Fear, Farming, Forclosure, and Seed Planting

One of the recurring themes in the scriptures for the last several Sundays is agricultural--sowing seeds, buying fields, etc... Today, The Rev. Thomas Brackett, my redevelopment mentor and the Program Officer for Church Planting and Redevelopment at Episcopal Church Center, had this to say in his latest blog entry:

The difference between [urgency and desperation] is incredibly important. Desperation stifles creativity and the capacity to listen deeply for the future that is longing to emerge in that moment. Urgency is the shot of courage necessary to take action and learn from the outcomes. Desperation is often borne out of a sense of institutional narcissism that believes that it really IS all about us!....I guess the difference between the two might be compared to the difference between "betting the farm" and losing the farm to foreclosure. Can you feel it?

As we continue to do the challenging work of redevelopment at St. Edward's, this is a key distinction. We need to avoid the temptation to slide into an attitude of fearful desperation. At the same time, we need to cultivate a sense of what one might call "holy urgency"--a sense in which we are no longer content with the status quo, not because we don't like what we have but because we have a deepening sense that God is calling us to be more than we have been in the past. This "holy urgency" is directed outwards, not inwards. It is a commitment to re-engaging with our community and serving the world in Christ's name. It is also a commitment to investing funds and time that we view as limited and finite, and taking the risk that some of our initiatives will "fail" and become learning experiences. Such a "failure" was our 10 a.m. Contemporary Service--it did not reach the necessary number of core members to be sustainable so we opted to step back, learn from that experience, and move forward.

I invite you to be a part of the discernment phase of this redevelopment work and to get a sense of "holy urgency" in the process. We will be meeting as a congregation this coming Sunday, July 31 following the 9 a.m. service to talk about where the Vestry and I believe we are called to go in the future and how we might best get there. Please come prepared to have both difficult and life-giving conversations about the future of St. Edward's, and bring both a dish to share in our potluck and a determination to share in our discussions. See you then!

"Don't Blame! Don't Complain!" but do Pray and Offer All

One of my colleagues recently brought the following "campaign" to my attention:



While I'm not really excited about the theology that says that God actively controls all aspects of our lives and therefore allows, or worse, causes calamities to occur, that sense of being thankful for our blessings and learning and growing from our difficulties is an excellent reminder!

I'm in the process of mulling over the lessons appointed for next Sunday, July 31 (Fr. Lawrence Robles of Santa Maria Urban Ministry will be preaching this coming Sunday).  The Gospel lesson is the generally well-known story of the Feeding of the Multitudes (4,000, 5,000, whatever...).  Of the many lessons to be gleaned from this story, perhaps the most powerful one is that when we offer all that we have to God, for God's use, God will give us the resources to accomplish God's purposes. This is no "prosperity Gospel" that says that if you "invest in God" you will reap monetary rewards. Rather it encourages us not to be discouraged at what may seem meager resources in the face of so much need. Rather, God takes, blesses, breaks, and gives all that we offer, and more, back to us for accomplishing God's will in the world.

This is a hard lesson to learn in an era of tight budgets and a climate of fear and scarcity. It is hard to focus on God's abundance in the face of a deficit budget. Yet the command Jesus addresses to his disciples continues to be addressed to us: "Bring them here to me." Bring what you have, ask that it be blessed, and use it to feed the world.

Institution and Transformation

It has been interesting to watch a sense of urgency surface amongst congregations around the 'need for new members'. This is precisely the problem. The focus should be on the power to change lives, the desire of persons to find our congregations to be incubators for the development of the faith and vehicles for sending Christians out into the world to witness in word and deed to the glory, grace of love of God.
- Mary M MacGregor, "Everything is Transitory" in the blog The Missionary Leader

It has been an interesting couple of weeks at St. Edward's. A little more than a week ago, our Vestry gathered together for a Strategic Planning Retreat and began to talk about the long-term plans and future of St. Edward's--with a key difference. We didn't break out reams of paper and start brainstorming about things we wish we had or could do. Instead, we talked about the results of a demographic survey of the local area and how that might impact our future. Long about lunchtime, things were at a sort of a low point--this remains a challenging mission field. Yet as we transitioned from defining where we are now to looking at the possibilities for where we might be in the future, a fresh breeze of the Spirit began to waft through our little "upper room." We began to look towards future possibilities, not present or potential difficulties.

At the same time, these last two Sundays have invited us to look at the beginnings of the church--the giving of the Holy Spirit to both the disciples in the upper room and to the crowds on Pentecost Sunday and then the Great Commission (or, as my colleague Lauren Stanley preached: Go. Baptize. Teach. Need I say more?) yesterday (Trinity Sunday). As I mentioned in the announcements yesterday, this is priming the pump for a "summer of discernment" at both the parish and diocesan levels.  At the diocesan level, we're working our way through a strategic plan that will hopefully be adopted by Diocesan Convention in November and will be implemented in the months and years to come. On a parish level, we're more than halfway through my own three-year tenure as Priest-in-Charge and it is a good time to look towards our long-term future.

Yet as we do all of that, the desire and need to sustain the institution of the church can block out What is really important--our relationship with God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we as a congregation and as a diocese function as incubators of faith, places where spiritually hungry people can not only get fed but can help fed themselves and others, we will be doing what God has called us to do and we will grow. To the extent that we focus on drawing people in so that we can sustain the institutional church we will devolve into just one more nonprofit organization with its hand out, looking for a piece of the increasingly smaller charity pie.

So, this will be a summer for discernment--for talking and listening. We'll talk about St. Edward's, about the changing demographics of the community around us, and about the evolving plan to engage that community with the transformational Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we do that, my prayer is that we will remember that it is our call to prepare a place where people may experience God's transforming power.

Getting Out and Getting Real

"I won't argue that I have all of the answers. I won't claim to have named all of the challenges that you are facing. For all that we hold in common, each of us have an experience that is all our own. But I will offer you a place to begin doing your own spiritual work, a place to talk about what is happening "out there" in the spiritual landscape that we all journey, a conversation partner, a place to begin thinking spiritually about the life you live, and thoughts to build on or to reject. Come what may -- and your responses will have a lot to do with what we discuss -- my hope is that you will be a little clearer about what you believe, why you believe it, why it matters, and how it shapes your life."
-- "The Dave Test,"  The Reverend Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr.

I had a great experience today--I went and had lunch with our Priest Associate for Evangelism, Julie Nelson, at her office. In many ways it was a 19 year flashback to my "before seminary" days as a Technical Support Specialist at a computer hardware and software company. I left the secular workforce in July 1992, entered seminary, graduated and was ordained in 1995 and have spent over 15 years in one parish ministry or another. It was almost surreal being back in that environment--and I was only in the cafeteria!

Julie can probably speak to this more than I can, but after our great lunch talking about future possibilities at St. Edward's I drove back to the church thinking: "How many of the hundreds of people on that campus have any relationship with any church of any kind and how many of them will be impacted (or fail to be so) by the Episcopal Church?" It seemed like "the church world" (where I spend 98% of my working life) and the "real world" are, literally, worlds apart. I eat, drink, and live church--it's my passion, perhaps occasionally my obsession. On my best days, that passion goes hand-in-hand with my love of God in Christ and my conviction that God is at work in the world and in and through each one of us. On my less-than-best days, it is simply a passion for sustaining the institution and something that can push more important things to the side if I'm not careful.

Being out there "in the world" forces me to confront a critical question: What does the church have to say to, for example, a 30-something software engineer with a wife and children, who works long hours, has precious little family time, and the usual raft of personal challenges common to everyone? Is he going to get up on Sunday morning and show up at 9 a.m., family in tow, to experience worship at St. Edward's? Probably not, unless he has either heard of us (positively!) from someone, someone invites him to church, or he attends some other event where he is introduced to what we offer folks here. I don't have to go 25 minutes north to Julie's office to think about this, either. About 1,000 feet away from where I'm typing in my office is Xilinx, a microchip company literally just over the overpass. I'm guessing that some of the same types of people who work where Julie does work at Xilinx as well.

My thoughts about connecting "the church world" with "the real world" coalesced when I ran across the article: The Dave Test, a portion of which I've quoted above. The author, an Episcopal Priest who has written several books, is talking about his (then forthcoming) weekly column: The Spiritual Landscape. However, in my thinking, his vision for his column is precisely the vision I have for the church. That is what I want the church to be, or at least to be more of---a place where people can come with their stories of both joy and loss, triumph and tragedy, wholeness and brokenness, and feel that St. Edward's is a place where they can feel comfortable exploring and thinking about their lives in a spiritual way. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like with in our particular context, and with our particular assets and challenges, but I am sure that we're not there yet. Food for thought, though....

Why don't people go to church?

As we continue to grapple with the many cultural changes swirling around us, perhaps one of the most basic questions we often ask is: "Why don't people go to church?" After all, presumably, we've found a home here at St. Edward's and, if we've been here long enough to feel a part of the St. Edward's family, it probably doesn't occur to us not to go to church. However, for those who are contemplating church for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, church can sometimes be a little intimidating. Look at this video for a great response to the question:



It is worth remembering these things, both in (hopefully!) sharing our own experience of faith with others and in welcoming those who do muster the courage to come through out doors. If you are one of those folks who is contemplating a visit, know that the above video perfectly reflects how we think of church attendance: all are welcome!

Christ is Risen! Now what?

It is Monday of Easter week, and I just got off a conference call with other clergy who are also leading redevelopment efforts in their respective parishes, all in California. It was a smaller group than usual, and we were pretty much all worn out from the busyness of Holy Week. Normally one gets into a rhythm: Monday you de-stress from the wildness of Sunday and, as the week progresses, you do both sermon and other service preparation in amongst all of the other things that leading a church involves--administration, pastoral visits, the occasional solicitation call, and hopefully time for prayer and some personal Bible study as well. With a weekly worship service, there is generally ample time to take a breath before the next Sunday rolls around. Not with Holy Week. We have a comparatively light schedule here (see last week's post), but the tiredness is still there.

There's a deeper weariness, though, that I also heard from my colleagues--the weariness of living in a world that appears stuck in Good Friday (death) while trying to preach and live Easter (resurrection life). It is also quite a challenge to lead an entire church composed of people engaged in this same struggle. What does a mission-minded church faithful to God's call look like in this place and in this time, and how do we get there from here? That is the challenge we face as individuals and as a community of faith.

One person's answer to that question, in that time and in that place, is my colleague Rebecca Stevens, founder of Magdalane. Becca's efforts just "went national" with a spot on National Public Radio (NPR). The story shows what transformation looks like--and how difficult it can be.



Regardless of our own context, the video does demonstrate one truth: we may not be able to do everything, but we can do something. For now, the "something" that our church can and does do is provide a place for various 12-step groups to meet, groups that respond to a real need and that have been life-changing for many people. God may be calling us to do even more, but that's where we are now.

We'll see where we go now....

The Day After Palm Sunday (or "Monday in Holy Week")

Less than an hour ago I finished praying Noonday Prayer as the first in the series of daily liturgies we will move through this Holy Week. We'll repeat Noonday Prayer tomorrow and Wednesday, then move to Eucharist and Stripping of the Altar at 7 p.m. on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday Liturgy and Solemn Collects at Noon on Good Friday, Procession with the Cross from Cambrian Park Plaza Shopping Center at 6 p.m. followed by the Stations of the Cross, then joining Trinity Cathedral on Saturday evening for the Great Vigil of Easter. All in all, a full week!

But for today, it was just me in a semi-darkened church reading Noonday Prayer, surrounded by the Palm Sunday decorations (palm branches reaching to the sky, palm fronds scattered in front of the altar, a lone palm cross left on the floor at the church entrance, etc...). As I prayed, I thought: "What must have that first Monday been like?" After the chaos, celebration, and fear of Palm Sunday, what might it have been like the day after? Perhaps some loose palm fronds scattered along the road, an expectant hush over the city wondering where the revolution (and the revolutionaries!) went, and everywhere the remnants of what must have been a wild day. In a short time, all of the palms will be gone from the church. In likely as short of a time, all traces of celebration would have been gone from the streets of Jerusalem.

I keep thinking about all of the "players" in this drama--Jesus, the disciples, the Pharasees, the crowds--what were they up to that first Monday? A week later and it would all be over--literally, death would be vanquished and the resurrected Jesus would begin a succession of appearances to his disciples. But, for now, the remnants of a celebration, and an expectant waiting....