Hit and Run Preaching?

The morning after doing supply preaching I often wonder whether I've been like a hit and run driver leaving the scene of the accident. Would I preach a different sermon if I thought I would be seeing those people next week? Of course I would. Or would I? The irony is those times I have been invited back and then, there I am, at the scene, and it's a different collision than the last time.

Yesterday in my boldness I suggested that Peter's excerpts in Acts 1: 20 from the vengeance Psalms 69 and 109 weren't really the witness that Jesus had just commanded them to have. While blotting someone out after betrayal is an all too human reaction, perhaps it's not the abundance of the heart that we are called to have. I quoted from Luke 6 about fruits of good and evil. I used Psalm 1 as my first reading about trees bearing fruit in their season. I closed with Galatians 5, fruit of the Spirit. Today I'm going to work in my garden after all of those fruit and tree references.

The best comment after the sermon was "I liked your sermon and you're right about the betrayal and the way people talk—too bad that the people who needed to hear that weren't here." Hm...

Then the deacon who had invited me said that she would call me again. Well, we have to trust the Spirit's leading on what happens then.

The next best comment, which I heard from at least two people, was that I was the first guest minister they've had who can really sing. While I am a singer and often a vocal soloist at my home church, I have to wonder at what that statement says about my colleagues in the pulpit. I am a worship leader, even as a guest preacher, so I put together the entire service when I am preparing, not just a sermon. Although the deacon said I could just give the scripture and sermon title to the secretary and let someone else pick the hymns, I can imagine that might not be the best way to have hymns that I know and can lead, and I wonder if that's what my colleagues did. I picked the hymns for the service, but I did consult with the secretary about whether the congregation would know those hymns.

So, those of you in the greater Boston area, or even in eastern Massachusetts, RI, or southern NH who need summer supply, feel free to contact me. Unless you tell me that your congregation needs it, I won't preach on betrayal, but I will lead worship and preach as the Spirit leads.


For those folks with interest in such things, I can provide a password-protected link to the final paper that resulted from my directed study, excerpts of which have appeared in postings on this blog in the past five months:

The state of welcome, inclusion, affirmation and placement
of women and LGBT people as clergy,
focusing on the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts

Just let me know your name and email via a comment (which I won't post here). It's 66 pages, with a fair number of charts, so rather too large a file for emailing, so I've put it on a website and then I'll send you the link. At this moment I want to manage the distribution of this paper (I'm still in the ordination process, you know), so I would appreciate some description of your interest and who you are. :-)

Welcome? by the numbers

Where are LGBT people welcomed in Massachusetts churches?

While the following numbers don't tell the whole story, and none of our stories are represented fully by the numbers, the following sets of numbers are indications of where LGBT folks are welcomed as congregants, and perhaps as clergy. There seem to be some correlations between denominations that have ordained women and those that welcome LGBT people. Is there in fact a cause/effect relationship between congregations that hire women pastors and who are welcoming and affirming/open and affirming or vice versa, and if so, what does that mean for women or LGBT clergy?

But first a poem about welcome by George Herbert that I read quoted in Gifted by Otherness by L. William Countryman and M.R. Ritley. This poem has also been famously set to music by Ralph Vaughn Williams in Five Mystical Songs. (I'm listening to the setting as I write. Also included in this set of five pieces is The Call—I included that one in my iTunes playlist about calling.) This is the kind of welcome I want the numbers to represent. Love calls us to welcome—are we/can we be the kind of host that Love is?

"Love" from The Temple
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

A Massachusetts LGBT-friendly congregational cameo

The UUA, Quakers and UCC have been leaders in welcoming LGBT people into their churches. In Massachusetts, there are more UCC churches that are open and affirming than there are UUA churches, but there are three times as many UCC churches in total in Massachusetts. Even among these historically progressive or liberal denominations this has not been without turmoil.

At the denominational level, the Unitarian Universalist Association is open and affirming to LGBT people and to the ordination of LGBT clergy. I was actually somewhat startled, given the denominational stance and publicity, to see that the percentage of officially welcoming churches in the UUA in Massachusetts is only 55%, just over half. Congregational polity means that the local church does not necessarily pay attention to or act on what the denomination thinks is important.

The leadership of the 1.3 million-member United Church of Christ has been foremost among denominations seeking the full inclusion of homosexuals. In the 1970s the UCC allowed the ordination of the first openly gay man and the first openly lesbian woman, and in 2005 the UCC endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples. Ordination of practicing homosexuals was officially accepted in 1980, and the blessing of same-sex couples is allowed. But the issue still roils the UCC. Because the UCC believes in local autonomy, some regions and congregations bar gay clergy and gay couples. Some congregations are threatening to leave over the denomination's official tolerance of homosexuality, while some liberal members want the UCC to be more active in promoting gay rights as a denomination-wide standard.

The American Baptist Churches-USA has a national denomination resolution, "We affirm that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching," The ABC-USA "resolutions are adopted by a 2/3 majority vote of the General Board of American Baptist Churches, a resolution represents the position of the ABC on a specific issue and calls for some type implementing action. All resolutions must be based on a policy statement. General Board policy documents are binding on national staff only and not on regions or local churches."

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), not a big presence in Massachusetts, has not taken a national stance on ordination of LGBT people, leaving that to regional committees on ministry. There are regions with openly gay or lesbian clergy, as well as welcoming and affirming churches nationally.

With the exception of the American Baptist Churches, denominations with congregational polity, rather than institution-centered denominations have higher percentages of welcoming/open and affirming congregations. As a barometer of liberal theology, this seems to be the reverse of the finding in Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling on the ordination of women where institution-centered denominations, once committed, do a better job supporting women, but it could also reflect that the institution-centered denominations clearly have not made the commitment to being open or welcoming and affirming, so it then is impressive that 7-11% of Episcopal, Presbyterian USA, United Methodist, and Lutherans-ELCA congregations in Massachusetts have made the commitment in the face of national stances that are negative toward LGBT people or clergy.

Institution-centered churches with episcopal or presbytery polities have similar percentages of open and affirming/gay friendly churches, but it is not clear how many gay or lesbian clergy they have. I personally know openly gay and lesbian Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian clergy, or at least LGBT clergy with really, really big closets. But of course, a quick internet search will reveal national news stories about lesbian and gay clergy being defrocked in the United Methodist Church and in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Presbyterians seem to be getting more mixed press on the subject today, and have a resolution being voted on by their presbyteries to change the denominational rules on LGBT clergy.

Openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire is not recognized as a bishop by the worldwide Anglican communion. And despite the publicity surrounding him, Episcopal churches don't list themselves as so gay friendly. Only one Episcopal Church in Massachusetts was listed as a partner member of Integrity, the gay Episcopal group, so the eighteen churches noted above were found on the listings at gaychurch.org. Gaychurch.org lists 5,301 churches worldwide, mostly in the USA and Canada, that have identified as gay friendly, welcoming and affirming, open and affirming, reconciling in Christ, etc.

I found no historically black church denominations that had welcoming or open and affirming churches listed in Massachusetts from any of the national gay church lists. None of the denominations' Massachusetts websites or national websites for African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, National Baptist Convention, or Progressive National Baptist Convention had any mention of gays (pro or con). The gay or lesbian Afro-American Christians I know have found their way into more diverse, but primarily white, welcoming and affirming congregations, or lead divided lives about their sexuality and their Christianity.

Here is where this info comes from:
Mass. UCC
ONA UCC congregations

Mass. UMC congregations
UMC reconciling congregations in MA

Christian Church/Disciples of Christ in MA
Disciples of Christ open and affirming congregations in MA
MA Presbyterian churches
More Light Presbyterian churches in MA

ELCA Lutheran congregations in MA
Reconciled in Christ ELCA Lutheran congregations in MA

ABC congregations in Massachusetts
Welcoming and Affirming Baptist churches in MA (all of which are ABC-USA)

Quaker meetings in MA

gay friendly/welcoming Quaker meetings and Episcopal churches in MA

Episcopal churches in MA
Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts

UUA congregations and welcoming UUA congregations

So there are some of the numbers. I have spent much of this week turning the musings of this blog into a final paper, and yesterday in a timely fashion, my friend PB sent a morning devotional reflection based on Acts 5:34-35, 38-39:

One in the council stood up, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in respect by all the people, and commanded them to put the apostles outside for a little while. And he said to them: “Men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do regarding these men. Keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God.

PB wrote:

Lord, your truth will be with the world, even when we are not. It is our choice to be a part of it or apart from it. In the end, you will not be overthrown.

I think we can see in vibrant and faith-filled people and churches what is the work of God, and today I pray that those who do the work of God will be sustained by the truth and power of God's word, and those who do not hear the voice of the Spirit will be gently led to hearing. If God is calling women and LGBT clergy to ministry and leadership, this is the work of God, and God will not be overthrown.

Articulating Call: How are you called?

Grant us … in our direst need, the smallest gifts:
the nail of the horseshoe,
the pin of the axle,
the feather at the pivot point,
the pebble at the mountain's peak,
the kiss in despair,
the one right word.
In darkness, understanding.
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold, (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 44

This week has included some of those small gifts in need for me: a conversation, the prayer, the one right word, the insights, the reminder: "We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in death." Paladin of Souls, p. 385 (See last week's post about doorways...)

This past week I met with my association's representative on ministry and ordination. She asked, "How were you called?" Not, "where were you when you were called?" Not even, "what are you called to do or to be?" And not, "how are you confirmed in your call?" Those are all good questions to be able to answer, but they are not the first question.

People preparing for ministry or priesthood often get asked if they have "a call." For some, it's an embarrassing question. They think the pastorate or priesthood may be what they're supposed to do with their lives, but that word "call" suggests some kind of voice from heaven that corresponds to nothing in their experience. Perhaps it evokes memories of an old Bill Cosby routine about Noah's ark, in which a deep bass voice calls out from above, "NOAH! NOAH! THIS IS THE LORD, NOAH!" Cosby, a nervous grin on his face, looks upward and says, "Yeeeah! Riiiight!"

Is that what it means to have God call you? Could most of us imagine such a strange event happening to us?
William C. Placher, ed., Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), p. 2

As I have been reviewing the facts, figures and stories about clergy and congregations, and in my own experience of being a part of the ordination process, something has become clear to me: in order to do "right" by clergy placement and retention, as well as by the congregations in which we minister, we need to provide ways and frameworks to understand, articulate and nurture our calls, both as clergy and as members of congregations, and as congregations as a whole.

How are you called?

In many traditions, calls—in the form of sounds—precede prayer, rites of initiation, spiritual healings, and major life events. The purpose of calls is to summon adherents away from their daily grinds to a new level of awareness, into a scared frame of mind, into communion with that which is bigger than themselves. The calls may come from bull-roarers, trumpets, rattles, wooden clackers, songs, bells, or the chanting of muezzins atop minarets.
In the primary creation myth of Western cosmology, the very first call came through the voice that said "Let there be light," and there was light, the words then becoming flesh. Every call since then has also been a call to form, a call to each of us to materialize ourselves.
Greg Levoy, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), p. 2

What is your trumpet, your bull-roarer, your song? How are you called? Since I heard this song by Mary Chapin Carpenter in 2007, it has been helpful in the way I understand calling, perhaps as "stumbling and falling," but as something that is deep, that I can't turn away from, perhaps as something in my blood that I can't quite articulate, even though people still ask. It's not certainty or lack of fear—that I know, even though I would like it to be.

Deep in your blood or a voice in your head
On a dark lonesome highway
It finds you instead
So certain it knows you, you can't turn away
Something or someone has found you today

Genius or Jesus, maybe he's seen us
But who would believe us
I can't really say
Whatever the calling, the stumbling or falling
You follow it knowing
There's no other way, there's no other way

There are zealots and preachers
And readers of dreams
The righteous yell loudest
And the saved rise to sing
The lonely and lost are just waiting to hear
Any moment their purpose
Will be perfectly clear

And then life would mean more
Than their name on their door
And that far distant shore that's so near
They'd hear the calling
And stumbling and falling
They'd follow it knowing
There's nothing to fear
Nothing to fear

I don't remember a voice
On a dark, lonesome road
When I started this journey so long ago
I was only just trying to outrun the noise
There was never a question of having a choice

Jesus or genie, maybe they've seen me
But who would believe me
I can't really say
Whatever the calling, the stumbling and falling
I followed it knowing there's no other way

Jesus or genie, maybe he's seen me
But who would believe me
I can't really say
Whatever the calling, stumbling and falling
I got through it knowing there's no other way
There's no other way
"The Calling" by Mary Chapin Carpenter, album: The Calling

How do you articulate your call or calls? Call is mysterious. Call is scary. I often think of the prophet Samuel as a boy, wakened from sleep, hearing his name called, "Samuel, Samuel!" and thinking that it was Eli whom he served, he ran into Eli's room: "Here I am, you called me?" Eli said, "No, I did not call. Go back to sleep." This happened three times, and then Eli, who was a priest, realized that perhaps some more powerful call was happening, a call from God, and told Samuel that if the call came again to answer, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." God called again, and Samuel answered, "Speak, for your servant is listening." God then told Samuel what would be happening to Eli's sons because they were not fulfilling their hereditary priestly duties. [1 Samuel 3]

Most of us though don't get the kind of call that Samuel got: God's voice speaking to us in the night. Or maybe we do, and we don't have an Eli nearby who tells us to listen and respond. Or maybe the Eli in our life doesn't appear for a long time. When I was a girl, I pretended that our high backed recliner was a pulpit and I was the preacher. Even then I felt silenced by the church where I was raised that didn't ordain women or even have women deacons, because I never preached a sermon aloud, only in my head, looking out the window. Was that God's call? Over the years, I forgot that I had ever stood behind the chair imagining…

God is patient, … and persistent. After college I left the church, sure that it had no place for the person I was. For a while, I stopped being involved with music and singing because music was and is a pathway to God for me. I sat at desks and computers and looked at numbers and systems and was disgusted by corporate politics. I learned to make presentations, and became more comfortable with public speaking. Then, one Easter Sunday, on a whim, I went to an ecumenical sunrise service in a park near where I lived. The minister was a woman who had brought along a portable tape player for music. Even at 6 a.m., I could sing out, "Christ Arose." I think the minister was surprised, because she only expected a mumble from the dozen of us there, as was I, for different reasons, that I found that song in my heart and memory. And, after a while, I joined a community chorus and started singing again. A year or so later I started going to church, mostly to sing in the choir. I left that church to look for one that felt more like home. My church home became a small, welcoming Baptist congregation with an emphasis on inclusive language and lay ministry among other social justice concerns. Once there, I began to participate in worship leading, and then occasionally as a summer preacher.

My Eli came along nearly 35 years after standing behind the high backed recliner in my parent's living room, in the person of Harvey Cox, theologian, author, professor at Harvard Divinity School, and member of that church, who came up to me after I preached one summer Sunday. "Nancy, do you know why you are walking funny?" I may have looked down at my shoes to see if I'd lost a heel or something. "No. Why?" I asked. Harvey replied. "It's because God is kicking you in the behind to get you to go to seminary and do this work that you are called to do."

"Speak, Lord, your servant is listening."

Who is your Eli? How do you articulate your call or calls? How are you called?

How do you nurture and clarify your call, as clergy and as a congregation? This is the work of the Spirit, perhaps the work of the church—to begin to know and understand what we really are to do, and then to do it. Frederick Buechner is often and aptly quoted,

The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've probably met requirements (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you are bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, San Francisco: Harpers, 1992, p. 185-6

We need to find ways to know or find our deep gladness, our passions, and our joys, and then find ways to hear and understand the world's deep needs and hungers. In an individual, we might ask what are your gifts, and I turn to Ephesians 4: 7-14 or Romans 12: 2-8 for a list of the gifts given to members of the body of believers. From there, in a congregation, we might use a tool called appreciative inquiry, and appreciate those gifts.

Through structured interviews the process identifies the healthiest, most life-producing aspects of a congregation and then builds upon those strengths to create a new future. … Appreciative inquiry poses questions that ask us to attend to the best of the past and present to ignite the collective imagination of what might be. The aim is to generate new knowledge that expands the "realm of the possible" and helps members of an organization envision a collectively desired future. It enables them to carry forth that vision in ways that successfully translate images of possibility or intentions into reality, and belief into practice.
From the work of David Cooperrider, Appreciative Inquiry Consultant's Manual, quoted in Dennis Campbell, Congregations as Learning Communities, (Alban Institute, 2000), p. 27

What are your gifts and deep gladness? Where are your strengths? How are you called? I'd be glad to hear your comments about your calling(s).

Pastoral Listening, the Economy and Capacities for Ministry

Listening
In saying good-bye at my CPE site, I had a conversation with a staff member whose father, father-in-law and mother-in-law all had been American Baptist ministers. She said that one of the things she had always liked about being American Baptist was the ability to come together for fellowship despite differences about some issues, but she has seen that change. Her husband was the minister of music at an ABC church and they had been members there for 15 years when they called a new minister. They had asked how he would approach his first year and he said he would listen to people first.

Within a couple of months he introduced a resolution for a congregational vote that restricted any homosexual from teaching in the church. When she asked if there were any currently teaching or wanting to teach, he said no, but that the young couple running the youth group were concerned about the behavior of some of the young teenage girls who were sitting with their arms around each other and playing with each other's hair. [I have a teenager—that's what girls do in 6th and 7th grade, and in 8th grade they apparently start to pummel one another—looking for ways to have touch in a socially acceptable way, but these people didn't know that, I guess.] While this woman probably wasn't going to initiate a welcoming and affirming statement at the church, she and her husband were quite disturbed by this push to exclude and they ended up leaving the church shortly thereafter, using changes in her husband's job demands as an excuse. It wasn't clear to me if her family had looked for or found another church after that. So much for the minister's promise to listen to all of the people: 15 years of relationships tossed away by someone who wants to exclude for a case that didn't exist.

On Thursday, I had an hour and a half conversation with the manager of the American Baptist placement system. They've stopped doing research and the data in the clergy data base is suspect. So the gist of his anecdotal evidence is that if I were willing to move anywhere in the United States, I probably would get a clergy position as a woman in the ABC, even though the national placement statistic is at 7.5% for women as senior/solo pastors. If I am not able/willing to move, it's going to be tough. My first reaction: "Be not dismayed whate'er betides, God will take care of you."

I am somehow oddly unfazed by this at the moment, mostly because my research to date leads me to the same conclusion. He says that the placement system is broken because not enough ABC area and regional ministers support women in ministry, and if those gatekeepers block the way, or cave in to any one person in a congregation who says "I can't imagine a woman minister," then it's unlikely that women will be getting jobs, especially as senior or solo pastors.

This has perhaps gotten worse since the late 1980's when the denomination was making a push to get congregations to accept women. His success story from that era: the ABC region with the highest percentage of women pastors, and women pastors leading large churches is Puerto Rico at 35%. Women pastors lead two of the largest or most prestigious churches. Thirty or so years ago a Puerto Rican woman called to the ministry convinced the regional executive to give her a shot, and he gave her a little church up in the mountains. Today that church has 3,000 people. Seeing one women with success meant that at some point a regional executive (and apparently the region has been fairly authoritative in suggesting pastoral appointments—more like a typical Methodist than Baptist placement process) decided that getting women into churches was a good thing. The result has been vibrant, joyful and growing churches.

Side note: Here in Massachusetts, perhaps one or two, if any, of the Spanish-speaking ethnic congregations have women co-pastors, although several of the Brazilian congregations have women pastors or co-pastors.

He went on to say: If God is calling women, and GLBT folk, and women and men of color to ministry, and churches are not paying attention, then no wonder mainline Protestant churches are dying. God is providing leaders for these times and the church is ignoring what God is giving them.
I am reminded of this verse: "Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches." (Revelations chapters 2-3) How do churches listen to the Spirit? How do clergy articulate and maintain their call, so that churches can hear the Spirit in that call? More on this below about Capacity.

Economy
Whether or not I could live on the clergy salary that I might find if I moved anywhere is a different question. The constraints of location and economics are real for both men and women--lots of people with working spouses and partners can't move because the spouse couldn't find work where the churches are, or they have family caregiving responsibilities, and they can't live on one clergy salary. There's not a clergy shortage, there's a clergy salary shortage. Clergy are also impacted by economic labor market ills.

Last week at the library I picked up a copy of the February 27, 2009 Commonweal Magazine (Volume CXXXVI, Number 4) and a book review (p. 34-5) entitled, A Different Ponzi Scheme by Robert DeFina, caught my attention. DeFina writes: "If nothing else, our current economic crisis has exposed the financial system’s rotten core. The various claims of efficiency, dynamism, and innovation spouted by its most ardent boosters were, it turns out, simply a façade hiding unbridled greed, unethical lending, and unfathomable financial assets. … It would be remarkable if structural economic decay were limited to the financial sector alone. It turns out that it is not. The light shined by Steven Greenhouse's new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for American Workers, reveals a labor market rife with the ill-treatment of workers, a market that conjures up Dickens and the worse excesses of the industrial revolution."

Greenhouse describes five squeezes:
wages which have stagnated for the average American worker in the last 30 years;
benefits reduced or eliminated so that workers pay for their own health care and pensions out of shrinking wages;
thus causing debt squeeze for health care, especially catastrophic health care, for housing and for higher education;
so many workers are working more hours or more jobs creating a time squeeze with less time for leisure, recuperation and family;
and finally a dignity squeeze where workers are too often treated without respect and decency in a stressful, degrading or even dangerous workplace. See this excerpt from Chapter 1.

I suspect that bivocational or part-time clergy are squeezed in these ways just as easily or often as any factory worker or any other white color worker. And then we have this other way we are squeezed—how do we maintain our call?

Capacities
Since my directed study is on clergy placement and retention, I am looking at not only how people get into ministry positions, but also what it takes to stay healthy in a ministry position. I've found three important readings on becoming a pastor. One is an Alban Institute special report Becoming a Pastor: Reflections on the Transition into Ministry by James P. Wind and David J. Wood, available as a free download. This document focuses on the crucial first years in ministry and the Lily Endowment funded programs of the past decade that have tried to bridge the gap between seminary and the "real world" through congregational based community practice, peer learning and clergy mentoring programs.

A key feature of all of these programs is "reflective immersion," what we might call trial by fire or being thrown into the deep end with a buddy or coach on hand who help the new clergy person in a reflective practice on what worked and what didn't. (See the Ask the Matriarchs forum on the Rev Gal Pals Blog as one more mentoring forum.)

Lesson 1: Seek and find a clergy networking group and/or a clergy mentor who will reflect with you.

The second is Becoming a Pastor: Forming Self and Soul for Ministry by Jaco J. Hamman. Hamman outlines six capacities that you need to grow to nurture and maintain your calling as a pastor: the capacity to believe, the capacity to imagine, the capacity for concern, the capacity to be alone, the capacity to use others and to be used, and the capacity to play. A lovely blend of psychology, poetry, and theological reflection, I highly recommend this book. I'm only part way through, but can share a few good quotes:

Some theologians and religious leaders deny that our sense of being has any importance, arguing that what one believes in—the knowledge you carry about God—is the essential matter. Intellect triumphs over affect. Belief, however, needs to come 'home' to your self. And in what condition is the foundation of your inner being? p. 16

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once?
A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 27-28

One definition of imagination is having the ability to see what is not there and to know the unknown or the unuttered. Like the artist who sees a beautiful flower on her white canvas, or the sculptor who sees a mother and child in a piece of granite, you see God using you to tend God's flock, you see the Spirit of God moving between and among the members of your community, or you see the personal loss or relational pain behind the person who is criticizing your leadership. p. 41

Lesson 2: Find and use a spiritual director or a spiritual direction group. Read and go over the questions from this book with your spiritual director or group.

The third book I've just picked up is Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry by L. Gregory Jones and Kevin R. Armstrong. Since I am reading a book by each of several chairs, I just offer this précis from the back cover: "Resurrecting Excellence aims to rekindle and encourage among Christian leaders an unselfish ambition for the gospel that shun both competition and mediocrity and rightly focuses on the beauty, power, and excellence of living as faithful disciples of the crucified and risen Christ."

So far, I've gleaned an emphasis is on excellence as beauty. Imagine that!

Today at worship my church was treated to a lovely ballet piece by the young dancers of the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre as the proclamation and to a gorgeous rendition of movements of a Handel sonata for baroque recorder and organ as our music for reflection after Lenten confession and during communion.

Lesson 3: Look for beauty.

My prayer is that we take time, especially this week, to listen to our own hearts and reflect on our own calls, to listen to the stories and be present with those suffering in economic and other distress, and especially to listen and attend to music and art and things of beauty, as we journey this week toward and through our celebrations of redemption and resurrection.

Lessons from Isaiah and the Slinky about the Ideal Church

For a number of years now I have been receiving a weekly email called "Rumors" from Canadian writer Ralph Milton who along with writer Jim Taylor founded Woodlake Books. They continue to write and bless many of us weekly. Early each Sunday morning I get an email that discusses the lectionary texts for next Sunday, and it usually includes a wonderful assortment of humor. One person remarked recently that it becomes a ready made Sunday school curriculum--share the humor, read the texts, and then get into the reflections on the texts that Ralph and Jim share. Check out the blog link to the side, which also has information on getting the weekly email.

This week I was drawn to Ralph's summary of next week's text from Isaiah:

Isaiah 50:4-9a – Most Rumors readers, both lay and clergy, are leaders in the church. Which means that the very first sentence of this passage is directed at us. “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher.”
The leadership instincts and skills we have are a gift, which we have received so that we “may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” But the most essential skill of the leader is to listen. God who “wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.”

How are we teaching? How are we listening as learners? How are we sustaining the weary? What words might sustain us? I'd like to suggest the word: Slinky.

Yesterday was my "graduation" service from CPE. The turning point in our interpersonal relations group seminar was the day I brought in an antique slinky in its original box, and we played together and then were able to talk about the boxes we were putting each other in. Yesterday's graduation sermon had three lessons from the Slinky that I'd like to share (thanks, Michelle!).
1. Don't judge a Slinky by its box.
2. Slinkies are designed for movement.
3. Slinkies are made for delight and connection.
We are all slinkies.

I'm still reading Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling and have been mulling over their research question about whether the ideal church would require ordained clergy. I grew up in a part of the Baptist tradition that had more farmer preachers, not the learned clergy of the Anglicans, Puritans and congregationalists. Surprising to the researchers of this book, but maybe not to me given my own background and context, more Unitarian Universalists thought that an ordained ministry would be necessary for the ideal church, and fewer Southern Baptists thought that. If you think the Spirit can call farmers to preach, then all of that education and rigmarole might seem unnecessary.

I return to the Slinky for answers to these questions.
So, then what box do we put ordained clergy in and what box are lay people in? If women are not equally ordained, what box are they in? What does learning have to do with call or ministry?
1. Don't judge a Slinky by its box.
How does the learned ministry constrain or enhance our call to ministry?
2. Slinkies are designed for movement.
How might we balance the Isaiah text about being teachers and learners with the Baptist notion of the priesthood of believers?
3. Slinkies are made for delight and connection.

My prayer for today is that we reclaim and sustain the lessons of the transforming power of play and connection contained in the Slinky.

Connections from last week with postscript on "getting over fear"

Excerpted from Sublimation by Anne Michaels

Flesh moves to become spirit.
You were the only one to understand my conversion.
Many people have asked me about God;
my proof is manifestation,
that God can be called
"getting over fear."

I wanted badly that truth be a single thing;
now I know it won't be measured.

It wasn't Heisenberg or Hindemith, but you
who convinced me
that nothing can be unraveled to its core,
that truth is a field, a cage, a cloud of sound.
How else to reconcile the faces of those running away
with the faces of those turning away,
with the faces of those in uniform – that hair-shirt
that says more about a man than his eyes
because you can't tell the parts of his face
that are his.
How else to encompass both that crying and those
orders; the sound of my own voice
begging, and my voice telling jokes to the man
without shoes beside me on a train;
how else to encompass the moon's chilling scream
as it calls out in its bad sleep above the earth
and your voice on the phone,
waking me in Paris, Los Angeles, New York.

from Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley.

God can be called "getting over fear." Yes, and amen.

Reaching out in this study has yielded its own rewards, so thanks to those who have intentionally or unintentionally provided these materials. This week my connections have taken me in several directions for my readings. One is a resource coming from someone at my luncheon last week, a doctoral study on the impact of openly gay/lesbian clergy who pastor mostly heterosexual churches in the UCC.

After discussing the study design with a friend who teaches statistics, I can concur that there are some unexplored questions about the results. For example, this study says that most of these churches with openly gay/lesbian pastors grew in attendance, Sunday school attendance, membership and giving. Survey design question that I don't know the answer to, can't find much research about: would a similar sampling of churches with a new heterosexual pastor show the same results? That is, is there a new pastor effect that causes growth? Or could the growth be attributed just to chance demographic factors—that these churches are in places where other churches are growing too and the gay/lesbian pastor doesn't make a difference? Even considering both of these caveats, what is clear from this study generally is that openly gay and lesbian ministers in the UCC, despite the worries and fears expressed by pastors and congregations, don't hurt a church's situation and may in fact be very positive contributors toward the Spirit working and growing.

Now how might we translate that information for/to other congregations in other places and denominations?

A second bit of reading followed a link from one of Rev Gal Blog Pal comments from last week (thank you for the warm welcome!) about the United Methodists and their women clergy.

UMC More Women Leaders Sought

The United Methodist Church, which boasts a history of ordaining women clergy, is seeking to shatter the so-called "stained-glass ceiling" blocking female pastors from its largest pulpits.

The nation's second-largest Protestant denomination has launched a new initiative, the Lead Women Pastor Project, to examine barriers to women being appointed pastors to Methodist churches with more than 1,000 members. The Nashville-based United Methodist Church has 44,842 clergy, and about 10,000 are female -- or 23 percent. Yet just 85 women lead those largest churches, compared with 1,082 men in those positions.

Church leaders say more women are needed to shepherd large churches, given that women make up more than half of those enrolled in master of divinity programs in United Methodist seminaries. Also, almost 58 percent of the 8 million-member denomination is female.
-- Associated Press

The details of what they plan are not given, but is something to watch: UM Lead Women Pastors’ Project Aims to Develop, Nurture Clergywomen
I guess we can check back and see what happens.

My reading for balance or pleasure recently has included a murder mystery series by Julia Spencer-Fleming about a woman who is a newly ordained Episcopal priest in her first church in a small town in the Adirondacks. Although I hope that the murder rate in any of our communities is nowhere as high as in this town, the author captures some really wonderful glimpses of what it means to start in ministry. The second book of the series, entitled A Fountain Filled with Blood, has a portion where the priest turns to the Compline prayer alone one night in her church as solace after discovering a particularly gruesome murder the previous day. The value of an ecumenical education is that this was not new to me, but, nonetheless, this portion lingered with me after reading it in this setting.

Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

May we all be able to turn to God in prayer, turn to "getting over fear," and open to a realization of truth as a container, "a field, a cage, a cloud of sound," as we work, watch or weep this night. Amen.

Fear and Love: lessons from Deer, Engineering, and the Devil You Don't Know

This is a "one thing leads to another" posting. Meander with me.

This past Tuesday morning, shortly before leaving for my drive north where there are a lot more signs about deer crossing the road than on the city streets where I live, I read a poem about hitting a deer while driving: Penitence by John Burnside from Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley, (Hyperion, New York, 2003). I quote just a bit from the middle of the poem:

I left the engine running; stepped outside;
away, at the edge of the light, a body
shifted amongst the leaves
and I wanted to go, to help, to make it well,
but every step I took
pushed it away.
Or – no; that's not the truth
or all the truth:
now I admit my own fear held me back,
not fear of the dark, or that presence
bending the trees;
not even fear, exactly, but the dread
of touching, of colliding with that pain.
I stood there, in the river of the wind,
for minutes; then I walked back to the car
and drove away.

Once I got to CPE, my colleague whose spiritual practice is from the Native American traditions led a devotion using animal medicine cards, and we each picked one. Mine was Deer. She then read the story of each animal's totem and characteristics. I share part of Deer's story:

One day Fawn heard Great Spirit calling to her from the top of Sacred Mountain. Fawn immediately started up the trail. She didn't know that a horrible demon guarded the way to Great Spirit's lodge. The demon was trying to keep all the beings of creation from connecting with Great Spirit. …

Fawn's eyes were filled with love and compassion for this oversized bully of a demon. The demon was astounded by Fawn's lack of fear. No matter how he tried, he could not frighten Fawn, because her love had penetrated his hardened, ugly heart.

Much to the demon's dismay, his rock-hard heart began to melt, and his body shrank to the size of a walnut. Fawn's persistent love and gentleness had caused the meltdown of the demon. Due to this gentleness and caring that Fawn embodied, the pathway is now clear for all of Great Spirit's children to reach Sacred Mountain without having to feel the demons of fear blocking their way.

Deer teaches us to use the power of gentleness to touch the hearts and minds of wounded beings who are trying to keep us from Sacred Mountain. Like the dappling of Fawn's coat, both the light and the dark may be loved to create gentleness and safety for those who are seeking peace. …

You may not be willing to love yourself enough to feel your fears and let them go. You may be projecting your fears on others. It may also be others whom you fear, reminding you of a time when you reacted to life in much the same manner. At any rate, love is the key.
from Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson (Author), illustrated by Angela C. Werneke, St. Martin's Press, Revised Edition (1999), p. 52-54

In our CPE group this week, we talked about our fears of next steps. Mine are of finishing seminary and getting or not getting a call to a church, and what that would mean. Well, I can take a hint. The message from Deer was about how to deal with my fear with love. The scripture verse, "love casts out fear," came to mind and I looked it up.

1 John 4.18-20 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

And of course I looked for music to go with it.

Your love, O God, has called us here,
for all love finds its source in you,
the perfect love that casts out fear,
the love that Christ makes ever new.
~ Russell Schulz-Widmar (1944-);
© Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188.

Or an older version with several different tunes:

O love that casts out fear,
O love that casts out sin,
Tarry no more without,
But come and dwell within!
~ Horatius Bonar, 1861.

So perfect love casts out fear. But I don't have perfect love, so what will imperfect love do? I mull on this.

As a part of my directed study, I gathered a group of GLBT clergy and seminarians this week to talk about what confronts them in their calls and career journeys. One arrived early and described her current compassion fatigue: she just can't do one more visit to the sick, one more meeting with someone made jobless by this economy. She's going on retreat to refill her own well. Fortunately, she's wise enough to know that she needs to do that and in a church where she gets support in both time and money for her development and renewal. Over lunch she described some of her times of fear in coming out while in a pastoral role. Fear remains a theme for the week, but another definition is uncertainty.

One problem with clergy work is that there is no clear standard for what it means to be a "good pastor." One way to deal with the uncertainty is to work harder and harder until you are working sixty to seventy hours a week and then you burn out because there is still so much more you could do. (United Methodist clergy woman). Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling by Barbara Zikmund, Adair Lummis and Patricia Chang, p. 74

My wise colleague also had this to say about our current troubled times: that now is probably a great time to be a non-traditional pastor candidate because denominational organizations and gatekeepers are so distracted by the turmoil that the non-traditional candidate can slip through into a place where they will be welcomed.

Engineering stories confirm this: Because women are not male the way clergy have historically been, then when they are being evaluated against traditional, successful clergy characteristics they already have a strike against them.

This, combined with the structure of clergy work and the ambiguity that surrounds performance assessment, makes women more vulnerable to subjective evaluations of their performance.

What can be done to change this situation?

A clue can be found in a recent study comparing pairs of male and female engineers whose careers were followed through six organizations. In this research, women were able to advance most quickly in firms in turbulent markets and in firms where work tasks were structured in flexible networks. In flexible network settings, when work was done by personnel organized in egalitarian teams and when communication and decision making tended to be horizontal rather that vertical, men and women tended to be evaluated on the basis of qualifications and skills rather than gender. The chief characteristic of these work settings was that different ways of thinking, different values, and different opinions were considered resources for working out solutions to existing problems. …

The research found that, in contrast, women do less well than men in bureaucratic organizations that seek to ensure a "continual reproduction of the culture." In such bureaucratic organizations, women become professionally invisible… Clergy Women, p. 76

Engineering also had insights on the congregation's side.

A church in its Prime can begin to suffer from the presumption that it doesn't need to work at renewal, vision, assessment, and evaluation, believing that things will always be as good a s they are now. But a congregation that falls for that illusions would do well to remember what any first year engineering student knows about the Second Law of Thermodynamics—Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused and spread out. Or, to put it another way, "things tend to break down." The critical leadership function for this stage is to fight the forces that lead to atrophy and resistance to change. … The constant challenge for the pastor will be to develop and communicate the vision that will tip the church's direction from homeostasis to evolution, from complacency to resilience. The Hidden Life of Congregations by Israel Galindo, p. 70-71

Okay, lessons from engineering duly noted. Finally, in searching the internet for scripture, love casts out fear, I found the following articles. Read them and let me know what you think.

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear by Angela Rose, an amazing article about someone confronting fears.

And the sidebar led me to this article with this great lead quote about fear.
Embracing the Devil You Don't Know by Candace Chellew

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure ... We ask ourselves: "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be ...? Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you... As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
--Marianne Williamson

And one link led to another article by the same author:
Clergy Cowardice By Candace Chellew-Hodge

As it happens this week I have just been reading the clergy survey that she references. Check it out for yourself. Clergy Voices: New Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey. I am not sure that I read these findings in quite the same way, but I take her point.

My prayer for this week is to act in love to cast out fear, to begin to understand how to do that, teach that, be that, or just claim that perfect love that casts out fear, and that each of you may do the same.