Monday, April 9, 2018

Alban Weekly at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States - PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: "How do you decide when to pivot?" for Monday, 9 April 2018

Alban Weekly at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States - PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: "How do you decide when to pivot?" for Monday, 9 April 2018
PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Faith & Leadership
How do you decide when to pivot?
MANAGEMENT, CHANGE, VOCATION
Dave Odom: How do you decide when to pivot?
SHIFTING DIRECTIONS CAN BE EXHAUSTING; HERE'S HELP FOR THOSE MOMENTS
Shifting direction can be exhausting. The key to a wise pivot is keeping one foot firmly planted on the ground -- remembering your mission and values -- writes the executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
Duke Divinity School professor Kate Bowler called me to talk through a critical direction-setting choice she faced. A few months before, she had chosen to fight for her life by aggressively treating stage 4 cancer. She wrote her story, later published in the New York Times(link is external), to explore what had happened and what it meant. On this day, a publisher had offered to publish her memoir as an “airport book.”
She knew what this offer meant.
The publisher thought her book could be a best-seller. Sharing her story could help many people by offering hope and a picture of faith in Christ. But to write this book and manage her growing public presence would take enormous time and effort -- time away from her research, her scholarly writing, her teaching, her family. And she was still sick, dealing daily with doctors and treatments.
Kate was pivoting.
She had a foot firmly planted in God, in her family and friends, and in her vocation. She was very clear about where she stood. But she wasn’t sure whether she should turn from the classroom to mainstream media.
With “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved” now a New York Times best-seller, and her podcast, “Everything Happens,”(link is external) cracking the top 100 podcasts on iTunes in February, it is clear that Kate made excellent choices in her pivot.
On the day we talked, Kate had a vision for what could be. She was pivoting into a world that she had carefully researched as a historian of the prosperity gospel movement(link is external). She knew that it would take time and sacrifice -- but she didn’t know how much, and she didn’t know how much help, or what kind, she would need to succeed. She had no guarantee that this pivot would work.
In a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA), leaders must constantly figure out how and when to pivot -- to shift direction. Each person faces such pivots in his or her career. Each project, department and organization faces pivots. It is exhausting to consider so many moves. The future beyond each pivot is not more certain for us than for Kate. I recently explained to colleagues at Leadership Education(link is external) about the latest shift in our strategy. The looks I got signaled exhaustion, their eyes silently saying, “Not again.”
How can you build up your capacity to determine how and when to pivot?
Know yourself. What are your strengths and growing edges? What is your tolerance for risk and your level of energy? What do you have faith in? What is true and right? Answering these questions illuminates where you stand, your place to plant your foot.
Know those you serve. What are the dreams, desires, needs and requirements of those you serve? What will help them?
Evaluate your impact. What difference do you want to make? Is your current work making a difference? As the audience changes, what adjustment (if any) is needed to make an impact? Is that shift consistent with who you are?
Decide how much to invest. Pivoting requires more trial and error than staying the course. How much time and energy will you give to a specific direction? New opportunities emerge constantly. How much attention can you pay to them?
Every organizational pivot involves hundreds of personal pivots. Leaders who pivot are asking many others to join the move. Changing behavior is never easy. An organizational pivot can mean learning new skills, paying attention to a different audience or different element of the audience, and risking failure.
One of the ministries I oversee has made three major pivots in the last five years as we’ve sought to make a significant impact in a financially sustainable way. Each pivot has led to new learning, deeper engagement and more impact. Unfortunately, none of these pivots has led to financial sustainability. Now, faced with the possibility of yet another pivot, we are wondering whether we have the energy -- and whether this one will work.
It requires so much energy to figure out the next move that I often make the mistake of taking the planted foot for granted. I talk with people about whom we should serve and what can be different, but my conversation partners often don’t realize what’s stable and what grounds us. Maybe it would be helpful to give my colleagues a whistle and empower them to call a foul whenever I talk about what is changing without also clearly affirming the foot that remains planted in our mission and values.
Working with Kate is a regular reminder about what is at stake in considering a pivot. Every decision Kate makes has life-and-death implications. I have yet to see her lose sight of either foot. She has a clear sense of what is important and what she is willing to change. I hope to be that thoughtful whenever I have the chance to pivot.
Read more from Dave Odom »
Faith & Leadership
CAN THESE BONES PODCAST: KATE BOWLER
In this episode of "Can These Bones," co-host Bill Lamar talks with Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity School professor and author of "Everything Happens for a Reason," about the irony of being a historian of the prosperity gospel diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
HEALTH & WELL-BEING, THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
Episode 5: Kate Bowler on the presence of God in the face of death
Kate Bowler was an ambitious young professor, a mother and an expert in the particular form of Christianity she sums up with the term #blessed. Then she got cancer. In her conversation with “Can These Bones” co-host Bill Lamar, she talks about facing death, her deep sense of God’s presence and her new book. Bill and co-host Laura Everett also reflect on the name of the podcast, and what it means to face one’s own “valley of dry bones.”
This episode is part of a series. Learn more about Can These Bones or learn how to subscribe to a podcast.
Listen and subscribe
Laura Everett: From Faith & Leadership, this is “Can These Bones,” a podcast that asks a fresh set of questions about leadership and the future of the church. I’m Laura Everett.
Bill Lamar: And I’m Bill Lamar. This is the fifth episode of a series of conversations with leaders from the church and from other fields. 
Through this podcast, we want to share our hope in the resurrection and perhaps breathe life into leaders struggling in their own “valley of dry bones.”
Laura Everett: In this episode, we’re going to hear your conversation with Kate Bowler, an assistant professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. She’s also the author of “Blessed,”(link is external) a history of the American prosperity gospel.
But Bill, that doesn’t really give us all of what we’re going to hear. Kate’s your friend and a really remarkable person. Tell us about your friend Kate.
Bill Lamar: I am pulling out of my wallet a Kate Bowler fan club card, and I am the president. I have known Kate now almost a decade. When I went back to Duke Divinity School to work at Leadership Education after almost 10 years in pastoral ministry, Kate was one of the first persons that I met, a rising star on the faculty.
And one of the things that you will soon detect from the conversation is Kate’s warmth and her love for God and for people and for learning, for her students. You get a sense of who she is right away.
But let me say just a little bit more. Kate was diagnosed in 2015 with stage 4 cancer at the age of 35, and she got quite a bit of attention. She wrote about it in the New York Times(link is external). This juxtaposition of one so young and so vibrant and stage 4 cancer, which we all know is indeed a most serious, serious disease.
She writes compellingly and honestly and openly about the irony of being ill while she’s an expert in prosperity gospel.
She defines “prosperity gospel” as the belief that God gives health and wealth to those with the right kind of faith. And this begs the question, from Kate and others who struggle, if we are not healthy and if we’re not wealthy, do we have the wrong kind of faith?
And so Kate’s own discernment, her own struggle, comes to bear in the beautiful words that she writes, her wicked Canadian sense of humor and ebullience that really shines through.
I was thinking about Kate in musical terms -- and I think often about music -- Erykah Badu, on her album “Mama’s Gun,” has a song entitled “Orange Moon,” and the first line is “I’m an orange moon reflecting the light of the sun.”
And Kate is a bright sun. When you’re in her presence, when you read what she’s written, if you’re a student in her classroom, her light just shines -- so much so that you reflect it. And I’m just so, so grateful that she joined us for this conversation.
Kate’s work [uses] shorthand -- she talks about this whole prosperity gospel and its belief in health and wealth, and she talks often about #blessed.
One of the things that’s also interesting as she discusses prosperity gospel is she never flattens the three-dimensionality or the humanity of adherents of the prosperity gospel. She doesn’t rob them of being real women and real men and real people. She’s able to study something that many people malign in a very human way.
Kate has a book forthcoming Feb. 6 that blends her research on the prosperity gospel and her experience with cancer, and the title itself tells you a lot about Kate. The title is “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.” Kate is also doing a related podcast.
And it was an honor to hear Kate speak honestly about her pain, but also about the things that bring her joy and what it means to live honestly, not only with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, but surrounded by a son whom she loves and a husband whom she loves and a group of people who continue to bear witness to life even as she confronts death.
Laura Everett: Oh Bill, there’s so much to dig into here. I want to ask you, though, about having this conversation. Was it hard for you to talk to your friend about her experience facing death?
Bill Lamar: Very, very, very hard, Laura.
Laura Everett: Yeah.
Bill Lamar: Kate is younger than I am, and it was difficult because I felt like she was giving us a window into her struggle. And I did not want to be an agent of exploitation, but I was curious, and she was kind enough to answer questions openly and lovingly and honestly.
But it was difficult. I really am reticent to speak of difficulty from my end, with all that Kate is struggling with, but I will admit that it was tough.
It was fun. It was funny. It was tough. It was experiencing emotions all at once that we often, you know, can take and separate, take them and put them in different buckets or different files.
But I experienced laughter and tears simultaneously. And I experienced being angry as hell at whatever force causes this kind of wickedness to visit people as wonderful and beautiful as Kate. But also I felt a profound joy at the wonderful God who could create one so marvelous as Kate.
Laura Everett: There is a lot of light and joy in the way you speak about Kate, Bill. I’m really looking forward to hearing your interview with her.
Bill Lamar: You’re listening to “Can These Bones.” I’m Bill Lamar, and I have the privilege of talking with my friend Kate Bowler, author, professor of Christian history, who has done great work helping us all to understand the prosperity gospel.
Kate, it’s wonderful to have you this afternoon. Thank you for joining us.
Kate Bowler: Hello, Reverend, so glad to be here.
[Laughter]
Bill Lamar: Cut the formalities, my friend; you know it’s Bill. But so good to hear your voice. It’s been a while. And I just wanted to begin by asking, how are things with you?
Kate Bowler: I’m OK. Yeah. I’m in the managing-illness phase. So it’s a kind of purgatory that I’m learning a lot from, but it’s the endurance phase, I think.
Bill Lamar: Would you like to share any of what it is that you’re learning about the purgatory you speak of?
Kate Bowler: Sure, I guess. I mean, I’m still figuring it out as I go along. And part of it has just been learning to set horizons in a beautiful way. I think part of the unexpectedness of life gives people, I don’t know, maybe more free license to do whatever they want without always imagining the consequence. So it’s been an odd mathematics to live life very intentionally.
And there’s been a lot of theological patience I think I’ve been given, a sense that God is present in the everyday, in a way I didn’t always imagine. And yet I think I miss the days of being bored or just ignorant. I miss, I miss the -- I miss that sense that life didn’t mean quite so much.
Bill Lamar: Well, Kate, I think it’s one thing for someone like me to talk about God being present, altogether another thing for you -- as you have mentioned, the stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Could you say more about what it means that God is present?
Kate Bowler: Well, it was something of a surprise, I think, that -- so I was just kind of a regular ambitious person climbing ladders, dreaming dreams, and then I got a sudden diagnosis.
And then all of a sudden, in the worst moments of my life, I’m thrown into a constant hospital world and an anxious look on everyone’s face and a sense of looming despair.
And weirdly enough, I realized that the new world I was living in was a place where God lived somehow, and I honestly couldn’t quite figure it out. What is this weird peace? What is the sense that God is present in the people who are visiting me, when I didn’t always love the person across the hall that I shared a printer with?
And yeah, it was weird, but now I think almost of God’s presence as, like, a place that I visit. And it was a place I was introduced to in the worst moments of my life, and now it’s a place I have to cultivate.
Bill Lamar: Well, Kate, I’m keenly aware that I’m violating one of the commandments -- we’re not supposed to covet -- but I have always coveted your ability to use language beautifully and economically. So always a joy. What have you been thinking and writing about lately against the backdrop of what you’ve shared?
Kate Bowler: Well, it was a little bit of a surprise that I had so much to say. I thought I was just sort of plodding along. But then last summer I got the chance to take a week and go to the Collegeville Institute in rural Minnesota, where I listened to an outdoor xylophone band camp play and sat in a field and cried a lot over a laptop.
And what it became was a memoir called “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved,” which was -- I think of it kind of like a research memoir, because it takes me back through my time as a historian and an expert in the history of the prosperity gospel and that God wants to give you health and wealth and happiness and every beautiful thing here on earth, and yet confronted with the fact that I’ve always had some kind of perpetual problem. Some kind of arm disability that I had that left me without the use of my arms for a year, and a miscarriage, and then this diagnosis.
So I’ve always kind of been trying to catch my breath, and realizing that I have not been the architect of my life in a way that I’ve wanted, that more things have happened to me than through me, and learning to live with that reality.
Bill Lamar: I was taking a look at a New York Times piece that you wrote a while back about your diagnosis, and the quote that just leapt off the page was this one: “But one of my first thoughts was also Oh, God, this is ironic. I recently wrote a book called ‘Blessed.’”
And I just was really transported by that sentence. Could you say more about the irony of working in prosperity gospel and living in the reality that you find yourself living in right now?
Kate Bowler: Sure. I mean, I spent 10 years with believers and preachers of the prosperity gospel, and saw them in all kinds of places -- in boardrooms and in hospital rooms and in all kinds of situations where I saw them believe, against all odds, that God could make a way no matter what.
And here I was, very often with double arm casts at a healing rally, watching them then turn their theological attention to me, like moths to a flame, and see them openly wonder why was I not healthy and wealthy and whole when I fully understood the principles that they were espousing.
So I’ve always lived in the tension of wonderment at the hope that they experience and yet experience this sort of sharp edge of those theologies, which is that when things don’t go well, the primary person to blame is always you.
So what’s also empowering -- “You can do it!” “Everything can work out!” “Put your back into it!” (is also a song I’ve come to love) -- is also this sort of double-sided nature of it, which is that you are saddled with this awful guilt when you just can’t quite make your life work out.
Bill Lamar: I wanted to ask you, you helped to humanize the folks that subscribe to this theology, that they are hungry for something. You are very -- always very human in your description. You did not lose that. You didn’t allow their humanity to be lost.
Could you say more, not only about the people, the preachers, who are in this theological camp, but could you say something about the people who are a part of this theological movement? Who they are beyond caricature?
Kate Bowler: Yeah, and the caricature is just right there. I mean, you don’t have to make it up -- Creflo Dollar, Cash Luna. I mean, I’d love a name like Cash just given to me as a divine vocation.
So with the jets and the Rolls Royces and the “Jesus would be driving a Benz” vanity plates, it’s easy to get lost in the absurdity of it and wonder then why millions of people sit in the pews every Sunday.
And I found by sitting in these benches with them and watching them live their life just a kind of resilient hope that their circumstances wouldn’t define them. I saw in that a real beauty and kind of playfulness, that every day was an opportunity to see God at work.
So sometimes it was like a little sort of divine conspiracy, like cash-in-every-mailbox kind of hopes that they might have, but mostly it was kind of a theological stubbornness: “God will make a way. There is a purpose and a plan for me that I can see and know and realize.” And I liked the idea that people could expect more from God.
And even though I didn’t always -- I just worried, I just worried about them so much, when, you know, they might believe that a car loan was divinely theirs and maybe not read the fine print, or assume that a new preacher coming to town with a special message of encouragement was actually their answer to their loss of a child or just something really traumatic.
But I did think that over the course of the long hours they spent in the pews, they learned to be patient with God, and that was something I could learn, too.
Bill Lamar: I think we can all learn from that. What are some of those other lies that you’ve loved?
Kate Bowler: Well, I guess I realized very quickly that I just have the worst prosperity gospel of my own. That as much as I reviled others for their easy schemes, that I really, I think -- I mean, within a few days of my diagnosis, I think I realized the absurdity of my own imagination.
I had really thought that my plucky, determined attitude was going to conquer all, and that -- you know, when I was in grade 8, I used to drive my parents crazy by writing the same book report over and over again.
It was always, you know, “Alicia from Poland had three things: wit, determination and a sense of humor. And with these things -- you know -- whatever obstacle was resolved.” I realized how quickly this was my own imagination for my life, that my character was somehow unique to me.
I think, too, I imagined that I was special. I mean, I’m sure we’re all special in God’s eyes, etc., etc., but I think I somehow saw myself as being able to avoid the pitfalls that entrap everyone else. And it was hard being as special as everyone else.
Bill Lamar: As I was reading some of the promo material, I found a phrase that I really liked. You talk about craving “outrageous certainties.” Say more about outrageous certainties.
Kate Bowler: Well, I mean, some of the things I imagined were just so sure in my mind that I would -- you know, I live in professor world -- so I would grow old and have just a very revered dynasty of graduate students, and that I would have an office in a tall neo-Gothic tower.
And that I would always have the same beautiful husband, and more than one child, and I would complain about who they dated and have preferences about their college major, and that I would be able to carefully arrange every aspect of my happiness.
I sort of had this idea of life, like it’s this basket and you have to cram everything into the basket -- like, that’s your job in life. You find all this stuff and then you put it in the receptacle, which is your life.
And I worried about -- you know, I’m Canadian -- what if I never get to move home, or what if I can’t always have the same friendships? And I would have these beliefs that I could somehow be the architect of my own life.
And when I found that I didn’t even know if I’d ever get to go home again, I found that in abandoning so many assumptions, I had to remake what I thought I deserved. And that was more painful than I thought it was going to be.
Bill Lamar: Your most recent writing -- did you find the process hard or cathartic or a little of both?
Kate Bowler: Yeah, I think a little of both, because I didn’t really think so much about audience. I mean, I do now, but I just thought, “I need to try to write until I find the truest, hardest thing.”
So in a way, it was sort of theological surgery. I was trying to get right down to it. And at the same time, it was also a love letter to my son, to my husband, to the people who have contributed to the happiness that I’ve enjoyed.
And at the same time say, “I’m sorry that I was so arrogant in assuming that everything would work out, but I promise I was grateful.”
Bill Lamar: Wow. I remember times laughing with you and sharing with you, and you just always had this boundless energy. And even in the midst of this difficult conversation, I still hear that.
The work that we are endeavoring to do is to think deeply about what it means for resurrection to be real, for individuals, for churches, for institutions. Where you sit in your life, when you think about this really absurd notion of a resurrection, what does it mean for you?
Kate Bowler: Wow. Well, I think there is freedom in knowing our limits, knowing the -- for me, the faultiness of my own body.
And you know, the part that precedes the resurrection is the death, right? And part of the beauty of coming to the end of yourself, and realizing, you know, you might not be quite as special or quite as original as you imagined, is the part where you end and God begins.
And you can say, man, the best part about me is not me, is it? It is this new thing that God is always doing.
And I’m still kind of baffled that this terrible time has been the most important time of my life, that everything felt brand-new again. And so in the midst of decay and terrible and hospital world and needles, there was always the sense that God can make things new with or without me, and I think that’s a lesson I’ll have to relearn again and again.
Bill Lamar: What kinds of wonderful conversations are you having with your son?
Kate Bowler: Oh man, he is totally impervious to my situation. I love it. He is just so complete. I think that’s maybe the best part about being a parent -- is you look at your kid and you’re like, “Oh yeah, you’re you; you’re just all there, aren’t you? All the parts.”
So yeah, I -- it’s definitely shaped my view of parenting. I think I thought my job was to protect him from everything, and then I became the thing that needed him to be protected from. And that scared the crap out of me.
So I don’t know. I looked at other people who do parenting with bravery and resilience, and I realized that the point is not to protect him from all the pain in the world but to help him see the way through.
And so we work on little things. He’s 3, and so we work on, like, “Do you feel sad? I’m sad. Do you feel frustrated?” About Lego or dinosaurs. But raising an emotionally intuitive, brave kid is my plan.
Bill Lamar: Well, I don’t think that that will be a problem with you -- he has your stuff in him. And finally, Kate, you have always been a good friend and surrounded yourself with a wonderful community. What does community mean to you at this point in your life?
Kate Bowler: Oh, man. Yeah, I have been overwhelmed by how much I need others and how much I hate needing others. And so you catch me at a good time, because I’m leaning back toward the heresy of independence.
Man, when I definitely couldn’t do anything for myself, which happened again this summer after a big surgery and I was useless, I found that my -- this is going to sound terrible, but like, my standards went down. Like, I didn’t have quite so many expectations of every single person being, you know, exactly like me in every way.
And the second I sort of changed my own perspective, I have been flooded with appreciation for all the amazing stuff people do. Like, they clean and they bring you cookies and they buy you stupid T-shirts and erasers.
And yeah, so now I’m a huge fan of community on their own terms, and I will learn to accept what comes my way.
Bill Lamar: So much in the world, recent events and political events -- can you point us toward the places of hope, from your perspective, from your vantage point?
Kate Bowler: Well, I do feel a sense of excitement over ministries that emphasize presence in the world -- kind of a higher tolerance for the awkwardness of being around suffering.
And so I find myself encouraged when I read the news or I learn more about ministries of other churches in which they simmer down on the proclamations of why people suffer and lean in to -- so lean away from explanation, lean toward the empathy and the humanity of the person in front of you, when they realize that they are just like you, with the same expectations for a manageable life.
Bill Lamar: Kate, I want to thank you for your time and for your honesty. And I also would like a signed copy of your book to add to the collection of signed Kate Bowler books that I have.
Kate Bowler: It will have many #blesseds on it for you.
[Laughter]
Bill Lamar: Thank you so much, and we’ll continue to pray for you.
Kate Bowler: Thanks so much for having me.
Bill Lamar: Thank you, Kate.
Laura Everett: That was my co-host Bill Lamar’s conversation with Kate Bowler, a professor of Christian history and the author of “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.”
Bill, this is an incredibly moving story, and Kate had so much that is wise to say about what she is learning in the space living between life and death.
I want to pause before we begin just to say a word of gratitude for you, Bill, and to our listeners. Bill and I are learning how to be good interviewers, and I was struck in that interview, Bill, about how pastoral and gracious you were in letting Kate really lead where you were going in that conversation. Thank you so much for that.
Bill Lamar: Laura, thank you. And you know, I learned from a very wise pastor. He shared that in great moments of pain and difficulty, silence is best.
Kate had much to share, and she was kind enough to engage and allow me to put something in the atmosphere and just to kind of step back and allow her to share her wisdom.
One of the things that you noticed is, I by no means am expert in this kind of difficulty in confrontation with mortality that Kate’s engaged in right now. So I found myself in the posture of student, and Kate, as always, was an excellent teacher.
Laura Everett: So Bill, one of the things that I find that is just going to stay with me from this interview is actually Kate’s book title, “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.”
That parenthetical at the end, “Other Lies I’ve Loved.” Bill, there are so many lies that I have fallen in deep and abiding and promiscuous love with. And so I’m wondering, Bill, what are some of the lies that you have loved?
Bill Lamar: Oh my goodness, oh, they are legion -- and the allusion to the text and the demonic spirit calling himself Legion, I mean that. I mean, they are manifold. I think …
Laura Everett: And they get under our skin, right? Like, I mean, that’s the thing about the Legion story in the Gospel, that that demon is deep in there. That’s the problem with these lies we love.
Bill Lamar: I think the belief that American democracy will solve all of our problems on some kind of autopilot, without agitation and without a confrontation with the ugliest parts of history. And I think a belief, even when we don’t want to admit it, that good church people really feel like we should be insulated from the vicissitudes of life and from the kind of stinging, nasty pain that Kate is wrestling with.
Just the belief that we deserve something better in our lives than the billions of people in the earth, upon the earth, who live subsistence lives, who are struggling to find clean water, struggling to stay alive, struggling to provide for their children.
I mean, one of the things that it makes me think about is this gospel story that we have staked our lives upon as folks in the church and folks in related institutions, and the fact that God enters history from the underside, from the place of pain, and those of us who live here often are so removed from it.
I wonder how we can proclaim the gospel with fidelity, as comfortable as we are and as deceived as we are by the empire around us.
Laura Everett: Right. I think I’ve bought the lie that if I just do right, people will be grateful and they will respect me.
Bill Lamar: They will love me.
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: They will love me. Bill, that is a lie I have bought hook, line and sinker. And it’s like I’m surprised every time it happens. When I do something that feels like the faithful and right step and I get pushback and I get angry letters and I get people calling, or being called things that are not appropriate for Christian programming such as this …
Bill Lamar: It’s appropriate, Laura. Say it, it’s appropriate.
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: I have been called all sorts of things, and I’m always -- it surprises me every time. But I have loved the lie that I’ve been fed that if I’m a respectable Christian woman that I won’t get burned, that I won’t cause a problem. That is -- man, that is pernicious.
And you know, one of the things that Kate brought up is she talked about her own prosperity gospel, and that really resonated with me. I think there’s a sort of American mythology of meritocracy.
But you know, Kate’s studying a certain subset of Christianity that is believing a particular vision of the gospel, one that I really struggle to wrap my head around. Because I feel very confident Jesus did not promise you a church building, he did not promise you that you are going to be big, and I don’t hear him promising that we’re going to be wealthy.
But Kate really brought up for me the ways in which my own belief is tinged with its own version of a prosperity gospel -- that I will be given full-time employment, that I will have health care, that I will be able to architect my own life.
You know, I really appreciate the self-critique that the studying of prosperity gospel brings to us who don’t practice in that way but, because we are so saturated by an American mythology of meritocracy, [believe that] that if I, especially as a white person, if I just study and work hard, there will be things granted unto me. And so much of what she’s writing and saying pops that mythology.
She uses that phrase a “heresy of independence,” and I’m going to hold on to that for a long time.
Bill Lamar: You know, I’ve been thinking a lot and teaching a lot -- and it’s coming from the things that I’m reading for school -- about market logic in our nation and how market logic dictates how we move and how we breathe and it dictates our being, to take from Scripture. This idea and modality of exchange.
And even in the way that we pray and that we preach, it has found its way into our theology, that we have a market logic as we approach God. That if we do this or if we offer this, in exchange we will receive health and wealth. In exchange.
And this kind of market logic that I think pervades our faith, our prayer, it may even -- and I won’t say may; I believe that it does -- I think it invades our leadership.
That we think if we give goodness, if we give honesty, if we give fidelity, then the institution will offer that back. And I think what, for me, is theologically explosive about crucifixion is that it destroys any kind of market logic.
Because what Jesus gives and what he receives, if you indeed look at it through the lens of exchange, he got a pretty bad deal.
Laura Everett: Yeah.
Bill Lamar: And so what we must understand is the things that we are expecting to get. You know, I was at a seminary recently, and I look at some of these bright-eyed persons, some who are like [I was], in their early 20s, and others who are second-career.
And I just want to say to them, “Do not enter this kind of work, be you in a church or in an institution, with this market logic, but enter it understanding the logic of crucifixion and resurrection, and understand that that will indeed pervade your work.”
And I think this is why we wanted to talk about “Can these bones …?” -- to ask that biblical question. I remember, Laura, when we were trying to figure out what we would name this podcast, we threw a lot of things against the wall. But “Can These Bones” stuck.
This vision from the prophet Ezekiel that there is a valley of dry bones, there’s this huge aggregation of sun-bleached death, and the understanding and the asking of the question, is it possible for some life to emerge from this valley of death?
And that’s what we’re wrestling with here, Laura. What do you think?
Laura Everett: Well, Bill, that Ezekiel vision is something I come back to all the time. You know, part of the narrative that gets told in New England, where I pastor, is about a former abundance, a former greatness, a time when the churches were full.
And the vision in Ezekiel is a battlefield. It’s so desolate that the bones are littered about; they have not even been given the dignity of graves, and all flesh has been picked off.
And so those sun-bleached bones on the parched earth, that even those bones, even that little life -- there is no sinew left on them -- even that degree of desolation, God can bring back life into. And it strikes me, for those of us who are bold to stand in Ezekiel’s footsteps and ask for God’s intervention, it’s not us.
The story of Ezekiel and the dry bones is not about human power or agency. It is a story of the extent and the power of God’s enlivening breath, even in a place so desolate as a battlefield.
When I was spending some time with this scripture, I remembered that the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel points out that Ezekiel’s vision in the valley has no date on it, because in every generation we need to hear in our own time that these bones might live again.
And so part of the work that we are trying to do in this place is to ask of people in other institutions, in other parts of the church, in other fields, where are they feeling the breath of God move in their community?
Bill Lamar: You know, Laura, you bring up something -- in this kind of biblical literature, in apocalyptic, you’ll have God or God’s agent, an angel or an elder, asking the one who’s the recipient of the vision a question they can’t answer.
So God asks the question, “Can these bones live?” And God says to Ezekiel ...
Laura Everett: [And Ezekiel says,] “Only you know.”
Bill Lamar: [It’s as though God says to Ezekiel,] “Son of man, you know. You know.”
And again, he does not know. But what is fascinating to me, which breathes life into me, and hopefully will breathe life into those who lend us their ears for these podcasts, is this: God speaks to Ezekiel. God says to Ezekiel to speak to the winds, to speak to the situation. And so human agents are used by God in this work of resurrection and this work of bones becoming life. Sinew returning to the bones.
And so for everyone in every church and every little hamlet, every little godforsaken space, in every little difficulty that you experience in church and in institutions, know that you are God’s agent of resurrection. And that is the hopeful note that keeps all of us going forward.
Laura Everett: And dear friends, know that we go along with you. That’s part of the hope of this podcast -- that you know that you are not alone in a valley of dry bones wherever you find yourself.
Because I know I am so grateful to be in conversation with this cloud of witnesses that includes Kate Bowler. Bill, thank you so much for the conversation with Kate today.
Bill Lamar: Thank you.
Laura Everett: “Can These Bones” is brought to you by Faith & Leadership, a learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. It’s produced by Sally Hicks, Kelly Ryan Gilmer and Dave Odom. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. And Kate Bowler’s interview was recorded at Duke University. Funding is provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.
Our next episode is a conversation with Almeda M. Wright, Yale Divinity School professor and the author of “The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans.”
Listeners, we want to hear from you. Share your thoughts about this podcast with us on social media. I’m on Twitter @RevEverett(link is external), and you can find Bill @WilliamHLamarIV.(link is external) You can also find both of us through our website, www.canthesebones.com.(link is external)
I’m Laura Everett, and this is “Can These Bones.”
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
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July 18 - 21, 2018 | Ernest N. Morial Convention Center | New Orleans, Louisiana
Register now for The Church Network's 62nd Annual Conference! This three-day event promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking time, offering you multiple ways to network with church leaders, find a mentor, get a sneak preview of emerging technology, and hone your skills. You'll have opportunities to get started on certification requirements and to participate in continuing education. Whether you are new to church leadership or a veteran, it's an event you won't want to miss!
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IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CHURCH MANAGEMENT
Faith & Leadership
Leading without agendas
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT
L. Roger Owens: Leading without agendas
Bigstock / Sofic
A professor of spirituality and ministry discovers that trust grows when leaders notice and release their own agendas.
Some years ago, when a church I was serving was hiring, a friend of mine applied for the job.
I knew I could work with her. I knew she would be fantastic. I knew I had to get her hired.
During the search, if church members had peeked in my office, they might have seen me pacing back and forth. They might have supposed I was practicing walking meditation. But my breathing was too shallow, my steps too quick and my expression too serious for that.
No, I was scheming about how to convince a skeptical search committee to go along with my plan.
I was an anxious leader, and not just because my autonomic nervous system is dialed a little above normal. I thought it was my job to make everything turn out “right” -- and “right” usually meant the way I wanted things.
In this case, I did get my way. We hired my friend, and she was fantastic.
But I wonder what was lost by my failure to lead transparently. I had spoken to the church leaders about “discerning God’s will together,” but they might well have recognized it as a smoke screen for my own agenda. Did my credibility suffer as a result? I’ll never know.
I now have a few more years of leadership experience. I’ve observed other leaders and immersed myself in the history of Christian spirituality. All of this has convinced me that the job of spiritual leaders -- in congregations, but in other faith-based organizations as well -- is to create the space for communities to discern and respond to the leadership of God’s spirit. And that discernment can’t happen when leaders are pushing their own agendas.
Christian spirituality has another name for agendas: attachments. Mystics across the ages -- from the desert monastics to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross to more recent figures like Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton -- agree: attachments blind us to the movement of God.
What we need, they teach us, is detachment, or what Ignatius of Loyola called “indifference.” It’s an inner freedom that’s not beholden to an outcome -- like whom to hire in a job search -- before a process of discernment takes place.
Congregations and organizations need this kind of freedom, and so do their leaders if there’s to be any hope of dancing to the choreography of the Spirit.
There’s no recipe for becoming free from these attachment agendas; only God can free us completely. But there are steps we can take to become more aware of the agendas that drive us. When we recognize them, we weaken their control.
First, notice. We can pay attention to our thoughts, feelings and actions. Ask: Do I perseverate about an issue? Do I come to a meeting anxious that my desired outcome won’t be approved? Do I avoid certain people, communicating only with folks who agree with me? When we notice these kinds of thoughts, feelings and behaviors, it’s a sign an agenda might be at play.
Next, probe. After beginning to suspect the machinations of an agenda, we can do what Ronald Heifetz suggests: get to the balcony. Hit the pause button and find some space to gain perspective on what’s going on. Talk it through with a trusted friend or mentor. Hash it out in a journal. Ask: Why am I feeling and acting this way? What am I afraid of?
Finally, name. When we begin to see what the agenda is, we can make it concrete by naming it. Write it down, tell a friend, or, if we are courageous, tell the group or committee we are working with: “I realize I’ve been anxious because I’m afraid that ______ (my friend won’t get hired, a new ministry will be voted down, etc.). I really want to lead us in a way that opens us to God and doesn’t force my own will.”
If pressing our agendas damages credibility, how much more would this kind of honesty build trust and cooperation, paving the way for others to name the agendas controlling them?
I recently chaired another search committee. Again, a friend of mine applied, and he would have been excellent. After the first review of applications, I was dismayed to find that he wasn’t in any other committee member’s top five. I began to panic.
Then I took my own advice. I noticed what was going on and didn’t need to probe long to see what the agenda was: I was afraid things wouldn’t turn out the way I wanted.
I took a deep breath and said to myself: “It’s not my job to make this turn out ‘right’” -- that is, to get my way. I said this like a mantra all the way into work the morning of a key meeting.
In the meeting, I honestly spoke my opinion as I led the committee in what I believe was an open, discerning conversation.
By the end, we’d listed many names on the chalkboard, scribbled strengths and weaknesses, enjoyed a sense of trust and collegiality, and unanimously agreed on what the next steps should be. My friend made it to the next round (though we didn’t hire him in the end).
Who would have thought the mystics knew so much about leadership?
Read more from L. Roger Owens »

Faith & Leadership
My work as an operations leader is pastoral
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT
Christian Peele: My work as an operations leader is pastoral
Varied skills, gained in a parish and the White House, work together to inform the shape of my call's expression, writes an executive minister at The Riverside Church. A widening of the traditional understanding of the pastor's role feels necessary as the church takes on new and unusual shapes.
Right after I graduated from divinity school, I spent six years in ministry in Washington, D.C. I like to think of my time inside the beltway as my theological coming-of-age, because my experiences there were so deeply formational. To this day, nearly everything about how I live into being a pastor bears the mark of what I learned and lived in that post-seminary season in the district.
The never-ending buzz of life in a 20-something group house taught me that putting the love in beloved community takes sacrifice (and is worth it). Dancing nights away in Columbia Heights dives taught me that joy is a virtue. And regular strolls along the banks of the Tidal Basin taught me that saying yes to peace takes a lot of practice.
The two most intensive places of learning for me during that time were the ministry contexts where I spent most of my waking hours. The first was the Church of the Saviour(link is external), one of the most progressive faith communities in the country. The second was the Obama White House, one of the most powerful institutions in the world.
At first glance, the two couldn’t be more different. The plots of “Touched by an Angel”(link is external)and “The West Wing”(link is external) have a lot in common -- said no one ever. And while a church makes sense as a pastor’s training ground, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building feels like more of a stretch. Yet my experience of pastoral identity suggests that the things I learned in those two spaces are more connected than not.
As an associate in ministry at the Church of the Saviour, I had responsibilities for pastoral care, worship leadership and teaching in various ministries ranging from a hospice home that serves the poor to a coffee shop church called Potter’s House(link is external).
My day-to-day work tutored me well in a host of ministry how-to’s, including a particular principle that the community holds dear and that still informs my work: journey inward, journey outward(link is external). That is to say, the journey of faith for myself and those I’m called to serve is cultivated, sustained and expressed within and outside ourselves; faith is the process of inward cultivation that leads to outward transformation, and one without the other is incomplete.
My path then took me south on 16th Street, from the Potter’s House to the White House, where I transitioned from leading worship to leading operational strategy in the areas of staff, budget and technology.
One of my most significant takeaways from there was that the quality (say, excellent or mediocre) and nature (say, intentional or ill-considered) of an organization’s operations always accurately reflects the organization’s values. The way budgets are built and talked about, the policies that shape staff culture, who sits where and in what kind of office, and how technology preserves or tears down silos all reveal organizational and even theological assumptions about power, access, hierarchy, inclusion and life together.
In my current role at The Riverside Church in the City of New York, I serve as senior clergy and also oversee four operations-related departments, including finance and human resources.
Living fully into the role requires that I do more than use my various skill sets as though they were mutually exclusive, sometimes using what I know about parish ministry and at other times using what I know about business. That kind of code switching would assume that some skills are for pastoring and some skills are for management, when in fact all the parts of my training fold into one another to create a richer pastoral palette of approaches and ideas.
Taking seriously the fullness of my leadership training in those very different contexts means understanding that my work as a leader in operations is deeply pastoral. One of the outward expressions of a dynamic spiritual life, for me, is managing with excellence the operational systems of my very large church context so that they exemplify the values of our faith.
I’ve noticed that many of my pastor peers often call me dual-vocational, as a way of pointing to the uniqueness of my professional path. But my vocation is singular: I am called to pastor. My skills are many, but they work together to inform the shape of my call’s expression. That kind of perspective honors the broadness of all that ministry can mean. Indeed, a widening of the traditional understanding of the pastor’s role and areas of focus feels necessary as the church takes on new and unusual shapes. It also makes room for reclaiming as holy any faithful approach to work that those in church circles may reflexively deride as profane, corporate or business.
There is no better classroom than the world around us, and a pastor’s ability to think creatively and critically across the lines of context only enriches the nature of call and fruit of the church.
Read more from Christian Peele »

FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Leadership and Listening: Spiritual
Foundations for Church Governance by Donald Zimmer
Church leaders must fundamentally change the way they view leadership, governance, and management in their organizations if they are to take seriously the need to listen to God's desires before acting.
In Leadership and Listening, readers will find encouragement and specific suggestions for re-imagining church governance and management. Zimmer observes that the contemporary church is rooted in both the kingdom of God and the systems and cultures of government and business. Most people who serve in governing and management roles in the church in the United States today have been formed in the corporate world and acculturated to parliamentary process. As a result, many church governing boards are about 'business,' rather than their primary task: discerning God's desires for the part of the church they serve.
Through research with more than one hundred church leaders, Zimmer learned that the church and the business community possess many insights and resources that can help boards shift toward a focus on seeking first the desires of God's heart and then responding effectively. By drawing on the guidance Zimmer offers, a church board can transform itself from a group that manages the day-to-day affairs of the church to one that makes listening, prayer, worship, reflection, and community the first priority.
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