“Cultivating Contentment”

(November 15, 2009) Too often, we buy into the idea that something– money, success, stuff, food, can fill the empty feeling inside us. The truth is that we will always have a sense of being incomplete without the deep peace of God, the One for whom we yearn. Perhaps our feeling of discontent can be a positive motivator, pushing us to love and serve God more. On the other hand, sometimes we also need to take stock and reflect on the things we have and who we are for which we are grateful. Only when we live with gratitude and with an knowledge of where our contentment really lies can we learn to, as Paul wrote from a hole-in-the-ground prison cell, “rejoice in the Lord always!”  (Luke 12:13-21, Philippians 4:4-13)

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Part three in a series addressing faith and finances, based upon the study and program series “Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity” by Adam Hamilton. Statistics, quotes, and general outlines are taken from that work and used with permission. I of course add my own interpretation. Sermon titles include: “When Dreams Become Nightmares,” “Wisdom, Vision, and Finance,” “Cultivating Contentment,” and “Defined by Generosity.”

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even longer than last week, but worth it, I promise. ask my biggest clock-watcher.

Gentle readers, thank you for your patience during my blogging silence. Due to some staffing transitions at Trinity and general crunch in responsibilities, it’s been hard to have the creative space and time to write as I would like. As my soon-to-be-uploaded sermon describes, very exciting things are going on in my ministry, and I hope to get back into a routine that allows me to reflect on those things and on what God is doing in the world in general. Until then, deep peace to you!

“Wisdom, Vision, and Finance”

(November 8, 2009) In this sermon, we take a more practical look at some of the ways to curb our prodigal nature (our wasting and spending). But for any of these practical things to matter, we need to first know what our vision is. Like the prodigal child, when we have no sense of who we want to be, we wander aimlessly. When we have a vision– a vision for ourselves, for our communities, for our churches and organizations– then we can begin to make wise decisions, using all of the tools at our disposal, including the monetary tools, to achieve our life’s purpose. (Luke 15:11-32)

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Part two in a series addressing faith and finances, based upon the study and program series “Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity” by Adam Hamilton. Statistics, quotes, and general outlines are taken from that work and used with permission. I of course add my own interpretation. Sermon titles include: “When Dreams Become Nightmares,” “Wisdom, Vision, and Finance,” “Cultivating Contentment,” and “Defined by Generosity.”

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and that’s one of the longer sermons I’ve ever preached. so far, only one person complained…

“When Dreams Become Nightmares”

(November 1, 2009) We think we want to live the “American Dream,” but we see that all too often and far too easily, this dream becomes an unsustainable nightmare. That’s because it is a false promise, that money– the love of it, the protection of its bottom line– is what will make us happy and successful. We fall into a trap as individuals and as churches, buying into this worldview. There is another, competing vision out there, a different dream for us, and that is to live into God’s dream, Gods vision. This life-giving dream is to be people focused first and foremost on God, and requires a change of heart. Fortunately, when it comes to changes of heart, God happens to specialize. (1Timothy 6:6-19)

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Part one in a series addressing faith and finances, based upon the study and program series “Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity” by Adam Hamilton. Statistics, quotes, and general outlines are taken from that work and used with permission. I of course add my own interpretation. Sermon titles include: “When Dreams Become Nightmares,” “Wisdom, Vision, and Finance,” “Cultivating Contentment,” and “Defined by Generosity.”

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Hey, any time I can get Vermonters to vocalize ‘Amen’ in the middle of a sermon, I consider my work well done!

Some people check the water level of the proverbial pool before they jump in. But you all know that I’m not ‘some people.’

I’m a co-chair of my Annual Conference’s Communications team, and frequently contribute to our online and print media communication. This qualifies me to become, as I did this year, a member of the United Methodist Association of Communicators, and be entered in contests for communications-related things (winning both the local church website best in class award for Trinity’s website and the local level non-fiction best in class for this blog– wow!), and attend the annual meeting. So I did these things, and this week, I spent time in Nashville TN at the United Methodist Association of Communicators’ annual meeting.

But, as with so much of what I do, I didn’t really know what the heck I was doing.

The UMAC people are the real deal; they are professional communicators—journalists, bloggers, photographers, videographers, technology gurus, and people with advanced degrees in something or other that I didn’t study. They approach crafting messages for internal and external audiences with a technical, precise, methodology. They feel justifiably frustrated when church folks—particularly clergy, who tend to pride themselves on being good communicators in their own minds—don’t respect or listen to the expertise of the professional communicator. And when they get together, they tend to, um, vent about that a little bit.

I can’t tell you how many people, upon hearing that I’m an elder and a pastor rather than a Conference-level employee, cocked their eyebrows at me and said, “wow, you’re so brave to come here!”

That would be because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.

I sat through a workshop on “Writing Worth Reading,” which only served to point out that (here’s a surprise for you readers out there!) I don’t write at all as if I were writing for a newspaper or a public proclamation. I tend to write as if I were expressing an opinion, making an attempt at a persuasive argument, or crafting a sermon. And here’s the thing: I don’t want to change the way I write to be a better journalist. I’m perfectly happy being a lousy journalist and a better preacher. I don’t know that I needed to be laughed at by proxy because of it, but I can take it. Largely, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.

Then I attended a workshop on Podcasting, and heard a lot about the technical aspects of how to put together a podcast, but not a lot about why we might do it or what content might be valuable and interesting. And no one there could answer my question about how to clean up my podcast’s feed so that you can actually find it in iTunes. So at least here, I’m not the only one who doesn’t totally know what I’m doing. Sometimes, technology is actually a pain in the butt for everyone. Big surprise.

And then I participated in the “ReThink Church” workshop, where I had a lot of ideas and several bones to pick with the concept of the ReThink campaign. The workshop focused more on the research, ad buys, trainings, and impact community (love this portion!) aspects of the campaign, and not discussing concept. So of course, I found a few people with whom I could discuss content. At great length.

I began to see the issue here. The off-the-chart big picture thinker is trying to bend her brain into focusing on the details, specifics, and methods. Maybe it’s not so much that I don’t know what I am doing as that what I am doing is from a completely different perspective than what the communicators are doing. That’s kind of why we need each other.

All that said, I had a great time. I did learn a lot about the methods and techniques of professional communication, and have an even greater respect for what communicators do. I used twitter more than I ever have, and I think I might actually have the beginnings of some understanding of how it can be used for me more effectively.

Of course networking, on and offline, in and out of official gatherings, is always the most important part. I met wonderful people, some of whom I knew virtually, and some who were new friends. I got excited about a couple of ministerial possibilities that interest me, and saw some parts of Nashville that surprised me (did you know this city has a full-scale replica of the Greek Parthenon, and at least one bar advertising ‘nude karaoke’? Yea, I didn’t know that either. I went in to only one of those places, and there were some nudes inside, but they were cast in plaster).

So thanks to friends and contacts and colleagues, new and old, virtual and in person, lay people, communicators, and clergy who stumbled in by accident like I did. I learned a lot, got some great ideas, and had tons of fun getting to know you. I might even know a little bit more about what the heck I’m doing from time to time.

[I look forward to watching the video of the Social Media Round Table that I missed this morning and reflecting on that, but tonight I'm just too darn tired!]

Howdy, y’all, from down here in Nashville! I’m attending the United Methodist Association of Communicators’ Annual Meeting (about which I will say more later), where this blog, that’s right, this very one, has been awarded Best in Class for non-fiction in the local church category.

No pressure there.

So, on to being relevant. Today, my inbox was overrun by emails and celebrations about Bishop John Shelby Spong’s Manifesto (linked at the Reconciling Ministries Network). In it, he lifts celebration that “the time has come” to move on from the battle about homosexuality. Bishop Spong writes that he believes the battle is won, and that he will waste no further time in debate on the matter:

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is “an abomination to God,” about how homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spiritual counseling” homosexual persons can be “cured.” Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, I feel this way a lot. As I wrote earlier, I wrestled greatly with how to respond to extreme positions like those of the Westboro Baptist Church, and I decided in the end that ignoring violent language and hate speech was not something with which I could live. Still, I resonate with the idea that some arguments are not worth the waste of breath, or the anger and bitterness they generate in me. When I find that I am becoming more negative and bitter as a result of a conversation or debate, it’s time to walk away. Actually, it’s past the time to walk away. I frequently give myself sanity breaks from such debates on the umcommunities website for that precise reason. It’s not worth the breath. It’s not worth the poison that seeps into me in the course of the debate. It’s not worth it–never worth it– when I feel more distant from God as a result of a conversation.

In this matter, I do think the handwriting is largely on the wall, and that Bishop Spong is right when he says that we as church are only making ourselves more irrelevant by our continued focus on sexuality rather than on ministry:

The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn’t. Justice postponed is justice denied.

He is right, and as a church we certainly do great harm to ourselves, not to mention to the witness of Christ, by fixating on sexuality and sexual orientation.

But I push back on two points:

First, while the tide may have turned, that doesn’t mean a battle is over. In this instance, I’m not yet prepared to walk away and dismiss anyone’s words as outdated or irrelevant or as the death throes of a position. They are still hurtful words and positions that I think must be countered. If the battle is over, there is many a GLBT person in my pews who doesn’t know it yet, and until they can let words roll off their back like water, I’m not prepared to ignore them– the words or the ones wounded by them– either. While I applaud Bishop Spong’s optimism, I don’t want to (totally mixing metaphors here!) declare ‘mission accomplished’ and pull out, leaving troops still in the trenches to be wounded and maimed.

Second, I maintain that there are many people out there, even a majority of people out there, whose positions about homosexuality in the church differ from mine, who are faithful Christians to the best of their ability and to the best of their understanding. I resent it when my opponents in a debate disregard me as “unchristian” or “liberal whacko” or whatever, rather than have to live together in difference with me. I can’t in good conscience do the same, disregarding not only their positions, but their theological frameworks, their gifts to the ministry of the church, and their human struggle to understand and serve Christ as best they can. To do so is in a way to deny the Christ in them, however hard it may be at times to see it, just as I’m sure it is sometimes hard to see the Christ in me.

Debate is, I’ll admit, fun and challenging, and often helps clarify one’s own point, but it can also be a forum for relationship growth and reaching out across differences. Wrestling together with our differences, even and especially such stark and emotionally charged ones, can in fact be a huge opportunity to grow and change. And while I’m not naive (or, I hope, arrogant) enough to assume that I can change the hearts and minds of the world, I do kind of have persuasive rhetorical speech as part of my job description, and I do therefore harbor a hope that some positive change might come from conversations I have with others. Like Jacob, wrestling with an angel in the night, we grapple with each other in the dark, each a wanderer, each an angel, and I for one don’t want to let you go until we both receive blessing.

There are some things about which I cannot compromise, and some places where I am not open to changing my mind. I cannot abide violence. I will not compromise with hate speech. I can’t imagine conceding that anything made and beloved by God is abhorrent. I reserve the right and the need to walk away from poison and mutually assured destruction in argument. I also want to declare the joy of living in the already-not-yet promise of God’s kin-dom of radical love. It’s here, in part and in glimpses! The snippets of grace and glimpses of living together in the tension of our differences, when they shine through, are enough to keep me hopeful and focused on the joy.

And yet, I still wade into the battle, to the wrestling match, because the ones with whom I wrestle are often sisters and brothers, are sometimes angels, can teach and transform me even as I hope to teach and transform them. I’m not ready to give up on them just yet.

“My Ways are not Your Ways”

(October 18, 2009) Often, we attribute to God human-like attributes: not just flesh and hair and gender, but limited loving, justice, or forgiveness. God reminds us that especially when it comes to provision, new life, and forgiveness (which we might just sum up as grace), God does not fit inside our tiny human boxes. (Job 38:1-7, 34-41, Mark 10:35-45, Isaiah 55:1-9)

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in this sermon, I make reference to a puzzle of unknown (to me) origin: connected four dots using three straight lines to create one enclosed shape.

answer:

think outside the box.