Vulnerability

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Someone I respect very much recently recommended this Ted Talk to me while making the following observation: "We can't selectively numb our feelings. If we numb negative emotions like anger, fear or pain, we will end up numbing our joy, our ability to love, and our passion."

Since I am someone who almost constantly struggles to express my emotions, I watched the talk.

Brene Brown is a brilliant anthropologist. Some of the observations she makes about human nature and American culture resonated deeply with me; they are things I have been recently noticing and learning in my own journey.

A few gems:

1. We can't selectively numb our emotions. We want to avoid negative emotions like shame, fear, anger or loneliness. But if we avoid those emotions, we will also prevent ourselves from feeling the positive emotions like joy, gratitude, love and happiness. You can't do just one thing.

Therefore, feel the negative emotions. Experience them. Stand back and observe yourself reacting to life. Don't judge, just observe.

2. People who feel more lovable, worthy and connected feel that way because they believe they are more lovable, worthy and connected.

Therefore, surround yourself with people and places who will remind you of your inherent worth. Take the risk of defining yourself as a beloved creation of God, instead of defining yourself by your ability to earn, attract, perform, or control.

3. Perfectionism will only end in neuroses, years of therapy, failure, and lack of intimacy.

Therefore, let go of the need to control and manage the messiness of life. Surrender.

Radical Moderates

"Liberal and sophisticated groups are usually trapped in current social correctness, and just keep affirming peoples' selfishness. It is classic enabling and codependency, with too much false horizontal affirmation and almost no vertical truth-speaking. Most fundamentalist and conservative groups just threaten people with God's harsh judgment and their own, but do not normally teach people how to heal or how to make amends, or how to let go in practical, emotional, and mental ways (no teaching of contemplation). 'Jesus has forgiven it, so we can forget about it.' This is far too vertical with almost no horizontal dimension. Their guilt problem was solved and that is all that matters."
    (from Breathing Underwater, Richard Rohr)

Nice critiques of both sides, Mr. Rohr.  Of course, every church is erring in one of these directions. What do we do?  Seek out the radical middle. Become followers of Jesus who yield to the natural hierarchy that God created to exist in the church, while resisting the urge to become authoritarian, hyper-religious legalists.  Learn how to pray for the Spirit's authentic healing of hurts in ourselves and others, and how to achieve vulnerability in healthy relationships with others rather than ignoring addictions or enabling destructive behavior.

It's so tempting to let people 'live their own lives' or alternatively to make people 'behave,' but the radical middle ground somehow strikes a balance between the freedom of spiritual maturity and the virtues of spiritual discipline.

Priests and Pastors

Calling & Character

William H. Willimon

If we hold to the ‘priesthood of all believers' doctrine, do we need separate ethics for pastors? If so, what are they?

            The Protestant tradition has long emphasized the doctrine (Biblical or not) that all Christians are qualified and capable of performing the same sacraments and roles as priests do in the Catholic tradition. Martin Luther puts it this way:

Now we, who have been baptized, are all uniformly priests in virtue of that very fact. The only addition received by the priests is the office of preaching, and even this with our consent. […] Thus it says in 1 Peter 2, “Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, and a priestly kingdom.” It follows that all of us who are Christians are also priests. […] The priesthood is simply the ministry of the word. So in 1 Corinthians 4 it says: “Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.””[1]

Willimon is writing in the Protestant tradition, and after nearly 500 years there is still much of Luther to be found in Willimon’s Methodist theology of the clergy.  He writes, “My starting point for thinking about the ordained leadership of the church is baptism, the ministry of all Christians for which ordained, pastoral ministry is but a species of a broader genus called the ministry of the baptized.”[2]  Whereas Luther must argue against a special class of Christian ministers in order to raise the moral bar and stop many abuses in the church, Willimon is arguing for at least some special treatment of pastors and ministers in order to raise the moral bar and stop many abuses in the church. He goes on to say that his book “seeks to highlight those ethical challenges that are peculiar to clergy, the morality and virtues that adhere to the practice of Christian leadership today and the way in which clerical character informs those challenges.”[3]

            In light of what Luther says, I appreciate Willimon’s emphasis throughout his book on the pastor’s call to faithfully preach the Word.  If pastors are meant to be believers who are called to serve the rest of the priesthood, their most difficult and thankless tasks are to offend people with Scripture, to expose their own failures and messes, and to confront the most embedded cultural sins of our time.  Perhaps this is the ethic from Calling & Character that pastors most need to hear.

As Willimon points out, all the ethical issues that pastors seem to struggle with most—such as inappropriate relations with churchgoers, financial irresponsibility and impropriety, or obsession with church growth and ‘success’—are merely role confusion.[4]  If we think our job is to meet people’s needs as much as possible, or to sacrifice ourselves to the point of burnout and embitterment, or to cater to the demands of the nominal masses from the pulpit, we will inevitably fail. But if we keep in mind the core of the gospel and remember that Jesus is the head of the Church, then everything we do will be aimed at creating “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”[5]

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[1] Martin Luther Babylonian Captivity of the Church 345-6.

[2] William H Willimon Calling & Character 10.

[3] Ibid., 12.

[4] Ibid., 24.

[5] 1 Timothy 1:5.

Fools for Christ

Calling & Character, William Willimon's book on pastoral ethics, seemed to start out as a fairly tame, conservative and even banal exploration of how American pastors should behave.  Then, in the chapter titled 'Crossbearing and the Clergy,' Professor Willimon starts lobbing hand grenades.

On conformity:

"A pastor...is a living reminder that the gospel is not establishment but revolt, not settled accommodation but rather destabilization of present arrangements." (p. 98)

"The temptation to be 'conformed rather than transformed' (contra Rom. 12:2) is rather relentless. Church is forever in danger of degenerating into Rotary." (p. 99)

"I wonder if one of the ethical challenges for ministry in the mainline church is the sort of people we attract to ministry. We seem to have a high proportion of those who wish to keep house, to conform, and too few who like to play, confront, disrupt, revise, and foolishly envision." (p. 99)

On finances:

"I therefore consider it ethically significant that, in my denomination, we clergy publish our salaries. This is what we call collegiality. Unfortunately, we do not do much about the disparity in the salaries of the lowest-paid clergy and the highest-paid, nor do we hold in prayer those clergy (like me) whose relatively high salaries place in situations of greatest moral peril." (p. 101)

Comments with sarcasm on American individualism: 

"If I explain my actions on the basis of tradition, community standards, my parents' beliefs, or Scripture, I have obviously not thought things through, have not decided for myself, have not been true to myself, have not rebelled against the external imposition of a role, so I have not been moral." (pp. 109-110)

My thoughts:

This book is a great reminder that "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise." (1 Cor 1:27)  We are always trying to whitewash our faith in order to somehow make it acceptable to the world. People don't want to hear the stuff Jesus said, like "If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." (Matt 19:27)

Our society defines success in very clear terms: be able to get what you want when you want it, don't depend on anyone else, get the things you need to make you happy. Unfortunately this is not the message Jesus preached. People don't want to hear about the widow who put the two bucks she had to her name in the offering box.  And we certainly don't want to imitate it!  American culture is telling us this is foolishness.

But if pastors and leaders try to hide stuff like this, they are not only lying to people but also failing in their mission. They forget that the mission is to say and do what is true. The gospel will work for itself, right? There's no need to dress it up. Pastors should not be about trying to improve church attendance on Sunday or making people feel okay about their dysfunctional marriages or promoting unity at the cost of honesty.

Luckily the gospel is not just about selling everything we have to follow Jesus or forsaking our families to follow Jesus; it's also about God's justice setting everything right that is currently wrong with the world, and about God's power delivering us from evil, and about God's grace healing us from all our diseases and inner wounds and sins.

Don't misunderstand me. I think contextualization of the gospel is a really important thing. I'm not talking about some Ray Comfort style of preaching that overtly tries to piss people off.  I'm talking about contextualizing the gospel to American culture--because maybe Americans don't really need to hear about deliverance from evil spirits or material blessings. Most of them don't go around talking about the demonic attack they underwent last night or the curse that the neighborhood witch put on their kids.  Most of them have a roof over their heads and food to eat and cars to drive. I'm not saying these things don't happen in the US; I know plenty of people in my neighborhood who don't own a car, and some who don't have enough to eat, and a few who are homeless. And many are undergoing spiritual attacks, but most of them aren't aware of it. What I am saying is that many Americans are really comfortable, and when they go to church, maybe they should feel uncomfortable. Many other Americans (including a lot of my neighbors) are living very difficult broken lives, struggling with joblessness and addiction and broken family relationships and lack of educational opportunities (and significantly, all of these issues and their contributing factors are being supported and perpetuated by dark spiritual forces at work in our culture). Maybe when these people come to church, they should find hope and comfort.  But it shouldn't just be promises of jobs and counseling for dysfunction and so on and so forth--because "Church is forever in danger of degenerating into Rotary."  We need to address those underlying, foundational causes like evil spiritual forces, or sins of individualism and materialism. Because if the Church doesn't preach the power of God and operate in that power, we are just another social justice non-profit organization.

Fortunately for all those American pastors out there, Jesus preaches a gospel that is simultaneously discomfiting and yet hopeful. He says, "But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places, who call out to the other children, and say, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.'  For John [the Baptist] came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon!'  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!'  Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." (Matt 11:16-19)

And then he prays, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to babes [...] Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn for me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my load is light." (Matt 11:25, 28-30).

Not bad for simultaneously preaching hard truth and hopeful truth.

Jesus In Community

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Eugene Peterson

Question: What are the signs and symptoms of a healthy community?

“I didn’t come to the conviction easily, but finally there was no getting around it: there can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community. I am not myself by myself. Community, not the highly vaunted individualism of our culture, is the setting in which Christ is at play.”[1]

            Resurrection is the first thing Peterson goes to as he tries to describe how the people of Jesus should incarnate the life and ministry of Jesus.  He writes that resurrection is something we cannot take credit for or make happen.  We didn’t raise Jesus from the dead and we can’t raise ourselves from the dead.  It is something God does. That truth applies to everything God is doing. “The more we get involved in what God is doing, the less we find ourselves running things; the more we participate in God’s work as revealed in Jesus, the more is done to us and the more is done through us.”[2]  Therefore, the first sign of a healthy community of believers is submission to God’s formation of us and the world around us. I take this partly to mean that we start with an attitude of worship and gratefulness, waiting on God’s presence and listening for His voice, rather than allowing people’s needs or our paradigm for ministry to dictate the way we serve or engage in community.

            The gospel of John highlights the way Jesus goes about forming a resurrection community on the night of his betrayal, during the Last Supper.  He starts out washing the disciples’ feet, he eats and talks with them for an extended period of time, and he ends by interceding for them to the Father.[3]  Jesus shows his disciples that a good leader demonstrates authority and leadership by serving.  His example is to serve, not to be served. A healthy community, therefore, is composed of servant-leaders who seek to honor each other.

After washing their feet, Jesus’ conversation with the disciples follows a pattern that Peterson lays out as follows:

           

            I washed your feet; you wash one another’s feet. (13:14)

            I have loved you; you love one another. (13:34; 15:12)

            You’ve seen me; you’ll see the Father. (14:9)

            You’ve seen me work; you’ll do my work. (14:12)

            I’ve been with you; the Spirit will be with you. (14:16-17)

            I live; you also will live. (14:19)

            You are in me; I am in you. (14:20)

            I am teaching you; the Spirit will teach/remind you. (14:25-26)

            Abide in me; I abide in you. (15:4)

            I was hated; you will be hated. (15:18-25)

            The Spirit will testify; you will testify. (15:26-27)

            I go away; the Spirit will come. (16:7)

            I haven’t finished what I have to say; the Spirit will tell you. (16:12-15)

            I am no longer in the world; they are in the world. (17:11)

            Father, we are one; may they be one. (17:11, 22, 23)

            I don’t belong to the world; they don’t belong to the world. (17:16)

            You sent me into the world; I send them into the world. (17:18)

            I sanctify myself; they are sanctified in truth. (17:19)

            You are in me and I in you; may they also be in us. (17:21)

            You love me; you love them. (17:23, 26).[4]

This repeated and reiterated and reinforced pattern that Jesus weaves into the conversation with His disciples is saying clearly that we are to continue what Jesus has been doing, and we are to do it by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, a healthy community ministers to people in the same way Jesus did (showing hospitality to strangers and outsiders, healing physical and emotional and spiritual brokenness, speaking up for truth and justice in ways that offend even the religious establishment), and does it by being filled with the same power Jesus was (the power of the Holy Spirit).

            According to Peterson, the greatest threat to healthy community is sectarianism.[5]  He defines it as “deliberately and willfully leaving the large community, […] and embarking on a path of special interests with some others, whether few or many, who share similar tastes and concerns.”[6] In other words, it is an easy substitute for the diversity and reconciliation that must exist in true community; a sect imitates community by involving a group of individuals, but it counterfeits community by drawing dividing lines based on all sorts of differences. Therefore, a healthy community avoids becoming a sect by renouncing selfism and individualism, by practicing radical hospitality with its neighbors, and by intentionally rooting itself in the place it exists.

            Peterson’s first grounding text for the section on community is the book of Deuteronomy, and he places the 10 commandments (‘ten words’ in Hebrew) at the center. Simply put, the book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ last sermon to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land, and he is laying out the necessary framework for how they are expected to live in community together as a holy nation. The ten words simply expand on the importance of loving God and loving others, and Moses follows them up with 16 chapters of instructions that deal with specific situations and how the people should deal with them.  He covers everything from what sort of meat can be sacrificed in the temple to how an Israelite can marry a foreign woman captured in battle.  Peterson sums it up saying, “If we are going to live in community we can’t brush things like this aside, trusting them to be worked out between men and women of goodwill who are, after all, ‘saved.’ We have to deal with these housekeeping details of getting along with each other.”[7]  Therefore, a healthy community has clear expectations put in place for how to correctly love God and love other people, and has specific, clearly communicated standards for right moral behavior that are applied and enforced with its members.

            Peterson’s second grounding text for his section on community is the two-volume work of Luke/Acts.  He highlights Luke’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit throughout both books, and points out that the Holy Spirit is the direct cause of two very important conceptions: the conception of Jesus and his cousin John, and three decades later the conception of the church at Pentecost.  In both cases there is a miraculous beginning that is followed by a completely ordinary journey of growth and development.  Jesus and John—despite being conceived in a miraculous way—must learn to eat, crawl, walk, talk, obey their parents, work, pray and read just like any other child.  Similarly, although the church is begun by the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples with tongues of fire, those same disciples must now learn to preach the gospel, pray, love their neighbors, appoint elders, partake in communion, and all the other thousands of activities that compose the life of the church. Commenting on the power of the Holy Spirit Peterson says, “Whatever the power of the Spirit means, bullying force isn’t part of it. It is certainly not what takes place when a fuse ignites a stick of dynamite (named after the Greek work for power, dynamis). The power of God is always exercised in personal ways, creating and saving and blessing. It is never an impersonal application of force from without.”[8]  In other words, although the Holy Spirit fills us and empowers us and performs miracles through us, there is a very important process and journey of growth that must also occur in healthy community, and that no power of the Holy Spirit will allow us to short-circuit. Therefore, a healthy Christian community has a clear understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in its midst, and a strong ethic of investing in the daily life of the church.

            There are five famous prayers in the beginning of Luke that help define how the church should respond to the Holy Spirit, and participate in the way He speaks and works in our lives: the Fiat mihi, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in excelsis, and the Nunc dimittis.[9]  The most important leaders of the Acts church spent most of their time praying.[10]  Therefore, a healthy Christian community has prayer as its common language, and is steeped in prayer.

            Both Luke and Acts end with trials—Luke with a trial of Jesus and Acts with a trial of Paul. Peterson observes that neither Jesus nor Paul—two of the most important men in the history of the church and in shaping the history of the entire human race since then—made much of an impression on the authorities interrogating them.  It is a stark reminder that the church, even at its most dynamic, will never impress or arrest the attention of the world. Peterson writes, “Hebrew history capped by a full exposition in Jesus Christ tells us that God’s revelation of himself is rejected far more often that it is accepted, is dismissed by far more people than embrace it, and has been either attacked or ignored by every major culture or civilization in which it has given its witness […]”[11] Therefore, a symptom of healthy Christian community is that the world around it is either disinterested in or actively rejecting its offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.

            In summary, the following are signs and symptoms of a healthy Christian community. Submitting to God’s formation of us and of the world around us, composed of servant-leaders who seek to honor each other, ministering to people the same way Jesus did and filled with the same Spirit Jesus was, avoiding sectarianism by practicing radical hospitality and connecting to a specific locale, creating and abiding by expectations for how to love God, love each other and behave in a way that pleases God, welcoming the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit while simultaneously working daily to grow and develop the church and its members, and avoiding the temptation to work for success and acceptability to our culture by accepting the reality of the world’s disinterest in Jesus.

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[1] Peterson 226.

[2] Ibid., 231.

[3] John 13:1-17:26.

[4] Peterson, 236-7.

[5] Ibid., 239.

[6] Ibid., 239-40.

[7] Ibid., 262.

[8] Peterson, 272.

[9] Luke 1:38-2:32.

[10] Acts 6:1-4.

[11] Peterson 288.

GRACE After School

In case you don't know, I am serving a 12-month term with AmeriCorps in the city of Buffalo, and my placement is the GRACE After School program, which is a ministry of the House of Grace. I work with students who live in this neighborhood, between 2nd and 7th grade, who are mostly refugees.

This week we are learning how to fuse glass, an ancient process that integrates global cultures, history, art and science.  Thanks to a friend and colleague who is a great artist and a mission team from Ithaca, we were able to make this great experience happen for my students.  Check out the photos on our blog!  There will be more photos to come by the end of the week.

GRACE Glass Fusing Project

The Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen

Question: Are numbers a good way to measure success in ministry, and if not, what is?

Henri Nouwen emphasizes hope as being a critical characteristic of any Christian leader, primarily because it allows him to offer vision to people that looks beyond human suffering and death.  For him, this hope is based on a promise that has been given to us and made tangible in Christ. However, that same hope should prevent a Christian minister from trying to measure his success in tangible ways.  He writes,

Every attempt to attach this hope to visible symptoms in our surroundings becomes a temptation when it prevents us from the realization that promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership. Many ministers, priests and Christian laymen have become disillusioned, bitter and even hostile when years of hard work bear no fruit, when little change is accomplished. Building a vocation on the expectation of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts.[1]

In other words God does not promise any Christian that life will be easy, that virtue will appear overnight or vice will be magically purged, that he will get his dream job, that marriage will be easy and fun, or that all sickness, pain and loss will be prevented. God’s promise is that we are now seated in the heavenly places with Christ,[2] given authority and wisdom through the mind of Christ,[3] given an eternal inheritance with Christ,[4] and our names are written in the book of life.[5]  Is Nouwen guilty of ignoring the tangible, earthly, immediate ramifications of these promises by warning against expecting success in ministry, or is he asking us to redefine success by looking at ministry through a different lens?

Obviously we shouldn’t believe or preach a gospel of prosperity, because Jesus never taught that the Kingdom of God would come and make our lives easy and our wallets fat.  However, as God’s ruling power and authority infiltrates our lives and the world, we will undoubtedly see the effects of His love, mercy, healing power and justice occurring in tangible, earthly, immediate ways.  We live in a physical world, but it also directly affects and is affected by the unseen spiritual world.  So if my ministry is bringing God’s Kingdom, shouldn’t there be a way to physically measure it?

I think we need to find a balance between defining success in terms of numbers while simultaneously investing our lives in the places and people God has called us to without regard to results.  Both extremes are mistakes, because while the former is faithless and short-sighted, the latter is naïve and spiritually insensitive. 

One of the dangers of looking for numbers to define success is a purely programmatic, institutional approach to ministry.  Humans, and especially Christians, tend to want a formula for success that has clearly defined steps and easily implemented strategies, as well as lots of workbooks, media, catchphrases and famous endorsements.  Unfortunately for us, the kingdom of God is made up of people, and relationships.  In my opinion, a huge and famous ministry with best-selling books, charismatic leaders, and great music that lacks true discipleship—no matter how much money is being donated or how many people are being miraculous healed—is a failed ministry.

On the other hand, a willingness to labor tirelessly and indefinitely in a neighborhood or church—investing our time, energy, money and spiritual assets regardless of any return—based on God’s call to that place or the needs of that place, has its own dangers.  Complacency or burnout are probably inevitable in the face of difficult obstacles like addictions, spiritual strongholds, generational poverty or racism.  We can easily become blind to the truth of a ministry situation when we avoid asking hard questions about effectiveness, strategic approaches to ministry, or the possibility that God has called us to do something else or go somewhere else.

Maybe one of the ways we hold these things in tension is through relying on the diversity of the body of Christ.  We need faithful people who are willing to work tirelessly, to pray constantly, and to invest themselves regardless of the outcome.  We need visionaries who have an idea of where a neighborhood, church or other community could be in 5, 10 or 20 years, and who can keep reminding the workhorses of the kind of change that is possible.  We need conscientious, detail-oriented people who will keep picking apart the nuts and bolt of a ministry, trying to make it better in every way and trying to customize it to the vision and purpose that God has for it.  We need prophetic people who can feel the movement of the Spirit and speak it into the hearts of everyone involved, so that when God begins to do a new thing or wants to redirect an existing thing, there is sensitivity and willingness to obey.

Perhaps the best way to measure the success of a ministry is to see what kind of leaders it attracts and what roles they are filling within that ministry.

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[1] Nouwen The Wounded Healer 76-7.

[2] Ephesians 2:6.

[3] Philippians 2:2.

[4] Ephesians 1:11.

[5] Revelation 3:5.