Marcus Borg

Marcus Borg passed away this week.  While I did not agree with everything he wrote, he was an influential scholar of the life of the historical Jesus.  He challenged contemporary people to have what he called an "adult faith"  He wanted us to make full use of the tools of modern scholarship, and still hold to an expansive faith.  It was and is a delicate balance that requires a thoughtful and consistent exploration and re-exploration of what is essential for a believing person.

This article is reprinted from http://www.ministrymatters.com

(RNS) Marcus J. Borg, a prominent liberal theologian and Bible scholar who for a generation helped shaped the intense debates about the historical Jesus and the veracity and meaning of the New Testament, died on Wednesday (Jan. 21). He was 72 and had been suffering from a prolonged illness, friends said.

Borg emerged as a major voice in biblical studies in the 1980s just as academics and theologians were bringing new energy to the so-called “quest for the historical Jesus,” the centuries-old effort to disentangle fact from myth in the Gospels.

Alongside scholars such as John Dominic Crossan, Borg was a leader in the Jesus Seminar, which brought a skeptical eye to the Scriptures and in particular to supernatural claims about Jesus’ miracles and his resurrection from the dead.

Like many of those critical scholars, Borg tended to view Jesus as a Jewish prophet and teacher, like many figures who emerged from the religious ferment of first-century Judaism.

But while Borg questioned the Bible,, he never lost his passion for the spiritual life or his faith in God as “real and a mystery,” as he put it in his 2014 memoir, “Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most,” the last of more than 20 books he wrote, many of which helped popularize scholarship about the historical Jesus among lay Christians.

“Imagine that Christianity is about loving God. Imagine that it’s not about the self and its concerns, about ‘what’s in it for me,’ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life,” Borg wrote.

Marcus Borg was the youngest of four children, born March 11, 1942 in North Dakota and raised in a traditional Lutheran family. He attended Concordia College in Minnesota where he majored in philosophy and political science.

He remained fascinated by the New Testament, however, and accepted a fellowship to do graduate work at Union Seminary in New York City, where he delved deeply into the Jewish background of the Gospels and Jesus of Nazareth and studied with some of the major liberal theologians teachings there. Borg then went on to further studies at Oxford and taught at various Midwest universities on his return to the U.S.

In 1979 he joined the faculty at Oregon State University and taught religion there until his retirement in 2007.

Borg’s 1987 book, “Jesus: A New Vision,” launched him to prominence. The book summarized and explained recent New Testament scholarship for a popular audience while presenting Jesus as a social and political prophet of his time and place who was driven by his relationship with God – a relational approach that Borg saw as more important than traditional Christian beliefs based on a literal reading of the Bible.

In subsequent books, three of them co-written with Crossan, Borg continued to press and expand on those ideas, becoming a hero to Christian progressives and a target for conservatives.

Borg himself loved to debate but was no polemicist, and over the years maintained strong friendships with those who disagreed with him, developing a reputation as a gracious and generous scholar in a field and a profession that are not always known for those qualities.

For example, Borg co-authored a 1999 book, “The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions,” with N.T. Wright, an Anglican bible scholar who took a more orthodox view of the Gospels. But Wright also recommended many of Borg’s books and lectured alongside him on occasion.

“Spanning the study of Jesus and a wide variety of subjects, Marcus shaped the conversation about Jesus, the church, and Scripture in powerful ways over the space of four decades,” Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr., of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog on hearing of Borg’s passing.

“I came to different conclusions about a number of issues, but Marc was always incisive, tenacious, thoughtful, and unfailingly gracious; and over the years he became a cherished friend,” Schmidt wrote.

The Rev. Barkley Thompson, an Episcopal priest and rector of Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, Texas, broke the news of Borg’s death in a blog post in which he spoke of how much he had learned from Borg and how close they remained even as Thompson’s beliefs became more traditional and veered away from Borg’s.

“I once introduced Marcus to a church audience by saying, ‘I agree with roughly 75 percent of what Marcus will say to you this evening,’” Thompson wrote in his tribute. “When he stepped into the pulpit, Marcus quipped, ‘I’m tempted to forego my notes and discuss with Barkley the other 25 percent!’”

During a question-and-answer period with parishioners at one event someone asked Borg, “But how do you know that you’re right?”

Borg paused and responded: “I don’t know. I don’t know that I’m right.”

Thompson said he had corresponded with Borg in late November and asked how he was doing.

“I may have ten years left,” Borg wrote back. “Not sure I want more. There comes a time to let go. And I could, with gratitude, sooner than that. My life has been very blessed.”

Funeral arrangements were not immediately available. While raised a Lutheran, Borg gravitated to the Episcopal Church, which was his home for much of his life. His wife, Marianne, is an Episcopal priest and canon at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, where Borg frequently lectured and was given the title of canon theologian.

With characteristic humor he said his wife informed him that “canon” means “big shot.”

A visit to All Souls Church, and 4 Key Learnings

Over the first weekend in January, Lisa and I traveled to Washington, DC to visit our son and daughter-in-law.  Aside from the great meals and conversations, we also joined them for Sunday worship at a church they attend periodically.  The congregation is All Souls Church near the Adams Morgan neighborhood.  What follows are some brief observations of what it’s like to attend a church of another tradition. 

-       Parking was a bit of pain, as you have to park on the street. No parking lot.  We normally take mass transit in the cities we visit, but several factors made us drive including the need to drive out to the burbs for an afternoon visit with my brother and his family.

-       It was easy to find the entrance, and despite the cool drizzly weather there were people outside greeting us.  They had name tags and a smile, “welcome to All Souls.”  They were expecting guests.  Does your church?

-       Once inside someone handed me a bulletin, and said “sit wherever you like.”  This was important, cause I’ve never been to a Unitarian church.  Did they have special rules regarding who sits where?

-       I sat about 2/3 of the way back, cause it was filling up fast and I needed to save four seats together.

-       The church filled between 11:10 and 11:25, with worship beginning at 11:15.  There were many people of a wide range of ages.  It was mostly white, with about 10-15% African American, and there were many same gender couples.

-       Worship was vibrant, a great mix of music, with hymns that were easy to sing.  “Hush, Hush, Somebody’s callin’ my name”  “Morning has Broken”  “We are marching in the Light of God” and a gospel version of “This Little light of Mine”  The fact that the songs/hymns were easy to sing was very important to me as a non-musician.  I’ve been to churches where no one knows the songs, and we all just mumble through.  In contrast, everyone sang and this brought energy to the place.

-       There choir anthems were much more intricate and sophisticated, and they were well done – really well done.  There were 3, and they ranged in musical styles from classical to jazz to gospel/rock.  Apparently, sometimes they do opera pieces.

-       There was a hokey children’s sermon, but then again, I’ve yet to see or give a children’s sermon that I liked.

-       The sermon was well done with both biblical references to Miriam as well as contemporary authors and poets.  The theme was around this new year and a chance for each of us to Sing a New Song in our lives. 

-       Since it was a Unitarian worship, we did not have Holy Communion, and there was minimal, if any reference to Jesus.  It was a worship service focused on a broadly defined understanding of God.

-       I left energized and inspired.  The community was welcoming, and if I was a newcomer looking for a faith community, I’d probably go back.  As a theologian, were there pieces I would have hoped for, of course.  But I was not there to evaluate and judge, I was there to enter into the experience.  I was rewarded.

 

All Souls has clearly carved out it’s mission as the liberal social justice church.  They make no bones about it.  They don’t apologize for who they are and what they are focused on – rally’s for an affordable housing project, a film group going to see “Selma”, an LGBTQ emphasis.  They know who they are, and people embrace it.

 

What can we learn from this experience that can be applied to our churches?

 

1.     Be intentional about welcoming people.  Have greeters outside with name tags.

2.     Make music accessible for people who don’t sing much, and use your choir/band/specialists for the more sophisticated pieces.

3.     Know who you are.  Don’t copy All Souls or any other church.  Carve out your own identity and make it clear.

4.     Notice the outward or externally focused nature of this congregation.  They are committed to serving their community, their context.  Once again, I’ve said it a million times, “Externally focused churches have a future. Inward, self-serving, we are here for our people churches have a very short lifespan.”

Today's Quote from Ed Friedman

"More thinking about the problem doesn't solve the problem...You have to have adventure...Move protoplasm through space in order to get new perceptions...The imaginative capacity changes systems."

Dr. Edwin Friedman

 

Dr. Friedman was a rabbi, and family system thinker and therapist.  He is the author of A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix  That's a book I only recommend to people if they are live, if you are dead, you can pass.

The Wisdom of Carey Nieuwhof on Small & Mid-Size Churches

I really appreciate Carey Nieuwhof's blog.  Do you know it?

Here is his latest post on small and medium size churches:

5 Tensions Every Small & Mid-Size Church Encounters

A recent post I did on why most churches never break the 200 attendance mark really seems to have struck a nerve.

tensions small church faces

People clearly have strong opinions and emotions about the size of churches.

When I began in ministry, I spent about 3 years leading a small congregation (under 100) that grew into a mid-sized church (under 500) and then grew into a larger church.

I remember the emotions that swirl around small and mid-sized churches. I also have lived through the tensions those congregations face.

This post (like the last one) is for church leaders and teams that want to reach more people.

It’s critical that as church leaders we understand the tensions we’re facing. In the same way that diagnosing that pain under your kneecap when you’re trying to run a race is helpful, diagnosing what you feel in the congregation can be critical to taking your next step forward.

Overcome these tensions and you’re closer to progress. Avoid them or fail to deal with them and you can stay stuck a long time.

So, here are 5 tensions every small and mid-sized church encounters:

1. The desire to keep the church one big family. This pressure is huge. People believe that the church functions best as one big family.  The reality is even when our church was 40 people, those 40 people didn’t know each other—really. Some were left out, others weren’t. Even at 100 or 300, enough people will still believe they know ‘everyone’. But they don’t. When people told me they knew everyone I would challenge people (nicely) and say “Really, you know everyone? Because as much as I wished I did, I don’t.” They would then admit they didn’t know everyone. They just knew the people they knew and liked and often felt that growing the church would threaten that.

The truth is, at 100-300, many people are unknown. And even if ‘we all wear name-tags”, many of the people in your church don’t really have anyone to talk to about what matters. The one big family idea is, in almost every case, a myth.

Once you get beyond a dozen people, start organizing in groups. Everyone will have a home. Everyone who wants to be known and have meaningful relationships will have them. And a healthy groups model is scalable to hundred, thousands and even beyond that.

2. The people who hold positions don’t always hold the power. This is a tension almost every small to mid-sized church faces. Your board may be your board, but often there are people, and even families, whose opinion carries tremendous weight.  If one of those people sits on the board, they end up with a de facto veto because no one wants to make a move without their buy in. If they are not on the board, decisions the board makes or a leader makes can get ‘undone’ if the person or family disapproves.

This misuse of power is unhealthy and needs to be stopped. In the churches where I began, I took the power away from these people by going head to head with them, then handed it back to the people who are supposed to have the power. In two out of three cases, the person left the church after it was clear I would not allow them to run it anymore. It’s a tough call, but the church was far healthier for it. The people who were supposed to lead got to lead. And we grew.

3. The pastor carries expectations no one can live up to. In most small to mid sized churches, the pastor is expected to never miss a wedding, funeral, hospital call or meeting, visit people in their homes, write a killer message every Sunday and organize most of the activities of the church and be present for all functions AND have a great family life.

The key here for those who want to grow past this is to set clear expectations of what you will spend your time on. I visited for the first two years and when we went to a groups model, explained (for what seemed like forever) how care was shifting from me to the congregation. I stopped attending every church event. We have a great counseling referral network. And I started focusing on what I can best contribute given my gift set: communication, charting a course for the future, developing our best leaders, casting vision and raising resources.

4. Tradition has more pull than vision.  This is not just about traditional churches—it’s true of church plants too. The past has a nostalgia to it that the future never does. Even the recent past. Remember how great the church felt when it was smaller, more intimate and met in the living room/school/old facility?

The challenge for the leader is to cast a vision that is clear enough and compelling enough to pull people from the familiar past into a brighter future.

5. The desire to do more, not less. As you grow, you will be tempted to do more. Every time there are more people/money/resources, the pressure will be strong to add programming and complexity to your organization.

Resist that. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Often the key to reaching more is doing less. By doing a few things well and creating steps, not programs, you will help more people grow faster than almost any other way. The two books that have helped me see this more than any other resources are Andy Stanley, Lane Jones and Reggie Joiner’s Seven Practices of Effective Ministry and Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s Simple Church. These two books helped our team resist the pressure to do more simply because we could.

Often complexity is the enemy of progress.

What tensions do you face or have you faced in small to mid-sized churches?

How are you handling them? Leave a comment.

Ideas on Preaching

I'm reposting this article from Pastors.com, cause I think there is good material in here for anyone doing public speaking.

Five Ways to Improve Congregational Engagement 

By Brandon Hilgemann

AudienceIs your audience boring?

Do they respond to your preaching? Do they laugh at jokes? Do they say “Amen.” Do they ever clap their hands? Are they leaning in to listen? Are they taking notes?

You may think the problem is your people, but I want to propose something different here: If your audience is dull, maybe the problem isn’t your audience. Maybe, the problem is how you have engaged with them.

Audience engagement starts with the speaker. People will do what they are taught., Many pastors just don’t encourage engagement.

In my opinion, good preaching sits somewhere in between monologue and dialogue (a lecture and a conversation). The preacher does the talking, but the audience is engaged and gives feedback with their body language and occasional with their mouths.

So how do you help build audience engagement? Here are five ways I have found helpful.

But first, I need to make 3 important disclaimers:

  1. Just because people says “Amen” or clap a lot  doesn’t make you a better preacher. There is such a thing as too much engagement. 
  2. Audience engagement will vary by church tradition. I am not saying that any one tradition is better than another. This advice is only if you want to encourage more engagement from a dull or difficult crowd.
  3. There is no better way to engage an audience than a great message. All the tips below on a bad sermon are wasted. If your content is bad, boring, or unbiblical, this advice won’t help. 

1. Ask questions

When you only speak at people, they will either tune you out or only listen. By asking questions (even though they are often rhetorical), you engage people’s minds and invite them to think for themselves instead of letting you do all the thinking for them.

Questions invite people to participate in the sermon. Questions ask people to think with you.

Don’t just tell people the truth; Lead them to discovering the truth themselves by asking questions and getting them thinking.

2. Tell them how to respond

If you want people to respond a certain way to your sermon, tell them to. This may feel strange at first, but people will do what they are asked to do.

Here are a few examples:

  • “Raise your hands if…”
  • “Amen?”
  • “Nod your head if you agree that…”
  • “Tell the person next to you…”
  • “Look at this…”
  • “Give a round of applause for…”
  • “Look at me, because this is important…”
  • “Stand up if…”
  • “Repeat after me…”

People will do what you ask them to do. Be clear about what you want them to do and they will do it.

3. Use Visual Illustrations

Give people something to look at.

People are visual beings. Visuals catch our eyes and engage our brains.

We could all learn a valuable lesson from kindergarten, you have to show and tell.

Many pastors just tell.

Turn analogies and metaphors into visual illustrations.

If you have a major point you are trying to get across, ask yourself, “How can I show and tell this?”

This may not work in every message, but I guarantee people will be better engaged when it does.

4. Add Humor

Humor immediately draws people in. It also disarms a tough crowd.

Laughter creates engagement. You cannot laugh at something and not be engaged. It’s impossible.

Laughter is also contagious. Have you ever noticed that watching a funny movie is always better with a crowd? We feed off the laughter of others.

Warning: This doesn’t mean tell a bunch of corny preacher jokes that you find on the internet. It means use your natural sense of humor when appropriate.

5. Tell Stories

We love stories. We live in one of the most story-centered cultures of all time. Movies, TV, books, talk shows, music, magazines… all of them tell stories.

People naturally engage with good stories.

If your audience is drifting, tell a good story and they will immediately snap back.

I often find that people will actually remember stories I tell years later, even after they have long forgotten the sermons.

I even hear Jesus told a story or two himself. There just may be something to this.

How do you help your audience engagement with your sermons?

Portico Article on Stress

Helping Our Leaders Reduce Stress

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.

What I'm reading this Christmas season.

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. JH

‘My Bright Abyss,’ by Christian Wiman

By KATHLEEN NORRIS

This 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.”

A Six Week Long Giving Response Plan

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.

Attract Families, More Money but keep it the same

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.

  • Measure the level of satisfaction and energy in the church you lead.
  • Identify the critical success factors for improving organizational climate.
  • Discover where members would like to go in the future.
  • Gauge readiness for change.
  • Uncover potential resources you may be missing.
  • Prepare for a search for your next pastor or priest.

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.

 

Giving Tuesday

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.

 

From the Bishop of Ferguson

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 New Mission - Joining God in the Neighborhood

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.