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Commentary

Government Regulations and Quality of Church Life

The government, in its infinite wisdom, has solved another problem that doesn’t exist.

Churches and church organizations are accustomed to government inspectors checking church kitchens to make sure refrigerators are cold enough, etc. Now they are dictating the way food is served, imposing restaurant regulations on venues that have very little in common with restaurants.

For decades, church camps served food family style. Reports of food-borne illnesses resulting? Well, let’s not wait for disaster to strike before we take precautionary action.

Meals at church family camp were short but pleasant in that the food of decent variety and quality was placed before a family for 25-minutes of togetherness without the concerns of cooking and minimal clean-up. A respite for every parent.

Typically, serving bowls were placed on tables seating eight or so. In some camps there was no need to get up. A request for more food was met when someone held the empty bowl high for camp staff to grab and refill. In others, one person might carry the empty bowl to the kitchen window where it was either refilled or a new bowl of food was supplied. No fuss. Families at camp could spend the short meal time in pleasant conversation.

Now the government has decided this must change. Food could potentially go bad in 25 minutes of unregulated heat. (How long does food sit on your table at home when you are hosting a dinner party?)

This year at family camp. The half-hour alloted for meals was spent waiting to wait in line, then waiting in line, then scrambling to sit down with people still waiting in line brushing against your table. The remainder of the time, about 15 minutes if luck prevailed, was spent quickly scarfing down the food, which seemed to be of poorer quality—perhaps because of the atmosphere. Parents in charge of multiple small children had the joy of balancing plates, while watching the children. It was chaotic. The group couldn’t even focus for the traditional table grace, something restaurants don’t have to worry about.

The food, heated over sterno flames that heat only the center of the huge foil pan, was scooped onto each plate by a worker clad in plastic gloves. Across the room, campers were permitted to serve themselves at the salad bar protected by a regulation sneeze guard. (Shh! The sneeze guard is too high to guard against children’s sneezes). But at the main serving table — even at snack time—campers couldn’t so much as reach into a bowl of potato chips without plastic gloves or oversight of kitchen staff.

This is camp?

Regulations, meant for restaurants where food sits out on buffet bars for undetermined amounts of time and are open to strangers, have been applied to camps where meals, start to finish, are less than 30 minutes and the population is known to one another.

Government regulations met. Quality of mealtime gone.

How did we ever get by without them?!

Let’s hope the government doesn’t start attending church pot lucks and saving us from more potential disaster!

photo credit: AmericanSolarChallenge via photo pin cc
25 Jul 2012

Pentecost: The Church’s Extraordinary Time

Pentecost: A Season for the ExtraordinaryThe Church: A Nice, Safe Place to Be

The New Testament is an exciting book. Something new and different happens chapter after chapter. Jesus comes to earth to bring love. His gift causes everyone he encounters to stretch their thinking and their behavior.

Jesus asks us point blank to sacrifice everything, to trust that our needs will be supplied. As in the Old Testament, the key players are asked to do the extraordinary, disregarding common sense and tradition. Jesus ministry culminates in orders. “Do this!”

This is the foundation that kickstarted the Church and brought us to where we are today.

But in the modern Church, 2000 years in the shaping and molding, this has changed. Church is now seen as the respite from life’s challenges.

We are the Church of Take No Chances.

Congregational leaders must be pillars of frugality. Decisions must be financially prudent. The Church must be a pleasant place where people can come and give offerings so that it will be a pleasant place for as many years as possible (not working well, by the way!). The orders given by Jesus have been internalized. Do this as long as you don’t make waves. Do this so you can support things as they are. Do this within the structure we expect of you.

We are now in the long season of Pentecost—the season of doing, of following through on the demands of our faith. We have listened to the life story of Jesus for about the 2000th time, beginning in Advent, taking a short break after the Epiphany, and seeing it through to the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension. (Even the names of the festivals evoke the extraordinary.)

So we get to the long season of Pentecost and we don’t know what to do. Perhaps it is because in our culture it neatly coincides with the summer, our cultural “downtime.”

At times this season is called the Sundays after Trinity or the Sundays after Pentecost.

In the reforms of the 1970s the Roman Catholic Church began calling it  “ordinary time.”

It’s time to put the extraordinary back into our religion. Pentecost shouldn’t end the church year and the celebration of Christ’s life. When it comes to the active Church, it should be a new beginning.

photo credit: Lawrence OP via photo pin cc
24 Jul 2012

Called to Common Mission, Indeed!

Lutherans have hitched their star to the Episcopal wagon. Now what?
Here is an interesting and lengthy discussion of the challenges facing the Episcopal Church.

The ELCA hitched its star to the Episcopal wagon a number of years ago and announced with great hoopla that we are now in full communion. (Called to Common Mission)

Lutherans were promised that the alliance was for flexibility, broadening the resource pool. Lutheran clergy and Episcopal priests could now vie for calls and employment in either denomination.

But it has resulted in more fundamental changes. It is changing the way we think and act, which isn’t necessarily bad. But it’s not necessarily good either. Martin Luther left a good legacy.

The ELCA and its predecessor bodies are historically a broad demographic with both low and high church values represented, often among ethnic or cultural lines. The American experience, which never answered to the Archbishop of Canterbury or any European figurehead, has traditionally no such loyalty to hierarchy.

The Lutheran tradition of congregational polity is a strength which small congregations should never be asked to sign away. Small churches must be free to adapt to their changing communities. This is harder to do under hierarchies. Hierarchies understand “big.”

  • Did the decision, advocated mostly by clergy, change our polity? No, but . . .
  • Are there statistics on how much this has benefited anyone?
  • How much resource sharing has been going on? (There doesn’t seem to be a lot of resources for either denomination to share!)

It is becoming increasingly clear that dissenting Lutherans were correct about many things.

Lutheran leadership has become more and more hierarchical. It began with a shift in language, then in behavior.

In the negotiations, Lutherans did a lot of agreeing to Episcopal terms.

Lay people don’t tend to care much about things like apostolic succession. We know that our bishops (which we used to call more appropriately “presidents”) are elected. Now every Lutheran clergy to be ordained must submit to Episcopal approval. Many of them have probably never set foot in an Episcopal church, but now their calling needs their blessing.

From reading this report, it is clear that we have sacrificed the wisdom of our experience to a troubled denomination.

The Episcopalians are so concerned that some want to scrap their leadership structure entirely, realizing they cannot support, nor do they need, a hierarchy. We have written about this before.

Meanwhile, Lutheran leadership is separating itself from its constituency more and more. They are planning to have full church assemblies every three years instead of two. If they operate like our local Synod Assembly, it won’t matter much—and that’s too bad. The regional assembly is fairly well orchestrated to get the approvals it wants with as little discussion as possible. But at least there was a chance of making a difference every two years. But then, maybe this is an admission that the hierarchy has less purpose.

Regardless, the action serves to alienate lay people — who still provide the support and funding for the mistakes made by the hierarchically minded.

Soon, if Lutherans want to rise to a call to change anything, they will have to wait three years. This may save money but it is unwise. Change is happening at a faster pace. More forums are needed, not fewer.

But the deed is done. We are in full communion with a denomination that doesn’t know where it is headed to the point that some talk about starting over. Have we been set up for a bait and switch?

If you think this shift in governance isn’t part of SEPA’s attitude toward small congregations, think again. In East Falls, Bishop Claire Burkat was assisting our Episcopal neighbors—we suspect for hire—while trying to destroy her own denomination’s church a few blocks away, hoping for assets to make up their huge deficit. The Episcopal Church in East Falls was of no stronger number than Redeemer with a far less desirable location for mission purposes. Bishop Burkat gave the Episcopalians of East Falls more consideration than the Lutherans.

Called to Common Mission, indeed.


photo credit: Whitewolf Photography (retouched) via photo pin cc
14 Jul 2012

The Power in Waiting

We all wait. As children we wait to grow up. As young adults we wait to finish school and get married. We wait for the right job opportunity. We wait for the kids to leave home. The day may come when we feel we are waiting to die.

There are the day-to-day little “waits,” too. We wait for the roast to cook, We wait for it to stop snowing. We wait for the traffic light to change. We wait in line at the theme park. We wait for grocery clerk to call the manager to bring the key to reset the cash register.

Driving is waiting time. Your mind can do a million things while you wait for the car to get where it is going.

Wait, wait, wait.

Churches wait too. Churches wait for attendance to improve. They wait for a new pastor. They wait until there is more money. They wait until school is out, until summer is over, until Christmas is over, until Easter is over. . .

There is an art to waiting. Game show hosts know this very well. And the winner is . . (pregnant pause), wait, wait, wait . . . . . contestant number 2.

Waiting is a way to create focus. Today’s solution to unruly school bus behavior is to provide bus monitors and surveillance cameras. Fifty years ago, a school bus driver had a simple, effective solution—pull the bus to the side of the road and sit until behavior was under control. No verbal exchange. Just the power of waiting.

The nature of waiting is changing. There was a time when people in waiting mode might strike up a conversation. Now when you glance across a crowded waiting room, faces are glued to smartphones. A few may be leaning back with an iPod in their pocket linked to their ears with earphones. The few engaged in conversation are talking to companions they already know.

Waiting time is a valuable resource!

Waiting time can be retrospective. Permission to daydream granted.

Waiting time is a chance to do what we want to do. Television commercial breaks are getting so long that programming is slight. Advertisers think we are sitting watching 20 ads in a row. Smart people reclaim this part of their lives and do a chore or two or fit in a phone call or turn to a book or press the mute button and talk to the others in the room. Smart people may even find there are more engaging things to do than watch TV!

Waiting time is an opportunity to do the things we don’t have time for — to plan and reflect. It is a time to work on your visions.

Waiting time can give you that chance you were looking for — to pray.

Waiting time is gold. Spend it well.

photo credit: chuckp via photo pin cc
14 Jul 2012

God is doing something new AGAIN in East Falls

Redeemer, East Falls is too small to serve its “missional” purpose (“missional” is not a word but church people seem to understand it).

That was the premise used by Bishop Claire Burkat and her coterie. It was never true. It sounded good to the people they needed to convince in order to have their way—which had nothing to do with mission but was all about money and property and synod’s habitual deficit spending.

SEPA’s actions did tons of damage to our people, our congregation and to our neighborhood, but Redeemer’s mission continues to grow. That’s what happens when you work a plan with selfless resilience and flexibility!

One of our projects was to develop our ministry online (since we had no building). We started slowly, doing research and following best practices. The site grew slowly at first, but after about six months, it was apparent there was a foundation for steady growth and an inexhaustible potential.

The site has grown steadily over all. There are day-to-day peaks and valleys, but the weekly and monthly trends reveal steady growth that is picking up.

In the last two weeks a few remarkable things have begun to happen on www.2x2virtualchurch.com.

We now have 100 people who read out posts by email each day. We have an additional 50 unique  visitors every day. Our weekly unique readership (not counting those who follow us on Facebook, Twitter or email) hovered between 180 and 275 for the last six weeks. Adding our subscribers or followers to that number puts us at around 1000 readers each week.

Our global reach is picking up. There are a few countries that check in daily—France, Canada, Great Britain, Netherlands, Australia, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines and most recently, India. Twice this week our foreign readership outpaced United States readers, at least until the very end of the day when there is often a surge in North American readership.

People are slowly beginning to participate in the discussion, often by email rather than on the site.

Yesterday, we had a request to find a way to have the site translated into Urdu, so Pakistani Christians might have access to our posts.

We invited churches to follow the site. That invitation has led to interesting friendships with four other congregations—two in Kenya, one in Pakistan and one near to us in Philadelphia.

Redeemer was never more able to fulfill its “missional” purpose. We believe our mission and ministry activities measure well with every other congregation in SEPA (large and small) — who now have the benefit of our resources.

photo credit: jurvetson (retouched) via photo pin cc
12 Jul 2012

Creating A Church Education Environment for Youth

Our Ambassadors read a flier advertising a church’s upcoming Vacation Bible School. It advertised classes for children up to age 10. Fourth grade.

Ten!

Ten is still fairly young to be the cut off age for the type of program VBS can be.

Many adults remember very little of their childhood before the age of eight. When these children become parents in another 10 or 15 years, they will have little to remember of Bible School to want to pass on to the next generation.

When Christian education stops at age 10, you end up in a few years with a church of unknowledgeable members—and probably a lot fewer of them. These unknowledgeable members will be expected to lead the church and vote on ministry decisions both within their congregations and in the broader Christian community. Without a strong church education, they will be puppets of the strongest influencers. We will become a Church of followers.

Why is age ten the cut off?

The easiest answer is that’s the age when children become involved in other activities.

But that’s the easy answer. There are other reasons. Some of them involve the Church’s inability to serve this age group.

Admittedly, the Church competes with a broad spectrum of organized activities for older children. It would be a shame if we were abandoning our youth’s faith because we have nothing to offer.

Children, still under the influence of parents, will find time when the family sees Christian education as a priority and when the educational experience meets their developmental needs. It is not acceptable to turn our backs on youth because we don’t know how to serve them and are unwilling to find a way.

Here are the challenges:

Older children are more work! Ten or eleven is the age that children are starting to come into their own and are more difficult for inexperienced volunteer teachers to handle. If we can’t train volunteers to work with our youth, we must find them. (See VBS-Aid concept).

It’s also the age when learning must become experiential. Older children cannot be confined to classroom talk. They must be challenged.

If churches want to continue to nurture youth beyond the age of ten, they must create learning environments and experiences that meet the children where they are developmentally. 

The challenge of teaching older children requires more time. Older children must participate in a program with a sense of accomplishment or they won’t return. They must be free to experiment and discover their abilities. Middle School teaching is known for being hands on. A summer program for youth requires more than five days.

Older children need camaraderie. They want to be part of groups. Five day Bible Schools are not long enough to create a sense of community unless the activity is more intense than a classroom atmosphere usually allows.

Children this age need to be silly. We expect them to try new skills. They are self-conscious and prone to taking themselves seriously. Church education for children this age should give them a chance to laugh at themselves and just open up. Allowing them to be silly gives them a soft place to fall.

At times, children this age need to be dealt with in subdivided groups. While this goes against modern inclusive thinking, other fields are meeting the challenges of interesting youth by developing some separate programming along gender lines. One reason sports is perennially popular for this age is that sports recognizes this need. The music and art world is discovering that boys become involved with enthusiasm when they are not with girls. Ask boys this age to sing with girls and you will get very few volunteers. Allow them to sing with just boys and they sing with an energy you would never see in a mixed chorus. Here is a video posted by one proud teenage boy singer. Boys-only ballet programs are cropping up and improving enrolments. Here’s video about boy dancers. Giving girls a chance to bond as girls has similar benefits. They are maturing at a different rate and may need a forum for what’s on their minds. The challenge is to make sure that their time together is enhancing their potential not excluding them.

Programs that separate boys and girls find that when the groups merge (which should be often) there is greater involvement among both boys and girls.

Churches rarely take the time to consider educational developments like this, but there may be something for us to learn.

If we want our young people to continue their church involvement into adulthood, all congregations must address the challenge. To assume lack of interest on the part of young people without any effort to interest them is short-changing them and our future.

photo credit: rileyroxx (retouched) via photo pin cc
12 Jul 2012

Dissent in the Church — Mum’s the Word

A random Google search brought up an interesting, if dated, web site.

The site owner was disturbed about the ELCA’s impending alliance with the Episcopal Church—Call to Common Mission. He had written to all major church leaders with deep concerns, which he took no care to hide.

Frustration with hierarchy brings people on the sidelines to exasperation fairly easily. This disgruntled Lutheran cared enough to post every response from mostly regional bishops. A few of those who responded to his letter gave carefully reasoned answers. More are condescending in tone with uncamouflaged arrogance.

The writer predicted an incongruity with the new alliance with historic Lutheran values. Some form of “not to worry” was the universal answer to his concerns.

This exchange was dated 2001. Reading it eleven years later reveals that this concerned Lutheran, so easily dismissed, was right. The Lutheran Church is abandoning its historic polity. This has changed attitudes of leaders, which in the Lutheran tradition are respected more as servants than as CEOs. It trickles down very quickly to affect parish dynamics which are troubled—if not by conflict, then with complacency. Don’t rock the Church boat!

When property issues become involved, it is landing the denomination in costly court battles. The ELCA is banking that the courts will ignore their constitutions in favor of staying out of the fight under the Bill of Rights. It is a tactic that is working at least for the moment.

One thing is likely to continue. The voice of dissent—the founding platform of our denomination—is likely to be easily dismissed by the leadership club called the Council of Bishops and their coteries. Some will write smug letters. Some won’t respond at all. Very few will give the concerns meaningful consideration. Dialog will take place behind closed doors or in controlled forums. Historic Lutheran polity has been traded for some undefined benefit.

Eleven years reveal that the owner of this site was rightly concerned. The ELCA took a giant step backward in its partnership with the Episcopal Church. It doesn’t make much difference to the hierarchy. They lost no time in assuming “powers” not given to them under their own constitutions.

It makes a huge difference to lay people. They can now be assured that any dissenting voice will be muted or ignored if it attacks the powerful.

10 Jul 2012

Scalability: Religion Seeks It But Can’t Embrace It

Exponential Growth vs Scalable Growth

The Christian Church has recently focused on the Gospel account of Jesus sending his disciples into the world 2×2.

Jesus’ concept of mission was built on exponential growth. If two people are each successful in reaching two people — for a total of four — and they in turn form teams of two reaching four more— that’s exponential growth. The effort and cost must be repeated again and again. The church will grow with hard work and dedication.

This was remarkably effective. Within a few hundred years, the Gospel spread to the farthest borders of the known world.

Scalability is a bit different. It is a term that centers on the power of technology. How can teams of two reach a thousand or more people using the same effort it takes them to reach four?

The answer is incalculable—and entirely possible. The tools are in our hands to make mission work scalable beyond the wildest dreams of the early Christian apostles. The same work required to reach or teach 100 people can also reach or teach a million for basically the same outlay of resources.

So why aren’t we doing it?

Roadblocks to Scalability

Sadly, the church is not set up to take advantage of scalability.

Try this, for example. Take an idea to a religious institution. They will have a great deal of difficulty thinking beyond their own constituency. “But don’t you see,” you might argue, “you have the power to reach beyond your congregation, beyond your geographic territory, beyond your denomination.”

They will respond with confusion. “But it’s our job to serve our constituency. We work for [name the regional entity.]”  

They will try to be helpful. Scratching their heads, they will suggest, “Take your idea to [another territorial constituency that might be a bit bigger]. Maybe they can help you.”

Any denomination can reach congregations and clergy of all denominations all over the world with truly helpful information—all for the same effort that they might put into a local symposium or workshop which they would charge 50 people $25 each to attend. They won’t, though, because tradition outweighs potential.

Oddly, the efforts to take advantage of the power of the internet are not coming from the higher echelons of the Church. Many regional web sites are of poor quality and virtually all are self-focused. Some of the flashiest regional web sites focus on only their own work—not the work of their members. They are ignoring the potential to strengthen community. They are also ignoring the potential to reach the unchurched — which is their mission.

Church leadership is accustomed to publishing and teaching coming from top down. There was a time when this was necessary. Not everyone owned a printing press and distribution system. There grew to be a comfort in the control which was part of this outdated system. Because control was once possible in publishing they mistakenly believe that it is necessary. It is not only unnecessary in today’s world; it is impossible.

The system of the past is clumsy and archaic, but the Church’s entire structure is built around it.

Smaller entities—individual institutions, small congregations and even individual church members are making stronger headway.

Examples

One example,  www.workingpreacher.org, a project of Luther Seminary, features guest theologians from many backgrounds, analyzing the weekly lectionary. Directed towards pastors, anyone can study the week’s scripture guided by the insights of a seminary professor.

Another: ministry-to-children.com is a web site started by Tony Kummer, a youth/family pastor. It is a lively, interdenominational exchange of ministry ideas and resources that has a large community participating and helping one another. A small church in Africa asked for 2×2’s help in finding affordable educational resources. We directed them to this web site and they were delighted!

Jason Stambaugh writes a blog, www.heartyourchurch.com. He is an individual layperson who works in social media and is a member of a small congregation. He writes about social media in the church and other church issues.

A college student in Texas, Virginia Smith, has used the internet to help small congregations access used Vacation Bible School resources. She’s just one young person passionately engaged in mission, armed with the web. (www.vbs247.webs.com/) Virginia has been very helpful to 2×2 in networking.

And then there is this site, 2×2, the project of Redeemer Lutheran Church, East Falls, Philadelphia, a church the Lutheran denomination (ELCA) determined was too small to fulfill its mission (the old-fashioned way). Three years after locking our members out of our church building, 2×2 is reaching more than a thousand readers a month with a significant local readership with global reach. (And we are just beginning.) We offer ideas for small church ministry and attempt to prompt dialog on small church issues.

Scalable projects are our passion—not to make vast amounts of money, as is often the aim of online enterprise, but to build an new infrastructure that will provide hope and help for neighborhood ministries that we believe are the strength of the Christian Church. We believe there is fiscal potential that would provide the hands-on resources to neighborhood churches that can’t afford them the old-fashioned way. (And this is a large number of churches!)

Meanwhile, denominations concentrate on building Christian communities of a certain number so that they can afford a pastor/building and support their regional and national denomination.

This is not scalable. And it is failing. But it’s still how the Church measures success!

09 Jul 2012

Missing the Main Event in Mission

The Tour de France is hot on the sports news. The TV coverage is beautiful. The commentators describe each day’s course. The cyclists will pedal through the Alps, the Pyrenees, and any number of quaint French villages and a gorgeous countryside. The video shows beautiful flowers cascading over rock ledges, rolling hills and towering mountains. Thousands will line the course attempting to get as close to the racers as allowed, eager to be part of the action.

But how much will the cyclists see? Intent on only one thing—speed, they ride with their tinted goggles pointed toward the macadam right in front of their front tires. If they raise their heads, all but a couple of leaders will see a sea of colorful jerseys and tight black leggings. All else is blocked. Each cyclist makes every attempt to keep anything or anyone from impeding progress toward a pre-assigned finish line.

And the people who line the course . . . will their presence make a difference? Will any action they might take make a difference in the outcome?

When the race is over, the winner will be praised. Most of the riders will be able to say no more than they were there.

Where were they? Following the guy in front of them, oblivious of everything around them.

How much time do we spend in church racing towards a finish line defined by someone else, following a leader with narrow focus, who allows for little or no help from the sidelines, hoping to win all the credit, while missing the main event—the beauty of God’s creation and the people and places God calls us to serve?

photo credit: Yug_and_her via photo pin cc
07 Jul 2012

Why Creative People Don’t Go to Church

The Church has fostered some brilliant creative minds. Martin Luther and Johann Sebastian Bach are ancient examples in the Lutheran tradition. Modern Lutherans even like to take credit for Steve Jobs. His boundless creativity outlived his association with the denomination.

He was probably not alone. The Church is starting to recognize that creativity might be needed to meet the challenges of mission in today’s world. But old habits die hard.

At the heart of creativity is the ability to solve problems. You’d think the Church would be clamoring for creative minds!

Churches like to talk about rebirth and transformation. These desirable qualities will only take root if creativity can blossom. Too often the lauded rebirths and transformations are short-lived. That’s probably because they were engineered for short-term success—an ephemeral way to meet old-fashioned goals—not the product of true creative thinking. “Look, we’ve done the same thing we’ve done for a hundred years one more time!”

Creative thinkers soak up ideas from anywhere and everywhere. They have to surround themselves with things, ideas and people who are different. It is as necessary to their existence as water.

Creative people juxtapose the eclectic. They find in the clash of differences the spark that launches the new. They are usually surprised that other people can’t see what they see — at least at first.

Creative people who insist on using their gifts are often a threat to the status quo and seen as unable to “get along.” Getting along is important to church leaders. Often the discomfort at the presence of friction is a startling revelation to the creative mind. They thrive on friction.

What does the Church do with creative minds? We tend to give them jobs that display talent but not creativity. They become, for example, pastors who do the pastor thing or the organists who do the organist thing. What the Church is looking for is people who can fill jobs they have already defined, sometimes with exceptional flair, but often, just so-so is just fine.

Revelation: some creative people can’t preach or play the organ! These are skills. Creativity is its own skill.

Consequently, change comes about very, very slowly. The temptation to revert to old ways at the first sign of creative discomfort is a magnet. Put a drum set next to the organ, but don’t get rid of the organ!

Creativity is always a bit discomforting!

That’s why creative people don’t go to church. What is most important to them as part of God’s creation is of little value.

06 Jul 2012