Author, Photographer, Storyteller
The Website of James Hazelwood author of Everyday Spirituality. Lutheran minister and Spiritual Director
On our return trip from a brief visit to Lisa's parents in Minneapolis, MN, we sat in bulkhead, and watched with great delight as these two Southwest airline flight attendants lead us through the typical flight orientation. I grabbed my iPad, and recorded as much as I could.
In 2014, the sponsoring employers within the New England Synod earned a 2% discount on their health contributions. This helped the synod office earn a 1% wellness reward, which it’s using to help its rostered leaders deal with conflict and stress.
Bishop James Hazelwood
New England Synod
Worcester, Massachusetts
October 2014
One of the factors that impact our health and well-being is stress. In times of great change, conflict emerges, which can lead to excessive stress.
Rostered leaders deal with various forms of conflict throughout the year. In New England, we decided that one of the best ways to help our leaders maintain their well-being was to provide tools to deal with conflict and stress.
We recently contracted with the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center to conduct a week-long training session in conflict and mediation to be held in March 2015. We’re using our synod office’s 1% wellness reward to provide discounts to the New England Synod’s rostered leaders who register for the event.
The training session is one way to help our leaders be healthy, but it can also help them see conflict as an opportunity for moving the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the world, for effective outreach and evangelism. What a positive statement it would be in the public square to have Lutherans viewed as people who can help with conflict in their communities.
The Christmas season is marked by an opportunity for the so-called secular world to investigate questions of meaning and spirituality and faith. We often see numerous coverages of religion in the media at this time of year. This week, I came across this review by Kathleen Norris of a recent book by the poet Christian Wiman. The review intrigued me, and the book is now on my Kindle. The book is a fascinating expression of how modern intellectuals are indeed hungering for a deeper life. All of this reminds me that we in the Lutheran expression of the Christian faith have an important contribution to make in our world. We are after-all the Jesuits of the protestant movement, the intellectual savings bank of the reformation. JHThis is a daring and urgent book, written after the author learned he had a rare, incurable and unpredictable cancer. But it is not a conventional memoir of illness and treatment. Beyond informing us that he received his dire news in a “curt voice mail message,” Christian Wiman says very little about his experience of the medical world. He is after bigger game. More than any other contemporary book I know, “My Bright Abyss” reveals what it can mean to experience St. Benedict’s admonition to keep death daily before your eyes. As a poet, Wiman is more likely to quote a poet than a saint, and the many citations here — from sources as diverse as A. R. Ammons, Robert Browning, Paul Celan, George Herbert, Eugenio Montale, Osip Mandelstam, Rainer Maria Rilke, Richard Wilbur and William Wordsworth — offer a rich encounter with literature.
But this book is much more than that, and Wiman is relentless in his probing of how life feels when one is up against death. In his desire to “speak more clearly what it is that I believe,” he recounts how, after long wandering, he sought to reclaim his religious faith. He understands that he is not recapturing the faith he had as a child, noting that “if you believe at 50 what you believed at 15, then you have not lived — or have denied the reality of your life.” With both honesty and humility, Wiman looks deep into his doubts, his suspicion of religious claims and his inadequacy at prayer. He seeks “a poetics of belief, a language capacious enough to include a mystery that, ultimately, defeats it, and sufficiently intimate and inclusive to serve not only as individual expression but as communal need.” This is a very tall order, and Wiman is a brave writer to take it on.
Drawing on his position as someone facing a diminished life span, Wiman mounts a welcome, insightful and bracing assault on both the complacent pieties of many Christians and the thoughtless bigotry of intellectuals who regard Christian faith as suitable only for idiots or fools. Wiman has endured dull sermons from liberal pastors who seem embarrassed to mention Jesus, and he has heard from secular fundamentalists who attempt to dismiss his faith with facile reference to psychology. He comments: “To admit that there may be some psychological need informing your return to faith does not preclude or diminish the spiritual imperative, any more than acknowledging the chemical aspects of sexual attraction lessens the mystery of enduring human love.”
Wiman is adept at making connections between the religious impulse and the need to create art. Like many artists, after shedding his early religious faith, he transferred “that entire searching intensity” into his work. But eventually Wiman sensed that all those hours of reading, thinking and writing were leading him back into faith. He began to feel that “human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God’s means of manifesting himself to us.”
Wiman finds that the integrity of a poem, which is “its own code to its own absolute and irreducible clarity,” is similar to that of a God who lives “not outside of reality but in it, of it, though in ways it takes patience and imagination to perceive.” Both require the use of metaphor, “which can flash us past our plodding resistance and habits into strange new truths.” Christ’s repeated use of metaphor and story, Wiman asserts, is an effective way of asking people to “stake their lives on a story, because existence is not a puzzle to be solved but a narrative to be inherited and undergone and transformed person by person.”
And there is the rub, the necessity of a personal commitment to a particular faith, with its own specific language, rituals and traditions. “You can’t really know a religion from the outside,” Wiman writes, and no matter how much you learn about it, it remains “mere information, so long as your own soul is not at risk.” With so much at risk for him, he takes the plunge. And in accepting that the words and symbols of Christianity say something true about reality but are also necessarily limited in their scope, he sees an analogue with poetry. “You can’t spend your whole life questioning whether language can represent reality,” he writes. “At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them.”
Christianity scandalized the ancient world because it was for common people, open to anyone, rich or poor, slave or free. It offered no secret, specialized knowledge that could be acquired by a select few. Some contemporary readers may be scandalized by Wiman’s opting to be a common Christian, relinquishing the elite status of the artist in Western culture. The idea of the artist as heroic loner, he decides, is for him merely an anxiety that has become dangerously useful. Coping with his cancer has drawn him closer to other people, and also to the Jesus who suffered on the cross. “The point,” he writes, “is that God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering.”
In reflecting on the meaning of Christ’s passion for his own life, Wiman finds that it reveals that “the absolutely solitary and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion.” It is the resolutely incarnational nature of the religion that draws him in. “I am, such as I am, a Christian,” he writes, “because I can feel God only through physical existence, can feel his love only in the love of other people.” His love for his wife and children, he realizes, is both human and entirely sacred. And here the poet comes to the fore, insisting on the right to embrace contradiction without shame. “I believe in absolute truth and absolute contingency, at the same time. And I believe that Christ is the seam soldering together these wholes that our half vision — and our entire clock-bound, logic-locked way of life — shapes as polarities.”
This pithy and passionate book is not easy, but it is rewarding. Wiman’s finely honed language can be vivid and engaging. He describes his childhood home as “a flat little sandblasted town in West Texas: pump jacks and pickup trucks, . . . a dying strip, a lively dump, and above it all a huge blue and boundless void” that he admits, with typical acuity, “I never really noticed until I left, when it began to expand alarmingly inside of me.” He exhibits a poet’s concern for precision, writing, for example, that “the sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else’s suffering flaring in your own nerves. Pity is a projection of, a lament for, the self.”
This is, above all, a book about experience, and about seeking a language that is adequate for both the fiery moments of inspiration and the “fireless life” in which we spend most of our days. It is a testament to the human ability to respond to grace, even at times of great suffering, and to resolve to live and love more fully even as death draws near.
Kathleen Norris is the author, most recently, of “Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life.”
Loving this Song
As a part of my on going Crazy Stewardship Consults, I drafted the following plan with a congregation.
I share it here for you to beg, borrow, steal, edit, adjust, change or delete.
Monday – Letter to the Congregation announcing the campaign This should come from the Pastor and the Council President.
First Sunday– Member of Ask team Announces the 2015 campaign explains a little of how it will work.
Second Sunday – Member of the Tell Team Announces Campaign and Tells one small story about the good ministry of First.
- Pastor preaches a sermon that celebrates the ministry of the congregation, and the ways in which the congregation is making a difference in the lives of people
- Monday through Friday. The letters to the congregation are prepared. The letter will be mailed on Friday. It is a personalized letter that invites people to make a pledge. The letter also explains that a member of the church council will call them asking them to make a pledge for 2015. The letter also includes an estimate of giving card, and a self addressed envelope.
- Letters are mailed on Saturday.
Third Sunday – Member of the Ask Team Announces that letters to the congregation inviting them to Make a Pledge for 2015 went in the mail yesterday, and people should receive them on Tuesday (Monday is a Holiday) Also, explain that they will get a phone call this week from t a member of the church council, inviting them to make a pledge and fill out the card.
- A member of the Tell team or another person can give a Mission Moment talk on what the church and their faith mean to them, and how they plan to increase their giving this year, and invite the congregation to join them. (They don’t need to say the amount they are increasing)
Tues-Fri of this week. Church Council members make phone calls. The membership directory should be divided up in advance. People can choose to call people they know or they don’t know. The content of the phone call is simple. “Hi this is _____, I’m calling from First Lutheran. Did you get our letter in the mail with the invite to complete an Estimate of Giving Card? If not explain, If so, say Great. I hope you will join me in completing a pledge card. I’m really excited about what God is doing in our church, and I hope you’ll join me in pledging. Oh We are also having a special reception after worship this week, I hope you will stay for it.
Fourth Sunday – This is your Celebration Sunday. People are invited to bring their pledge cards forward and place them on the altar or in the baptismal font, while an appropriate hymn is sung, preferably something like “Amazing Grace” that is easy to sing, and people will still be singing as they walkl up with their Pledge cards. The Pastor prays over the pledge cards, maybe with two or three lay leaders, offering thanks to God for the generosity of the people.
- Possibly some kind of extra special coffee hour afterwards.
Monday after Celebration Sunday – Personalized Thank you to all who have pledged go in the mail, with pledge entered into letter, and a personal handwritten "Thank you so much" from the Pastor or Financial Secretary or both. Also, a follow up letter with a Self Addressed Envelope goes in the mail inviting people who have not yet pledged to do so.
Fifth Sunday – Announce the results. The announcement should be the total $ pledge, PLUS the total of estimated giving. The estimated giving can be obtained from those who gave last year in 2014 but have not pledged yet, and they are still fairly active disciples in the life of the church.
Next Tuesday – A follow up email or letter to those who have not pledged yet goes out.
Sixth Sunday – An announcement updating the congregation on a new total, and thank them for their participation.
For a little over a year now, the New England Synod has been using the CAT.
No not this kind of a cat.
Rather, the CAT as in Congregational Assessment Tool.
This resource was developed by Russ Crabtree, minister, author and now owner and chief consultat of HolyCow Consulting.
The Church Assessment Tool (CAT) is the only reliable benchmarked instrument designed to provide an in-depth look at the experiences, perceptions and aspirations of a church's congregation. It is an essential step for any church in leadership transition or undertaking strategic planning.
The CAT is a customizable assessment instrument that can help you and your leadership team.
In the New England Synod, we have been using it in two primary areas. One is with congregations in the search process for a new pastor. The second is with our Forward Leadership Community.
As we conduct the CAT, what do you think often emerges as the number one desire in our congregations?
Make necessary changes to attract families with children and youth to our church.
This is probably not a surprise, right? Here is the other piece I hear from my conversations with people. They also want those very same families with children and youth to be giving to the church at a high level. Guess, what? That ain't gonna happen.
Yesterday I was on the phone with the pastor of one of our healthier churches. he told me that in the last year they've been receiving more and more families with children and youth. As he gets to know these families, he's learning about their lives. Their insanely busy schedules, their pressures at work and their financial crunch. It's not unusual for him to hear about families with ridiculously high debt loads - largely from student loans, but also mortgages, car payments, etc.
In another conversation with a member of one of our congregations who was really griping at me about why his church isn't attracting young people. by which he meant 30 or 40 somethings with kids. He was being a bit obnoxious so I finally told him, what his church had to do.
- Change the worship service style and time and music
- Hire someone to do quality child care, or make the worship kid friendly.
- Tear out the old musty carpet that's in the entry way and replace it.
- Start some kind of ministry focused on helping families with the major challenges they face, like a simple grocery shopping service for single mom's, where the retired people pick up a list and money from the mom, and go shopping for her.
I then stopped before going on down the list, and looked at him. He said, "well, we can't do that."
And I said, well sir, you can't have it both ways. You can't want young families, and not be willing to make the effort to adjust what you are doing.
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What the CAT does is test the man's statement "well, we can't do that." He really meant to say, we won't do that. the CAT gives the congregations leadership some concrete information. It helps the leaders say to the congregation, look you all said in the CAT you wanted to make necessary changes to attract families with children and youth to our church.
Notice the phrase "make necessary changes"
Here's the truth no one wants to admit. We all know we need to "make the necessary changes" but we are often unwilling to do the hard work or if we are willing, we know we need strength for the journey.
Make next article will be on the three styles of change we all possess.
December 2 is Giving Tuesday. Huh? What's that?
First there was Black Friday, a day when masses of people crowd into shopping malls and gorge themselves on stuff they'll probably toss out in a year or two, but the day is said to keep our economy flowing. Then there was Small Business Saturday, a day when US Americans are to shop locally in those small shops that are independently owned. Next we have Cyber Monday, when all the people that go to work can sit at their computers and shop online for those things they could've gotten on Friday or Saturday, but opted to stay home and rake leaves instead. Now, there is Giving Tuesday. It's a day set aside to encourage people to make a gift to a church, a charity, a non-profit. So, Dec 2 is Giving Tuesday. What are you gonna give. Here are some suggestions:
1. Your congregation - Consider an extra gift to your congregation on this Tuesday. And make it one of those no strings attached gifts. You know, here is an extra $50 over and above my regular giving. Why? Cause, I know that God makes me a better person when I generous.
2. The ELCA World Hunger Appeal - This has become my go to charity for giving. I like it better than Heifer cause I know that more of my donation actually goes to help people, as opposed to getting sucked up in TV ads. Here's the cool thing. ELCA World hunger works with the same people on the ground as Heifer and the like. So in the end you are giving to the same on the ground hunger ministry, only through ELCA World Hunger, more of your gift goes to the place that makes the difference.
3. Global Mission Companion Synods. In New England we partner with the church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and in Honduras. The New England Synod supports scholarships for kids to go to school, health related ministry and church construction. Consider a gift in that direction.
One year ago today, Lisa and I returned from a wonderful trip to the Holy Land. Here is a photo trip down memory lane for us, and for you.
(Just click the center of the rectangle and give it a second to load.)
I know I've posted this before, but somethings are always worth revisiting again. Listening to Eugene always puts me in a Thanksgiving mood.
In the aftermath of the announcement of the decision of the grand jury not to indict the police officer in the death of Michael Brown, many of you have been asking how we might offer support. Bishop Roger Gustafson of the Central States Synod of the ELCA, wrote today:
Dear Colleagues,
It’s been a busy couple of days, but I wanted to update you on the happenings in Ferguson and the rest of metro St. Louis. As you know, there was a large spasm of violence last night after the grand jury’s decision was announced. As I walked the streets of Ferguson this afternoon it was clear that business people are getting ready for more of the same – lots of windows being boarded up, merchandise being moved to the backs of stores, etc. There’s a rumor that the Chicago chapter of the New Black Panther Party is in town, along with members of the KKK. If those boys decide to tangle, it could be a nasty night.
Our congregation in Ferguson, Zion, is two blocks from a main street downtown. Pastor Rick Brenton had the church open through the night for whomever wanted to come in for prayer and conversation. Yesterday I met Scott Megwer, a local businessman and member of the Governor’s Commission. He’s exactly the sort of person that commission and this city needs: eager to listen, eager to build a way forward, fully aware that this is a long-term project that’s going to require a lot of patience and persistence.
I met this morning with an African American woman who is completely heartsick over the many dimensions of the tragic aftermath of Michael Brown’s death. The police and National Guard who were obviously more present in some areas of the city than in others, the businesses that were allowed to burn, the looting that was allowed to happen, the mistaken public perception of the violence that “they’re doing it to themselves” – in her perspective it’s all an illustration of the bad drama that characterizes the black experience. Her name is Janis. Please remember her tonight; I’d like to be able to tell her that the congregations of the New England Synod are praying for her, personally.
Speaking of prayer, I’d invite yours as well: for wisdom to know the way forward, and for courage to step out.
Peace,
Roger Gustafson
Bishop
Central States Synod | Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
As a partner in the Gospel of Jesus Christ I encourage all of us to remember the people of Ferguson, in particular Janis, Pastor Rick Brenton, Mr. Scott Megwer and Bishop Roger Gustafson.
Bishop James Hazelwood
New England Synod
The old mission was get people to join the church, and discover God there. We've spent 500 years with that focus, and particularly in the United States that has been our focus in the post WW II era. The incredible growth of Christian congregations that occured after my parents generation returned from the global conflict to hault fascism resulted in a huge economic boom. That was accompanied by a baby boom, that included a church boom. Denominations expanded and grew in the 40's, 50's and 60's. But, then it all started to shift in a different direction in the 1970's. The steady decline of institutional forms of Christian expression began. A new school of thought emerged in the 1970's. It started with Donald McGavern and later Peter Wagner at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. It was called the Church Growth Movement. I'm a disciple of that movement and as a parish pastor I borrowed some of the principles that enabled two congregations I served to expand their outreach. Yes we grew. We grew through an approach to ministry that emphasized removing the barriers that were discouraging people from coming to church. This meant genuinely welcoming children, sermons that were rooted in real life, celebrating broken people as embraced by God, rearranging the worship service to be contextualized to where we resided. I was always suspect of some of the theological tenets connected with the movement, but more so, I was deeply uncomfortable with the marriage of consumer capitalism and congregaional marketing. The movement needed a corrective, and it received it.
In the 1990's and early 2000's, many of us sought to deepen our congregational life in both the historic roots of the Christian faith as well as the practices that had for centuries deepened people's spiritual vitality. We shifted the focus to the Schema Creed, found in Jesus emphasis on Loving God and Loving Others. The idea was that a spiritually formed person loves God by following Jesus and loving others. While still maintaining certain adjustments from the church growth movement, we moved down and out. In other words, the idea was let's get deeper (down) so that we can serve others (out). Faith in Action became a central part of our ministry focus. The new mission, or as I prefer to call it the ancient/future mission, is to join God in the neighborhood.
This is a very difficult shift for many who have been conditioned and trained in the church culture of the 20th century. But, I now believe that the future of the Jesus movement will be much more diverse that it is today. In the future, we will have congregations. But we will also have other expressions, such as spiritual life centers that teach yoga, Tai Chai, meditation, prayer all with a Jesus centered philosophy. There will also be businesses such as Bean Towne Coffee, which function as businesses but have a covert Christian philosophy of service and charity. We are also going to have small communities where people gather a couple times a month, maybe for a meal, faith conversations, service. In other words, more explicity in the world expressions of the Christian movement, as opposed to retreat from the world expressions.
The biblical basis for all this can be found in Luke 10:1-12. Typically known as the sending of the 70. I've come to love this chapter of Luke's gospel. (Click the scripture link if you want to read the passage now.) As Jesus is sending out these disciples, in pairs, he exhorts them to find a house and stay there, eat what they eat, shower them with peace, and as you go take no purse or bag. In other words, leave the baggage behind. In our time, you could translate this passage as: "Go be anthropologists. Go immerse yourself in the culture, eat what they eat, wear their clothes, shop in their shops, watch the TV and movies of the people in the neighborhood. As you get to know them, develop friendships. Be the person people look to as the source of something deeper. Don't sell Jesus and his philosophy, live Jesus and his philosophy."
Alan Roxburgh's great, and I mean this book knocks my socks off every time I pull it off the shelf, goes into this thinking deeply. It's called Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood. (I've got an autographed copy, bet you are super jealous. Maybe in the future I'll put it on ebay and become a very rich man, and donate all the proceeds to some cool Jesus movement)
Some quotesfrom the book:
The good news is that God is doing something far bigger and more imaginative than can be placed in these small, parochial categories.
It is through the ordinary people of God, the nameless people who never stand on stages or get their photo in the news, that the gospel will indwell their space.
It may be that Christian but not churched, is the new expression of spiritual but not religious.
The lord of creation is out there ahead of us; he has left the temple and is calling the church to followin a risky path of leaving behind its baggage.
Roxburgh makes us nervous, because he is challenging deeply held assumptions about what it means to be a Christian and to be the church. But, he is not doing this only in books and lectures, he is living it out in his home in Vancover, BC. He lives in a house of family and Jesus followers attempting to exlore what this all looks like.
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How does this fit here in New England, the synod of grand experimentation.?
Last Sunday, I was at St. Ansgar Lutheran Church in Portland, ME, where we celebrated the beginning of a
new ministry in the neighborhood. Together with a whole host of partners, chief of which is the people of St. Ansgar but includes Episcopalians and others, we installed Pastor Maria Anderson. She's half time at St. Ansgar and half time in the neighborhood. That's right, 55% of her time is going to be spent in the neighborhood. No, not recruiting people to come to church. Instead she'll be entering into the lives of people, exploring and understanding the culture of spiritually curious but institutionally allergic Portlandiars. Who knows what will develop over time? - a small group in a coffee shop, a monthly dinner club, a weekly book club, a mission and service core. We honestly don't know. We are giving up a bit of control here. We are saying, Jesus you lead. We've been trying it our way, we'll now try it your way, Luke 10 way.
If this ministry sounds exciting, interesting, curiously wonderful, and you want more information. Send me an email, I'll connect you. If you are sensing this is something that needs some Holy Spirit mojo, stop reading right now, and offer a prayer for Maria and St. Ansgar. Offer thanks for their courage, and wisdom going forward. You can also offer up a prayer of thanks for Pastor Tim Roser, my Associate for Maine who pushed this experiment forward. If you are inspired and thinking how can I support this ministry, and you want to help it continue, consider a donation. If this ministry makes you think, wholly molly Batman, this is not the church I grew up in - you are right. It is different. You weren't wrong, you aren't a bad person, it's just that the world has changed, and is changing. It's not your fault. But, I believe that a big part of our calling in this time is to explore ways to move the mission of Jesus forward into the next millenium. I'm not entirely sure how to do that, so we are just gonna keep experimenting our way into God's future.
On the eve of the President's Speech on Immigration, the ELCA Bishops release this statement.
Immigration Statement
November 20, 2014
Conference of Bishops
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
As people of faith and leaders of the church, we support public policy that protects
children, reunites families, and cares for the most vulnerable, regardless of their place
of birth.
The treatment of immigrants is a core religious value. To welcome the stranger is to
welcome a child of God. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us to welcome the stranger,
for "just as you did it to one of the least of these... you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:40)
Each day in our congregations and in our service to the community, we see the
consequences of this broken immigration system: separated families, children returning
home to find their parents have been deported, and the exploitation of undocumented
workers.
By removing the threat of deportation for many people, we are showing compassion for
people who have been here for years, working hard to provide for their families, obeying
the law, and contributing to the fabric of our community.
While today’s action addresses a pressing need, it does not provide a path to
citizenship, establish policies that prioritize family unity, or create more efficient
channels for entry of new migrant workers. Our hope is that congress will address these
and related issues, including the practice of family detention, which undermines our
values as a people of faith and a nation of welcome.
The Scriptures consistently show a significant concern for immigrants:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner
residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you
were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)
The positive role of immigrants in our history, economy and our community is
unmistakable. We support this compassionate first step toward reforming an
immigration system that is flawed and requires many of our neighbors to live in the
shadows in fear.
The ELCA Conference of Bishops
It was a cool, crisp day on the campus of Duke University. After a morning tour of the chapel, we spent a couple hours with Wes Granberg-Michaelson, former General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America exploring the subject of Transformational leadership. The General Secretary is the equivalent of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton in the ELCA.
Wes has a long history in denominational work, both in the United States as well as Globally. Sitting with him at lunch yielded some great stories about his travels. But, most of the morning was focused on the Spirituality that is at the heart of organizational change. He highlighted for us the fact that, at his last count, there are 6,243 books on Leadership currently available on Amazon. The vast majority of them are focused on technique. He's not disputing the value of technique, but helped us see the need to focus on the person of the leader. "All the doing has to be rooted in being."
Shortly after his election as General Secretary, he announced publicly that he would be taking one day away per month to go on a spiritual retreat. This saved his soul and his butt, because it recentered him on a regular basis.
Wes lifted up the importance for denominational leaders to have a spiritual director, using the metaphor of fly fishing. "I like to go fly fishing in Montana with a guide, because a guide has been down that river before, and knows the pitfalls, smooth spots and location of the fish."
I have a couple of pages of quotes related to the soul of leadership from this day. It was a rich conversation with a person who worked hard at organizational change, while keeping it rooted in a spiritual activity.
The afternoon gave some time off, so I took a long walk around the Duke campus. Mostly, cause all this sitting has gotten to me, and I needed to move my body for a while.
But, the late afternoon session was a very helpful session on change style. While we all recognize that change is a part of life, as well as our work, we learned (not surprisingly) that people have various approaches to change. Using an instrument called the Change Style Indicator, we each discovered our preferred approach to change.
If you imagine a continuum. On one end is the Conserver, on the other end is the Originator, and in the middle are the Pragmatists.
Conservator..........................................Pragmatist.........................................Originator
You plot yourself along that spectrum. Not surprisingly for those of you who know me, I landed between Pragmatist and Originator. Remember, it's a spectrum or continuum, not an either/or
Conservator's prefer to accept the exisitng structure, and like change in incrementation.
Pragmatists explore the structure of an organization, and prefer change that is functional.
Originators challenge the structure, and prefer change that is expansive.
The key learning for me was the value of each part in the change process, and viewing all the types as making contributions along the way.
All of this was rooted in the work of William Bridges, author of many books on Transition, which explored the process of change. Interestingly, Bridges used the Exodus narrative as an influential part of his work.
Bridges describes the process of change as initially a process of grief. What's ending? What am I loosing? What do I have to let go of as we move through this change. This explains why most people's initial reaction to change hoisted upon them is "no." They are grieving what they may loose. As you move forward through the neutral zone, the "Back to Egypt" committee rears it's head and points to how good we used to have it. The leaders job is to focus people's eyes on what is ahead. Ironically, like Moses, once the New Beginning is reached, it may require a new leader to move people into the Promised Land.
A great dinner, and a night off to process what we've learned. More tomorrow as we wrap up and head home.
This week I'm at Duke University for a four day seminar on Leadership for the Denominational Executive. There are 24 of us here, mostly Methodists, a few UCC, a pair of Episcopalians and me. I'm the only bishop, and the only Lutheran. It's nice being a minority for a change.
I really didn't know what this was going to be like. But, Rev. Laura Everret, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches highly commended the program. So I went, and boy, am I glad I did. The focus is right where we need to be in the church. Our first full day began with an exploration of both Traditioned Innovation and Disruptive Innovation.
Dave Odom lead us through an understanding of the latest thinking on Innovation. This video gives you a good overview.
Traditioned Innovation seeks to take something that is in existence, and improve upon it. This is mostly what we do in the church. Actually, it's mostly what business does as well. Example: The iphone was a disruptive innovation, but now all Apple is doing is building a better battery, screen, etc. In the church, one could say that although we may have Jazz worship, outdoor worship, liturgical worship, rock n roll worship, silent worship - it's still worship. That's traditioned innovation, we are improving an existing.
Later in the day, we spent time with Marlon Hall. He is a gifted pastor, filmmaker, artist and incubator of hope in the Houston, Texas area. You can read a short piece about Marlon here or check out his video blog. Marlon is an example of a disruptive innovator. What does a disruptive innovation look like in the church? It begins by asking a very different question than the question we normally ask in our congregations. "Who is the church not paying attention to?" From there, ideas are germinated. Awakenings Movement, of which marlon is the pastor, is a church without walls, but it's more than that. It is a nomadic church, as it moves location every 3 months. It incubates in the community. It's a very different view of church. Read more about it here.
What can we learn from all this thinking about innovation? The last session of the day focused on the work of Roger Martin, who wrote a book called Opposable Mind. Here is the basic premise: Most of us, and increasingly more and more of us thinkin either/or categories. However, Martin found that the most effective people tended to have a both/and view or the ability to see multiple options.
This has to do with a mind set shift. THe first move is to reject the instinctive either/or reaction. The second move is to wade into the complexity of the problem. The third move is to explore how the oppositions of option A or option B can mean. What do they need from each other.
This all starts to lead down a path toward engage a set of skills or tools centered around assertive inquiry and generative reasoning. We ask lots of questions, infact the rule is you need to ask 8 questions before you can make any statement. It's about making the move from critic (something all graduate level educated folk are trained to do) toward cultivator.
We then engage experiences as learning times. A key question in any activity is centered around, 'what did I learn from this?' It's especially important when we are trying something new, engaging in experiments. Whether something is a success or a failure is not the first question. THe central question is "What did I learn from this today?' That seems like a question worth asking at the end of every day, every sermon, every business venture, every drive, every thing we do.
As in any intensive learning experience, there is so much more. But this gives you the intro to what I'm engaged in, here in Durham - home of the Blue Devils.
British supermarket Sainsbury's just made my heart melt with their Christmas commercial. It's based on the true events of the Christmas truce: Unofficial ceasefires that took place in Christmas during World War I. Germans and British soldiers stopped fighting and exchanged presents and played games.
Thanks, Glen.
I've become a follower of the work at Vital Smarts. This is Joseph Grenny's company. he is the author of the book everyone on the whole planet shhould not read, but absorb. Crucial Conversations. The article below came to my inbox this week. I thought there was a lot of wisdom here, and written in a contemporary business style, it reflects the values of jesus teachings from Matthew 18.
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've become a follower of the work at Vital Smarts. This is Joseph
This weekend I was invited to be the guest preacher at the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island's annual convention by Bishop Nick Knisely
Last month I presided at the Eucharist during the Western Massachusetts Episcopal Convention, preached at Pr. Bill Peterson's installation as the new Rector of All Saint's Episcopal in New Hampshire, and spoke at the Clergy day for Lutherans and Episcopals in East Longmeadow, MA. What's the point?
Called to Common Mission is the name of the agreement between our two church bodies, where we now have formally agreed to engage in mission together. Our clergy can serve in each others congregations, and most importantly, we can now do ministry together.
Here's what we got going so far:
Cathedral in the Night, Northampton, MA and soon to be Pittsfield, MA. This is a joint effort to be a church without walls serving the homeless Veterans of these cities with worship, a meal, ministry of care giving, and social services.
Church without Walls in Providence, RI. A similar ministry with both Lutheran and Episcopal clergy serving together.
Missional Community, Portland, ME. A new venture reaching out to young people who are spiritually curious but church averse in the Portland area. Pr. Maria Anderson just started this project.
Iglesia Luterana, a Lutheran congregation worshiping at All Saint's Episcopal in Providence.
Escuela de Laos, OK my spanish is breaking down, but this Lay School of Ministry which began as a Lutheran only program, is now connecting with the Episcopal church.
FARM, Swanton, VT where Kim Erno is reaching out to Mexican migrant workers in Vermont.
There are others, and there is more to come.
Each tribe, that's what I call the denominations, has gifts and each has shortcomings. We are working together to leverage the gifts and minimize or compensate for the short comings. So far we are engaged in some pretty cool stuff. Some Jesus stuff.
That's why I'm driving all over Kingdom come, aka New England, to help ensure these relations are fostered and nurtured.
Question for you: Do you know the Episcopal church near you? What have you done with them? Shared a meal? Joint Ash Wednesday worship? Merged a pericope study group? Maybe just taken a priest out for coffee, or a beer or a glass of cherry?
Most significant things start with relationships.
Check this out Click here
While this is not rocket science, I want to lift up Geoff Sinibaldo's most recent blog post on greeting people outside. I can't tell you how much this small thing CHANGES EVERYTHING. Yes, that's not hyperbole, I mean it. From the get go you are setting the tone for what is going to happen. What does this say to people coming to church when the pastor is on the sidewalk welcoming people, even when it's cold and he (or she) is out there. Love the pic of Geoff in his signature ridiculous looking hats. Even when's it's rainy - Go buy one of those big honking' Golf Umbrellas.
But you say, I can't do that, I've got to prep for worship. I say, prep for worship on Saturday. get out there and greet people. You could wrap a whole theology around this behavior.
Here's a challenge try doing it this sunday. Yup just try it one sunday, see what happens. And you can do it whether you are the pastor or the usher or the sunday school class of a teacher and 5 kids.
Maybe it's the first step out into the Neighborhood.
Nov. 10, 7 p.m.
Emanuel Lutheran Church
Hartford, Conn.
This is your last chance to register to attend a public lecture by celebrated author, speaker and activist Brian McLaren at Emanuel Lutheran Church (311 Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn.), sponsored by the New England Synod and several ecumenical partners.
REGISTRATION IS OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT ON THURSDAY, NOV. 6. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
McLaren is the author of several books including "We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation and Activation"and "Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words." A graduate of the University of Maryland with a bachelor's in English, McLaren was awarded Doctor of Divinity degrees from Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, B.C., and Virginia Theological Seminary. He's also the theologian in residence with the Life in the Trinity Ministry. To learn more about Brian, click here to visit his website.
McLaren's lecture will be held Monday, Nov. 10, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $45, with discounts for clergy and students.
