Category Archives: wesley united methodist church at frederica

Leadership Ingredients: Courage

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“They told this story about Agatho. He and his disciples spent a long time in building his cell. When they had finished it he lived in it, but in the first week he saw a vision which seemed harmful to him. So he said to his disciples what the Lord said to his apostles, ‘Rise, let us go hence’ (John 14:31). But the disciples were exasperated and said, ‘If you meant the whole time to move from here, why did we have to work so hard and spend so long in building you a cell? People will begin to be shocked by us, and say: “Look, they are moving again, they are restless and never settle.” ’ When Agatho saw that they were afraid of what people would say, he said, ‘Although some may be shocked, there are others who will be edified and say, “Blessed are they, for they have moved their abode for God’s sake, and left all their property freely.” Whoever wants to come with me, let him come; I am going anyway.’ They bowed down on the ground before him, and begged to be allowed to go with him.”

Courage is required of all leaders. Unfortunately, there is a lack of courage these days, which is one reason the leadership pool is so shallow. Every industry and profession is suffering from a lack of leadership and the United Methodist Church is no different. I was on the phone this morning with a mentor of mine and the topic of courage came up as it related to the United Methodist Church leaders. There are too few courageous leaders – laity, clergy, and bishops. Ironically, when one of our leaders shows courage and stands up for certain issues, they are castigated and called “out of touch”. It’s always easier to alienate those we disagree with rather than engage in an intellectual, reasoned conversation.

Our culture cultivates careful practitioners and while there is nothing wrong with being careful, we have confused care with the inability to lead. A leader cannot make everyone happy and to attempt it is futile and can be destructive to any congregation or organization.

I am not saying courage is bullying. Courage is not demanding your own way. Courage, as Agatho in the parable above shows us, is acting upon the vision God provides no matter what others may think. I love the way Agatho says, “If you want to come with me, come on. I’m going.” That is courageous leadership even when others want to call him crazy. And as the parable above enlightens us, our biggest fear is what others may think of us.

Courage is a key ingredient of leadership. Spend time in prayer discerning God’s vision for your life and for your organization and when God gives you a clear direction – move. I truly believe that Godly leaders of courage will not alienate their followers. After all, you are not really a leader if you take off and no one follows. What Agatho’s followers discovered is that a courageous leader helped them move beyond their fear of what others may think of them. Once they saw that fear clearly, they were ready to follow.

Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you may go.”

Reflections on General Conference…from the Porch

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“In Scetis a brother was once found guilty. They assembled the brothers, and sent a message to Moses telling him to come. But he would not come. Then the presbyter sent again saying, ‘Come, for the gathering of monks is waiting for you.’ Moses got up and went. He took with him an old basket, which he filled with sand and carried on his back. They went to meet him and said, ‘What does this mean, Abba?’ He said, ‘My sins run out behind me and I do not see them and I have come here today to judge another.’ They listened to him and said no more to the brother who had sinned but forgave him.” – Sayings of the Desert Fathers

“A brother sinned and the presbyter ordered him to go out of church. But Abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, ‘I, too, am a sinner.’” – Sayings of the Desert Fathers

We are more like Nicodemus than we care to admit. We try to interpret Jesus too readily and respond too quickly. We come to the living Jesus and the first words out of our mouths are “we know” (John 3:2). Unfortunately for those of us who love facts and truth and logic and clarity, Jesus is more untamable than we care to admit. Instead of coming to Jesus with “we know”, we should humbly come to Jesus that we might “experience Jesus”. For as Jesus told us, the wind blows where it chooses and we do not know from where it comes or where it is going, so it is with the Spirit (John 3:8). The experience of Jesus is the very essence of discipleship, not knowledge. Disciples are followers not because of what they “know” about Jesus. Disciples are followers because they “imitate” and “experience” Jesus.

John 8:7-11 says, “7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ 11She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’”

As I watch and reflect on the United Methodist General Conference, I am struck at how poorly we imitate Jesus in our deliberations. Every side of every disagreement claims “we know”, but I wonder if any side really does? No one is innocent here. Every side is influenced by their own religious zeal as they interpret what they “know” about the “love”, the “truth”, or the “word” of the Lord.

I have to admit; I am left wanting. If we really want to make disciples of Jesus for the transformation of the world, we need to begin by modeling discipleship ourselves. General Conference reaffirms for me something I have believed and preached for a long time: “We would rather be right than reconciled.” Winning the day, even if my so-called “position” triumphs, leaves me wanting as I watch General Conference this year. We can change all the structure we like, but until we, as a church, really begin to experience Jesus and begin to imitate Him, we will be nothing more than a clanging cymbal or a noisy gong.

Is it possible that we have it all wrong? In all of our effort this week to save our church, our witness in how we did our work together, many times, did harm. The irony of it all is that we will all agree that harm was indeed done…..by those who disagreed with what “we know”.

Reflections on General Conference. Pt. 1: Are We Who We Think We Are?

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In his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge lifts up a timeless evaluative tool for organizations.  This evaluative process helps us to see if we are who we say we are, or if we are something else; something we do not intend to be.

General Conference is going on in Tampa, Florida, as I write this.  This is the chief legislative body of the United Methodist Church and meets every four years to decide matters of polity, theology, and practice.  For many United Methodists, watching General Conference online can be an uplifting and sobering experience.  At moments one can be proud to be United Methodist, and at other times ashamed.

Let’s engage in this little test.  If a group of outsiders watched General Conference online, what kind of church would they say the United Methodist Church is?  I’m not sure our leadership really thinks strategically about how our actions line up with our beliefs, as Peter Senge defines them.

Senge points out that Espoused Theory is what we say we are, what our mission statement says we are, what we profess to be, and what we profess to value.  Theories in Use are what we actually do, how we model ourselves through action,  and is reflected by the actual decisions we make.

My espoused view may be that people are basically trustworthy, but I may never lend friends money and jealously guard all my stuff – obviously my theory in use (my deeper mental model) differs from my espoused theory.  We all have gaps between our espoused theories and our theories in use.  This is a consequence of vision, not hypocrisy.  The problem is not in the gap, but our failure to tell the truth about the gap.  We are not always what we say we are.

As I watch the online business sessions and worship services of General Conference, I am left to wonder if we really value what we say we value.  The talk leading up to General Conference was primarily about our decline and inability to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  I wonder whether “what we do” and “what we actually lift up” at General Conference reinforces what we say we value.

While “making disciples for the transformation of the world” may be our espoused theory, is it really our theory in use?  Is it really what we do?  Does the whole denomination embrace it?  Is the vision shared?  Or, are we a collective of differing interests and priorities?

Yesterday, I shared a list of news items from General Conference, both business and worship items, with a friend who does not go to church and who is not a Christian.  I asked him, “based on what they are doing and talking about, what do you think the United Methodist Church is all about?”

He simply said, “Your church reflects what is wrong with America.  I hear what you say the church is supposed to be about – what you call making disciples.  I would never know that based on what is going on down there.  From reading this list of stories and hearing about these worship services, you value a lot of things, but I would never guess it was making disciples of Jesus Christ.”

Sobering.

It’s not over yet.  I am hopeful for our church and for General Conference!  I am reminded what John Wesley used to say about conferencing together as the church.  You should leave more passionate about making disciples of Jesus Christ than when you arrived.

Ask a delegate how this conferencing is inspiring them to engage in what we say we value.  Are we who we think we are?

Crying Out From a Dark Place

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Psalm 137
1By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows there we hung up our harps. 3 For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4 How could we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! 6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!” 8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! 9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

“You are forgiven” I wrote, “but when you die, you are going to hell.” I wrote the words matter of factly and without great emotion. These words were not written to a stranger or a criminal. They were written to my father as he lay in the CCU recovering from a massive heart attack in 1989.

I am not proud of those words now, but when I wrote them I was struggling to move from Hate to Hope. I was struggling to move from the desire for vengeance toward’s God’s call to love. My father walked out on my family when I was 14. He had an affair and decided he wanted something else in life. Needless to say, I hated him for that.

Babylon was not home for the exiles of Judah. They had been captured and carted away to a foreign land. Their temple was destroyed, and now they are lost and in despair. The Babylonians destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. All of the elite, the teachers, business leaders, land owners, artists, all of the prominent people have been taken to Babylon. Only the poorest were left behind to remain in the land and intermarry with Canaanites. They were taken from their homes and land. They were separated from their families. Their homes and their Temple were destroyed. Their families killed. Their children murdered.

Here by the rivers of Babylon, we see the children of Judah expressing pain as they remember Zion. Their captors mock them and sarcastically call for them to sing a song of Zion – “where is your joy?” But the Psalmist asks, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?” We don’t belong here in Babylon. We are refugees. We are slaves. How can we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?

Verses 7-9 are very difficult for us. The words shock us, but if we think about it they express the same feelings many of us have had when we have been through suffering at the hands of others. The Babylonians killed families including children. Children represent the future of their people. Verse 9 represents the pain of the people crying out, “They deserve the same thing they did to us!” I can completely understand this. I’ve been there myself. We’ve all been there.

The Psalms of lament speak to us about putting our suffering and struggle to speech TO God. I really believe that one of the main reasons many of us cannot move on from hate to healing and hope is because we refuse to let go of the pain. It becomes a crutch for us. We won’t let it out. Many of us won’t even give it expression.

I am not proud of what I wrote to my father 1989, although I could come up with 100 reasons why he deserved it. And if I shared those reasons with you, many of you would say to me: I would have done the same thing. My father never asked for forgiveness and never even acted like he did anything wrong. He just lived his life the way he wanted never thinking about the consequences.

I ultimately learned that it was not about HIM for me to be made whole. All through my teenage and college years I was sitting on the banks of the rivers of Babylon trying to sing a song in a foreign land. I was miserable and filled with resentment. Giving those feelings “words” during my freshman year of college was the beginning of liberation for me. I am not lifting up the way I did it, what I am lifting up is the need for expression of our deepest pain and anger.

In order for the pain of our lives to be healed by God, we must give it expression. Cry it out to God – no matter how it may offend our sensibilities. I think this is the beginning of healing. This is how we move from hate to hope and healing.

What do you need to cry out? What is in you that needs to be brought to God in prayer?

Break the Silence…Lament!

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Read Psalm 74

We are told all the time that all our problems are solvable.  The wars are solvable – we need either more or less troops.  Our illnesses are solvable – we just need the correct diagnosis and the right medicine.  Our poverty is solvable – “those” people just need to work.  The problem with this assumption is we all know it is not true.  Life is more complex and intricate than we often assume.

One of the powerful messages we are reclaiming during the Lenten season at Wesley is that the Hebrews did not feel that masking the emotional pain of life was appropriate.  They brought their pain to God and cried out in God’s presence.  They were not afraid to speak these prayers of darkness to God.  They believed that this was the only way faith worked – you bring the good to God and you bring the bad to God.  You bring all things to God.

The lament of Psalm 74 is a communal cry and prayer of the Israelites as the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 576 BC.  You can hear their cry as the elements and carvings of the temple are destroyed.  You can feel the pain as they desecrate the holy space.

Professor Walter Brueggemann gives us some wonderful insights regarding the Psalms, especially the lament Psalms.  This “outline” of lament may help us to reclaim our cry. (Spirituality of the Psalms)

First, Brueggeman says that a lament is a cry of expression that always addresses the Lord God. What is said to God may be scandalous and offend some of our sensibilities; but the ones who lament are completely committed, and they believe whatever must be said must be said directly to God who partners with us. We have permission to speak freely, but that speech is always directed to God – honestly and openly.  We bring all we are TO God.  A lament is not a cursing of God, but it is an honest prayer and expression TO God.

Second, the Rev. Dr. Claus Westermann, the great 20th century Old Testament scholar, pointed out the distinctive pattern of the lament.  There is an inherited way it is done.  There is order to it.  This order of the prayer was/is recognized by the Israelites.  The lament has two components:

  • The Plea which is a complaint that God should correct a skewed situation.
  • The Praise where the one praying always moves from a sense of urgency and desperation to joy, gratitude, and well-being.

In Matthew 8:1-4, there is a brief healing story.  “When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; 2and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” 3He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.””

In his book Psalmist’s Cry: Scripts for Embracing Lament, Walter Brueggemann shows how this healing story models for us the way that lament works as a powerful means to address the emotional pain in our lives and not just mask the symptoms.

First, the leper comes to Jesus and admits his status and despair – his “plea”.  He doesn’t pretend to be anything other than one of the most wounded. He doesn’t come to Jesus on his terms, pretending to have control over his life.  He kneels before Christ and says “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  I am unclean, I am broken, I am weary and I am downtrodden – but you can make me clean.

Second, we notice the trust this healed man places in Jesus.  What if Jesus wouldn’t heal him?  But is more than that, there is an ongoing trust.  He trusted Jesus with not only his initial healing but also with whatever was to come after – to go to the priests and present offerings (and keep the healing quiet).

We have seen this trust in all the lament Psalms we’ve read so far this Lenten season.  There is a definitive plea and always a move to praise…even in the midst of fear and pain.

The lament points out that there are no easy and quick solutions to many things in life.  Not every problem is “solvable”.  But that does not mean we lose our voice.  The Psalms of lament say to us, “you can go to God in darkness and despair and speak to God, and in that plea we can place our trust in God.”

Making Disciples by Keeping Our Heads Down

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Wesley before Easter 10:45 worship 2010

That old cartoon image of the ostrich with his/her head in the sand whenever danger is around is always used as an image of someone who just doesn’t get it.  When your head is in the sand, you are unaware of the challenges and dangers around you – you are oblivious as the world passes by.

In a lot of blogs and articles about making disciples, there seems to be a lot of discussion about what disciple making actually is and how disciple making actually occurs and where disciple making takes place and who it is that actually makes good disciples.  Then there are those that don’t like the term “make” disciples.  They want to form them or mold them or spontaneously combust them or magically cultivate them like a ch-ch-ch-chia pet.

There are also a lot of voices out there discussing how older Christians over 50 don’t know what it takes to make young disciples under 40.  There are those who insist “traditional” worship can’t reach new, younger disciples.  There are those who say the church isn’t “missional” enough, or “emergent” enough, or (insert-latest-catch-phrase-word-here) enough.

I read the blogs and the articles and the critiques all over the internet regarding making disciples and the United Methodist Church and Call to Action, and to be honest, most of them actually create in me the desire to stick my head in the sand. When did making disciples become nuclear particle physics??

Author Robin Sharma recently posted,  “The amateur adores complexity, the professional cherishes simplicity.”  So is my head in the sand, or am I keeping my head down?  They mean two completely different things.

Reading blogs and articles online, one would think that only new, emergent, contemporary churches are growing and successful.  I will admit, I am bothered by this assumption many people have in the United Methodist Church.  I don’t have anything against new churches.  Many are growing at amazing rates making many new disciples.  I am concerned about what we are modeling to our clergy and churches.  Are we communicating that we are ‘incapable’ of making disciples unless we throw out tradition?

Many traditional churches are growing and making disciples effectively.  For example, the vast majority of new members joining Wesley United Methodist Church at Frederica on St. Simons Island where I serve (a traditional church) are under 40 years old.  While we are a traditional church, we are not “conventional” to use Thomas Merton’s term.  We strive to be authentic, relevant, creative and relational.  I wish I could tell you we were trying to be “different”, but we’re not.  In essence, we just do what we do.  We are not trying to over think it or over analyze it.  Can we do better?  Sure!  But we learn more through trial and error, which is a more dynamic yet simple way to learn than policy statements, strategic models, and prescriptions.  Statements and prescriptions are merely secondary reinforcing mechanisms.  They merely reinforce culture that already exists.  If a church isn’t making disciples, you can have all the mission statements and strategies you want, they won’t really change anything.  People have to model making disciples – it happens person to person, in real time…in real life.  Sorry, but that’s the only way it works.

What we do at Wesley isn’t flashy, but it’s working.  Of the 70 new members who joined in 2011, almost 60% were under 45, and most were under 40.  We are learning from our mistakes.  We are loving one another.  We are caring for one another.  We are growing in our knowledge of Christ.  We are growing in our service of others.  We are meeting in nurturing groups.  We are inviting others to participate.  That’s it.  That’s the list.

I’m going to keep my head down.  If you want to say its in the sand, that’s okay.  I don’t mind…really.  I just hope we will all keep in mind that if we are truly concerned about the transformation of the world then let us recapture the beauty of simplicity.

Sowing in Tears – Lenten Lament

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by sculptor Tony Quickle

Psalm 126

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

The men’s group of one of my previous churches felt the calling to help troubled young men in our community.  I remember one of the men, George, sharing with me his sadness about one of the boys he tried to help, David.  David was without a father and running with the wrong crowd.  He had been arrested a few times.  The men’s group and George particularly felt they should reach out to him, scholarship him for the sports he wanted to do, give him work, and try to be a good influence.  They outfitted him with new clothes and George set the boy up a job at his car dealership.  The boy never showed. Every time George tried to help David, David would turn away and end up in even more trouble.

George couldn’t really understand all of this.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to work, right?  I mean, if you help someone and invest in them, and you give them all the opportuntities to turn their life around, aren’t they are supposed to turn out okay?  How can someone who is being giving the opportunity to have a better life, have people willing to help him, how can he just throw all that away?  You would think that George would have been mad, but instead he was sad – almost to tears for the inability he felt that he couldn’t turn David around.

The psalmist wrote, “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.”

The Psalms.  They are songs.  They are acts of praise.  They are moments of worship.  They are prayers.  But they offer us something much richer and deeper and more troubling.  They can also be cries of pain and frustration to God.  Unfortunately for many of us Christians, we only like to think of the Psalms as uplifting praise.  These Psalms, which are beautiful and wonderful can be important for us during seasons of well-being.  A former professor of mine, Walter Brueggemann, calls these types of psalms “psalms of orientation”.  They articulate the joy, delight, goodness, coherence, and reliability of God, God’s creation, and God’s governing law.

But Bruggemann goes on to point out that life is not always joy, delight, goodness, and coherence.  Life for us is not always “oriented” correctly.  Human life also consists of anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering, and death. And when we face those seasons, different emotions rise up – rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred. There are psalms that match these feelings as well, but we don’t always life them up in our society or our churches.  Bruggemann calls these complaint or lament psalms “psalms of disorientation”. They are poems, songs and prayers that match our feelings of “unsettledness”. They are cries out to God from the depth of our pain and despair. They seek resolution.  They ask questions.  They cry out in frustration and pain.

May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

Sowing in tears.  You and I know sowing in tears.  My friend George knew sowing in tears.  When you invest, plant the seed in a life or a situation and the torrents of rain wash it away.  The psalms of lament call us not to deny the reality that we sow in tears but to cry out to God when we do!  The hope is that we will ultimately reap with joy, but for a time we sow in tears.  Why would we deny this voice?  Do we think God will be disappointed in us?

Crying out to God in prayer is not an act of NO FAITH, rather it is an extreme and deep act OF FAITH.  How?  Because as people of faith we believe God hears our joys and our sorrows.  As people of faith, we speak these laments TO God!  God longs for us to come to him in prayer – in the good and in the bad.

It’s time to stop denying the prayers of lament.  You may need to cry out to God.  My friend George needed to.  He needed to hear the cry from Psalm 126 that those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy.

The Passions: Vainglory and Pride

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Proverbs 11:2 – When pride comes, then comes disgrace; but wisdom is with the humble.

Proverbs 16:18 – Pride goes before destruction; a haughty spirit before a fall.

Almost 2,500 years ago, the famous Greek storyteller Aesop told the following parable:

Two roosters were fiercely fighting for the mastery of the farmyard.  One at last put the other to flight.  The vanquished rooster skulked away and hid himself in a quiet corner, while the conqueror, flying up to a high wall, flapped his wings and crowed exultingly with all his might.  An Eagle sailing through the air pounced upon him and carried him off in his talons.  The vanquished rooster immediately came out of his corner, and ruled henceforth with undisputed mastery.  The moral of the story? Pride goes before destruction

Love has space to grow within us only as each of us learns to recognize and root out the passions within us.  The ancient Christian monastics in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries believed the eight passions to be eight terrible temptations.  They were obsessive emotions, attitudes, and desires that the earliest Christians believed blind us in our dealings with God, each other, and ourselves.  Roberta Bondi in her book, To Love as God Loves, says the passions are deadly because they pervert perfectly good and useful impulses which take away our freedom to love.

Today, we take a look at the last two Passions outlined by Evagrius of Pontus in the 4th century AD: Vainglory and Pride.

First, let’s take a look at Vainglory:  Vainglory is defined as “liking praise or recognition, or needing to be liked so much that our actions are determined by our need.”  People who suffer from Vainglory seek admiration from others instead of love of God and their fellow human beings.  This admiration becomes the goal of their lives.  You can probably see why Vainglory can blind us or get in the way of love, but why is it so deadly?  Vainglory leads us to believe that whatever your skills, it is essentially yourself you are selling to others.

Bondi points out that vainglory is a special passion for ministers and priests and teachers, and anyone else whose self-identity is bound up in the idea of service. It is deceptively easy to confuse being liked with having done a good job.  I meet ministers all the time whose really believe their effectiveness is directly related to whether or not people in their church actually like them. This is one derivation of vainglory.  Vainglory is at the root of a lot of burn-out as the desire for approval replaces everything – goals of your work, love of family, etc.; certainly an enormous amount of self-deception, and hence blindness, stem from vainglory.

Pride is the last of Evagrius’s eight passions. I always thought of pride as the overvaluing of myself.  I remember when my first District Superintendent introduced me to my first Bishop (Richard Looney) for the first time in my first one-on-one meeting with him, the DS said, “This is John Stephens.  He is a very talented young man and he is very proud of his humility.”  They both laughed and I laughed, then I thought – I don’t think that was a compliment.

The early monastics believed pride to be the inverse of humility. Rather than an overvaluing of self, pride manifests itself as a devaluing of others as we compare ourselves to those around us. In modern terms, it makes up an important part of envy. Its essential quality is not found in having too high an opinion of oneself so much as too low an opinion of everyone else.  Self-righteousness is one of its more obnoxious characteristics, as its sufferer looks around to make sure the people around her or him are as good as they ought to be.

One last fable today from Aesop:

There was a peacock who was very proud of his long and colorful feathers. One day he saw a crane and approaching and said, “Look, what splendid tail I have got. All the color of the rainbow are there. And your feathers, how dull and drab they are!”  Saying so the peacock spread his bright tail into a fan and began to dance. The crane saw it all and smiled. He knew that the peacock was trying to impress him in vain  Then the crane spread his large grey wings and began to fly off saying, “well Mr. Peacock follow me if you can in the skies”   The peacock remained earth bound and couldn’t fly. The crane rose high into the sky and was gone beyond the horizon in no time.

The Moral of the Story: Vainglory and Pride Blossom Bright But They Never Bear

God Weeps With Us

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Matthew 26:37-50

…“I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want…”

I will never forget a story shared to me by Bill Mallard, one of my theology professors at Emory. He recalled a story of visiting a friend whose husband had died way too early in a tragic situation. As the people were at the house grieving, a friend of the husband asked Mallard in the presence of the wife, “Bill, where is God in all this?” Bill Mallard shared how he looked back with tears in his eyes and he replied, “God is here. And he is weeping with us.”

That’s not always how we think of God. We get that God is with us, but the weeping part has never been a part of our understanding.

N.T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham and now Professor at the University of St. Andrews. When students would come to him and say, “I won’t be attending chapel, I don’t believe in God,” his reply was, “Which God is it you don’t believe in?” This would cause them a little hesitation, then they would begin to describe something like this, “I don’t believe in a God up in the sky looking down, a God who doesn’t care about humanity and suffering, a God who is removed from the world.” N.T. Wright’s response was, “I don’t believe in that God either!”

On this Palm Sunday and as we begin Holy Week, we are reminded of the last week of Jesus’ life. During this week, we see betrayal, suffering, and death. The death of Jesus at the hands of those in power. This was always God’s plan, but it doesn’t make it any easier for Jesus. You see, we seem to forget that Jesus was a man (yes, he was God in the flesh, but let us never forget that he was a man) – human flesh and blood just like us – and he suffered tremendously.

At this moment in the Garden of Gethsemene, Tom Long points out that “we see the collision of wills and desires at work”. This happens to us all the time in our Moments in the Wilderness. The collision is between the divine will and the human will. There are times when we can clearly draw lines of distinction between divine and human wills, but when times are difficult and suffering and grief are present, the lines are not as clear. We’ve all dealt with this – when something has happened to us – a broken relationship, divorce, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of anything of value or importance – we struggle with the why. That is normal and God doesn’t have a problem with that at all. The hard part is when we move beyond the grief work and try to figure out the why. When we struggle to answer the why of the conflict between the human and divine wills, we find confusion and a lack of clarity. This causes many of us to believe God is not with us, God doesn’t care, or God somehow caused and we just have to accept it.

In the Garden of Gethsemene, we see Jesus grappling with the same thing. The tension between the divine will and the human will. Trust me; it’s not easy to see God and believe and understand when you are in the midst of great suffering. Here we see Jesus struggling in his soul. He is profoundly anguished. Jesus knows his life is in peril. He knows what is coming and he doesn’t face it with stoic resolve. He is emotional, full of sorrow, and distressed. Like the Psalmist in Psalm 42 and 43, his “soul is cast down” and he is “deeply grieved even to the point of death.”

In this moment of trouble, we have been taught that Jesus says, “Alright God, I know what I’ve got to do, give me the strength.” In almost every church Sunday school or sanctuary stained glass is the image of Jesus kneeling in the garden with his back straight, his eyes toward heaven, and a light beaming down. Funny thing is that the passage in Matthew 26 says that Jesus “threw himself down on the ground and prayed.” Jesus reveals deep pathos and humanity by asking God to provide a way out, an easier road that his life may be spared.

Jesus can relate to our grief and suffering. Not only because he has felt suffering and stared into it with the same questions we have, but because he also knows what if feels like to go through it alone. I think it is ironic that he asks his friends to stay up with him to pray. They cannot. This passage of waking them up and them falling back asleep communicates something we all know; we go through suffering alone. Jesus experienced this. Thomas Merton writes, “When a man [sic] suffers, he is most alone. Therefore, it is in suffering that we are most tested as persons. How can we face the awful interior questioning? What shall we answer when we come to be examined by pain? Without God, we are no longer persons. We lose our humanity and our dignity.” We must suffer with faith, knowing God is with us – knowing God weeps with us.

Let us look deeper into the life of Christ and say, “The God I believe in is not some God living in the sky who doesn’t know me or my struggles.” No, we serve a God who is revealed through Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus who died for us -yes; but Jesus who has also suffered. Jesus is acquainted with our griefs and our sorrows when we are in our moments of wilderness.

Is Adaptive Change What We Need? Reflections on the UM Leadership Summit

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In the world of 24/7/365 social media, I realize I am a dinosaur in the amount of time that has passed since last Wednesday’s UM Leadership Summit. For the five people out there who are not aware of what the summit was, it was a collection of leaders in the United Methodist Church who led the entire denomination in a live web feed discussion concerning the issues and concerns regarding the Methodist church. The primary focus was the Call to Action Report which calls for confession from us all that we have not been as intentional as we should in making disciples. The study also spent $500,000 to define and identify “vitality” in vital congregations. You may decide if the money was worth it or not, that’s not what I want to discuss. I am more intrigued by the primary use of the word “adaptive” which is used significantly and defines the way in which we deal with the challenges. (Call to Action, pg. 22, pp. 25ff)

As a student of systems theory, organizational culture, and learning organizations, I was most fascinated by the leaders’ use of the word “adaptive”. Bishop Gregory Palmer uses it first when he states in the video (at 37:41 and 37:56) what our “adaptive” challenge is: Redirect attention, energy, and resources to increase the number of vital congregations. The actual report itself has an entire section devoted to “Adaptive Challenges” (pp.25ff)
I understand that anyone can define any word to mean anything they want, but I’m not sure what we need is “adaptive learning”. Maybe its what the institutional church and leaders desire, but its not really what true reformation is all about.
Peter Senge, noted systems theorist, learning organization guru and author of The Fifth Discipline, defines a “learning organization” as “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future. For such organizations it is not enough to merely survive. ‘Survival learning’, or what is most often termed ‘adaptive learning’ is important – indeed it is necessary. But for the learning organization, ‘adaptive learning’ must be joined with ‘generative learning’ – learning that enhances our capacity to create.” (The Fifth Discipline, pg. 14).
Adaptive challenges and adaptive learning are all rooted in the struggle to survive. There is nothing created or recreated in adaptive learning. Adaptive learning is kin to the old adage “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Adaptive learning is reactionary and is motivated from fear of survival. Adaptive learning also usually comes from the top down as the institution or organization meets survival challenges and works diligently to stay alive.
Generative learning, on the other hand, creates something new – or recreates that which once was vital. Generative learning is closely connected to the scriptural word metanoia. Metanoia is in no way connected to adapting. It has always been connected to conversion and recreation. The great central truth of our faith in Christ is that the dead can live again and that mediocre living can be recreated to something abundant! Abundant life (vitality?) is our fundamental need which is why the word “vital” is central in the Call to Action Report. Unfortunately, as with any large initiative coming from the top, it is extremely difficult to step away from the drive to survive. The drive to survive (adaptive) is not the same and the drive to live creatively and abundantly (generative). This, in my opinion, is why the creators of the report feel the urgency to increase reporting and accountability. While rooted in something that seems generative, it is totally adaptive and rooted in the fear of death. “Maybe, if we watch our numbers more closely and measure everything more carefully, we will become more vital.” It’s like watching a pot of water waiting for it to boil but never turning on the heat.
In the Call to Action Report, they write “Adaptive change and leadership are not possible without an authentic purpose and vision; powerful, cohesive, guiding coalition; strong standards, and accountability.” In truth, adaptive change is entirely possible without purpose and vision. Dying churches engage in adaptive learning every day and it hasn’t really changed anything because they are not expanding their capacity to create! The essence of adapting is merely adjusting to the external factors to survive.
Do we merely need to survive? If that is all we are after, then I say the Call to Action Report is just what we need. More reporting, more dashboards, more numbers, and more measurables.
Or do we want to breathe new life into these dry bones? If that is what we are after, it will start in the local church, with local laity, and local pastors who will define vitality rather than live into definitions from Nashville.
So, do we really desire to live and create?