A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

With a growing list of frightening things in life lately, anxiety and how to provide spiritual leadership during this time has been very much in my mind. Recently, the Alban Institute web site quoted Peter Steinke from his book Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times:

Anxiety represses human functioning by decreasing our capacity to learn, replacing our curiosity with a demand for certainty, and stiffening our positions over and against one another.

Anxiety is also contagious. It connects people. Let one or two people unleash their anxiety and it won’t be long before it has a ripple effect on the congregation.

Finally, anxiety has a reactive effect. People oversimplify, become indecisive and unable to react. (Alban Institute Source)

I would add another aspect of anxiety. In the midst of anxiety we find it very hard to trust one another.

On one level we can see trust as a casualty of fear and anxiety. We wonder who we can trust and even if we can trust anyone. We over-analyze people’s words and actions seeking some ulterior motive, we withhold information, ideas and reactions because we fear how those things can be used to hurt us.

I see this at work in global politics, within our society, and within the church. I will say it clearly: in our church we have a Crisis of Trust.

As I think more about the idea of trust being a casualty of anxiety, I find myself wondering if it might also be true that distrust is the source for anxiety. As our childlike trust is injured and bruised we find ourselves being more afraid. Do the weeds of anxiety grow more vigorously in the seed-bed of not trusting?

This change of perspective offers a way of response. Fear does not dissipate when you focus on it. Anxiety thrives on the attention we devote to it. That’s why we find ourselves more afraid the more media attention is devoted to something. I do have a choice about trust though. It might be a hard choice, but I can choose the way of forgiveness and trust even when my trust has been betrayed. That is what Jesus came to show us on the cross and through the resurrection. God comes to our sin and chooses to invite us to receive forgiveness and to try again to be faithful and faith-filled.

In the church and in life we need a renewed commitment to trust.

With a renewed commitment to trust one another we become available in new ways to practice compassion and forgiveness to one another, to our neighbors and to ourselves. Living care with grace is a frightening and risky thing. That is part of what Jesus on the cross teaches us, but as we live into being followers of Christ we must walk the same path of love and grace he walked. It might not feel safe, but it is the way of eternal and abundant life.

As we choose the way of trusting one another we also open up the Divine creativity which is part of being created in the Image of God as well as a sign of the Holy Spirit’s fruitfulness at work through us. Expressing life with creativity risks judgment and criticism both from others and from ourselves. In the changing world around us, we the Church need to be seeking new and creative ways to reach out to others with the invitation to come to Jesus.

Dan Dick at United Methodeviations has done it again with words I needed to hear and that many followers of Christ in the church need to hear. All I can say about this great post is click quick and read again and again.

Survival – Revival -Thrival

As I was trying to fall asleep last night a dream about church slowed that process. A sad dream, because it reflected how absurd our church already is.

In the dream I was at the top of a long flight of outdoor stairs. At the bottom of the stairs I saw a bubbly group of children who were on their way to play with Jesus. They are stopped first by a few people who ask them questions about who they believe Jesus is and what do they believe about church and God and stuff like that. Unless they can answer the questions correctly, they don’t get to play with Jesus.

That was the basic dream, but my heart and mind immediately went into process mode and spun out meaning and absurdities. Before falling asleep and forgetting, I grabbed a pad of paper and the pen by my bed and wrote: absurdity, doctrinal test, moral test, loyalty test.

How sad that we do that to people. There are people in the world who want a living, vital, even playfully enriching relationship with Jesus Christ. They are seeking that intimacy and joy and strength from God. Yet, we the leaders of the Church of Absurdity see ourselves as gatekeepers. We think people need to hold the right beliefs before we will let them near Jesus. Answer the questions right to get a pass to the next test. Then we send everyone through a moral screening test. You have to dress the right way and act the right way and talk the right way in order to be allowed closer to Christ. As if Christ is so fragile that everything has to be so quiet and neat and orderly and right or else God will break. If these children of God pass that test then we try enforce a loyalty test. Make the right pledge, say the right vows and then you will receive the official “I am a member of the church” pass that gives access to the Presence.

Absurd. Maddening. Frustrating. Sad.

For most of my life, I have paid attention to renewing God’s vision in the church. It is one of my core callings of ministry. This renewal work involves listening and observing trends and opportunities that exist both within our local congregation as well as in the church universal. The prevailing opinion of those who write about this is that we have a problem. A big problem. This goes far beyond–yet includes–our own financial challenge in the current recession. Every denomination in our country is facing declining numbers. And some are even saying the church is virtually extinct in Europe. As one response, the United Methodist Church is starting a new media campaign this month that targets the 18-34 year old age group because we are missing them (10thousanddoors.org). Through this we are being invited to Rethink Church.

I’ve been doing my own Rethink of Church. I am excited about this new media campaign and hope it helps, but I don’t think it goes deep enough to really provide long-term change. I’ve heard a lifetime of theories about why our church has so many problems. Most of them involve pointing out how someone else’s choices and actions lead to our decline. They examine how someone else needs to fix the problem, take their proper responsibilities, meet their obligations, and fulfill expectations. The challenge then becomes an issue of analysis and even control. Not working yet? We need to work harder and manage everything better they say.

Yet, with a plethora of great theories, years of training, and tons of books written and read about it, we are not better as a church. The challenge we face continues to deepen and become more insurmountable. I believe that as long as we are always looking at what someone else has done or needs to do to fix things we will remain in the swamp of guilt and anger, grief and blame.

We the church suffer.

As I Rethink Church I think we will stay stuck until we change the question: we need to each accept that the problem is mine and that each of us is God’s answer to the challenge. Instead of focusing on how to manage others or manage ourselves, our focus becomes ownership. This Rethink of Church leads me to consider how I am participating in both the problem as well as the solution. What am I doing right here, right now with the new life that God gives me? That is the ultimate stewardship question.

There is great freedom in this Rethink of Church. We are invited to let go of the burden of the past (guilt or blame) and turn our attention to God’s present Presence and to consider what we are called to today. This is the power of the Cross and the Resurrection: our past covered by the cross and our future opened up in the Risen Christ.

For a while, I’ve been aware through various blog articles about the Emergent Church. Without delving into it, I found myself intrigued. Yet, many other things on my plate to be more than intrigued.

Then a few weeks ago, I decided to dive into the Twitterverse. I found a couple celebrities to follow for fun and linked Twitter with Facebook. Then somehow, I connected with The Emergent Village. From there I found myself connecting with a large community of Emergent Church people and leaders and went from being intrigued to resonating. The first couple weeks there were a couple Emergent Church conferences around the country and the participants were tweeting quotes and thoughts from those conferences. The result surprised me, I saw some old passion for ministry slowly regenerating. So, this 50 year old United Methodist pastor/Spiritual Director has been slipping into the Emergent field.

I don’t have much street cred, though, just a Resonating heart. (energy level hasn’t reached the level yet.) I find myself appreciating the emphasis on creativity in worship and in ministry activities (how about a free breakfast on Sunday Morning in Atlanta?). I love the call to the church to renew a new missional as well as spirituality focus. All my time learning and living systems thought and Process focus as well as my post-modern perspective on life finds a welcome home in this movement. Of course, it doesn’t help that there is not only little fear of technology, there is a reveling in it (hence being all over the Twitterverse).

Yet, the one area that is most resonant to me, and also the source of greatest creative tension is the attitude and relationship to the institutional church. From what I can discern, a big part of the movement arose out of the dissatisfaction with the limitations and embedded nature of the church. This was seen as stifling passion and creativity and mission. While I have chosen and continue to choose to be within those structures, I understand the pain and scars that come from those institutions. I have said and will continue to say that the answer to the world is Christ not the church. Yet, the church is still the means that God (by grace) chooses to work. The renewal of God’s people will not be found in “church” itself, no matter how we contruct or deconstruct it. (Yet, I will also say that I don’t believe the renewal we seek can be found outside the community of believers either.)

All that is actually prelude to what triggered my thoughts today. Yesterday, the Emergent Village linked to an article by Mark Sayers, The Emerging Missional Church Fractures into Mini Movements.I found it a very helpful article to understand the Emergent Movement (he relates it to the rise of Protestantism, which worked for me). I’ve been reflecting on that every since I read it…hoping this exciting movement of God will not fall prey to the evils it seeks to remedy. The one that is most visible to me is the institutional focus (even if it a reaction against those structures, the focus is still as powerful). Mark talked about moving beyond the “defining against” phase through he “defining itself” phase. Which led to a strange dream last night.

I woke up in the middle of the night with the image of a laser light. That light was at first the sharply focused energy of this new movement of God. Then I saw that it also represented the institutional mentality that demands laser precision and order. This light then passed through a prism and the light fractured into myriad dimensions and colors and hues. The institutional view is that this fracturing is bad, so pick a color as the right color. And in choosing, one must say that the other colors are wrong. Hence we find ourselves hundreds of years after the prism of Luther and the Reformation still fighting for our “turf” as the place God loves best (nyah, nyah, nyah). With the light being this new movement of God (today it is Emergent, tomorrow it will be ?) the prism always invites us into a new perspective on the light. What prevents us from seeing the full spectrum of mission and ministry to the world as different parts and realities of God’s One True light? I like being red, and while I’m not blue, I am glad there is a blue ministry somewhere in my world and in my community.

Each hue then becomes not better, not worse, not more God-like, not less God-like, just different. Isn’t the work of the Essence of Life, the Beloved of the Universe more than what any one or any few of us can do together? Absolutely.

Embrace the richness of God’s Light to the World. That is true within the stone cathedrals and on the streets. This is much better than returning to the spiritual turf battles where everybody (especially the children of God) lose.

There is a set of notes on this week’s sermon preparation worksheet that I am pretty sure won’t fit, that I don’t want to lose out on giving life to.

I woke up the other morning with this contrast in my head: “I cannot persuade or convinve, but I can behold and celebrate, witness and express.”

Ever since our Stephen Ministry training materials talked about the difference between being result oriented and process oriented, I have been chipping away at shifting my overall perspective of life to reflect that new way. Simply stated, whenever we find our goals and expectations connected to what another person does for or because of us, we are goal oriented. That orientation becomes a source of frustration within ourselves and a temptation to manipulate and control in relationship to others. For better self and other relationship the idea is to keep our focus oriented on our participation in the process of life.

In order to live fully while participating in the process of life, did you catch the tricky part? We have to relinquish control. As an Enneagram 8, this is a hard one for me. Control and the fear of being under the control of others is a big red flag within my heart and soul. To remain in process means that we need to cultivate surrender and trust in deeper and broader ways.

I’ve been casting my attention to personal and ministry goals lately and noticing how pervasive this goal-orientation is. What are common ministry goals for a church? To increase attendance in worship, to get more people in  small groups, to increase financial contributions by ??%, etc. They sound good, but they set us up for manipulation and despair when people just don’t respond as we expected/wanted them to.

So with that idea, it is harder for me to be satisfied with motivations and goals that include the idea of persuading or convincing people. Even the idea of making people’s spiritual lives better or imporving their walk with God pushes that control button for me. I have to keep reminding myself, that I have no power or control over what another person decides or feels or thinks, why act as if I can influence or change that.

I find ideas like witness and express becoming more important to my motivations for writing and preaching and teaching. People don’t have to agree with or even like what I say. Am I clearly and fully expressing my own heart and thought? I certainly want to do so in a caring way, because expressing includes being true to my own personal integrity. And if I am simply expressing without any expectation of a result I have removed the teeth of manipulation and control from communication.

The other ideas that fit within my spiritual direction and worship leadership lives are Behold and Celebrate. I cannot create an experience of God within my spiritual directees or within the worshippers. When I try, then I become invasive of their very heart and soul. I have experienced that from the other side and it is not pleasant or respectful. Yet, we can together behold what God is doing in life and we can as a community (whether it is one on one, in small group, or larger congregation) celebrate (give witness to) that activity of God within us.

As I make this shift in my own life, I find less frustration and more fulfillment in ever increasing parts of my life and ministry.

Yesterday I started a preaching series on Lessons from the Crisis Center. First focus area was worry and Care. One scripture source was Psalm 121. Here are the first couple verses:

I lift my eyes to the hills–
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth. – Psalm 121:1-2 NRSV

I can remember a few years ago, I thought this was such a wonderful image: we go through troubled times and then we cast our eyes up to hills where God sits enthroned above the heavens and we find there, God’s help.

Then I was reminded of an important piece of the original cultural context that changed the dynamics of this image.

When the Psalmist wrote, this hills were not necesarily the residence of the God of creation, others resided there. The hills surrounding Jerusalem and ther other town in Judea held the High Places, the temples and worship centers for the various idols and other gods that were continued temptations and the shame of the people which led to their eventual conquering and captivity. While Yahweh created them and led them into freedom and the promised land, the hills and the rituals that resided there remainded active. The gods of fertility and harvest, the beings that resided in the air and the sea and the soil seemed so much more accessible to the people than Yahweh who eschewed those statues and visible representations. And as the cult in Jerusalem grew in influence, I can imagine it was much easier to just go to the corner high place to say a prayer and make a small sacrifice than to travel all the way to the temple or tabernacle site.

Even today we understand the importance of visibility and accessibility in marketing: location, location, location.

But of course, we in our modern/post-modern civilized society doesn’t need to worry about High Places and idol worship, right?

In my mind, I believe we become susceptible to idolatry when we seek in other people or other things the source of life and when we become more enamored of the creation over the Creator. With that idea, there are many places within and without the church that can become for us the High Places.

As I was thinking of “lifting up our eyes to the hills” to seek our help from other things, I can see us naturally looking in 3 basic places for help outside of God. And all three have a strong element of personal control.

The first one would be trying to fix things through our skills and programs (skill sets). Things aren’t working so we initially think we are doing something wrong. If it’s broken, maybe I can fix it. I can learn. I just need to find the right book/expert/trainer/helper/blog that will teach me just what I can do to make it all better. I have benefited (and continue to benefit) from authors of all kinds in learning about being a parent, husband, preacher, pastor, spiritual director, manager, more productive person, and a writer. My extensive personal library is a testimony to some of that assistance, but it is also a symptom of the vulnerability to this High Place in my life. I know the inner dialogue: “this book really helped me with this, but it isn’t quite right, maybe this new book will be just what I need to get it all figured out and under control… ooh, pretty cover.”

It doesn’t have to be limited to personal Skill learning, just consider the plethora (I love that word) of programs available to churches and businesses to get their ministry/marketing/fund-raising/inter-personal communications/etc on a winning track. Every church I have ever been in has a closet somewhere with old stewardship campaign programs that work for a year or two and then no longer “produce” so need new skill sets. I can also name in my own life many schools of thought that are important to who I am, but can so easily become the be-all-and-end-all of idea systems: process, post-modern, liberation, spirtuality, enneagram, labyrinths, missional, family systems, and lately emergent, and I know there are so many more. Good ideas and great learnings, but when they become our High Places and source of life, we each have a problem.

A second High Place would be technology and our tools. Nothing bad about them as far as they go, but it is so easy to become so wrapped up in the latest and greatest that we get out of focus. Just ask my wife, I love technology and I can so easily get wrapped up in computers, internet, blogs, twitter, and I know the next “best” thing will be attractive. I have been blessed with limited spending money otherwise I would be one of those who envy and drool over the latest hardware (look it is so tiny and does so much). Sure, I have tried Covey, and GTD, and other tools to get past productivity blocks, but I haven’t found the right one yet (so, the drive for more power and more help is fueled).  How much do we depend on our technologies (hardware and software and processes)  to be The Answer that will fix all of our personal and societal ills? The more we do, the more we “lift our eyes to the hills.”

The third High Place I considered is energy. No, not green or electrical or wind or ethanol, but personal energy. How often do we respond to something being wrong by trying to apply more energy to it. We work harder. We work faster. Somehow we think that we face our crisis and problem because we haven’t done enough, or we haven’t done it fast enough (overlap with technology), or well enough. (overlap with skills). We get stuck in that idea of personal control. I can fix my own problem with my own energy and my own work and using my own tools and applying my own skills. One of the hooks of idolatry in my mind is measuring. I don’t have what I want becuase I haven’t done enough to please the god. Or I didn’t practice the ritual correctly, I didn’t say the right words, but this time I will get it right and I will give enough so the god (of technology, of the market, of whatever) will finally deem me worthy of getting what I want.

Terrible traps aren’t they? We are all there and keeping coming back. I find myself a bit more sympathetic to those early Israelites and Judeans who just couldn’t give up their High Places.

But the witness and invitation of the Psalmist still comes to us. The source of our help needs to be based not in ourselves or in our control of things, but in the true source of life and help, the Creator. We are afraid and we worry because we find ourselves with a healthy shadow of doubt that God is there caring for us and helping us. And that is the grace of faith: to reverse the perspective. Put those technologies and skills and our investment of energy back into their places of serving  andbeing conduits for the flow of God’s Creating and Living Essence. We have to continue being intentional about seeing God working through those various gifts. As we do that, I think even the hills will breathe a sigh of relief to be able to be just what God created them to be: witnesses to all the ways God is at work in living.

Not too long ago, I was getting ready to be at a meeting that was wrapped up in a change-induced turmoil. As I tried to prepare my heart and mind to attend, I reminded myself of a change of perspective that I picked up at a Conflict Seminar at the Lombard Peace Institute many years ago.

One seminar leader addressed the idea of table arrangements and how they are usually set up for failure. You know the table setup: The party of the first part sits on one side of the table. The party of the second part sits on the opposite side of the table. The mediator sits off to the side. This arrangement makes sense if you see the time as a battle with the adversaries squared off against each other and the innocent mediator staying out of the fray.

The trap in that arrangement is that the parties may start off with the situation and the problem laid out on the table between them. But as the discussion continues the issue on the table is lost and the people on the other side of the table become the problem.

This leader offered another arrangement. All parties sit on the same side of the same table with the mediator and the problem out in front of both of them (I picture a great white board out there that the mediator uses to keep track of the current state of discussion). The image shown and even explicitely named for all is that we are partners together seeking a common and best case solution to the issue and the situation. The mediator is always celebrating and challenging the participants to be creative in coming up with the best solution.

It also helps to keep in front of everybody’s thoughts the goal of finding the best way to enhance the entire situation and not just one faction (fraction?) of the group. No one issue is more important than another. No one person is less important than the other.

At the meeting we didn’t have to get that far, but I was ready if we did.

I spent some time today trying to figure out what approach to take into preaching through Lent this year. For some reason, the lectionary passages didn’t capture my attention as they usually do when I do my seasonal planning.

As I reflected on themes, one idea kept resurfacing: what are we in danger of losing in life in the face of crisis.

Of course, a big crisis on people’s minds today is the economic one. Our finance committee had some unpleasant moments as they looked at lower donation numbers and higher winter heating costs. Yet, in the last few days I have been in conversation with people who are facing the crisis of marriage disintegration, cancer, emergency surgery, as well as job loss or the threat of it.

While hearing all those voices of fear and anxiety and despair and even panic, I hear the whisper of another voice. A voice that is seeking to remind me that life is still a good thing and that we are held beyond what we can remember.

So, my Lenten preaching is unfolding as a series of reflections on what the scripture and the Spirit want to tell us we are at risk of losing when we only hear the voices of fear and loss. And what is the more we can gain as we again attend to that tender voice of  the Beloved.

The list of themes is still forming and may spill over beyond Easter, but isn’t that the way it is supposed to be. In the midst of our darkness and fear, Life spills over out of the shadows to carry us beyond Easter eternally.

Preaching on the Transfiguration. Applying it to the transforming work of God in our lives. As I follow the thoughts and ideas I find I am needing to change a perspective on the spiritual life that I have preached on before.

I used to really like the idea of our lives being a reflection of the Glory and Grace of God. It has been in invitation to free ourselves from the trap of needing to create and work for our own righteousness and spiritual life. We need to try to get out of the way of what God wants to show to others. Reflecting is a good thing, but I am wondering if that is enough.

At the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9 this year) we don’t see Jesus reflecting the glorious light of God as if God turned a huge spotlight on Jesus and said, “Look at him.” I read the text saying that Jesus was transfigured from the inside out. He didn’t just reflect God’s glory, he revealed it. It may not seem like much of a difference, but I am beginning to see it as an importance shift in perspective.

When we are reflecting something, we don’t really participate. We are showing something that is not us or a part of us. A mirror reflects light and images but is unchanged as a mirror. That silvery surface can reflect images of beauty and wonder then in the next moment show images of ugliness and destruction.

Yet, when Jesus reveals the Glory of God he is fully participating in that action. He is transfigured by that presence and we see in the Gospel a noticeable change in him for the rest of the story. Jesus is the Living Light of God in that event. Jesus, according to John, is the Living Word of God while on earth. The early church wrestled with that idea and ended up with the mysterious formula of Jesus being fully human and fully divine to capture this idea that when we see Jesus we don’t see a human being giving us reflections and pictures of God, but we see the real presence of the Divine in the completely human life of Jesus.

I believe our transformation by grace can learn from that event in the Gospel. God doesn’t come to simply use our lives as a surface to reflect something that is not us to the world. God wants us to fully participate in the Creating/Living Presence of Love. And we should want that, too. We ache inside to be a part of God in the world. We yearn to become Revealers of God.

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. — 2 Corinthians 3:18 NRSV

While Paul begins here with the idea of reflection and mirror, he doesn’t end there. He talks about this process of transformation where we no longer just show but become.