Right Mindfulness

I cannot recall of the top of my head whether Right Mindfulness is a term I picked up from reading the Tao of Pooh or from Buddhism classes in college, but it seems like a particularly striking notion to me now. Not because I am finding myself in the right frame of mind, but because I am reminded time and time again that it is important. One of the great challenges of church planting ... I think more than simply being the pastor of a more established congregation is the day to day waves that shift and challenge my perspectives, my right mindfulness. One day I will feel like I am riding high, things are going well and the next I will find myself mired in the midst of challenges, faced with the overwhelming knowledge of everything that is still to be done. The challenge seems to be that everything in church planting is so fluid, or at least it feels that way. I am reminded of the line from a hymn "on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." While I try to live that out in some ways I feel Christ is not the rock on which I stand, but the lighthouse that I orient myself towards in the midst of a storm. Though the waves go up and down, I face towards Christ ... that is the right mindfulness that I seek.

Cleaning House

When I was a kid I was terrible at doing my chores around the house ...
ok ... full disclosure, I am still terrible about doing my chores around the house. When company is coming, or my wife is coming home from a long trip I can find the drive and the energy to get the work done, but day to day stuff is not my strong suit. When I was a kid though I never minded helping clean other places, whether it was doing stuff at school or at a friend's house.

I feel like we see the same thing when it comes to church work. People will drive hundreds of miles to do a mission trip but will not want to help people in their own backyards. Every year Park UMC struggles to get their members to work at their booth at the Crow Wing County Fair. Every year Hamline UMC struggles to get member to work at the MN State Fair. However without really trying my wife and have managed to find 20+ youth from Light of the Lakes and Grace, two smaller churches who are willing to go to the Cities to help out.

I guess it makes sense ... no one likes to do the work they HAVE to do ... we like the freedom to choose what we do, even it is the same kind of work we resist doing. I suppose this is why the maverick heros are so popular. Maybe this is why so many people struggle with faith. One of the key steps in the 12 step program is accepting a higher power. An implication to that can mean accepting that there are things we have to do because of that higher power. A relationship with God seems to imply things we have to do. What we really need to do is find a relationship filled with things we want to do. We need to remind people that a relationship with God is not about subservance but joyful service. Now if only I could think joyful about the dishes at home with my name on them or the jungle ... I mean lawn that surrounds my house.

Starting a new appointment

Before anyone who reads this gets confused, no, I am not being reappointed, it just feels like it. Right now I am stuck in the middle of changing two jobs at once. My role at Light of the Lakes has been switching from pastor to church planter. With this switch suddenly my hours are less concerned with sermon and worship prep and instead are focused on how I can reach out and meet new people and working with my launch team to make things happen. Basically one of the main goals to get out of the office and out of my comfort zone and to do more things in the community. Unfortunately that is running counter with my other "new" appointment, which is the temporary "sole" pastor at Park. With Rory on sabbatical in Australia I get the joy of providing the pastor care and limited leadership for all of Park's members. This means I also have increased pressure to be in the office at the same time, since that is a great way to keep a pulse on the congregation. All of this combines to really feel in some ways like a new appointment. I am having to rethink how I structure my work week. I am learning and being reminded of different things I need to make sure get done and I am taking on a whole host of new responsibilities. The bonus though is that I don't have to move to get all of this. It reminds me of those first few days a year ago when I sat in the office and tried to figure out what in the world I was supposed to be doing as a pastor. Three years later the feeling is still the same. It is kinda nice that ministry remains fresh, new and interesting.

NYC

I had the chance on my recent vacation to see New York City. This was my first time seeing the Big Apple and was excited to see what all the fuss was about. Having lived in Chicago for a couple of years I was not exactly a small town kid coming to the big city for the first time. Still even my experiences in Chicago did not fully prepare me for the mass of humanity that is NYC.

I think the thing I struggle with in NY is really the lack of private space, the notion that almost everyone shares some space with someone else, often a lot of someones. Having spent most of my life in a quiet suburb I am not used to having to share so much space. The fact that cost of living forces people into tiny spaces and economic realities emphasize the importance of sharing that space is just foreign to me.

Not only is living space shared, but so to is open space. Central Park becomes the space to get away from cramped living conditions, as long as you are willing to share it with thousands of other people. What is most unnerving to me about all of this is the way it leads to dehumanizing those around us. I walk around Brainerd/Baxter and expect to met someone I know. With so many people around in NY you begin to not care who is around. It is hard to care about and give care to people in need because you see so many. The result seems not to be to help open our eyes to the needs of those around us, but in fact force us to close our eyes, because we just get used to it.

I only have my limited experiences living in Chicago, the Twin Cities, and visiting NYC, but I wonder if the number of people around us changes how we think about people. Do we have a limited capacity to care? Are we limited in how many people we can recognize as individuals and not just another person, part of the mass of humanity and so ironically less human to us? Is the benefit of a small community not just the quieter way of life but the benefit that we can keep seeing people as people. We have the space to be ourselves and to let other people be themselves and see everyone around us as being human.

Just my musings for the moment.

The point of debate

Garrison Keeler, in "A Prairie Home Companion" jokingly talked about a Lutheran Synod meeting where people stood up and said the same things they had been saying to each other for 15 years and neither side changing their minds. Today I read in Star Tribune that often appeals courts, such as the Minnesota Supreme Court have often made up their minds on cases based on the briefs put before them before oral arguments begin and that oral arguments often do little to change people's minds about things. This certainly resonates with my own experiences of debates in student government and also my own personal experiences in matters of faith I have been involved in where it rarely mattered what was said since both sides had already dug in on their side of the issue.

So the question that I am musing on today is, if debate does not seem to really make a difference, why do we value it so much? Why do we spend so much time in structured arguments if they so rarely result in a change in opinion. Is it all about posturing for the future? Do we just hold out the hope that hearts/minds will change? Or is it just important that everyone have the chance to have their say, even if it likely won't matter? Maybe it really tells us that we all need to be more open minded when we enter into these conversations. In the end I think it is telling that often we value people saying what they think rather than valuing listening to them, or having the conversation make a difference outside the debate.

The Learning Curve

I was at a training event for Rethink Church this weekend and one of the other learners at the event raised the question/concern that just as churches are getting the hang of websites we have Facebook and that is followed quickly by Twitter and who knows what is next. It is hard to stay on top of the new technologies and possibilities for ministry. Only having been in the ministry for the least 3 years I can only imagine what is like for people who have been doing it for a lot longer. The impression that I have gotten is that the changes in how technology aids ministry have increased, with notably fewer changes in the 80's than the 90's and even more changes in this decade than the 90's which brought the advent of email and websites, though churches often took their time getting on board with both of those.

One of the biggest challenges I think for the church is that our learning practices are not built for this sort of rapid learning. Churches, like many other institutions are generally adverse to change. Often it takes pressure from leadership and official workshops and mandates to get people to take seriously the need to do something new, like have a website, or a Facebook presence. The problem is that by the time our leadership has seen the need and figured out how to train for it, it is really too late. We often use the language of people being life-long learners. What I always think of when I hear this is taking classes, doing workshops, engaging in formal opportunities to expand my knowledge. Institutions across professions encourgage this by rewarding and often requiring continuing education credits. Unfortuntely the kind of education we really need is something that we cannot get credit for. I am not aware of a formal system to get credit for learning how to use Twitter and researching what churches and other groups are using it for. The classes on things like that happen in conversations with other clergy struggling with the same questions. They happen on message boards and blogs, as groups of people talk about success and analysize failures.

Life-long learner is good. It is good from a practical standpoint and it is what we are meant to do spiritually. At the same time maybe what we need more of is an attitude of life-long experimentation and collaboaration. Light of the Lakes is in the midst of doing something different. We are not the first church to do it, but we are certainly one of the first. We are in a position to try new things and look at things in different ways. For the church to do the best it can to be the Church, we need to keep that attitude of holy experimentation, to not limit ourselves to what has been done and what is proven to work but instead to free us up for trying new things, to work together and fail together, and to share what we learn in that to help the Church grow and reach new people. Because that is really why we are called to learn, collaborate, and experiment, to fullfill our great commission, not our continuing education requirement.

Religion

I had the pleasure of being a part of an informational session/conversation on Thursday about Islam. In addition to deepening my understanding of the faith I was reminded me of the things I should have learned in World Religions class if I had been more awake or done more of the readings. Not only that, I also gained an interesting insight about my own faith and chosen religion. The presenter started by asking the question of what a religion was. The purpose of this was to highlight the understanding of the Islamic faith, specifically that Islam is not just about what you believe but is also a product of how you live that faith/belief.

This to me is a great way of looking at Christianity and what we should be emphasizing as well. I do not know enough about other faith traditions, in particular to comment on how well they put their understanding of living out faith into practice, but my experience of Christianity is that end up concerning ourselves too often with orthodoxy (correct thinking) instead of orthopraxy (correct practice). Denominations and individuals fall into the trap of arguing about how the Bible is meant to be understood, read, or what exactly it means. We split hairs, parse out meaning and ultimately do little more than dig ourselves deeper into theological trenches. My worry is simply shifting the conversation to orthopraxy does not fix it. I fear that all that will do is turn the philosphical, analytic cannons of our faith on a new target. Instead of arguing about issues of theology we will end up arguing if using a reusable bag at the grocery store is really a way to live out our faith.

Ulimately it seems to me that problem is not the Doxy or the Praxy, but the Ortho that goes before it. If we stop worrying about getting it exactly right we will have a lot more room for belief and from belief will come action. Religion gets reduced and codify, so we can say if someone is Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, and know what it means. Instead we should worry more about how people of all faiths live them out in the world. None of this is to say I don't have a sense of both a correct orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Afterall, I need something I think is right in order for me to act, but it is not productive to simply worry about getting everything right, because I will never achieve that. At some point we need to go out and try this whole faith thing out, see what it is like to live our faith in the real world and let our faith define who we are, not just in terms of believe but in terms of action, then we really will be religious.