself. How do I go about balancing all of those in a healthy way?

And why is it that every time I try to make a decision I believe to be healthy, people keep telling me that realistically, I can't (or shouldn't) do it?

I'm preaching this Sunday on the cruciform shape of life, using 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. I'm pondering all of the ways in which the cross makes absolutely no sense, pays no attention to the "reality" of the day and flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But I wonder if it's even possible to break free from my own neediness (which translates sometimes into busy-ness) and the neediness of the church (which translates, somehow into creating more busy-ness than is either healthy or faithful) to get to a place in which I live life looking like the cross.

I'm being haunted by something just beyond my reach--that there is something more than working at "life in Christ". There is living into it, which is a different thing all-together.

I want to live, not just work.

Bread Upon the Waters

I have been working through some of my bread-making skills to help some friends pull together a Lenten series based on the stages that bread goes through as its being made. I pulled out again a copy of Peter Reinhart's Bread Upon the Waters. Peter Reinhart is a lay member of an Eastern Orthodox monastic order, but he's also one of the pre-eminent breadmakers and teachers in this country. Rereading through that little book reminded me again of how much of my own spiritual journey gets mirrored in the things I love to do.

This week, given the ways in which I have functioned and failed to function, the chapter on degassing (also called the "punch down") spoke strongly to me. In it, Reinhart speaks of running Brother Juniper's Cafe with his wife:

(page 65) "Despite [the support structures set up to help us be channels of grace as we ran our cafe], we had many moments of crisis and disagreement surrounding management issues, cooking choices, short-temperedness, and other manifestations of fatigue and stress. We often felt like play actors, putting on happy, cheerful, courteous faces for customers when inside we were grappling with upset and anger. There were times when we were actually afraid to pray to be used by God because it seemed as if we were setting ourselves up to realize our many inadequacies. We often wondered if we were failures...Despite the many difficult days and challenges to our personal sense of virtue and civility, we forged ahead knowing that our obligation to our customers was to model the courtesies that we espoused."

That line about not even being sure that we wanted to pray rang true with me. Sometimes I don't want to pray because I'm not sure I want to hear the answer...don't want to deal with inadequacy. I'm supposed to have competency, but I'm running out of steam for it as well. Sounds a lot like I need to let go. But what does it look like to be "punched down" for the sake of the Kingdom?

(Reinhart, pg. 68) "When we punch down bread dough, humbling it as a creation dependent upon the baker's beneficence and skill, it springs back, stengthened in flavor and character, building upon the fermentation already present. Letting some air out of the dough is a necessary passage if the dough is to become truly great bread. ...
There can be no growth, no evoking of the fullness of our own (or our bread's) potential, without enduring punch downs. They lead to humility. But humility is a powerful creative force; it is a manifestation of one of the energies of God, and what could be more empowering than that?"

Humility. Not a virtue I've ever sought after. Perhaps it's time. Perhaps it's time for all of us.

Emergent Merton

Last week, I was at Perkins School of Theology for Ministers Week. The topic this year was the emergent church, and as I've read a lot but never heard anyone actually talk about it in person, I went up. I felt behind the times while at the same time ahead of many of my colleagues, who are still discussing how to get a contemporary service up and running. It was challenging to take some things that I had been thinking even further, especially in how I communicate--communicate the Gospel, communicate about the church, and foster communication within the church and about the world.

But then in my reading today, I came upon this:

"The 'spiritual preoccupations' of this time--the post-Vatican II Conciliar years. ... I need perhaps to be less preoccupied with them, to show that one can be free of them, and go one's own way in peace. But thee is inculcated in us such a fear of being out of everything, out of touch, left behind. This fear is a form of tyranny, a law--and one is faced with a choice between this law and true grace, hidden, paradoxical, but free.

"An unformulated 'preoccupation' of our time--the conviction that it is precisely in these (collective) preoccupations that the Holy Spirit is at work. To be 'preoccupied with the current preoccupations' is then the best--if not the only--way to be open to the Spirit.

"Hence one must know what everybody is saying, read what everybody is reading, keep up with everything or be left behind by the Holy Spirit. Is this a perversion of the idea of the Church--a distortion of perspective due to the Church's situation in the world of mass communications? I wonder if this anxiety to keep up is not in act an obstacle to the Holy Spirit." (February 4, 1966)

I think this may be where I could run into trouble with emergent--not that it is inherently a trouble with the idea of emergent churches. It seems, instead to be something that is built into the system--that they don't read everything everyone is reading or know what everyone is saying--that it, instead, emerges out of who the community authentically is and what it is authentically connected to in the Spirit. But I will be tempted to read my way, to knowledge my way, to network my way into it because I am so thirsty for this kind of experience in all its creativity and vitality and out-of-controlness.

But where on the circle do I start?

I remember as a young girl trying to figure out when to jump into a game of double dutch. Maybe it's just a question of finding the rhythm of those who are already turning the rope.

Bill Gates

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the partners of the United Methodist Church in the Nothing But Nets campaign, so I tend to perk up my ears when I hear news of the foundation. This week, Bill and Melinda Gates sent out an annual letter, outlining their goals, hopes and progress on the issues of health that they care most about. But it was the following that caught my eye:

"Our spending in 2008 was $3.3 billion. In 2009, instead of reducing this amount, we are choosing to increase it to $3.8 billion, which is about 7 percent of our assets.

Although spending at this level will reduce the assets more quickly, the goal of our foundation is to make investments whose payback to society is very high rather than to pay out the minimum to make the endowment last as long as possible."

This is something different even than a theology of abundance (which is what I'm hearing most from people in church circles on how to talk about money). No one would argue that the Gates foundation has an abundance. But they are pushing ahead to give more because the need is greater--and because they can have more impact.

I'm not arguing that the Gates Foundation has any kind of theological basis or that their giving patterns fit a theological argument. But they are not hoarding, and that to me is good news. They are saying that when they see brothers and sisters in need, they don't just try to keep the institution safe guarded and going. Although I'm not sure I would term it "extravagant generosity", they are trying to be more generous, not less.

This is good for me. I'm hoping that this is good for the church. We need to be more generous, not less because there is much more need. And instead of hoarding for the future, our giving needs to have impact right now, when people are hurting and struggling all across the globe. We will always and everywhere need Jesus. But now there might be more opportunity to help people realize it. With our time and with our resources, I hope that we give bigger.

Holy Boldness

Tonight we start session 5 of the Holy Boldness Urban Academy that we've been holding in our conference. We began the process in July-ish of 2006, bringing together the design team around a model that the General Board of Global Ministries provided. The hope is that through a 6-session academy (note: not a conference!), urban churches might identify paths toward one another and paths into ministry in their own neighborhoods.

We know that most of our urban churches are struggling right now. If they're not struggling, they're probably considering moving out into the suburbs. But I take great hope in some of the things I've seen come out of our academy. Churches working together, even across conference boundaries. Churches sharing good ideas with each other, encouraging one another. Urban churches realizing that they are not alone and that there is something different about them than their suburban or rural counterparts--and that ministry cannot be done in exactly the same way in all three areas.

And yet they've realized that not everything is different. There is still a need for focus and for ministries that have a life-changing impact on the neighborhood and community. The gospel is not different...but it is heard sometimes differently. We have an incredible opportunity to be in an uncomfortable place.

Why incredible opportunity? I still remember being at Perkins Minister's Week early on in my pastorate when I heard Ched Myers giving his reading of the Mark 14 passage in which Jesus says in most of our translations: "you will always have the poor with you." He wondered out loud whether or not it could also mean "you will always be with the poor."

Now I haven't done due diligence and gone and checked the Greek myself. But that phrase caught me. What if it isn't that we will always be able to go out and serve the poor as one of the many options that a church might offer for ministry? What if, instead, we are asked to keep the poor constantly within hearing, within seeing, within reach? This is just one of the incredible opportunities I find in urban ministry.

Not that it isn't available, especially in rural ministry. But in the gentile UMC, it is easy to become addicted to the office with my desk and secretary, screening calls. My place of leisure with my books and resources around me. This Holy Boldness academy has reminded me once again that the power of God in the urban church is one that draws such a wondrous crowd together that we might experience something like the Pentecost every day. Economic diversity, racial diversity, unchurched and churched, age diversity. It's not just the poor in wealth, but every person who has been impoverished because they have not "fit" into other places.

I hope and pray for the churches who are converging on Travis Park UMC right now that they will be encouraged--to be holy and bold. And to be with those who also need the Word in their midst, made manifest by the Body of Christ, choosing to stay among them.

Covenant Connection

There are so many reasons I'm proud to be from the Southwest Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church (Bishop Schnase was in my father's youth group in Del Rio!)...but one of the big ones is Covenant Connection, which is what we call our process of the provisional membership years. There is so much support built into it, so much community, so much useful continuing ed and some really great feedback that I believe helps form and shape incredible ministers. I think that the fact that we're one of the smaller conferences in the Jurisdiction and yet have managed to produce some excellent leadership has a lot to do with the way we start our pastors out.

I say this because I just got back from our 3rd Covenant Connection retreat of Year 1 (this is supposedly the last class that will be three years, something that many of us regret, since our process aims to create community and it's difficult to do that in the 17 months that a 2 year process will give them). The skill sets of the provisional members are evident, but it's also clear to me that many of them are figuring out that this can be a place where they can admit their own struggles and the places that they would most like coaching and feedback. It's not just gatekeeping--it's continued instruction and a safe place to learn how to be colleagues both with each other and with the greater orders of elder and deacon.

So hooray for annual conferences that aren't just letting people hang around and occasionally meet for the time between their commissioning and ordination. Hooray for annual conferences who are taking seriously the fact that this time that we are given is a gift--to help us become more effective and receive affirmation and continued feedback and advice!

May we not be so anxious to get to the goal that we miss the richness of the journey and thus become poorer for it.

More Auden

I thought that one more line from Auden at this point in our History would be helpful. We're coming up on the Inauguration, and I have such high hopes...and I'm trying to remember that it's most helpful to put my hope in God. And yet it's so easy to hope that our government can do good!

Our government, though, is made of fallible people facing difficult problems. I doubt that there has been a government ever which hasn't been made up of fallible people facing difficult problems. Yet the people in this one I like more than I like others (oh, may I not be fallible!) and they are facing more difficult problems than many governments have faced at the beginning of a term.

But back to Auden. When I remember that it is people who are in charge...and people of whom they are in charge, I remember this line, said by Simeon, the man whom God promised would not die until he saw the salvation of God:

"for the course of History is predictable in the degree to which all men love themselves, and spontaneous in the degree to which each man loves God and through Him his neighbour."

What is predictable scares me...what is spontaneous and somehow the working of the Spirit delights me. My hopes and prayers for this country are that we don't let predictability work its insidious machinations...but instead a fresh Wind might blow. And leave all of us more loving.