Author Archives: hummingbird

Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Does your driver’s license stipulate that you need to wear glasses or contacts to operate a vehicle?

I’m blind as a bat without glasses. Maybe you don’t have vision problems: maybe you need to wear  a pair of “drunk goggles” that simulate intoxication in order to lose your vision and depth perception.

It’s an incredibly vulnerable feeling, groping for your glasses in the dark, unable to see, or unable to know what threat may (or may not) lurk nearby. This helpless sense is portrayed with a familiar shudder in the film “The Mummy,” in which the characters unleash a curse, setting a horrific monster loose. And of course, a man is fleeing, he trips, he falls – his glasses go flying; the white-knuckled audience can see where the glasses have landed in the dirt but he can’t, and as he gropes the viewer sees the mummy getting closer…

When you can’t see, you’re powerless to act with certainty.

Are there people who have been a light for you? Family members, church members, community members? Those who are not just someone you liked a lot, but All the Saints – all the holy ones – the ones who showed you just a bit better what God is really like?

You are not at the mercy of the dark; even with Halloween approaching, you don’t have to fear the dark. The Gospel of John 1:4-5 tells us, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Ordinary people bear the light – like the lights the acolytes carry down aisles to candles.

And it’s not just a reflected light from Jesus Christ that people see in you and me. After a visit to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, my little boy was entranced with rockets, planets, and stars. Riding in the car early one evening he said “I see a star!”

“No,” I replied, “that’s actually a planet; it doesn’t make its own light, it only reflects the light of the sun.”

And for believers, Jesus wants us not just to tell others about his light, not just to reflect his light – Jesus Christ wants you to be luminous; to glow from the inside out with the love of God.

God wants humans to know, “I love you and sent my Son to die for you!” But that’s not the end. Throughout the New Testament, we read of the heart of the Triune God: “I want you to be transformed – not to talk about light, not to reflect light, but to be my light in the world!”

And the Apostle Paul reminds us, “in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And if you’re thinking, “I can’t do that!” – of course you can’t.

You’re shattered, you carry darkness in your chest, you’re mean or selfish or scared or distracted.

But God says, “let me transform you!”

You may not realize it at the time, but people will start to see slivers of light shining out of your life; you will do one thing, and for a moment, just a moment – you’ll look startlingly like Jesus…

As you offer yourself to God, the darkness grows smaller, and before you realize it, people will think you know something about the light.

Why?

Because they see more clearly through you; they’re afraid of the dark, and they want a light to see by – and for them, you are that light.

Jesus Christ wants you to glow – not just to see his light, not just to talk about the light of God, not just to reflect his light, but to be transformed into light.

And as we consider saints who illumine the way for us, consider portions from the Acts of the Apostles, chapters six and seven –

“So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses. All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he fell asleep.”

Amid plastic Jack-O-Lantern candy buckets and fake spider web and all the superheroes of the “Trick or Treat” season, we give thanks for the Light of the World, Jesus Christ; for the lives of the holy ones, the blessed ones, the saints who are light for us. And I pray that you will not be conformed to this world, not be shaped like the darkness around you, but that you will be transformed into brilliance, the light of Jesus making sense of your life and leading others around you…

This originally appeared on Wesleyan Accent in 2014.

The bottoms of your shoes tell a tale.

Examine them: the soles are worn down on the inside or the outside, at the front or at the back. They show how you walk. They show what you compensate for. They show the way your foot moves as you stride. And as you wear them, the sole of your shoe begins to tell the tale – of a back injury, of a sore hip, of a tender place on your foot.

A used pair of shoes will tell a foot doctor all about you.

**********

Yesterday I visited a massage therapist. I’d had deep tissue massages in the past. This one was slightly different: she had experience working on professional athletes. I told her a bit about what my body has been through the past couple of years. After briefly expressing this verbally to her, she responded, “let’s see what we find.”

Words weren’t needed. I didn’t need to tell her about my daily habits: my body told her. At one point I chuckled as her strong hands felt a sore spot and ruthlessly applied laser-like pressure to an area that felt only a few centimeters across on my shoulder.

“Muscles and joints can’t hide anything, can they? They don’t lie.”

She chuckled back.

“No, they don’t.”

My body told her I sit hunched with terrible posture at a laptop for hours at a time, writing and editing, oblivious to everything around me. It told her I’ve been hunched nursing a lot the past few months. It told her I go from 0 to 160, sitting a lot and then doing high impact activity like pushmowing the large, bumpy, uneven lawn for stress relief, flipping the mower over to clean out the bottom and continuing on my march. It told her I delivered a baby a few months ago and my joints are still coming back together.

I didn’t have to tell her once, “there! Right there. That’s the spot on my back.” Her hands felt and prodded, smoothed and bore down without my saying a word.

**********

So many of us have been mangling the bottom of our shoes trying not to show our limp. The body remembers old injuries, prone to re-injury. It also remembers the ways our muscles have attempted to compensate: a knee injury or hip injury on one side can lead to added pressure on the other side, throwing the other, completely uninjured side out of whack.

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

So often Jesus looked at someone, and like a foot doctor examining the bottom of a pair of shoes, like a massage therapist honing in on the source of the knot, he saw the hidden limp; the old injury; the compensating stride; the posture attempting to correct itself. He asked questions, but not really because he needed to be told; rather, because people needed to tell.

**********

The body carries memories of trauma. Brains shriek with confusion when deep chemical pathways light up again. The moment of injury seems present, whether it was a car crash or personal violation, whether it was an injustice or words that ring years after the voice spoke them.

We can’t control or compensate for it a second longer: the limp returns. The muscle seizes. Some limps remain the rest of our lives. Others fade with time. Some need emergency surgery; others need quiet, careful, long-term care.

Today, can you bring your shoes to Jesus? Can you flip them over and examine the soles? What would a specialist say about how you walk? What would a sports massage therapist know about how you spend your hours? Jesus can see you limping, or fighting to hide it. Can you give him your shoes?

Can you say, “here. I’ve been hiding this injury, or trying to hide it, for so long. It’s thrown off the whole way I walk. I’ve become so used to the ache I don’t even notice it unless I sit very still and quietly. And then I feel it crying out for relief. But that pain is so hard to sit with, it is overwhelming. I can’t do it by myself without help, I might vomit from the pain.”

You don’t have to tell him the hard words unbearable to speak aloud. Just give him your shoes. They’ll tell the story.

It is okay to stop running.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Surely he took up our pain  and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:1, 3a, 4-5

When everything is turned inside-out, a jumble of items cascading from a moving box or a partially rearranged room in upheaval, then you can picture a bit of the chaos of a liminal space or season.

Rites of passage move people from one stage, through a liminal stage, and into another stage. You are not yet baptized; you move through the season of preparation for baptism; you are baptized. This progression took early converts from pagan, to neither one nor the other, to Christian, with the preparation for baptism often tracking alongside Lent.

You have completed your college classes, you sit, but you haven’t yet received the diploma or turned your tassel. (Maybe even the best of commencement addresses are hard to listen to because there is inherent discomfort and impatience with in-between stages.)You are no longer undergrad, not yet alumna, simply an in-betweener sitting in the hot sun sweating under your graduation robe.

You are no longer one thing but you are not yet another: like Tom Hanks’ character in The Terminal, sociologically speaking, developmentally speaking, you are stranded in a terminal between places.

Liminal times of no longer one thing-but-not yet another are intensely uncomfortable. Humans are creatures are habit and routine. Like hobbits, we prefer predictability, place, and order. We prefer not to have our nice dishes taken out of our cabinets by a bunch of hungry dwarvish miners who wish to return to their dragon-infested mountain. Even those of us who claim boredom often find security in it. Then something happens to shake us out of our comfortable state of being: perhaps not Gandalf on the doorstep, inviting to an adventure, but something equally unexpected. A diagnosis; a calling; a birth; a death; a move. Sometimes even smaller things can uproot us when we don’t want to be uprooted: a building is torn down; a familiar street closed down with a grassy bank instead; a friend moving away; an arm or leg that doesn’t work well anymore.

Like Bilbo Baggins, we become quite irritable at the disruption, mess, and change.

And yet.

And yet, like Bilbo, there is that pesky part of us that relishes the invitation to something new. For Bilbo, when Gandalf and Bifur and Bofur and the rest arrived on his doorstep, he was a resident of Hobbiton. While they invaded his hobbit hole, he was in a state of upheaval at the unexpected guests and the proposed adventure. He argued about his identity: who he was, what was reasonable to expect of him, what was very unreasonable to expect of him. But then, at the moment he stepped foot out of his door, running after them without even his favorite things packed, he exited the state of uncertainty and became an adventurer. From quiet hobbit to unsettled hobbit to adventuring hobbit, the arrival of upheaval gave him space to become someone new.

The Holy Spirit loves upheaval, I think. Not chaos – that’s different. But in times when a half-rearranged room is in disarray, the Holy Spirit waltzes in and smiles with possibility. We don’t like liminal states – no longer being one thing, but not yet being another.

But the Holy Spirit specializes in using upheaval to rouse us from sleepiness and get us out the front door, even if we forget our pocket handkerchief on the way.

Are you in a season of upheaval? Do you squirm at being no longer one thing, but not yet another? Do you long for resolution of uncertainty? Is there part of you aching to answer the invitation to become something new?

Good. Those are marks that the Holy Spirit is at work. Now be ready to give in to the adventure of becoming someone new.

Note from the Editor: This week at Wesleyan Accent, as we scan, with grief, ongoing news from seeker-sensitive Protestant megachurches and Roman Catholic dioceses, we are reaching into our treasure trove of archives to reexamine different aspects of leadership. Our contributors over the years have written thoughtful, challenging reflections on leadership from a variety of perspectives. 

Are American clergy suffering a crisis of faith?

From megachurch pastor and quintessential church cool guy Rob Bell to Seventh-Day Adventist pastor-turned-atheist-for-a-year Ryan Bell, 2014 was a doozy (the topic even emerged as a central theme in Steven King’s new novel Revival).

From Rob Bell: “All of these things that people think dropped out of the sky by divine edict are actually a reflection of ongoing human evolution and a thousand other factors that have shaped why we as humans have done what we’ve done.”

From Ryan Bell: “I do think I’ve now seen both sides of the coin. Being with the atheists, they can have the same sort of obnoxious certainty that some Christians have, and I don’t want to be a part of that. It feels like I’m stuck in the middle. I want to be for something good, but I don’t want boundaries, and religion just feels like a very bounded thing. The question I am asking right now: Why do I need religion to love?”

But I don’t just have to look at the headlines about Rob Bell’s seismic theological shift (he learned the most about Jesus from…Oprah? She’s great if you want to know if you’re wearing the correct bra size, but – Oprah?) or about Ryan Bell’s wrestling with the problem of evil and whether God exists (I completely applaud him for being honest about his struggles and for stepping out of the pulpit if his beliefs were in flux that deeply).

No, I don’t have to read stories like this one or this one to wonder if these North American clergy suffering crises in faith and theology are part of a greater trend. I have too many friends who are going through a similar process to wonder if it is, as my Facebook feed daily demonstrates.

It’s a mistake to think that clergy suffering crises of faith are something new under the sun, though. If Mother Teresa recorded her struggles and doubts, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s also a mistake to criticize questioning by and in itself. Buddy, you better. An unexamined life is not worth living, and an unexamined faith will last about as long as Farrah Fawcett hair, Hammer pants, beanie babies, MySpace, “Gangnam Style” and every other grass that withers and flower that doth fade away. Or as I occasionally put it to my congregants from the pulpit: “I really believe this. Otherwise I wouldn’t waste your time. Join the Rotary if you just want to be a good citizen.”

Why here, though? Why now, and why so many?

Orthodoxy itself is not bankrupt. In fact, if you feel disillusioned with the church or faith (though people rarely actually say they’re disillusioned with Christianity itself, which is why you don’t hear, “you know, the Apostle’s Creed really disappointed me today”), reading G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy might be just what the doctor ordered, a breath of fresh air that anticipated with remarkable acumen what the intellectual challenges of the next century would be. No, orthodoxy is not bankrupt even if modernism is. As many clergy or church-bred people I know who are slowly, gradually breaking up with the church, I know nearly as many drawn not just to orthodoxy but to an additional packet of dogma as well, eschewing North American Protestantism for the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions.

If there is this crisis of faith among North American clergy, then, why here? Why now? And why so many?

Here are a couple of factors that I suspect are shaping this trend.

The fault lines in fundamentalism have taken their toll. What a heartbreaking process to read (former Seventh Day Adventist pastor) Ryan Bell’s intellectual turmoil. Fundamentalism is all baby, no bathwater, as the LA Times piece recounts: “All along, his doubts grew. The more he tried to reconcile the Bible with science, the more it seemed he was putting together a puzzle with parts that didn’t fit. The more he thought about the unceasing suffering in the world, the more he doubted God’s existence.”

If your faith falls apart when you pull on the string of literal, six-day creation theory, you probably grew up a fundamentalist. There are good, loving, generous Christian fundamentalists who are the salt of the earth. But if your faith – the whole of your faith – could be shaken by the discovery of millions of iconic, undisputed, beautiful “missing links,” then your faith wasn’t in the Creator God whose mysterious ways caused all life; it was in one narrow interpretation of a complex language. This intellectual legalism has churned out more atheists and universalists than even Ricky Gervais could ever hope for.

What happens when you go through college and seminary without working through these theological issues? You work through them after you’ve joined the ranks of other clergy, after your own faith gets hit with challenges while you’re also trying to serve in ministry. American clergy are in part suffering a crisis of faith because we’re still recovering from a wicked hangover left by the well-intentioned fundamentalists of the 80’s, committed to coalitioning everyone to heaven.

The fatigue of the faithful has taken its toll. Show me a pastor who is struggling with theology or philosophy of religion and I’ll show you a pastor who’s also very likely burned out. Clergy see the best and the worst. Consider this statement from a Huffington Post piece on former megachurch pastor-now-Oprah-network-show host Rob Bell:

Now resettled near Los Angeles, the couple no longer belongs to a traditional church. ‘We have a little tribe of friends,’ Bell said. ‘We have a group that we are journeying with. There’s no building. We’re churching all the time. It’s more of a verb for us. Churches can be places that help people grow and help people connect with others and help people connect with the great issues of our day,’ Bell said. ‘They can also be toxic, black holes of despair.’

Competition from colleagues, church members fixated on petty, ego-driven concerns – these realities can knock the wind out of a beautiful baptism, a tender, hard-fought reconciliation, or a quiet “thank you” after a sermon. It’s not always the moments when a church can be a “toxic, black hole of despair” that send clergy into a theological tailspin. Sometimes it’s what they’re also dealing with themselves: grief, loss, depression, mental illness or addiction.

In At Home in Mitford, writer Jan Karon hits the nail on the head in this fictional letter from a bishop to his clergy friend:

You ask if I have ever faced such a thing as you are currently facing. My friend, exhaustion and fatigue are a committed priest’s steady companions, and there is no way around it. It is a problem of epidemic proportions, and I ask you to trust that you aren’t alone.Sometimes, hidden away in a small parish as you are now – and as I certainly have been – one feels that the things which press in are pointed directly at one’s self. I assure you this is not the case.An old friend who was a pastor in Atlanta said this: “I did not have a crisis of faith, but of emotion and energy. It’s almost impossible for leaders of a congregation to accept that their pastor needs pastoring. I became beat up, burned out, angry, and depressed.”The tone of your letter does not indicate depression or anger, thanks be to God. But I’m concerned with you for what might follow if this goes unattended. Keep a journal and let off some steam. If that doesn’t fit with your affinities, find yourself a godly counselor. I exhort you to do the monitoring you so sorely need, and hang in there. Give it a year!

Any pastor “worth their weight” willingly exposes himself or herself to extraordinary amounts of pain. Even those who attempt to engage in “self-care” frequently short themselves or fear criticism from colleagues and supervisors. Does your denomination offer sabbaticals?
What percentage of your pastors actually take the offered sabbaticals? Do you communicate expectations to your staff that they will not only take their days off but their vacation days as well? Do you make sabbaticals mandatory? Do you admire a colleague’s “work ethic” and then raise an eyebrow when he has an affair? Do you demand 60 hours a week for a salaried position and then make judgments on your employee’s health and fitness level? Do you give compassionate leave to those in your district or conference who lose a parent, or do you send them carefully worded correspondence reminding them that their church is behind on apportionments, budget, or whatever your denomination calls the money a local congregation sends to its hierarchy?

Dear pastors, superintendents, bishops: remember the Sabbath. Keep it holy. Rest your way back into faith.

For clergy suffering through the epidemic of faith crises that seems as miserable, unwelcome and persistent as this year’s flu strain, what palliatives might be offered? Plenty of rest (see above), but also these comforts:

Good-enough pastoring. When I became a new parent, I was panicked, constantly waking the baby by checking on him. Then I read just a short review of a book with a title that, in itself, calmed me down. The book? Good Enough Parenting. Thank you, sensible reviewer, who, having had enough of the neurotic 21st century moms and dads who overparent so lovingly, gently suggested that perhaps parents need to relax a little and simply aim their expectations at “good enough.”

Dear clergy slogging through a crisis of faith: I know you are pressured on all sides to be intuitively genius at social networking; to have the preaching abilities of your congregation’s favorite pastor from 20 years ago; to have the evangelistic zeal of Billy Graham; the charismatic charm of Jimmy Fallon; the generational with-it-ness to know who Jimmy Fallon is; the biblical knowledge of a cloistered New Testament scholar; the entrepreneurial spirit of Elon Musk; the organizational abilities of Martha Stewart; the leadership abilities of whatever current “best practices” guru is popular; the financial soundness of Dave Ramsey himself; the parenting insight of Super Nanny; the technological and fundraising prowess of the 2008 Obama campaign and the humility of Mother Teresa.

Oh. And the holiness of our Messiah.

Let’s prevent a few existential crises by saying, here and now, that the Body of Christ in North America might better be served simply by pastors who are “good enough.” You may never have a multiple-book publishing deal, but you never got sent to federal prison, either. You weren’t ever a keynote speaker, but you also avoided major public meltdowns. In our quest to give God our best, maybe it also would have been valuable to give God quiet, almost invisible consistency.

Philosophy matters. Some of the most pastorally gifted people I know, who seem to intuit the pastoral needs of those in their care, are extremely well grounded in philosophy. I’ll never forget what a seminary friend once said to our philosophy of religion professor. After a tragic loss while she was young, she was left with enormous life questions that threatened to engulf her. In all her questioning, it wasn’t counseling classes or time with therapists that ultimately gave her peace: it was the content of an introduction to philosophy of religion class, where questions like “why would a good, all-powerful God allow suffering?” were dissected with compassionate logic and reason rather than answered with a quick-fix Bible verse or a prod to rehearse the blank abyss of her own sorrow on the therapist’s couch.

The best response to bad theology isn’t an absence of theology: it’s good theology.

And the best response to deep philosophical questions isn’t to throw away faith, but to acknowledge that faith and reason complement each other, and that any version of Christian faith that rejects intellectual and philosophical questioning – or claims – is a version of the Christian faith that is cheating you.

And dear friend, you deserve more.

Let’s eavesdrop on G.K. Chesterton in closing:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

Oh God, take our cynicism and hand us back our wonder…

A reading list for the underwhelmed, overmarketed and disillusioned:

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton (non-fiction)

At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon (fiction)

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory by Jerry Walls (non-fiction)

Harry Potter books 1-7 by J.K. Rowling (fiction)

Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality by David Baggett and Jerry Walls (non-fiction)

Note from the Editor: This week at Wesleyan Accent, as we scan, with grief, ongoing news from seeker-sensitive Protestant megachurches and Roman Catholic dioceses, we are reaching into our treasure trove of archives to reexamine different aspects of leadership. Our contributors over the years have written thoughtful, challenging reflections on leadership from a variety of perspectives. 

Several weeks ago [2015] I attended a conference in Houston, Texas that targeted ministry with large churches. Throughout the conference were presentations on technology, capitol campaigns, and “new age” ideas in ecclesiological innovation. Many left with concepts to take back to their congregations in hopes of implementation while others departed inspired with a rejuvenated energy for ministry. I, however, returned to Atlanta convinced that few recognized what was missing. There was no mention of the race problem we continue to face that affects American Christian life and the growth of our congregations.

Yes, I called it a “problem.” Problems are unresolved issues that stall progress. And needless to say, our inability as a country and as the Body of Christ to have productive conversations about the reality of racism is a problem. By race, I mean, our biologically engineered features (not to be confused with ethnicity) – the problem we often have with each other because of our color differences.

One of my confirmation classes experienced this problem first-hand. At their confirmation retreat two years ago, 35 black youth from an affluent Atlanta congregation were asked by a large group of white youth if their church was “ghetto”and if their hair was “real.” Where they were from and how prominent their parents were didn’t matter–only the difference in their skin color.

Because of the race problem, the nation now has to face itself in the way it did when Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. Ordering that the casket remain open at his funeral, Till’s mother wanted America to see that senseless killing as a result of racism is not just unjust, but evil. That no one regardless of their color should have their life end under such cruel circumstances.

Fast-forward 60 years and the nation now faces more media coverage of the killings of unarmed black men and women as well as the issue of racial profiling. Not that these things are new, they are just receiving more media coverage since the Travyon Martin case in 2012.

It is important to pause here and explain my intent. I am not a race baiter.  Neither do I believe that inciting rage is the way to productive discourse. Rather, I am a pastor who always seeks ways to unite God’s people regardless of the associated discomfort.

Race is an uncomfortable thing to discuss. It brings back memories for many who would prefer them remain in the closet in which they were locked. Some even ask if race matters at all.  It is the 21st century and by the way, we have a two-term black president, interracial families, minority-owned businesses and multi-cultural churches. Why is there a race conversation?

A New York Times article titled, “Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions,” cited a study conducted by Marianne Bertrand, an economist from the University of Chicago that highlighted the effect of race on job opportunities. Bertrand and her team mailed thousands of résumés to employers with job openings and measured which ones were selected for callbacks for interviews. But before sending them, they randomly used stereotypically African-American names (such as “Jamal”) on some and stereotypically white names (like “Brendan”) on others.

The same résumé was roughly 50 percent more likely to result in a callback for an interview if it had a “white” name–even though the résumés were statistically identical.

The conversation about race is important for the Church because it directly affects our parish–the world. And though every person has value, we each have intrinsic prejudices. Whether parents become nervous when a black kid shows up to a majority white youth group, or members of a primarily black congregation look suspiciously at a Latino man with tattoos who decides to attend worship, we often have the propensity to feel some kind of way towards the “other.”

So, where do we begin?

I contend that it begins with a desire to love all people and seeing the Kingdom of God as racially diverse. God did not create everyone to physically look the same so it is preposterous to think that God is White, Black, Hispanic, or any other race and only attends a certain “type”of church. Such a theology about God will keep the Church divided as it has for centuries.

One of my mentors, Dr. Gil Watson, is a white pastor serving one of the most prominent churches in United Methodism, located in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, Georgia. He is 40 years my elder and has been in ministry longer than I have been alive. We continue to see God, through our conversations, expand our understanding of each other and our calling as pastors. This relationship is intentional, and at times, uncomfortable for us both; and at the same time, one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives.

What he and I understand is that we are the Church–one, holy, apostolic, and universal–and our witness demands that we live in these intentional, uncomfortable relationships and lead the difficult conversations about the race problem. Society should not drive the Church; rather, the Church should be the influencer of society.

The race problem, however, does not have to remain. When reconciliation comes, such a problem is overcome.

Read more from Dr. Kevin Murriel here.

Note from the Editor: This week at Wesleyan Accent, as we scan, with grief, ongoing news from seeker-sensitive Protestant megachurches and Roman Catholic dioceses, we are reaching into our treasure trove of archives to reexamine different aspects of leadership. Our contributors over the years have written thoughtful, challenging reflections on leadership from a variety of perspectives. 

Leadership is a tricky subject.

I had a great college professor who modeled it, taught it, instilled it, and theorized about it (only a rare person can do all of those things). He posed a question: are you born with leadership abilities, or are they learned? (A probable admittedly false dichotomy, to be sure, but a great way to think about how one gains the qualities of leadership.)

Rather late to the party, recently I watched the painfully exquisite Band of Brothers miniseries (2001), a carefully rendered tribute to a deep slice of modern history. Band of Brothers follows American paratroopers who served in Europe in WWII. The men were real, the stories are real, it all really happened – a fact which shakes me. It ought to shake all of us.

I’ve grown up in a generation extraordinarily cynical about leaders, largely because of scandal in every sector and at every level of public life. A President misuses power with a young intern in the Oval Office, Catholic priests are brought up on charges around the world, Congressmen and Governors accidentally Tweet explicit photos or try to sell Senate seats, Bernie Madoff bilks millions, star athletes admit to doping, unarmed black men are strangled and shot in the back by police officers, 40% of North American pastors surveyed admit to using pornography. The development of the internet means we don’t learn of things slowly – we’re bombarded by information almost as soon as something happens.

Whether or not it’s fair, integrity isn’t assumed. Lack of integrity is.

It is assumed there’s a dichotomy in your life between image and reality – an Instagram filter, if you like. Everyone knows you take 20 selfies to get one good one, right? So the Sunday morning you – why would I assume that’s the real “you”?

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the world desperately needs strong leaders. Leaders won’t have to go busking on street corners with their guitars for loose change. Additionally, the good news is that there are still strong leaders in the world.

The bad news is that it costs. Additionally, the bad news is that many strong leaders don’t get much recognition.

Your list may be different from mine. Here are a few thoughts on leadership qualities that can’t be faked. The hard part is answering whether you and I are willing to be the real deal, when a Photoshopped head shot is so much faster and easier.

*You can’t fake sacrifice.

You can fake generosity, though. But real sacrifice – real sacrifice – isn’t faked. Usually only a few people know about it. When someone talks too readily about themselves and their sacrifices, watch out: often, real sacrifice is learned of from and through others.

To take the battlefield imagery alluded to above, you can fake generosity by offering to do something you were already signed up to do. But you can’t fake the sacrifice of offering to go on a patrol so someone else can rest, or sharing the last of your supplies.

If you’re not willing to sacrifice regularly and quietly, don’t be surprised when people follow you when you’re successful but abandon you when the going gets tough.

*You can’t fake humility.

False humility is visible a mile away. False humility still finds a way to put other people down privately and publicly. False humility asks followers to do things the leader isn’t willing to do. False humility gets mean at perceived slights. False humility goes hand in hand with a strong self-protective instinct. It sees humility as a social tool rather than a quality of Jesus Christ.

Real humility is comfortable with confidence – in the right things. Real humility doesn’t take potshots at others in order to masquerade as wisdom. Real humility leads from the front and picks up the cleaning rag first, not last. Real humility means a mild response when someone insults you. Real humility puts self-preservation to death.

*You can’t fake consistency.

This doesn’t mean glossing over temperamental differences and personality traits. It does mean that whether you discipline yourself to become knowledgeable about property insurance or Greek verbs, the latest studies on PTSD or the life of Bonhoeffer, you see discipline and consistency as qualities that allow you to serve others better when the moment arises.

Or as Major Dick Winters put it (portrayed in Band of Brothers, he fought at Normandy, in Holland, and at the Battle of the Bulge), “war exposes the best and worst of those who are called to fight. I know of no man who lacked character in peace and then discovered his character in combat.”

There are very few leadership qualities that can’t be faked. You and I both know that real leadership costs something – and that every newly elected President of the United States who has worked hard to prove him or herself a worthy leader finds out quickly just what it costs to be one of the leaders of the free world.

What leadership qualities are you tempted to skate by on? What leadership qualities are valued by your peers? Do your peers value apparent leadership qualities easier to counterfeit or do they value less-apparent qualities harder to fake?

We want to follow Jesus Christ faithfully – don’t we?

After all – we live in a shell-shocked, battle-weary world.

Are we willing to raise a hand?

“Here am I…

send me.”

Read more from Elizabeth here.

Note: The featured image is “Moses the Leader” by artist Nicholas Roerich, 1926.

It is summer camp season. For thousands of children and youth that means night hikes and camp fires, arts and crafts and lake fronts.

It is commonplace for churches in the United States to offer a trip to summer camp for their children or youth. It is often a highlight of the year for these ministries. Years after their experiences, many former summer camp participants describe it as a particularly important time: when they accepted Jesus as Savior, made a deep commitment to Christian discipleship, or heard a call to ministry. What makes summer camp such a significant experience?

Perhaps it is because, in some ways, summer camp is a bit like a Christian pilgrimage. Historically, Christian pilgrims journeyed to a place where they understood God to have worked in the past, expected that he would work again, and expected that he could work in them while they were in that place. When setting out, the pilgrims do not expect to stay at the pilgrimage site, but to be there for a fixed period of time and to return to their homes different than when they left. So it is with many Christian summer camp experiences.

In a classical understanding of pilgrimage three things are necessary: 1) a strong sense of communityamong those on the pilgrimage, 2) an escape from the routines of home, and 3) a return to that home after witnessing God do something amazing, perhaps even miraculous. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Community. My teenage children talk throughout the year about the friends they made and the counselors they got to know at camp. Though they were only together for a few days, they speak of these friendships as though they have lasted for years. What makes this bond so strong? In part, the strength of this bond comes from the common experience they share. For example, while together, the kids in the cabin are much the same: in a room full of bunk beds and sleeping bags. No one has a “cooler” bedroom than another here. They are all the same at camp.

Escape. Many camps do not allow the students to have mobile phones or other devices. Even if they did, students are often so far out in the woods, no one would get phone service! Such devices may be a part of everyday life at home, but not at camp. Similarly, the pressures of school and home life are left behind at camp.

There are a few keys to make the community strong and the escape profound. The pilgrimage to camp must be voluntary, to a place considered extraordinary, where special goals are pursued. These goals can be physical, like passing the swim test or going on the zip line. Or they can be spiritual, like those pursued through Bible study and prayer that are integrated into daily Christian summer camp schedules. These first two, community and escape, create a space for the profound to happen. By leaving the mundane the pilgrim seeks the sacred. It is here that the pilgrim discovers what was otherwise hidden at home. 

Return. But the pilgrims do not remain away from home forever. After leaving to search for the holy, they will return to the place they call home—in an elliptical motion. Often when the camper (pilgrim) returns, she will be a bit different than when she left. She has been on a sacred quest and learned more about God and herself while she was away. Sometimes the lessons become obvious immediately upon return. Sometimes the lessons reveal themselves years later.

If your church is sending youth to summer camp this year, how can you continue foster the lessons of their pilgrimage? What can you do to help them process what they experienced in their sacred time away? When they get back to the routine, how can you rekindle that spark they felt while they were away at that extraordinary place?

This originally appeared on Wesleyan Accent as “When Summer Camp Becomes Pilgrimage” in 2017.

Methodists are good at counting. The numerous records that have been kept over the years of “conversions,” “probationary members,” and the like, are a goldmine for historians. This penchant for noting numbers remains in our DNA today. “How many members?” and “How many in active attendance?” are the two primary questions asked when one evaluates the strength of a local church. The church growth movement did little to abate this obsession with head counting. While a growing congregation is, in fact, a sign of vitality, it’s the type of growth that we are marking that concerns me.

We Are Called to Make Disciples, Not Converts

Obviously there is a correlation between the two—one must be born again to become a disciple. And, one of the reasons I am a Methodist is because of the clear emphasis John Wesley placed on saving souls. As Wesleyans, though, we also affirm that conversion marks the beginning, and not the end of following Jesus. We should, we must, continue to celebrate each person brought to the new birth in our congregations, but we should never lose sight of the fact that baptism is just the start of life in Christ.

Our church desperately needs to shift from just asking questions like “How many members?” to also asking “How is the congregation growing in Christlikeness?”

This change in emphasis may equate with numeric growth, or it may not—calling people to come and die doesn’t always make for rapid growth in our time.

The Sunday Worship Gathering is Primarily a Gathering of, and for, the Faithful

Most Methodist churches I know of view Sunday worship as the primary doorway into the church. Worship styles are tailored to meet the perceived “need” of the surrounding community or “target” population. If a church is declining in membership the solution is most often thought to be found in a retooling of the Sunday worship service—making it more appealing. While worship in a local congregation must be contextual, I have found at least three problems with this approach.

First, it feeds into the consumerist mentality that has dominated the North American church for years, making worship often about personal preference.

When worship services are crafted primarily because of a concern for attractiveness, worship becomes a commodity. This approach does little to make disciples; oftentimes it simply makes spectators.

Second, this method is inevitably bound to the winds of change. I find it fascinating (and saddening) to see how many churches continue to launch new, “modern” styles of worship in an effort to increase attendance. Many churches that once offered “contemporary” and “traditional” options now offer a plethora of services with differing styles often defined by generational preferences.

Third, the weight of Christian worship history testifies that the Sunday service is primarily a gathering of, and for, the faithful. This is not to say that we shouldn’t consider how our worship services can best speak in the language of our local contexts. It isn’t to say that we shouldn’t consider if our gatherings are marked with radical hospitality and welcome. But we gather in continuity with the first followers of Christ who found the tomb empty on Sunday. When worship services are designed with the primary aim of increasing attendance, often the centrality of the Story of God’s salvation in Christ is obscured. “Boy scout Sundays,”  “U2charists,” and countless other services which mirror the culture, have all fallen victim to this trap.

Our Culture Needs to See Faithfulness, Not Flashiness

In an increasingly post-Christian context the viability of the Church will stand or fall on the witness of its members, not the appeal of its facilities, programs, or worship services.

For five years my wife and I were a part of a church-plant in Boston, MA. It wasn’t a perfect church— there’s no such thing—but we watched with joy as the church grew significantly during those five years. While there were plenty who joined the congregation through transfer of membership (people who had moved into the city who were already following Jesus); to a person, those who were baptized into the faith came to Christ because of a relationship outside of the Sunday service. One young man, for example, first became curious about Christianity after meeting some of our members at a gardening club. For over a year, he seldom set foot in our Sunday worship services, but came every week to a bible-study/fellowship group some of our members held in his neighborhood. He was baptized on Easter this past year in what was an incredible moment for our congregation. When it came time to give a testimony about how he came to faith, he had nothing at all to say about how good our worship band was or how attractive our space looked.

From the Top, Down

Our current ways of evaluating the health of local churches need to be reexamined. For instance, United Methodist pastors face an ever-present pressure to increase membership, grow the average Sunday attendance, and pay apportionments. I hear plenty of bishops talk about making disciples, yet in most cases head counting on Sunday morning and the paying of apportionments remain the primary criteria for evaluating local congregational health. If we are to see a new way of counting in the Methodist Church, and, I would argue, healthier congregations as a result; change must come from the top down. Our Methodists leaders – our bishops – must model a fresh approach: an approach that values making disciples, restoring worship to its roots as a gathering of the faithful, and finally, faithfulness in the form of relational evangelism. If our leaders model this new way of counting, our pastors can more faithfully lead and grow communities of disciples.

From the archives: this first ran on Wesleyan Accent as “A New Way of Counting” in 2014.

What made headlines while pastors were preaching this weekend? With firework celebrations, parades, Vacation Bible School, and family travels occupying our time and attention, catch up on news from the church and around the world with this quick overview.

Worldwide attention has been turned toward Thailand, where a harrowing rescue is taking place, eliciting a global push to #prayforthailand.  A group of boys – soccer players – and their coach were found alive in a complicated cave system after being reported missing. Rising flood waters have made the rescue a diving mission; one expert diver has died after taking in air tanks for the boys.

According to the BBC, “A team of 90 expert divers – 40 from Thailand and 50 from overseas – has been working in the cave system. They have been guiding the boys through darkness and submerged passageways towards the mouth of the Tham Luang cave system. Getting to and from where the boys are has been an exhausting round trip, even for the experienced divers. The process includes a mixture of walking, wading, climbing and diving along guide ropes already in place. Wearing full-face masks, which are easier for novice divers than traditional respirators, each boy is being accompanied by two divers, who also carry his air supply.”

Becky Castle Miller has compiled a user-friendly chart comparing Bible translations of passages about women, and the differences are pretty remarkable. “The ESV is intentionally complementarian, meaning it favors a male-dominant hierarchy in marriage and the church. While Scot [McKnight] maintains that all modern English translations are good and reliable, he doesn’t favor the ESV because of their wording on women’s issues, among other problems.” Castle Miller is a student at Northern Seminary and the Discipleship Director at an international church in The Netherlands.

Over the weekend, NPR shared an interesting take on the intersection between the Beatles and religion by reminiscing about the odd emergence of “Submarine Churches” after the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film premiered 50 years ago. (A restored version of the film was released in theaters yesterday.)

“Not long after the British-made film landed in the United States, “submarine churches” attracted urban, young people. They adopted the outline of a yellow submarine with a small cross on its periscope as their symbol and displayed it alongside peace signs, flowers and other popular emblems of the 1960s. There were enough of the churches a year after the film’s release that they operated The Submarine Church Press, which published a national directory of 40 such churches, most with mainline Protestant or Catholic roots, and held a three-day “rap session,” or conference, in Kansas City.”

Worn-out preachers may find some inspiration in this nuanced defense of rest as an essential component of creativity. “It seems that no matter how much the #hustle culture or the #nosleep blowhards on Instagram and Twitter would have you believe, there really is no trade-off to overwork. Long work hours don’t make you more successful. Instead, no rest makes you tired, sick, and uncreative,” writes Jeff Sieh. Citing Pang’s Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, one of the most eye-catching sections points out the value of what Pang describes as “deep play.” Among other characteristics, “deep play” “offers a new context in which to use some of the same skills from their day job” and “offers some of the same rewards as their day job, but also offers different, clearer rewards.”

“It’s Coming Home.” What sounds like a sermon title is actually a dark, wry hope of the English as England has advanced to soccer’s (or football’s) World Cup semi-finals for the first time in a very, very long time. The phrase is encapsulated in a popular song, “Three Lions,” from a couple of comedians in the nineties: the tune captures the bitter despair and hope that lives simultaneously in sports fans’ hearts.

How do you really, truly rest? For weary clergy, don’t miss Edgar Bazan’s post from this weekend, The Rest of God. The United Methodist pastor writes, “when we hear Jesus talking about rest, it is not the kind that you find in a couple of weeks in the summer, in a hammock, or in bed, but it is the relief in life that leads us to experience joy and the blessings of God through a grace/faith relationship with him. This is an invitation aimed at all people to bring them to a place of belief, trust, and a deeper level of commitment in which they are to follow Jesus and become like him.” He continues, “God moved creation from disorder and formlessness to a place of beauty, order, and creativity. And rest is the final gift of God to creation.”

We hope these highlights will help inform and inspire you this week!