Tag Archives: Leadership

Church Growth: Fruitful Or Cancer?

Today’s post is a compelling piece written anonymously by a successful pastor.

The Ideology of a Cancer Cell

I rarely have those moments I would unquestioningly call, “divine.” I’ve never been one to see the fingerprints of God on everything around me. So when something happens in my life that just seems divinely orchestrated, I have to latch on to it.

The other day I was sitting in Chik-Fil-A, eating my #1 with no pickles, sipping my Coke Zero, and reading my new Eugene Peterson book, The Pastor. As I read, sometimes challenged, sometimes encouraged, sometimes disagreeing, and sometimes annoyed with Peterson, I looked over and saw a young lady at the table next to me. She had a baseball cap on with a small, round pin clipped to the side. I’m sure I looked rather stalker-ish trying to read the small print from 7 feet away, but the effort was worth the risk. Her pin read, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.”

The pin had no logo. Just the words. I have no idea exactly what it was protesting. But because I’m a pastor, it didn’t take long for me to think of the church and how I, and many of my fellow pastors, see church growth as an end in itself.

After reading the pin and being prompted to thought by its vivid verbiage, I then looked down at my book once again. Where I’d left off before staring at the other patron’s head, Peterson had just written a letter to one of his friends who was leaving his church to pursue the greener pastures of a bigger church. Peterson wondered, in his letter, if the guy hadn’t just been enamored with the idea of a big church and had not been sufficiently enamored with simply being a pastor. So when my eyes went back to the page, this is where Eugene picked up – and I think you can see from this why I think I was having a divine moment:

“He accepted the call to the big church, and then another, and then another. I would get occasional reports on him from friends. All the reports seemed to document that size was turning out to be a false transcendence in his life. Meanwhile, the momentum of what was being termed church growth was gathering. All of us in the Company agreed it was misnamed. It was more like church cancer – growth that was a deadly illness, the explosion of runaway cells that attack the health and equilibrium of the body.”

If I can have a moment of critical reflection before anything else – I honestly do find Peterson’s comments here a bit condescending and extreme. I’m sure he knows his friend and probably something of his friend’s motivation, but not everyone who goes to a bigger church does so for self-centered glory. I do not believe either big church or small churches are the solution to the American church’s major problems. If you’ve ever spent much time in a small church, you know not to sentimentalize them any more than people who have seen the sausage made in big churches can consider them all bunnies and sunshine. Both are filled with finite, sinful human beings. Neither should be held up as the ideal – after all, Acts 2 records a church of 2,000 on the day of Pentecost, and some of Paul’s letters were probably written to small churches meeting in houses. Both are acceptable New Testament models. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I think Peterson is too hard on big churches in The Pastor. I think he’s too easy on small churches.

But he’s probably not entirely wrong about the church growth movement that drives big churches. I can probably point to other people I’ve known, other ministers and pastors, but I think it’s mostly appropriate to talk about myself. There is something grand and exhilarating about growing a church. It’s in some ways validating to the pastor, his/her preaching skills, and general likeability. There’s a kind of energy (often confused with the Holy Spirit, I think) in a room full of worshipers that is contagious and addicting. For these reasons, it can be really easy for me to focus on and find my satisfaction, not in changed lives, but in simple numbers. Church growth. Attendance. Butts in seats.

I know I can’t be the only one who struggles with the temptation to find my satisfaction and identity in church attendance because we have entire conferences pastors pay lots of money to attend simply designed to tell us how to make our churches get bigger.

When pastors lament the waning of the American church, what we are often really lamenting is a declining attendance. Our complex metrics and statistics tell us all kinds of things about church attendance trajectories and predictions, but few of us have thought through adequate and objective ways to evaluate whether or not our congregants are taking up their crosses. Some churches even hire pastors based on whether they think the pastor can make the church grow numerically. Pastors like me can even get caught up in it, thinking we’ve “arrived” because the numbers are the primary indicators of our talents. Then we secretly compare the size of our church with that of our colleagues – the fallout of which is, ehem, a bit of steeple envy.

At some point in wrestling with my own gauges of success, I wonder, to what end are we growing? Why exactly am I excited that my church or my service is growing at a high rate? Am I obsessed with growth simply for growth’s sake? How big is big enough for me? Am I just building bigger and bigger barns to store more and more people but caring only in a lip-service way for the development of their souls, bodies, minds, and societies in the image of Christ? And is there ever a time when church growth might be contrary to the kingdom of Christ? If so, how would we know?

Again, don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a problem with big churches in themselves. I work in a big church. Given the right structures for relationships, personalization, humanization, and discipleship, big churches can be really healthy manifestations of the gospel. They can be salt and light. They can most certainly witness to the gospel in their towns and around the world. So, no, big churches are not the problem. And to that end, I’ve also been in churches of 30 people that were obsessed with the attendance they didn’t have. But at the same time, whether the church is large or small, pastors can still have that greedy, cancerous voice in our head that wants us to value church numerical growth over church spiritual growth. That cancer whispers in our ears of the glory that could be ours if the sanctuary had 3,000 people instead of 300, or 300 instead of 30. At every level these sirens cry out for the pastor’s attention, and I fear for myself and many of my colleagues that we will find ourselves shipwrecked there if we are not careful.

When we take an honest look at the Bible, church growth as an end in itself does not seem to be something Jesus seems manifestly concerned with. Jesus had several opportunities to grow his numbers, but instead he sent the crowds away. He had no problem letting people walk away who could not give up their possessions (something almost no church growth experts would recommend, I expect). He had no problem angering the Pharisees, even though he knew that if he got them on his side he would gain the average-Joe population with them.

Of course, no pastor – myself included – has the guts to say, “I don’t care about making disciples; I only care about making my church bigger.” We don’t want to think of ourselves as having the “ideology of a cancer cell.” Every one of us is, in theory, willing to let people walk away. Every one of us is, in theory, willing to suffer the loss of audience for the sake of the gospel.

But how often does this really happen in practice?

Be honest. Don’t just attribute the decline in attendance to “the gospel” when it could have been your bad preaching or the cliques in your church. Be honest. How many times have any of us actually lost people because of the call to take up a cross and deny self?

This is what makes me wonder about my motivation. This is why I wonder if we have somehow missed the point. Look, if you want to gain a crowd, serve some coffee and have a giant pizza party. You don’t need Jesus for that. Some Papa Johns should do the trick. But if your objective in ministry is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, church growth may be a natural corollary to that mission, but it is not an end in itself. And therefore we pastors – the royal “we” by which I mean “I” – need to be much more in tune with our motivations, measuring methods, and the things we celebrate with our staff and congregation.

Since we pastors struggle to grapple with this question in a self-reflexive kind of way, I’d like to just pose a few questions to help us see whether or not we desire growth for the sake of growth or if our growth is really kingdom oriented.

When you evaluate the success of the Sunday morning service (or any ministry of your church) is your first question, “How many people attended?”
Do you find yourself envious of pastors with bigger churches? Or judgmental toward pastors of smaller churches?
Have you ever said something you thought might lose you a percentage of your congregation, but you knew you needed to say it to be faithful to the gospel? Or did you shy away from it for fear of slipping attendance or making people upset?
When you consider the measureable goals you have for your church this year, how many of them are attendance based or financial? How many of them concretely gauge whether or not true discipleship and life change is happening in your congregation?
Do you spend as much time and energy thinking about how to get people into deep relationships with each other and Jesus as you do how to get them in the door week after week?
Is your self-esteem as a pastor in any way connected to how many people attended church last Sunday? If there had been fewer people, would you have felt like a failure? If there had been more people, would you have felt like more of a success?
When you think about the future of your church, do you primarily dream in terms of more attendees, more services, more programs, and more visitors, or do you think in terms of more relationships, more disciples, and deeper connection to Christ?
Comparatively, what do you spend most of your time doing? Praying for your Sunday morning services or planning how to get people to come/return?
If a neutral party were to anonymously ask your staff, “Does your pastor care more about church growth in attendance or church growth in connection to Jesus” what would your staff say? Why would they say it?
When you celebrate your staff, do you celebrate their numerical victories in regards to attendance at their events, or do you celebrate the concrete discipleship and relationships they built and fostered?
Have you ever been willing to send someone to another church because you think they would fit in better there? – in other words, do you think kingdom growth is more important than your local church’s growth?
Deep down in your heart, when you’re honest with God about your motivations, do you have a sinful desire to grow the church big for the sake of growing the church big (and all the reputation and frills that come along with that), or do you want to see God’s kingdom grow, even if that means shrinking attendance at your church?

I ask you all these questions because these are the questions I must ask myself. I love preaching to a full room. I love it when people respond to my preaching and my ministry. I love looking at the spreadsheet every Monday morning and seeing how much our congregation has grown in the last two years. A certain amount of my identity is wrapped up in that growth. It’s tempting to keep chasing it.

And I know it’s tempting for you, too. But are you willing to acknowledge that this exists in your heart? And what are you willing to do to shift gears, change what you value, and see church growth (or non-growth) in light of God’s kingdom values? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have the ideology of a cancer cell. I want to have healthy growth, which may or may not look like the image we’ve been sold at conferences, by consultation groups, or even by our peers.

Leadership Qualities That Can’t Be Faked by Elizabeth Glass Turner

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, 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’m in a generation that’s extraordinarily cynical about leaders, largely because of scandal in every sector and at every level of public life. A President misuses power 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.

Here are a few of the 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.”

A Pastoral Prayer: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr by Claire Matheny

As a daughter of Tennessee, I hear the echoes of bullets that blasted before I was born. The same sounds that drew my parents from Mississippi to work in Memphis’ inner city, as Martin Luther King, Jr., fell on a second floor landing. We hear the shots even now.

For guns still yield brutal killings. And so often even now the color of one’s skin increases the chances of falling on the balcony of freedom.

And so from the seemingly lilted view of nearly 50 years we long for the top floor, for the highland’s celestial ceiling. Even if we can only seem to get as high as one set of stairs a decade, there is the lasting hope that we are still in one way or another ascending to greater understanding, greater compassion, and greater elevation.

But no matter how high we climb, we recall that beloved community also rests on the ground. At best, our upward ascent is a steady retracing of our steps down and up again as we make out the determined footprints of Jesus. And we recall the shots that freeze even the best of intentions. We recall that the future of sanitation workers are always in peril somewhere as we attempt to clear the refuse impeding the path that would guide us all upward.

And so we pray today for our some day ending, for the will to keep on working, descending and ascending. We pray owning our roles to play in the unequal state of the terrain. We take one step at a time past suburbs of privilege and down the streets of cities trembling. Our companions on the journey don’t always look like us, talk like us, fret like us. We pray for collective movement as we plod along together covered in the mud of the mountain.

May we march until the sound of shots is overcome by the sound of singing. May we march with the drum major who has been to the top: two steps forward, one step back as long as it takes for the motion of peace and justice to advance everyone.

Amen…

Holy Tenacity by James Petticrew

I have been reading Jeremiah over the past couple of weeks – not an easy read in many ways – but certainly for me a thought-provoking one. Something struck me while reading: the recurrence of a word which also reminded me of a chapter in a book by Eugene Peterson. After a great deal of rooting around in boxes in the garage, I found Eugene Peterson’s little book of reflections on Jeremiah called The Quest for Life at Its Best. In this wonderful wee tome Peterson talks about this word which had struck me so forcefully. It’s the word persistently.

“For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, the word of the LORD has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened.” Jeremiah 25:3

With those words Jeremiah describes his ministry as a prophet to the people of God. It’s been 23 years ….“persistently.”

For 23 years he met with God and listened to God and then shared God’s message with God’s people. If you know anything about Jeremiah you’ll know that it wasn’t 23 years of unmitigated success – anything but. Much of the time he was ridiculed, abused and imprisoned. Yet day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and decade after decade, Jeremiah persistently did what God had called him to do. He didn’t give up, he didn’t move to a city where people were more responsive, he didn’t modify his message. He persistently carried on doing what God had called on him to do. Peterson remarks, “the mark of certain kind of genius is the ability and energy to keep returning to the same task relentlessly, imaginatively, curiously, for a life time. To never give up and go on to something else; never get distracted and be diverted into something else”

I have been thinking a lot about Jeremiah and his persistency the last couple of days. It’s reminded me that what God calls us to do often calls for something we don’t regard as very glamorous; it’s what I would call holy tenacity.

Peterson defines it as the ability to return to our God-given calling “relentlessly, imaginatively, curiously, for a life time. To never give up and go on to something else; never get distracted and be diverted into something else.” I have to be honest and say holy tenacity doesn’t come easy to me. I belong to the Pot Noodle* generation, where we expect instant results. The stories we tend to celebrate in church life are the leaders and churches who achieve success quickly – 500 new people in five years impresses us. It probably should too. We should celebrate God’s blessings. However, we seldom celebrate those who minister “twenty three years…persistently,” who, like Jeremiah, approach what God has called them to do with a holy tenacity over an extended period.

I suspect that for all of us, whatever God calls us to do and to be, there will be a need at some point for this self same holy tenacity. It takes holy tenacity to be a teacher, to return to the classroom day after day when often there are more problems to be solved than successes to be celebrated. It takes holy tenacity to be a parent at times, to keep on loving and being firm when it would be easy just to be apathetic and give in. It takes holy tenacity to build a business that reflects the values of the kingdom of God rather than one that simply generates cash. It takes holy tenacity to represent God in an office year after year. I wonder if God led you to read this because he wants to remind you of the need for holy tenacity in doing what he has called you to do?

What we are talking about here is more than dogged determination and drudgery. Peterson comments, “don’t feel sorry for Jeremiah. He was not stuck in a rut, he was committed to a purpose. Jeremiah shows no evidence of bored drudgery. Everything we know of him shows that after 23 years his imagination is even more alive and his spirit even more resilient than it was in his youth. He wasn’t putting in his time. Every day was a new adventure of living the prophetic life. The days added up to a life of incredible tenacity, of amazing stamina.” Those words excite and inspire me; that’s the kind of holy tenacity I want to develop. I want to be more alive, more imaginative, more resilient as I grow older and I serve longer in my calling. Which made we wonder, how was Jeremiah able to develop and sustain this holy tenacity?

A read-through of the book of Jeremiah soon reveals the source of Jeremiah’s holy tenacity. Just look at these verses.

Jeremiah 7:13: “And now, because you have done all these things, declares the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer…”

Jeremiah 7:25: “From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day.”

Jeremiah 29:19: “Because they did not pay attention to my words, declares the LORD, that I persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen, declares the LORD.”

Jeremiah 11:7: “For I solemnly warned your fathers when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, warning them persistently, even to this day, saying, Obey my voice.”

Jeremiah 32:33: “They have turned to me their back and not their face. And though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive instruction.”

Jeremiah 35:14: “The command that Jonadab the son of Rechab gave to his sons, to drink no wine, has been kept, and they drink none to this day, for they have obeyed their father’s command. I have spoken to you persistently, but you have not listened to me.”

Jeremiah 35:15: “I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, sending them persistently, saying, ‘Turn now every one of you from his evil way, and amend your deeds.'”

Jeremiah 44:4: “Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, ‘Oh, do not do this abomination that I hate!'”

Eight times God says that he has persistently reached out to his people. Do you see the implications of these verses for understanding Jeremiah’s holy tenacity? Jeremiah developed and sustained his holy tenacity through being in relationship with a holy tenacious God, a God who persistently, repeatedly, constantly and urgently reached out to his people and to the whole of humanity.

I think I am beginning to understand how holy tenacity is developed now. Its not an end in itself; rather, it’s the overflow of our relationship with God. Jeremiah had holy tenacity because he was so close to God that his life reflected God’s character. I should have known that holy tenacity wouldn’t come easily or instantly.

After all my reflection I have come to the conclusion that just like Jeremiah I, and you too, will only develop this holy tenacity which is so vital to our callings by spending time with and listening to the God who is tenacious in his love and mission to all of humanity and to us as individuals. Jeremiah says that during the 23 years he ministered persistently, the word of the Lord came to him. In other words, he persistently spent time in God’s presence, listening to God’s Word. I can draw only one conclusion: a lifetime of holy tenacity ministering for God will take a lifetime of holy tenacity being with and listening to God.

*Great Brit equivalent to Cup o’ Noodles or Ramen.

From Projects To People: Serving With Christ’s Heart by Andy Stoddard

To get a better picture of Jesus, let’s look at two stories together, Mark 10:32-34 and then verses 35-45:

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

What we see here is two contrasting ideals with Jesus trying to reconcile them. We see Jesus teaching about what must happen, that he must suffer and die to save the people from their sins. His purpose is to teach us to love, to care, to serve, to forgive – and ultimately, his purpose is to go to the cross (and the empty grave) for our sins.

Jesus is teaching them that. But they aren’t getting it.

Then we see in the second portion James and John trying to wiggle their way into being the greatest in the kingdom. And Jesus says (paraphrasing), “guys, you are missing the point here.”

Your life, your greatness, it doesn’t come from power or prestige or titles. It comes from serving. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. That is the path he walks. And that is path that he calls us to walk.

Serve. We are not like the world. It is “not so among us.” We’ve got to be different. The only way that we change the world is to be different. The only way that we can make a difference in the hardened hearts of this world is through service: to love God and love our neighbor.

That’s what Jesus calls us to. That’s the path to greatness for us as Christians. Not in power, but in service.

Today, and in this soon-to-be Advent season, may we live out that love of God. May we serve.

Advice for Young Preachers by Michael Smith

When I was in high school, I took private voice lessons. I will never forget my first lesson: I had to stand in front of a mirror and look at myself. I thought, “what does this have to do with singing?” It was the most uncomfortable experience. This was a lesson in posture, in how the muscles in our mouth and throat, and even through our body, affect the sound we produce as singers. I had to align myself in the mirror. The mirror revealed truth (it always does). Even worse for me was when we recorded the lesson and I was asked to listen to the tape when I got home.

You see, I thought that the sound I produced was a combination of Frank Sinatra, Barry White, Nathan Lane, and all of the other great voices that I wanted to emulate. I was afraid of my own voice and thought that in order to be good, I had to sound like someone else. When I listened, it wasn’t my voice. I was able to hear the sound I produced rather than what I thought I sounded like. That kind of reminds me of some lessons in preaching.

Work on it.

When was the last time you listened to yourself – or worse, watched yourself – preach? Humble yourself, and listen and watch. Don’t live into the lie that you are God’s gift to preachers. I know I’m not; I have to keep working on it every week. Guess what? It’s hard, soul-wrenching work. When you watch, you may discover that you wipe your nose too much, you sway, or you have a nervous habit. Of course, preaching is more than just excellent oration; the Holy Spirit is involved. But let’s be honest: you can still work on ways to eliminate distractions to let the Spirit speak.

Listen to others.

Listening to good preachers should inspire us to sharpen our skills (and not just borrow material). Reflect upon not only the material and presentation, but also on who you are as a preacher. I remember sitting in an ecumenical service where another pastor preached. I thought to myself, “what is he talking about?” There was no focus. I don’t mean to be offensive to that person; in fact, it was more convicting for me. It invited me to reflect. I discovered I never want to be a preacher who, when I finish, walks away unaware that the people don’t have a clue what I was talking about. I realized how much I want to honor the precious gift of people’s time each week. When you listen to others, let it inspire you to be the best version of you. To do this you must find your voice.

Find your voice.

Much like my singing analogy, there is nothing more frustrating than listening to someone who is clearly trying to be somebody else. Just go to an elementary school talent show: the fourth-grade version of Christina Aguilera is enough to make you go crazy. Be comfortable with who you are. If you are not funny, don’t try to be. Let your passion and your authentic experiences shape your words. Remember that it is not all about you in your message, but people don’t want to hear about this random guy or that girl as an illustration. Your listeners want to know that you have wrestled with your subject and have overcome it, or are still wrestling with it. Your sermon must be authentic.

More and more, I see people going online and printing off stories they found from a keyword search. That’s lazy. Don’t do that. I like Mother Theresa, Winston Churchill, C.S. Lewis, Henri Nouwen, and Abraham Lincoln – but it seems many preachers follow a recipe for what a sermon should be that includes a sprinkle of quotes from these people. Quotes have their place, but even more powerful is your memorable phrase that drives what you are presenting over and over again in your message.

I still consider myself a “young preacher,” and I know that I am not “there” yet. But I do know that if you are not passionate about preaching, then you should find someone else to do it. I would do it for free. Unfortunately, in ministry, we want people to be great at all things. I know a lot of senior leaders who are great at pastoral care, visitation, Bible studies, and the like, but not great at communicating or preaching. Their churches are often struggling.

Until we reach a place where the senior leader isn’t expected to do everything in the church, you will have to work on your preaching. So either delegate this weakness, which can mean swallowing a huge dose of pride, or work on it, listen to others, and find your voice.

When Preachers Read by Elizabeth Glass Turner

“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.

The Greatest Spiritual Need by Elizabeth Glass Turner

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?

Right Privilege by Tom Fuerst

About a year ago my son started expressing interest in playing baseball. So we went to Dick’s Sports to get him a glove. But my son, only 3 years old at the time, throws left-handed. When we tried to find a glove small enough for his right hand there weren’t any. There were plenty of left-handed gloves for right-hand throwers, but absolutely no right-handed gloves for left-hand throwers. The right-handed throwers are the dominant culture. Being right-handed is the assumption. It is most people’s reality.

But this trip got me thinking at the time about how, when little league starts, my son could be functionally behind the right-handed kids. Not because he’s not smart enough, athletic enough, or big enough, but simply because there were no gloves in his size and for his hand. Simply because the dominant culture is not one he fits into. In this way, he lacks privilege that most kids have.

Privilege is a dangerous word in our culture. We don’t like to acknowledge privilege, and for those of us in the dominant culture, we don’t have to acknowledge privilege because the society is set up for us. We can be blind to these things, not because we’re necessarily immoral, but because we’ve had the privilege of never having to think about them. Again, I never had to think about the dominance of right-handed culture because I’m right-handed, but once I saw how left-handedness can impact athletic performance, I learned that my privileges of right-handedness come with all kinds of assumed, unearned benefits. How much more, then, does the fact that I’m white come with assumed, unearned benefits? How much more, then, does the fact that I’m male come with assumed, unearned benefits?

Of course, it’s at this point that people object – especially white men. We like to see ourselves as self-made. We like to think that we did it all ourselves. And some of this might even be true. Those right-handed little leaguers who get really good at baseball certainly work hard at it. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t benefit from privilege. You can be privileged and still be a hard worker.

The point is, your privilege affords you certain benefits that others can’t assume. To further the handedness metaphor a bit, once I noticed how my son might be delayed about in his baseball skills because of a lack of glove, I began to also notice other ways our world privileges right handers. Standard scissors assume right handedness. Our written language assumes right-handedness – even the way the letters are formed, especially cursive. Even something as simple – and unnoticed – as the dishwasher always being on the right side of the sink displays an assumption (and therefore privileging) of right-handers. Before I had a left-handed son, I never had to think about these things. I was able to just assume right-handedness is just the way the world is.

And this is maybe the key to any discussion of privilege. Those with privilege just assume this is the way the world is, and therefore they do not have to be aware of how others are not included in their privilege. As a man, I’ve never had to worry about whether people think I have the authority to preach. I’ve never had to worry about people judging my entire sex based on my preaching performance. Rather, because men dominate pulpits, I just get to assume this is just the way the world is. But I’ve never had to think about why a woman’s experience in the pulpit is thoroughly different. I’ve never had to think about the fact that most women in preaching roles struggle with their congregations questioning their authority, giftedness, or competence. I’ve never had to think about how if I preach a bad sermon, no one is going to say, “See, that’s why men shouldn’t be preaching.”

As a white man, I’ve never had to worry about if I did or didn’t get a job because of my skin color. I’ve never had to worry about how a “black name” might appear to an employer on a resume. That’s not a problem white men in this country ever have to deal with. And when I do get a job, nobody ever asks if I got it because I’m white. I have to privilege of everyone just assuming I’m qualified. That’s just the way the world is for me. But it’s not the way the world is for everyone. I’m privileged.

But my blindness to my privilege can also make me blind to the fact that the God I worship is not blind to the way the world is and he sees how some people have an easier go at life than others. Getting a late start in baseball because you can’t get a glove on your hand has minimal significance in life. But getting a late start in education or getting an inferior education simply because of where you were born or the color of your skin matters to God!

The God of scripture has a preference for those who are not privileged. Christ came to proclaim release to the captives, healing for the sick, restoration of sight to the blind, and good news to the poor. His entire mission is a message of restoration and empowerment for those who lacked privilege. This is why Christianity started off as a dominantly poor movement. It’s why so many women were attracted in the beginning. It validated the lives and stories of those who lacked privilege in Roman society.

But this isn’t just something Christ did that was different than how God had previously revealed himself. Rather, God, from the beginning, has been challenging our understandings of the way the world is. In Genesis 4, God went against the way the world is and accepted the younger Abel’s sacrifice over the older (and more privileged) Cain’s sacrifice. Later, God went against the way the world is by choosing Isaac over his older brother, Ishmael. Again, later, God contradicted the way the world is by choosing Jacob over Esau. God later tells the people of Israel that He chose them, not because they were the greatest, most powerful, privileged nation, but precisely because they were not. We could cite numerous examples of this even prior to Christ.

So it begs the question – in what ways does God want to challenge the way the world is today?

One of the key things God may want us to understand is that just because that’s the way the world is for us, doesn’t mean that’s the way the world is for everyone. As a white male, I was raised on the assumption that if you just work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you want. That promise is nice in an ideal world, but it’s a myth – even for me. Nevertheless, it still stays in the back of our minds, such that when we see less privileged people who aren’t succeeding as well as we are, we don’t first think about privilege. Rather, we first thing about hard work, or intelligence, or even virtue. They must not be working hard enough, be smart enough, or be good enough, we think.

But, if I can continue with the handedness metaphor, that’s like saying, “Left-handers have ugly handwriting. If they just worked harder at their handwriting, if they just worked on not smearing the ink on the page, if they just put in some effort, they could have beautiful handwriting like me.” But such an assumption fails to take into account the privilege – the way the page is set up, the way our written language moves from left to right, the way beautiful handwriting is judged by certain slants and curves that are darn near impossible for left-handers to achieve, no matter how hard they work.

Or, if the ugly handwriting metaphor doesn’t work for you, let me actually couch the metaphor in performance. Remember in grade school you had the wrap-around desks? Well those desks were made for right handers – so right handers could rest their arms up on the wrap-around piece to make writing easier. But where did that leave left-handers? If we were doing a timed test, as a right-hander I had an easier time with the actual writing because my arm didn’t get tired. Not so for a left-hander. Not only do they write slower on average because their pen-strokes have to be different, but they also didn’t have an arm rest. My higher performance on a timed test may not be because I as smarter, but was because I had a privilege, the word of the desk was assumed me.

When we consider that privilege is more than just about desks, the problem is exacerbated. An individual underperforming child, then, should prompt questions, not first about a child’s intelligence, but about social structures, educational access, and even simple things like if child eats when not in school. Looking at the larger context should cause us to ask other questions, too – why are all the best schools and best teachers out in the suburbs? Why do Christian schools – schools that name themselves after a poor man named Jesus – have prices so high that poor people can’t access them and get a great education, too? And what is the impact on our city of 50 years of underfunded schools in poor neighborhoods? Do you see? There’s a larger context than individual underperformance. And we must be willing to look at the larger context.

Just as left-handers can’t work harder or just learn to write with their right hands, no amount of hard work is going to remove or displace a glass ceiling. It’s going to take persons in privilege caring enough to notice that ceiling and working with those who are limited by it to remove it. It’s going to take the non-privileged persons to raise their voice, and the privileged persons having the willingness to listen and respond appropriately.

And our faith can play a key role in helping non-privileged persons gain access and resources to flourish as God’s creatures. Christianity is a religion that proclaims a God who laid aside his privilege, power, and even comfort, entered into the human story in the physical form of an oppressed minority in the backwater of nowhere, died a non-privileged death. What might it take for Christians today, especially those of us with privilege, to “take up a cross” and emulate that story?

To return to the left-handedness metaphor, when I was in high school, my best friend Tommy Branch was a left-handed Catholic. In elementary school, he said he went to a Catholic school where they, for religious reasons, tried to make him learn to write right-handed. As a Protestant, I don’t fully understand this, but the point is, his teachers reinforced “right privilege” and tried to justify it on religious grounds. The way the world is was reinforced by baptizing the way the world is instead of celebrating that there are other ways of viewing the world.

I wonder what the white church world, of which I have always been a part, can learn from our brothers and sisters of color. I wonder how we have theologically justified white privilege or male privilege, instead of asking tough questions about the way the world is. I wonder how much we have baptized our assumptions and benefits, talked about them as gifts of God, without considering how God might want us to lay those aside to benefit other voices. Not because I’m anyone’s hero or messiah, but because I care about a world where everyone can flourish, and I understand that I participate in a faith tradition where God’s privileging of the non-privileged is just the way the world is.

The Prevailing Sin Of Evangelicals by Elizabeth Glass Turner

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.