“Read everything.”

Rev. Steve DeNeff, a pastor and well-known preacher and speaker in The Wesleyan Church, said this one day in my undergraduate homiletics class. He is an excellent communicator and taught a fascinating preaching class. At the end of the second semester, he presented students with a print of a pastor in a pulpit, surrounded by shadowy figures – prophets and leaders from familiar biblical texts. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” it reads. It is an encouragement: you never step into the pulpit alone. Preachers are part of a fellowship of truth-speakers that stretches back across centuries.

“Read everything.” News stories, fiction and nonfiction books, magazines. It was practical advice – we had to assemble folders of cut-outs or printed pieces from the web or photocopied pages of books, a built archive of potential sermon illustrations that might work well as an introduction to a text or an illumination of a difficult principle.

“Read everything.” The advice was also given almost like a pronouncement, a warning, an exhortation: if you preach, you must know the culture in which you live and breathe. A lot of our cultural dynamics go unspoken – but if you read regularly, you will notice trends, changes, you will be aware of the atmosphere others breathe unconsciously.

Reading everything didn’t mean ignoring the scriptural text in a sermon: on the contrary, DeNeff made clear that a sermon that doesn’t reference the Bible after the initial reading isn’t a sermon. It’s a motivational speech. Rather, reading everything means voraciously pursuing every tool at your disposal to help communicate the Word of God.

So what happens when preachers read?

You gain perspective. If all you read is Tweets and football scores, your perspective will be limited. When you read the news (even skimming stories outside your usual areas of interest), you become aware of the big picture. If there’s any danger in church life, it’s becoming so wrapped up in your own denomination or geographical area that you forget to pop your head up and see what’s happening around you. Because most preachers also make hospital visits or review committee budgets or calm disputes or counsel troubled couples, it’s even easier to get so wrapped up in other areas that the habit of reading is seen as a luxury. If a preacher does read, it’s a book – often from their own denominational or traditional perspective – about leadership, ministry, or preaching.

Which is about the moment that we begin to get nearsighted. But when you read – whether hardback or Kindle or even audio book – you deliberately expose yourself to other times, to other places, to other voices. Reading Dickens will throw into sharp relief how much things have changed in just a short 150 years – and how much they’ve stayed the same. In a time when all news is “BREAKING!” headline, it’s valuable to get some perspective. How far have we come? Where was God faithful in the Middle Ages? What circumstances from 50 years ago might give us some wisdom as we face today?

You gain storytelling awareness. If you read or listen to classic fiction, you will inevitably become – at the least – a slightly better communicator. Writers read good writers. Reading a good writer makes you a better writer. Not all books are worth your time. Some of them are worth investing in, though. By reading “Moby Dick” or “Roots” or “The Violent Bear It Away” or even “Harry Potter,” you allow yourself to be a listener – a good discipline for speakers in itself – and to be swept up in the tide of the story itself.

Dr. Sandra Richter tells her Old Testament studies students to “tell the Story, and tell it well.” The more shy or inarticulate you are, the more I encourage you to read really good stories. They will help give you the words to express yourself.

You gain a disciplined mind by engaging new texts. Pastors have a lot of spinning plates, to use a familiar image. You’re busy. You’re subjected to the need for ruthless time management. But consider this benefit of reading fiction, nonfiction, news articles or poetry: you are subjecting yourself to the discipline of engaging new texts.

And that’s what you ask people to do every week.

Biblical literacy is at an astonishing low in North America: people who grew up in the pews are often unfamiliar with Bible stories and biblical themes. When you add people who did not grow up in the pews, even if you hand them a Gospel + Psalms, you are asking them to engage in reading that might, for them, be a challenge. Even listening to the Bible on your morning commute can be a challenge if you’ve never read it before.

Many pastors delegate Bible study to small group ministries. While whether actual Bible study actually happens in the fruit salad and coffee context of living room discussion is up for debate, it is the preacher’s job to proclaim the Word of God on Sunday mornings. And when you’re asking people to engage with the Word of God throughout the week, whether individually or in groups or through whatever book they’ve picked up at their local Christian book peddler’s, you should be willing to discipline yourself to read texts that are, for you, out of your comfort zone.

Reading one chapter of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” will probably remind you of how it can feel to encounter the Bible as a newcomer to the faith.

You gain sermons that grow beyond the surface. Truth pops up across history in many ways. There’s extraordinary wisdom about
human nature in Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” You can dog-ear pages of “Watership Down” or even smile at “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” If I preach to a certain demographic of college students, I can communicate difficult Christological truths in a cultural shorthand with just one or two short quotes from “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

Many people need to move from the familiar to the alien, from concrete to abstract. Jesus knew this in his own preaching. To prophetically proclaim is to take people on a journey. When pastors read, pastors deliberately invest in looking for effective ways to communicate the truth of scripture. Engaging in classics not only allows you to use stories and images that will engage your listeners as you bridge them to the biblical text, but also allows you to engage listeners whose intellects will appreciate the connections you draw – say, between Naaman’s vulnerability to his soldiers as he bathed in the river, and the struggle for dominant tribal position illustrated in a jungle animal fight early in Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.”

You gain health. Preachers, you are as hungry after mental work as you are after physical work. Only you haven’t expended near as many calories. Which means you’re ravenous after you write or preach your sermon, even if you haven’t been chopping firewood or playing basketball. In other words – you may be sedentary and very hungry, a potentially problematic combination. That’s on top of having a job that elevates blood pressure and steals hours of sleep.

But reading can boost your memory and reduce your stress; neuroscientists have discovered that reading a novel increases your brain connectivity; when you’re ready to clobber a difficult church member, reading can help increase empathy. (Just maybe read a paper version and not a screen that emits light right before bed.)

So when you have to fill out a report on your wellness practices, you can include “reading” on the list.

Last week I encouraged everyone to take a nap.

But if you’re in a preaching rut or having trouble sleeping, I recommend a good book.

A college professor at my faith-based liberal arts university used to make a bold declaration.

“The greatest spiritual need on this campus,” he would state, “is sleep.”

Every semester he saw the same thing. A student would come to his office for a meeting feeling discouraged or depressed, defeated or frustrated, struggling. Whether it was addiction or relationship problems or academic anxiety, the student would spill out their woes for a few minutes until he gently interrupted.

“How much sleep did you get last night?” he would ask. Their faces surprised, students gave answers that revealed a pattern. Four hours. Three hours. Five hours. “How much the night before last? Last week? What did you do over the weekend?”

Soon, a picture would emerge. Attempting to operate on three or four hours of sleep a night, students began making poor decisions, finding their tolerance or resistance low, their emotions unpredictable. And often, they looked first to emotional or psychological or spiritual factors before taking into account one very practical influence.

So instead of telling them to pray harder or switch majors or break up with their significant other, Dr. Keith Drury would tell them to go take a nap. And then to start going to bed earlier.

Sound familiar, Church?

Are you feeling discouraged?

Depressed?

Defeated?

Frustrated?

Is everything a struggle?

Church members, small group leaders, pastors – how long did you sleep last night? The night before? Last week?

Do you wrestle with hidden addiction – alcohol, porn, eating disorders, binge shopping, prescription pills? (PS – it won’t stay hidden forever, as we’ve relearned the past few weeks.)

You may scoff. Maybe your ego won’t let you consider being or appearing less productive (why is productivity a god in our culture?). Maybe your feelings of insecurity won’t let you put away Pinterest ideas for creative cupcakes you’re taking to a bake sale hosted by a snide woman. Maybe your auto-pilot won’t let you question how healthy it is to let your kids sign up for so many extracurriculars.

Recently I half-jokingly commented to a friend that I felt holier.

Why?

My husband had traveled out of town for a while and the absence of my beloved epic squirmer resulted in the best nights’ sleep I’d had in years. I noticed I had more patience with the kids. I was making better lifestyle decisions. I was more sensitive to the pushes and pulls of the Holy Spirit. I noticed feeling more free to be intentional.

The truth is that all the dark circle correcter in the world won’t erase bad decisions, broken relationships, and vanished months and years. Besides knowing that sleep deprivation leads to more obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, slower reaction time, less creative thinking and poor immune systems (30% of adults get six hours of sleep a night or less – and getting less than six hours of sleep a night makes you four times as likely to catch a cold), we might also ask how many church board conflicts, 15-passenger van accidents, extramarital affairs, social networking snark, and small group meltdowns are influenced by what, according to one wise college professor, is the greatest spiritual need on any given college campus.

“Jesus was inside the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. The followers went and woke him. They said, ‘Teacher, don’t you care about us? We are going to drown!’

Jesus stood up and gave a command to the wind and the water. He said, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind stopped, and the lake became calm.

He said to his followers, ‘Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?'”

You can choose to be like an alert disciple, panicking and awake.

Or you can choose to be like Jesus, and go take a nap, ready to face the storm with calm and clarity and authority.

Or are you better than Jesus?

In the midst of an extraordinary amount of stone-throwing and name-calling from across the political and theological spectrum, the Church in North America has shuddered and shaken from its timbered ceiling (or its artfully exposed industrial lighting) to its hallowed stone foundation (or tiled coffee house floor).

(Astute readers perhaps will have noticed the use of the capitalized word “church” but not the use of the phrase “Body of Christ.”)

The various branches of the organization of Christian faith in North America are flailing in a storm that some see as a clearing, cleansing front needed to wash away theological detritus while others see a hurricane destined to imperil and destroy life as we know it.

The shake-up, for better or worse, has caused a great deal of soul-searching and reflection – though perhaps not as much as is needed, one might think after wearily skimming the morning Facebook news feed. What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to be human? How has the way in which the Church relates to prevailing culture changed in the past 30 years? What leaders to we need to pay attention to right now? Who has the answers? Will my congregation die if we don’t change what we believe?

How did we get here?

To the dismay of many, a startling realization is beginning to dawn: we thought we were strong, faithful, and following where God led. But what if we weren’t?

I know that many of my progressive friends will read the above question in a different light. “You thought you were strong, faithful, and following where God led, but you weren’t, because you refused to be fully inclusive. Now you’re realizing that and you’re reevaluating what you believe and who you are. That’s a good thing, because now you can change.”

That angle is not the one predominantly preoccupying the evangelical consciousness right now, however.

(I use “evangelical” for lack of a better word to describe theologically orthodox Christians who place a high value on the understanding of Scripture as the inspired Word of God and, out of that understanding, hold a humble but defined traditional theology of marriage and human sexuality. Personally, I think “evangelical” is largely a useless term because of the number of meanings that can be painted onto it.)

How did we get here? We thought we were strong, faithful, and following where God led. But what if we weren’t? These thoughts haunt laypeople and clergy alike who have spent years serving in the church and who now survey their surroundings in shocked disbelief. The sweeping changes in society over an extremely short time in the scope of historical context – a few decades, half a century at most – have left a reverberating tremor of shellshock.

No matter how many “statements” are issued from denominational spokespersons, individual clergy, and faith-based organizations, there seems to have been little direction, discernment or comfort gleaned from what many feel are either empty platitudes or hopeless, feeble claims of continued perseverance in the practice of the faith. This is understandable in part: there’s a great deal in flux in North American culture, in key denominations and in many pews. But behind a great deal of conversation lurk the questions above. We thought we were strong, faithful, and following where God led. But what if we weren’t?

It is time for the Church in North America to repent – but of what?

We must ask ourselves, “what made us think we were strong, faithful, and following where God led?” Were we confident we were being faithful because we could afford a new building? Were we assured we were strong because attendance grew and we implemented the leadership trends du jour? Were we assured we were following where God led because we practiced relevance and offered a traditional and contemporary worship service?

None of these are the fruits of the Spirit.

We should’ve recognized the symptoms – pastoral scandals brushed over and shrugged off, millions of budgetary dollars spent on state-of-the-art buildings while the missions and outreach dollars stayed steady or shrank, congregations of predominantly one race or socioeconomic status staying of predominantly one race or socioeconomic status. None of this characterizes the Spirit-filled Body of Christ. 

It did, however, characterize the Church.

What if the prevailing sin of evangelicals in the past 30 years was the same as the prevailing sin of progressives today – the cult of the individual? Protestants have this struggle wrapped tightly throughout our Reformer DNA. It was extraordinary, a gift of grace that individual people could read Scripture in their own language. It was extraordinary, the idea that the individual can reach out in response to God on her or his own because of the priesthood of all believers. It was extraordinary.  It also had a deadly-sharp edge, as all Truth does – for individualism, run rampant, becomes as much of an idol as a statue of a saint or a gilded icon does to uneducated peasants.

If there is a prevailing sin of evangelicalism, might it be the cult of the individual? Take, for instance, the far-right fundamentalist trope – “God says it, I believe it, that settles it” – and place it alongside what could easily be the far-left progressive credo – “I feel it, I believe it, that settles it.” Both hinge on the individual. And while we have inherited a robust faith that celebrates the one – the one up in the tree, the one lost or left behind, the one who came back, thankful – it is not a faith that relies on the individual. Far from it.

The Christian faith springs from belief in the Trinity, first and foremost – Father, Son, Holy Spirit (not suggesting that God is gendered, but that God is persons, that God is relationship – that God is love…). Unlike our Muslim and Jewish friends, we do not claim God is one without also claiming God is three. And of the Threeness of God, we believe that the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, Word-Made-Flesh, Emmanuel-God-With-Us, has called us to be his Body on earth empowered by the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

There is no such thing as a solitary God in Christianity, this Three-In-One “I AM,” and there is no such thing as a solitary Christian.

Yet for decades, evangelicalism swooned into a vast approach not unlike marketing rather than evangelism – and make no mistake, the two are different. For one thing, marketing targets consumers, not believers. And when you market, you see demographics made up of individuals. The North American Church began attempting to market the faith to what it perceived as “swing voters” – every young new emerging generation, seen as the trendsetters that predict the future.

“Now hold on a just minute,” pastors counter, having spent thousands on demographic research, relocation trend watches and seminars on relevance. But I counter that a small but important tell-tale sign that North American evangelicalism got too self-centered is the fascinating migration of Protestants to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. I have begun to lose count of the number of friends from college and seminary – not counting friends of friends – who now have icons in their living rooms, rosaries next to their beds, and a surprising but joyful number of children springing up.

Fed up with the elevation of the individual, this minor but very significant trend reveals people from their 20’s to their 50’s deliberately seeking out traditions that emphasize a great many practices and doctrines before the individual comes into play. Eastern Orthodox followers spend seasons fasting together, feasting together, venerating together. Roman Catholics turn to a higher authority than the individual in the pew, looking to time-worn dogma, to a faith community of extraordinary countercultural fellowship. Both traditions practice exclusivity, interestingly enough, something that occasionally offends unwitting Protestants expecting to “take communion” like everyone else. Yes, both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have strong traditions of mysticism – something experienced by the individual. In the main, however, you do not have the tail wagging the dog.

Before we repent, then, for what “those people” are doing (“thank you, Lord, that I am not like that person over there…”), fearing that they will bring about the Apocalypse during our lifetime or our children or grandchildren’s lifetimes, Church, we must repent for being an organization of Christian faith but not the Body of Christ. We need to face that we have made an idol out of self, a god of the individual. It is not about us. It is about Jesus Christ – and him crucified…

We have shaped the Church in our own image, so that it is a safe, suburban place to be, with mall lotion in the ladies’ room and shrubbery trimmed to perfection. We have shaped the Church in our own image, so that we worship only in ways that will attract people we want to be seen with. We have shaped the Church in our own image, so that “benign” segregation is practiced while we allow cultural differences to trump unity in Christ. We have shaped the Church in our own image, so that it is something that will appeal to our grandkids or our yoga friends or our IT colleagues, though hopefully not the foreclosed-upon, the elderly poor, or the bi-racial kids of a single woman missing several teeth driving a broken-down car.

If we attempt to address theological challenges with answers that rely on the individual, we return immediately to where we started.

We thought we were strong, faithful, and following where God led. But what if we weren’t?

“It’s not as I would have it,” said Rev. Richard Coles, priest in the Church of England, gay, living celibately with his civil partner, on the doctrine of the Church of England. “But then – it’s not about me…”

What a splash of cold water in the face. It’s not about me. When’s the last time you heard an activist, commentator, pastor or church member say that? (And that’s what was so stunning about the shooting victims’ families confronting Dylann Roof, after all: “I forgive you” is a profound wail of pain combined with the acknowledgement that it’s not about me. “Accept Jesus Christ.”)

I’m not sure what to think about this community worship our pastor set up with a neighboring Black church. I want the other church to know I like them, but I don’t know how they perceive me and I don’t know the songs they seem to love.

It’s not about me.

Is my ministry making any difference? Are my family’s sacrifices worth it? If we build a new $7.5 million worship center, that will be something I can look to for affirmation that something I’ve done is of value, that something will outlast me.

It’s not about me.

I don’t want my friends to think I’m ignorant, predictable or gullible because of my traditional theology of human sexuality.

It’s not about me.

I don’t want my friends to think I’m ignorant, predictable or gullible because I feel called to volunteer and serve with AIDS ministries.

It’s not about me.

If there is anything that God is calling us to face, it might just be the reality that there has been a stark difference between the organized Church and the living, Spirit-filled Body of Christ.

I am crucified with Christ, therefore I no longer live.

If there is anything that God is calling us to celebrate, it is that we are not alone – we are not individuals squabbling over foyer paint color – we are called to live and breathe the fellowship of the saints, the suffering of our Lord, the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the community-generating creative motion of the Father.

We confess we have not loved you with our whole hearts. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

Recently I took a college student with me to a Zumba class at the local Y.

“What you see may not be pretty. What happens at Zumba stays at Zumba.” This warning is necessary for all who accompany me to a workout class, given my unique combination of Lucille Ball and Miranda Hart-like skills or, more specifically, lack thereof.

Male pastors in particular, I speak to you today. I understand you might be uncomfortable visiting a primarily female workout class (though occasionally there are a few men). My advice: book a special Zumba session just for you and your staff or clergy group. It will be highly instructive, and hey, we all know the risks to personal health that ministry can inflict. You probably need to get your target heart rate up anyway.

This post isn’t so much about what pastors can learn from Zumba as what they must, and because the Venn Diagram results of clergy who sweat through Latin music dance exercise class who write yields only a small overlap, I’m here today.

1. Leaders occasionally need to put themselves in a place of following instructions in a group.

Pastors, no matter what your role or title in a local congregation, are frequently up front and on the platform. Many gatherings of pastors, who, whatever their personalities, are intrinsically in leadership positions, end up being, “all shepherds, no sheep.” Pastors are used to making decisions, bearing a weight of responsibility, and being the one who has to run things.

When I enter Zumba class, I’m not the expert in the room – to put it mildly. I’m not choosing a hobby at which I already excel (a tempting option to tired leaders). I enter the room knowing I’m not the one in charge.

What blissful relief.

You’re not the one a roomful of people is following.

But be warned.

You’re not the one a roomful of people is following.

Can you be comfortable with that? It’s a good test. You need to have some area in your life, some space in your life, where you have to be the clueless follower. You may not choose Zumba as the arena in which to practice that (though I think it’d be a great staff exercise), but you need to remind yourself of what it is to follow.

It’s also helpful to watch how someone else leads. How do they cue? Do they seem like they enjoy what they’re doing? If you find yourself frustrated, why? Is it your lack of ability to mimic them? How might people on your staff or in your congregation or district or conference feel similar?

2. Leaders occasionally need to put themselves in a place of uncomfortable marginalization.

When I enter the aerobic room at the Y, which dauntingly has two mirrored walls, I set down my water and take my place.

At the back.

The very back.

Of the hour-long class, the first 20 minutes or so I can usually follow the leader pretty well. The next 20 minutes is definitely uphill. The last 20 minutes, I’m following her in my mind, but my body doesn’t cooperate and the word “flail” comes to mind.

I deliberately place myself on the margin, but I’m in a place of marginalization nonetheless. One of my first days in Zumba I remember thinking, “and this is what it must feel like to visit a church and feel completely out of place and bewildered.” Even if you have a great “hospitality team” or “greeters,” sometimes if they’re too in-your-face it feels just as overwhelming: you want to explore at your own pace, make your own judgments.

The only way through is…doing it. Friendly faces who smile wryly between songs while getting a drink of water are helpful, but at the end of the day, you’re the only one who can do it.

It’s valuable to remember the off-kilter feeling of being on the edge, the threshold. There are participants here who are already friends, who are familiar with the music, who run half marathons and even wear Zumba shoes. Who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside?

3. Leaders occasionally need to put themselves in a place of being a minority.

Depending on the day, sometimes when I walk into the room I’m a minority, not in terms of gender or skill, but in terms of race and cultural background. The first day I realized this, a deep wistfulness washed over me.

“Why don’t more churches look like this?” I thought.

There were senior citizens and teenagers, Latina women and black women and white women, fit women and very large women, chic women and dowdy women.

All sweating together, moving to the same music, like fitness Pentecost. We were sweating enough to feel like tongues of fire were on our heads.

It’s the history of the church and the future of the church.

I so want it to be the present.

When’s the last time you picked up your keys and drove somewhere to take part in something where your culture or race might not be dominant, especially if you’re Caucasian? Do you regularly seek that out as a discipline in your life?

As I look over these three points, something strikes me, after recently visiting the site in Georgia where John and Charles Wesley spent some time.

Wesley had trouble with these things at one point in his story, as he watched from the outside as the Moravians handle crisis gracefully, as he placed himself as an outsider in Georgia with the hopes of being a missionary to Native Americans, as he had trouble getting along and following others.

All of these things helped unsettle his heart so that it could be strangely warmed (not by an hour of Zumba, according to our best church history records).

If your ministry has stalled, go to Zumba. Maybe Aldersgate will follow.