Archives For Mainline Decline

Ministry: When ‘…Bless His Heart’ Becomes ‘I Will Miss Him’

Jason Micheli —  May 21, 2013 — 3 Comments

choir_taize_crossI’m closing in on my 8th year of serving this particular congregation and more so every day I’m convinced there is fruit in ministry that only becomes possible with a longer measure of time.

For instance, a few weeks ago I confirmed about 40 students in our congregation many of whom I remember from their Day School years here at the church. The students from my first confirmation class 8 years ago are now in the midst of choosing their careers and have since blossomed into adults. One of those first confirmands is joining me this weekend for the Taize Pilgrimage of Trust at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

These are all blessings only made possible by the patience and passage of time, blessings our Methodist system of itinerancy rarely affords pastors.

Yet of all those, one such example is at the fore of my thoughts this week.

On Sunday I was privileged to spend several hours at the deathbed of someone in my congregation, a man whom just a few years ago I would’ve ended any mention with the passive-aggressive Southern epilogue ‘…bless his heart.’

I can be honest about the rough edges of our relationship because to pretend otherwise would be to dishonor the grace-filled trajectory of our relationship ultimately took.

He was a thorn in my side and, to my chagrin, I could not avoid being so in his. He was for me the personification of what pastors and non-churchgoers lament as ‘church politics.’ He was convinced I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t preach my out of a paper-bag and would be the ruination of his church…”bless his heart.”

My- less than pastoral- thoughts generally ran ditto but in the likewise direction.

He has the distinction of being the only parishioner ever to challenge me to a fist fight.

And an arm-wrestling contest.

And the softie in me hopes no one ever takes that distinction from him. 

Yet with all that ‘history’ between us, something in the past couple of years changed between us. He first made peace, I think, that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon and decided to make the best of it.

He then started earnestly to listen and read my sermons, stealing them from the pulpit lectern (sometimes before I’d preached…teaching me to have a spare copy handy) and concluded that even I’m not Billy Graham I’m not without some gospel IQ.

Later, he one day filled up my voicemail box not with complaints but with a thoughtful history of his faith walk.

The barbs I’d once received in the receiving line after worship became playful ‘young fella’ banter and I’d chide him that ‘if I had my own 12 disciples then he’d be….the guy who replaced Judas.’

Last spring he sincerely thanked me for being involved with his granddaughters’ experience at church and this winter he made a substantial gift to our mission work in Guatemala; however, he requested that I carry said gift down to Guatemala myself in cash.

When I asked if this was to insure 100% of his gift went where it was needed or if he was merely trying to get me cavity-searched at the airport, he responded with a cryptic chuckle and a ‘we’ll just see.’

Thus was the down then up path of our relationship that found me visiting him in the hospital this week last. Weak, emaciated and slightly disoriented, he smiled when he saw me. He grabbed my hand and tried to hug me.

Pulling me close, with dehydrated lips he asked me ‘to forgive him for any ugliness he showed in the past- I reckon I was in the wrong…’

I smiled and said: ‘Ditto.’

‘I still could’ve taken you in a fight,’ he said mouthed hoarsely.

‘Try it old man’ I replied loudly into his ear. His smile quickly became another cough.

And then I prayed for/with him.

(* If I was in a different temper I’d insert a diatribe here about how our United Methodist system of itinerancy actively prevents moments like this, moving pastors before relationships can come full circle, but that’s a grouse for another day.)

On Sunday I spent several hours at his bedside, holding his hand while his son rubbed his head and shoulders and reassured him of both our and God’s love.

I sat there quietly amazed that 5 years ago I was about the last person he would’ve wanted next to him in those moments yet all the more amazed that just a few years since there was absolutely nowhere else I’d rather have been on Sunday.

I left him Sunday afternoon not realizing he had only a few hours left.

I got in the elevator of the assisted living facility behind an elderly lady toting a walker. She acted as though she knew me.

I pushed ‘1’ for her and then, to my surprise, I started crying.

‘It’s all right John’ she said.

I’ve no idea who she thought I was but I appreciated the solace nonetheless.

It would take me a while to track back through all the deaths and burials I’ve been a part of since I started out in my little parish back in Princeton. Whatever the number, it’s a lot. Children, parents, men no older than me. They cover the gamut from tragic to the welcome blessed rest, with some well-loved congregants sprinkled in along the way.

Seldom, if ever, has a death hit me the way as has this one.

I’m not quite sure what’s behind this effect.

Is it that I saw in him someone much like myself, someone who as Martin Luther described was ‘at once sinner and justified?’

Is it that, in both the good and the bad, there was absolutely no pretense about our relationship- something that can be rare in congregations?

Is it that he (or our relationship) was a genuine, identifiable proof of grace, that tempers can ease and relationships can heal?

Is it that with him I’d experienced both how petty church politics can be but also how easily such pettiness pass into irrelevance if we let it?

Probably, I suspect, it’s a little of all the above which is but another way of saying:

 ‘_____  was like family to me’ with all the complexity and joy the word ‘family’ entails.

And though the me from 5 years ago would’ve laughed at the thought, I can now honestly say I will miss him like family.

 

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Change in Church: ‘Jason, If You Were Older…’

Jason Micheli —  May 16, 2013 — 12 Comments

Bishop-Will-WillimonSome one, bless his/her heart, grumbled to me Sunday whilst leaving worship that if I were a part of the older generation I’d change my tune about what is broken and what needs to change in the church.

You only think things should change because you’re young.

Young people always want to change things.

He/she said.

Cue wag of the finger: But if you were older…

I honestly considered the possibility. Really, I did. Sans snark.

And then decided, no, I’d still be pushing the same view. Because it’s not a ‘young person’s view.’ It’s naming reality. Reality with a ticking expiration date on it.

And to prove this, I offer this snippet from Bishop Will Willimon, who will be preaching and lecturing at Aldersgate next Lent.

Willimon, as you can see by his pic, is old, put out to pasture by the mandatory retirement age. His membership in the AARP, however, does not determine what he says about his membership in the Body of Christ.

He also says exactly the same things I say:

Being bishop gave me a front row seat to observe ministry in the Protestant mainline that is being rapidly sidelined.

Pastoral leadership of a mainline congregation is no picnic.  My admiration is unbounded for clergy who persist in proclaiming the gospel in the face of the resistance that the world throws at them.  Now, as a seminary professor, I’m eager to do my bit in the classroom to prepare new clergy for the most demanding of vocations.

From what I saw, too many contemporary clergy limit themselves to ministries of congregational care-giving – soothing the fears of the anxiously affluent.

One of my pastors led a self-study of her congregation.  Eighty percent responded that their chief expectation of their pastor was, “Care for me and my family.”

I left seminary in the heady Sixties, eager to be on the front line in the struggle for a renaissance of the church as countercultural work of God.  By a happy confluence of events, the church was again being given the opportunity to be salt and light to the world rather than sweet syrup to enable the world’s solutions to go down easier.

Four decades later as bishop I saw too many of my fellow clergy allow congregational-caregiving and maintenance to trump other more important acts of ministry like truth-telling and mission leadership.  Lacking the theological resources to resist the relentless cloying of self-centered congregations, these tired pastors breathlessly dashed about offering their parishioners undisciplined compassion rather than sharp biblical truth.

North American parishes are in a bad neighborhood for care-giving.  Most of our people (at least those we are willing to include in mainline churches) solve biblically legitimate need (food, clothing, housing) with their check books.

Now, in the little free time they have for religion, they seek a purpose-driven life, deeper spirituality, reason to get out of bed in the morning, or inner well-being – matters of unconcern to Jesus.  In this narcissistic environment, the gospel is presented as a technique, a vaguely spiritual response to free-floating, ill-defined omnivorous human desire.

A consumptive society perverts the church’s ministry into another commodity which the clergy dole out to self-centered consumers who enlist us in their attempt to cure their emptiness.

Exclusively therapeutic ministry is the result.

I saw fatigue and depression among many clergy whom I served as bishop.

Debilitation is predictable for a cleros with no higher purpose for ministry than servitude to the voracious personal needs of the laos. 

The 12 million dollar Duke Clergy Health study implies that our biggest challenge is to drop a few pounds and take a day off.  If you can’t be faithful, be healthy and happy.

I believe that our toughest task is to love the Truth who is Jesus Christ more than we love our people who are so skillful in conning us into their idolatries.

Yet I must say that by comparison, the poor old demoralized mainline church, for all its faults, is a good deal more self-critical and boldly innovative than the seminary.  Our most effective clergy are finding creative ways to critique the practice of ministry, to start new communities of faith, to reach out to underserved and unwelcomed constituencies, and to engage the laity in something more important than themselves.  Alas, seminaries have changed less in the past one hundred years than the worship, preaching, and life of vibrant congregations have changed in the last two decades.

As bishop I served as chair of our denomination’s Theological Schools Commission. Most of our seminaries are clueless, or at least unresponsive, to the huge transformation that is sweeping through mainline Protestantism.  We have so many seminaries for one reason: the church has given seminaries a monopoly on training our clergy with no accountability for the clergy they produce.  Increasing numbers of our most vital congregations say that seminary fails to give them the leadership they now require.  Oblivious to our current crisis, seminaries continue to produce pastors for congregational care-giving and institutional preservation.

The result is another generation of pastors who know only how to be chaplains for the status quo and managers of decline rather than leaders of a movement in transformational faith.

As a fellow bishop said, “Seminaries are still cranking out pastors to serve healthy congregations, giving us new pastors who are ill equipped to serve two-thirds of my churches.”

In just a decade, United Methodists, various Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians will have half of our strength and resources – judgment upon our unfaithful limitation of ministry to a demographic (mine) that is rapidly exiting.

After decades of study, finger-pointing and blaming, we now know that a major factor in our rapid decline is our unwillingness to go where the people are and to plant new churches.  Yet few traditionalist mainline seminaries teach future pastors how to start new communities of faith.

My new pastors repeatedly told me: “We got out of seminary with lots of good ideas but without the ability to lead people from here to there.”  “I’ve learned enough to know that something is bad wrong with the current church but I don’t know where to begin to fix it.”

You can read the full article here.

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Clergy Robes and Anonymous Notes in Church

Jason Micheli —  May 14, 2013 — 23 Comments

3.19.PastorsDoAnonymousLetters_855603649When I was a student at Princeton, I got the chance to hear a lecture delivered by Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian whose work I knew only from the snarky comments I heard whispered by certain professors as I waited on their tables during faculty lunches.

Hauerwas was a like a breath of fresh air: robustly Barthian, absolutely not a Calvinist, and he had a mouth dirtier than my own.faith4

During the lecture, which was on discipleship, Hauerwas shot from the hip and offered what has continued to be a guiding maxim of the pastorate for me:

“Ministry is like being nibbled to death by ducks.

It’s just a nibble here and a nibble there but before you know it you’re missing a leg.”

I’m grateful for those auspicious words and have never forgotten them.

I once again recalled them when this morning this little gem found its way to my desk:

photo

Context:

In December I preached a sermon in which I used folding chairs to illustrate my point. In the first service, the cincture of my robe kept getting caught in the chairs so I took it off for the following services.

I wasn’t making a statement.

I wasn’t trying to ‘go contemporary.’

I wasn’t trying offend traditional sensibilities.

I wasn’t trying to do anything but avoid breaking my leg on the altar steps.

Not wearing my robe that Sunday elicited such bad behavior, in the form of anonymous notes left in my box, under my door, in the pew pads, and on the pulpit, as well as gossip being brought to me fourth-hand (‘so and so is concerned..’), that I decided not to encourage such behavior by putting it back on.

To date, in over four months, only 1 actual living, breathing human has approached me face-to-face to tell me how they feel about the robe. The ratio of anonymous complaint to face-to-face encounter is about 1/300.

Before proceeding, I probably don’t need to, but I will do so anyway and point out that 98% of my congregation are wonderfully sincere Christians who are supportive, encouraging and want nothing but to partner in furthering God’s mission in the world. I love working with those 98% and I think (fingers crossed) they appreciate me, warts and all.
Back to this week’s latest note.

I could point out that leaving an anonymous complaint in the offering plate- the plate that gets prayed over and dedicated to the Lord’s reconciling work in the world- suggests something far more disturbing than my lack of vestments.

I mean- would you ever stick a cranky post-it note on the communion bread?

That’s bible bad.

I could point out how anonymous notes by their very nature are antithetical to Christian practice for they represent a refusal to be in relationship with another. They make the other an object and thus deny our mutual in-Christ-ness. This is exactly what Jesus was commanding us away from in Matthew 18 when he insists we confront those we’re upset with face-to-face.

And yet time and again we blithely dismiss congregants’ disrespect and gossip as ‘that’s how churches are.’

Meanwhile, most people my age want nothing to do with church exactly because ‘that’s how churches are.’

I could point to what’s missing in this note. Like appreciation. For example, I spent roughly 20 hours- outside the normal work day- writing the sermon I then had to deliver 4 times after also writing a funeral sermon for a tragic death. It wasn’t the best sermon in the world but it was faithfully prepared and preached. And that was just my contribution to the service. This doesn’t even include the hours the other music staff and volunteers put in to making it a meaningful service. To notice only clothing is trivial to the extreme.

I could point out that Methodists only started wearing robes in the 1940’s and 50’s when we ceased being a frontier church and aspired to be a downtown church like the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. *Interestingly, the advent of the robe in Methodist worship coincides with our inability to make new Christians.

And don’t even get me started about tattling to get the other pastor to make me do something that anonymous complaints have heretofore not solved.

The observation I do want to make, however, is about the irony within this note, suggesting that a clerical robe is a sign of my respect for said anonymous complainer rather than the robe being a sign of the respect due me by virtue of my ordination.

The note is correct. It is about respect. Towards me. My office.

And on this point I lay blame not on the anonymous individual but on the United Methodist Church. 

I spent countless summers working as a lifeguard at a country club. I know what it feels like to work at a country club, sporting the emblazoned, obligatory uniform. Sure, the uniform served a helpful function. I was the guy who could help save people.

The uniform did something else too.

It identified me as ‘labor’ and everyone else as ‘ownership.’

I would argue that same dynamic, dichotomy, marks many a Methodist church.

The downside of the United Methodist Church having never fully claimed the Reformation mandate of the ‘priesthood of all believers’ is that in most congregations the ministry is owned by the pastors and staff.

We do ministry for the members not with them; consequently, the constituency becomes the congregation rather than the community.

A delineation between clergy and laity grows until it becomes ingrained.

What was once anathema to the early church becomes ‘how we do church.’

The clergy robe marks us in many minds not as a vicar of Christ, not as someone who might help people get saved, but as ‘labor.’

And as I know from working at a country club, owners can treat labor however they please.

The difference between a church and a country club is that I don’t care who pays the bills (though I’m grateful they do) it doesn’t change the fact that the church belongs to Jesus Christ. And I report to him not the authors of anonymous notes.

When it comes to churches, unlike country clubs, membership has no benefits.

Other than taking up a cross.

 But as I said I blame this on the UMC not on the individual. 

The United Methodist Church gives a lot of lip service to laity sharing in the ministry of Christ but the denomination places such requirements upon the local church (mandatory committees and admin positions) that ‘sharing in the ministry of Christ’ most often gets realized in the form of serving on committees.

Having raised their hand to vote, most lay people don’t have the time to do anything else in their church.

And then we wonder why lay people can’t even pray out loud without blushing and deferring to the pastor.

It gets worse on the flip- side.

The polity of the UMC tacitly encourages this division of ‘labor’ and ‘owners.’

The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church lays all the responsibility of the local church upon the pastor- you should Google the Discipline’s summary of the expectations of a pastor, it’s endless.

At the same time, the Book of Discipline gives those same held-responsible-pastors virtually no official leadership authority. As a pastor, I’ve no real role (nor do any staff) at a church council meeting, for example.

To make us even more impotent, itinerancy moves preachers at such a frequency that most pastors are kept from serving in one place long enough to ever cultivate organic leadership authority.

The only solace I derive from this is that our bishops are similarly neutered into irrelevance at General Conference.

Since this note was anonymous I can’t (in biblically mandated Jesus fashion) confront the person face-to-face. Instead I I thought I could pass the note on to my true source of frustration, the denomination. I could forward the note to my bishop with my thoughts on the real problem behind it all:

‘the priesthood of pastors and the ownership of members.’

But then, that would be a waste of time.

The bishop too is powerless to do anything about it.

 

 

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Too Old To Be A Pastor?

Jason Micheli —  May 2, 2013 — 2 Comments

Caveat Lector: This is pretty insider-church stuff. If you’re a part of the 2/3 of Americans who do not regularly participate in the life of a congregation then you’re not likely to be interested in the following. We’ve already failed to interest you. 

I remember going to my first Annual Conference, the yearly gathering of all United Methodist clergy in Virginia. Not having grown up in the church and being a far cry from a church nerd and just generally being a non-conformist, I’d never attended a denominational gathering before.

I’d just graduated from Princeton Seminary.

I sat up in the cheap seats of the Roanoke Coliseum and gazed the thousands of clergy and lay delegates on the floor below me.

And I was shocked by what I saw:

A sea of white hair.

Seriously, the Hollywood premieres of Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy totaled a lower % geriatrics. cocoon

I said I was shocked, and I was, truly so. Sitting up there in the nosebleeds, having spent 3 years and thousands of dollars in seminary, I realized that this was a harbinger of things to come.

The Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is entertaining a measure that would strongly encourage individuals over 45 not to seek ordained ministry.

The Texas Annual Conference is one of the denomination’s largest, and- it should be said- it’s one of the few conferences with churches still demonstrating the ability to make new Christians.

The reasons for not admitting 45 and overs into the ordination process?

It pivots, as all things do, on an investment and return strategy (some clergy will take issue with such a bald, capitalist analogy but, whatever, not all wisdom belongs to the Church).

The larger Church invests a large amount of funds into ordinands and eventual clergy. This investment comes in the form of financial support for seminary education and, later, pension and health benefits- and even with such investment most graduating seminarians are sinfully saddled with a student loan debt their paltry pastor’s salary will not be able to remit. Such investment is premised on the return the Church will receive from the clergy’s service, growing churches and making new disciples.

The UMC’s ordination process is long and laborious, excessively so but that’s another post.

I was admitted into the ordination process in 2003 the year I graduated from seminary.

Without a hitch, I successfully jumped through all the hoops (you’re not supposed to refer to them as ‘hoops’ but that’s what they are) and I still wasn’t ordained an Elder (full clergyman) until 2006 or 2007- crap, I can’t remember now. So someone entering the ordination process at 45 might not be ordained until they’re nearing their golden anniversary, giving them, on average, a quarter’s worth of time to return to the larger Church.

In addition, if it’s conceivable, given our bureaucratic blight, for ‘institutional knowledge’ to be a good thing then it should be noted that older ordinands will have less time to acquire it.

the-girl-next-door-20090902023804594When it comes to older ordinands, in all but exceptional cases, the juice- as the pimp says in the Girl Next Door- isn’t worth the squeeze.

As I said, the measure is premised on an investment and return strategy. The measure reflects a strategic decision to name reality (always a leader’s first calling) and posture the Church to best survive the immediate incoming trends and position it to meet the missional need of the future.

In case you haven’t been to church since JFK was alive, the UMC is old.

In fact, most of our constituents are older than our denomination, which only dates to 1964.

The death rate among UMC members was 35% higher in 2009 than it was in the 1968.

Meaning: the percentage of older members (65 and older) has steadily been on the rise. What’s more, 53% of all UMC clergy are 55 or older.

The UMC has been serving a constituency older than the general population since before I was born (1977).

Think about that stat for a while: we’ve been serving congregants who are older than their peers in the general population LONGER THAN I’VE BEEN ALIVE. 

According to Lovett Weems, a leading denominational consultant, the next 3 decades will see a ‘Death Tsunami’ visited upon the UMC, with 50% more deaths in 2050 than in 2010.

Any systems analyst will tell you, an organization gets the results- good or bad- that it’s designed to get.

In other words, it’s not that we’re bad at reaching younger people and turning them into Christians; it’s that we’re REALLY GOOD at taking care of ourselves.

Whether by intention or institutional inertia, for half a century the UMC has been at servicing the needs of its older members.

Even with all my congregation’s children’s and youth ministries the great bulk of my time is spent by ministering to a demographic who won’t be here in 20 years. It’s not that that’s not a valuable ministry; it’s just that provision for the future needs to be taken too.

The Texas Conference’s measure reflects how the UMC in a bad way needs to reach out to younger and more diverse people.

And just as you wouldn’t send a missionary into a country where they didn’t speak the language, the best way for the larger Church to reach younger and more diverse people is by investing in younger and more diverse clergy candidates.

Charles Handy said: “It is one of the paradoxes of success that the things and ways which got you there are seldom those things that will keep you there” and that’s exactly the crossroads the UMC stand upon today.

Except, the UMC hasn’t really been successful since before Let It Bleed came out, which is why, as I like to point out to congregants from time to time, ‘doing it like we’ve always done it’ is a stupid strategy.

It’s not about discriminating against older clergy candidates. The measure doesn’t say it won’t admit any candidates over 45 into the process. It is instead a matter of discerning where and in whom to invest the Church’s increasingly limited resources for the benefit of the larger Church. Of course, there are exceptional exceptions.

Many have reacted against the measure, pointing out that God calls whom God chooses to call regardless of policy. After all, goes the ad naseum biblical citation, God called elderly old Abram and Sarai. To my mind, this isn’t a very compelling argument for two reasons:

God’s call is never a solitary endeavor. The call must always be affirmed by representatives of the larger Church. Not every one who thinks they’re called actually is. The Church with a big C already vets and discerns people’s calls.

God didn’t call Abram and Sarai to serve him in the form of the professional guild that is ordained ministry.

#2 for me is where it’s at. As experts like Phyllis Tickle point out the time is quickly coming when bivocational ministry (not full-time) will be a necessity for churches and denominations.

The changing missional context of our culture requires that we rediscover that God’s call doesn’t need to equal ordained ministry.

In fact, what the Texas measure doesn’t even begin to address is the fact the greater need in the UMC is a rediscovery of the ‘priesthood of all believers.’

There are many ways- equally valid, authoritative and effective ways- for people to respond to God’s call that doesn’t require the larger Church’s investment of finite funds.

Now, I’m sure I’ll be accused of discriminating against older people, but I recently turned 35 so I no longer even count in the ‘younger clergy’ category.

raymondburr2Not to mention, I work alongside Dennis Wayne Perry.

I can tell you firsthand, Dennis Perry doesn’t let his worn-out body, rapidly fading mind, and prehistoric job skills stop him from showing up to work at least a couple of hours a week to take credit for my work.

So I don’t think it’s about the abundant gifts older clergy can offer, it’s about the limited gifts the larger Church can afford to give. MV5BMTI1MjcxMzI1M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTA5MDAwMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR2,0,214,317_

 

 

 

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3 Lessons Protestants Can Learn from Pope Francis

Jason Micheli —  April 24, 2013 — 6 Comments

romeroYesterday a friend shared the news that Pope Francis has moved to ‘unblock’ the beautification of Oscar Romero.

Romero, in case you don’t know, was a Catholic priest in El Salvador who was shot to death in 1980 while saying Mass. What made Romero a hero to many made him an enemy to others: his solidarity with Latin America’s poor and his opposition to human rights abuses. Up until now, Romero’s beautification had stalled over concerns with his ‘liberation theology.’

Liberation theology, is a discipline within theology that is controversial only to those (Glenn Beck) who don’t know anything about theology- but that’s a post for another day.

When I heard the news about Romero, my initial gut reaction was to say:

‘Pope Francis has totally given me a bad case of Catholic-envy.’ 

It’s true; he has.

And judging by the amount of praise in Protestant journals, such as Christianity Today, I’m not alone.

From the news that Francis refuses to live in the papal mansion to his shunning elaborate vestments to breaking ‘tradition’ when it comes to Holy Thursday foot-washing, the new bishop of Rome seems to possess the one thing that’s almost extinct in our media-saturated world: authenticity.

And that makes me envious. 4577728-3x2-700x467

Where Catholics get a real-deal, legit Jesus-follower as the global face of their tradition, Protestants get what…? Who…?

Joel Osteen? Blegh. Franklin Graham? Lord, I hope not.

The frenzied excitement that each Pope Francis story generates in the press and among the public bears out at least 3 lessons from which Protestants, it seems to me, can learn.

#1: It’s About Jesus

While the ‘Nones’ may be on the rise and while the ranks of the ‘religiously unaffiliated’ swell, people are still- stubbornly so- captivated by Jesus. There’s still plenty of people in the world interested in how a crucified Jewish messiah could so haunt the world still that he produces someone like Francis. Someone whose whole life seems conformed to replicating as closely as possible the life of Christ- just like the Francis of the pope’s namesake.

The curiosity piqued by Francis demonstrates, I think, that though the ‘Nones’ are opting out of institutional Christianity (Institutionanity), they’re not necessarily writing Jesus off.

Mainsideline Protestantism, like United Methodism, is in decline, and with such decline the temptation towards institutional preservation increases in inverse proportion. Too often in the guise of ‘saving souls’ we’re really just trying to save our little corner of organized religion.

I think the appeal of Francis shows the dangers in such temptation. People aren’t interested in institutions, but they are- still- interested in Jesus. Part of the appeal of Francis is that he clearly cares more about Jesus than he does with the institution called Church.

#2: It’s About the Poor

Even non-Christians know in their bones that ours is a faith that was intended to be of the poor, by the poor, for the poor.

That’s the wisdom of liberation theology: our scripture is best understood read from the perspective of the poor.

Somewhere along the way many of us have lost the clarity of Jesus’ message. The Vatican has its opulence, sure, but we Protestants are no better. We have our prosperity preachers on TV who fly around in their personal jets (which Jesus blessed them with) and we have others who are content to do charity (Operation Christmas Child) without ever, in Jesus’ name, addressing the systemic causes of poverty. And then there are the rest of us (me: guilty) who think of ‘serving the poor’ as one church activity among other, equally urgent, ministries.

To the extent that we forget that Jesus’ Gospel was intended to be ‘good news for the poor’ ours will always be a Gospel with a hole in it.

I think so many have praised Francis’ declaration that the Church should be a Church in solidarity with the poor because they know, if just intuitively, that that’s exactly who we should be.

Because that’s who Jesus was.

#3: It’s About Integrity

Pope Francis is a walking, talking 21st century illustration of Marshall McLuhan’s maxim:

‘the medium is the message.’

Our mode has to match our message.

In other words: We’ve got to walk the walk if we’re going to talk the talk.

Far be it from me to criticize Joel Osteen but most people know there’s a dissonance between an affluent peddler of the Gospel and the one who initially proclaimed that Gospel. That Francis seems so refreshing a Christian leader is but an indication of how hungry the world is for people whose character corresponds and compliments their confession of faith.

As Paul says in Corinthians, we are ourselves like letters sent by Christ to a watching world. And none of the letters that made their way into the New Testament can undo the damage done by you or me, in our daily lives, when we make the love of Christ illegible or unintelligible.

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Ten Things Pastors Should Keep in Mind When Blogging

Jason Micheli —  April 17, 2013 — 5 Comments

Screen Shot 2013-04-09 at 2.37.42 PMI was recently asked by a colleague to write up some advice about Why Blogging is Important for Ministry and Things Pastors Should Keep in Mind When Blogging. You can read my thoughts on the former here.

Below are my thoughts about the latter question:

#1: Content, Content, Content

Tony Jones once told me that if you want put out quality, substantive content then people will come.

It’s true and, like most true things, has a corollary: if you put out junk then people will not come.

People in and out of the church want to do theology and think about how their faith impacts their lives. Content is what they’re after.

If you just post cute, cliched things people probably saw in email forwards in the early aughts then they’re going to check out.

Insider church humor is even worse. Please don’t. It’s NEVER funny and is only further evidence of (a subject on which I’ve written before) how Christians writ large are not funny.

#2: Voice

The whole point of social media is that people have access to you. Who you really are.

Not the you you pretend to be on Sunday morning.

You. The you your husband/wife knows you to be.
You. No pretenses. No masks. No church/corporate veneer of authenticity.

Blogging has to be about you and how you interact with whatever topics that interest you.

If you’re just writing predictable things about predictable topics that any generic minister could write, it’s not really you.

If it sounds like it was written by the Flanders on The Simpsons, it’s not the authentic you- unless (God help us) you really are like Flanders on The Simpsons, in which case you shouldn’t be writing anything at all. You’re just more bad PR for why Christianity is irrelevant.

Thanks to our constant media culture, people- especially young people- can smell BS a mile away. Because blogging is about you and your honesty, don’t use it as a promotional tool for your ministry. People can smell that a mile away too.

#3: Be Okay with Upsetting People

This is really a subset of ‘Voice.’

Most United Methodists abide by this equation:

If ‘Gospel’ = ‘Niceness’

&

‘Ministry’ = ‘Keeping the Members Happy’

Then: 

‘Pastors Must Never Upset People’

In the United Methodist Church that’s as binding an equation as saying Pi = 3.14….

So my advice here will be a bridge too far for many:

Being true and open about who you are and what you’re thinking is going to upset some people.

You can’t avoid it.

So don’t bother trying.

Of course, you still have to exercise discernment, prudence and restraint.

Learn from my experience/mistake:

Before click ‘Publish’ ask yourself:

Is this post really worth the headache of having the bishop call you? Is it worth having certain a church member (HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED) start a silent petition to get rid of you?

Even if it is funny and cogent and theologically sound?

If the answer is ‘no’ or ‘not sure’ don’t click ‘Publish.’

However, said post while netting me said call and said petition also netted my church several worship visitors whose curiosity I’d piqued.

So don’t let my cautionary tale keep you from abiding by my initial suggestion:

Be ready to upset people.

joel_osteen_by_bdbros-d4cnmxiIf you think, for example, that Joel Osteen is the gospel-equivalent of that Set It and Forget It guy on the Shopping Channel, then be open about it and don’t worry about how many people love ‘Become a Better You.’

#4: Lists

What’s worked for Dave for years works for blogs too. Top Ten, Top Five, Three Things I Wished/Learned/Hoped…whatever. People like lists.

#5: Titles and Twitter

The analytics don’t lie. You should post titles that are caustic, controversial or questioning. Attention-getting.

Likewise for the summary statement you feed to Twitter (which you should do) in 140 characters or less.

#6: It’s Social Media

You’re not the New York Times or Bono. 

People aren’t going to visit your blog because you have a blog and deserve a readership.

It’s called social media for a reason; quid pro quo is the hinge of blogging.

If you want people to read your blog, you’ve got to read others’ and comment and contribute. ‘Like’ their posts on Facebook. Invite others to post on your blog and ask if you can contribute to their blog.

#8: Be Responsive

This is the hardest thing for me with my pastor’s schedule, but the social aspect of social media means you need to respond to people’s comments, questions and feedback.

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#9: Comment Policy

This is the second hardest thing for me. Philosophically, I believe in the internet as an ‘open-source’ community. I believe all comments and contributions should be allowed, zero censorship.

My role as pastor qualifies that a bit for me.

The Comments section of most any blog or website could be used as Exhibit A of the Calvinist Doctrine of Total Depravity.

People can be freaking mean, ugly, offensive and insensitive. 

I don’t want church members whom I care about reading some of the stuff that comes my way.

My rule of thumb:

I have to ‘approve’ every comment.
I’m inclined to approve every comment.
I approve anything that’s ugly or critical of me so that it’s not me editing for my self- image sake.
I do not approve anything that’s blatantly derogatory.

#10: Community

I commend this based on my reflection above.
It’s a big mistake to think of blogging as simply an extension of/service to your congregational constituency. It’s a big mistake to think of blogging as a way of communicating with your congregation or getting people through the doors of your congregation.

You should think of the blog as its own congregation. It’s own community.

(Shamelessly stealing from Doug Pagitt):  You should think of your blog readers as your congregation’s diaspora.

People who are engaged through your ministry (blogging) who will never step foot in your sanctuary. I recently raised cash from this ‘diaspora’ for our mission in Guatemala so don’t think their engagement is limited to reading and commenting.

Given how badly most mainline churches engage the ‘Nones’ this is not an idle point.

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The Best Ways to Kill a Church

Jason Micheli —  March 5, 2013 — 1 Comment

0Last week as part of our leadership development we had a group of 45 people engage in a ‘Ways to Kill the Church’ brainstorm, inspired by the book, Kill the Company. They imagined they were a rival church plant, moving in across the street from us. It was shocking how many ideas they came up with to put our church out of business.

The exercise got me thinking. Here are my baker’s dozen, in no particular order, of tried and true ways to kill a church.

In fact, there’s no shortages of churches practicing any number of these:

 

  • Take It for Granted: Don’t bother with evangelism, or at least assume it’s the pastor’s job. Instead assume there will always be plenty of people in your community who are interested in going to church, who think (feel duty-bound) that church going is important. Assume young people will return to church when they marry and have kids. FYI: All those traditional trends are rapidly declining.

 

  • Refuse to Adapt: Stop asking the questions that got asked when the church first began and grew, ie, ‘What does our community need that we can offer? What questions is our community asking to which the Gospel might have an answer? How can we best incarnate the Gospel for the people in our community?’ Instead of adapting how you do church to fit your community, insist on doing ministry and worship ‘the way we’ve always done it.’

 

  • Major in the Minors: Spend the majority of your time, money, communication, energy and volunteer resources promoting activities that either have nothing to do with your mission (spreading the Gospel and making disciples of it) or actively and inadvertently frustrate your mission. Before you know it, you’ll have a huge chunk of your congregation who can’t even speak a single sentence about God without blushing or saying ‘that’s private.’ Congregational death is just around the corner.

 

  • Don’t Partner with Your Pastors and Staff: See them as ‘labor’ and the membership as ‘management.’ Think it’s their job to do the ministry of Christ while your role is to attend, participate and evaluate how well your Jesus-Flavored-Country Club is run. When the church does’t grow and thrive- because it can’t if the members are not engaged in ministry- you can blame the staff. It’s a wonderfully self-fulfilling posture.

 

  • Subconsciously Insist on Homogeneity: Say ‘we welcome everyone’ when you actually mean: ‘We welcome everyone so long as they dress like us, act like us, speak like us, vote like us, worship like us and want to do church just like us.’

 

  • Assume Faith: Take it for granted that people who’ve been sitting in the pews for 50 years, who helped start your church and who’ve served in leadership have ever been converted to the Gospel, know Jesus Christ personally and can engage in genuine religious conversation. Odds are many of them haven’t and can’t.

 

  • Neglect the Young: Fail to make them a priority of the church’s ministry. Worry instead about what the church is doing for you and your peers. Fail to disciple them and catechize them rigorously. Give them a Jesus-lite Christianity because that’s what you prefer. They’re looking for an adventure and something to give their lives to.

 

  • Make Mission All About $: Don’t engage hands-on in work with the poor in your community or the world. Don’t take risks or get out of your comfort zone. Don’t go to places in the world to see with your own eyes how the Church and the Gospel can change lives and communities. That can be too transformative. Instead if you want to kill your church, make mission primarily about raising money for and giving money to (good) charitable causes that will impact people you will never meet. If you’re a denomination, insist that the local church give their money to denominationally approved mission ministries staffed by professional missionaries. That way the local church has neither the time nor the resources to develop organically its own hands-on mission ministries.

 

  • Bureaucracy: Don’t ask or expect people, especially leaders, to learn how to pray or read the bible or articulate why Jesus is important in their lives. Instead set up committees- lots of them- and ask people to vote on things that could just as easily be decided by consensus-building. Who needs to lose the shirt off their back when all you need to do is raise your hand yay or nay to follow Jesus. If you’re a denomination, you can speed the killing by replicating it on a much larger scale, saddling pastors and congregations with forms, reports, procedures etc that sap a church’s clarity of focus, a staff’s time and energy and a pastor’s willingness to be creative.

 

  • Value Communications Over Character: Believe that a particular strategy, ministry program or communication method will overcome a lack of vital faith and hospitality in the congregation. In other words, believe that the commercial you put out about the congregation can distract from the lack of a converted character in the congregation.

 

  • Make Your Mission Making Your Members Happy: Incidentally, if you want to kill your church then keep on using the term ‘member.’ It’s a terrifically helpful word, much better than, say, ‘servant,’ that conjures all sorts of assumptions about special privileges and status. It creates an unspoken insider/outsider dynamic. It invites people to boast about how many years they’ve been a member, which invites sharing about how much they’ve given and served too. Implication: you’ve not been here as long, given as much, served as much so be quiet. If you want to kill your church, for the love of God don’t say ‘our constituency is our surrounding community.’ And don’t ask ‘How can we best serve our community?’ Instead make your mission keeping your members happy. Pastors, the best way to accomplish that is to maintain the status quo and never, ever, ever say no.
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Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?

Jason Micheli —  February 18, 2013 — 4 Comments

1223-Jump-Elie-01-popupJames Davidson Hunter, a sociologist at UVA, writes convincingly about the causes of Christianity’s rise in the ancient world. The faith spread, Hunter argues, not by being a religion promulgated by the poor, as the popular myth tells it. The faith spread by being, almost from the beginning (think of the wealthy women mentioned in the Gospels as ‘sponsors’ of Jesus’ movement), a religion of the elite.

Christianity was from the get-go a religion of the culture-makers. Christianity changed the world because it so quickly changed the hearts, minds and worldview of artists and intellectuals who shape and change culture.

That is why Constantine was able to convert to Christianity. It was politically expedient to do so because the cultural elite of Rome were already largely Christianized.

For Christians to change the world anew, to influence culture and not just retreat from it, they need to reengage the arts and intellectual disciplines as Christians- and I’m not talking about those terrible looking Amish romance books you see in the ‘Christian fiction’ section at Barnes and Noble.

I’ve brought this up before and I bring it up again because of Paul Ellie’s article in the NY Times Book Review: Has Fiction Lost Its Faith? 

Ellie points out that fifty years ago writers like Flannery O’ Connor, Walker Percy, Graham Greene, Reynolds Price and even John Updike wrote ground-breaking, lauded fiction that was suffused with their Christian convictions. Today, Ellie observes:

A faith with something like 170 million adherents in the United States, a faith that for centuries seeped into every nook and cranny of our society, now plays the role it plays in Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “This Blessed House”: as some statues left behind in an old building, bewildering the new ­occupants.

To Ellie’s reckoning, only Marilyne Robinson’s Gilead (click and buy it now!) counts as an analogous, contemporary novel with equal parts Christian sensibility and aesthetic quality. It’s a beautiful book in case you haven’t read it.

Following the contours of Hunter’s argument above, you could see the loss of faith in fiction as something of a harbinger. As art goes so goes popular culture. The absence of a credible Christianity in contemporary literature could portend a popular culture in which Christianity plays an even more marginal role:

In America today Christianity is highly visible in public life but marginal or of no consequence in a great many individual lives. For the first time in our history it is possible to speak of Christianity matter-of-factly as one religion among many; for the first time it is possible to leave it out of the conversation altogether. This development places the believer on a frontier again, at the beginning of a new adventure; it means that the Christian who was born here is a stranger in a strange land no less than the Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Soviet Jews and Spanish-speaking Catholics who have arrived from elsewhere. But few people see it that way. People of faith see decline and fall.

Ellie’s use of the world ‘frontier’ is a wise one for Hunter’s argument can point the other way too. Christianity finding itself on the margins, almost as immigrants in a strange new land, can be seen as an opportunity to reengage the faith in new, creative ways, to rediscover the ‘core’ of our story and convictions and to reemphasize the importance of training Christians to enter their fields of study as Christians.

This opportunity then is one not limited to the world of art and literature. It’s the opportunity which God, in God’s infinite sense of humor, has laid open to the whole Church.

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Kill the Church

Jason Micheli —  January 29, 2013 — 1 Comment

KillCompany_finalLast night I finished reading Lisa Bodell’s book, Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution. Back when I was a young, know-it-all elitist (hey, I’m not young anymore), I looked down my nose at business and leadership books. They were secular, shallow, consumerist and not theological I sneered.

Of course, that was before I realized:

A) mainline seminaries do an atrocious job of preparing pastors to…you know…actually lead, vision and fundraise for an organization and

B) the mainline churches those mainline seminaries aren’t preparing pastor to lead are in desperate straits, in desperate need of leadership and change.

So I’ve reassessed and have read a good number of book’s like Lisa Bodell’s. Some are good, some not so much- just like theological books. Kill the Company, is in the former category; in fact, it’s like a kick in the pants/splash of cold water/wake up call/epiphany sort of good.

Bodell’s basic premise is that what hold companies back and leads to failure isn’t their inability to dream big, identify the right next step or sketch goals. It’s their inability to let go of the status quo in order to achieve those dreams. Weighed down by the demands of the status quo, and all the internal processes, procedures and loyalties that come with it, employees never have the time to get to the vision thing. And after a while they cease believing change is possible.

Here’s the thing.

You could pretty much go through the entire book and just scratch out the word ‘company’ and in its place put ‘local church’ or ‘denomination.’ Her assessment is spot-on for what ails churches. 

For example, here’s this from page 6:

In fact, too many CEO’s Denominational Officials and executives Laity refuse to see that what has generally been accepted as the undisputed path to success and profits is in many ways holding their companies churches back. They have forgotten that great business ministry is not just about improving on what you’ve got; it’s about inventing something different and better. So they insist that employees pastors try to build on bad things rather than allowing them to tear down the bad and do something new. They Denominations, Boards, Conferences et al implement supposedly innovation-enhancing programs that create additional layers of process, making it so difficult just to get things done that people pastors, staff and lay leaders no longer feel that they have control over their work. This leads them to resign any dreams they might have of making a real difference to the company. They become complacent zombie workers, repeating the same thing day after day, lacking any incentive to be innovative.

The penalty for taking a risk is greater than it is for not taking any risk. Yet by definition, an innovative company church is a place that embraces and rewards (smart) risk. It’s one where people are encouraged and, yes, paid to think. And question. And challenge. And experiment. 

 

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By the Power Vested in Me by this Mouse

Jason Micheli —  November 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

I’ve often thought the NY Times wedding pages are a good harbinger of the trends to come. Long before ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ died a relatively quiet death and well before a seeming cultural consensus settled about homosexuality, the NY Times posted wedding announcements celebrating gay couples like they we just ordinary couples.

That’s not a comment on the rightness/wrongness of the issue; it’s just a comment that the Times foreshadow future trends.

So here’s another trend.

Those same wedding pages this week wrote a story about the ever-increasing trend of couples getting friends, duly vested in made-up online religions, to preside over their ceremony.

As much as I refuse to pimp myself out to marry couples who are just treating me in the same way they do the caterer, it’s also depressing that an increasing number of people prefer to circumvent any faith element in their wedding altogether.

This is the cultural climate in which we’ll need to figure out how to do Church into the future.

Here’s the article…and before you get your friend to perform your wedding after a few minutes on Google make sure he/she is legal.

IN the days leading up to their August wedding at the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island, Kinara Flagg and Paul Fileri chose Andrew Case, a friend and former law school classmate of Ms. Flagg’s, to officiate.

In some places, online ministers may need backup.

In the eyes of the couple, Mr. Case, who had become a Universal Life minister through a quick online ordination, was the right man for the job. In the eyes of the law, however, Mr. Case, who was not a part of an active ministry, was officiating in the wrong county.

An increasing number of couples are steering away from traditional religious and civil wedding officiants in favor of friends and relatives who become ordained through online ministries. But many couples are unaware that while New York State recognizes marriages performed by those who became ministers by the power vested in a mouse, there are five downstate counties where such officiants are not technically legal.

Ms. Flagg and Mr. Fileri, who knew that Suffolk County on Long Island, which includes Shelter Island, was among the handful of no-online-minister zones in the state, obtained their marriage license in Monroe County (where Mr. Fileri grew up and which recognizes online ministries), making their wedding a legal union after all.

“It’s surprising that Suffolk County does not recognize these online ministers,” Ms. Flagg said.

Neither do the counties of Nassau, Westchester, Putnam or Dutchess, owing to a 1989 ruling by the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in a case involving a Suffolk County couple who were then embroiled in a divorce. In that case, the court ruled that the couple’s marriage and prenuptial agreement were void because their officiant was a Universal Life minister.

Though Ms. Flagg speaks for many married couples when she says “we wanted a friend to marry us, someone who could speak about us to our friends and family, rather than a person who doesn’t really know us and recites a lot of formulaic vows,” it remains that Connecticut, Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, a part of Pennsylvania and (of all places) Las Vegas do not necessarily recognize the credentials of officiants who were created, for better or worse, through such online ministries as the Universal Life Church, the Church of Spiritual Humanism, Rose Ministries and the Temple of Earth.

For many years, New York City also did not recognize online ministers, but in 2006 began allowing them to officiate at weddings in the five boroughs. But the appellate court’s ruling still holds for the other counties. (In September 2007, a couple in York County, Pa., who had been married two months earlier by an online minister received a call from a county clerk who told them that a judge had ruled that ministers who do not have a “regularly established church or congregation” cannot perform marriages under state law. Their marriage, they were told, might not be valid. Representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union advised them to seek help from the organization if the legality of their marriage was ever challenged.)

New York Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, a Westchester County Democrat, who has been trying since 2005 to pass a bill in Albany that would give online officiants legal power to marry couples throughout the state, said, “We need to change the law so that people everywhere can be legally married by online ministers.”

“I have had lots of conversations about this issue with the Judiciary Committee staff in Albany, and everyone knows something needs to be done,” Ms. Galef said. “I’m not quite sure what is blocking this bill. Is there opposition from priests, rabbis and other clergymen who see this as both a competitive and economic thing? I just don’t know.”

The Rev. Kent Winters-Hazelton, who once served in a no-online-minister zone at the United Community Church of Wantagh on Long Island, in Nassau County, and is now pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Lawrence, Kan., said that he understood why some states still do not recognize online ministers.

“In some places, there is still an understanding that certain qualifications have to be met by a minister or a justice of the peace before they are legally able to perform marriages,” he said. “And I agree with that.”

Here’s the rest of the article.

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