Grace in and out of uniform

There is an old joke that sometimes pops up in ordination sermons. I forget the run-up but the punch-line is “It’s not a clergy shirt, it’s a projection screen.”

That line came to me when I read a piece in the Christian Century (and linked in The Episcopal Café) about the need for clergy to not be shy about wearing their clerical collars.

In it, the Rev. Samuel Wells, a vicar in the Church of England at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, talks eloquently about all the different ways that the clerical collar speaks to people. He related the different responses he gets to his clerical garb. One, person, a firefighter, appreciated his wearing the collar because he felt the cleric was taking him seriously. Another said that he should avoid wearing it because he felt “like you’re condemning us as sinners.” And the kicker was when, as a deacon, he turned aside an apparent request for confession from a bus driver on the technical point that deacons don’t hear confessions. Wells regretted that response saying, “My clerical collar had done its work.”

Sigh.

Been there. Done that. Bought the tab collar.

Already the column is getting quite a number of comments on the Café’s comment section and on Facebook, including, I suppose, this.

In many ways, I identify with Fr. Wells’ experience. I get all kinds of responses to my clerical garb. Almost none of it is about me, and almost all of it tells me something about the person who I am meeting. But it took me a while to learn that.

One of the things nearly every person preparing for ministry in a mainline denomination in the USA must do is take a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. As a former clinical chaplain who once held a board certification, I have taken quite a few of these. The most basic thing a person learns in their first (few) unit(s) of CPE is about how to carry their authority as a minister--how to give it and how to receive it. They also should learn about the basics of transference, counter-transference, displacement and projection. When you take that first CPE unit as a person not-yet-ordained, you have the distinct experience of having to function without “the uniform.”

Sometimes the uniform can be helpful. Like when I had my first clinical experience at hospital in England, where a bunch of us Yanks along with some Canadians were sent to do field placement. Dressed in our respectable coats and ties but talking with a funny accent, we found that none of the patients in our ward would talk to us. Turns out that we were confused with a group of equally young, equally earnest Mormon missionaries. When the deacon in our group suggested that we all go to the ward wearing cassocks, the patients began to open up. Why? Because they knew that we were somehow CofE and therefore “safe.”

Sometimes the uniform can get in the way. Like the times when patients refused to open to me in clerical uniform but would later chat away happily when I returned wearing a necktie with my lab coat.

Sometimes the uniform can open doors…which is handy when you need to visit a patient who has called you from the nursing home at 11 pm…and close them. I am aware that many of female colleagues have many strange, and sometimes quite horrid, stories of how people have handled the cognitive dissonance that comes when an unprepared person sees a woman dressed in clericals.

Sometimes the uniform means absolutely nothing. Like the time a young woman walked up to me in Barnes and Noble wondering if I could help her find a particular book. The black suit and clerical collar meant nothing to her, except that this well dressed person might work here as a clerk.

My dad used to say that the most important part of the car is the nut holding the wheel. The same is true of clergy garb. The most important part is the person wearing it and how they receive what is projected on that handy screen they happen to be wearing.
Once some members of my first CPE group pulled a prank on one of our fellow group members…and the supervisor quietly went along pretending not to notice because either the lesson was so rich or the situation so priceless…or both.
Our colleague was really bothered that as a lay person she could not wear a clerical collar (and her Bishop did not allow his seminarians to wear the then-common “seminarians collar”--if you don't know what that is, that's probably a good thing). So she was very glad when our lab coats came equipped with this very nice patch sewn above the breast pocket that said in large letters “CHAPLAIN.” She felt that the patch gave her an entrance that allowed all kinds of good things to happen.

She’d bring this fine intervention to group or tells us about an amazing conversation…and then she’d sell her own authority short by saying something like “well, if it weren’t for this (meaning the patch) I’d never have….”

So one of our number quietly and carefully removed the sewn on chaplains patch from her lab coat and then hung it up in its usual spot.

Of course, soon she came back with the story of another great encounter and, as usual, she gave at least part of the credit to the badge. Only when the ringleader of our little gag leaned over and put the patch in her hand and showed her that she went nearly a whole week with a plain white lab coat did she understand that the power of the encounter—the care, the listening, the prayer, the articulation of meaning and the consciousness of the divine—happened not because of the patch but because of the meeting of persons.

I have a habit I picked up in clinical settings of allowing my parishioners to decide what they will call me: Father, “Padre”, Andrew, Parson…whatever. And I choose to wear the archetype of my office for the same reason. Because how people respond to the trappings…the title, the symbol…not to mention my race, my gender, my age, my wedding ring, whatever…tells me something about the person of God in front of me at that very moment.

When a doctor tells me not to wear a clerical shirt in hospital because a patient might think they’re dying, it’s not about my shirt.

When a parishioner leans on me after a Eucharist because it’s one more week without her late husband and everyone has gone back to their lives except for her and everything, including the liturgy, reminds her of the love of her life now dead…it’s not the chasuble speaking.

I don’t care whether a person wears street clothes or pontifical garb, it's not the collar doing the work.

Once I went to a free comedy show in my city’s amphitheater. The mayor was the master of ceremonies introducing five comics. At the start of the show, he looks out in the audience sees me and says “Oh! Hello, Pastor!” It didn't matter that I was wearing a t-shirt... four of the next five comedians still had to make jokes at my expense. If you can’t take the transference, get out of the kitchen.

These things—the titles, the garb, all of it—are nothing but tools. And they are good ones! Make no mistake: the symbols speak and it is often powerful! And just as often they take one to unexpected places. How well the tool works depends on the skill and artistry of the person using it.

You know what really pulls me up short? It’s when I am walking through the grocery store or the hospital, and I am saying “good morning” and looking people in the eye, and holding open doors and engaging in strangers in conversations and then I remember…oh, yeah! I’m wearing a golf shirt. No one “knows” who “I am.” Gee!

At moments like this, I have to laugh at how I am still learning that same silly lesson!

Graceful encounters happen… even when out of uniform!

A person is a person is a person

Does this sound as silly to you as it does to me?

Up until yesterday, if you were an Anglican priest ordained in a Church within the Anglican Communion and you were seeking to get a license to officiate in the Church of England, the gender of the Bishop who ordained you might impact whether or not you would obtain permission to function.

Until yesterday. 

This appeared on Thinking Anglicans this morning:

The Questions yesterday evening at General Synod included this question and answer:

Mrs Christina Rees (St Albans) asked the Secretary General:

Q Is there any longer a bar on a man or woman who, having been ordained to the priesthood by a bishop who is a woman in another province of the Anglican Communion or in another Church with which the Church of England is in communion, being given to permission to officiate under the Overseas and Other Clergy (Ministry and Ordination) Measure 1967, so as to make them then to be as a priest in the Church of England, given a Licence or Permission to Officiate?

Mr William Fittall replied:

A The decision taken by the Synod this afternoon means that it is now lawful for women to be consecrated as bishops in England. The rationale for the bar which the Archbishops have operated up to now under the 1967 Measure has therefore disappeared. The gender of the consecrating bishop will be no longer relevant when applications for permission to officiate are considered.

So among the things that changed yesterday when Parliament and the Queen cleared away the final hurdles to women being consecrated Bishops in the Church of England is that apparently any lingering doubts about the validity of the orders conferred by women bishops in other parts of the Anglican communion has been resolved.

A priest is a priest is a priest. 

When the Episcopal Church regularized the ordination of women in 1976, it did so by simply stating that the canons of this Church would apply equally to women as to men. But there was an allowance for people who did not believe in the ordination of women: that no bishop would be penalized for refusing to ordain any otherwise called and qualified woman nor in placing a qualified woman in pastoral authority in his diocese. No priest or lay person would be penalized for refusing the ministry of women. (Deacons, I suppose, had to live with their discomfort because no one seemed to object when women deacons had the "-ess" dropped off their office and they were integrated in with the other male deacons.) 

It was presumed that this refusal would be for reasons of conscience and not simply because the person was bigoted or sexist. 

The so-called "Conscience Clause" was passed in 1977 after the then-Presiding Bishop, John Allin, offered to resign rather than accept the ordination of women to the priesthood.

"No Bishop, Priest, or Lay Person should be coerced or penalized in any manner, nor suffer any canonical disabilities as a result of his or her conscientious objection to or support of the sixty-fifth General Convention's actions with regard to the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopate."

Jan Nunley described the "ontological ambiguity" faced by those first women priests that lingered nearly twenty years later:

And for the church's women bishops, the "conscience clause" puts them in a House of Bishops that is not unanimously convinced they even belong there. "Obviously I'm not recognized as a bishop by the bishops who say that women cannot be ordained. I'm not valid for them, I'm 'ontologically impossible' -- that's the language that's used," said the Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon of Washington. "Yet I have polite conversations with some of the bishops who don't recognize me. One evening Mary Adelia [McLeod, bishop of Vermont] and I had a very interesting conversation with a number of the ESA bishops. I think most of the people in that room were dumbfounded. You live with the ambiguity."

Of course, some of these folks who thought that a woman being a priest or bishop was simply impossible have left the Episcopal Church and now another denomination has to live with this ambiguity as the price of their independence.

The conscience clause, which became the norm for the Anglican Communion, did not work both ways. If a male bishop refused to ordain or place a woman priest or refuse to accept the validity of an ordination performed by a woman, that was conscience. If that person was called out on their stubborness, then that was just, well, cheeky.

And apparently in the Church of England those who accepted the equality of orders as fervently were for a long time not as fervently protected those who fought to exclude women...for reasons of conscience. So, until yesterday, those ordained by men might expect that their application to officiate in the CofE would be accepted, there was still some lingering doubt about those ordained by a woman. I'd be interested in hearing stories about both male and female clergy whose orders were questioned because of the gender of their ordaining bishop. 

This matters not because our Presiding Bishop can now wear her hat the next time she goes to England.

And it doesn't even matter that the paperwork might be a little easier for some American priest seeking to spend his or her sabbatical in England via one of those nifty "housing for work" deals that I hear about (but have never tried).

And it doesn't even matter because in hind-sight the conscience clause caused us more trouble by delaying justice and justifying sexism than the ordination of women ever caused by itself. (Imagine, if you will, if we decided that the exclusion of a whole race from orders was merely a matter of conscience. Oh, wait...! We did that! More than fifteen years after a letter from a Birmingham Jail, the House of Bishops finally turned away from that form of incremental racism in shame while at the very same time the House of Bishops was creating this "appeal to conscience!") We are still learning that it takes a while for us to learn.

It matters because the conscience clause got in the way of the practical application of the ordinary-but-revolutionary implication of the Gospel that was right there all along only we were too blind, silly, or prejudiced to apply it: that a priest is a priest is a priest.

And that's important because in God's grand scheme of salvation it turns out that a person is a person is a person. 

So when the first women bishops are consecrated in the Church of England, let's celebrate! But as the first men starts having vapors over the ontological impossibility of it all and claim to be the victims of discrimination, pray for them, and remind yourselves that except for God's grace it was ontologically impossible for any of us to even walk with God, let alone dare to be God's ambassadors of reconciliation. 

Today the Church of England officially teaches that a bishop is a bishop is a bishop. And a priest is a priest is a priest. And a person is a person is a person. Thanks be to God.

The thing about magic bullets

I just read MikeAnderson's post about why he is leaving Mars Hill Church and the regret he feels for having participated in what can only be described as a church built around the personality of its leader. Evidently, this is falling apart. It calls up many memories for me.

Truth be told, I have some sympathy for Anderson's struggle and journey. He is struggling with the fact that this group and Pastor Mike Driscoll, was  crucial to the formation of his faith, but also coming to terms that the place was no longer a healthy place. It was killing him inter-personally. It was wrecking his faith. It was time to go. He evidently left before all the scandal broke and reorganization set it. 

Now I have no direct, personal experience with any of the Mars Hill Churches. The "resurgence" movement about which they wrote, blogged and sold books did cross my path regularly. Usually in the hands of an enthusiastic lay person--sometimes even a cleric-- with the enthusiastic wish that we could somehow use what Driscoll did to "revitalize" our parish. I would usually make that into a conversation about what "vitality" in Christ looks like and that would become a discussion about whether we are merely propping up an organization or if we were using the tools (and challenge) of the local parish to create, nurture and support vital Christian people in community. 

When I left the brand of evangelical Christianity that did so much to nurture my young faith and orient me towards Christ, it was like a death. I had a brief re-union with that group four years ago, and I am still friends with some of the folks from that period, and it is very good. 

But at the time I also had to grieve the loss, realize that I no longer fit in, discover new ways of being fed and nurtured in my faith and develop new faithful friendships. 

So my response to Driscoll is the same as my response to all the other religious celebrities that have come and gone with their books, videos, seminars and mass-mailings: there is no magic bullet. There is only life in Christ in community in the place where God finds us.

Lately, I have been talking with some young people who went off to college, found Jesus in the local campus evangelical Christian group, grew like wild-flowers in their faith and "bam!" ran smack dab into their version of personality-based leadership. Or into judgmentalism. Or bigotry. Or mega-resistance to gays in meaningful relationship or women in meaningful leadership or both. Sometime I hear about the more mundane, but still deep pain that comes when they realize that they've already outgrown the kind of literalistic biblicism that some of these groups teach. I am glad they have a parish to come home to. I am glad they have tweeted or spoken to me. For one thing, their struggle feels familiar.

I don't care what flavor Christian you are: we all must engage the culture. We must listen to the culture we are in because this is where God has put us and it is the venue where we must live out the Gospel. But when we start to simply parrot the culture--and whatever trappings the culture brings us...celebrity, entertainment, materialism, political expediency, you name it-- we are dead in the water. If my kind of Christianity gets too hung up on Gothic buildings and ancient liturgies, then evangelical Christianity is tempted to get too hung up in trying to be "cool." 

We all have to come to terms with our own idols.

And idols have this way of looking like magic bullets for Jesus.

Which brings me back to Mars Hill.

You know, I have been curious about their choice of "Mars Hill" as the name for their churches. They are trying to say in their name that they are engaging the culture on their terms with the Gospel just as the Apostle Paul did when he went to Athens as described in Acts 17:16-34.  It is the only story of we have of Paul starting a church where there was not already an existing Jewish community as the basis for his mission to the Gentiles. The idea is to start from scratch. So I get that. 

The problem is that Paul's encounter on Mars Hill was a failure. At least by the measure of what we know about the Pauline mission. The author of Luke-Acts, always willing to magnify Paul's successes, says that only "some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." Now small isn't bad, but basically the folks in Athens gave Paul a respectful hearing and then went about their business. They apparently scoffed at the idea of resurrection and Paul did not or could not engage them on the point. They reached an impasse. Perhaps he was unprepared to deal with the way debate happened in Athens. Perhaps the gap was too big between the Athenians and Paul, what with their wildly divergent backgrounds. Maybe the Athenians, in their theological market-place, did not catch the life-changing urgency of Paul's message. For whatever reason, they didn't connect. So Paul left. 

Now just because we have no extant Epistles of Paul to the Christians in Athens doesn't mean that there weren't any. And it doesn't mean that was not church in Athens. But it does probably tell that whatever letters that might have been written weren't memorable enough to end up in the folio that would become the New Testament. 

Which leads me back to the rough seas that Mark Driscoll and his "movement" is experiencing. The group that Paul left behind in Athens was small. They probably had to patiently learn how to do the small day to day things it takes to grow a community of faith. They had to learn to pray together, to get to know one another, figure out the nuts and bolts both of following Jesus and being in community...all while going about their daily lives. And where they went after Paul left...? Only God knows. 

Driscoll's sermons are filled with Big Ideas proffered in Big Ways. This is a man with all the answers--and he is now coming to terms with the results of some of his choices. In the real Mars Hill, there was only a small group finding their way and Paul's Big Idea didn't go very far.

Paul may have imagined that he was just what the Athenians needed. But not even the Apostle Paul was the magic bullet. If Paul's goal was to get Athenians to kick the idol-habit, he failed. He did not change the temple to "the unknown god" into a church. Another failure. Paul failed to leave behind a movement and he certainly didn't publish any books out of the experience. 

Instead, he left behind a handful of believers who became the nucleus of whatever gathering of Jesus' followers grew up in that city.

That's the real lesson of Mars Hill. Paul went in wanting to show these really smart, worldly well-educated Athenians how it really was. He left with his tail between his legs. A failure by every reasonable measure. 

Except for that handful of faithful followers of Jesus who because the nucleus of a congregation we know nothing about. 

In other words, God's kind of success. 

Sticking our tongues out at death.

An All Hallow's Eve Homily

As we in this household ready the candy anticipating night visits by wee ghosties and ghoulies, I recall that Halloween is our culture's time to stick our tongues out at death, and even make fun of it. Of course, death gets the last laugh.

Or so it seems. It is not for nothing that the Risen Christ is first encountered by the women in a cemetery.

Still, death is real. And even when we stick our tongue out, it has the way of leering back at us when we least expect it. Here is an essay by Jana Riess of Religion News Service that reminded me of our need to "grieve well".

"I had a wee breakdown in a big-box store yesterday.

"This was not the heaving sobs of a year and a half ago, when I felt so bereft after my mother’s death it sometimes manifested as a sharp physical pain whenever something reminded me of her.

"Which was all the time.

"No, this grief was quieter but more surprising. It was all so mundane. When I was placing an order at Lowe’s, the clerk found me in the computer from the last time I had placed an order at Lowe’s – which was when our family was fixing up Mom’s house to put it on the market.

"So there on the screen was the contact information that Lowe’s had on file for me, which was all my mother’s. Mom’s street address. Mom’s phone number. Mom Mom Mom.

"I had to turn away so that the clerk wouldn’t be alarmed that his formerly normal-seeming customer suddenly looked ready to weep buckets.

"These episodes don’t happen very often anymore, more than a year and a half after losing Mom. I can have whole conversations about her now without visibly losing it. But the grief is always there, gently submerged, biding its time. Sometimes it lashes out unexpectedly, a sudden onslaught of memories making it difficult to breathe."

Halloween is also the precursor to our culture's Great Winter Festival--you know, the one that runs from the Macy's Parade through the Super Bowl. So for many people in our lives, as well in our congregation, this is when deep loss and memory will jump out at us and shout "Boo!" as we pass by holidays, gatherings, music, worship and all the other hallmarks that remind us of people and moments long past. Sometimes that encounter, as in the one at Lowe's, will bring us to our knees.

I think St. Francis' had it right when he describes "gentle death" as our companion; and the prayer book, too, which describes death as a gateway. So when we walk with our companions in their grief, or as we dress up in our comical defiance of death, we followers of Jesus are not whistling past the graveyard. Instead we are sharing a knowing nod between life's constant companions in the company of the risen Christ.

----

Take an on-line class "Grieving Well" on ChurchNext here.

Leadership, community, and the current crisis on Chelsea Square

On Friday, the news broke that most of the faculty at the General Theological Seminary in New York City have decided to refrain from teaching classes, attending official seminary meetings, and attend Chapel services until they are able to sit down and have a conversation with the Board of Trustees. 

Despite a follow up letter from the faculty to the students describing in more detail what it going on, there is still some question as to what is going on. 

The conflict has nothing to do with pay, hours, job description, benefits, or perks. There is none of the traditional pocket-book labor issues at stake. 

This is not a disagreement over the need for change to they way we do theological education or the way we prepare clergy for ministry. So the Wisdom Year (where in students spend their third year in parishes, particularly those that are small, in distressed communities, or who have lacked regular, full-time priestly ministry, doing and learning parish ministry in "a real-world setting") is not at issue. The faculty have been supportive of the concept both in theory and in substance. 

As far as I can tell the real issues have to do with the leadership style of the dean and his tendency to "Lone Ranger" decisions--even correct ones, but also dubious ones--without debate, discussion or buy-in.

In speaking with, or reading things written by, various stakeholders--some who support the action and some who do not-- I have learned the following:

The main issue has to do with the relationship between the faculty and Dean & President especially the consequences of his style of leadership. In particular, those who chosen to take part in the job action cite the apparent tendency of the Dean to hear questions as dissent and to assign hostile intent to those who disagree with his approach.  

Dunkle makes no secret of the fact that he is a person who does not believe in collaboration but rather that he prefers to be a leader who keeps and articulates the vision with the expectation that the leaders in the middle will use their talents and skills to carry out his central vision. 

The line in the faculty statement about "maturity" has to do with the fact that the Dean has told the students that protest is a form of immaturity and that the problem is that the faculty will not do what they must do to accomplish the mission as he sees it.

So the Dean does not like to waste too much time in listening to or compromising with other stake holders. Especially when that dialogue might delay or temper his vision. He wants to dive right in and get on with it.

Related to this is the fact that he has gathered all authority to himself. So he has final say over both curriculum decisions as well as the conduct of worship in the chapel.  The problem is that--like many Rectors who find themselves in trouble--he apparently has lost the balance in leadership between direction and influence that is essential to function effectively in an environment where checks and balances exist. In a parish, the Vestry holds the purse-strings. A priest can choose to make that relationship essentially adversarial or essentially collaborative. In a parish, congregants can come and go. A rector can choose to write off those who don't follow as recalcitrant folks who dislike change, or the rector can choose to work the process knowing that most will come along and some won't but that the community is working together for change--and this takes time, patience, and finesse. 

This comes into play in the Dean's public discussions about the so-called "Wisdom Year." For him, "Wisdom" comes from the experience of enduring conflict. He has said that what students need to experience in the Wisdom Year is "being beat up." While he has publicly and repeatedly apologized for using that image, it reflects a bias that "wisdom comes through struggle." 

Add to that the idea that theological knowledge is secondary to practical skills. He has also publicly told people in public forums that a priest's education is incomplete unless the cleric learns in the "real" world she or he must be able to "fix the toilet."  His perspective is that unless the cleric learns practical considerations of institutional management, the priest will not be successful. 

We in this see two different visions of theological education at odds with each other. 

The tension comes when those practical considerations are cut loose from theological reflection.  Basic questions about how the parishes that are supposed to benefit the most from the wisdom year--marginal, struggling and moribund congregations in various states of transition--can afford and pay for the seminarians sent to them for a year; of how those students will receive useful supervision, peer support, and theological reflection; and how the congregations will both get necessary sacramental ministry and live with the decisions these students make from year to year have not been effectively answered. In the haste to get this model up and running, fundamental questions of both process and mission are left unanswered. 

A third perspective the Dean brings is that it appears that the success of the leader can be measured by the resistance he experiences from the system. From this stand-point, collaboration can be dangerous because it allows the leader to live at the mercy of the anxiety of those threatened by change. Again, I hear in his comments about wisdom coming from "being beat up" and protest arising out of "immaturity" as indicative of a perspective that assumes that when people are fighting back, the leaders must be doing something right.

Lastly, Dean Dunkle believes that the Seminary must align itself to be responsive to the general attitudes and trends of the church at large. To be relevant to the culture, the seminary must dare to jettison some long held traditions. So he has ended the practice of daily morning and evening prayer and daily Eucharist in favor of a schedule of alternate morning prayers and Eucharists over a few days a week. He has removed some of the pews to make for a space for people to socialize after chapel. And he has discouraged the use of words like "Mass" in describing the Chapel Eucharist or "Solemn" in describing a sung liturgy (in favor of the friendlier "festival") because, in his view, that's not now the culture at large speaks about the liturgy. 

In the process, the focus on worship that was once the hallmark of life at General changed. Because most parishes don't worship on a daily basis and most don't have daily Eucharist, and since the student body is more and more dispersed, the pattern of worship has been changed. 

But with this decision, the idea that formation happens in community and that the rhythm of daily office and daily Eucharist anchors the common life of the seminary, even if only a minority of the community was present at any given time (because mandatory Chapel went away decades ago), has been eliminated. The idea at the heart of Hoffman's grand design of the Close was to combine academics with Chapel life in a way to intensely form priests.  There is a reason that the buildings include living spaces and classrooms that center on the Chapel. 

Now, this is not to say that worship is at the heart of the tensions with the faculty. The pinch comes when decisions about worship that have a significant impact on the fabric of the community are made by mere fiat. That's a recipe for turmoil. 

There appears to be a profound lack of theological reflection in the process of change that the Dean has undertaken, which along with an impatience with relationship-building, that is strangely at odds with the mission of a seminary to form and prepare priests for mission in parish communities. 

After a decade or more of financial instability that required the relief of accumulated debt--through the sale of significant chunks of property-- and after many false starts at realigning the mission of the seminary, I believe that the Trustees wanted a strong leader, a man of action, who willing to think outside of the proverbial box.  It is entirely possible that the Board is completely sold on and committed to the direction and changes that the Dean has in mind.

I believe that the faculty were as anxious as the Trustees were to have in their Dean someone who was willing to take big risks and make bold moves. What no one expected is that this particular leader would not be at home with collaboration but is instead impatient to get going and get the job done. 

The Trustees may have been told that they should expect resistance from the faculty and that this might be seen as a sign of success. They may not want to have any dialogue with the faculty because they feel that they must support the Dean and President no matter what. And they may believe that to mediate conflict or to develop processes to bring in key stake holders in the decision-cycle will de-rail the hard choices to come. 

The Trustees, I think, must choose what they understand their primary function to be: let the vision and direction flow from the Dean and President or, alternatively, to be the ones who themselves take responsibility for developing a vision and direction for the seminary. Being an elected and appointed body that represents the wider church, alumni, faculty and students, this will by definition call for collaboration. 

In my view, it is not the Dean and President who is in charge of developing the mission and direction of the Seminary, but the Board of Trustees and by extension the General Convention who, after all, "owns" the Seminary in a way that is unique to the seminaries of the Episcopal Church. 

There is an interesting parallel process to the recent turmoil uptown at the Metropolitan Opera, who barely avoided a devastating lock-out and salvaged their season when the unions representing the choristers, stagehands, and orchestra wrung out of the Board and Peter Gelb, the artistic director, significant input into the artistic choices of the company, the use of resources to put on productions, and financial accountability. 

In that instance, the take-it-or-leave-it style of leadership generated a crisis, perhaps in the hope that the management and board could win concessions and cost savings from the workers and artists who put on the productions. Instead, it alienated the people who made the Opera possible and, worst of all, drove away patrons and donors. 

What is happening in Chelsea Square is similar in that the leadership is so intent on their goal and so committed to a single over-riding vision, that they appear to have forgotten who it is they serve, who it is that makes the mission happen and who must live with the decisions in the long run. 

It is true that the tone of an organization--parish, seminary, opera company, manufacturer--emanates from the leaders. But it is easy to forget that an organization is organic. The effective leader listens to resistance--from within himself, from within the organization and from outside--because of it is usually sending a message. The leader must choose what stance he or she is going to take towards the people being led. This means choosing his or her approach to the necessary and predictable responses to even ordinary change. If one assumes that the people who are not buying into your vision are incompetent or fearful or wrong, or if people who have a different approach are either saboteurs or terrorists, then all the organization will experience is conflict. The measure of success will be "winning" rather than accomplishing the goal. 

It is true that if a leader takes the approach of going along to get along and always accommodates unhappy people, then the organization falls into kind of chaos. 

But what is strange here is that fight is among people who essentially agree-- but who bring to the table concerns or perspectives that seem distracting or irrelevant to the leader. 

This is the second time in a year when a seminary of the Episcopal Church has been wracked by internal strife between administration and faculty. Tom Ehrich wrote about his seminary that he hoped that students would learn that this is not the way to handle conflict. In a similar vein, I hope that the current class of students of my alma mater will learn that visionary, risk-taking leadership is required for the church's future, but that perhaps this is not the way to go about it. 

One may disagree with the approach the faculty has taken...to stay away from classes, meetings and chapel until they have a open and honest conversation with the Board...but after two attempts at mediation have failed--combined with the fact that it has only taken twelve months for this level of crisis to unfold--indicates that leadership has failed to build on the opportunities that their new found financial stability has brought them.

Instead of developing a shared vision, building relationships with all the stakeholders, a solution is imposed as a cure all with the promise that it will change the church. Perhaps that's the problem. We don't change the Church. The gathering of God's people, wherein the Holy Spirit dwells and which demonstrates the face of Christ, changes us.

The incompetence of force

In watching the events in Ferguson, Missouri unfold, I am struck by the sheer incompetence of the police and the ineptitude of the political leadership. Their reactivity and fear is adding fuel and oxygen to the fire on top of the heat that already exists in the community they are supposed to lead and care for.

They lack moral imagination and it is making things worse.

It is clear as the police empty the streets, enforce curfews, and confront protesters that the police forces there are well equipped, apparently disciplined and well versed in the use of their considerable technology. They seem to understand the tactics of crowd control, riot suppression and the use of what they deem minimal force to control violence. Apparently, the chief of police and the political leaders are listening to their lawyers (and maybe their media consultants) and doing everything "by the book."

But they have forgotten "why" they do what they do and for whom they do it.

The chief appears to be honestly mystified by the anger he and his officers have engendered. The political leadership seem singularly incapable of doing what is necessary to both direct and control their police and to calm and dialogue with their citizenry.

So they apply more force. And in return they get more anger, rage, and violence.

Right from the start, in their apparent adherence to procedure, they showed a startling disregard for the dignity of the people they were supposed to be protecting. They forgot--if they were ever aware--of the fact that the police are not outsiders who keep order, but fellow citizens who maintain the peace so that society can function in a civil manner.

The media face of the government in Ferguson is the police chief. Except for well-scripted sound bites, it does not look like the politicians of that community are going out into the community to listen, to dialogue and to lead. Instead, they are hiding behind the cops saying "protect us", and then I will bet blaming those very cops for not quickly calming things down.

Every one in leadership is apparently looking only to "salvage" a "situation" and so save their own skins.

And so the police are not alone. The political leaders of the community have also apparently forgotten why they are there. They are not there to be "in charge." They are there to govern. Which is different from exercising authority. Governing means, among other things, that they must have the consent and the cooperation--the trust--of the people. Good governance requires a moral framework and the kind of courage that does not need body armor.

We have done this to ourselves. As a society, we have given into fear and reactivity, and our political leaders have done nothing to help that and have even encouraged it! And the police have become the expressions of the very things we fear the most.

It should not surprise us that politicians don't govern because they are instead focused on winning. They don't function in a democracy because they don't understand it. Democracy is not about garnering enough votes to win elections--which is why gerrymandering and cash politics are so rampant. Democracy is a mechanism to govern with the maximum participation of the governed. It is the way we have organized ourselves to order our common life, preserve our liberties and get things done. And, oh yes, keep us safe.

Policing is about order but only in the sense of maintaining that fine balance between enforcing the law and creating the environment where the law is respected, understood and obeyed in the context of a society where all the citizenry are trusted to play their part. So while the police put away the bad guys--the murderers, the thieves, and the vandals--they also make it possible for people to go about the business of being citizens--going to work, going to school, keeping the economy going and taking part in all the different kinds of discourse that make a polis work day to day.

At the same time as our political leaders have forgotten how (and why it's even important) to govern. They debate. They stir people up. They seek their constituencies and play to their base. They use amazing technology to win votes and when they get to their offices they raise money so they can do it all over again and leave the actual work of governing to others.

We have given our police the most amazing tools ever created. Since 9/11, we have thrown so much money at policing so that now every little jurisdiction either has or can quickly call up a military style special weapons team. They have the technology to quickly reconnoiter situations, process suspects, communicate with one another, and quickly out-gun and control any situation. They have learned just enough psychology to use intimidation as a tool. They know the law and have a procedure and policy for every contingency.

But none of this is finally useful when the people who use it don't know why they are doing what they are doing, and the tools become and end in themselves. They come to see themselves as the adversaries of the very citizenry they are called to serve.

In some ways, it's too late for the solutions that could have prevented this. Because if they understood their neighborhoods, had relationships with the people they police, and if they designed their policing so that the people would have a voice in how they are to be policed this would not have happened.

Because in that kind of environment, the body of Michael Brown would not have been allowed to lie in the street unattended for hours.

Because in that kind of environment, the police would have a basic understanding of the dynamics of race and would have built the relationships of trust that might have made the confrontation less likely in the first place.

Because in that kind of environment, when something does go wrong--even fatally wrong--the first steps would be to allow dialogue, listening, grieving and, yes, protesting. And in that kind of environment the protesters and the police would have worked together to avoid unnecessary confrontation.

But both the police and the political leadership have failed their people because for all the technology at their disposal--the police in their riot gear and the politicians with their ability to manipulate elections--they are incompetent because they have no imagination for why they are doing what they do. They are incompetent because they have forgotten on whose behalf they police and govern.

In 1968, on the night that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning for the Democratic Party nomination to be President of the United States. He was scheduled to hold a political rally in the African-American neighborhood in Indianapolis. His advisers and the police told him not to go. There had already been two summers of riots in cities all over the US and, of course, Bobby's brother the president has himself been assassinated.

Instead, Bobby stood on a flatbed truck, announced to the crowd of King's murder, and then spoke to the people. He spoke of his own feelings and his own experience. He quoted to the shocked and grieving people the Greek poet Aeschylus. He talked to them of pain and of hope.



Kennedy brought nothing to Indianapolis except himself. He did not even have a speech writer craft those words! He brought with him the experience of a man who moved through tragedy from ruthless political operator to a man with a moral vision. His moral vision was not only for himself but for a nation.

Other cities burned that night. Indianapolis did not.

Ferguson burns this week because of the incompetence that grows out of a lack of moral imagination.

Once again we are experiencing the lesson that the best technology and the best training in the world will not guarantee a moral outcome. A moral outcome requires people with a moral imagination to meet people where they live and who have the courage to work solutions out of the pain and contradiction of the moment.

Leadership that makes you feel safe

I have been thinking a lot about leadership especially over the past two years.

Over the next several weeks, I want to use this space to reflect on leadership and the communities they serve, especially in the context of parish ministry where I live and work right now.

To start, I share a TED talk by Simon Sinek who describes why good leadership makes people feel safe. It helps answer a basic question-- "What's a leader for?"

Here is a pull quote to start the discussion:

"Leadership is a choice, it is not a rank. I know many people at the senior-most level of organizations who are not leaders - they are authorities, and we do what they say because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people who are at the bottoms of organizations, who have no authority, and they are absolutely leaders, because they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them and to the right of them. This is what leadership is."

The Martyrs of Uganda witness against sexual violence

The Martyrs of Uganda are celebrated on June 3rd. While the feast is not well known in the West, it is a big day in much of Africa. Martyrs Day on June 3 is a national holiday in Uganda. The men who were martyred were Anglican and Roman Catholic Christians and this year marked the 50th anniversary of their canonization by Pope Paul VI.

The story of their death is hair-raising. The Satucket Lectionary on the Holy Women Holy Men website says:

On 3 June 1886, thirty-two young men, pages of the court of King Mwanga of Buganda, were burned to death at Namugongo for their refusal to renounce Christianity. In the following months many other Christians throughout the country died by spear or fire for their faith.’

These martyrdoms totally changed the dynamic of Christian growth in Uganda. Introduced by a handful of Anglican and Roman missionaries after 1877, the Christian faith had been preached only to the immediate members of the court, by order of King Mutesa. His successor, Mwanga, became increasingly angry as he realized that the first converts put loyalty to Christ above the traditional loyalty to the king. Martyrdoms began in 1885. Mwanga first forbade anyone to go near a Christian mission on pain of death, but finding himself unable to cool the ardor of the converts, resolved to wipe out Christianity.

Their deaths was the spark that began a remarkable expansion of the Christian Gospel in eastern and central Africa. It is a story of remarkable faithfulness in the face of the violence and power of the state.

But the story of the Ugandan Martyrs has changed. Their witness is no longer remembered in terms of the resistance of the faithful to the demands of a human king. Instead, their story has been used to justify homophobia and violence . Because in addition to demanding that the thirty-two men renounce their Christian faith, King Mwanga also demanded that they submit to him sexually. As a result their story is used to justify both hatred of homosexuality in general and violence against gay and lesbian people in particular.

The transformation of their story from a story of sexual violence exercised by a king into a moralistic story against homosexuality is similar to how the church of the Middle Ages, the Victorian era and even in our time, transformed the story how many Christian women in the early church were martyred...women who were often called "virgins."

In the early church there was a strong connection between a woman's chastity and martyrdom with several examples of women choosing death over rape or forced marriages, and so on.

One the hallmarks of the early church was that it was a place that accepted "widows" and "orphans," who were not simply women or children whose husbands and parents predeceased them, but who were women and children cast off by society because their bond to that society was severed either by the death of--or very often the whim of-- a man. A woman whose husband put her out and whose father and brothers would not take back was a "widow."

Similarly, the children of a man who would not accept paternity--the child of a mistress or a slave or conceived through rape or simply not accepted in the family (like an expensive girl-child)-- were put out to fend for themselves in the society of the Greek and Roman world.

Slavery was one answer to this. Not the chattel slavery that we think of, but a high-order indentured servitude. People, in short, could and did become property.

The early church offered a place and a status to women and children by welcoming and caring for the widowed and orphaned. The idea that a woman could choose chastity over involuntary sex with a person not of her choosing, and this choice was considered not rebellious but virtuous was a radical aspect of the Christian gospel. Paul's affirmation that in Christ there is no "slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female" but that all are one in Christ takes on a particularly radical and poignant perspective in this context.

In this context, "virginity" was not so much about sexual restraint as the refusal to allow others to choose when, how and with whom a woman may exercise her sexuality. Early church saints and martyrs like Cecile, Agatha and Agnes were choosing not to participate in a society that made women the property of some man, in a world where sex was a sign of domination and power instead of intimacy.

The impact of their witness was lost when chastity and virginity became more about morals and regulating women's bodies in later times. Understanding the original context of these women can help us in understanding what to make of the Martyrs of Uganda.

For one thing, in the story of the king demanding sex with these Christian captives, there is very little connection with how we understand homosexuality (as an orientation) or marriage (as an equal partnership based on mutual love and mutual commitment) or even healthy sexuality today.

Like the early Christian martyrs, what the Martyrs of Uganda refused was the power of an earthly king who wanted to demonstrate his power over these slaves--and the powerlessness of the Gospel--by attempting to have forcible sex with helpless victims. What they refused was the use of sex as a expression of power--in this case political and religious--through the humiliation of rebellious subjects. Their refusal was an affirmation that in Christ each person has inherent dignity and worth. As they went to their gruesome deaths singing and praying, they proved that God's power builds up while human power degrades.

Their witness is a powerful example today where sexual violence is widespread in conflicts all over the world.

Participants at last week’s Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, agreed that faith communities can have significant influence to end the sexual violence that still takes place all over the globe.

Faith leaders and faith-based organizations have a vital role to play in engaging their communities in both the prevention of, and response to, sexual violence in conflict..

…faith communities are often at the center of communities and able to be first responders in times of crisis. They can challenge the attitudes associated with sexual violence and address perceptions that can lead to inequality and the spread of violence.

Those who use the witness of the Martyrs of Uganda to condemn homosexual persons, or to denigrate same sex marriage or as an excuse to persecute GLBT persons miss the power of the original witness of the Martyrs of Uganda. They reduce their deaths to a story of paranoia and social control. In short, they accomplish precisely was the Ugandan king failed to do in 1886.

Instead, the Martyrs of Uganda are a powerful example of how the Church can—and does—stand against sexual violence of all kinds and in all places.

This post first appeared on The Daily Episcopalian at the Episcopal Cafe on Saturday, June 21, 2014.

Living baptism by immersion

A Sermon for the Easter Vigil, March 19, 2014

At the baptisms of Melissa Ashley Bilza and Jessica Rose Floray

Once upon a time a man walked into a small country church and asked the preacher about being baptized. After some conversation, the pastor agreed and on the following Sunday the two men along with the members of the small church gathered at the river for the big moment.

They waded into the river, and the preacher took the man by the shoulders and shouted “Do you believe?”  “Yes!” the man said, and with that the preacher pushed him way under the water until the bubbles got smaller and smaller and then after a moment pulled him up.

“Do you believe?” the preacher shouted again. Spouting water from the first question but still determined, he nodded his head and once again the preacher pushed his head under the water and then after a moment, pulled him to his feet.

A third time, the preacher shouted into the man’s face “Do you believe?”

The man pushed the preacher away and said, “Yes! I believe! I believe you’re trying to drown me!”

All of which is to say that Baptism can be a little overwhelming.

While we did not march down the Delaware and we will not dunk Melissa and Jessica in the river, and just because I am going to pour water on your heads at that font, don’t think for one minute that we Episcopalians don’t immerse.

Episcopalians live our baptisms through immersion. Every day.

Take tonight’s liturgy. What we did today was immerse ourselves in a whole lot of symbolism. We lit and blessed a brand new fire and we held candles in the darkness to remind us that in Christ, God drives away the darkness of death and sin and brings light to our lives. We steeped ourselves in Scripture, hearing again snippets of the long story of how God has never forgotten us. We heard that from the moment of our creation and all through our history God has worked to save us from the consequences of our sin…right down to this very moment. We have sung ancient and new songs of hope and worship and expectation. We have joined with Christians all over the world who tonight carry the same light and sing the same songs and tell the same story. We have joined with Christians who have been doing this for centuries.

We have engaged every sense in telling the story: sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch to remind us that God is engaging our whole being, our minds, our hearts, our imagination, and our ethics. What you two women are doing tonight, and what every Christian does in their baptisms, is to immerse yourselves in a new relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul is talking about this kind of immersion when he asks the Christians in Rome “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

He is saying that when we go down into the water it is like going down into the grave. And we come up out of the water, it is like stepping back into life.  He says that we immersed in Christ’s death and in that immersion we are changed, we take on Christ’s life.

Baptism is the complete initiation into Christ’s body, the Church. But “initiation” in this case is not mere hazing, mere boot camp after which you get a medal or certificate, but “immersion” into Christ. Paul uses the word “with” six times in this short little passage. You are not just joining a club in baptism, you are being immersed into the divine and this will change you.

Have you ever tie-dyed a shirt? What do you do? You bunch up the shirt and tie the bunches together with string and then you dip—baptize!—the shirt in dye. And when you untie the strings the areas that were bunched up, voila, you have a shirt with a new design! And if you repeat the process with different colors, you can get a different funky design. The colors may fade or run or blend with each other but they won’t go back to being a white t-shirt from Target because in the dyeing process the very fabric, the very threads, have changed from their old color to the new.

In the Book of Acts, we hear of a woman named Lydia, who knew all about baptism. She did it for a living. She lived in the Greek city of Phillipi and she was, the Bible tells us, a seller of purple cloth. To make that cloth purple she had to take the wool and bleach it—baptize it in a bleach and water mixture—to get out the impurities. And then she had to baptize it again in the rare purple dye to make into a very valuable, rare and much sought after fabric that all the wealthy and fashionable people wore in Paul’s day.

Lydia, a woman who was both wealthy and the head of a household—a rare thing in the first century—heard Paul preach about Jesus and decided that she, too, wanted to be baptized, immersed into the life of Christ. And so she was, she and her whole household. Lydia was one of the earliest supporters of the brand-new church. I will bet that when she heard the Apostle Paul talk about being immersed in Christ, and coming out new and whole and changed, she knew exactly what he meant.

Being immersed in Christ will change us. As we take the plunge into baptismal living we will discover that God in Christ will have the way of getting into the secret parts ourselves, and changing us in ways we never expect. It is not that we never be without tension, or choice, or difficulty, but rather that we are being changed at the very fiber of our being into the people that God made us to be.

In the early days of the church it was a common baptismal practice for those entering the water to lay aside their old clothes, depicting their surrender of the former life of sin and death. They emerged from the water like newborn babes and then were clothed in new, white garments. According to Eugene Peterson’s version of Colossians in a version of the Bible called “The Message,” it is not just new garments that are put on. No, the newly baptized are "clad in the wardrobe God picked out for them: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline and the all-purpose garment of love." The symbolic garment we will put on each of you, a white stole, is more than a fashion statement. It is another reminder that you have put on Christ.

In your baptisms, you have immersed yourselves in Christ.  You choice to be baptized tonight has led you to be immersed in grace and now be filled with the life of the risen Christ. 

So as you have been immersed, immerse yourself in prayer. Take the plunge into scripture and become part of the story of God’s salvation. Steep yourselves in the rhythm of the sacraments, the church’s year, and the church’s time. Wade into the world with acts of mercy, justice and practical caring. Marinate yourself in Christian community, where you find people who far from perfect and who often stumble but who are just as immersed in this ongoing,  unfolding, joyous, spiritual experiment called baptismal living.