authentic – Page 4 – Salvaged Faith

putting your money where your mouth is… even if it hurts

Recently there has been a call on some of the social media outlets I follow… a call to take money out of the big banks.

As a part of the larger “occupy”movement, people are being asked to put their money where their mouth is… literally… and close their accounts with the the big guys on Wall Street and to move that money to local banks and community credit unions. A link to the pledge can be found here: http://www.rebuildthedream.com/move-your-money/

I like this idea. I appreciate local businesses. I like the accountability that comes when you are in personal contact with the people who take care of your money. I like that it is more than just feet on the ground complaining about things they don’t like, but people willing to make changes in their personal lives based upon the message they are preaching.

I don’t like what doing this would do to my personal credit rating.
When the pledge first crossed my desk, I immediately went and started searching for information on the statewide United Methodist supported credit union. I looked at loan rates and credit card rates and started doing the math to see what kind of a personal financial impact it would have if I closed my accounts with the “big banks” and moved my debt and my checking account somewhere more local.

My Bank of America credit line has been around for over 11 years. As a freshamn in college, I caved to the credit card pressure… but it was a “Working Assets” card – and they donated 1% every year to non-profits that you get to choose. At the time, I justified my decision, thinking it was the “conscientious choice”… if I was going to have a credit card, that’s the one I wanted. But they were bought out by the big guys and I’ve been with BoA ever since. Because I have been with them for a while, and pay my bills faithfully, it is also my largest line of credit.

The only line of credit I have with Citigroup is fairly new… and I opened the card to transfer some balances with no interest so that I could work on paying off debt from college/seminary/long-distance-relationship-plane-tickets…

To close the first account and to open a new one would drastically reduce both my average age of open credit lines and my open card utilization percentage… thereby significantly affecting my credit score (especially since I have that newer line of credit from only a year ago).

To transfer balances would involve fees and especially with the Citigroup account, I still have another year of no interest and would rather spend that time paying off that little amount, rather than incurring another fee and having to pay interest.

Argh…

Sometimes, doing something that is seems right, hurts. Taking a stand involves personal cost. Finding the courage to literally put our money where our mouth is… priceless.

(sorry, I couldn’t resist).

But we should spend time wrestling with financial questions.

Where is my money invested?
Who benefits from my money/debt?
What kind of transformative change does the power of a single dollar have?

Does my bank align with my values?

What kind of damage does debt do to my spiritual life?

What does your spending say about your spiritual life?
All sorts of thoughts are rolling around in my head, all as a result of a little tweet.

What tires you?

Posted on October 4, 20112 Comments

I recently had my annual interview with my conference superintendent. We talked about what was going on in the church, the joys and the struggles of ministry in a small town like Marengo, and I had a chance to talk about what I feel is a calling to revitalize small to medium sized churches like the one I am currently serving.

But about three fourths of the way through our conversation, he stopped me and said: A few times now you have used phrases like “in a rut,” “tired,” and “wears me out.” What is going on with that?

I had not even realized that I had been doing it. And as I sat there and thought, my work had very little to do with why I was feeling that way.

My ministry was feeling some of the side effects of what was going on in other parts of my life.

So I’ve been thinking really hard this week about what exactly it is that is wearing me out. Stress, conflict, exhaustion in some areas of our lives bleed through to the ones that are going well. So you can’t ignore it. You have to figure it out and work on dealing with it.

What is wearing me out?

To have a baby or not

It seems like everyone around me is pregnant or just had a baby. I’m twenty-nine years old and I was convinced that I would have babies (yes, plural) by this point. But my husband doesn’t want children. He can’t imagine how they would fit into our crazy, busy lives. And he’s right. Our lives as they are right now don’t work for children. They would have to change. I am okay with that, he’s not.

So, for months now, we have been avoiding the conversation. And not having a conversation is as hard as having it. I mean, how do you compromise on something like that? Either we have kids or we don’t… One of us is going to not get our way. And that reality in itself is hard for someone like me, who wants it to be fair for everyone, to deal with.

But, we finally did it. We had the conversation. A big, long conversation. As I thought about all of the things that I am asking my husband to compromise on in this life as a pastor’s spouse (where we live, when we move, what kind of community we live in, potentially asking his own work to take a back seat at some point), I want to try to let him have this one. And in the end, I promised that I would live into the reality and sit with the idea that we aren’t going to have kids. As I have done this these past few weeks, it has been easier. The craziness that is teenage life expressed among my youth group kids helps (yikes! I pity you parents!). Having adorable nephews and a niece to pour out all of my love on makes a huge difference (I can spoil them and wind them up and then leave!). And considering the fact that I have not had a weekend free since the middle of August, our lives really are just too crazy to stick a baby into the middle of it right now.

That doesn’t mean that every time I see a baby I don’t get a twinge in my heart. It doesn’t mean that I’m 100% okay with not having kids. But I love my husband. And to be honest, I love my crazy and busy life, too. And so we are going to try to make this decision work. But, please, for now, stop asking when we are going to have kids!

Family stress

There is a lot going on in my extended family right now that also adds stress and conflict and emotional burdens to my life right now. So much so that as I sat in a funeral for a friend’s grandparents this past weekend, the tears just would not stop. I’m mourning the loss of what was and it feels like we can never go back… the relationships are so damaged that I really cannot see a way forward. Carrying that pain is exhausting, but letting it go means that I have given up.

That conflict seems to also affect other relationships that are experiencing conflict… ones that would not have been so burdensome otherwise. When I see firsthand what happens when problems are not addressed, and then watch other people in my life make similar choices to sweep things under the rug, I cringe, imagining the worst of what might happen.

I am so grateful for my brothers who are right there beside me walking this hard road and I can already see the ways that my family has been brought closer together as we protect and love and support one another… and as we commit ourselves to talking about what is going on in our lives, instead of pretending.

Exercise? What’s that?
The hard part about really loving your work is that it takes over your life if you let it. And I have. It has been so flexible lately that I don’t have a routine for my home life. And so I’m doing good things and come home tired and instead of taking care of myself (especially my body), I sit in front of the television and let my brain turn into a pile of goo. Exercise gives endorphins and makes you feel good and I just have not been keeping up with it lately. But my mom and I are going to start holding one another accountable and that should help. =)

Our lives need balance and they need support. When one area of our relationships or work or health is not functioning fully, the whole system can fall apart. So take a good hard look… what is tiring you out? And what can you do to take that seriously?

a day in the life…

Posted on September 21, 2011Leave a comment

7:00am – alarm goes off

8:10am – start thinking about getting out of bed

8:30am – phone conversation with Trustee chairperson about the new shingles for the parsonage roof

8:50am – arrive at church, small talk with folks gathering for the Tuesday morning small group.

9:05am – phone call with Memorial chair about some checks that came in

9:10am – check emails, put checks into envelopes to pay some church bills

9:30am – Tuesday morning small group: food, devotions, prayer, conversation

11:00am – check in with some members of our co-missioned coordinating team to plan event on October 1

11:15am – scripture reading and exploring commentaries to get ready for Sunday

12:00pm – time spent thinking about hymns for Sunday interspersed with facebook (seeing what is going on in colleagues and members lives)

12:15pm – phone call with congregation member about an upcoming wedding

12:50pm – head home for lunch, heat up leftovers and watch an episode or two of Dr. Who

3:30pm – back to church to meet up with a youth… visit with a member and help transport some items being donated to Women at the Well (prison congregation)

4:45pm – conversation on the side of the road to coordinate a visit with some church folk

5:00pm – back home to make dinner: chicken, sauteed musrooms, wild rice

6:45pm – back to church for Lay Leadership meeting

7:10pm – start our meeting with devotions, discuss calling all who serve and changes in our organizational structure

8:10pm – head home. pajamas. computer.

9:30pm – movie with the husband

11:45pm – bed

something to identify as

Posted on September 12, 20111 Comment

I heard a song on the radio this evening by Patrick Stump featuring Lupe Fiasco called, “This City.” It’s a new single, it has an okay beat and the lyrics are kind of lame. As one listener texted in, it sounds like a song that should be on high school musical. Teen pop, whatever.

But as I sat there thinking about the lyrics, I thought, here are two guys who are totally proud of their city, in spite of all of the bad things that happen in it. They mention corruption and gentrification and racism and even the weather, but they love that city (Chicago) anyways.

My emergent cohort read this month Tony Jones’ new book “The Church is Flat.” He describes a relational ecclesiology that he finds within emergent theology and emergent congregations across the United States. Being his doctoral dissertation, it is a bit heavy, but was a good mental exercise to explore.

As I drove in the car listening to this new song playing on the radio, running through my head was the conversation I had only an hour before about identity and belonging and authority.

Pulling from new social movement theory and characterizations, Jones claims that the emergent church movement helps people to claim a “new or formerly weak dimensions of identity.” In the process, the “relation between the individual and the collective is blurred.” The actions, behaviors and identity of a person become all wrapped up into the movement and your very participation in that movement gives you an identity.

Think about it like this: 50 years ago when a couple introduced themselves to new neighbors, one of the first sentences they might have shared was, “We go to the Methodist church.” Their very identity was wrapped up in the church. They raised their children in the church. They belonged on the church softball team. But then came the 60’s and 70’s and that communal identity started to be questioned. The next generation would go back to the church only to raise their kids, if at all. And then the GenXers who followed were either not brought up in the church at all, or it was a background institution that had little to no bearing on their personal identity.

As an offhand comment, there was a mention somewhere in the book about how that dillusion of identity also has come from parents marrying outside of their denominational upbringing. A child of Lutheran-Methodist parents might have far less denominational loyalty as someone whose whole family has come from a particular tradition.

If we look at the religious landscape today, there are few who proudly claim their denominational identity as one of the primary markers of their personal identity. I have a friend or two with a “John Wesley is my homeboy” t-shirt, but they are few and far between. I am much more likely to encounter someone who tells me that they are a farmer or a vegetarian or a Marxist than I am to find someone in my daily walk who will tell me, I am a Presbyterian. Our churches do not form the core of our identities.

The claim that Jones makes in his book is that this is not true in emergent congregations. In these communities, the life of the individual is tied to the life of the movement. They claim it as a part of who they are. It impacts where they eat and what they buy and who they spend time with. And that is a conscious action based upon their identity.

I am torn at many times in my life between denominational loyalty and faithfulness to the Wesleyan understanding of community. While at times I hope and pray that they can be the same thing, there are many days when it is not so. I want to belong to and lead a church that lives out their faith every single day, that is committed to the virtues that community cultivates, and that deeply seeks to follow Jesus Christ and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, the institutional church just doesn’t do it for me. Sometimes, I see glimpses and I’m energized once more.

I guess what I’m saying is, I want to write a song called “This Church.” And I want to proudly proclaim to all the world that I love this church, in spite of its flaws. I found my faith in this church, it raised me to know and love God, and if I have my way I’m going to stay here. You can burn it to the ground, or let it flood, but this church is in my blood. And I want to be a part of a community that every day in small and ordinary ways, seeks the will of God in all that they do. I want to be a part of a community that has the gospel in its blood… whose very identity as individuals is predicated on their participation in the body of Christ called the church in this place.

Is that so much to ask?

a time and a place (#1bread1body)

Posted on September 8, 2011Leave a comment

I am a child of my age. I carry my cell phone with me everywhere. I check facebook at least five times a day. In between episodes of my favorite streaming television shows on netflix, I hop onto an online forum to chat about what I just saw. I blog. I tweet. I sometimes play MMORPG’s.

All of that means I am connected to hundreds of people every single day. Sometimes superficially… but sometimes on a really deep and intimate level.

I got to thinking the other day that the only time and place that I do not have my cell phone by my side is when I am at the front of the sanctuary next to the pulpit.

First of all, it would be totally embarassing if my cell phone went off during worship. Egads!

But second of all, what would people think if the pastor, the one who is leading it all, casually glanced down to see what was happening in the twitterverse, or heaven forbid, played angry birds during the offeratory! (we actually have a really amazing pianist, and I would never dream of doing anything but listening to her play… really – she’s awesome)

It is a strange disconnect, however. For the rest of my life, I am connected electronically to other people, but for that small chunk of time it is just me and the people I can see/touch/smell in front of me.

75% of me thinks that is a good thing. We need to disconnect every now and then. We need to spend time with people in real and authentic ways – without being distracted by the next buzz from a phone. And afterall, worship is our response to God. The holy is the center of worship… not what my neighbor’s dog had for breakfast.

But the other 25% of me believes there is a time and a place for everything. That in the right way, under the right circumstances, with the right intentions, some things just work.

Like painting a mural during the reading of scripture to illustrate the creation story.

Or dancing wildly with hands clasped together with the children to tell of the perichoretic nature of God.

Or telling jokes for an entire hour as we laugh in the face of death.

Or cussing from the pulpit.

We have the entire globe at our fingertips through social media… and it would be a shame to let those connections sit idly by on a day like World Communion Sunday when we celebrate our unity.

A friend of mine, Sean McRoberts and I, dreamed up this thing called “One Bread, One Body.” For one morning, we want to hold our cellphones proudly and watch as the prayers of people all across the world are brought together in our times of worship. We are using the conferencing capabilities of twubs.com to create a live stream of these prayers and pictures that any congregation that wants to participate can use to join us.

There is a time and a place for many things… and I cannot dream up a better way to join together so that all may be one.

Knowledge and knowledge

Posted on July 18, 2011Leave a comment

Many have been discussing lately social media monitoring of clergy and candidates/ordinands. A post by sheyduck on Everyday Theology got me thinking about my one hesitancy regarding the issue.As I posted there…

There is a tendency of some who do not understand social media, to use it as an evaluation method, rather than understanding online discussions as works in progress. 20 years ago if you were to publish something, it was final and complete and authoritative… Now, you push a button and your best understanding of something at a particular moment is out there… But it can be edited and critiqued and the knowledge can grow in comments and follow-ups. It’s a different way of thinking about what is true, and I worry that some who monitor ordinands conversations won’t understand that.

Earl Creps described generational differences in knowledge in his book, Reverse Mentoring: How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and Why We Should Let Them. I heard him talk about the book to a small group at University of Northern Iowa’s Wesley Foundation.

One of the things that struck me most was an analogy he used regarding knowledge.

He described folks his parents age (60+) who saw Knowledge as something important, rare and treasured. It was kept inside of beautiful buildings that you had to have special passes to access, aka, libraries.

People in his own generation (40-60) started to have access in much more profound ways. At the library, a whole world of microfilm was available, the internet started making its way in and so the scope of Knowledge expanded. Tools helped you to access what you needed.

But younger generations see knowledge in a completely different way. Knowledge itself has become a tool. There is so much knowledge, and all of it at your fingertips, that it is almost a worthless, commodity. Instead, its about using the hacking the system, using the knowledge for other things like community, status, work, etc. It is chopped up into bits and bytes and reassembled in a thousand different ways on blogs and forums.

I understand that Knowledge isn’t one right answer out there, but the way that knowledge changes and grows and expands through conversation, exploration, experience, revelation, and any number of other means. That means my answers will never be complete. That means I will probably have more questions than answers. That means what I write or say or do might never end up in a vault of information we call a library.

And that means that there will be doubt, waffling, changing stories, confessions, errors, and growth shown on these pages… And similar pages from my peers.

My only fear is that someone “monitoring” our interactions will mistake our quest for knowledge through these forums as not living up to the standards of truth from another generation…

A summer of confession and struggle and hope

Posted on July 2, 2011Leave a comment

I have decided to journey through the book of Romans with my church folks this summer.

a) it’s the lectionary
b) I haven’t spent that much time with Romans before
c) it is fitting in nicely with our visioning process
d) it has absolutely positively hit me right in the gut and there is A LOT to preach about

I started off with confession… about one of the worst days of my life recently. Not that bad things happened, but that I was a terrible, awful person that day. Those verses in Romans spoke directly to my life and so I used my life as a lens for the good news to shine through.

This might be a very difficult summer of preaching if every Sunday asks so much of us… but I think in the long run, it’s going to do amazing things in this church!

I’m going to link here the weekly installments, just to keep them in one place:

P+3 – June 26: STOP… in the name of Love.
P+4 – July 3:
P+5 – July 10: LIFE in the Spirit
(vacation and youth mission trip took up a few weeks)
P+8 – Aug 7:
P+9 – Aug 14:
P+10 – Aug 21:

postmodern holiness

Posted on June 17, 20112 Comments

I have been having a discussion with some colleagues about what it means to be disciples and pastors in the world today.

The question was raised about what it means to be holy and to seek after God’s holiness… especially in the context of the postmodern world we live and move in.

Some of us find the dichotomy of holy/unholy something of a misnomer. Modernism tended to place these things at opposite ends of a spectrum. We could easily categorize something as good and bad, holy and unholy, do this and don’t do that.

Yet I think that postmodernism has helped us realize that this is a much more complex question. Holiness and unholiness are not matters of morals, nor are they black and white categories.

What is it that makes something holy?

Holiness comes about because something is set apart by and for God.

We typically use that to mean that as pastors, we set ourselves apart from the ways of the world and demonstrate a certain way of being. In the modern era, this meant things like don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t lie or cheat, don’t swear. Do wear suits and ties and below the knee skirts (for us women pastors out there). Holiness becomes a check-list, standards for living, high expectations, a list of places you should not go.

But is that what biblical holiness is all about?

Didn’t Jesus do crazy things like turn water into wine and eat with sinners and touch the unclean? Didn’t he get down and dirty and messy with his disciples? Didn’t he preach the good news in every day language and use images that ordinary people would understand?

Which brings me back to the question. What makes something holy? Does our answer change in this post modern world? Who decides the answer to that question? What if holiness in a postmodern world is more about how we use and redeem the things of this world, where they are, in order to speak the good news of God?

I have been reading Elaine Heath’s Mystic Way of Evangelism. She shares the http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=amomono&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=080103325X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr stories and experiences of these amazing saints of the faith who have shared their faith through deepening their relationship with God. One of those people is Phoebe Palmer, who realized that

holiness is about a life given irrevocably to God, which then in union with Christ the Sanctifier is empowered to be in God’s redemptive mission in the world… Christ is the altar, and whatever touches the altar is made holy

When things are given over to him. When they are set apart, surrendered, turned over to our Lord, they become holy. It is about God working in the midst of these things, not about us or the things themselves.

I did a funeral a little while ago and the family was not wanting to stand and speak, but had a few words they wanted me to share on their behalf.

They especially wanted to include the phrase – “He may have been an asshole, but he was OUR asshole.”

I wrestled with what to do.

If I’m completely honest with God and everyone, cuss words do occasionally come out of my mouth. Usually in the heat of the moment on the disc golf course when a drive goes about 5 feet and then hits a tree.

Things that are said on the disc golf course are different from things said in the middle of the church sanctuary from the pulpit. Maybe this is a false dichotomy. Maybe as a pastor I shouldn’t say those words even on the disc golf course… but I do.

If the me that God loves says those things out in open spaces… and if this family felt like they needed to say those words about their loved one… then I felt like I could take that language to God and make it a part of that time of worship and celebration.

So I said it.

I didn’t leave it there, however. I used that phrase to talk about how we are not perfect people and a funeral is not a time to paint a rosy picture of someone’s life – but to be honest and to celebrate who that person was in all of their fullness… and also to celebrate that God comes to each of us in our imperfection and loves us enough to save us.

Like Jesus, I met them where they were. I also found an opportunity to transform the language they were familiar with and the experience we all had that day – to use their expression in order to speak the gospel.

It has taken me a while to write about that day, in part because I’m never quite sure what others might think. But this week in conversations about holiness and being a pastor, I had to admit that it was one of the most powerful experiences of community and ministry I have experienced. And that means that it needs to be shared and celebrated and lifted up.

Holiness is not something that I can pretend to have attained. I am far from perfect, although I seek to be more Christ-like each and every day.

In the same book mentioned above, Bonaventure’s understanding of the imago dei is lifted up. He believes that

humanity is uniquely charged to image the second person of the Trinity, in that humans should mirror God as Jesus mirrors God, as beloved children of God.

I pray continually that through God’s grace I might love as Jesus loved and who Jesus loved: the hurting, the broken, the alienated, the unclean, the grieving, the joyful, the sinners, the saints.

Maybe in this postmodern world the question to ask about holiness is not: is it in the rules for me to do this or not? But will this better help me to love and serve this person? Can this language/experience/person be brought to the altar of Christ? Is there an opportunity for the gospel to be heard right here and now?