Risk taking

This coming weekend will be exciting.  The little church, the one with just a few mostly elderly members, finished the discernment process with our consultant a few weeks ago.  Through that process, they've decided to move forward with a God-sized plan.  We are simultaneously giddy with excitement and slightly nauseated with uncertainty.  But it feels right.

This church, founded in 1824, but recently in decline, has a significant amount of savings.  It's not a huge amount, but it's six figures, which I think is pretty good based on the size of the church and its recent history.  Some of this money is reserved to maintain the cemetery in perpetuity, but they are ready to spend almost all the rest on ministry.  If you're not familiar with the politics of church, that is HUGE.  In my experience, most congregations cling to their savings with clenched fists, letting small bits of it go to replace the roof or pave the parking lot.  Then they have a fundraising drive to replace the spent funds.  It gets called "stewardship," but in reality, it's often "hoarding."  Truthfully, it is often "distrusting God."

So what's about to happen?  Well, I don't know exactly what God's going to do, but I feel like it's going to be amazing.  Here's what God's people are planning to do:

1. Hire a part time musician.  We have not been able to have consistent music in worship at either church, but the two churches in the charge are willing to spend some money to make that happen.
2. Put on a festival on Saturday with hot dogs and BBQ chicken and a bounce house.  Money raised will be given to the "fuel up" program for local schools, which provides weekend food for children on reduced/free lunch.  Local neighbors have been invited, with invitations to over 200 hand delivered along with pound cakes.
3. Host a community Thanksgiving service Sunday evening, inviting other local churches.
4. Spend over $18k on an awesome playground at the church for the community.
5. Start a summer literacy program to fill in the gaps for at-risk kids in the community.  
6. There are dreams to create a day-retreat center at this church in the woods, with a prayer walk and a labyrinth.
7. At least one adult member is going to be baptized soon, and at least two young families (with ties to present church families) are officially joining.

I'm sure there's more that I've left out.  It's exciting to see the spirit bubbling up - dry bones coming to life.  I am blown away by the attitude of the folks here.  Much has been learned in the discernment process, I think, and it continues to bear fruit.  I feel like we've all taken to heart the idea that to gain life, you must be willing to lose it.  We have to be willing to take risks and trust God.  That doesn't mean being foolish, reckless, or out-of-touch with reality.  It does mean not to let worry about self-preservation choke off our calling to minister to our neighbors.  No matter what happens, these folks want to be faithful to that call, and I think it makes God happy.  I know it makes me happy and hopeful.

So please pray for this little church and its neighbors, if that's the kind of thing you do.  

Indifference

I really want people to like me.  I really want everyone to get along.  I hate it when there's conflict.

Wouldn't you think we could all get along at church?  I mean, aren't we all nice people?  Don't we all want the same thing, ultimately?

Well, I have found the answer to these questions is, in order, No, No, and No.

Maybe I've started this post off on the wrong foot - I don't want to give the impression that we are engaged in great turmoil and everyone's up in arms about something.  Mostly, things have calmed down since the drama I mentioned in the last post occurred.  Let me back up a little.

One of the nuggets of wisdom I've been exposed to during our weekly discernment meetings is the importance of practicing indifference toward anything except for the will of God.  It's more than just a matter of prioritizing concerns with God's will at the top, though I suppose you could think of it that way.  The problem with prioritizing things when "doing God's will" is one of the items in your list is that it's so much more than just an item in a list.  It goes to the very core of pretty much anything else you could put on the list.  It defies boundaries, overlapping into every aspect of our lives, ideally.

It sounds nice, I suppose, but what does it really look like to put "indifference" into practice?  I'm not entirely sure, since I have such a hard time doing it.  But I think it means that we look to our mission as a church - in the United Methodist Church, it's been spelled out as "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."  Anything that aligns with this purpose should be lifted up as something good.  Anything that undermines it should be purged.  Anything else should not be given too much attention and energy.

The problem I have is that I have other priorities like:

1. Being liked.  Making decisions that don't make everyone happy puts this priority at risk.  It's far easier to just accept the status quo.
2. Being "successful."  Success as we define it is not always congruent with what God wants for us.  Sometimes we just want more people in worship or the best facilities or an award-winning choir or more money in the offering plate.  All these are fine in and of themselves, and can be markers of success, but they are not themselves "success."
3. Being comfortable.  I want to get to a place where I have arrived as a fully mature person who has done all that he's supposed to have done and can now stop.  I don't want to deal with my junk - my sinful nature, my bad habits and my hangups.  Jesus accepts me as I am, so that should be good enough, right?  Churches act this way corporately sometimes too.
4. Working hard.  Ironically, even though I just want to stop my transformation process and declare myself done, I have a nagging fear that I'm not working hard enough.  For churches - sometimes we believe that all we need to do to turn this place around is to keep doing what we've always done, but everyone needs to work harder at it.  

This is by no means a complete list, but you get the idea.

To get back to my initial questions about getting along - I think they're mostly the wrong questions to ask.  We certainly want to get along and be kind to everyone.  We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings if we can help it.  But we are not together as a body solely to make everyone feel good about themselves. We are together as a body to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  We have to be indifferent to anything else.  Fortunately, we serve a loving, gracious, and merciful God who transforms us into a community who loves one another if we are open to transformation.  That is really good news.

Declaring victory

Obviously, it's early in this appointment for the pastor.  She's been at this two-point charge for less than 3 months, but it's hard to imagine things going much more smoothly.  I say this the morning after a weird day of drama that kept her on the phone with people until past the time we usually like to go to bed.  I am confident that in the long run, this dust-up will be only an afterthought, though the possibility of continued drama always exists.  People are broken, all of us, but some more obviously than others.

So "declaring victory" at this early date may seem premature.  However, these are words that I use in one form or another when discussing the state of things with the pastor.  There's always someone upset or disappointed, no matter what good is happening before everyone's eyes.  We know this on an intellectual level, and it's not a surprise at this point.  So why does one naysayer or one negative offhand comment make us question so much of ourselves?  I think it's what the pastor calls "the big lie."

The "big lie" is the tape we play in our heads over and over again that tells us that we are not enough.  That we do not deserve to be loved, that we are not good enough or smart enough or can achieve enough to be worthy of anything, much less the love, grace, and mercy of God Almighty.  This was a theme of her message on Sunday - God loves us with more grace and mercy than we can imagine.  It's more even than we think we need.  It's overflowing and intense.

Declare victory?  Now?  With so much ahead of us and not much behind us in this place with these people?  With all the drama and garbage that we see in ourselves and those around us?  Yes.  Declare victory for what God has already done and what God is going to do.  I think you have to declare victory as often as possible.  Because the victory is God's and not ours.  And also, because we must cling to the good that we see happening and remember it often.  Remember, remember, remember.  You were slaves in Egypt, and God heard your cry and reached out his mighty arm.  You were a slave to sin and death and God came to be among us - descending from the highest height to the humiliation and suffering of the cross because GOD LOVES YOU.  YOU ARE PRECIOUS TO GOD.

This is not a victory declaration that we are "done" in some way.  It's more of a marker along our path.  We will be declaring victory every time we perceive that God has shown up.  We will hold fast to the moment so we don't forget it.  At least that's what I hope for, and that's what I plan to do with God's help.

Discernment

One of the pastor's churches in this 2-point charge is very small, as I've mentioned before.  In the weeks leading up to the appointment, we were hearing that they were down to about 10-12 in worship.  This was usually presented as a gloomy reality, or maybe that's just the way I took it.  I must say that I'm not feeling gloomy at all about this place.

This church was founded in the 1820's, with the current building dating to the 1930's.  The oldest parishioner, a local farmer, remembers tagging along with his father and others as they cut down trees, hauled them via mule to the mill, and brought them to the current site to build the church house.  I have no idea what has transpired there, or what attendance/participation numbers have looked like over the years, but there's no way to think of this place other than in decline and struggling to survive.  We take up about $400 a week in offering there.  They have some savings in the bank that's dipped into to pay bills, and they can probably continue at this rate for a few more years if nothing changes.

Since we've been coming, the worship attendance has averaged in the low 20's, I would guess.  Half of the increase of course, is our family of 5.  But I think some folks are showing up out of curiosity about the new pastor.  The regular attendees are mostly related to each other and are mostly elderly, but there's a youngish couple that attends, and we even had another visiting couple with a baby last week.

What to do?  A case could be made for making plans to shut it down.  Many churches do just that, and it doesn't have to mean some kind of failure.  But these folks are not ready to go quietly, and they want the place to go forward making disciples.  Our old farmer, in his 80's, has his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents buried in the cemetery there, and doesn't want to see the place die before he does.  He's not alone in that feeling.

This is a church about 5 minutes from a thriving artsy town and 10 minutes from a large state university.  There are probably a dozen subdivisions close by, with large houses on large lots.  If you drive around the area, it feels like you're in the country, but beyond all the trees and lush vegetation, there are people.  It seems like the ideal spot to plant a church.  So that's what the pastor has in mind - a reboot.

She called a former pastor of ours at our "home church" who has recently retired, but is now consulting.  She wanted to ask him who would be a good resource to help this place "vision" and discern what God wants for it.  He said he'd do it.  For 10% of his usual fee.  Wow, what a blessing.  This is a guy who has started a couple churches from scratch, and everywhere he's gone, ridiculous growth has followed.  He does not take credit for the growth God brought, but he knows something about getting out of God's way and being available for God's use.  We've met 3 times now with a group of 6-10, and will meet a total of about 12 times as we try to discern how to move forward.

It is a great joy already to see hope and excitement on the faces of these dear people who have been sad and struggling.  It is not just a hope in our consultant.  It is not just a hope in the pastor, or a hope in the process of discernment.  It is a hope in the goodness of God, and God's care for God's people.  It is also, I think, a softening of the corporate heart of this place, and a love and concern for those people who live behind the trees and vegetation - people who are hard to see when you are turned in on yourself and your own pain and struggles.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen here.

Fear and leading in the country

So the pastor had her first administrative council meeting with one of the churches on Sunday.  I was not able to attend due to childcare responsibilities, and frankly, I am just fine with that.  I am not one who enjoys meetings, but having said that, I'm not sure who really does.  I suppose there are some people from different parts of the Myers-Briggs spectrum who really get a charge out of such things, though.  In one of her previous appointments, now that I think about it, there were some people who seemed to get a perverse joy out of conflicts and arguments, and no issue was too insignificant for a battle to be waged.  That's not the case here.

I have written before about the innate dysfunction of churches, much like the dysfunction of most families. We are human, so we do not relate perfectly to one another.  With the folks at this appointment, there is some division at the moment, but it does not seem insurmountable.  It's more related to the change in pastoral leadership, which is understandable.  For many of these people, they've know each other and worshiped with each other for decades - their whole lives spent together.  Often in a rural area, but it can happen in the middle of a big city too, a certain provincialism takes hold and folks can't see past their own little worlds.  In that situation, small disagreements get magnified and stretched out of proportion.

So what do you do when you are trying to lead people through something that seems insignificant to you, but makes the people you're attempting to lead shake with anger and fear?  I am not sure I know, but I do know some things that you shouldn't do.  For one thing, the anger/fear can't be allowed to drive decisions.  If the leader decides to act or not act based solely on wanting to avoid conflict or hurt feelings, she is letting fear do the leading.

Throughout this ministry adventure, we have tried to make pleasing God our number one goal.  Sometimes we fall short, but we've tried to maintain focus on that goal regardless.  I am hopeful that we can make that the goal of the two churches she is serving.  Based on feedback from many parishioners, there is much reason for optimism about that.  I know it's early in our time with them, but I feel quite optimistic about the possibilities here - "Aslan is on the move."

Finding a balance - privacy/honesty

This morning, I thought I'd share some pictures with the few people who may be reading this blog.  Then I wondered about how much I should share.  I'm not sure how "out there" I want to be.  It makes me wonder why I'm blogging in the first place.  How much do I want to share?  Clearly, I want to share at some level or I'd just be writing a journal instead of a blog.  When I started this meager attempt a few years ago, the hope was that other pastors' husbands would want to communicate/commiserate about our unusual place in the Church.  That hasn't happened, but it's no big deal.

Still, I am not sure how much to share.  I want to be honest about the joys and struggles of our life in parish ministry, but I don't want to share too much.  Inevitably, I'll end up sharing something about parishioners that touches on confidentiality in some way.  I don't want to embarrass anyone, even if the embarrassment comes from their bad behavior.  And I don't want to share the details of anyone's life without their permission.  So if our parishioners start reading the blog, things could get awkward.  I want to be as honest as possible about what's going on in our lives, so being anonymous is a tremendous help.  I have probably left enough clues that a determined person could easily figure out who and where we are, and I'm accepting the fact that there is no real privacy online.

With that said, here are some pictures.  For now, I'm leaving out pictures of the church signs that say, "Welcome Pastor ", but I hate that, because I find it kind and sincere.  I will try to take some pictures of the countryside this weekend.  It's a beautiful area.

First Impressions

I finally made it to these two little churches yesterday.  Last week was the pastor's first Sunday, but our youngest spent the night before throwing up, so I stayed home with him and his big brother while our daughter tagged along with the preacher.  We think it was something he ate, because no one else got sick, thankfully.  I had to take the oldest boy off to summer camp that afternoon anyway - a three hour one-way drive.  It made for a long day, and I was kind of relieved to miss the fanfare of being the pastor's family on parade.  Not that I really mind it - it's part of the gig.

Anyhow, I did make it yesterday, and it was a great day.  I still felt like I was on display a bit, but that's ok.  The parishioners were exceedingly kind and friendly and didn't seem to mind the sweat rolling off my head during the passing of the peace on a warm and humid July morning in NC.  One interesting bit of logistics - these two churches are about 20-25 minutes apart.  The earlier service starts at 9:30, while the later one starts at 11:00.  That's a really small margin of error.  Fortunately, my wife has a foot of lead when necessary.  We pulled out of one parking lot at 10:36 and into the second one at 10:55.  The second church is the one with only about a dozen regulars.

My wife was not all that thrilled about her sermon for the day.  Last week's was better in my opinion, but for some reason, many folks complimented her on this week's.  I don't think they were trying to make her feel better, either.  Preaching/teaching is one of her greatest strengths, so even when it's not her best, I always think it's pretty good, and I'm not the only one who feels that way.  You just never know what people will respond to - it's fascinating, really.  Or frustrating, depending on your mood, I suppose.

After worship at the smaller church, we went back to the first one for a covered dish lunch.  They do that every week.   Wow.  Every week.  I will need to either ramp up my exercise or buy bigger clothes if I end up doing that every week.  We shall see.

Of course, we are now in a honeymoon period, which I am well aware could come to an abrupt end.  And it will sooner or later.  That's ok - it's part of the process.  With a new pastor comes new ways of looking at things and doing things.  The past will be honored for sure, but not worshiped.  Sometimes change is difficult, and we will have to move slowly.  Our pastor is not always patient about moving forward, but she is loving and kind and extremely, almost painfully, honest.  Hopefully, trust will build quickly.  For now, I am feeling good about a fresh start.

Quite a week, and it's not even Sunday yet

Well I think this is going to be fun.  The pastor has been visiting folks, meeting people from both churches, visiting the sick, and bringing home produce from the country.  So far, so good.  People seem glad to meet her, and apart from an anonymous complaint about her being too pretty and wearing a skirt that was too short (really, it was below the knee), everyone seems happy to have her around.  I suppose they'll have to adjust to her hotness.

One of the churches is down to a handful of members, but it's my impression that it's never been all that large, at least not the last few decades.  I saw a pictoral directory from about 5 years ago that features both churches, and the smaller church's section was a single page of pictures.  However, they are located about 5 minutes from a thriving, artsy town.  There are clearly enough people nearby that growth and ministry could happen there.  It's exciting to think about the possibilities.  It seems that they've never put much effort into inviting others in, and as they continue to shrink, they're finally thinking about their own corporate mortality.  At least that's my very early impression, never having set foot in the place, so take it with a grain of salt.

Her first appointment was in a small town church, one with a secretary and a preschool.  It's in town, not out in the country.  It's a rural setting, but these two little churches are what come to my mind when I hear the term "rural church."  The scenery is green and lush, and you have to go far enough away from "civilization" to get there that you might wonder if you've missed a turn somewhere.  It's beautiful and quiet.

Can't wait for Sunday.

Resurrection

New things are happening for the pastor, so I may start blogging again.  After 2 years working part time at our suburban church, she will be serving a 2 point charge in a neighboring county.  We will not be relocating, however, which will be great for the family (though I'm sure there will be some parishioners who don't like that :*)  I'm excited for her and for our family - it's been a good break, not without drama, but certainly good for our kids.  It's time to jump back into the parish, though, and continue on the path towards ordination in the UMC.

In case you're not aware, "2 point charge" means that there are 2 churches who combine their resources to pay for a pastor.  She will preach twice each week, once at each church, e.g, 9am at one and 11am at the other.  These are two country churches that have been in a bit of a decline.  We've been told that one averages about 40 or 50 in worship every week, while the other one is down to about 12 active members.  Should be interesting and fun.

So if anyone reads this - google reports some very light traffic here, but I don't know if it's real people or bots - and you are one who prays for such things, please keep our family in your prayers.