My Reconstitution Posts

               The Vice President of the ELCA, the highest-ranking lay leader in my denomination, just asked a question: If you were to change the organizational structure of the ELCA, how would you do it?

              Last year I engaged with this question in a sustained kind of way on this blog. Here are links to some of those thoughts.

-In my first post, initially planned as a one-off, I thought back to major changes in the ELCA since its establishment and laid out a couple of alternative models of church that took them into account, but the idea caught my imagination and I was off to the races.

- I took some time defining Church.

- I thought a bit about the task of lay folk.

-I meandered around what it means to be ordained.

-I made the case that practicing the liturgy is reasonable, an argument I am still making in a variety of forms.

-I made some arguments about a more decentralized or more centralized polity.

-I engaged with an Atlantic article everyone, even non-church-types were sharing.

-I shared a map of what the ELCA (missing the Caribbean Synod) would look like if we cut the number of Synods in half.

-I wrestled with some questions about authority: Who is the Pastor’s Boss? How do we share our money?

-More recently, I tugged at the thorny question of power and responsibilities surrounding congregational closings and named some alternative framings for leadership and organization.

              What do these dozen or so posts add up to? A few ponderings inspired by the ELCA’s hopeful intention to reconstitute ourselves, so that we might be more faithful in the world as it is, so we might move on from “living into” the merger of 1988 to living together in 2025 and on into the future.

A Defense of the Liturgy

 

              I know folk like Ross Douthat pooh-pooh naming the social good of the liturgy and the church as adopting the position of a quisling to culture, but I disagree. Focusing on the transcendent frame is very important, it is why I encouraged my congregation to have God conversations and why I added a 4^th D to my conception of ministry in the year of our Lord 2024. That said, noting how people’s physical lives are impoverished by a lack of practicing the liturgy, is worthwhile.

              If you’d like to read the broad strokes of my thoughts on the 7 Central Things of Worship, here is my most comprehensive thoughts. But, for this post, I’ll be focusing on the absence of the 7 central things.

Gathering:

              The recently released documentary, Join or Die is a popularization of Robert Putman’s famous book Bowling Alone. It documents the rise and fall of club/league culture, and points out that not gathering with other people is disastrous both for individuals and for whole societies. On the individual level not being an active member of at least one organization is as detrimental to one’s health as picking up a major vice, like smoking or overeating. For societies it is the difference between kleptocracy and democracy. So, gathering weekly with your fellow Christians doesn’t sound so bad when compared to the alternative, does it?

Baptism:

              The church in every age has a built in buffer against bigotry—Baptism. We can point to that famous phrase found in Galatians, “In Christ there is no…” and add whatever division the world has created in the present moment. In Christ there is no cis or trans, in Christ no black or white, in Christ no red or blue, in Christ no foreigner or native. We quite often fail to live up to that ideal, but it is always there as a prophetic wooing, “Come back to the font you whose ultimate Identity is in Christ Jesus.” In the face of Apartheid and segregation and the murder of Matthew Shepherd—look again, that’s a CHILD OF GOD! That’s the IMAGE OF GOD! You are a child of God, ACT LIKE IT! Imagine if you were regularly reminded of that reality! If your identity and the identity of your neighbor was grounded in grace! Imagine if our society was less bigoted, because a good portion of us had to make a mark of the cross upon our brow before brow beating the “other”.

Confession and Forgiveness:

              I regularly hear complaints about our country being too litigious, people being too sensitive, no one having a sense of shame, and that there is never a way to back down in a confrontation. What if there was an alternative to tit for tat confrontation, a way to wrestle with having fallen short other than a shame spiral or complete denial that you’ve ever done something wrong? What if we could soothe and ameliorate hurts instead of holding onto them or resenting the one we’ve wronged? What if there were ways of righting a wrong and receiving an apology and rectifying the wrong that didn’t involve going to court? Well, according to the Christian tradition, there is, confession and forgiveness. In fact, there is a concrete process for doing so, most earnestly described by Desmund Tutu—the fourfold path of forgiveness.

Word:

              Especially with the gaping wound of our partisan divide, it feels like we aren’t telling the same story. Our news is siloed, our lives are cut off from one another by garage doors and diverse area codes, our fables, myths, and metanarratives are told by politicians—mediated by storytellers with axes to grind. What if instead, once a week, we shared a common story? How might that transform the ugliness we've all embraced?

Thanksgiving

We are an anxious people, drawn into that dis-ease by a sense of lack, a sense of want, a sense of avarice even. Our souls are cultivated by an artificial sense of scarcity, advertisements that turn our attention to what we do not have. In that mentality of scarcity, we lose our sure footing, resilience and very selves—all this in one of the most well-off countries in the world! It doesn’t have to be that way, we can name everything as gift, and in so doing recognize that we have enough, that abundance is on offer.

Meal

              For some time there has been talk of a “generosity crisis”. While a few super rich people and corporations are currently propping up charities, millions and millions fewer people donate to charities and volunteer their time, than in previous generations. Some of that has to do with the average person being squeezed economically, some of it has to do with a lack of trust in institutions and the breakdown in community Robert Putman talks about, and some of it has to do with people being out of practice. Well, I’ve got news for you, every time a congregation receives the Lord’s Supper—Holy Communion—we are participating in “The economy of the City of God.” We receive the generous, priceless, gift of the body of Christ, and in turn are sent to be that very body in the world. Receiving grace, we offer grace, receiving the generosity of God, we are moved to be generous. And, funny enough, the statisticians and psychologist agree with this theological statement, the most generous folk, are religious folk!

Sending

              Piggypacking off that last point, in a world where consciously avoiding assisting our neighbor (just look at any of those hidden camera viral videos with people passing a stranger in need, or search your own heart when someone asks for assistance) and where we have grown to believe we are so time poor we hoard our hours and our minutes, isn’t it amazing that I have the audacity to use a phrase like: “sent to be that very body in the world.” That’s a dangerous thing, to understand leaving a church building as a call to go and entertain angels unaware, that’s downright countercultural! But that’s part of what goes on at a typical Sunday service. We are priming ourselves to serve and to be sent for the sake of our neighbors.

Conclusion

              So, what am I saying with all this? That liturgical worship, worship that encompasses the seven central things, is expansively good!

-It is good in a spiritual way that is maybe too ephemeral or transcendent or unquantifiable to justify the practice to anyone not already wooed by its mysteries.

-It is good in a nameable individual way as I’ve spelled out before: I’m better at being in community, I have an increased sense of self-worth, am better at getting over slights and making sense of life, and I am more content, generous, and gentle, because I worship.

-But also having a meaningful number of people practicing the seven central things is good in a way that benefits society at large. We flavor our neighborhoods and nations. Where there is loneliness, we offer community. Where there is bigotry, we offer identities rooted in baptism and loyal to the truth that all people are made in the image of God. Where there is enmity, we offer a path to reconciliation. Where there is a broken story, we offer narratives that can cross many boundaries. Where there is greed and scarcity, we offer abundance, resilience, and generosity. Where there are walls of separation and unmet needs, we offer assistance and neighborliness.

Truly, the liturgy is very good.

Ministry in the Trump Era, initial thoughts

                Here we are again. A week ago, Donald Trump was elected president. We did this once before. Many of us tried to forget those four years, and how bone achingly hard it was to minister faithfully. Well, it’s worth reflecting back a bit on those hard years.

Every word of yours will be blue or red

                One of the hardest things about the four years of Trump was how everything was viewed through an intense partisan lens. I remember the week the Sermon on the Mount came up in the lectionary. A colleague was called onto the carpet by her church council for “picking” such “anti-Trump” words.

At bible studies and council meetings you could see parishioners calculating out if your words supported Trump or the Resistance; anything that didn’t clearly have a red hat or a pink hat with ears on it, was suspect. You were assumed to be on the other “side” unless your words explicitly announced the shibboleth of the moment, whatever the moment was. In short, good was wholly defined by its relationship to Donald Trump and his framing of whatever issue was front and center in our national life that day or that week.

                This means we need to remember how to blend idioms, so people can actually hear the gospel. It means translating the message of scripture into two opposing vernaculars and then tearing the corners off each, so they still startle and save your people! It means preaching the good news about Jesus is going to challenge your people in ways that are going to make them uncomfortable, and sometimes they are going to hate you for it.

                As a corollary, there will also be a temptation to see every instance of discomfort and every time someone spews hatred at you, as proof of your faithfulness. We preachers aren’t that righteous. There will be times when we screw up or are indelicate or are responding to events with our own agenda, not faithfulness to the Gospel. Deep and meaningful discernment is required.

                And the lectionary is doing us no favors—or every favor, depending on how uncomfortable you are willing to get. We’re heading into the year of Luke! Luke, who insists on an ancient sort of gender equality when it comes to miracles—if a guy receive healing in a certain way inevitably a woman will receive the same. Luke, who is concerned about everyone having enough to such an extent that his John the Baptist sounds to some like John the Socialist, with his cloak re-distribution and emptying of the Tax Collector’s pockets. Luke, who begins Jesus’ ministry with the words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Christian Nationalism

                Along with partisan lenses, there was the drum beat of Christian Nationalism. People would continually confuse being an American citizen with being a Christian and vice versa. Using Lutheran language, people were consistently confusing the two hands of God—the authority of government and the authority of the church. Or to use more American language, there were gleeful urges to break down the wall between church and state.

                Sometimes this was fairly innocent stuff: “Why not more hymns that honor America, if baseball games can honor our country, why can’t worship do the same.”

                The answer being that worship is something different than a baseball game. We’re here to worship Jesus, not America. Many civic hymns aren’t written and embraced because they have good solid doctrine, but because they rouse people to fight, or feel especially good about a cause, or a country. For example, the Battle Hymn of the Republic affirms that God’s glory is clearly visible in the wrath filled death visited upon America during the Civil War. As Lutherans we affirm God is most fully visible only on the cross, and even then, it is a strange thing, an “alien work of God.”

                Other times it could get downright uncomfortable, insidious even. “In the prayers of intercession don’t pray for countries that aren’t America.” “We’re a Christian country, so shouldn’t non-Christians leave?” “The ELCA shouldn’t do refugee work or foreign mission, we should help our own first!” “Pastor, don’t you think Donald Trump is America’s King David, anointed to Make America Great?”

                The above may sound comical, but they are all things said to me last time around. So, as good Lutherans, we ought to be clear that the Church is never a political party at prayer, the City of Man isn’t the City of God, and there is no such thing as a Christian country, because Christians are always sojourners. Theocracy is not our goal, and the Kingdom of God comes about in instances that will look nothing like America’s political process. We only hope that we are given the grace to catch glimpses of it.

Exhaustion

                The pace of those 4 years was grueling. It felt like there was a whole year in there where a major world-shifting event that had to be referenced and unpacked in the sermon if the preacher was to be faithful, happened every Saturday afternoon. Along with that, the number of parishioners breaking down under the unrelenting weight of the news cycle and unending familial partisan fights, in need of pastoral care but also prickly as could be, was astonishing!

                In retrospect, some of those times we preachers tried to be faithful to the moment came off as shooting from the hip. For that matter, sometimes it was chasing relevance, not faithfulness. But, in the fog of those four years, it was hard to tell the difference. Even with the breathing room of the last four years, it’s still hard, at least for me, to discern the difference.

Don’t go looking for crosses, they’ll find you

                Maybe this is a “me” problem. For all my time in New Jersey and Belgium and England and Oregon and about a dozen other places, I’m at my core a Liberal from Wyoming, a “Red State Reject.” That means I tend to assume a defensive crouch and am tactically and strategically moderate. I don’t assume going for maximalist goals or grand denunciations work. I assume if I were to announce that everyone in the room has to side with me or my ideological opposite, I’m going to be pretty lonely—and doing so might endanger other people. At my core I value: listening, finding common ground, holding my own ideologies loosely, and taking bold action only when it will do the most good.

                This kind of stance was not well received in the Trump era. You see, at least once a month there was a drum beat on social media that, “If your preacher doesn’t preach this talking point, this Sunday you need to leave your church!” This was usually followed up by one-upmanship by preachers about how fiercely Trump was denounced and how many “Red Hats” walked out that Sunday. It felt at times like the misquote of the day was to, “Preach with Daily Kos in one hand and the Bible in the other.”

                And maybe some contexts called for that level of political engagement. But every time I tried to hop on that train, every time I tried to fully embody that meme, “If you wonder what you would have done in Nazi Germany, look at what you’re doing right now!” it felt performative, and like I was trying to center myself in a story that wasn’t actually mine. The raw energy of the era made every protest, every new book, every email, every action—be it wearing safety pins or now blue rubber bands—the most important thing.

In short, I felt like I was rushing off to find my cross so I could carry it. But, the same thing I tell parishioners who get excited about some harmful thing being their “cross to bear” and Luther told all those monks flagellating themselves as a good work, applies here, “If you’re acting faithfully in the world, the cross will find you.”

I found that to be true. Faithfully ministering during the Trump years caused me to lead my fairly moderate to conservative congregation to care about and advocate for Indonesian refugees, some of whom were eventually deported. The cross found me, not in safety pins or marches, but in the day in day out work of caring for souls well. Or to roughly translate that into a secular phrase, “Think globally, but act locally.”

A Word on Protest

With all the above said, there is something right about protest that I’d been told in college, and only have come to believe to be true after January 6^th. I was fairly active in protesting against the Iraq war. After that movement fizzled out, some folks thought I would show up to the protest about the next issue, and the next issue, and the next issue—there was literally a protest about something at least once a week at U of O. It was like people cared about the medium as much as the message, that protests were a good unto themselves, which always hit me wrong.

At the time, again call me Crouching Wyoming Hidden Liberal, I thought less was more—people would actually pay attention to protests, if they weren’t the background noise of the everyday. My more serious protester friends responded that the smaller inconsequential protests were practice for the big ones that matter.

When the Women’s March happened, I remembering making a big deal about how amazing it was that no one was arrested or hurt. Many conservatives forcefully pushed back at me. I tried to explain how there is a talent and genius to protesting well. My words were mocked. Then when the conservatives did their version of the Women’s March—January 6^th—hundreds of people were hurt, several died, and there are still ongoing arrests!

On one hand, I could say that was all by design, that the violence was all intentional, and therefore everyone who participated ought to be locked up, or at least fined. Or I could assume that the right has absolutely no idea how to protest, because they never practiced.

Now, if my kinder interpretation is correct, it also means college me was wrong. A healthy practice of protest ensures that the big ones are orderly, that points are made with words instead of with bear spray and brass knuckles.

 

Conclusion

-Trump is really good at pushing people into partisan corners, we’ll need to be ready to preach Gospel to an even more siloed church.

-People are going to confuse Church and State, we need to be clear about that separation and refuse to be co-opted.

-We need to think about pacing—we have been given timeless truths and we need to trust they’ll be relevant even during seismic shifts.

-We won’t need to hunt down the hard particular work, it’ll find us in the day to day of our baptismal vocations.

A thought experiment: A Local Tithe and a Vision Tithe

 

              If the statisticians are right and the mainline tradition writ large will not be a significant force in America in about a decade, mainly because many congregations will shrink and close, we need to rethink Holy Closure, if for no other reason than there will be a whole lot of them. Luckily, one of the very forces hobbling the church, decentralization, may also assist in setting things right. Now, I know, no shock, one of the last guys defending decentralization in the ELCA, thinks it could be helpful.

              But hear me out. A danger in the coming years is that the Synod will be spending all of their time and effort shepherding congregational closures, instead of equipping the remaining congregation for ministry. A second danger is that a large portion of the proceeds from closures will go straight to the Synod to fund Synodical ministries, which will be fixated on closing churches. These two dynamics pressed together could create a bad feedback loop, where a Synod becomes invested in doing the work of church closure, and church closure in turn funds that work.

              So, what’s the problem with that, you may ask. After all, those who do the work ought to receive the fruits of that work. Yes, and. And millions of dollars leaving local communities for a centralized office, is alienating, especially if that centralized office is so caught up in closures that they have no bandwidth for other ministry and mission. I know there is an implication that folks from closing congregations will join a nearby congregation and renew them, and those who make that move certainly do. But the majority of the members of a closing congregation disappear into the ether, and will only reappear as “anonymous” Lutherans at the funeral home. The pastor of the receiving congregation will go from doing 6-10 funerals a year for people they know, to 10-12 funerals a year, half of them for people they do not know. And again, the shibboleth is that if a Pastor does one or two “anonymous” funerals really well they’ll gain a family… that may have been true when families lived near each other, but rarely happens these days.

              What if both the responsibility and fruits of closure were distributed differently? What if, becoming a District Dean or Cluster Counselor came with more than a vague “Other Duties as Assigned” type of mandate, but instead an understanding that 10% of resources from closing a congregation would go to ministries in the Cluster or District? This would do two things:
1. It might encourage Districts and Clusters to think more “missionally” about who their Deans and Counselors are (I know in Clusters and Districts I’ve been a part of, everyone touches their nose and says “not it” when picking the new Dean or Counselor).
2. It might also spark little local fires until something catches—it might harness the power of Decentralization in such a way that congregational closings will cease to be a sign of death, but instead a sign of resurrection and new life!

              So, one thing to think of, is encouraging every congregation to voluntarily pass a continuing resolution that if they close, they want at least 10% of their assets to go to the Synod and 10% of their assets to go to either their Cluster or District. Give 10% to support the broader vision that the Synod has laid out, the strategic big picture thinking that takes into account demographic shifts and programs that benefit the whole Synod. But also, give 10% to minister to those who remain, to encourage tactical victories that might otherwise become missed opportunities, to fund ground up innovation and empower clusters and districts.

The Kind of Leaders we Need Now

 

              If my suspicions about the 4Ds are true, then they may be calling the Church to new behaviors, new models of leadership and organization even. Imagine a Congregation, or Synod, or Churchwide Office, ordered and staffed to focus on the 4Ds. Imagine Lay and Ordained congregants focused on ministering in a dispersed world; imagine Bishops and Bishop’s Associates focused on finding new models of partnership amongst the wreckage of the old order of the informal establishment of religion. Imagine Churchwide Organizations ordered around doing the things that allow us to believe in God at all and listening to those most on the edges of our society and our church.

              In our Disenchanted world, we need Soul Shepherds. We need leaders who practice what they preach, have encountered the living God, and want to introduce others to Jesus! Leaders who are centered in prayer, are able to listen people into the faith, and can cure congregations of their Lutheran Laryngitis.

              In our Diverse world, we need Wave Riders. We need leaders who come from and advocate for the edges of both church and society. We need leaders who are conversant in multiple vernaculars, who can cross and gather together intergenerational and multicultural cohorts. If we seek to be a young diverse denomination, we need young and diverse leaders, and those who care for them.

              In our Decentralized world, we need Sacred Scientists. We need leaders who encourage small groups of people to embrace holy experiments that magnify their ministries. We need leaders who will act like spy handers, equipping leaders, setting goals, and letting people go and do, because they trust them to get the work done. We need leaders adept at the holy grail of decentralization, the internet—but not because it is cool or fashionable, but because it can make meaningful ministry happen. We need leaders who can gather dispersed people for fun and fellowship, and food—a host adept at dinner church could be just what we need to be church today and into many tomorrows.

              In our Disestablished world, we need Partnership Crafters. We need leaders who can be matchmakers between secular organizations and congregations, who can midwife a new web of connections into existence. We need leaders who can articulate the church’s mission in a way that inspires those who are neither religious nor spiritual to join in common cause with the Church, be it in acts of service or sharing of space.

Sermon: The Promise of God in Partisan Times

          Do you remember that part in the book of Revelation where, 

‘round the throne of God, 
the saints all arrayed in white are singing
—then there are discordant voices, 
shouts, 
scuffling breaks out!

“I can’t believe you voted for THAT man!” 
“You cast a ballot for that WOMAN!”

 

         That feels like where we’re at, doesn’t it? 
Electing the other candidate is the end of the world, 

         In an election on a knife’s edge, 
a country that is 50/50 split. 
Where literally billions of dollars are being poured into political ads.

Our anxiety and hackles are both up. 
Burnt ballots in the Pacific North West, 
and teens chasing blue haired ladies with machetes down in Florida…

         And yet, it is not, I want to tell you, the End of the World…

 

         I say that not downplaying the big and challenging issues of our day
—or the real-world implications of the choices we make this year… 

         For example,

         I have a friend whose Trans son will be making college choices based on who gets elected. Will he stay in state, can he risk going out of state
—or does he need to look out of country, for his safety.

         Similarly, another friend will decide which union to join based on the election results… 
will he be making cars with internal combustion engines or electric motors
—it is literally a 10,000-dollar question for his family.

 

         These are consequential choices, 
fraught with peril and meaning and a whole lot of fear, 
and that’s why it is worth considering it all in the light of eternity.  
         To center ourselves on the Christian witness about all these things
—that I feel can be best boiled down to two points:

1.   Christian discernment, especially about secular choices, will always be done as a “Faithful, reverent, best guess.”

2.   God has a promise for us, even in these Partisan Times.

 

Prayer

 

         No nation is the Kingdom of God

         St. Augustine wrote his weighty tome “City of God” as a reflection of the New Jerusalem in Revelation
—and also as a reflection on the tension he found between being a Roman Citizen and being a Citizen of Heaven. He spends well over a thousand pages untangling being a citizen and being a believer.

         So too Luther, and we Lutherans by extension, 
we make a distinction between the secular and the sacred by saying that there are “Two Kingdoms” or sometimes we use the language of “Two Hands of God.”

(As a side note none other than James Madison was a close reader of Luther, and from that reading offered our country the Establishment Clause—popularly called the Separation of Church and State) 

         For we Lutherans, we understand that God uses the Government to do “Law” that is, 
the Government can restrain evil and encourage the good… 
but it cannot do “Gospel”
—it cannot save, comfort, destroy death, bring life to the dead or comfort to the mourning. 
God has authorized the Church to be His good news in the world.

 

         Now, this time of year as a Pastor, 
I always get mailers from various Religious Freedom groups, 
encouraging me to endorse a candidate from the pulpit…

         They say that “if every pastor did it, they couldn’t lock us all up… 
Let’s break down the wall of separation between Church and State!”
         To which every Lutheran Pastor ought to say, 
“No thank you, fences make good neighbors, 
and I’d just as soon the Church be a good neighbor to the state, 
as opposed to subsidiary of it.”

         As a Pastor, all I’ll tell my congregants—all of you—is “Make a Faithful, Reverent, best guess!”

 

         No Party can bring about God’s Kingdom

         It was true in Jesus’ day
—the Zealots thought through might of arms 
and the Herodians through ideological purity
—that they could force God’s will…

         For that matter, some partisans tried to crown Jesus King…

         His reply was to slip away, saying essentially, “I’m not that kind of King!”

 

         Or look carefully at what happens in Revelation
—how God is enthroned
—God comes down!

A Renewed world comes down! 
A new Jerusalem comes down! 
God comes down!
—we don’t climb up
—that’s the story of the Tower of Babel …

we don’t force God’s hand… no… 
         We pray “Thy Kingdom Come” 
because we just hope that we’ll notice it, 
when God is at work in the world 
in mysterious and wondrous ways!

 

         No party is going to bring about the Kingdom, 
and when the Church forgets that, 
bad things happen… 

When you ride the tiger
—you end up in the stomach of the beast.

         If the Church becomes a political party at prayer… 
no matter the party… 
is ceases to be the Church. 

         Now, one of the more unique duties I had at my previous congregations was marching in the Labor Day Parade (biggest one in the state).
 Inevitably our float would be wedged between the Democrat’s float and Republican’s
—and always people dressed as Batman & Iron Man or the Flash, 
marched between us and the political floats
—there needs to be a superhero sized space between Church and Party. 
         While most of us here in the building today are probably members of political parties 
—that identity is always provisional in the face of our Baptism,
that choice must always be our “Faithful, Reverent, best guess” 
one of those first things that shall pass away…

 

         The Christian faith is about those things that will not pass away… 
Nation and party are not the end of the world… 
heck even the “End of the World” isn’t the end of the world… 
what John the Revelator, and Isaiah before him, 
is describing is instead the goal of the world, 
the hope of God
—the Promise of God!

 

         God is calling forth a world in which the lesser things pass away
—all those things that can be transformed into idols, 
or even overpower us with vile demonic force, 
evaporate and are redeemed, 
they become what they ought to be in light of eternity
—where pain and mourning, 
abandonment and disgrace, 
the power of death and the chaos represented by the watery depths
—all redeemed!

         The only death, the new life of baptism—that stream that settles the soul. 
Grace enwrapping and transforming all of creation! 
Tears reserved only for rollick laughter 
and pain only evidence of work well done.

 

         This transformation accomplished because God is present
—the book of Revelation is ultimately describing the same thing as the Gospels
—what it means that God dwells among us
—it is Christ’s work for this world he loves
—only complete! 
That is the Revelation of John the Revelator
—John of Patmos… 
he describes cosmically what John’s Gospel describes personally
—Lazarus, and all of us, brought out of our many tombs. 
Lazarus unearthed, unbound
—freed to be present with God! 
A whole world, 
from beginning to end, 
being made new!

         Lazarus come out!

         Elaine come out!

         Mary come out!

         Ron come out! 

 

         On this side of the Jordon—we see only glimpses, 
we make guesses, 
we discern, 
we reverently and faithfully try to choose what is best 
in the world as it is… 

         But we can trust that 
the one who is the beginning and the end, 
the Alpha and Omega, the A and the Z 
has already chosen us, 
already is transforming this beloved world
—making all things new!

A+A

Being God’s People in a 4D World: Disestablishment, Decentralization, Demographic Shift, and Disenchantment

 

              There is a crisis in the North American church. The way we once did things, no longer works. We cling to models that were faithful 75 years ago, models of ministry that brought Gospel to millions, for generations flowing from the post-World War Two era. But now, my faith tradition, broadly speaking the mainline tradition—denominations associated with European Protestantism, who have structures in place to weed out bad actors and hold leaders to account—are heading to statistical non-existence in a decade or so.

              It is imperative that the mainline tradition, to move beyond its way of being from decades past, grapple with the world as it is. This especially means grappling with the four Ds: Disestablishment, Decentralization, Demographic Shift, and most importantly, Disenchantment.

 

Disestablishment:

          When the Baltimore Colts were a team, or so I’ve heard, they were only allowed to play football after a certain time on Sunday, on order of the Archbishop of Baltimore. Then when Baltimore got a new team, the Baltimore Ravens, the Archbishop went to the owner of the team to schedule when the team could play on Sundays, and he was gently shown the door.

          As the above story illustrates, something has fundamentally shifted in how American society treats Christianity. While America has never had an official state religion, we have often informally acted in ways that centered the Christian faith. This is an insight Theologian Douglas John Hall has famously pointed out in his own country, Canada. There were once a host of cultural norms that assisted the church, and the church has grown to rely on them. In fact, often the Church returned the favor, teaching American cultural values instead of the gospel. As long as the Church was vaguely “nice” a bunch of social organizations would help it out.

          For a variety of reasons (Bowling Alone dynamics, the end of the Cold War and the rise of the War on Terror, etc.) that reality came to an end. Some in the Church are desperately trying to claw our way back into the halls of power, others despair. I would suggest the whole situation is an opportunity.

We can now reconsider all those formal and informal cultural connections and start again. The Church has been given an opportunity to rethink how we make partnerships. One of the places doing this sort of work, at least on a building use level, is Partners for Sacred Places in Philly. The Mainline needs to intentionally remake connections with new partners. We need to re-imagine our place in society and find where the Holy Spirit is already acting in our neighborhoods (is that not the whole story of the book of Acts)!

 

Decentralization:

          Once, or so I have been told, the world was centralized. Everyone received news from a single trusted newscaster, desks in schools all faced forward looking at a teacher, organizations were very hierarchical, a top-down kind of thing. The Church too functioned in this way, top down, facing forward in your pews, trusting the Pastor as the authority on the Faith. And this all worked quite swimmingly, at least for a time.

          Now everyone gets their news from information silos, classrooms are modular and virtual, and organizations are taught to value decentralized, democratic, “leaderless” leadership, as most clearly articulated by the book The Starfish and the Spider. And probably most noticeable, the internet has flattened the world.

          And the Church has changed, some. The ELCA constitution uplifts lay leadership and democratic principles in a way predecessor bodies did not. When Covid came around we managed to get most of our congregations onto the internet. But we’re still struggling with this.

I can’t help but think of a very confused Roman Catholic who attended my congregation for a time. He had discovered from some amalgamation of the “History” Channel and chat rooms on the internet that the difference between Protestants and Catholics was that Protestants acknowledged that the Apostle Paul was a werewolf (that was the thorn in his flesh). When I burst his bubble, he wasn’t fazed. He decided I was a centralized authority figure--so suspect--who was hiding “the Truth.” Then he started attending an “Entrepreneurial” Church down the street where the Pastor agreed that mainline Churches often hide things from “the people.”

So, what do we do in a flat, leaderless, democratic, virtual, world? We harness it. We recognize that 12 disciples, inspired by the testimony of Mary and her crew, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, changed the world. “Oh no, we have small churches” can be transformed into “Wow, we have small teams of empowered people excited to be the Church in the world!”

Imagine if we took seriously the Church’s duty to equip and encourage lay folks! Imagine if we embraced holy experimentation, every congregation had a solid and sustainable internet ministry, and we met out in the world, becoming seeds thrown out into the world doing Kin(g)dom work!

 

Demographics:

The ELCA, and many Mainline denominations, identify as white and middle class. And there was a time when that seemed to serve us well. After the world wars European refugees poured into our country looking for Churches where they could belong and become American at a pace that was comfortable. In the heyday of the Mainline, middle-class jobs paid well and offered opportunities for women not to work. This meant congregations had access to lots of funds and volunteer hours.

To be clear the above description was never that neat, just talk to old timers, especially the women and immigrants, or talk to non-white Lutherans, they have a whole different story to tell. But, granting the above story, it didn’t last.

On one hand, immigration from traditionally Lutheran countries tapered off. On the other hand, being middle class shifted. Those who think of themselves as Middle Class are now time poor, and financially poorer, than early generations, just read Reich, or Steve Bannon for that matter. Hence new members aren’t beating down the doors, there are fewer volunteers, and donations are down.

Luckily what is a “traditionally” Lutheran country has changed. Ethiopia has the second largest Lutheran population in the world, followed by Tanzania. For that matter, Guyana has a thriving Lutheran tradition, and if you’ve ever been to a Guyanese wedding, the first thing you notice is how racially diverse the country is. So, sometimes I tell folk, invite anyone who looks Guyanese to Church, because that’s a way of saying, invite everyone! Throw away those preconceived notions of what a Lutheran looks like!

For that matter, we need to take a hard look at what middle class practices of the past serve us well, and which don’t. And, the impoverishment of the Mainline should refocus us on poverty and point us to how Church is done by impoverished people!

 

Disenchantment:

 Finally, behind all the above there is a larger challenge we face, Disenchantment, as described by Richard Beck. The way the average American lives makes it hard to believe in God at all. Our habits and focuses point us to the material and secular things of this world. We have trained ourselves to notice the ball, but miss the gorilla.

So, what to do? Reenchant the world! Encourage:
Holy Friendships—prayer partners and chancing “God Conversations”

The Romance of the Faith—passionate preaching, feeling as well as thinking, encouraging people to reflect on their own faith stories, and the wisdom therein.

Practice Gratitude—reflect on the “roses and thorns” of your day, and give thanks for the roses,

Embracing Beauty—paint murals on churches, reflect on iconography, create new pretty singable music.

 

Conclusion:

              As we bring Gospel to God’s world, I pray we do so clear eyed, ministering to the world as it is, not as it once was, or as we would like it to be. Interpreting our ministry in light of the 4Ds may help us to not fall back into nostalgia. Facing the world as it is can be a challenge, but might bring forward previously unseen opportunities. Seeing our world more clearly might allow us to see the Spirit at work, patiently waiting for us to join in.

Listening Wisdom into Existence

               On multiple occasions in the summer of 2023, I sat with my parishioners. We read portions of the Wisdom Corpus: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. I said a few words about the books, asked the central questions of each of the books, and then listened with a tape recorder. From those conversations, I harvested theological gems and set them back into the context of a booklet. What came of it is: Wisdom from Spruce Run, which we then gave to our confirmation students on Reformation Sunday.

              I pray that this book is useful for shaping the generational imagination of the confirmation students, and my congregation at large. After all, the big questions of Wisdom: “What is success? How do you deal with crisis? How do you end a thing well?” are perennial questions. How they are answered, and that they are answered at all, can give a person a glimpse of a faith life that is not yet their own, but could be. Such answers can be mentors on a page, a sense of new possibilities, and a window into yet to be experienced realities of the life of faith. A 15-year-old, newly affirming their faith, can dream about what being a Christian might look like at 85 or 42 or 20. For that matter, an 85-year-old can remember back to the faith struggles and joys of yesteryear and think anew about what that might look like in the present, and in so doing be more fully present with younger Christians.

              Bonhoeffer once wrote:

“Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too.”

              I think this method of Bible Study, where listening is the primary goal, is a challenging but good one, especially for clergy folk like me who tend to step into role of the expert teacher/information wielder, sometimes even when unbidden to do so. What we did in this bible study echoes the Liberation Theology insights about indigenous communities in conversation, that they have all the expertise they need, that lived experience can inform reading of scripture as readily as extensive lessons and seminary expertise. Hearing the wisdom already present in my place of ministry was itself a sort of ministry to me. It reminded me of my tradition’s commitment to “The Priesthood of All Believers.” Not that my being set apart for ordained ministry is unimportant, but it is not the only means, or even the primary means, by which God speaks in my congregation!

              All that to say, the next time you lead a Bible Study, make sure you do so with your ears open. For that matter, if you’d like to do a similar type of Bible Study to “Wisdom from Spruce Run” please reach out, I am developing resources that would help!

I worry for those who sojourn among us

As some of my readers might remember, back in 2017, at my previous call, parishioners of the 7^th Day Adventist congregation that shared the building with us and worship there on Saturdays were arrested and deported. That led me to speak out about how we were deporting immigrants, especially those deemed “Non-criminal immigrants” and people who the State Department had made asylees by irregular means. Well, I’m particularly worried about those type of folk again.

I hear all the rhetoric about mass deportation, and the corollaries about how it will be done in a way that focuses on criminals, and it feels like déjà vu. We’ve heard all this before.

In 2016 we were told that “Bad Hombres” would be targeted for deportation. Instead, what actually happened was all of the nuance about who was in our country was washed away. As ICE’s community relations officer explained to me 7 years ago, the Executive Order put in place at the time removed all the footnotes that guided ICE officers about why immigrants were in the USA and the best way to engage with them. Literally some guy pressed the "remove all footnotes" button on a spreadsheet and it scrambled how and who ICE officers apprehended.

That meant an Iraqi translator who risked his life working with US soldiers and a member of the cartel became indistinguishable to ICE agents. That meant a bunch of ethnically Chinese Indonesian Christians who the State Department brought into the country through an atypical path for their safety, who checked in with ICE regularly, who were productive tax paying members of society, who had American spouses and children, had their house raided and were deported as if they were criminals.

If we’re going to deputize the military to do the largest deportation of immigrants in our nation’s history, we have to be clear eyed about what that means. We must acknowledge that we are going to hurt a bunch of good and innocent people in the process. Even if a radical deportation regime is the best option for our country (and I’m not convinced it is) we have to confess that it is going to harm a whole lot of people. We can’t be gleeful and jumping up and down with excited about such a policy; such a choice ought to be mourned.

The Baptized Life is Truth and it is Freedom

         V & N—today you are going to affirm your baptisms. You are taking a greater responsibility for the relationship you have with Jesus Christ

—instead of your parents or Godparents holding onto the promises of at baptism—you will be saying, 
“Yeah, that promise is true for me too… 
yeah, that is the kind of spiritual life I hope to walk with God.”

         And I want you to know something today about that Baptized life you will be confirming—affirming—
The Baptized Life is Truth and it is Freedom. 
The Baptized Life is Truth and it is Freedom.

Prayer

 

The Baptized Life is Truth 

         It is truth about us…

         On this Reformation Sunday, we ought to remember the opening lines of Luther’s 95 thesis:
"When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent,' he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”
That doesn’t mean penitence—buying God off by being especially pious
—but being born again into the life of God
—isn’t that what our baptism is? Death and New Life!

         A life of repentance is a simple recognition that we mess us, we… to use the language from scripture: 
break relationship, sin, and are captured by forces we cannot control. 
To use Luther’s language—we’re curved in on ourselves—selfishness is plainly present in our life. 
Said another way we’re vulnerable and in need 

and so we don’t show up with our best self.

         Now, that can seem like mighty bad news, but it can be sort of freeing too… 

-Think of all the excessive time and extravagant effort people put into portraying their life as perfect
—it never is, and that’s normal. 

-Comparison—that thief of joy
—falls flat if we’re all in the same place, 
all captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.
-Even Shame is put away, 
replaced with humility and understanding
—we’re in the same boat. 

 

And therefore, there is good news for everyone (to quote Luther again):
“God receives none but those who are forsaken, 
restores health to none but those who are sick, 
gives sight to none but the blind, 
and life to none but the dead. 
He does not give saintliness to any but sinners, 
nor wisdom to any but fools. 
In short: He has mercy on none but the wretched 
and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”

 

         That is the truth about God: 
God is gracious
—God acts first
—is giving
—is generous… 
always seeks the least, the last, and the lost…

         The whole Trinity is generous!

-In the beginning, God gave the gift of creation.

-Jesus generously joins us, God with us
—with us for his whole life and beyond.

-In the midst of dispersed and desperate disciples, 
before the church can get its act together
the Spirit speaks holiness into the Church
—and continues to do so even to this day!

         God never stops being gracious.

 

The Baptized Life is Freedom

         The Lutheran way of being Christian can be suspicious
—you are almost obliged to ask
—if God is the active one, 
what do we do?

         We get to abide
—dwell with God
—lean on God’s chest like a newborn, 
so that our heart beats with God.

         The good we do is done not to pay off an angry creditor, 
but out of gratitude! 
Thankfulness is our starting point; 
everything a joyous response!

         Think of it
—threats don’t get results, 
love does!

         Think of that fable of the sun and the wind
—both want a man to take off his jacket:
the wind blows and blows and all that does it tighten the man’s grip on that jacket… 
but then the sun comes out, and warms the man, until he takes off his jacket 
and basks in the sun with joy!

         So too this baptized life of ours! 
We’re free! 
We get to be Christian! 
We get to!

 

It is freedom!

         Freed to be disciples!

         One of the dangers of the Baptized life 
is that we can start to think of it as a sin management system… 

         It’s the idea that there is a sort of bait and switch
—God is gracious, 
then once you’re friends with God, 
God becomes a task master demanding perfection…
-sometimes this is as crass as the medieval indulgence system that Luther fought against,

-Other times it looks like the belief that God is a sort of omnipotent accountability partner,

-Or that the threat of hell is your new motivator to “be good”…

         But being a disciple of Jesus is a dynamic relationship, not a system of self-control! 
It is the ongoing unveiling of God’s love among our neighbors!

         You hear the difference, right?
One sees Christian behavior as a series of discrete habits, 
the other does things out of love of neighbor… 
“I’m not going to cheat or lie, because I’m a Christian”
is different than 
“I’m not going to cheat or lie because those things harm my neighbor… 
who God loves, and I do too!”

         

It is freedom!

         I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, 
I came to Lutheranism because of the grace, but I stick around because of Theology of the Cross
—God shows up in the opposite of where you’d expect him to show up
—the Blessed One on a cursed cross…

         The God who shows up where we least expect him!

         And that too is freeing
—we’re freed to be curious! 

         Freed to look for Christ, 
after all he’s already found us! 
Found us on the cross, born for us in the cradle. 
He comes to us in the common things…
in Christian community, 
a crust of bread and a sip of wine, 
in word and in water!

         God showing up for you in the waters of Baptism! 
That’s what you’re affirming today N, V.

         Truth about our vulnerability and need 
and Truth about God’s trustworthiness.

         Freed to dwell in the heartbeat of God, 
disciples who love like Jesus, 
always curious always seeking the one who has already found us 
in the waters of Baptism.

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