Posts Tagged ‘Church’

« Older Entries

44 Catholic Elementary School and 4 High Schools Closing

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Working in the church world is terrifying.  For many – parishonier, priest, pastor, teacher, student – these are tumultuous times.   Evidence abounds – from the closing of many local Catholic churches and schools (Link) to the struggles within this denomination and its flag ship schools. So how is it that we move forward?

We start with a candid acknowledgement of what is.  In the book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins wrote of the “Stockdale Paradox.”  To restate the paradox, it is the ability to (a) candidly acknowledge the brutal facts and (b) maintain hope.  From a spiritual perspective, it is the prophetic imagination which is able to live in both of those worlds.

And what “is” – the brutal facts –  is that fact that a model of church that many of those reading this blog grew up in is unraveling.  There is less interest in and financial support for traditional churches and schools. This is arguably part of a growing apathy around the topic of “church” evident in America today.  (A recent survey listed 15% of Americans as having no religious affiliation.  In 1951 that number was 1%.)

So where does one go?  I believe a starting point is simply repentance – candidly acknowledging that church and religious education are irrelevant to many because we as the church body have made it so.   The author Donald Miller, author of “Blue Like Jazz”, got that and in an evangelization effort on the campus of Reed College set up a confession booth not to hear confessions but to make them, to apologize on behalf of Christianity for all the misguided ways in which church as an institution hurt others.

What are the sins we need to confess?

  1. Church has become far too synonymous with politics.
  2. Church has largely disengaged from the world and its problems
  3. Church has become more concerned with theological correctness than healing (Water or grape juice at the holy supper anyone?)
  4. Clergy often view themselves as detached resident experts vs. fellow travelers
Summarized maybe we have made church more “a museum for Saints than a hospital for Sinners.”
What then is the way out?  We start with “unlearning” and then move to “radical.”  These words by the Richard Rohr get right to it.  ”Enlightenment is not about knowing as much as it is about unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is more about entering a vast mystery than arriving at a mental certitude. Enlightenment knows that grace is everywhere, and the only reasonable response is a grateful heart and the acknowledgment that there is more depth and meaning to everything. A too quick and easy answer is invariably a wrong one.”
What we “know” then – which is our past experience – maybe one of our biggest blocks.  The quick and easy answer I see many churches trying is to simply try to work at the failing system better.  So we work at preaching and teaching better but it is within an unraveling system.    All that needs “unlearned.”  And that unlearning starts with a painful question we prayerfully must ask God, “How do we serve others?”
Off course you read and think – “painful”?  what is that about?  Service is easy.  My answer – NO.  Because if you really want to ask that question it means you give up that church or school is for us or for our kids.  It is for others.
And that is radical – radical in the true meaning of the word – a word which means “roots.”  The disciples thankfully never thought of the very first Christian “church” as being about them and their needs. It then gets us back to ancient future Christianity – the core of the New Church message, a world in which if we do the work, getting ourselves out of the way, the blessings as Emanuel Swedenborg phrased it, can spread “contagiously.”  What we most need are the guts to both honor the past and let it go.  Then we can start the wonderful journey of living the question!
And there is interest folks in that question.  There is reason for hope as we turn around.  People have an innate, God given desire to know more of God, to experience God, to engage His Word and Work in all its various forms.  These challenging times are painful, true, but also a necessary winnowing as we get back to what Christianity can be, redefining and refining its meaning for this generation.  The work of repentance is good work.   It is good work because that is where hope lies.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

Allowing the Work to Gather Us

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Writing here on the first day of 2012, I am thinking of the blessing in allowing the work to gather us.  Maybe our corporate New Year’s Resolution?

Much of life is the pivot toward gathering around the Work, written eloquently of here by Richard Rohr:

The Christian life is a matter of becoming who we already are, and allthat we truly are! Can you imagine that? Is the seed already within you—of all that God wants you to be? Do you already know at some level who you authentically are? Are you willing to pay the price? Even the mistrust of others? Could that be what we mean by having a unique “soul”? Most saints thus described the path as much more unlearningthan learning. There are so many illusions and lies that we must all unlearn. And one of the last illusions to die is that we are that different or that separate, and finally we are all one and amazingly the same. Differentiation seems to precede union and communion, for some strange reason.

As he notes, it is the True Self in God coming alive.  And there is a cost.  Are we willing to pay the price?  In a culture that worships the private, the individual, and the inviolate sanctity of personal thoughts and opinions – which are very good, to a point – the price is obvious.  We may in the end be called to give up those vary things that got to that point, to the “pivot.”  ”Unlearning” carries a cost.

As the New Church theologian Emanuel Swedenborg put it, our task then is straightforward in this great “unlearning.”

Abstain from evil, and do what is good, and believe in the Lord with your whole heart and your whole soul, and the Lord will love you and give you love for what you do and faith in what you believe. Then you will do what is good because of love, and you will believe because you have faith, which is confidence.  And if you persevere like this a reciprocal partnership [with God and others] will develop and become permanent.  That is salvation itself and eternal life.   

To get our selves out of the way, we need to allow the Work to gather us.  What is the Work?  It is the work of compassion, love, service, sharing, teaching, reaching, stretching.  If you put that all into one word it would be “church”, not in an institution of orthodoxy but as a living, breathing universal BEING.

So for 2012, lets allow the work to gather us!

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

Christmas

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

So it is easy to imagine what I should write about Christmas. It is difficult maybe to find words around what I am called to write.

We are building a church. That journey led us through several major crises including the February budget reductions. And where, maybe, we now find ourselves is in a far more quite and humble place… a place to simply listen to the quiet call of what this is all about.

The profoundness of that place is so well seen in the spirit of Christmas. I am not talking here of the muscular, amped up Christianity out to solve all the wrongs of the world but of the gentle, compassion filled, patient Christianity that I believe lies closer to God’s heart and settles us into a place where He can truly be born again in our lives.

What of that birth? We find Him on the margins, in a stable. We find Him at night, in reduced circumstances. We find Him in life as we live it – uninvited but brilliant in His showing. We find Him in each other, His gentle spirit showing itself in the profound love growing in this community who were strangers one to another a few short years ago.

“Peace on earth. Goodwill to men” – God’s “mission statement” as extolled by the angels at Christmas. In the book “True Christianity”, Emanuel Swedenborg put it this way. “Goodwill makes the connection because God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; He can benefit us … indirectly through each other.”

“Goodwill makes the connection.” The more goodwill takes root in our DNA as individuals and as a church body, the more we join a wider movement, more profound level of change… the more we make the connection.

I shared with my sister a few nights ago that through this journey, I feel like I am now privy to a secret, as in something not everybody knows (yet!:)) That “secret” is not NewChurch LIVE. That secret is falling into the immense grace of God, a sky on fire with His love, and a community of angels-in-training.

Blessing to all!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

Can you see the 11 Point Buck?

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

Walking through a local water shed recently, I stopped to take a moment to look out into the woods to a creek beyond.  A hawk was in a tree.  And there strolling through the woods was an 11 point buck (male deer).  For those not raised in countryside of Western Pennsylvania, that is a BIG deer, a patriarch, a trophy.  Can you see the buck in the photo?

I saw the buck plain and clear.  Snapped numerous photos.  Went home.  Downloaded the photos and realized it is almost impossible for someone looking at the photograph to see the deer.

Being a church trying to struggle forward in fits and starts with a new paradigm within its denominational setting is similar. It is hard to get others to see it.  It is hard to “show”, hard to explain.  And yet it is there.

“Church” is moving far beyond buildings and denominational labels.  In a recent interview with George Barna, Barna spoke of a new generation far more interested in being the church than going to church.  He noted some statistics that point to this demographic shift.  In 2000, 60 to 65% of people experienced/ expressed their spirituality through conventional church environments.  5% gained that experience through other small groups – i.e. 12 Steps Programs, Mother’s Groups, as well as 5% who experienced it via the media.  By 2025, if current trends hold, 30 – 35% of people will experience/ express their spirituality through conventional church environments.  30 – 35% will express it through alternative small groups and another 30% will experience it via the media.

Do you see it?  Can you see the figurative buck in the photo in terms of a new vision for church?

See right there imbedded within those demographic shifts  could be our call to serve as a church.  For example, look at our ministries.  Currently Strength, Women’s Ministry, and A Course in Miracles are all hosted by NCL but not created or run by NCL.  We have folks who attend these programs who do not and may never attend a Sunday Service.  A second example are our online programs.  More people join us online than in person.  For the vast majority, they tune it, watch parts of services, and then move on.  Are they forming small groups?  Sharing links?  Probably and we will never know the full extent of sharing.

I think as well to the Wedding Ministry.  Last week I officiated at a 4th funeral that grew out of the wedding ministry.  That would have been unthinkable 10 years ago because a pastor served his congregation, not those outside of it. That to me now sounds deeply archaic.  I think pastors will serve wider and wider audiences many of whom will not be directly involved in the church.  The definition of congregations is widening dramatically.

What then of the Sunday service?  Of the institutional church know as NCL?  Those will be critical I believe in the same way the “hub” of  a wheel is significant.  Those elements will collect and equip a “core” that in turn will help grow other new and exciting ministries.  And for those of us who constitute that core, we will be called to take a deep service orientation towards our work.  If we focus myopically on attendance as the sole barometer of performance of bring people in vs. us serving out, we will miss the very point of how we are trying to serve.  What we will need is to be willing to dedicate time, treasure, and talent to creating that strong “hub” or “core” that in turn will allow us to better serve God going forward in this new and exciting era.   Christian New Church theology calls us there – a foundational belief in spiritual freedom shaped around core principles, and a profound respect for the individual’s spiritual journey.

Look at God’s Word from Isaiah:

“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.  What kind of house will you build for me?  Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things?”

He is speaking to a rather expansive view of the Church!

 

 

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in Thoughts | 1 Comment »

What As A Pastor I Really Want To Share

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Last night my son Gannon, aged 11, volunteered to quit school in order to save the family money.  (He attends a New Church elementary school.)  The year has not gotten off to an easy start for him so this bright fellow felt that it would (a) help him and (b) help the family finances.  I told him that though he might be happy with me now, he would surely be disappointed in me 10 years down the road.  And I believe that.

And I believe that there are things a Pastor needs to share that may actually be uncomfortable to share.   That discomfort comes from my ego frankly.  I want to be “liked” and saying challenging things means running the risk of being “disliked.”  What are those things that require sharing with this amazing congregation that in turn might put us in a good place maybe not today but maybe 10 years down the road?

Church Is Not Always Fun

We live in a consumer economy, one that creates an atmosphere of hyper-attentiveness to whether or not something “sells.”  Faith is a hard “sell” so many churches slowly, over time, and out of a legitimate concern for self preservation frankly lean towards “entertainment” over “engagement.”  Church offers environments of hope, healing, prayer etc… none of which frankly are all that sexy.  But they are real.  That means the simple act of showing up for the good series/ sermon as well as the bad series/ sermon is laudable.  It is a simple discipline.  Preaching requires a reaching to both ends of the spectrum – to those whose lives are in a place of celebration and those whose lives are in a place desperation.  Showing up for both supports both.

The World Is Changing

37% of all families in the US now live beneath the Poverty Line as compared to 5% of retirees.  The number of Americans living below the Poverty Line is now at all time high.  Global warming is real.  Governments in the Western Hemisphere are facing increasing stringent budget demands which in turn will limit government’s ability to address various social and economic issues.  We are approaching finite limitations.  These are real facts – structural limitations – and as John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things.”  And, the joyous blessing, is that we can be part of the answer.

We Can Be Part Of The Answer

We can part of the answer.  The success of NewChurch LIVE does not depend on the right music, the perfect sermon, the internet, funding from the General Church or foundations.  It depends on us.  We get to choose. We get to choose if we support the endeavor with our time, talent, and treasure.  If we as a group do that, we will be successful.  If we don’t, we won’t.  That is a very different perspective than that of church-as-entertainment.  As a congregation and community, we are not working for tips for a good performance.  We are working to be part of the answer.

New Church Christianity as a life style can be integral to a new framing.  Christianity offers a perspective, a way to hold the challenges moving forward.  It does not give specific programatic answers but Christ clearly addressed how to hold poverty – spiritual and physical – as well other issues facing us in 2011.

New Church Christianity calls us to stretch in pursuit of those answers.  Emanuel Swedenborg wrote in the book “True Christianity” that the failure to stretch means “our mind collapses in on itself” – a collapse we unfortunately experience as a narcotic, creating a happily detached sleep.

That being said, we can choose to stretch, to be awake, and in that stretch we will find joy, a joy that in turn provides a far greater “rest” and “peace” than doing nothing.

Closing

I read a recent article titled “What Your Congregation Most Wants You To Know.”  Loved the title and loved the first thing the article listed.  What a congregation most wants the pastor to know is that church is not the most important thing in their life.  I say to that – thank goodness!  My relationship with God, my spouse, and my kids all outrank my relationship with church.  I would imagine that should be true for all of us.

We should not then sacrifice our most important relationships to serve church.  And, that being said, church deserves our attention and financial backing.  With that help it in turn can support and enhance those relationships as well as lives of grace, meaning and beauty here on earth.  I imagine a day where Christianity flourishes anew, a flourishing that grows not out of an “entertainment” orientation but out of a candid, sober acknowledgment that Jesus actually knew what He was talking about, what He was living, and that His words guide, comfort, and heal in uncertain times.  This is what we can discover in one unique place – church.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

The Acceptable Year of the Lord

Monday, March 21st, 2011

If Jesus showed up at church, what words would He offer?  Well, fun that we know what words He did offer when given that opportunity.  The words we looked at came from Luke 4.  Especially instructive to look at the verbs – the actions – in this sermonette.  They are engaging to read in light of the brevity of His comments – He said a great deal in a very short period of time – something critical in this day and age.

The verbs in His charge …

  1. preaching
  2. healing
  3. recovering
  4. freeing

What was deeply moving for me is the sense of peace about the mission of church these words speak to.  These were the verbs Jesus chose in addressing His hometown synagogue.  It is so easy to place “church” into an economic context –  if a church is growing and making money, it is doing what it is supposed to do. That is not what these words speak to.  A church is doing its job if it is speaking to what is true, being a healing presence in the world, helping those who are recovering and freeing those who are metaphorically imprisoned.  If a church does this, I imagine it will of course grow and be financially healthy but those two criteria are not the point.

Not easy to do.  Jesus was not at all interested in engaging theological or doctrinal debate.  His was a clear call to action, a call that when we hear, becomes the “acceptable year of the Lord.”  That is the place to build a church from.

Tags: ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

What If?

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Views of church evolve.

For many of us church begins as the bastion of law, order, tradition.  Religion then plays out as morality, as codes, as creeds, and as attendance.  What if though church, like our faith, was designed to evolve?

Christian New Church theology is filled with numerous references to what can be described as “mutual indwelling.”   In the Gospel of John, Jesus offers a wonderful prayer of oneness, or as one theologian phrased it, of “cascading unity” that speak to mutual indwelling – unity with Him and the Father, with us, with those who will know Him in the future.   The unity literally spills out of the prayer.

In our faith system, that very unity spills out again into areas such as marriage, work, service – all areas where the unity can be experienced.  It is also experienced in our connection with the spiritual world, not a connection of soothsayers and swamis, but a connection of heart and thought.  When experienced, “belief” in a dogmatic sense becomes less a priority and caring and the wisdom growing from it gains its rightful seat.  Morality, codes, creeds, and attendance follow a similar path – giving way to compassion, simplicity, intuition, and engagement.  Divinity becomes grounded in our humanity.

What if?  What if church evolved to a celebration of the mutual indwelling we have with God and with one another?  Such a shift is not without pain – I am absolutely convinced that opening to God and to others actually opens us to more synchronicity in terms of pain.  Likewise it opens the joyous space for co-creation.   And such a shift may be just where the Christian church is headed.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

Is there Life before Death?

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

As is well noted, for most of us the burning question is not if there is life on the other side of death but is there life on this side of death?  As Thoreau noted, most of us live lives of quiet desperation.

One way to hold the choices this presents is to understand repentance as the gentle nudging by God to change our view of happiness.  In that sense the death in this life – the quiet desperation – can actually become one of the most life giving forces in our life if we use it to recast our vision our happiness.  As one author phrased it, “Sometimes we must cry in the wilderness, even when no one is listening, even when it is not changing people, just to keep the common untruth from changing us.”

I take that to mean that we need to be rather serious about not allowing the “untruth” to change us.  We are not American Christians, or Democratic Christians, or Republican Christians.  We are Christians, period.  The other identities are secondary.    That is not to re-break the world yet again into “us” and “them” but to simply say that Christianity is entirety – that we rest in God – that our secondary identifications are to be held within the primary model of identification – Jesus.   Much of the power of what Swedenborg called the universal church grows from that place.

If exclusivity, snobbery, clubishness grows, we not only missed the Christian message, we warped the Christian message.  The Christian message is that in surrender to that greater identity we will know life, we will respond with life, we will give life.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Small Groups | No Comments »

Christian Evolution

Friday, September 24th, 2010

New Church theology posits that the growth of faith, historically, moved through several “churches” – groups who had a deep understanding of God and His Word.  Some of that was specific to a given church body.  Other elements were far more broad, more shared as it were, constituting a church of the heart, a universal church that crossed denominational boundaries.

Each phase was inaugurated within God’s plan to uniquely serve humanity at that time.  Within the Christian tradition, that means the Old Testament was to serve humanity at that time as was the New Testament and as is New Church theology for this time.   Each builds and adds on to what went before, adding its own unique layer of meaning to what preceded.  As each sows itself together, married with experience, it constitutes for a Word for now.

The author Parker Palmer wrote: “All of our propositions and practices are earthen vessels. All of them are made by human beings of common clay to hold whatever we think we’ve found in our soul-deep quest for the sacred or in its quest for us. If our containers prove too crimped and cramped to hold the treasure well, if they domesticate the sacred and keep us from having a live encounter with it—or if they prove so twisted and deformed that they defile rather than honor the treasure they were intended to hold—then our containers must be smashed and discarded so we can create a larger and more life-giving vessel in which to hold the treasure.”

At a certain point we do outgrow the older forms he references. losing touch with the treasure within.  We then need to find “a more life-giving vessel.”  That does not change the sacredness of revelation.  It does however call us to be aware of the “pots” we place it in, including worship and Christian community.

Just as revelation “moves”, so much churches.    The trouble  is “when any religion insists that the treasure cannot be carried except in their earthen vessels ….”

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

Dig one deep well. Not many shallow ones. (Gandhi)

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Faith is often an intensely person experience.  It also atrophies when undertaken as a purely solo flight.

One can absolutely count on a formal church letting one down.  Imperfect human beings – including you and me – populate all religious institutions.

This makes it hard to stick with a formal religious organization.  The disappointments will come making it hard to take root in one place long enough to “dig one well deep.”

So why “stick”?  Because we need that deep well.  Because part of the digging is moving through the inevitable disappointments that all man-made institutions give rise to.  Because one deep well might not seem that important in times of plenty but is critical in times of drought.

This is part of why faith is so deeply counter-cultural.  We play by a “winner’s script” in which we often give the rather trite advice, when faced with disappointments, to do “what you feel like doing.”  I am a big advocate for feelings, for emotions.  I also cringe when I hear that advice being glibly dispensed.  I work with people all the time who suffer from wounds because they or someone they know did what they “felt like doing.”

Maybe that is again the power of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  Jesus was asking His 12 disciples – dig one deep well.  Don’t be afraid.  Stick with your feelings and move through them.  There is a spring – eternal water – for those who can remain in one place long enough to dig.

Tags: ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

« Older Entries