Transparency in the Church—That’s a Toughy

Tough, but not impossible.

People in today’s world expect transparency. We are emerging from a world where business was conducted in back rooms, managed by a few bosses with self-interest as a core motivation.

That’s not working so well anymore. It’s truly a new business environment. Management must listen to employees and employees must listen to customers. Failure to operate openly and honestly in a considerate manner (transparency) can quickly spell disaster.

Recovery from a gaffe in this new business model is all the harder if shortcomings are not readily admitted and corrected publicly and promptly.

The Church lives in the same world, but it has a tougher time adapting. Church leaders sense that things aren’t going well, but they are reluctant to make any changes that might right our course.

Churches teach trust. Sometimes the trust that we intend for God and His Son, is projected onto church leaders—who are often quite willing to accept the surrogacy.

Recent events in the Church have proven this trust to be ill-placed. There is little evidence that we are learning from the exposed mistakes.

The reason? The Church just doesn’t know how to change. The existing structure is perceived as right, proper and necessary. So what if it is no longer effective!

If the Church is to continue as a viable influence in society, it must provide transparency. People expect this—especially the young who are unfamiliar with old ways of operating. They are looking at their parents across a dinner table discussion about church and thinking, “And we are expected to tithe to support this?”

They are not going to trust that their offerings and other tangible sacrifices for their church are put to good use. They will want proof—real proof. They will no longer trust the Church — just because. There simply have been too many abuses of their trust.

We are referencing an article written by Brian Honigman and published at this link.

This article posts a short bulleted list of the qualities of transparency.

Transparency means that you are not afraid of feedback.
Transparency means that you have nothing to hide.
Transparency means your employees’ personal and work persona blur.
Transparency means you like to have conversations with your customers.

The Church fails at each of these.

The Church discourages feedback.
The Church operates in secrecy.
Clergy and hierarchical leaders remain distant in maintaining relationships with congregations and with individual lay members.
The Church likes to give orders. Dialog is controlled, when it exists at all.

Illustrations follow.

The Church is facing the same new demands for transparency. But the old ways of doing church are hard to break. Progress is slow.

In our region, we have a synod council that constitutionally represents the congregations in leadership within the synod. The names of the representatives are listed on the regional body’s web site. There is NO contact information.
The dates of synod council meetings are not publicized to the congregations that have the right to attend them.
Synod council’s published minutes include fairly frequent “executive” sessions that are not reported.
Synod deans, who lead regional clusters of congregations, were once volunteers, representing the group of congregations to the regional body. Today they are paid — an extension of the bishop’s office.
It is almost impossible for a congregation to initiate conversation with the regional body.

The national church, too, has transparency problems.

They respond to correspondence from congregations (who fund their budget) when they feel like it. One of our members, after months of attempting to contact the national church, received a letter from its legal department stating that they felt no obligation to respond. Ten monthly letters to our regional body and the national church went totally ignored. We gave up.
The denominational magazine, The Lutheran, plays at social media. It allows comments on its website only if you pay. A lot of Lutherans read the denominational magazine via subscriptions paid for by their congregations. Others share a subscription within the family. The result: the forum in the Church is controlled.
Most people in the congregation have no clue what might be discussed (in the limited time allowed for discussion) at the tightly controlled Synod Assemblies.

The article we are referencing goes on to list ten suggestions for achieving transparency. We’ll adapt them to church life.

Treat members right. Genuinely interact with them. One devoted Lutheran once shared that he was eager to attend an evening with the bishop. He expected to be part of a dialog. He sat through an hour-long monologue, got discouraged, and walked out.
Don’t come on too strong. Show respect. Bringing legal counsel and a locksmith with you to a meeting with a congregation might be seen as coming on too strong. Dismissing all the elected leaders of a congregation with no discussion is disrespectful.
Always listen to church members. Our synod failed to return phone calls or respond to correspondence for more than a year.
Continue to satisfy. Offer support. Our regional body failed to provide even minimal services for nearly a decade.
Treat congregations and lay leaders as valued partners—even when you disagree. You might be able to learn from one another, but only if communication is two-way.
Build trust. Trust is a process. Start by keeping little promises and staying in dialog. One-way email broadcasts are not dialog.
Admit mistakes. This is impossible if you never make mistakes. But that’s unlikely, isn’t it?
Follow through on your word. Keep promises. We have a long list of promises broken by our regional body.
Recognize responsibility. The congregations may not always be right — but they probably are more often than not. Certainly regional bodies are not necessarily right just because they are regional bodies.
Always say Thank You. Our regional body seized our property and financial assets. No please. No thank you. Just five years of litigation.

The modern Church will find its strength not in bolstering the clergy and hierarchy but by enabling lay members (upon whom they rely for support).

Failing to answer the modern expectations from rank and file church members will result in the failure of the Church. Transparency must be addressed. The sooner the better.

The good news. It’s not too late.

07 Mar 2013

The Prodigal Son in Art

The Story of the Prodigal Son is visually rich. Artists through the ages have loved it.

Artist Giovanni Barbieri focuses on the three key characters in the story. (early 17th century)

Part of the fascination with the story is the multiple points of view. It is easy to focus on the Father and Son and occasionally the second son.

This artist, Giovanni Barbieri, does this beautifully. We have little to notice except the gestures of the three key figures.

But many artists recognize that there are more players in the story. The Prodigal Son is worn down by many bad relationships. Some artists focus on this broader interpretation as seen in two paintings below by James Tissot (c. 1880).

One concentrates on the Return, the other on the Leaving.

In this retelling of the story, there is a mother or sister!

James Tissot tells the story with the involvement of the whole community.

Artists enjoy taking us to the depths of the son’s despair. Look at this painting which shows the son’s rejection by the society he so longed to own.

And then there is the scene with the hogs. What an image of despair!

There is plenty of emotion to explore whether it is in the selfish leaving, the desperate squandering, or the pathetic, yet joyful return.

Look below at the treatment by Rembrandt. Focus on the story told just in the depiction of the son’s feet.

It is easy to re-interpret the story through contemporary eyes. Each depiction above shows the culture and times of the artist. This painting by an African artist is no different.

Finally, a simple line drawing can be as moving as a full-color mural.

How would you draw or sculpt the Parable of the Prodigal Son?

06 Mar 2013

Adult Object Lesson: The Prodigal Son

The Prodigal Father

Today’s object is the story itself.

The Story of the Prodigal Son is one of the best known of Christ’s parables.

The adults in your congregation are likely to have heard the story hundreds of times. Today, we can think about the story anew by turning the tale inside out.

This is a true story. A church leader traveling to the growing church in East Africa brought this story home.

While, the organized church in the United States is suffering deep and ongoing losses, the church in Africa is growing by leaps and bounds. It is now commonplace for American Church leaders to travel to Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and other East African countries to meet with leaders of the growing church and to experience some of their success.

How is this happening? they ask with some measure of envy.

One African bishop responded, “Let me tell you the Story of the Prodigal Father.”

Huh?

He explained,

“The American and European church came to Africa many years ago with the message of God’s love. You asked us to believe and we did. You were our spiritual fathers. We were your sons and daughters. We believed.

You went home. We kept on believing the message you brought to us. We shared what you taught us. We grew.

Now your churches are troubled. They have stopped believing. Now you come back to us — your children in faith. You tell us your troubles. We welcome you back. We celebrate your visits. And that’s why we call our story The Story of the Prodigal Father.”

The adults in your congregation who have heard the Story of the Prodigal Son will appreciate this twist in an old biblical story. It will give them something new to think about after hearing the old, old story—one more time.

05 Mar 2013

March 4th—That’s an Order!

Onward Christian Soldiers

March 4 is the date that commemorates my coming of age at Redeemer. It is the date of the funeral of a senior member of our congregation. It’s easy to remember. March Fourth — the answer to an old riddle—the calendar date that is an order.

I was happy being a peripheral member of Redeemer back in 1985. I was 31 years old and was just becoming active. I taught the adult Sunday School class. The members of the class were all senior women. They were part of the capable old guard in this neighborhood church. Redeemer had accepted women as leaders well ahead of the national church.

I had just been elected to the congregation council. I joined in the congregation’s shock when one of the long-time leaders announced he would no longer continue. Our pastor recommended they nominate me as president. I felt unqualified. It wasn’t that I didn’t know church. I was a seasoned preacher’s kid from a long line of Lutheran preacher’s kids. Families of clergy are accustomed to viewing church from the outside. Ministry is the family job. Add to that the fact that I was a country gal in an urban church. A guppy out of water.

I accepted the role of president on one condition—that Elmer Hirsh, one of the seasoned leaders, serve as co-president and teach me the ropes. Deal! The annual meeting at which I was elected was the last Sunday in February.

Elmer died on March 1. From that moment, it was trial by fire.

I took the job seriously and tried with success to lead the family church in facing the changing demographics of the neighborhood.

I convinced the congregation to stay open in the summer instead of ceasing all activity in East Falls and merging worship with Grace in Roxborough. Summer is when people re-organize their lives and the church should be open, I argued.

I was president when Redeemer received its fateful endowment in 1987. This large infusion of cash made it possible to call a full-time pastor once again. I saw the shift in attitudes among clergy that occurs when it is known that a small congregation suddenly has means.

I helped the congregation transition from running their own parish school to working with the Lutheran agency, Ken-Crest, to operate a school that could help even more children. This worked well for 25 years — until SEPA interfered behind the backs of the congregation.

I married into an old Redeemer family in 1988. I left for five years when the endowment began to cause tension with clergy. I didn’t want to be part of what was happening. My old guard husband stayed on — ever loyal, but growing disillusioned. We had just reunited at Redeemer in 1997 with a change in pastors when my husband suffered a catastrophic stroke. He was to live the last nine months of his life totally dependent.

His death coincided with Bishop Almquist’s first attempt to seize Redeemer’s assets. Had Bishop Almquist made his move a couple of months earlier, he might have prevailed.

I had been absent from Redeemer for nearly a year, caring for my husband—a 24/7 job, and for five years before that. Only a few weeks after my husband’s funeral, a Redeemer member called — a woman I barely knew—asking for my help with a situation that was brewing with the Synod.

I was recovering from a horrific year. I hadn’t been working. Newly widowed, I was the sole family bread-winner and raising an 8-year-old boy solo. Even so, I agreed to help the church that had become my family church. We reorganized to face Synod’s threats.

Thus began two years of needless fighting (1998-2000).

Redeemer had already taught me a lot about what makes people work well together. I learned from Redeemer that it is OK to fight. One older member explained to me: an occasional verbal bench-clearing is good for the team. I learned that these people knew each other well enough to fight and reconcile at the same meeting. There was no shame in insisting on what you thought was right.

One Sunday, there was a momentous argument. (I DO remember what it was about!) As is typical at Redeemer, the air soon cleared and everyone sat down at the same table to work together as if nothing had happened. I noticed our pastor’s wife standing off to the side, observing and grinning. I asked her why she was smiling. “That kind of reconciliation doesn’t happen in every church,” she commented.

It was the norm at Redeemer. What comes as a surprise to us is that others are incapable of arguing, standing ground, and reconciling. We still don’t understand why this is impossible with SEPA.

Bishop Almquist gave up the always unnecessary “synodical administration” and a year later returned most of the assets the synod had seized. But his actions did lasting damage.

The current feud was made possible by his precedent. It fueled gossip within the insulated environment of church hierarchy. Redeemer became fair game. It was OK to abuse and ignore us. They’d done it before!

Today’s six-year feud could have been resolved before it started with a good, bench-clearing debate, followed by reconciliation. We are all on the same side, really. The control of property and assets — which is clearly defined in our founding documents — stands in the way of reason and ministry.

Redeemer members are trying to uphold historic Lutheran polity. Lutherans are interdependent, not hierarchical. More and more Lutherans (including clergy) don’t know that!

Fueled by clergy gossip, the Synod views Redeemer’s fortitude as a threat to their power. We see our position as doing the job of lay people.

Lutherans believe in equality of and cooperation between laity and clergy. I learned this in Confirmation Class and from the examples set by Elmer Hirsh, my husband, my adult Sunday School class, and both the old and new leadership of Redeemer. They are all saints in my book.

Somewhere in the last 25 years of the new ELCA, this strength of Lutheranism has waned and may be totally lost as we seek to emulate the structures of other denominations. Logically, other denominations should be emulating us—we have the tradition of reformation. But the concept of hierarchy is once again attractive to those who crave power.

Congregations are expected to comply with whatever the regional body sees as best. The regional body’s vision is muddied with self-interest and waning support across the board. Its information, especially from under-served smaller congregations, is often dated. Still, it’s comply or die.

And so, at least in my mind, this week commemorates the death of old Redeemer and my inauguration as one of many leaders of a new Redeemer. We went in directions none of us foresaw (and SEPA wasn’t looking). We constantly reassessed our neighborhood, our resources and our pool of talent. We were on a solid course, which still shows more promise than anything SEPA has in mind.

We remain ready to work together toward reconciliation however unlikely it seems.

No more “March forth.” More’s the pity.

photo credit: The U.S. Army via photopin cc

04 Mar 2013

The Modern Story of the Good Samaritan

. . . or should we say Samaritans

In the story of the good Samaritan, the religious people (the priest and the Levite) find reasons to pass by the poor soul who has been robbed and hurt. In each case, their failure to act with compassion is prompted by fear for their own hides.

It is the Samaritan—the outsider, the person at whom the religious people of the day would collectively thumb their noses—who offered help—ongoing help, not just a quick fix.

We lived the Good Samaritan story this week. We needed help. One of our good members faced the imminent loss of her home and income due to the reign of terror inflicted on Redeemer and its members by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Our little church, which SEPA insists doesn’t exist, rallied.

We asked for help from churches who helped create this situation. They were prayerful but unhelpful. It’s so easy to find excuses to do nothing.

“We’ll pray for you” is the universal excuse of SEPA Lutherans. Their prayer, we suppose, is that someone else will fix the mess they created. How tiring all that prayer must be!

We went to unrelated Lutheran churches. We don’t do that sort of thing, was their answer.

At last we found the help we needed. One local church who has been helping us for the last four years offered major assistance with no expectation of return. A church some 200 miles away (and smaller than Redeemer!) both contributed and guaranteed what we couldn’t raise locally. Four individuals also helped graciously. As far as we know, only one has any church affiliation.

Two of them used the same phrase: “A wrong has been done and it must be righted.”

And so little Redeemer, raised the money we needed to satisfy Redeemer’s debt—twice what SEPA expects to pay. This debt would never have been a problem to anyone if our school were operating for the last four years and contributing to mission and ministry in East Falls. But SEPA, hungry for our assets, interfered with and ruined our 25-year relationship with a Lutheran agency and stopped us from opening our own program. They have kept the doors locked on both the sanctuary and school for nearly four years—no ministry is better than a neighborhood church they can’t control.

SEPA Synod took our property under questionable legality. A court split decision ruled in their favor, saying the courts could not be involved in church issues. The dissenting opinion pointed out that the legal arguments seem to favor Redeemer and the case should be heard by the courts. In five years, court room after court room, the case has never been heard.

We have always claimed that SEPA’s interest in our property was entirely a result of their failing finances and mission—not Redeemer’s.

This week is further proof.

We’ve been saying in our posts on social media that the power in the church is shifting. There was a day when congregations had to band together to provide services and perform effective mission. Individuals now have the power to do much more on their own. Support of hierarchy is more expensive than effective.

Redeemer (and yes, we do exist) proved that this week.

Don’t get us wrong . . . we appreciate prayer. But we appreciate even more those who help find answers to prayer.

Thank you to all who cared enough to do more than pray. You are a living parable.

Bwana awabariki!

03 Mar 2013

Ten Reasons Churches Die

Churches Get Lots of Help Along the Road to Failure

I am adapting 10 observations drawn from David DiSalvo’s post published in Forbes Magazine.

He describes ten reasons businesses die. They apply to churches, too.

1. As Yoda said, you just don’t believe it.

Luke Skywalker says, “I just don’t believe it.” Yoda answers, “That is why you fail.”

For all the talk about faith and belief, the Church often acts as if we do not believe our own message. We don’t believe small churches can survive, so we do nothing to help. Our leaders see no economic incentive in helping small churches. Regional bodies see themselves as better managers of money. They often are not. When the assets of one closed church dry up, they look for another small church to loot. The altruistic promises made to justify the seizures, are quickly forgotten. No one really analyzes where the money goes.

Bishop Almquist told us our assets were being put into a Mission Fund. It was later revealed that the Mission Fund fills the synod’s own spending deficits (which were frequently in the healthy six-figures). A few weeks ago we learned that Holy Spirit’s assets would go to The Bishop’s Emergency Fund. Does anyone know what that means?

Belief in the purposes of church—as in life—is foundational to success. More, when we believe in an all-powerful, merciful and gracious God. If we in the pew don’t believe and the regional body has self-interest in our failure — we have a problem.

2. Other people have convinced you of your “station.”

This brings to mind the school principal who fired a teacher when she learned that the teacher had told students from poor urban neighborhoods that they would never amount to anything.

We need this principal’s kind of leadership in the Church.

Any church leader who goes to a small congregation, accepting a salary, with the message that the congregation will never amount to much should be history.

Redeemer was lucky. Bishop Almquist had left us to die. “You’ll die a natural death in ten years,” he told us. He refused to provide even a caretaker pastor. But we found a part-time pastor who served us for three years. He told us we could be a flagship church. We believed. While SEPA was waiting out the ten years, we began to grow.

DiSalvo quotes Tennessee Williams. “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”

3. You don’t want to be a disruptor.

DiSalvo writes:

Disruption means that consistency, stability and certainty might get jettisoned for a time, and that puts our hard-wired internal defense system on high alert. Sometimes, though, you have to override the alarms and move ahead anyway. If you never do, you’ll never know what could happen.

Disruptive innovation is discouraged in the Church. We talk about innovation and change, but are ill-prepared for it.

Redeemer had put aside old expectations as we forged new ministry and began to experience success. SEPA allowed alarms to go off without ever sharing our successes.

4. You think “what if I die tomorrow?”

We stop trying because we foresee our own demise. The Church feeds into this with its “caretaker ministries” concepts. They use language like palliative care and putting the congregation on hospice. They use these terms and act appalled when people suggest they orchestrating the closing of churches. Meanwhile, we may be transforming into something the experts don’t yet recognize.

5. You wonder how you will be remembered.

We all want to leave a legacy. The Church feeds into this idea, too.

Our pastor in 2008 met with the bishop and never returned to our church. He sent word that rumors were being spread that he was leading a rebellion and he feared his reputation being ruined. A rebellion? A church defends its ministry and it is seen as rebellion! Bishop Burkat shamelessly used the fear of tarnished legacy to fuel her cause. She wrote in a letter to all pastors.

In the case of Redeemer, leaders did not cooperate with us and instead resisted tenaciously in an adversarial manner that publicly tarnishes the wonderful memory of ministry that has taken place in the East Falls community since 1891.

Small churches must learn to live in today’s world and guard against any appearance that protecting the past is mission.

6. You think there must be a pre-established role for your life.

This is part of the church model. We are who others tell us we are. Don’t dare step beyond your role — even if the role you played historically no longer has a need in today’s world. Instead of using our assets to explore new ways of meeting needs, the Church attempts to find new places where the old ways might still work. They call this mission and celebrate it as innovative. It is not; it is replication. Chances are such replicated ministries will fail soon after the publicity value wears off.

SEPA’s vision of Redeemer was that of a small family church. Redeemer started to transform from a small white congregation in a working class neighborhood to an international church in a growing collegiate neighborhood. SEPA was unprepared to serve us. They had been counting on our failure for 10 years!

DiSalvo writes that these pre-defined roles (agency) “is a figment our brains rely on to manage difficulty with as little trauma as possible. The first thing to do is recognize that….”

7. Your career appears to be well-established and that’s good, right?

We all know the role of the small church. Serve the immediate neighborhood with the message of God’s love. Support a pastor to the best of our ability. Maintain the property. (Not necessarily in that order.) But what if you stepped out of that role and began to serve in new and innovative ways? How would the church react? (It isn’t always pretty.)

8. You are afraid of losing what you have built.

DiSalvo ponts out that this is beyond our control. There is always a danger of losing what we have built. It should not determine your ministry. Unfortunately, in the Church, there are people ready to help us lose what we have built. This fear of being a victim of hierarchical greed is actually crippling the potential of the church. Lutheran congregations used to be fairly independent. It’s written into our founding documents as “interdependent.” But lately, congregations are looking to the bishop’s office for approval of decisions that are constitutionally theirs to make independently. This is what happens when you start forcing church closures. Congregations start to live in fear.

9. You think “maybe I’ve hit my ceiling.”

Many small churches stop trying. Pastors often stop trying. Synods encourage this when they use terms like caretaker and hospice ministries. Small churches must fight this mindset. But that, we learned, can be dangerous!

10. Confusion about where to go.

This is a huge problem in the church because the Church really has no vision for where it is going. Frequently, the people we look to in the Church as visionaries are people who have found a way to preserve the concept of Church as we understood it in the past. They are few. These pastors write books about their successes, hoping they will help others. Some of them are pretty good books! These successes are, however, often the result of a serendipitous combination of personalities and circumstances that is hard to replicate.

The Church, I suspect, is headed someplace very different than what we have known. At 2×2, we are excited to be part of it—even as we have been made to feel so very unwelcome in it.

photo credit: komehachi888 via photopin cc

photo credit: Krissy.Venosdale via photopin cc

03 Mar 2013

But What Do We Use for Content?

7 Ways to Dig for Content Gold

The Number 1 challenge for churches who want to use social media but do not know how to get started is finding content.

This is new territory. In the past, church members had to seek permission to have a voice in the Church—earning the right with years of faithful obedience—best achieved in silence.

In the past, “content” came to us from the national church. Congregations subscribed to a service which provided bulletin shells with four-color art on the cover and a national church pitch on the back. We’ve visited 56 churches. Not one is using them.

The national church also published all curriculum and worship materials. Our visits reveal that worship books sitting in the pew racks are rarely—almost never—used. Instead churches are drawing from many sources — including the web.

2×2 uses seven types of content. When the well is dry in one, we move on to another. Generally, we rotate fairly evenly between them.

First of all, recognize this. If you don’t have a message, it will show. Blogging and social media is not for the timid. So take a look at each of these types of content and determine how each can “tell the story.” You don’t have to use them all. You can use just one of them consistently. But they are all available.

We’ll point out how 2×2 uses each.

1. Articulate A Dream

Think back to Martin Luther King, Jr. He had a dream and his actions and his sermons/speeches articulated that dream. Without the power of the internet, he rallied people around his vision. He sparked action. He dusted the cobwebs of bigoted thinking. He changed society. Just think of what he might have accomplished today! Find the dreamers in your congregation. Ask them to write. Otherwise that vision statement you worked on so hard might be wasted!

2×2’s dream is to restore neighborhood ministry in East Falls. We write about this often. In that quest we have discovered that other churches face similar threats. We try to help.

2. Teach

Social Media is changing the American classroom. It is turning the education process inside out. Old way: Students listened to lectures in school and went home to complete assignments. New way: Students listen to lectures at home and come to school ready to work out problems both individually and collectively. How this will apply to congregational education has yet to be explored. Explore it.

2×2 posts two about twice a week with teaching content — an object lesson suitable for adults and a religious art feature. They draw good traffic!

3. Persuade

Jesus and Paul were great persuaders. Jesus tirelessly told persuasive parables. Paul was less of a storyteller — at least in his preserved letters. A letter from Paul was a carefully drafted persuasive treatise. Each one articulated — often to disgruntled or confused people — the reasoning behind the Christian movement. The Church still has this need. Fill it.

2×2 tries to persuade our denomination to view small churches as powerful mission resources and not just assets-in-waiting for the larger church.

4. Analyze

The Church is accustomed to people of higher authority analyzing the world for them. This will change as it becomes easier to tap the wealth of experience and education sitting in the pew that never attended seminary. Choose a topic of current interest—or introduce a topic that needs attention. Look at it from every point of view you can think of. Then invite others to look at it from more points of view. The Church is a cornucopia of topics that call for this need. Theology. Mission. Ethics. Morality. Modern Life. There is no end of material. Much of it begs for attention.

2×2 analyzes the direction of the modern church from the small church viewpoint.

5. Review

People love to know what other people think. Review the popular movie or book. Introduce readers to less popular art, writing, music and cinema. Is a noted artist or choir coming to town? Give a preview to promote it and a review after the fact. Attend local school performances and write reviews. Be part of your neighborhoods!

2×2 posts occasional reviews and moves them to a review page. We have started to make a conscious attempt to attend local events and write about them.

6. Tell Stories

The foundation of all good communication: Tell THE story. Tell YOUR story. Tell the stories of members and mission.

2×2’s Ambassador Reports tell our story about once a week.

7. Curate

The web is full of information. When you come across something of interest to church members, SHARE. You can also link readers to interesting posts. Tell them why you found the post or video worthwhile.

2×2 occasionally posts meaningful videos. We’ve just started featuring an analysis of religious art that coordinates with the weekly lectionary. Type “video” in our on-site search engine to see some. They include a little girl that tells a great story, the story of a boy with great imagination and initiative, and an uplifting story of boys who like to sing.

photo credit: Sharon Drummond via photopin cc

02 Mar 2013

Adult Object Lesson: Luke 13:1-9

Do We Earn Misfortune?

Today’s gospel starts out with the common human feeling of hopelessness and despair. The people are reporting one tragic news story after another, laying each at Jesus’ feet, and asking “Why?”

“Why?” is the question that draws many people to religion. We want to live in a world that makes sense.

Jesus does not really answer his questioners. He is like a mother turning to a relentlessly inquisitive tot and saying “Why? Because! That’s why.”

He decides to tell the story of the fig tree. Divert their attention—another mother’s trick!

You can tell the story of the fig tree, too. You might follow it with another story that might help them see this parable in a different way.

Tell the Story of the Three Little Pigs.

Or let the congregation tell the story. They probably know it better than the parable of the fig tree and telling it along with the Jesus’ story may help them remember it.

Start the story and ask them what happens next.

There are many versions. So expect some different answers. That will be part of the fun of letting others tell the story. Some tellings of the story have the first two pigs deserving to lose their lives and homes. They were lazy and arrogant, preferring to do just enough to get by and playing away the rest of their lives. They deserve to be the Big Bad Wolf’s dinner. Only the third pig who planned ahead, worked hard, and sacrificed to build a strong home deserved to be spared.

Similarly, the Wolf deserves to boil in the third pig’s soup pot.

The Disney version has the first two wolves running to the third pig’s brick home for safety. The wolf survives having learned a lesson from being burned. Happy endings all around.

It’s human nature to try to make sense of stories and have them apply to our need for fairness and justice. We like when stories have happy endings. We want to love that reformed wolf.

That’s exactly what the people who came to Jesus with their troubles are hoping for—answers that make sense. Bad things must be reserved for bad people in our earthly thinking. What’s the point of religion if good doesn’t flow steadily from its fountain?

But look at the Story of the Three Pigs this way.

The three pigs each face disaster.
One lives in a straw house.
One lives in wooden house.
One lives in brick house.
The evil one, the Big, Bad Wolf sets out to hurt each little pig. Why? Because he wants to and because he thinks he can. The motive of all villains.

What did the pig who built his house of straw do to deserve losing everything? If laziness and arrogance were reasons for misfortune, many would suffer daily!

The pig who built his house of wood had taken more precaution than the pig who used straw. Shouldn’t he be spared something? Aren’t their levels of righteousness?

We usually see the brick house as being the solution. Create for yourself a safe world that evil cannot penetrate.

Adults know that there are no such guarantees. There are clever and persistent wolves out there.

True, the wolf was unable to blow down the brick house, but that didn’t stop him. He plotted to lure the pig out of the house. The third pig outwitted him until at last the Big Bad Wolf decides to come in through the chimney. The third pig doesn’t just sit there. He does something. He lights a fire and the Big Bad Wolf gets his just dessert.

None of the three pigs deserved to be the target of the evil. Evil and misfortune happen.

But none of the pigs was a bit the better for simply accepting his lot. The third pig got ready. He used his head. He stoked the fire.

Returning to the biblical story, he took care of the fig tree.

By the way, if the Story of the Three Pigs doesn’t work for you, you can always use Old Testament account of Nehemiah. They share the same basic plot!

26 Feb 2013

Social Media—Revealing the Real You

Peeping Out from Behind the Curtain

2x2virtualchurch.com has been an experiment in using social media in the realm of religion. We started in February 2011, following a WordPress how-to book.

Wait a minute? I just wrote “we.”

2×2 is a “we.” Our members subscribe, comment on posts (usually off line), suggest direction and lend support. We get together every week and discuss 2×2’s direction. But the writing on 2×2, for the most part, is an “I” job.

One thing I’ve learned about social media—it is hard to write that word “I.” I posted for nearly a year without using it. I was thinking about “we,” so I thought it was the fair way to represent our mission.

However, in this journey of discovery as an online ministry, we/I have discovered that the word “I” is more powerful than the communal “we.”

“We” can become a crutch. The person saying “we” can say with confidence almost anything. There will be someone in a group that thinks that way. The more and louder you speak, the less likely those that disagree are going to speak up.

“We” can be an excuse for thinkers with ideas that aren’t fully cooked. It becomes an army of phantom support — like the Wizard of Oz. Pull back the curtain and what do you see?

“We” can become theologically lazy. “Well, if that’s what everyone else thinks, they must be right.”

It can take centuries to undo the sometimes tragic results of “we” thinking.

This is especially hard in church work. Church/congregations are communal in nature. We are used to expressing ourselves as a group. That’s what church hierarchy is about—making sure the voice of the church is authentic to the word of God.

The practice began with authentic concern but has morphed in the modern world (and probably long before the modern world) to being a shield—protecting influence and sanitizing the behaviors of church leaders who we all know are just as human as everyone else—capable of sacrifical love, tempted by selfish interests. It becomes crippling to the millions of church thinkers who don’t have a platform in the church — unless they blog!

When we consider the consequences the power the word “I” carries in church work, it is no wonder we refrain from using it. A Martin Luther or his modern namesake—King, a Ghandhi, a Bonhoeffer don’t pop up until things are really, really off track. Saying “I” in the “we” society of church can make life’s journey pretty rocky.

2×2 has learned that “I” is a more powerful word than “we.” The more personal our posts have become in recent months, the faster our traffic has grown. Admitting that I am one person within the group that sponsors 2×2 (Redeemer Lutheran Church, East Falls) is honest. People connect to individuals more easily than to groups. Online readers appreciate honesty. They’ll keep you honest, too! A writer thinks twice when he uses the word I in the sentence.

In two years, 2×2 has grown from one visitor per month to 2500 per month, doubling its monthly average in the first two months of 2013. (We suspect little Redeemer, has become the congregation with the biggest following and widest reach of any church in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America —SEPA/ELCA.)

There is power in the vulnerability of the word “I.” That one letter is difficult, at first, to type. The advice was always there in the how-to books: write as an individual. It takes a while to become comfortable with the idea that yes, these are MY ideas. I am putting them out there for others to criticize. It becomes powerful when others add their 2¢. The “we” that “I” serve in writing this blog starts to make a difference.

That’s how we all grow in faith. By practicing the “I” word. And remembering that every “I” is a child of God. Every “I” that is part of Redeemer matters. That’s the story I tell.

I think.

I care.

I love.

I hurt.

I enjoy.

I need help.

I can help.

I was made in God’s image for a reason.

So were you!

What do you think?

Photo: 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz