Social Networking with Care

Brad posted last on this blog and told us he was going to disable his Facebook account, staying off of it for the rest of the summer. I have to say I hear what he is saying, and I think his post deserves a second look. There was much in his post to think about and quite frankly that I agree with. And yet, I have to say this might be the counter argument of sorts to his. I would say anything in this life can become an addiction. Also, anything in this life can be abused, misused, overdone, and soon be death dealing instead of life giving. Facebook and other social media do not escape this reality. What I fear Facebook and other social media has done is take away the care we use when dealing with a real human. Since distance and the illusion of anonymity which comes from posting alone, and yet being in the midst of sometimes thousands, takes away many filters, we tend to be bolder, but also much less discerning. So, while a sabbatical, as Brad suggests, might be good from time and time and maybe even necessary for some, I think the real issue is the effort and care we put into the posts we make, the intention and care we put into our communication. It being so quick, simple, fleeting, it simply becomes a stream of consciousness without the care for what we say. So often this has become about quantity and not quality, about volume instead of content.

While posting or texting during a worship service may detract from the experience for some, it may enrich it for others, and in fact, the well thought out reflection, sent out for those who did not make it, or may never make it, could be a life line for some. Instead of shutting it down, I would advocate less posts and more thought on the fewer we do post. Perhaps thinking about what we post as if we were saying it to one of our most cherished friends, while at the same time considering it could appear on a billboard on I-5 tomorrow would provide a bit more quality, where technology is actually serving us, helping us, connecting us, bringing us closer to reality, not inverting it. Brad was right on about one thing, our communication through social media should be life giving, profound, provocative, inspiring, challenging, not dull or draining. With thought and care and discernment I believe it can be.

Bishop Greg

Why?

A while back Brad wrote about an elevator speech for why to be an Episcopalian. Recently in Outside Church Walls we discussed the Why that comes prior to that – Why are we Christians?

My answer goes something like this:

Because of grace. I experience God’s grace every day, even when I’m trying to ignore it. So much in my life can only be attributed to grace. I want to receive it, share it, channel it.

That’s why I’m a Christian. What’s your answer?


Greg

Unplugging

Last night I disabled my Facebook account. I’m going to stay off it for the rest of the summer.

I did so because I had been spending entirely too much time on it, constantly checking for updates. I found that the quality of posts was declining as the amount of time I spend on it was increasing. It seems that more than half of all posts weren’t written by the people who posted them, but were just links. I was guilty of doing that myself.

Overwhelmed is too strong of a word for it, but I was definitely feeling bombarded by ads, “news”, and the irony of people promoting ideas that they disagree with. Because little is isolated anymore, everything is a Big Deal. It was draining me.

A theme I’ve been developing when thinking about the church is that we should avoid fads and trends. Sure, Teh Interwebz are a useful tool; this article is published electronically. But we need to guard against an inversion of reality where we unwittingly become the tool, serving technology instead of the other way around.

Sorry, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to post updates or text during a worship service. It detracts from the experience. And yet I’ve found myself doing that, because the world is literally in my pocket. Instead, I think we should turn off our devices in church and focus on the authenticity of the liturgy.

We’ll sort out what makes sense and what doesn’t over time, but the answer probably won’t be obvious immediately.

I don’t know what my no Facebook rest of summer will be like, but if I gain any insights I’ll let you know after Labor Day. In the meantime, I’ll be outdoors as much as I can. Enjoy the sun!


Brad

The Power of Why

This past weekend I worshiped at an Episcopal church in Savannah, Georgia. It became apparent this small congregation had experienced a split in the past year, and were in a process of re-evaluating their purpose. During announcements at the end of the service, a working group reported on their plan for reconciliation: small groups of remaining parishioners would visit every person who had left, with an emphasis on listening.

Virtually every person in the pews signed up to participate.

It was evidence of the power of “Why.” This congregation that had been adrift chose what was a powerful Why for them: to pursue reconciliation with former members. This purpose for existence clearly mattered to the people in the pews that Sunday morning.

I don’t know whether this “Why” is the best one for that congregation, or whether they will succeed. However, I was glad they had a compelling purpose. Simon Sinek gives a potent TED talk on the power of “Why”, and has a book on the subject as well. The premise is this: “Why” comes first, and effective leaders have a clear and compelling Why.

Often times in churches we are seeking the “How” long before we’re clear on the “Why.” Actually, a “Why” generally exists; it just may not be spoken or acknowledged. The “Why” might be to get enough people pledging to pay the bills, or to keep the church operating in just the way that makes us comfortable.

Because we don’t always recognize our “Why” – or want to recognize it – we often chase “How” instead. We ask, “How do we get young families to attend?” (when we’re really wondering who will pay the bills and do the work now that we’re getting tired). Or we wonder, “How can we get people to pledge more?” (when we’re really just wanting to meet the budget). When starting with “Why”, we are more likely to say, “Our neighborhood is full of young families; what can we do to support them?” Or we say, “We want to help people have a more faithful relationship with all of the things God has placed in their lives. How can we do that?”

We can choose to align ourselves to the “Why” that God intends for our congregations. Each community will have slightly different expressions of their roles in God’s kingdom, based on the needs and circumstances of their neighborhoods. With true alignment will come passion and vitality. The work may still be hard, but it will be the kind of hard work that brings peace that passes understanding.

What is your congregation’s “Why”? Is it openly stated and well-understood? Is it focused on maintaining your comfort, or on making an impact on others? If you’re struggling, it might be time to start with “Why”.

Greg

So You Want to Reach Young People?

I am haunted by several images this week. I am haunted by the large numbers of refugees from Central America crossing our borders over this past year and I am particularly haunted by their youth. I am haunted too by the faces of the young men and women of Aberdeen who I am getting to know, who tell me the stories of their lives in poverty in a post industrial town.

I am struck most of all that my generation struggles, in many cases, to simply survive.

In media depictions of millennials, we are alternately maligned for not working hard enough and desired as pew warmers in churches where the average age is rising rapidly. Our habits are discussed and critiqued and our behavior predicted. But in all the talk about micro-beers and shopping habits, there is little conversation about the vast numbers of young people who are struggling to simply survive.

52,000 young people have fled across the U.S. border in the past 8 months as refugees from Central America. 40% of people unemployed in the U.S. are millennials.

It is in this context that I’ve been thinking about what kind of values we need to have in the church. What kind of practices, if we are going to reach young people in a struggling age?

Latino/a theologians sometimes talk about the Spanish word, “la lucha,” or “the struggle,” as a spiritual value, as a theological commitment. This struggle is for justice, for liberation, yes; but most of all, it is a struggle for life. It was Gustavo Gutiérrez that wrote that the struggles of the poor represent “an assertion of their right to life.”

Children fleeing Central America are asserting their right to life. The young men and women of Aberdeen, who have a hard time keeping a roof over their head, who struggle with increasing levels of addiction, who go hungry, who despair of a future—they fight, one day at a time, to simply live. And there are far too many funerals for people who have died young in Aberdeen. And far too many young graves in our southern deserts.

The entire Bible points us toward a struggle toward life. From the Exodus to early church, the people of God struggle for life—the life of God, a life that affects our whole being, body and soul. It was Jesus who said, in John 10:10; “I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”

What would it mean for the church of God to own this struggle? To enter into the struggle for life with our young brothers and sisters from Honduras and from Aberdeen, from Detroit and El Salvador? To be converted by our young people to a struggle for the abundant life that Jesus promised? What would that look like?

Sarah

Whose Story

There we were on the floor, the three of us, me and my two boys. They were helping me as I practiced telling the Godly Play lesson on the Parable of the Sower. They couldn’t help themselves. They were eager to know what was inside the golden box I was holding in my hand. The Box contained little artifacts that would help me tell the story, they knew that, they just didn’t know exactly which story would it be. They could contain their curiosity. They were thirsty to know the story, to enter into it, even if just for a brief moment to enter into it. It was as if the world had stopped, nothing else matters but the story. Now I do not want to make my boys sound more pious than they are, they also have the same reaction when I am reading them a book, they just give themselves to the narrative. They live as if it was really possible to cross the threshold of realities. As I come to the “wondering time” in the story (a moment of open questions in which listeners are invited to ponder and explore) I said “I wonder why the sower would scatter seeds in all kind of lands, even though some would not produce fruit…” To this question I received the deepest of answers from my 5 years old son, he said “Papí, the person was throwing the seeds in the other group for the birds to eat, because he wanted them to have food too.” How ‘bout that! Of course, if I had been paying as good attention to the story I would have noticed that too. It makes complete sense that the sower would be sharing the seeds with the birds of the air. After all birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet our heavenly Father feeds them. My sons helped me to move from the point of mastering the story toward a posture of living the story, to letting my perspective and world be changed by the story.

What story is changing your world? What stories are you so curious about that you cannot but help step into it and be transformed by it?


Eliacin

On the 7th Day God Rested

Back in an earlier era, the 1970’s and 1980’s, when the Leadership Skills Institute in this Diocese, as in many others, was a thriving ministry it offered life changing –faith enriching experiences for many of those (including myself) who participated. It was a six day experience. The essential process (intentionally slow) was one of allowing the soul to catch up with the experiences. The formula for this was 50% experience, followed by 50% reflection on that experience = new learnings. Yes, this takes time. I believe this principle continues to be a truth that, in our nano second world of living now, we have allowed to drop away.

Sunday’s lesson included “And on the 7th Day God rested.” The God I know didn’t sit on his tush on that 7th day taking it easy, but rather was engaged in reflecting and gathering in new learnings about this universe that had been called into existence and envisioned as “God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth as in heaven.

No doubt it is because I have, by necessity, been called to a month of Rest during June this year, that Rest and what it means and how it means to honor Rest, without feelings of guilt, is so present to me. (I had a difficult struggle with my feelings of guilt, of letting go and forgiving myself for being in Rest Time.) It has been and will become, for me, a time for my soul to catch up with my body and too busy life. 50% experience + 50% reflection = new learnings. I am re-learning and remembering that Sabbath is not a luxury, it is an essential quality for living a healthy life.

Our ancient ones have given us the gift of the Creation Story, telling us of our God resting on the 7th day. This brings me to a hard look at our normative Sunday morning services of worship. As we are well aware, many among us are finding that 7th day of rest in other experiences –mountain hikes, bike rides, kayaking, reading the paper, sleeping in and in doing a laundry list of chores needing attention. You can easily add to the list of ways folks find re-creations and rest or attend to their lists of chores needing to be done.

So, I ask of us. Do we go out, invite and welcome people to a place to rest, renew and re-create? Do we show them by our actions that we are people of hospitality and caring for one another? Do we welcome with gratitude those who long for a resting place - those who are weary and stressed? Do we not all too often make our first question of the new comer through our door, “What do you do?” Do we acknowledge the suffering through-out our world today? Do we express our joy and gratitude for creation? Do we give thanks for all people whose hearts and hands are those of Christ today?

What might this holy time of faithful people gathered be for those among us who are yearning, as we have always yearned, for authentic, caring community? To know and be known and to be missed when we are not present.

What I’m writing next are merely a few of my visions of how Sunday morning church-time might be: To warmly welcome each person; to want to know each other by name; want to know one another’s stories and deepen our commonalities and understand our differences. To be truly present to celebrate with one another our joys, sorrows and needs; to experience communion at its best – gathered around God’s Holy Table - to eat the bread and drink the wine that nourishes us for the journey ahead; to hear music to which the children (of all ages) want to dance freely to the songs we sing; for an invitation (without embarrassment) to ask questions and be inquisitive to learn more about the Great Story of Our People who journeyed before us and with whom our stories merge today. God’s story with us continues to be a work in progress and always will be.

The language, the technology, and the images that make meaning of our lives in this 21st are radically different from our ancients who told and later wrote the stories of their lives with God and also when they had forgotten Him. The world we live in has continuously changed, yet our feelings and yearnings as humans remain the same: to know and experience unconditional love and to be loved, to acknowledge and share our sufferings with others who we trust to care, to eat together by participating in a holy meal - the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation - in the hope and intention that among people in all times and places holy meals will become a way of living in God’s kingdom come. Finally that we can become a people who revere a time for silence and rest and learning together how to better become one Body of Christ right in the place we live. Hear, reflect and learn what the Spirit is saying to us , God’s people of the Now living and learn in this accelerated time. Hear, reflect and learn what the Spirit is saying to us as she guides us forward on our pilgrimage into the future, which begins with our very next breath. Thanks be to God! God grant you a rest-filled Sabbath time.


MaryAnn

The Importance of Religion and What It Takes To Change

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/religion-answer-problems_n_5537783.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

Here is a newer and interesting take on the perceived possible influence of religion in today’s society. The polling data has many things to say to us. I have to say, though, that I disagree with the last paragraph in the article itself, more of a commentary part rather than data, because I have seen lots of polls and data that show that most organizations (especially Christian ones) are trying to spread messages of NOT compassion and caring, but exclusivity--that their way is the only way to God, and all others are doomed. And that is where the judgment starts with them—into every way one lives their lives.

In other thoughts, I attended recently a church with a worship service and congregation that, I guess, you could say, was dead--at least in my view. Unfortunately, I’m convinced that this is becoming very prevalent among many churches in our country these days. I’m not talking about the worship service words or music, although a couple of other choices might make things seem less “dead”. What I’m talking about is everything about the experience I had—no greeters to talk with any visitors coming in, a church that could seat maybe 300 people with maybe 35 people present spread out all over the church, a total lack of participation by the people in the service, and other than the short healing part of the service and at the Peace, no spark at all from anyone. At the very short fellowship time after the service there was little talking among any of the people, and especially not to me as a visitor, and they cleared out quickly.

Is our worship of God becoming this rote and not meaningful at all? Is this lack of enthusiasm and spirit what we take with us from worship each week back into the world to be the people of Jesus?

There are some simple things that can make this experience I had change a lot. The service can be designed so that all can be much more connected—1) everyone can sit much closer together (even by forcing it), 2) the priest can utilize the church in a much more people-oriented mode, doing as much of the service in the nave rather than in the large sanctuary set apart from the rest of the worship space, 3) shared Prayers of the People, instead of one person reading it all including a list of those in need, 4) several different lectionary readers from the people in the pews, and 5) some music selections that are not what I hear called “dirges” or funeral music. And the quality of what is done in any type of service is important.

But the problem is so much worse than just how the service is designed. These people seem to have given up, maybe are just worn out, tired, and don’t know what to do any more. Without any reason to show any spark in their worship they show none. As much as we want to think it is all about clergy leadership, and that a great new clergy person will totally change this church or any other one, it must be about those who are presently attending to resolve to work with good clergy leadership to make the needed changes and become enthused again about their church community and their call to mission in their community. Nothing short of this will attract anyone else to even attend their church, and this is just the starting point. Getting the right messages and actions about what this church is about with its mission with do the rest. New younger (and even older ) people want a church with meaningful things happening that they can relate and plug into, not just go through the motions with the worship or do what has always been done and offer the same boring jobs in the church. Good inclusion into the ongoing life of the church will go a long way, and these people will need to be met where they are first, which is not likely in the church. And maybe it will not be even about getting them into the church at all, but into the community of believers doing the things Jesus calls us to do, wherever that may be.


Jim

Connecting Virtually

Yesterday I was part of an interesting conversation among a group of friends. For many years, this group has been working, studying, discussing, and thinking about how the church can respond to ongoing changes in society. Our meetings are always thought provoking.

The topic yesterday was how to create spaces online where people can connect and have ongoing conversation about common concerns. We talked about how to use technologies and applications to form communities in cyberspace that offer rich opportunities for dialogue and learning. We identified podcasts as a way for those with wisdom to share to get it out there. I know there are other tools out there as well.

The opportunities seem limitless. The challenge is figuring out how to keep these online communities respectful and safe, as well as vibrant and engaging. What tools have you found that help create common conversation online?

Kelly