New tricks, same old dog

Someone asked me via e-mail how it was going with the Episcopal Cafe. Here is what I said.

I was the Monday newshound on the first day out of the new blog but I started pre-posting late last night. 

Remember that old Far Side cartoon of Rex the dog riding a unicycle on a high-wire in front of a hushed crowd while juggling, balancing a goldfish bowl on his head and using a hula hoop...? Well, just call me Rex. 

I am an old dog and this is a new trick! 

I thought I knew WordPress pretty well, but getting to know this new platform has been interesting... I know that good folks who are managing the back end are working hard and that Jon has my back. All day I saw improvements happening while I watched. 

As the day went on I either got (or muttered) comments like:

This is too slow...

Why does it do this?...

But it looked on fine on mine....!

Did you try clearing the cache?

huh?...

Well. Hmm. That was interesting....

404?!? Really?!?...

@#$%&!!!

Hmm. The old platform did this, how come we can't do that here...?

What's the HTML code for....?

Oh, what the heck! I'm going for it...!

In other words, normal stuff for the first day of a new platform. 

So we are learning and fixing things as we go. Already we've received some donations, and this helps because while we lived for years with an out-of-date publishing platform and had to hold together the old site with spit and airplane glue, now we have a platform that is both up to date and with which can (with the resources the donations bring us) make changes. 

It's been amazing how many people are really wrapped up in what we are doing. All the good feedback tells us that many in the Episcopal Church (and elsewhere) are rooting for us to succeed. I am praising God for that witness.

Living God's kingdom on earth as it is lived in heaven

A sermon for the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Year A - November 23, 2014.

So today is the last Sunday of the Church’s year. And denominations of every flavor all are celebrating with a fairly new common feast that is called either “Christ the King” or the “Reign of Christ.”

It is a feast of hope. That the Risen and Ascended Christ will bring together everything in heaven and on earth and that he will make all creation new.

And the picture we paint in our hymns and scripture lessons all point to God wrapping it all up and bringing everything together in Christ. It really is quite grand!

Now we might want to focus on Jesus’ kingship in terms what being a “king” means, and how that works with our mindset of individualism and our experience of democracy.

But let’s do something else: let’s ask “what kind of Kingdom does Jesus want?” What would Jesus’ reign actually look like? And how do we take part in it?

So before we turn to today’s Gospel, let’s turn to that prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. And what do we pray? We pray that God’s Kingdom will come and we pray that what God wants will happen on earth just as it happens in heaven.

So what would that look like if what God wanted happened where we live just as it does in heaven? Well, that the trouble. Because it depends on what your idea of heaven is.

If you think heaven is a cloudy, puffy place where everyone has a harp and wings, then I guess then you think heaven to be a really peaceful and quiet (except for all the harp music).  How would that show up on earth? Probably in a kind of religion that says we don’t ever talk about hard things: like poverty…or war… or sickness… or ethics… just speak nice, comfortable things.

If you think heaven is filled up with people who think and act just like us, then I guess that both heaven and life on earth heaven will look a lot like our Facebook pages. Everything familiar would be blessed. We would only watch what we like, hang out only with people just like us, and with folks that pretty much believe and act the way we think they’re supposed to.

If you think heaven is only filled up with people who do right or believe right or think right, then you probably think that life on earth should be managed and governed only by people who do, believe and think the right way.

The problem with these approaches is that we turn our biases, prejudices, and assumptions into different kinds of idols. We try to get heaven (and God) to conform to our image not the other way around. It’s easy to do…but not what Jesus has in mind.

If we really believe what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, then our prayer is that God will act and be present right here and right now every day just as God is present and at work in heaven. And that means that we want us—and our world—to match God’s what God imagines for creation. What will that look like?

Well, let’s ask Jesus—or at least today’s Gospel lesson!—where Jesus asks simply “did you do on earth what God does in heaven?”

What I love about this story is that Jesus’ sets it up exactly as how we would expect it. Christ returns in glory surrounded by angels. And he separates the nations into those who will enter to heaven and those destined for eternal punishment.

And what’s the criteria for entrance?

Was it right belief? Nope!

What it belonging to the right religion? Nyet!

Was it doing the right ritual at the right time? Nada!

In this passage, the criteria for entrance into Heaven was simple kindness.

Now some people think that this passage means that the ones being judged are people who cared for persecuted Christians (or not). As if somehow non-believers would have heard and been swayed by Matthew’s Gospel. 

I don’t buy that argument. This is not kindness reserved for the club, and “the least of these,” is not a narrowing statement but a broadening of our definition of “neighbor."

All of the Law and the Prophets are summed up this way: Love God with all your being; and love your neighbor as yourself. In addition, it is fundamental to Jewish teaching at the time of Jesus that the faithful care for the stranger no matter who they are. And that is the hinge for this passage: When the opportunity to care for the stranger arrived people acted according to their inner compass. The people being welcomed—or not— in the passage did not even notice that they had the opportunity to act and it was how they chose to act in the moment that became the criteria for judgment.

When did we feed you? When did we clothe you? When did we care for you? When did we visit you? Jesus’ answer: when you cared for anyone who was hungry or naked or sick or in prison or alone or in trouble, you cared for me. And that is how God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

One of my all-time favorite movies is “42”, the story of Jackie Robinson and his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first black player in Major League Baseball in 1947. Today’s Gospel made me remember a scene in the film when Branch Rickey, the manager of the Dodgers, gets a call from Herb Pennock the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. Pennock wants Rickey to leave Robinson in Brooklyn, saying that if Robinson comes to Philadelphia, the Phillies won’t take the field.

Branch Rickey ask Pennock “You think God likes baseball, Herb?”

“What - ?” replied Pennock. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” shouts Rickey into the phone before slamming it down, “someday you're gonna meet God, and when he inquires as to why you didn't take the field against Robinson in Philadelphia, and you answer that it's because he was a Negro, it may not be a sufficient reply!”

Which makes me wonder what the difference is between standing before the throne of the King…or getting a phone call from an angry Branch Rickey? I’ll take the phone call. Because at least you have a chance to change your mind.

Speaking of change, during Advent, Father Andrew’s Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Bible Study will be look at Charles Dickens’ famous little book “A Christmas Carol.” A most subversive commentary on life in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, and a plea to live God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.

As a preview, I will tell you what Dickens idea of hell is. They don’t go to a place where “goats” and “sheep” are sorted out but someplace far scarier. Instead of going to fiery pits, the wailing and gnashing happens right here on earth.

When Marley’s ghost leaves a shaken and startled Ebenezer Scrooge, Scrooge looks out and see a world “filled with phantoms” all carrying chains, cash boxes, safes, and bags of gold. And they wail because they see very clearly and feel very deeply the suffering of humanity all around them but have lost the power to do anything about it.

Marley’s ghost describes the symbol of his life’s work and focus: “I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard….”

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” 

Every day we pray that simple, radical prayer that Jesus taught and which we learned as children. We pray that what God does in heaven will be done on earth.

Jesus’ lesson today is that God’s reign is now. Jesus’ kingdom is here. Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection, God has cleared away all that stands between us and God. In our baptisms we are united with Christ and marked and his own forever. And if we want to see God’s will happen on earth as it happens in heaven, then it starts now, right here, where we work, live and play in how we care for the hungry, the lonely, the sick and those in jail or any kind of trouble.

This is how know “that Jesus reigns where’er the sun doth its successive journey run,” this is what makes God’s kingdom happen on earth just as it does in heaven. It is so simple that we can overlook it. It is the eyes and the heart and the will to make practical kindness happen, and the will to live mercy, and the faith and humility to let generosity lead us to unexpected places. 

Godspeed, Farewell, Amen!

I only met Jim Naughton once.

We communicated nearly every day for seven and a half years, and with increasing regularity before that.

But we only met once.

It was March 1, 2014. I was chairing the Special Convention of the Diocese of Bethlehem that would elect Bishop Sean Rowe, the Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania as our new Bishop Provisional. As President of the Standing Committee, it was my job to chair the meeting, oversee the election and along the way I would preach and celebrate the Eucharist. The Standing Committee had contracted with Canticle Communications to handle the press work and help us communicate to the people of our diocese why the Standing Committee chose to undertake this unprecedented arrangement.

So there I was, behind a table at the top of the chancel steps and there all the way in the back of the nave was Jim, laptop open, live tweeting the proceedings with Rebecca Wilson, also from Canticle. I had to stop and give a shout out saying something like “in seven years of almost daily interaction, this was the first we were actually in the same room.”
And when we got to talking during a coffee break, we were having such a good time that neither of us thought to get a picture. Not even a selfie!

It was appropriate that we were together in a Cathedral, during a church meeting, while history (or at least news) was being made. And it was appropriate that we never let a good photo-op get in the way of relationship. 
I write all this because today, Jim finishes up his stint as editor and chief cat herder at the Episcopal Cafe. I will miss working with him.

Back before there was a Café, there was the Daily Episcopalian, and before that was The Blog of Daniel. That first blog was meant to be a running commentary about a short-lived TV show centered on an Episcopal priest. There was a lot of buzz about this in the Episcopal Church, and I remember how people (including in my parish) were at the time grousing about all the little details the show got wrong. So I wrote a thing for my parish newsletter that said, essentially, that the point of the show was not for NBC to do our job of communicating the Episcopal Church—or the Gospel—to the world, but instead it was our job to listen and watch the show for what the culture is telling us about how they perceive us—what they think we are like—and what we can be—what the writers and producers wish we can become. These were actors, directors, writers and producers imaging themselves in our shoes and wondering what they’d do in our place.

Anyway, Nick Knisely, now the Bishop of Rhode Island, but then a priest in Bethlehem, passed the essay onto Jim and it went on the Blog of Daniel. Then I wrote a few things for when the Blog of Daniel became the Daily Episcopalian. Then one day I get a phone call about this idea of an online magazine for the Episcopal Church that reflected a progressive, independent voice.

Back then, there was a huge variety in the Anglican blogosphere (I know…I was one teeny-tiny part of that) and while there was lots and lots of opinion, there was only a few places that was gathering and reporting Anglican and Episcopal News with any quality or consistency. Most of them are still at it: Anglicans On-Line (the grand-daddy of them all), Thinking Anglicans, and Titus One Nine. The printed diocesan and national papers were dying fast. An attempt to start a news-gathering blog from the Episcopal Church's communication office (“Episcope”) showed much promise but was not supported and went away.

I remember the conversations that led to the Café. The vision was for something visually attractive, that covered news, reflected theologically, and fed spiritually. The Episcopal Café was born out of that. 
When Jim asked me if I could be a regular contributor to the Daily Episcopalian and one of the newsteam at The Lead, I was both thrilled and humbled.

I’ve had an attraction to journalism for most of my life. But other than dabbling on my high-school and college papers, I never really followed that urge. Working with the Café allowed me to get to know the Church on a whole different level, it has made me think, and it has made me listen. Along the way, Jim patiently taught our happy band of cub-reporters/bloggers…all of whom had other jobs and work to do…how to report and write on the fly. He taught us about fact-checking, and about how to distinguish a real story from mere rumor, and how to know what out there was worth passing along.

He let us try stuff: like the “Saturday Coffee Hour” where we’d gather all the little good news stories that were left in the inbox unused and summarize them on Saturday morning. And when the experiment ran its course, he helped us let it go.

He let us put up our very first April Fool's Day post, which has become something of a Café tradition. I like to think of myself as the unofficial editor of the April Fool's Desk at the Café. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

One thing about the Café that tickles me is our fanatical adherence to baseball. Even if the Episcopal Church is not really the official church of MLB, it was certainly the official sport of the Episcopal Café . Somehow, I think that fits that we at the Café keep tabs on the Church of Baseball while The Other Guys (you know who you are) follow tennis. 

I wonder what, Jim, the real journalist of the bunch, thought of all that ecclestiastical silliness.

We did get to do some real reporting…sometimes we ended up being the only reliable news that ordinary Episcopalians would have on the ground of what was going around them. Jim led the way with his investigation of the Institute for Religion and Democracy called “Following the Money” before the Café was born. 

Just when we thought that this job might not be needed any longer—that maybe with the daily battles that marked church life a decade ago largely over, our job was done—then came the blow-out between the faculty and the Dean/Trustees at General Seminary. For a while, the Café was the only consistent news-source following that story. Big papers like the Washington Post were linking to us! Jim led us through. Not bad for a bunch of volunteers who only met by IM, Tweet or e-mail. 

This surely demonstrated that the need for an independent news and opinion “paper” with a progressive voice has not gone away.

And when Jim decided to put out to the world that he was stepping down and put out a call for interested people--I must admit that this made me nervous--I was amazed to see what a talented and gifted group of people stepped forward and asked to take this on!

I am very excited and confident about the future of the Café, and can’t wait to see what happens when we go live with the new version next week. I am very happy to continue to do what I have come to love doing. 

But I will surely miss Jim at the Café and thank him for all he brought to me, the Episcopal Church and to the work of the Gospel.

God go with you in all you do, Jim!

Read Jim's two farewell blog posts on The Lead of the Episcopal Café here and here.

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.