Speaking of Preaching, Or Not

Posted on April 12, 2014 by smaxreisert

In this holy season of Lent, when we should be focused on a prayerful and thoughtful approach to our faith, when we should have the courage to examine our faithfulness, I find myself in a difficult place. For the first time in a very long time, Lent is feeling very heavy and dark.

A few clergy colleagues and I share leadership of a Wednesday Bible Study, the “Bible Bunch.” This group includes other United Church of Christ churches, as well as a United Methodist Church. For this year’s Lenten theme my colleagues and I devised our own program: “Why We Do What We Do and What It Means To Us.” Individual sessions included preaching, singing, stewardship, mission, etc.

I led the first session, on preaching. We had about twelve to fifteen people in attendance—most, if not all, life-long church-goers. My first question—not intended as a trick question—asked those gathered around the table to share a story about a memorable sermon. The sermon didn’t have to involve one of the preachers at the table. I asked about a sermon that made them think differently about an issue, or about their faith, or about a Bible story—a sermon that spoke to them in a special way.

Silence. A long, uncomfortable silence.

When someone finally spoke up, when the silence just got to be too difficult to bear, the person shared a comment about the general preaching of one of the preachers at the table. Her sermons, her style of preaching, was “good,” maybe even “very good.” Others chimed in along the same lines. They generally liked the preaching of the clergy at the table, and the preaching styles of some of our predecessors.

But none of them could speak in any particular way about any particular sermon. Nothing.

By way of contrast, the following week’s topic was singing and they had plenty to say about that. I thought about those early settlers to New England, who didn’t allow any singing during worship services except for the singing of psalms. They knew that singing was dangerously distracting . . . .

I’ve been an ordained minister for almost twenty years, and active in the leadership of church for almost twenty-five years. It’s not easy to think that one’s vocation having so little impact.

And, more than that, I find in that uncomfortable silence a big clue into our shrinking congregations. If those who attend church regularly cannot talk in a meaningful way about anything other than music, how can we possibly think that others will want to join us? If people who attend worship over the course of most of their lives cannot come up with even one little nugget of a sermon that offered something meaningful, is it a mystery that so many have left or are not inclined to give church a try?

It’s not that I think my preaching is completely without value. I do receive thoughtful comments and feedback on occasion. These suggest that there are people in the congregation who are listening and paying attention. And, there were a few comments offered during this particular Bible Bunch where participants reflected on times when they talked about a sermon, with a friend or family member, after the worship experience.

The problem is that they cannot remember specific content in any meaningful way. Those moments of feeling connected to a sermon are fleeting. In essence, sermons are not experienced as transformative. There is nothing akin to a moment of “being saved.”

There is, perhaps, no more profound challenge for good church people in our cluster of churches in Central Maine and in churches like ours: to learn to speak personally of faith, what it means and why it matters, and to say something meaningful about why someone should give up brunch or sports practice or even household chores and to come to church instead.

We can’t “transform” the behavior of others if we haven’t experienced our own transformation.

Posted in Maine Cautionary Tales, My Life as Pastor | Leave a comment

Career Day

Posted on March 29, 2014 by smaxreisert

Recently, Waterville Junior High held “Career Day.” As co-chair of the PTO, I was asked to help get some parents to speak on various careers. I was even given a list—Health Care, Veterinary services, Finance, Human Resources, Arts & Communications, Agriculture/Natural Resources.

I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t looking for people in the “religion” field, and I was relieved when they didn’t feel that they needed to invite me to participate anyway. About a decade ago and for several years in a row, there was an area “Career Day” that was organized by the local AAUW. This Career Day was focused on 8th grade girls. A former parishioner was one of the organizers and she always insisted that I be a participant.

The first year I served on a career panel, I was pleased to be there. But, as I began to talk about my career, I realized very soon that I was in deep trouble. There was almost nothing that I could say that offered any kind of connection to the girls in that room (and to some extent, the other panelists as well—a state trooper and an executive director of an area nonprofit). None of them went to church. They didn’t seem to know what the Bible was, even if they had heard the word before. How about weddings and funerals? If they had attended one of these, it was probably not in a church.

Every year after that, I attended Career Day with a great deal of trepidation and doom. One year, I basically found myself describing my career so that it sounded an awful like I was a social worker. That, the girls understood—at least somewhat.

And, now I don’t feel like I would be doing the responsible thing by sharing my career with 8th graders. What if, by some miracle, I was able to spark some interest and inspired an 8th grader to think about a career as a minister? Will such a career exist when they are old enough to embark on that career?

It’s not exactly that I think that the future will not have any ministers, but my suspicion is that many ministers of the future will probably not see their vocation as a career. They will likely have another job that actually pays the bills, or they will have a spouse or partner who has a well-paying career that allows them to minister without much of a paycheck.

The future of the ministry is indeed in peril. Seminaries have closed, or are engaged in dramatic re-visioning of who they are and what they do. Alban Institute, a long-time leader in providing resources to mostly mainline churches and clergy, is closing its doors.

While I try to cling to hope, that churches and church leaders will experience a transformation into something new and wonderful, I can’t help but wonder about my career and vocation. I may very well need to worry less about presenting my career at a future “Career Day,” and worry more about finding one to attend.

Posted in My Life as Pastor | Leave a comment

It’s Not News that Religion Isn’t Important

Posted on March 15, 2014 by smaxreisert

A recent NBC News and Wall Street Journal survey has found that one in five Americans say that religion does not play an important role in their lives—the highest percentage since the poll began asking participants about their focus on faith in 1997.

This is not news in Central Maine. I’ve been aware of the decline in the significance of religion for quite some time. I can even place a date on my personal epiphany that faith and religion are no longer significantly important to a great number of Americans, even those who go to church.

The date: September 11, 2001. Or, to be more accurate, it was in the days after that horrible day. At the time, I was Acting Pastor and Teacher at Winslow Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Winslow, Maine. I had been serving there as Minister of Christian Education for a couple of years. During the month of September 2001, though, I was the only minister on staff. The long-time settled pastor had retired during the summer, and the interim was not due to start until October 1. So, I was the pastor during that time when one of the most significant events in all of American history took place.

In the days following September 11, quite a few of my friends, who do not go to church, commented to me something along the lines of, “I bet church attendance is way up.” But, church attendance in the weeks following September 11, 2001 was not “way up.” In fact, it hardly went up at all.

And then there was the actual day itself. Not long after I had begun processing what was going on in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, I decided to pull together a church service for that evening. I called a few retired deacons, who I thought might be home, to ask for help in spreading the news that we were going to gather that evening at church. The first deacon I called apologized that she couldn’t help me. She had plans to meet a friend for lunch, she mentioned casually. I asked her if she had seen the news about what was happening. Oh yes, she told me. She had seen the news. But, it was clear that she hadn’t even thought about changing her plans. She didn’t think she would be at the service either. It just wasn’t going to fit into her schedule.

The service that night was fairly well attended, but attendance at Sunday services remained mostly the same as before September 11. I remember noticing this and wondering about what it meant. Now, these many years later, I have a better sense of what it did mean: the unsettling truth that religion is just not that important to people. Even people who are part of churches.

Back in 2001, I noticed that the lack of a rise in worship attendance had two components: 1) There was no real discernable uptick in the number of unfamiliar faces in worship (visitors), and 2) There was no real discernable uptick in the attendance of those who were associated with the church (the Christmas and Easter people).

That more people say that religion is not important in their lives, or less important in their lives, is not news to me. But, I do wonder about how that happened. What happened in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century that made religion increasingly insignificant?

This shift happened in an almost indiscernible way. Even my religiously unaffiliated friends who shared their assumption that national tragedy somehow equaled increased worship attendance, not only did not go to church themselves during that time, but assumed that they were somehow in some kind of “outlier” category—when, in fact, they were part of a growing population of people who didn’t feel compelled or drawn to church during a national crisis.

There are two basic questions that I would love to ask on a much bigger scale, and to have asked by those poll takers from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal (or the Pew Research Center, which has found a similar story in their research): 1) what is it exactly that happened in the late twentieth century that motivated people to feel less connected to organized religion? and 2) why do the people who regularly attend worship still do so?

I’m not so sure that I would really want to know the answers to these questions, but they are the ones that keep popping up whenever a study offers the same data that people are less connected to organized religion. After all, this isn’t news to me. I’ve known it for a long time.

I’d just like to know why—and also what it means for the people I pastor.

Posted in Studies, Demographics, Reality | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Becoming a Part of Maine’s Aging Population

Posted on March 3, 2014 by smaxreisert

In just a couple of days, I will turn 50. Instead of ignoring this reality or trying to find some way of moving into it quietly, I’ve decided to do the best I can to embrace this milestone moment in my life. I’ll gather with some friends next weekend. I’ve ordered a few balloons that have an exclamation point after 50—instead of the ones that that say something like “Oh No, the Big 5-0!”

It’s a lot easier to be positive about turning 50 when I keep in mind my context. I live in the oldest state in the country. I’m actually still younger than the median age of the small city where the church I serve is located. In Hallowell, Maine, the median age, as calculated from the 2010 census, is 50.5. I have a whole six months to still be on the younger side of the median age. Hoorah!

Then, there’s my work environment. At Old South, I can literally count on one hand the number of people who attend worship on a regular basis who are younger than I am—not counting the people who are brought to church by their parents. While the median age of Hallowell might be 50.5, the median age of the Old South Church community is significantly older than that. And, beyond that, I continue to be the youngest UCC pastor serving a UCC church in our association of churches—and it’s about a decade that separates me from the next youngest pastor.

I’m turning 50 in a place where it’s relatively easy to turn 50.

So, while my context allows me to feel better about turning 50, I can’t help but wonder about what this really means for my work life, for the church I serve, and for the future.

Maine is the oldest state in the country, and at least by one survey, the most secular. As I’ve written about in the past, the secular nature of this part of the world makes the life of the church tremendously complicated. It is no simple or easy task to think, or believe, that we can turn the tide.

In my self-centered focus on my birthday, I also wonder about whether or not I will be able to do what I do and be compensated for it until I’m ready to retire—without moving away. I’ve been concerned about this trend for a while now, but I wasn’t quite expecting to feel like it’s an accelerating trend. But that’s how it’s beginning to feel.

This might be a good place to turn 50, but it’s not exactly a great place to be a professional clergyperson. So, as I turn 50, I will celebrate, but I suspect it won’t be too long before I find myself a little more reflective and even troubled. For today, though, I’ll take that command to not be afraid and celebrate the blessings of life, including life’s perplexing challenges.

Posted in Maine Cautionary Tales | Tagged | 1 Comment

A Lesson from High School Sports

Posted on February 22, 2014 by smaxreisert

I spent all day last Monday, at the Maine High School Class B State Swim Meet, held at the Greason Pool at Bowdoin College. My daughter is co-captain of her small girls swim team from Waterville High School.

In the arena of points and standings, the Waterville girls did not do well. Only two of them had even qualified for the preliminaries in individual events, and neither did well enough on Monday to advance to the evening finals. But, the 400 free relay team did qualify for the finals, in the consolation heat. That event is, of course, the very last event of the meet.

The team ended up finishing 13th overall in the 400 free relay. But, the Waterville girls got a big surprise at the end of the meet. They were honored with the Sportsmanship Award.

I have no idea of the actual reasoning behind this award going to the Waterville team, but I’d like to think that one of the reasons was what the Waterville girls did for one of the swimmers at the event, a girl who swims with the local YMCA (so some of the Waterville girls know her), but is the only swimmer to represent her high school.

State swim meets, as in any high school sports event, celebrate not only the athletes, but also the pride and identity of Maine high schools. In the stands, parents wear matching high school t-shirts featuring school colors. It can be a difficult place, then, for a lone swimmer—especially a swimmer who is a very good swimmer. There’s a lot of pressure, but no large cheering squad, no real communal experience of team identity.

But for that one lone swimmer on Monday evening, Waterville became her cheering squad. They yelled and screamed so much for her that a couple of them didn’t have much a voice by the end of the evening.

There’s a lesson here for struggling churches. We really need to find a way to let go of our own concerns about our own selves, and our concerns about our small numbers and our fretfulness about our “success,” or lack thereof (at least in the terms of the world). We need to find a way to let go of our concerns and fears about how or why we’ve gotten smaller than we once were.

And, we then we need to reclaim our voice as the “cheering squad” for the lost, lonely, and marginalized. There are so many people—and some of them successful people, by the standards of the world—who are lonely, lost, even marginalized. And, then there are those who really are living on the edges of society—the poor, the homeless, the severely mentally ill, for instance. These people need someone to notice them, to encourage them, to show them the love of God.

That’s our calling—to show the love of God. We should worry less about how many are showing up for worship on Sunday, and worry more about how well we share the love of God. Our calling is to show the love of God with reckless, and enthusiastic, abandon.

Posted in Sports | 1 Comment

Getting the Rules Right

Posted on February 15, 2014 by smaxreisert

In the fall of 2008, our family (myself, my husband, and our two children, then 11 and 9) set out on a Grand Tour of Europe. It was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime kind of adventure. Our trip began in September in London, where we stayed for about nine days, and then we went over to the Continent, to Belgium, Amsterdam, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and France. The Tour ended in Paris in the middle of November.

Among many other things, the Tour involved a great deal of family time—close, almost always together, family time. It didn’t take long, therefore, for a set of rules to be developed:

1. Paws off! (Keep your hands, and all other appendages, to yourself.)
2. Stay on the BUS (Butt Upon Seat)
(this was especially important when eating, in a restaurant or whatever place we were calling “home” at the time)
3. No swatting Dad on the butt
4. No turning off the lights in the bathroom when someone else is in there.
5. Don’t be an insufferable know-it-all.
6. Don’t be a mindless buffoon.
7. No snarky insolence.
8. No calling Daddy unflattering names.

During the past few days, I’ve been thinking about these rules for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’m preaching tomorrow on the Gospel passage from the Revised Common Lectionary, Matthew 5:21-37, where Jesus seems to be talking about well-known rules, and then taking them up a notch. The second, more or less related reason, is that I’m thinking about how much the Church has taken up the cause of “rules,” so much so that it’s strangled the life out of them, to the point that people have finally had enough and are leaving the Church.

In the Matthew passage, Jesus lifts up well-known rules for living, those ten commandment kind of rules, and seems to take them to a whole new place. According to Matthew, Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Is Jesus really stating that even seemingly minor infractions of the rules for living will subject one to eternal damnation? Could it really be that Jesus is encouraging us not only to get busy correcting and guiding certain actions, but also to see what we can do about reading the minds of people as well?

I’ve been thinking about the rules that we developed on our family trip through Europe, rules that in many ways are still part of our family life. The rules didn’t just come out of thin air; they were solidly grounded in our experience. For instance, we had a problem, especially with the kids, physically needling each other—poking each other, and so forth. What family doesn’t? So, Rule #1: Keep your hands to yourself.

The rules were not set up to keep the individuals in our family from having a good time. The rules were not set up to squelch all of the fun out of our trip. Instead, the rules were set up so that we could all have a reasonably good experience on our trip. The rules were set up to remind us all of a certain level of respect we needed to have for each other, and the need to preserve a certain level of dignity.

In short, it’s really all about the relationships.

I think it should be the same way for religion. The rules that appear in the Bible are not simply about how we can squelch all of the fun out of life, so that our actions and our thoughts should be always so pure just so we can please our Creator.

The rules, instead, should be considered in light of how we live together and how we interact with our Creator. It doesn’t take much thought, for instance, to see that the Ten Commandments are really about relationships—relationship with God, and relationship with each other.

It’s not simply that murder and adultery and lying are things that God doesn’t like, so don’t do them. It’s that murder and adultery and lying are not good for human relationships. The rules, then, should not be viewed in a vacuum as if rules have no context and no purpose other than just to be rules.

Rules for living are grounded in community, in relationship, and in the love and grace of God. Do I really think that Jesus wanted us to try to get inside each other’s thoughts so that we could try to figure out some way of policing thoughts as well as actions? I don’t think so.

Tomorrow’s Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus cared a great deal about community and relationships. His “taking it up a notch,” I believe, was to try to encourage his followers to think about themselves and others in context, in their relationships with each other. The standard rules for living should be something that give life, that encourage and guide good relationships, instead of something that sucks the life out of living.

But, the Christian Church, over the millennia, has been much more interested in understanding and appreciating the rules in a sort of a vacuum, that rules should be mindlessly followed, as if that’s the only way to show honor and respect for God. Finally, people have had enough and they have gone away, searching for other ways of finding worthwhile, life-giving and life-affirming, community and relationships.

The Church should, instead, be exploring new ways of fostering good relationships, and good community—especially because the Church actually has some very good things to say about such things. Our holy book is full of good guidance—life-giving and life-affirming guidance. We just need to find a way to steer clear of approaching that guidance as simply a list of rules that exists solely for the sake of having rules. And, instead, we should appreciate and promote the guidance of our Holy Book in context, as a way through which we show respect and dignity to each other, to our Creator, and to ourselves, and how we build and shape good community and good relationships.

After all, “paws off” is always good advice and it’s never a good idea to shut the bathroom light out when someone is in there, especially when the only switch is on the outside of the bathroom. Respect, dignity, good relationships, good community. The Church could go a long way in promoting such things, and helping to foster meaningful life and living.

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Living in the Present; Loving the Past

Posted on February 8, 2014 by smaxreisert

A friend of mine passed away recently. He was an older friend, in his late eighties. He was a popular man in the Waterville area—a respected retired business owner, a generous contributor to many area nonprofits, an active presence around town.

As I sat there last weekend at the Mass of Christian Burial, I found myself thinking about my own grief and also thinking about lessons that I learned from Walter. One of those lessons is a good lesson for churches.

Though Walter loved talking about the past, he lived very much in the present. Despite tremendous loss that he experienced in his personal life, he lived with vitality in the present, able to hold his past lovingly while not be a hostage to that past.

As an adult, Walter experienced a great deal of success. He moved to Waterville when a business opportunity was presented to him. That business was a small one, but Walter got that business to grow in a big ways, and was able to live generously and in comfort in his retirement.

Walter lived very much in the present, making new friends of all ages. He was actively involved in philanthropic activities in the community, not just by writing a check. He was actively involved, working to help organizations that served children and the homeless. He had an infectious and easy laugh, and was completely charming and interested in people, in being in good relationship with everyone around him.

But Walter also loved talking about the past. He loved to share stories about his wife and their life together, and the family they raised. He also enjoyed talking about what Waterville was like when he arrived, and the wonder of moving to a community teeming with possibilities. But, then also watching the community decline.

Walter lived in the midst of two important dynamics that I think offer a lesson for churches—to live in the reality of the present, while speaking lovingly of a past, which has been left in the past. So many churches seem to live in the past, while also speaking suspiciously of the present.

The lesson is that good church people must find a way to embrace the present, to engage in good relationships with community in today’s terms. But, at the same time, churches must find a way to speak lovingly of the past, in a way that conveys an acceptance of the past as past.

My friend loved to reminisce about the past and to share wonderful stories, most of them happy but a few of them were sad. But they were stories of a life well lived and a life that continued to be well lived until he died. Walter wasn’t held hostage by the past. Instead, he found a way to bring his past with him into his daily life, balancing it with the present, with his seemingly constant array of new friends and new opportunities.

Churches, and the good people who are a part of them, should seek to learn this lesson and to live by it. The past doesn’t need to be completely left behind, but good church people must free themselves from being held hostage to a past that will never, can never, be made anything other than the past. And, to engage in the present, and all of the wonderful opportunities and new friends that are waiting.

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What Makes a Church?

Posted on January 25, 2014 by smaxreisert

Probably because Old South’s Annual Meeting is this coming Sunday, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a church. At Sunday’s meeting, if I were to survey those in attendance, I would probably hear a lot of answers that include someone who “serves on a committee” or “a person who comes to worship regularly” or even “someone who’s on our member list” (whether or not they participate actively).

But, I’ve been wondering more and more about how we broaden our concept of what it means to be “church,” and how we tackle some of the really tricky questions, especially when it comes to this thing that we call a “congregational” church, which is what Old South is. How do we define “congregation”? How can we include people who consider themselves part of our church, even though they don’t come to worship (not even once in a while) or serve on a committee?

As I think about the very different ways through which people are connected to Old South, I find a wide variety of ties to the church. There’s one man who shows up in the office every December to drop off a check. I don’t ever see him in worship, but I know that he considers Old South to be his church. There’s a woman who occasionally comes to funerals, and stays connected through my weekly e-newsletter and sometimes through email correspondence, but I’ve never seen her in a regular worship service. We have a few people who actively participate in the bell choir, but only during “bell choir season” in Advent and Lent. I have an increasing number of people who read my columns that have been published in the local newspaper or posts to my blog. Some of these people actually reach out through email or an occasional face-to-face meeting. How much can we stretch the elastic of Old South church? Who’s “in” and who’s not? To what extent does the question even matter?

Then, there are those we find out through obituaries. “So and So” was a “long time member of Old South Church,” even though we’ve never heard of that person and can’t find them on any of the rolls. For some reason, though, they considered themselves as a part of our church.

Clearly, there’s a wide array of people who feel connected to Old South, but what does it mean for people to just feel “connected” to a congregational church, without really participating in the life of that church? And, perhaps even more challenging of a question, how much of my time (especially as a less than full-time pastor) should I spend keeping the connection with those who feel at least somewhat connected to the church (or perhaps are thinking, even just a tiny bit, about getting connected to the church) but don’t contribute to the financial bucket that keeps the church afloat?

I recently attended a workshop that challenged traditional notions of what it means to belong to a church, thinking about new, web-based notions of “parish,” incorporating Facebook, YouTube, and other social media. This idea is compelling to me, yet I wrestle with this very new, and multi-dimensional, notion of what makes a “congregational” church. The workshop, unfortunately, did not include a discussion of the financial end of things, but that’s important too. It’s great to be connected to a widening group of people, and to know that one’s ministry is meaningful to others. But, I’m already a less than full-time pastor—and the finances of the not so distant future are looking not so good.

So, I’m wondering a lot about what the future looks like. I think it’s powerful to think about a widening sense of “parish,” and to pull in a multi-dimensional approach to ministry. If Jesus were around today, I’m not so sure that he would have a Facebook page or a blog, but I’m quite sure his disciples would. But, the question remains: will I still be able to consider “ministry” as my profession, and not just my vocation? Will I be able to continue to make a living as an ordained clergyperson, or will I eventually need to have a different profession that pays the bills, with ministry happening on my own time?

Posted in On the Hopeful Side | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Church and Patriots

Posted on January 18, 2014 by smaxreisert

Like other churches in Maine, and perhaps in other places too, Old South is considering a change in its governance structure. We have too many committee slots for too few people, with some people taking on multiple roles on various committees. And, more than that, we have more committees that I can reasonably cover, especially now that I work less than full-time. Even though I don’t regularly meet with all of the church’s committees, there are still too many of them for me.

The change in governance that I’ve proposed, though, is much more than a consolidation of committees, it also reflects a recognition that Old South is in a different place than it once was. Perhaps in the distant past, worship and committee service, and for some singing in the choir, was enough to satisfy spiritual yearnings and a desire to do good work in the community.

Now, in ways that I find exciting and meaningful, Old South folk—though they are getting older and smaller in number—are looking for new ways of being church. They are talking about wanting to get to know each other better, wanting to engage in new paths of mission, and exploring their spiritual selves. Old South is also blessed with amazing musical talent, only a fraction of which is used on a regular basis. Last summer, for instance, one woman organized a ukulele choir and ended up with eight to ten people playing with her during a Sunday worship service in the middle of summer—a sure sign that it was time to try some new things at Old South.

We now have an opportunity to be about the business of reinventing ourselves—of transformation. Isn’t that what the church is all about?

Though I’ve learned in the past that this might not be a good idea, I can’t help but to compare our situation, in a small but significant way, to what’s happening with my favorite football team, the New England Patriots. Truth be told, my love of football, and my devotion to the Patriots, has become more complicated in recent years—the growing evidence surrounding the dangers of concussions, the Spygate scandal, the Patriots’ former tight end in prison for murder (and now the allegations that he may have committed other murders) . . . . These problems have caused me to squirm when it comes to football and the Patriots, but I’m not quite ready to cut them loose.

The Patriots play in the AFC Conference Championship tomorrow afternoon, against the Broncos. The Patriots have reached this place near the top of the AFC heap because of their ability to reinvent themselves, to deal with their very real and very significant losses in personnel, and to figure out how to effectively use the gifts and talents of the players they still have or can get their hands on, and to convince all of their players to work together, even when they must take on new tasks or a new ways of playing their positions—including their celebrity quarterback, who has been transformed from gunslinger to hand-off man (big throwing offense to an offense focused more on a running game).

The Patriots have stared reality straight in the face and they have responded—and now they are on the brink of yet another Super Bowl.

The picture, of course, is a whole lot more complicated. I’m especially mindful that the Patriots have a coaching staff that has a whole lot more power and authority than I have for making changes. And, I probably don’t even need to point out that football and church are very, very different things in almost all aspects of who they are and what they do.

Still, I think it’s worth spending a moment considering what the Patriots have done this season in order to keep winning (though churches cannot think of themselves in the same terms of “winning” and “losing”). Reinventing the team did not happen by accident or miracle. Reinvention happened because of hard work and commitment to the whole, even where some highly paid “star” players had to put aside their personal glory for the benefit of the team as a whole.

Churches like Old South can learn from this lesson. Our line-up is different than what we thought it would be. We’ve lost important “players” and some players, who we assumed would show up at some point, haven’t. Yet, we have the same old playbook, and the same old patterns of existence—despite the fact that clearly have gifts and talents that are not being put to good use and the old playbook is not especially rewarding. We end up doing what we’ve always done, and there is some comfort there. But, there’s also restlessness.

It’s the restlessness that we must pay attention to, for it is in that restlessness, I believe, that we will encounter the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And, though our average age may continue to climb and our numbers may continue to shrink, we may very well find, and experience, new life, and whole new wonderful way that God is speaking to us and beckoning us to be the church we are called to be.

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Righteous Anger

Posted on January 11, 2014 by smaxreisert

A few weeks ago I went to see the film Philomena, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I finally figured out why.

Philomena is based on the true story of an Irish woman who, as an unwed pregnant teenager, was left at a convent that took in women just like her and subjected them to hard labor in return for the service of taking them in when no one else would. As many of these women experienced, Philomena’s young son was taken from her and offered for adoption.

In the film, Philomena, now a much older woman played by Judi Dench, sets out to find her son. Her companion on the journey is a world-weary former BBC reporter, Martin Sixsmith, who, until he was fired, was not interested in telling “human interest stories.” But, he needs a job and this brings Martin and Philomena together for an odd, but touching, traveling “buddy” movie.

When the full extent of the injustice visited upon Philomena is made clear, there is a very moving scene where Philomena offers forgiveness for what was done to her. But, Martin is not prepared to forgive. He is very angry. Philomena, though, will have none of it. She dismisses his anger. She would rather forgive.

I’ve been struggling with this one aspect of the film. Philomena’s ability to forgive is extraordinary, but the dismissal of the anger is unsettling to me—probably because I share some of that anger. It’s not that anything remotely like what happened to Philomena has happened to me, or anyone I know, but the Church—Roman Catholic and Protestant— suffers in an important ways, still today, from the sins of church leaders of the past. Though certainly not all of the reason, but part of the reason, for the missing people in the pews of my church, the entire swaths of generations of people who do not attend church, can be traced back to the harm of priests, ministers, and nuns of the past.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard from quite a few people who are searching—searching for church, or some kind of spiritual community or connection to the holy. These people have reached out to me because of my occasional columns in the local paper or because of this blog or they’ve stumbled upon Old South’s webpage or Facebook page. They are drawn to the words that I write, the ideas that I try to convey, and so they reach out with questions.

Almost all of these people have had—either directly or through a family member or friend—a bad church experience. All of those bad experiences involve religious leaders—ministers, priests, nuns. All of the bad experiences involve terrible harm to the soul, and sometimes the body too. How is it possible that a trusted religious leader can tell a child that a parent is ill or has died because of the weakness of that child’s faith? How can trusted a religious leader abuse children, take advantage of trust, for his own needs?

These abused individuals left the church, but then there is still a place of searching in their lives, there is something missing, a connection that they want to make. Somehow, they discover the words that I write on a regular basis and wonder if it could be true: Can a Christian church really be an open, nonjudgmental, loving place? Can a religious leader really be trusted, can take seriously the emotional needs of those in the leader’s care?

And, though I try—sometimes in person or more often, through the power of email—to convince them that, yes, a Christian church can be an affirming, loving place with no judgment and with religious leaders who will not take advantage of them or their children, it is almost impossible to get these people to come to church more than once or twice.

The scars are deep, powerful, and abiding.

So, I find myself angry, righteously angry—at religious leaders of the past, ministers, priests, nuns. I am angry at those people who have harmed so many, and have left those people searching, still with deep wounds. I realize that the nuns who took in Philomena, and other young women like her, were offering help in a way no one else did, but how could they go so far in damaging those young women,  even in adulthood, and the children they bore?

And I’m not just angry for what those religious leaders did to these individuals, I’m also angry for the damage to the church that’s been left in their wake. I serve a church with a population of people under fifty that is tiny. Now, there’s a range of reasons why this is—and lots of those other reasons I’ve written about in the past—but part of puzzle is the damage of religious leaders of the past, and the harm they have done to individuals that  caused those individuals to flee the Church. The harm is not just upon the individual but the corporate body of Christ.

I find Philomena’s ability to forgive remarkable, but the language of anger is also an appropriate voice. While forgiveness is powerful, it is not the only response that can propel important change. Anger is also essential, especially anger from within (which, in the case of Philomena is not the case, as Martin is an atheist).

For anyone who finds this blog, who has experienced directly or indirectly, the harm of church leaders, I encourage you to come back and to raise your voice from within. The body of Christ needs you.

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