"Onward" a better Call to Action?

While I do not plan to blog each week about the book I am reading, the latest book I have read, "Onward" by Howard Schultz feels particularly fitting for the church.  The book is written, with help of course, by the CEO of Starbucks who talks about how he came back as CEO as Starbucks and the economy were in the midst of a downward spiral and eventually managed to turn Starbucks around even as the economy continued to languish.

Obviously the recession was not good for Starbucks, but Schultz's feeling is that Starbucks was hurting even before then and the economic downturn only magnified or perhaps revealed flaws that were already present.  In fact he really seems to feel that the past success of Starbucks and its rapid growth became a barrier to its further healthy growth as a company.  In the midst of massive store openings and rampant success Starbucks began to lose focus on its innovation and even its core value of providing great coffee and a community environment, a "third space."

Starbucks was able to turn itself around in part because it stopped resting on its past success, it stopped allowing pressure for further such growth to distract it and instead returned to its core purpose as a company.  Could we in the church learn something from this?  One of the challenges is that denominationally and even at a local church level we lack someone with that same level of power that a CEO tends to have.  We also lack the same focus on a few core things.  While we have powerful statements like "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world" they lack the concreteness that would actually help us know what we as a church are supposed to be doing.  Are we meant to be a "third space" in the community like Starbucks?  Can we even compete with companies in that realm?  How do we know when we have made a disciple or transformed the world?  While Jesus gave us really big goals to shoot for, I think to turn the church around we need to hone in on what we are really trying to do.

For the last 40 years mainline churches have been declining in worship attendance and in membership.  Why this is happening is the subject of numerous books, but perhaps just as telling is I am not sure we could actually say why this matters.  Can we actually point to the fact that our decline numbers MEAN we are failing to make disciples or transform the world.  Thanks to our obsession with reporting in the UMC we can say that we have fewer professions of faith, one measure of discipleship and we could also look at our churchwide giving to various missions, one way of transforming the world.  Do these actually tell the whole story?  Maybe we as a church need some concrete sense of what we are going to try and do, what difference we are seeking to make in people's lives, then we would know what to be focused on, what we can look at cutting, and maybe be able in the future to see how things begin to turn around.

"The Dangerous Act of Worship"

As part of my goal to read more books I have been trying to work through the large stash of books I have acquired but not read over the years.  I just finished a book called "The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God's Call to Justice" by Mark Labberton.  In it he talks about how the church, by in large is asleep, that we are failing to respond to the call of the Gospel on us and failing to live out our full potential.  In particular he names the fact that we tend to seek worship services that are comforting rather than disturbing.  He advocates that worship should in fact be something that awakens us to the need to do God's work in the world.

On the one hand I certainly have been guilty of what he has said.  Like most people I want to be liked and so like most people I respond to positive affirmations and shy away from negative ones.  I know that no one wants to hear that they are not giving enough, not doing enough or failing to love their neighbor as much as they should.  Instead we want to hear that we have already done more than enough, that we are well on our way to earning a gold star.  Preaching sermons that challenge us or worship services that raise questions about how much, or maybe how little we are doing runs counter to these tendencies.  At the same time, my reaction is to wonder how often we need "wake-up calls" do we really need to be reminded each week of the work we have to do in the world?  In fact if we emphasized it every week wouldn't we dilute the effect and desensitize ourselves to such a message?

The more I think about this though the more I think that being reminded regularly, even weekly about the need to be doing God's work in the world is exactly why we encourage worship on regular basis.  We need to constantly have this put before us or it gets lost amidst everything else we are doing.  We might have occasional moments of awakening, but generally we become lax if we are not constantly spiritually prodded towards action.  It may be hard to accomplish on a weekly basis, but I think we need to try and make sure our worship does push us out into the week, out into the work we need to do.  Spiritual rest is important.  Sabbath is necessary, but so to is a constant call to action, a constant reminder that justice is what our work is about, loving the least, the last the lost, that is all of us, and bring God's good news into the world.  It is a regular action that needs us, something we must constantly place before us, otherwise we lose sight of it in the midst of all the less-pressing but more present distractions in our lives.

What does it mean to be in a "rebuilding year"

Bishop Sally recently raised an interesting idea in her column for the Minnesota UMC website, http://minnesotaumc.org/BishopsCorner/TheBishopsMessage/tabid/40439/Default.aspx, she raises the question about whether like many sports teams the UMC is in a rebuilding year.  While I would certainly agree that by comparison it does not seem we are positioned for a championship run, nor are we really in a perennial contender category if our continued decline in membership and worship attendance are any indicators.

What does it mean for us to be in a rebuilding year?  In sports that can mean one of several things, it can simply be an excuse to fans while you try and sell tickets in the midst of a slump or it can be a dedicated attempt to try and build up a team from the ground up.  Usually a team that is rebuilding does not look for the quick fix of the free agent hire but instead works on building through drafting good young players and honing their skills through careful coaching and development.  In a rebuilding year the concern is less about attendance numbers, wins and lose, and instead is about growing that new base of players.  Older, popular players are often traded to acquire young talent, more draft picks, or simply to free up salary and save money since their effectiveness will be diminished down the road when the team is ready to move into a contender role.

So what does that mean for the church?  If we are really in a rebuilding time, what are the "young draft picks" we are developing?  Are these new churches? New lay leaders?  New clergy?  New ideas and practices?  What are the old standbys that we need to trade or let go in order to leave room for the new players AND reduce our costs during this phase?

I see two dangerous paths ahead for the church if we are to play this analogy out further ... we risk becoming like the Cubs, a team with an incredibly long drought of not winning 102+ years and counting.  In the last 10 years the Cubs have seemed desperate for a winning season, to take the team to the next level.  They often have signed big name players and gambled their future in hopes of finally winning a World Series title.  This does not seem unlike the UMC, at least as I experience it, prone to jumping after quick fixes and new ideas in a hope of quickly turning things around, afraid to face a long process of rebuilding and more years of loss members and diminishing numbers.  Perhaps a worse fate than being the Cubs is being the Browns, a football team known for losing, whose fans almost seem to relish the loss of hope in their franchise (I may be exaggerating here).  When a team loses so often for so long you almost become numb to the losing, numb to the defeat and truly despairing that any change will make a difference.  I hope this is not where we are at.

If we really are in a "rebuilding year" do we have the patience to see it through?  The willingness to face more loses in hopes of a greater gain?  Are we willing to trade away our current star players and favorites to have a real hope of making disciples and transforming the world?

Growing for Growth's Sake

A month or two ago I did a funeral service for someone without any strong church connection.  For that reason they chose to have the funeral service at the local Eagle Club or Aerie as I believe they call them.  Now I knew about service clubs like the lions, and I was familiar with the Elk and Moose Clubs we had in town but I had never heard of the Eagles.  While I waited for the time of the service I spent some time wandering around looking at the walls.  They had lots of posters extolling the virtues of things like Fraternity and Loyalty.  In addition there was a whole string of awards.  Every award was for growth.  Basically if you club grew in a given year, or decade you got another award for your wall, another patch for your banner.

Now, I know that clubs need to grow, that bring in new people is a healthy thing and all of that, but I walking around and just looking at things I could not figure out what the point of the Eagle Club was expect growing ... well and gathering together to share a few drinks.  I college one of my excuses for not joining a fraternity was that I did not need to pay for my friends.  This seemed a lot like that.  I realize that fraternities are about much more than just paying to have friends ... and I suspect the Eagle Club is the same way, but the message I got was that the point of the club was to grow.

My question is ... are in the church any different?  I am as guilty as the next person of wanting the church to grow just to grow.  As a member of a liberal, mainline denomination I get tired of hearing about how we are dying out, dwindling away.  I would love to be able to have some proof of growth that I could shove back at those who argue this is because of our values, our seminary education, the way we worship, or really anything about us.  I would love to have some scientific proof that our church is not in decline.  But should we be growing for those reasons?  The mission of The United Methodist Church in Minnesota is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  Now disciple making implies some growth, whether it is growth in numbers or just the development of the people who are already a part of the church could be debated.  Transforming the world does not require growth.  Growth might stem from such action and growth would certainly help such action, but growth is not sufficient or even a necessary condition for transformation to occur.

If we were going to have banners and celebrations each year, maybe they should be around transforming the world ... harder to measure than growth, but ultimately what I believe we are called to do.

Beyond the Facts Ma'am

USA Today recently published an article about an increase in young pastors going into seminary.  While the information in the article was well put together what struck me were the listed reasons for young people suddenly coming to seminary in larger numbers.  In the tagline for the article they talked about alturism, demographics, and the economy being factors.  In the text of the article they focused more on increasing demographics and spent some time on denominational efforts, but even then the focus was on scholarships and other incentives or help.  What went under-represented in my mind was the real reason people go to seminary and more importantly become pastors ... a call to ministry.  While scholarships help people repsond to a call and a lack of money can hold someone back from seminary occasionally, I would like to believe that it is not simply an increase in number of young people in general that has cuased the increase in people going into ministry.  The challnge for the church in the midst of this is to not get caught up in these facts but remember we believe in some other factors as well.  I believe that God calls people to ministry not based on demographics or scholarships or anyhting else, but on a need.  To me the rise in people hearing a call to ministry is thanks in part to the work of denominations that encourage young people to know they can be called but also because God is calling more young people to meet a great need we have in the church.  I am reminded of when Jesus talked about needing more workers for the harvest.  From USA Today's perspective the facts are about demographics and scholarships.  From the Church's it is about people help others repond to the call (like Eli does for Samuel) and about how God is calling more people to the work of the Church.  The real story is not about the facts but about what God is still doing in the Church.

Money as Speech

My brother is the Supreme Court expert, not me, but I know at some point the Court determined that use of money is a protected form of free speech.  The Court also recently ruled that corporations are people too ... or at least they get the same rights as us.  Polls seem to indicate that in general people support the idea that giving money to campaigns is a form of free speech and should be protected and thus not restricted.  At the same time I think we have a reluctance to recognize the other ways that we let money speak for us.  Target Corporation recently gave money to support a business minded Political Action Committee (PAC) ... that PAC then gave money to support Emmer, the endorsed GOP candidate for governor in MN.  This obviously upset a portion of Targets faithful shoppers who had no intention of personally giving money to support Emmer and do not like the idea that a fraction, however small, of the money they spend at Target is going to support someone they do not support.  I feel like I could spend a great deal of time discussing the pros and cons of Targets choice to support Emmer (who the PAC considers the better candidate for big companies) but I would rather focus on something else, which is why more of us do not remember that like Target we have the ability to use our money as a form of speech as well.  I am not saying we should all go out and give the legal maximum to whataver candidate or party we support but instead we should consider what other ways we make a statement with our money.  We could make a statement that we do not want companies using profits to make campaign contributions, and not give our business to those companies that do.  Or we make a statement by shopping at local business over big corporations, or buying Fair Trade coffee (or similar brands) instead of other types of coffee.  Every dollar we spend can be used to make a statement, just like ever word we say expresses something.  Are they all of equal importance, probably not, but I feel we do ourselves a disservice if we do not think about what we are saying, with our mouths and with our wallets.  I may not place a lot of trust in corporations, but I do trust that they are willing to do what it takes to make money, and so the message that each of us sends with our dollars makes a difference ... maybe now we just need to be more intentional about what that message is.

Creating Ritual

I have been challenged to create a ritual to help me in the starting of my day off, my Sabbath.  Today it seems like the most prevelant ritual is TGIF ... going out for a drink or something special to initiate the weekend.  Obviously there are more detailed and beautiful rituals in the Jewish faith for the starting of the Sabbath.  Recently I am becoming more and more of the value of ritual and the deliberate work it takes to create them.  Rituals get their power through repetition and through intentionality.  I think my laid-back nature tends to make it hard for me to practice ritual well, but at the same time there are unintentional ways that I am creating ritual all the time.  I say a similar offering prayer every week, moving my hands in similar ways.  I pray the same pray before I preach (unless I forget).  All of these things work, intentionally or otherwise to create rituals for me, for the congregation I serve.

So what are good rituals to create when it comes to time off, Sabbath, the weekend.  Is it a time of silence observed at the end of work ... a release of what I have been working on and an emptying before beginning a time of rest?  Is it a "drink" at the end of the day ... some way of clearly marking that work is done because the fun has begun?  When does the event occur?  At sundown?  When the last meeting is over on Thursday?  Before I leave "the office" or when I get home?  Maybe the reason that pastors, myself include struggle with having a healthy Sabbath time is that we struggle with the boundaries of our Sabbath.  When you work odd hours and work outside an office as well as in it there is not a clear transition point ... that 5 pm Friday commute where you move from the world of work to the world of the weekend.  We talk about boundary violations in ministry a lot, but usually we are referring to boundaries between people.  Instead we maybe need to be talk about boundary violations between our time and God's time ... between work and rest.  To begin to talk about that I think we first need to find ways to mark the boundaries ... otherwise it is hard to know when we have crossed the line.  Pastors really do need ritual to help us move from one space to another.