From Here to There

We like to think that we are further down the road than we are about this but . . .we still have work to do.

When those of us planning a Midwestern gathering of congregational leadership teams to work together (and with professional support) on their own processes of transformation, we intentionally made it easy for these congregations to bring teams from neighboring non-Disciples congregations. We reduced the amount of denomination ally specific references throughout the event so as to provide a less exclusive context. Our thought was (and still is) that congregational transformation happens best when it happens in concert with neighboring congregations in a community because the missio Dei (work of God) was given not to a denomination but to the whole Body of Christ. In other words, we are transformed - not to be more competitive but to become more collaborative with other congregations beyond our particular denominational tribe.

Sadly, no one took us up on the offer and only DOC congregational teams will be in attendance.

I accept some responsibility for that. We probably needed to customize our promotional materials. I could have been more aggressive in marketing the event to ministerial alliances. I suspect, however, that part of the reason for the response we got is that many of us are not yet there.

In the first place, not all of us are convinced that our work is, by its very nature, ecumenical. Without wanting to minimize the real value of serving within denominations, it has become comfortable for many of us to operate primarily within a denominational bubble. We know the people, the language, the safe boundaries within which we can operate freely. Not a bad thing, necessarily.

And if we are inclined to think ecumenically, we may be a bit jaded by previous attempts to create artificial unions between denominations before we were ready to experiment with shared missions - before we had sufficient opportunity to wrap our minds and hearts around the concept locally. Understandable uneasiness.

Our non-Disciples colleagues might also be wary - and not without good reason. Could ecumenical conversations these days be driven more by shrinking budgets and membership rolls than by a sincere desire to get the whole Body of Christ working well together locally? A fair question. How would you answer it? And if the Baptist congregation down the road has a thriving ministry with a million dollar budget and a junior college campus that is busy seven days a week, why would they suddenly feel the urge to partner with a congregation that prefers to take smaller steps to advance the Kingdom?

Like any change worth making, this one - local congregations of any and no denomination working together closely until big missions are actually accomplished - will take time. We cannot shorten that timeline but could we, should we begin to name that as a goal toward which we all strive?

The Poor and the Body

The lights were dimmed and we settled into reasonably confortable chairs to watch a 45 minute presentation selected by one of our annual clergy retreat planners.

Mike had told me about the cutting edge work by film maker Gerry Straub to put film at the service of the poor but I was unprepared for what we were about to see.

In the film Faces of Poverty ( http://www.sandamianofoundation.org/film_facesofpoverty.html) we were introduced to real people with credible stories - filmed in such a way as not exploit those interviewed but to introduce them to us as neighbors. What becomes abundantly clear through the film is that the Church has significant work to do at the most fundamental levels.

Before we are seekers of grace, we pursue the basics; food, clean drinking water, clothing, shelter, sanitary toilets, showers, work. When children are homeless, when the church-going factory worker is told that her job of 18 years has been outsourced to China, when the medical bills for a loved one leave a family in bankruptcy, how do we proclaim the gospel of Jesus and not get deeply involved in moving toward healing?

While it has to be said that the plight of the poor may not be our collective fault, it is, clearly a responsibility we share with them. We pay taxes that provide some helpful services. Our offerings to the congregational treasury help to underwrite the local food pantry. What we seldom do enough, however, is to meet the poor, to acknowledge them in person.

In Cameron and in many other communities, Christians of every tribe are hosting weekly community meals at no cost so that the poor and those with resources can sit at a common table that previews our sitting together one day at the Lord's Table. There in soup and crackers we taste God's preferred future - a time when all members of the Body are joined as one, praising, serving, and advancing the reign of God.

How are you helping the struggling and the well to find each other and new life in Christ?

Jesus as Enterprise Facilitator

I have never known anyone who could "throw" their voice, that is to speak from the front of a room but make it sound as if they are speaking from a corner in the back. Some ventiloquists are particularly good at this. God may be, too.

While meeting with Annette Weeks - Facilitator for Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation, I had the sense that what I was hearing had both a secular and a sacred source. Annette, who formerly owned a successful antique shop, works part-time from her home office in Savannah serving small business owners at no cost to them. Essentially, she is referred by her regional board of over 60 leaders in business, finance, government and not-for-profit to individuals who desire to begin or to expand their business. She interviews those who seek her out, confidentially helps them to assess how they are doing with production, marketing, and financing and then, at their request, introduces them at a monthly board meeting to people who know how to open doors, access resources, and share professional talent. Enterprise facilitation now documents successes outpacing most of all other traditional economic development programs in the creation of new jobs, new income, and more positive images for business owners and communities in several countries around the world.

Annette explained that Enterprise Facilitation is a concept developed by Ernesto Sirolli (http://www.sirolli.com) that essentially turns modern economic development on its head.

While many economic developers work tirelessly to bring big employers into their cities to inject new life into local commerce, Sirolli notes that over 75% of any economy is driven by local, small businesses - employing 1-15 people just about anywhere in the world including the U.S. He argues passionately that any local community has what it needs to be economically viable and profitable if only those seeking to develop that would better respect local wisdom, local resources, local talent, and individual passion. Sirolli also cautions that facilitators should not initiate contact, nor should they ever try to motivate their clients. When individuals are ready, they seek coaching and open themselves to grace in any form that seems appropriate.

Annette loaned to me Sirolli's Ripples from the Zambezi wherein he draws deeply from E. F. Schumacher (Small is Beautiful), Carl Rogers, and others who take a person-centered, positive approach to addressing human challenges. While I read - slowly and over the course of three weeks worth of periods of prayer, scripture reading and meditation - I sensed God saying, "Pay attention!"

What Sirolli described as enterprise facilitation sounds very similar to a missional approach to being missionally oriented followers of Christ in our communities:

• Be connected to Christ in ways that transform us individually and in our families

• Be so familiar with local culture as to appreciate and respect what God has already provided and begun locally

• Be present and fully accessible to anyone who seeks (or may seek) to deepen their relationship and/or to initiaite or to epand mission and ministry

• Be connected and trusted by those in our communities who can also assist those seekers and spiritual entrepenuers

• Be humble enough to facilitate (but not drive) the initiative of Christ in others

What do you think?

Church of the Savior Revisted

Gordon Crosby, founding pastor of the Church of the Savior in northwest Washington D.C., gave his last sermon Sunday, according to an article in the Washington Post.

Gordon and Mary Crosby are not household names among most mainline Christians. Perhaps they should be. Church of the Savior has begun more (and more types of) community and neighborhood based missions and ministries than any other congregation of its size. They gather in small groups that meet in homes, neighborhood centers, and storefronts.

They never did reach their goal of becoming truly multi-cultural. Most of their members are of Euro-American ethnicity and most are over 40. In this they are like so many Midwestern mainline Protestant congregations with one notable exception. They have earned respect from those they served and were trusted enough to forever change some parts of the nation’s capital.

Still they kept trying to connect the gospel of Jesus to the every day lives of folk around them – particularly among the most vulnerable, “the least of these.” They have dared to confront the larger “powers and principalities” -- a labor of love that, while often very challenging, has born good fruit and a lot of joy.

Their anchor? A rich, personal and corporate spirituality that seeks deeper roots in Christ so that the on-going work of Jesus moves closer and closer into the center of otherwise ordinary lives. This core of quiet confidence in the face of intractable problems (poverty, ignorance, racism, violence, and political indifference) has enabled members of this unlikely congregation to take risks that the comfortable would seldom consider appropriate.

Gordon and Mary Crosby brought no more or less potential to their walk with Christ than any of us. They just did more with it than many and built not a personalized dynasty but launching place for the Body – of – Christ – in – motion.

More to the point, what are you and I doing and becoming today to advance the whole cause of Christ in a world that longs to be One Body . . . again?

Post Denominational? A Story From Japan

Former Mid-America Associate Regional Minister Ken Watson told a memorable story during a sermon at FCC, Odessa, MO.

A small but populous fishing village was located at the base of a 150 foot cliff on the east coast of Japan. They caught, processed and sold fish to people on the mainland while farmers in the highlands supplied them with grains and vegetables.

One day a wheat farmer near the cliff was about to begin the first good harvest after a long drought when he spotted a tsunami headed directly for the fishing village.

Knowing that the wave would destroy the village within 15 minutes, the farmer quickly pulled some ripened wheat stalks together and lit them with a match and set his field ablaze.

When the villagers saw the smoke, they immediately took off for the farm to help their neighbor extinguish the fire. They arrived too late to save the farmer's crop but just in time to avoid the crashing 60 foot wave that pulled every house and boat into the foamy sea.

Some might think that the village being saved by the farmer's sacrifice was the crown jewel of that folk tale. I think it was the experience of a just, loving, Christ-like community in action that is the true glory of the story.

Farmers and fisher folk, lowlanders and highlanders each thinking in terms of the whole community while building on what made each unique offers a lesson to the Church of Jesus Christ in our time.

If ever there was a time for the various tribes of the Body of Christ to pull together, it is now. And while challenges threaten to overtake some congregations, it should not be that we commit to better collaboration to avoid the dangers but to embrace the opportunities that we miss to advance the cause of Christ because we still tend first to think in terms of our own tribes (denominations) when we plan mission and ministry.

Of course, denominational organizations are helpful. We are not disembodied spirits. Denominations - like extended families offer something very important to many Christ followers and they are not likely to go away anytime soon.

I am particularly pleased as many Disciples of Christ are re-examining our heritage and discerning how we are to be, what we are to do in the centuries to come.

A piece of that discerning has to revisit the question about our original "polar star." Early in our 19th Century beginnings we understood that a divided Church could not prevail in the "Wild West." For two centuries we experimented with a variety of models for re-unifying the Church in North America with less than stellar results.

Today, we do not wait for academics, denominational leaders, or experts to tell us how to bring the Body of Christ together into more effective, coordinated, missional activity. Prompted by the Spirit more of us are praying, conversing, experimenting locally, and, our local communities benefit as a result.

How is this true or not true for you?

Leadership and Membership

For a couple of years now, Tom Russell and I have had an ongoing conversation about leadership. He contends that pastors get a really bad rap for not being able to serve up the magic potion that will cure all congregational ills. They are pilloried for not having enough expertise, for not earning a Doctorate, for not preaching like an all-star, for not administrating like the church version of a Donald Trump. Tom suggests (and I concur) that all the legitimate efforts to help pastors be all that they are called to be, required to be by God tell only part of the story. At some point members of congregations have to own their own callings, their own ministries (and some of these ministries are also their primary occupations).

Tom's observations come into sharp relief for me as I consider the 80%+ approval ratings for the new president and I wonder if we - common citizens - have a transition team to help support our own plans for stepping up in huge ways to the challenges that can only be met by the whole Unite States. I suspect that most of us have neither a plan nor a transition team to support our taking on more civic responsibility. Is it too far a stretch to wonder if this is also the case with most disciples in the care of articulate, prophetic pastors?

Elders, deacons, and pastors who met in Waverly two weeks ago offered some hope in this regard. There seems to be an emerging consensus among elders and deacons that they are no longer content to be liturgical functionaries or fixtures in congregational boardrooms. They want to do more of the spiritual formation work that is desperately needed by new and veteran members. They also see the value of doing that in teams - networked within but also beyond the congregation.

Some (not all) elders and deacons at the Waverly training event expressed a desire to form a grass-roots, inter-congregational network of continued training, support, and accountability. As information becomes available, we'll post that. We would also like to be able to support similar efforts around the area. In the meantime, check out Richard Foster's article "Spiritual Formation Agenda" from the January issue of Christianity Today.

What do you think? Please share your comments.

News is out from the Barna organizations that giving to churches is down 6%. More economists and government leaders are willing to admit that we are now in a deep recession with the earliest recoveries predicted to be in late 2009 but no one feels confident to offer a firm prediction.

We are certainly feeling the pressure in the area office and we expect it to get worse, barring something unexpected. We hear from several of you that congregational budgets are not being met and the gaps between income and expenses are causing concern even among optimists. And while we certainly have seen miraculous intervention by God through faithful and compassionate stewards, we are also charged by the scriptures to be wise.

I want to put this offer out in all seriousness and I pray that many of you will agree to take part.

It may be time to have a meeting of congregational leaders (executive teams and pastoral staff) on two levels - within the NW Area and within local communities (among congregations of any and no denomination) to prayerfully explore ways to share income and expenses to more effectively support the missions to which we are called.

I do not suggest a "Y'all come!" gritch session, nor would it be helpful to toss around several ideas with no real commitment to follow through. This would be a very focused and productive conversation among people who are determined to carry out mission with excellence and to honor the economic realities of our time.

If you (or someone you know) might be interested in helping to plan such an event with me, please let me know. We'll call the planning group together as quickly as possible and schedule events as soon as possible.

Let's not allow the secular community look to the Church during the recession and find us merely huddling and fretting while the power of the gospel and the promise of the Kingdom go unrealized on our watch.