At What Cost Focus?

Preparing to host the Quickening Preview on August 31st brings back to mind some of the lessons I have learned from Brian Klemmer and his team.

• When intention is clear, the mechanism will appear
• It may not be my fault, but I always share responsibility
• No matter how eloquent or true, excuses are no substitute for excellent results in God's reign
  
• Those who lead must serve

Every one of these has corollaries in Scripture - particularly in the teaching of Jesus.

Who among us would not want to lead or to be part of congregations that, in a Church-wide Congregational Olympics, would win a gold medal?

Who among us would turn down an opportunity to help mentor the apostolic equivalent of a Michael Phelps or the Williams sisters - Venus and Serena"

And, despite God's track record for bringing life out of unlikely places, what reasons do we frequently hear when the results of hard work and faithfulness don't produce exceptional fruit?

• If we just had better attendance and more youth . . .
  
• If only our members were more invested . . .
  
• If only this community was not so parochial . . .
  
• If only we included more . . . (name your oppressed group) in leadership . . .
  

Mea culpa! (I thought I'd admit it before you correctly pointed it out.) Been there. Still go back to that up-chuck more often than I care to think about. Just can't stay there, however, and move forward. (Or as Henry Blackaby likes to say, "You cannot go with God and stay where you are.")

If we would allow God to better clarify our focus, would we not only see more clearly God's intended future, but, looking around at the same context, suddenly notice more of the provisions given to us by a God who is passionate about loving people. And what about all those gifts given to us by those who went before us in hot pursuit of God's highest intention?

Tom Russell rightly reminds me at every turn that we need not beat up on pastors for not delivering on God's promise. Church, after all, is unlike professional sports. It's mission is carried out by volunteers - many running only on what the Spirit provides today. It is never the fault of any pastor for congregational failure, however, don't we all share responsibility? Does not the life of the congregation - its strengths and weaknesses, victories and struggles reflect to some degree our own stuff?

My own continuing education has become less focused upon technique and more on developing my character. I can have the best tools, programs, and congregational context available, yet, if my own life is unfocused and short on positive results I will probably also notice that also in the communities that I serve.

From recent reflections by Tom Bandy, a few questions may help to guide our introspection:

• For whom does my heart burst? Whose suffering or failure to fully become who they are in God keeps me awake at night?
  
• What am I driven to accomplish for/with them? What else am I willing to give (or to give up) to do more of that or to do it with greater excellence?
  
• Am I part of a "pilgrim band" from which I receive and give helathy accountability and appropriate support? If not, is my reason for not creating one really more compelling than my reasons to be in one?
• Do I really believe that the purpose of my life is God's purpose? If not, what am I doing in ministry?
  

Lately, I answer the same questions in this way:

• My heart bursts for leaders who struggle to what they love with more excellence among those they love and serve
• What I want with and for them are more and better networks of support so that they succeed more often and with greater effect in leading communities that make the Kingdom an earthly reality in their zip code
  
• I'm willing to give more time and energy to becoming a better human being so that when I am invited to bring my "tools," I don't distract from what God will do with those tools in that moment. One way I'm working at that is to say "Thank you," and mean it, more often.
• I am part of a pilgrim band. The area staff of nine paid and volunteer staff (and growing) has done more to sharpen and support than I could ever have imagined
• I do believe that God's purpose trumps every personal dream. I cannot out-create, out-redeem, out-inspire God. Left to its own devices, the planet and everything in it will run out of energy and dis-integrate. The will to live and love - as modeled by Jesus Christ - keep that from happening sooner than later. I cannot think of anything better to offer with my life than that.

How about you? How do you gain clearer focus? What are striving to achieve in Jesus' name? How may I better support you this week?

Bill

Wisdom For Pastors From Tom Bandy

One of my disciplines is to keep up with the conversations between local church pastors and the staff at Easum, Bandy & Associates.

Occasionally I see something too good not to share - especially when the timing is serendipitous.

In congregations everywhere pastors are gearing up for the resumption of church activities and attending a flurry of meetings to prepare for new and on-going programs - most of which have their real center not in advancing the reign of God but in satisfying existing parishioners and attracting new church members.

Admittedly, I am not immune to that dynamic in middle judicatory work. Perhaps this is the real reason why Tom Bandy's words in a recent post jumped out at me:

"I mention emotional burnout primarily because family church pastors become overwhelmed and exhausted bearing the problems of others, listening to complaints, and a steady barrage of selfishness.

But you are identifying another facet of this burnout. In order to escape chronic guilt, many pastors retreat into a false "professional personae". Although they talk about self care and protecting time off and private space, it is really often keeping life at arms length. So they become consummate preachers but they can no longer worship God personally.

Yes, perhaps it can help going to worship occasionally at another church of your spouse's choosing ... but more often than not we are still so obsessed with competitiveness and comparison that we find it difficult to be refreshed by God. So I think it is even more important to build a devotional partnership with a pilgrim band, and let yourself be refreshed by a smaller, more intimate circle of worship." (Taken from a post by Tom Bandy on the Advanced Leadership forum of Easum, Bandy and Associates.)

I want to close this post on a more hopeful note. This past week NW Area pastoral and support staff and Area Board officers met by conference call with Dick Hamm - our coach - and then we met face-to-face at the area office. Perhaps the most important thing we did was to agree to be for each other more of the kind of "pilgrim band" that Tom talks about. Over the course of last month we worked out a covenant with each other to:

• be in prayer at least two and more times each day
• take part in a telephone conference call at 7:45 am each Thursday morning to identify our missions, to ask for and to offer support, and to pray
  
• to seek help if our prayer discipline seems dry, lifeless, or fruitless
  
• remember each other in prayer daily
• worship together as a team on fifth Sundays with our families - sometimes at a church not among those we serve
• spend part of one day every month in personal prayer retreat
  
• be in spiritual retreat with each other, directed by someone else, at least once a year

Perhaps the best thing about this for me is that we agreed to do this - not because any of us wanted to be trendy or religious but because the mission entrusted to us was too important not to do this. There is simply no way for us to advance as servants to congregational leaders without significant spiritual and personal transformation of this team and of each individual member.

Most of those making this covenant are volunteers and are choosing to be more accountable to one another, so, you may understand why my spirit soared after we agreed to this.

I cannot tell you how much it has meant to me to be part of a group of highly committed Christ-followers where planning about mission is usually focused on serving and not preserving. I look around the table and see folk who have sacrificed a great deal and endured lack of support, apathy and criticism from those they serve - primarily because they are passionate about serving congregational leaders.

And, no, ours is not a perfect situation, nor is any of us without serious flaws and gaping holes in our characters. All of us still depend deeply upon the forgiveness Christ offers. We are, however discovering fresh expressions of the Spirit in more missional community and for that I give thanks and encourage you to seek or perhaps to help call together such a community.

Ephesians 4:11 Revisited

A lot of modern literature describing the role of the pastor assumes that she or he is an extraordinarily high capacity leader in whom are embodied the five gifts: apostle, shepherd, prophet, evangelist, and teacher.

That description works well within a highly personalized, consumerist paradigm of ministry which happens to predominate the current church culture in North America.

Sanctioned by the denominational bureaucracy, trained by professional academics, and entered into a complex, competitive system of search and call, the pastor functions much like one's cardiologist or orthodontist. Congregants consume what pastors are trained and strained to deliver until they become enamored of another or if ever disappointed with the customer service or competence in all five areas.

Put into the context of the servant-leader congregation, however, and the pastor-as-embodiment-of-the-five-fold-gifts breaks down.

In the servant-leader congregation, lay people live and work in their communities with authority and power, equipped for sacrificial and sustainable mission by a leadership team that contains at least one or more for whom one of the five gifts is a significant and tested strength.

The role of the pastor becomes more that of overseer, coach, and accountability partner to the team of leaders. Mission - which is central to the life of the Christ-follower - becomes apostolic, evangelical, prophetic, educational, and pastoral because leaders serve the various members of the congregational team - which sees itself not as a voluntary association but as a community of people called into purposeful work together with expectation of significant outcomes.

If that is true, then why are so many pastors still attempting to fill too many of the equipping and serving roles?

I suspect that so long as congregants can afford to pay us to serve vicariously through us, and, so long as we allow their co-dependence to be our defining paradigm, nothing will change until the downward spiral goes deeper and faster enough to require positive change.

Of course, through prayer, the Spirit may transform us and those we serve to move more into the model the Ephesians seem to employ. This may be what we are seeing in some congregations that are rediscovering their love for serving and leading in their communities.

Lifelong Learning Center: an immodest proposal

Okay. So you are standing on the set of God's "Let's Make a Deal" and the Apostle Paul is the highly caffeinated show host. As the main contestant for the NW Area Christian Churches you've just been given the option of door number 1, door number 2, or door number 3. You know that part of your "prize" is 160 acres of land in Lathrop, Missouri. What lies behind each door is what God will do with that land. The only clue given to you is a reference to the passage where Jesus tells the parable of the talents. Which door would you choose?

Door number 1 is the one-talent option. God blesses the 160 acres with lots of hay. Occasionally, folk from area congregations go to visit but unless the hay is cut there really is little to see or to do. It is pretty, though and the sound of the wind in the tall grass is almost hypnotic.

Door number 2 is the two-talent option. Behind this door is a view of the NW Area Church Camp about 5 years from now. It looks a lot like Camp Crowder at Trenton (where we hold church camp now). There is a 15 acre area with a house, barn, kitchen and mess hall, several cabins and a craft hall. There are about 80 campers, counselors and staff members this day and everyone looks like they are having a great time.

Door number 3 is the five-talent option. Open this door and what you see 10 years from now takes your breath away. Over by the wind turbines and solar panels a tour group of engineers from Japan is hearing Ken Jameson explain how we developed an international award winning green camp and conference center. On their way back to the state-of-the art conference center (filled with employees of Cerner for their annual corporate retreat), they pass a cluster of ranch-style buildings arranged in a cul-de-sac that hosts a unique End-of-Life Camp for children diagnosed with end-stage cancer and their families. On the 20 acre lake, senior citizens from Osborne are taking kyack lessons from one of the staff while a preschool class learns to fish on the opposite side. Almost hidden are several one-room studio cabins where, on this day, a pastor is outlining a sermon series, a single mom is struggling to find balance in the midst of chaos, and an artist is working on what will become a piece that will one day hang on a wall in the White House. The music of midday prayer wafts from open windows in the glass walled chapel as several staff members and guests praise God and intercede for everyone being served on the campus. The chef on duty is preparing 5 different lunches with interns provided by a local technical school to be served in a simple but beautiful set of dining rooms - each with their own theme. When our international guests leave to board their plane at KCI, they will take the campus shuttle which will drive on roads paved clear to the Interstate.

If you could ask God for one of these three scenarios, which would you choose?

We are in the process of recruiting candidates for a long-range development team that we will ask to form a 501.c.3 not-for-profit corporation dedicated to serving a wider public described in option 3. A short-term development team is already hard at work preparing the campus for your arrival on September 6 (or sooner if you happen to be a volunteer). Their commitment is primarily to serve congregations and to prepare a place that will be used often by members.

We have made (and plan to keep) a solemn pledge to keep the neighbors in the loop and to be responsive to any concerns they may have about noise and traffic and other difficulties.

Unless we hear differently from you, we'll keep working hard and praying that God grants us what is behind the door that will require the most from all of us and from partners within beyond the Church.

Blessings,
Bill R-H

Don't Just Stand There, Do Something!

We must engage in conversations around mission at least 20 times a week. Much of the talk is about how tough it is to motivate "them" to greater faithfulness, missions with greater impact, and more consistent compassion.

Some complain that there is not enough (fill in the blanks) coming from (the area office, the regional office, the general office, etc.) to help us move from where we are to where we think God want's us to be.

Most certainly, I am the worst offender. It is acceptable, even fashionable, to indulge in scapegoating as a way to cover up my own inadequacies or under-performance.

At some point, however, I have to take responsibility for the outcomes I live with.

Note that I did not say that a disappointing outcome is my fault. It is, however, my responsibility. It will change for better or for worse to some degree based upon my own engagement with it.

If I don't like the way things are shaping up in the church or if I yearn for something more, I have a responsibility to engage proactively.

If I find that there are too few companions with whom to make those changes, I have a responsibility to find and to invite more committed colleagues.

If there are not enough resources, I am responsible enough to change that rther than to let lack determine outcome.

This week your area staff and executive officers took a hard look with Dick Hamm at what we are doing to support pastors and other congregational leaders.

We cannot take much credit, nor can we completely accept blame for the way things are, but we can choose to be responsible, and we have.

Staff and officers have taken on new homework assignments and we have agreed to take some risks to improve the quality of our service to you.

No one told us we had to do that. It is simply a part of what it means to be responsible.

If you'd like to help your staff or team to deepen its sense of responsibility, join us for the Quickening Preview on Sunday evening, August 31. Click here
to learn more and to register on-line.

What Is Our Place in the Body of Christ?

Imagine for a moment that Disciples of Christ have discovered a new sense of purpose rooted in serving and supporting other Christians.

We wake up one morning and realize that we don’t really enjoy competing for the dwindling number of existing church members in our local communities . . . even if some of them are members of that weird church across town.

We are weary of being the denomination of last resort. “Hey, Disciples of Christ don’t require you to believe or to do anything beyond Baptism. We can get our weekly dose of whatever we need and leave the rest behind.”

Lately our own people admit to feeling spiritually restless. They want something more from their religious life than keeping the congregation running on fumes.

Our hope in a vision coming from a small group of people who make their living going to meetings has cooled a bit and we are becoming more adept at looking for what Christ is doing locally.

We have observed that when Jesus does something big in our home town, the effort requires the investment of more Christians than attend our worship services . . . or the Methodists or the Baptists (combined).

A review of our denominational history suggests that we were originally all about reclaiming the oneness of the Body of Christ and with 33,000 known Christian denominations, sects, and cults; we have our work cut out for us.

But oneness in what? A coalition of denominations that welcomes all comers? Wasn’t CUIC supposed to accomplish that? (It hasn’t.)

Churches in our community decide to raise money so that Cindy can have that liver transplant that her family cannot afford. They work with civic clubs to organize after school programs for kids whose parents have to work minimum wage jobs. Whenever those missions get going, or need to begin, the one ingredient that is essential is someone (or a group of leaders) to help get very different people working well together.

Why is it that so often those community project organizers are Disciples of Christ? It is not as if we have a lock on that kind of work but it does fit so well our DNA.

So, what if we got far more intentional about calling and equipping new saints – not only for the more common, congregational missions, but also for the missions that local communities of Christians will do together?

What if our worship services made room for celebrating what Christ is actually doing locally (as well as globally)?

If our Sunday Schools and Bible studies included a weekly focus on how we could better support the folk who actually do the work of these community missions, might they be more vital and dynamic?

How about those beloved symbols of summer – the Vacation Bible School and the annual youth mission trip? Imagine if instead of offering competing programs we committed to help local Christians to organize and carry out one program with excellence for all the local youth (or at least most of them)?

And if you have a better idea about how Disciples can become clear about God’s preferred role for our denomination within the larger Body of Christ, what’s keeping you from sharing that with the rest of us?

Bill Rose-Heim

Three Trends?

Congregational visits can inspire songs of great joy and deep laments – even in the same visit. This month has been no exception.

It might be helpful to share with you some of what we have seen and heard recently in your congregations:

• A team of volunteers stripped the bark from a huge fallen tree (casualty of the ice storms last winter) and recreated the “tree” for VBS in the middle of the fellowship hall along with a working waterfall – just to make the experience more profound for participants.
• “Thanks for volunteering to help. You don’t need to prepare. The kids don’t want to be there anyway. Just go be with them for 20 minutes and send them on to the next activity.”
• Her graduation picture is propped on a table in front of the sanctuary. The members of this small, graying, rural congregation are filling in for absent parents to support another fledgling about to fly.
• “Our fellowship hall and sanctuary are available for an emergency relief shelter.”
• A congregation cashes in a long-held certificate of deposit (proceeds from memorials and bequests) to pay the utilities. Giving per household is about what it was 20 years ago. The number of households is down 50%.
• “We had fifty adults helping and teaching eighty eight kids for VBS. The Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor taught one of the classes and led the whole inter-denominational group of kids in one of the best prayers those kids ever prayed!”

There are more stories to tell and we will tell more of them in time.

Some themes are beginning to emerge. We’ll just identify three here.

First, there is a core group in every congregation who still believe that the message and mission of Jesus is as important to happiness as breathing. That is hopeful news.

It is also true that many congregations are getting very comfortable just coasting on the momentum of prior generations of Christ-followers. The culture has so infected their faith that it is almost impossible to distinguish between the gospel they believe in and the American Dream.

There is a noticeable upsurge of local, ecumenical activity – much of it generated by lay folk. We cannot help but wonder if we are in the early phases of a very pragmatic course correction in North American Christianity – to unify the Body of Christ around local mission.

What do you see?

Grace and peace,

Bill R-H