for Monday, 1 May 2017
PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Formed by worship to be in the world
FOUR WORSHIP PRACTICES THAT FORM PEOPLE TO SERVE THE COMMON GOOD
As early as the fifth century, the church proclaimed Lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, or more commonly put, “as we pray, so we believe”. This means if you want to know what Christians believe, you study what we do and say in worship. And what we say and do in worship not only expresses what we believe, it also forms what we believe. And what we do.
Ideally, worship strikes a balance of awareness of both the immanent and the transcendent nature of God — that God is among us and forever beyond us. At its best, liturgy also forms our individual faith and forms us as a community of people, the church, for ministry in the world.
I wonder if, in a world that is increasingly polarized and detached from the moorings of faith and meaning, God might be calling the church to consider anew how we can more intentionally form faithful people through worship to be witnesses in the world, a witness not just to the teachings of faith, but to the way of faith, engaging with others and offering an alternative to the dominant self-serving, profit-seeking narrative of the world and culture, helping others to find meaning and goodness. If so, how we might adjust our week-in and week-out worshipping practices to that end? Before we get to the liturgical benediction, how might worship strengthen people to engage with others faithfully “out there”?
We can start by finding ways to engage with each other in worship.
See and hear each other.
Anything we can do in worship to break free of the idea that we are there as individuals to get our own needs met and to worship God for our own sakes, will help us to be attentive and engaging in the space outside of church. Pews facing forward can inhibit this move, but turning to face one another in occasions in worship can break things open. To have some form of an exchange of the peace is a good start, as is extending a welcome at the beginning of worship. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, regularly encourages people to turn to one another at the start of the service and say, “I’m glad you are here.” or “I’m glad to see you.” It’s corny perhaps and uncomfortable even, but it’s formative. Whatever we practice in church we can more readily do in the world.
Processions provide another opportunity to see others and be pulled from our personal-needs-based worship. Too often limited to the clergy and the choir and to the beginning of worship, processions often serve as a means of getting worship leaders into the room and calling the attention of the worshippers to the front of the worship space. Thus, processions are vastly underutilized in the church. For churches that have a processional cross, what if it, as a point of focus and a symbol of Christ coming among us, encircled the congregation? Or what if the procession could wind its way among and through the people, just as God moves among and through us all the time, sometimes inconveniently, sometimes causing us to adjust our posture? What if this happened, not just at the start, but after the reading of the Gospel, too? What if we add a procession at the offering, as many of the churches in Africa, and their descendants, do, acknowledging that we give ourselves to God, as well as whatever we might otherwise passively drop in the basket as it goes by? What if we, on occasion, processed the whole congregation out of the church into the world, even if the world looks much like our own parking lot?
Hearing others can make also us more attentive to God and the other. Singing a cappella invites us to hear God in the voices of those around us. Allowing for prayers from the congregation does too. Is it just a coincidence that Quakers, who speak so that others may hear, and Mennonites who sing in such a way as to be attentive to each other’s voices, are also among the most consistent moral voices for the common good in our society?
Pray for the laity in their life and work in the world. Pray so they can hear it. Consider commissioning lay ministers, not just as Sunday School teachers and church board members, but as caregivers in the world, as people who work in business or government, or law, or the arts. Let the congregation say to them: “We commission you to this work and pledge to you our prayers, encouragement, and support. May the Holy Spirit guide and strengthen you, that in this and in all things, you may do God’s will in the service of Jesus Christ.”
Find opportunities to worship in the public square.
Take the liturgy to town. Be on the lookout for occasions to gather in prayer in public spaces, and to invite others to join. Any time we worship in a public rather than within the walls of a church building, our awareness of our identity as Christians and people of the Way, is heightened. Two Holy Week services are especially suited to public worship — Palm Sunday, in which we are invited to re-enact Jesus’ triumphal entry in Jerusalem, and Good Friday, in which we are invited to re-enact Jesus’ way to the Cross. Prayers in response to a natural or societal disaster can also be shared in public. While we may experience some discomfort in public expressions of faith, moving through it can be empowering and formative.
Let go of perfect worship and the perfectionism it models.
The downside of carefully thought out, even perfect, worship, is that it suggests that anything to do with faith and faithful living needs also to be carefully thought out, even perfect. This inhibits a whole lot of spontaneous faithful interaction outside of church. Many of us with liturgical sensibilities may fear a free-for-all. But the truth is, there is a whole lot of space between what we usually practice and what we fear. Without letting go of the reins altogether, we can show that it’s okay to make mistakes, we can model the giving and receiving of forgiveness, and good humor, too.
Do we believe that our worship can empower us as a people to engage with the world for the common good? If so, let’s consider how our worship might form us to make that known.
Read more from Lisa G. Fischbeck »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: WORSHIP
Spiritual identity and worship planning by P. Alice Rogers
As worship leaders, we cannot assume that our dominant way of experiencing God is the best and most effective way for every member of our congregation. Rather, when we understand the four "spiritual types," we can design worship in ways that engage more people where they are.
Most people who participate in congregational worship services can describe a service they experienced in which they connected with God in a profound way. When I have asked people to describe such a service, I have heard stories similar to these:
- The sanctuary was very dark with candles producing the only light. We listened to Scripture readings, spent time in silent prayer and ended the service by partaking of Holy Communion while kneeling at the altar rail.
- The music was lively—people were clapping and swaying and singing their hearts out. The preacher preached a powerful sermon, and she did not use a single note! People were moved to tears and laughter all in the same service.
- Oh, we sang the great hymns of the church accompanied by a magnificent pipe organ. The preacher preached one of the most well-crafted sermons I have ever heard on the Magnificat. The gothic architecture lifted my very soul heavenward.
- I entered the sanctuary and saw ladders, paint cans, saw horses, and dozens of other tools arranged in the chancel area. The youth had just returned from a mission trip, and they told incredible stories about their week of service. They taught us songs they had sung while they worked, we took up a special collection for missions, and we closed with the entire congregation walking out to the front lawn as a symbol of taking our Christian witness to the world. Now that was a worship service.
- It was the most BORING service I ever attended. All they did was sit in the dark and read Scripture. There were these long periods of silence where I almost fell completely asleep.
- It was the NOISIEST service I ever attended. I didn’t want to stand during every single song, and I certainly didn’t want to clap. I don’t think the preacher had prepared her sermon at all. She didn’t even stand behind the pulpit, and she didn’t have any notes. I was embarrassed for the people around me who were so emotional.
- The service was held in this cavernous, cold building that must have cost a fortune to build. That money could have been used to feed the poor. We sang old, tired hymns, but I couldn’t hear anyone singing because the organ music was deafening. The preacher just stood behind the pulpit and read. What is a magnificat anyway?
- I think that the chancel area is sacred and should never have objects that are not approved. I was horrified to walk in to find paint cans and saw horses and ladders cluttering up the chancel. I expected to have a worship service, not hear youth talk about their vacation. When the congregation got up to walk to the front lawn, I walked to the parking lot and got in my car.
All of the ways people experience God are real and valid. There is no right way or wrong way to experience God. In fact, many people may say that while they identify more strongly with one of the particular scenarios depicted above than the others, that does not mean they do not appreciate various types of worship. They simply are more comfortable with certain styles of worship. So what makes this experience so different for different people, and why does it matter to those of us who lead worship?
Much research has been conducted as to why people are different in their behavior, in their personality, in the way they relate to the world. But the most helpful research I found in understanding the spiritual identity of people who gather to worship was conducted by Dr. Corinne Ware, an Episcopal priest who serves as Assistant Professor of Ascetical Theology at Seminary of the Southwest. Her research, which grew out of a typology articulated by the late Urban T. Holmes, and is related in her book Discover Your Spiritual Type, presents four types of spiritual identity, which when matched with the scenarios above are: mystic, feeling, thinking, and visionary.1 These categories could also be labeled: contemplative, charismatic, intellectual, and crusader. But they are not just categories. They represent the spiritual identities of real people who gather to worship each Sunday.
While many congregations manifest a dominant corporate spiritual type, I am convinced that on any given Sunday, in most congregations, there are people gathered in the pews who represent all four spiritual types. They come week after week expectant and hopeful they will experience God in profound ways, that they will connect to God in a way that brings them strength, hope, and peace. As worship leaders, we have the unique and awesome task of designing worship to help that happen. But this task, this opportunity, requires sensitivity, intentionality, and creativity.
First, the task of designing worship that is inclusive of all of the spiritual types requires sensitivity—a sensitivity to our own dominant spiritual type and sensitivity to the spiritual types of others. As worship leaders, we cannot assume that our dominant way of experiencing God is the best and most effective way for every member of our congregation. Conflict and frustration often arise when a “contemplative” pastor prepares highly contemplative services every single Sunday for a congregation that also has thinking, feeling and visionary types. The contemplatives of the congregation leave each week feeling spiritually renewed and refreshed, while the others depart frustrated and empty. The same is true if a “thinking” pastor has the feeling, contemplative, and visionary members of the congregation read long prayers and litanies each week and writes every sermon as if it were an exegesis to be delivered in a classroom. It is imperative that we know and understand our own dominant spiritual type in such a way that we do not unconsciously and exclusively force it upon others.
A good exercise to develop such sensitivity is to attend a worship service at a church where you have never been. As you experience that worship service, look for the ways in which it allows space for all of the spiritual types to connect with God. Of course, the service might not have been designed with conscious attention to the spiritual types, but look at it from that point of view. How were the different types engaged? Was anyone left out? What parts of the service could have focused on a particular spiritual type? Developing a sensitivity to the variety of ways people experience God will enhance our ability to design effective worship.
Second, if we believe we are called to help all people experience God through worship, then we must be intentional in our planning of each and every service. While there may be other activities throughout the week where individuals have the opportunity to nurture their spiritual identity, such as Bible studies for the thinkers, prayer groups for the contemplatives, or mission activities for the visionaries, the time of corporate worship is the one time of the week when the congregation as a whole gathers. It is the primary time when the body of Christ comes together with their variety of gifts to worship the living God. The preparation for this sacred time should be approached with great intentionality.
That intentionality can be generated by choosing persons who represent each spiritual type for a worship planning team that will design weekly worship together. They will need to be knowledgeable and sensitive to all spiritual types as well, but they will be able to contribute to the design of worship out of their particular spiritual identity. They also will be valuable to the ongoing evaluation of worship as it is experienced each week.
Intentionality also requires constant and ongoing research for resources available for worship design. The internet provides a plethora of worship resources and a planning team can help a very busy pastor search and sort through that information.
A third requirement for designing worship that embraces all of the spiritual types requires working creatively within the basic structures of Word and table and the church year. These structures allow us to design services that are true to the order of worship but with a variety of experiences. For instance, the season of Lent tends towards a spirit of contemplation and also provides a time for focusing on the missional aspect of Christian service. Many congregations choose a mission emphasis during the season of Lent, therefore the design for the gathering time during that season might be very contemplative and the going forth very visionary. The hymns and prayers chosen for those Sundays in Lent might be chosen with more sensitivity to the thinking and feeling types.
The high celebrations of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, All Saints’ Day, and Christ the King allow for a triumphant focus that speaks not only to our hearts and moves our emotions, but allows us to celebrate the theology of the great hymns and traditions in creative ways. During these high celebrations, the basic order of worship continues to provide room for intentionally connecting with all of the spiritual types.
A good exercise in creativity is to take a particular Sunday in the church year, such as Baptism of our Lord, and to design three or four services that mix up the experience of the spiritual types.
Such an exercise opens us up to the variety of ways we can creatively design a service for all of the spiritual types without falling into the dangerous practice of assuming only prayer is for contemplatives, or the hearing of the Word is only for thinking types, or the gathering is only for feeling types. Redundancy will kill creativity!
It is a great and wonderful gift to be called by God to officiate worship, and it is an awesome task to facilitate the experience of others in connecting with God. The research provided by Corinne Ware on spiritual types gives us a foundation from which to be sensitive, intentional, and creative in our worship planning such that all persons may experience God in profound ways
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Note
1. Ware, Corinne. Discover Your Spiritual Type: A Guide to Individual and Congregational Growth. Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 1995.
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Questions for Reflection
- What is your preferred style of worship? When have you felt the most connected to God in a worship service? Which of Corinne Ware’s spiritual types do you most relate to?
- How can your congregation appeal to many different worship preferences? As a worship leader, how can you create a worship style that is both personal to you and effective for the congregation?
- Where could you go to experience worship in a new way so as to expand your worship horizons?
- Every congregation has people that prefer each worship style mentioned in the article. Who could you ask to be a part of a worship planning committee so as to include all kinds of worship?
Volume 1 2011, Number 1Read more from P. Alice Rogers »
Vital worship, healthy congregationsWorship is at the center of congregational life. To "go to church" means, for most members of congregations, to "go to worship." Correspondingly, worship is central to the identity -- and health -- of most congregations.
Christianity is a “first-person plural” religion, where communal worship, service, fellowship, and learning are indispensable for grounding and forming individual faith. The strength of Christianity in North America depends on the presence of healthy, spiritually nourishing, well-functioning congregations. Congregations are the cradle of Christian faith, the communities in which children of all ages are supported, encouraged, and formed for lives of service. Congregations are the habitat in which the practices of the Christian life can flourish.
As living organisms, congregations are by definition in a constant state of change. Whether the changes are in membership, pastoral leadership, lay leadership, the needs of the community, or the broader culture, a crucial mark of healthy congregations is their ability to deal creatively and positively with change. The fast pace of change in contemporary culture, with its bias toward, not against, change only makes the challenge of negotiating change all the more pressing for congregations.
At the center of many discussions about change in churches today is the topic of worship. This is not surprising, for worship is at the center of congregational life. To “go to church” means, for most members of congregations, to “go to worship.” In How Do We Worship? Mark Chaves begins his analysis with the simple assertion, “Worship is the most central and public activity engaged in by American religious congregations.”1 Worship styles are one of the most significant reasons that people choose to join a given congregation. Correspondingly, they are central to the identity of most congregations.
Worship is also central on a much deeper level. Worship is the locus of what several Christian traditions identify as the nourishing center of congregational life: preaching, common prayer, and the celebration of ordinances or sacraments. Significantly, what many traditions elevate to the status of “the means of grace” or even the “marks of the church” are essentially liturgical actions. Worship is central, most significantly, for theological reasons. Worship both reflects and shapes a community’s faith. It expresses a congregation’s view of God and enacts a congregation’s relationship with God and each other.
We can identify several specific factors that contribute to spiritually vital worship and thereby strengthen congregational life.
- Congregations, and the leaders that serve them, need a shared vision for worship that is grounded in more than personal aesthetic tastes. This vision must draw on the deep theological resources of Scripture, the Christian tradition, and the unique history of the congregation.
- Congregational worship should be integrated with the whole life of the congregation. It can serve as the “source and summit” from which all the practices of the Christian life flow. Worship both reflects and shapes the life of the church in education, pastoral care, community service, fellowship, justice, hospitality, and every other aspect of church life.
- The best worship practices feature not only good worship “content,” such as discerning sermons, honest prayers, creative artistic contributions, celebrative and meaningful rituals for baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They also arise out of good process, involving meaningful contributions from participants, thoughtful leadership, honest evaluation, and healthy communication among leaders.
The Vital Worship, Healthy Congregations Series is designed to reflect the kind of vibrant, creative energy and patient reflection that will promote worship that is both relevant and profound. It is designed to invite congregations to rediscover a common vision for worship, to sense how worship is related to all aspects of congregational life, and to imagine better ways of preparing both better “content” and better “process” related to the worship life of their own congregations.
It is important to note that strengthening congregational life through worship renewal is a delicate and challenging task precisely because of the uniqueness of each congregation. This book series is not designed to represent a single denomination, Christian tradition, or type of congregation. Nor is it designed to serve as arbiter of theological disputes about worship. Books in the series note the significance of theological claims about worship, but they may, in fact, represent quite different theological visions from each other, or from our work at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. That is, the series is designed to call attention to instructive examples of congregational life and to explore these examples in ways that allow readers in very different communities to compare and contrast these examples with their own practice. The models described in any given book may for some readers be instructive as examples to follow. For others, a given example may remind them of something they are already doing well, or something they will choose not to follow because of theological commitments or community history.
By promoting encounters with instructive examples from various parts of the body of Christ, we pray that these volumes will help leaders make good judgments about worship in their congregations and that, by the power of God’s Spirit, these congregations will flourish.
John D. Witvliet is the director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and the series editor of the Vital Worship, Healthy Congregations Series, which is published in cooperation with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
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1 Mark Chaves, How Do We Worship? (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 1999), 1.
Copyright © 2008, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share Alban Weekly articles with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
_______________________________________Read more from John Witvliet »
The art of worship planning
Worship planning is an art. It's a discipline. It must be done over and over and over again in community order to get worship "under our skin." How we plan worship reflects what we believe worship should be - a transformative, communal experience of observing, trusting, trying, reflecting, and taking chances for the sake of experiencing the Holy One.
Worship planning is an art. It’s a discipline. It must be done over and over and over again in community order to get worship “under our skin.” How we plan worship reflects what we believe worship should be — a transformative, communal experience of observing, trusting, trying, reflecting, and taking chances for the sake of experiencing the Holy One. At Church of the Pilgrims (PCUSA) in Washington, DC where I am Minister for Spiritual Formation, we have created a process that has cultivated our skills for planning worship.
Worship at Pilgrims has been called a “wild mess” by Andy Wassenich, a church member at Pilgrims. While working well within the boundaries and framework of the Reformed Tradition, our worship changes liturgical season after season, with nuances each week. Walking meditations? Check. Pilgrims singing in three-part harmony? Check. Prayer stations, compost pile as communion table, Biblical storytelling, and bubble machine for Pride and Pentecost? Check, check, check. Over a decade, we’ve opened ourselves up to improvisation and spontaneity in worship allowing ourselves, at the same time, to be cracked open by the Holy Spirit and her empowering and prophetic ways. How did we get to this point? Of course, it wasn’t always like this.
I arrived on the Pilgrims scene in January 1999 after graduating from Union Theological Seminary in NYC where on a daily basis I experienced profoundly creative and ever-changing worship. Pilgrims’ was in dire straits in the late 1990’s: crumbling building, shaky finances, lack of identity and purpose, and existing without a called pastor. The congregation was small, getting smaller, and depressed.
Their worship reflected their existence—it was deathly, put-me-to-sleep boring.
A year and a half later, Pilgrims called Jeff Krehbiel who is still serving. Pilgrims re-grouped, started getting involved in community organizing, became a More Light congregation, and re-designed our administrative structure (good-bye standing committees!). While revitalizing worship incorporated many of the same principles of those endeavors, it was a different task altogether. Instead of consulting worship planning books or creating more rules on how to run an efficient worship meeting, we accessed ourselves, harnessed our own creativity, and started planning and creating worship together.
Over time, we developed an art of worship planning that has transformed our Sunday liturgical landscape and the entire eco-system at Pilgrims, the interconnected processes and structures that make up our life together.
The Process of Our Worship Planning
In worship planning we begin the process of sharing responsibility for worship as broadly as possible, shifting the dynamics of “worship leader” and “worship participant” in order to break down the barriers between “provider” and “receiver,” so that worship truly becomes “the work of the people.”[Jeff Krehbiel, pastor at Church of the Pilgrims]
Four to six weeks prior to the upcoming liturgical season, Jeff, myself, Rob Passow, our music director and Lauren Dwyer, our Elder for Worship, along with interns, currently Jess Fisher and Dana Olson, brainstorm names of four to six Pilgrims to invite to worship planning. Invitees could be folks who have been at Pilgrims fifty years or five months.
We send an email that includes a link to the lectionary texts to the upcoming season and any other relevant links or an article. We are clear in the email we are asking them for a one-time commitment of brainstorming on a specific evening. We ask invitees to read the texts prior to the evening and choose one that stands out to them for any reason. We’ve realized that is all the prep work that’s needed. Less is more.
Before the meeting, Jeff, Rob, and I divide up the responsibilities of who is going to lead what part of the gathering. At the start of the meeting, we give an overview of the planning process, liturgical season and the texts. Then we move into liturgical storytelling, sharing stories of worship from the past season that have stuck with each person. This creates a shared, collective experience right from the get-go and lifts up experiences of worship that have hits our hearts for one reason or another. We’ve moved away from the “I like” and “I didn’t like” evaluative response of worship experience. In the storytelling, we are asking people to dig deeper into an experience that challenged their participation or disrupted their own thoughts and patterns of living.
After the storytelling, Rob teaches us a new song that he envisions could be used somewhere in the service based on the texts. We sing as a small group, a cappella, feeling the music more than performing it at that point. From there we jump into the texts, offering people time to look over the texts again and identify something that stands out to them because of an image, word, phrase, or social context. Then it’s time to go deeper either through a short, exploratory Bible study having individual time to ponder some questions or break into groups of two to three to explore.
After the reflection time, the group shares thoughts on the texts, taking time to identify patterns, connections, and contradictions and scribbling it all down on newsprint. When we’ve exhausted our wonderings, we start another piece of newsprint and share about on what’s going on in the life of Pilgrims, in DC, in our culture, and the world-at-large. How do these texts speak to our life right now? Soon, all the papers are up around the room, surrounding us.
We stand back and take a look. We ask, “how can worship make these experiences come alive?” We consider if there are sparks from recent Sundays that we want to continue, and whether there are things we want to stop doing for now.
With the doors of creativity opened, the Holy Spirit starts to flurry around the room, and improv, the artistic methodology of saying “yes…and” comes front and center. Ideas get tossed into the air, each affirmed and clustered to form a foundation from which we work. During the recent planning for Lent our intern Jess Fisher created a map of the sanctuary, distinguishing its moveable and stationary parts. When it came to placement of the liturgical furniture, the map facilitated an explosion of ideas related to our chosen theme of “The Body.” I sat in awe, listening to people give critical analysis in the weaving together of liturgical space, Christian ethics, and theology.
We leave the gathering with a pretty good sense of where the upcoming season of worship is headed. We’ve primarily spent time sitting with the macro-image of worship; we haven’t struggled with the nitty-gritty details of the service that can bog down creativity and create power struggles. But the big picture is all that Jeff, Rob, and I need establish our own marching orders to give life to participants’ ideas. We take the ideas, cycle through a number of more detailed conversations about responsibilities and delegations, and then toss the whole enterprise up into the sky and let the Holy Spirit continue on with her work.
The Method of Our “Wild Mess” Madness
We collaborate. We think outside of the box. We touch. We listen. We share. We’re vulnerable.
Sometimes we cry. We incorporate our experiences, our lives and our personal work into worship planning. We brainstorm and then make it come alive. We’re interconnected. We taste, touch, smell, listen, feel. We do all of the above in worship planning and I think that this process makes it all happen in worship itself as well.[Lauren Dwyer, Elder for Worship at Church of the Pilgrims.]
What does our worship planning create? What kind of culture has it created at Pilgrims? How does it impact worship?
Worship planning has let Pilgrims find its own unique voice not just in our expression of Sunday liturgy but also in Pilgrims eco-system at-large. How we brainstorm and “do” liturgy has impacted the web of life and interconnectedness at Pilgrims. Indeed, the intentionality of our worship planning method is not isolated to those evening planning sessions. Our methodology has now infused itself throughout the congregation, impacting how we run meetings, share meals at Open Table (our Sunday lunch for hungry neighbors), welcome first time worshippers, and plan our Capital GLBT Pride events.
Improvisation: Improv is a state and being of creativity that involves saying “yes….and….” Improv involves structure (like the structure in our worship planning and order of worship) and that structure creates safety to say “yes” to new ideas. The “yes…and” results in the creation of new patterns, behaviors, actions, and structures. There are no mistakes in improv; only risk-taking. We say “yes” to new ideas in worship planning and beyond all the time at Pilgrims. This doesn’t mean that all ideas are used. It means all ideas are welcome, noodled around with, explored, and honored.
Improv has also taken us “off script” more often than not in liturgy. We use the “call and response” model a lot; use an improv communion liturgy when it fits the service; and if the liturgist “messes” up like sharing a prayer of dedication before the offering has been taken, it’s not a mess-up. It’s liturgy. It’s life. It’s human. We stop what we are doing, re-group, and move forward without judgment or evil looks from the pew.
Safe, Welcoming Space: Improv is almost impossible without safe space. Improv connects to creating a safe space whether in the sanctuary, coffee hour, or a planning meeting for the Capital Gay Pride parade. Cultivating a safe space where ideas, bodies, spirits, stories, life histories are valued is crucial to taking risks that take us beyond our edge as individuals and a community. A safe place lets us find our edge, that emotional, sensory place within us that tells us we are moving beyond our comfort zone. It isn’t a place of pain or suffering; it’s a place where we move beyond our own, personal norms and socially constructed ways when we can die to our old ways, and rise to the new. Caitlin Bousquet, a recent member at Pilgrims, “in the couple of planning meetings I’ve attended, the people leading and participating have been very open to listening to, validating, and considering all input, no matter how out there it has been. This openness has led to some really creative practices and experiences in worship.”
We can say “yes…and’’’ because we’ve created a safe, permission-giving environment to plan worship. This doesn’t mean we are void of discomfort, tension, or anxiety in our planning process. But we learn to live with these feelings as we come face-to-face to express our trust in the stories of faith.
Power: This is huge. Power and liturgy go hand-in-hand. Our worship planning has deconstructed power and constructed power in new ways. First, as clergy and a music director, we see it as our job to get out of the way. Deconstructing power means dismantling constructed sources of power—clergy, in particular, are socially constructed sources of power in a congregation. We provide a certain type of leadership and guidance in worship planning and then make sure our egos and any power tripping are taking a nap. The center of worship planning isn’t us as clergy, it’s the Biblical narratives which exist to agitate and heal our lives. Worship planning lets the texts do the work needed on us.
Power in worship planning is then centered on the texts and community, as the Spirit moves, does her thing, and creates a “wild mess” of a liturgical season. Liturgy can affirm hierarchical, dominating, and life-sucking-can’t-afford-rent-because-minimum-wage-is-so-low kind of power. Liturgy demands relational power–the kind that creates space for people to connect and feel their own capacity to create Holy change. This means having a worship planning process that reflects the kind of worship we want to experience.
Impermanence: Each Sunday, eighty impermanent beings sit in Pilgrims sanctuary. That’s eighty human beings. We are born. We die. We are impermanent. As the scriptures and those around us show us, we are soil, and to soil we shall return. If we are impermanent, then why do we try so damn hard to keep worship the same week after week? Why do we bolt down with all our might the pulpit, pews, organ and whatever else when we ourselves will be released into the great, swirling energy of the universe? Why do we hunker down with nostalgia, like it’s been guerrilla glued to our DNA? Why do we have liturgy that works against our human nature of transformation?
We are born. We die. Our worship planning and the ever changing nature of participants is an impermanent experience. We can’t get too tightly wedded to the group because within an hour, the group will cease to exist. People from the group might take on leadership in the liturgies they’ve helped plan but the group dies at the end of the night. The nature of our planning and liturgy mirrors our human impermanence.
Janet Walton, my Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, has remarked if worship is the same week-after-week, if worship never changes, it reflects our view on the world. We don’t want the world to change. If we seek transformation, connection, fluidity, and social change for the world then our worship must be of that same nature. When people experience their own individual and collective power and grace in worship planning, worship is an ever-changing for the sake of the ever-present need for justice and liberation for the planet which is the body of God.
Creativity:
People who are not “professional” worship planners frequently approach the planning with a more open mind—or at least with fewer pre-conceived ideas. Their response to worship is usually more visceral (and less intellectual/analytical) than those of us with formal seminary and/or conservatory backgrounds; and they often ask better (or at least more straightforward) questions.[Rob Passow, Music Director at Pilgrims]
The questions we ask near the end of worship planning: “how do we make these experiences come alive in worship?” followed by “what have we experienced lately in worship that we want to keep, what do we want to stop doing for now?” are crucial to our creativity. The questions focus on keeping actions in worship that are meaningful to us right now, breaking through unquestioned habits done in the name of nostalgia rather than connection and relevancy.
Our worship planning has evolved in participant’s confidence and questioning. Both confidence and questioning involve risk-taking. Do the Advent candles have to be purple? Can we build a wailing wall for the sanctuary? Can we worship without the lights? Can “non-ordained” people be at the communion table? Do we need a communion table? Can we have a compost pile as a communion table?
David Gauntlett, in his book, Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and knitting to Youtube and Web 2.0 writes that creativity “helps us to build resilience….and the creative capacity to deal with significant challenges.” The discipline of worship planning, and the experience of Pilgrims liturgy, builds layers upon layers of creative experiences. Not only is creativity part of resiliency, “creativity is an act of defiance,” says dancer Twyla Tharp, as creativity breaks through the status quo and pushes our imaginations to explore, dream, and imagine a world made new.
Congregants-as-Liturgical Artists
“The connection I see between our worship planning and our worship services is the inclusiveness and participatory nature of it. Through our many open and collaborative parts of our services the entire congregation is given the opportunity to add to the experience and the service.”[Andy Wassenich, member at Pilgrims]
With Pilgrims “liturgical ecology” or the connections, relationships and systems that reflect our methodology of liturgy, we’ve created congregants-as-liturgists. News flash! Liturgy isn’t about the clergy. It really isn’t about those participating either. It’s about taking the Biblical narratives and the Reformed Tradition that’s been passed down to us and, as a community, seek to interact with it in order to recognize the Holy One in life and the organizing of justice.
The ownership and participation in planning and liturgy that’s been cultivated through our process means we have particularized our liturgy, found our unique voice to enable us to deepen and nourish the continued wrestling of faith. Congregants-as-liturgists means those participating substantially infuse themselves into the liturgical experience. Pilgrims have learned to design the liturgical experience and greatly impact the content of the liturgy.
When we improv our Prayer for Great Thanksgiving, those at the table offer prompts that create space for thanksgivings. “What aspects of creation do we need to give thanks for? “What acts of Jesus do we live with gratitude?” Those gathered around the table call out their responses, moved by their own experiences and the Spirit at work.
Recently we’ve been using two questions to reflect on worship: “What did you notice in worship” and “what do you wonder about?” Both get away from the “it’s all about me” attitude about worship, and pushes us to reflect critically within an artistic framework. In this type of reflection process, Pilgrims are thinking critically and imaginatively about their experience. We also get insights into how to nuance upcoming services.
Liturgy as a “Wild Mess”
When we create a “wild mess” in worship, we experience what change feels like, looks like, smells like, and tastes like. We learn to take risks for the sake of justice. We push through age-old, conventional, status quo driven boundaries of worship. We sing new songs, we engage the Biblical stories in multi-sensory ways, and the sacraments are authentic, ancient expressions of grace within. “Wild mess” of a worship service breaks through social and ecclesiastical norms so we can embrace the hope and possibilities of the Commonwealth of God. We learn what it looks and feels like to take a stand.
Liturgy as a “wild mess” means critiquing Empire, the powers-that-be, and the social structures that oppress, defile, and disfigure who we are as created in the image of God. It means offering a liberating way of being together, practicing in-the-moment ways of being equal, compassionate, vulnerable, and powerful. When we started this type of worship planning at Pilgrims, we had no idea what kind of liturgical journey we were embarking on, that it would impact our congregational eco-system like it has. We are inherently experimenting with our life stories and the story of the movement of God. With this type of planning, you can’t expect what will come at the end, you can’t predict. One of our long time members, Gerry Hendershot, puts it, “Every time something is added to our already symbol-laden worship, I think, ‘That’s it, we can’t add anything else.’ Then we do.” As in the process of creating social change, we engage in a process of creativity and critique with an outcome yet-to-be seen or experienced. It’s wild, messy worship full of integrity, intentionality, and experiences of change. It’s also a hell of a lot of work. And we love it.Read more from Ashley Goff »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Encounters with the Holy: A Conversational Model for Worship Planningby Barbara Day Miller
Many churches have active worship committees or planning teams, and an abundance of books and resources guide pastors and laity. Encounters with the Holy offers a conversational model of worship planning that was developed to train practitioners to be more reflective in their planning of worship experiences. The model (planning, ordering, worshiping, reflecting) is a flexible, fluid pattern. It provides a more circular, spiraling practice of imaginative planning, preparing the leaders and the space, and reflecting theologically to understand more fully the experience of worship. It has been tested in congregations, seminaries, and campus ministries amid a wide range of denominational and cultural styles.
An underlying theological assumption of this approach is that we are engaged in holy work when we plan and prepare for worship. Leaders' study, preparation, and training are themselves an encounter with the Holy. Therefore, we are called to become more informed and better prepared liturgical leaders.
The language and encouraging style of the book is accessible to student pastors, pastors, and lay people interested in learning to think more deeply about worship.
Learn more and order the book »
Preaching and teaching about gun violence from Alban Weekly at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States for Monday, 24 April 2017
PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Preaching and teaching about gun violence
BIBLICAL THEMES DEMAND A PROPHETIC WITNESS
Lisa L. Thompson:
Preaching and teaching about gun violence
Photo courtesy of Union Theological Seminary
Guns and gun violence may not be addressed in Scripture, but human dignity, the sanctity of life and other matters that speak to the issue and resonate with Christians’ core beliefs are, says the Union Theological Seminary homiletics professor.
You can read the Bible through and you will never find anything about guns or gun violence. But Scripture is rich with resources that speak to those issues, says Lisa L. Thompson, assistant professor of homiletics at Union Theological Seminary.
“It’s not going to have a verbatim answer, but if we read the text, there are principles that come up over and over. One of those is violence, and how we connect and live with one another,” she said.
Part of the task of preaching about gun violence is to draw upon texts that illustrate God’s disposition toward violence and the sanctity of life and human dignity, she said.
“If the text, and our faith, values life -- the sanctity of life, the imago Dei in every individual -- then somehow that has to hit the ground today,” she said. “If we say that gun violence leads to disregard for human life and dignity and does not recognize the image of God in every person because it takes life away so carelessly, then we begin talking about gun violence as people of faith.”
Thompson was a featured speaker last fall at “God and Guns: Faith Leaders Address Gun Violence,”(link is external) a conference at The Riverside Church in New York. She and the Rev. Amy Butler, senior minister at Riverside, co-led a session on "How to Preach and Teach on Gun Violence." An ordained Baptist minister, Thompson has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in religion from Vanderbilt University and an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary.
Before joining the faculty at Union, she was an assistant professor of homiletics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a Lilly Faculty Fellow at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.
Thompson’s publications include “‘Now That’s Preaching!’ Disruptive and Generative Preaching Practices,” in Practical Matters Journal, and “In Search of Our Mothers’ Healings: Holistic Wellbeing, Black Women and Preaching,” in Homiletic, The Journal for the Academy of Homiletics. Her forthcoming book is entitled “Sacred Imaginings: Black Women and the Practice of Preaching.”
She spoke recently with Faith & Leadership. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: So how does one preach and teach about gun violence?The hope in preaching is that at some level, the message lands in the lives of the listeners and connects in terms of what I call contemporary veracity -- it holds true today in a way that it has implications.
Traditionally, we use illustrations, images and metaphors to touch and make bridges and connections between the message and the listeners, so we have to reframe gun violence. One thing that I always go back to is that this is not just about gun violence.
We have to think about our approach to Scripture. If we were to mine it for matters related to this issue of gun violence, there are some key things there. There are ideas around violence and connection, our relationship to neighbor and others, and how this connects to our relationship with God and our belief and understanding of Christianity.
If you go to Scripture, you’re not going to see anything about gun violence. It’s not going to have a verbatim answer, but if we read the text, there are principles that come up over and over. One of those is violence, and how we connect and live with one another.
One thing that we have not done well -- and sometimes are even afraid to do -- in our congregations and pulpits is to tackle biblical texts that are violent. And this is also why we hesitate to talk about gun violence -- we haven’t figured out how to talk about violence, and violence in Scripture. Talking and teaching about gun violence has to begin with our willingness to tackle texts in the Bible that are violent.
We can’t say that guns exist in the Bible, but we can think about parallels between how we interpret violent texts, or how we interpret God’s disposition toward violence and the sanctity of life and human dignity. Those are things we can talk about and make parallels to what we do today.
If the text, and our faith, values life -- the sanctity of life, the imago Dei in every individual -- then somehow that has to hit the ground today. If we say that gun violence leads to disregard for human life and dignity and does not recognize the image of God in every person because it takes life away so carelessly, then we begin talking about gun violence as people of faith. We can then work backward to say, as people of faith, that this might be something we need to tackle. Does it resonate with our core beliefs as people of faith?
Q: Are there particular scriptures that are useful in that interpretation?I think about the narrative of creation, where we see God breathe into adam and creation is called good and the human being is called good. Then if we go back to the commandments, “Thou shalt not kill” is there for a reason. It dictates how we are in relationship one to another but also says something about the value of life.
And if we look beyond texts in general, if we look at the ministry of Jesus, it was fundamentally about attending to the people in his midst, sitting with everyone, meeting the needs, feeding. Feeding was not just a spiritual practice; the body needed nourishment. The body was valued. The person was valued as a whole person.
The echo behind this idea of gun violence is that something is at stake. It’s curious that we talk about gun violence and we’re not just speaking about gun rights. This is the way that you frame the conversation, which says, “There is something there.”
Q: Speak some to that -- the distinction between talking about gun violence and talking about gun rights. I can have a right to own guns, but it’s a different question to say, “Do I have a right to gun violence?”That’s the way that we often hear the conversation in the media and on political platforms. When the conversation of gun violence comes up, the pushback is the idea of gun rights, and those are two different things.
At the end of the day, the question about gun rights isn’t whether or not someone can own a gun. It is just what you said. Is there a right to gun violence? And then, what is the responsibility that we have in even claiming the right to own a gun as a nation or individually?
There are lots of Christians in our nation who are adamant about gun rights and being able to carry their guns, so that any infringement on that seems like a threat. But part of the key to working across difference -- and where preachers have missed the mark -- is to translate what happens in the public square into the theological narrative.
For me, that means we have to figure out how to say why this matters to people of faith. What does it have to do with life? What does it have to do with faith? What does it have to do with our lives and our relationship with God?
This is where we miss the point in the pulpit -- the divide that happens in the message because we are not able to help people of faith translate between faith and everyday life. We tend to distance that stuff out there in the world, as though we do not have to be close to it.
Q: So how do clergy do that?I always say that if we are not attentive to the world in which we live, then our sermons will not be attentive to the world in which we live.
Do we read the news? Do we watch the news?
Pick up a newspaper. Watch the news. Be in conversation with people who are different from you and might not have the same perspective.
We do that also reading the text. In the classroom, I always say that in the first reading of the text, before you even get to thinking about the sermon, just let the free association flow. It’s amazing what happens when we’re reading something and all the connections are happening in our mind that sometimes lay dormant or are elusive, beneath the surface.
If I read something -- I don’t know, say, “the Ammonites went in and possessed the land, and they destroyed all the inhabitants of the land” -- if I’m reading that attentively without just thinking that I know the answer to the text, something happens when I hear “destroy.” There are associations in my mind with “destroy” and “land.”
“Well, wait, people were in the land? So does this mean that the people were killed? And what are the implications of that?” There’s a way where I think we have to let the text jar us, and that happens as we read it closely, and it’s what shakes us from the world in which we live.
Q: Many people now are trying to figure out the role of clergy in talking about political issues. Gun violence and gun rights are clearly political issues, but are they also more than that?It is absolutely political. But I’m not sure how we’re not supposed to get political when it’s the world in which we live. If we look at the Bible, our sacred texts are political. From the beginning, they are about trying to figure out life as people of faith and interacting with other people.
Then if we go to the Gospels, if Jesus wasn’t political, I don’t know who was political. When you say, “The kingdom is at hand” in the middle of the Roman Empire, that is a political statement. That’s a statement about this kingdom that Jesus is speaking about and the literal kingdom of the empire. The turning over of the tables of the money exchangers in the temple -- all of that is political.
It’s just a matter of our willingness to read it that way, even down to the crucifixion of Jesus, which I’ll even call an execution. The gospel is political at heart.
Q: How do clergy help their congregations think critically about all of this and about gun violence?One approach is taking the long-term view in preaching and teaching. Change does not happen overnight, so I always suggest to preachers that they think about, “What are the hopes for your ministry over the long term?” Every congregation is shaped by what it hears over time. This is how we develop our values. Over time, the narrative that comes from the pulpit and the Christian education ministries shapes the values in the congregation. This is a long-term change. We take it small steps at a time, and we need to think about it that way.
Another way is to think about that underlying narrative that I spoke about earlier, the underlying narrative in all of our sermons. If we say we value life, then we need to think about how we preach the value of life over the long term and teach about the value of life in our congregations and context.
The third way I want to think about is, how do we teach in the midst of resistance? In preaching and teaching, there’s always going to be resistance or obstacles to the message being received.
If it’s a congregational context that says, “It’s my right to own my shotgun or my rifle or my M16” -- OK, fine. It’s your right to own it.
But is there a way that the preacher can find something that his or her listeners can agree with, where you can draw a parallel? If somehow in the sermon you’re able to get people on board to say, “Oh yes, we value life, and God values life, so we have the responsibility to take care of life and to take care of one another” -- if they can say yes to that, then the preacher may be able to introduce, “Well, look at this tragedy. A young boy was taken by gun violence, by a random drive-by or a domestic-violence incident.”
It’s about figuring out how to create parallels for people where there is resistance. What can they not disagree with? If we can get them to say, “Yes, I cannot disagree with that,” then by the time we get around to the tough thing that is really the same thing, they’ll also say, “Oh, yeah. That too.”
Q: You’ve written about “disruptive and generative preaching.” Isn’t that what all sermons should be about?It is, but then we have to also recognize that every disruption is not generative. Does it help the community thrive in its life together in ways that continue to foster life more abundantly? Sometimes, we can do things that can be disruptive in the preaching that do not lead to the well-being of the congregation.
In teaching these tough topics, those of us who go and get all sorts of education and knowledge around texts know there are plenty of things we can make Scripture do if we decide to preach it. At the same time, the question on the other side of that is, “How do I do the least harm even as I tackle these tough topics?”
Because we’re not just tackling a text. We’re tackling a text that has authority in the community and the community’s way of life.
Read the interview with Lisa L. Thompson »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: PROPHETIC MINISTRY
The prophet calls for civil discourse
The bombastic prophetic voice must be sounded, but becoming a steady, sensitive, unhesitating pastoral prophet may be a more pressing challenge.
For three hundred years, the voice of prophecy had been silent in the land until John appeared, brusque and outlandish, one “crying in the wilderness.” How odd that they came to him in droves, even as he addressed them as a brood of vipers, announcing an axe poised to cut them down at the roots. Even hard truth catches some inner, discerning ear. They were baptized by the hundreds, Jesus among them.
The voice of prophecy may not be totally silent in our time, but where is it being sounded with vigor and volume, with relentlessness and outrage? Then again, who would choose the role? In a time of escalating fear and hopelessness, will we nurture a new generation of prophets? Will they be unafraid to stand against the empty promises and illusions of security offered by an ethos of domination and power? Who will arise to boldly trust in God’s promises of fullness and grace and reconciling love?
I remember a workshop participant at a church with a history of tension and discord, who even as she said these words laughed at herself, “I wish we could do everything with graciousness and goodwill like they did in the Bible.” The Old Testament narratives are rife with dissension and rebellion, competition and conflict. The positioning and rivalries among the disciples dismayed Jesus. And virtually no one signed aboard for a second missionary junket with Paul. It doesn’t take reading between the lines to see how deep the conflict was between Peter and Paul, though Acts 15 narrates its resolution. Biblical characters, failing to close the gap between differences, bridged them. The issue is not whether there will be broad and ardently held differences of opinion, but how those differences will be expressed. In a time when civility is in collapse, when public discourse is riddled with innuendo or outright assault, the church can model an alternative. Sometimes it does. Too often it does not.
A sad tale unfolds in a downtown church in a major East Coast city. It is not pretty. And it is not unfamiliar, but I find it infuriating. A denominational judicatory is holding its monthly meeting, three hundred delegates in all, clergy and laity, a six-hour agenda at hand. Although the chatter accompanying coffee and pastries seems innocent and amiable, smaller circles of kindred spirits tighten, whispering tactics anticipating the engagements of the day. The “issue that will not go away” is on everyone’s mind—you can fill in the blank yourself. At day’s end, with everyone weary and bloodied, the issue looms larger and more potent than ever, and ardent adversaries are more wounded and divided than when they began. Given an opportunity to speak and listen with open minds and hearts, even as they speak their truth with vigor and persuasiveness, they collapse into a cacophony of name-calling and assault.
Imagine they had called a mission agency in advance of that Tuesday meeting, offering three hundred people to be deployed around the city for six hours. Eighteen hundred person hours! Imagine the senior citizens they might have visited, the kids they might have read to, the meals for the homeless they might have prepared! They might have attended to homes that needed to be weatherized for the approaching winds of winter or patients in a mental hospital who would benefit from a visit. It was no one’s conscious choice, but choose they surely did—to do pitched battle in a musty old sanctuary, in take-no-prisoners combat, impossible as in most wars to declare victors or vanquished.
As I look back over my longest pastorate, one of the things that stands out is the members’ ability to face and engage one another even in the face of sharp and potentially destructive differences of opinion on even the most divisive of issues. The congregation marshaled a sensitivity and courage in fully integrating the prophetic mandate with a gentle and loving pastoral ministry. Though in many cases my political leanings were rather transparent, I made a commitment not to advocate partisan positions from the pulpit—a decision that was not received with universal appreciation. I maintained the right to speak my biases vigorously and persuasively, but only when my preaching robe was off.
Three particular strategies employed across those years are worthy of sharing. In the midst of some national debate, a member felt prompted to place a large table in the back of the church, with a sign that read Faith and Social Concern, inviting people to place reprints of articles that articulated their point of view on any pressing issue. Soon the table overflowed with reprints advocating opinions on various issues, local, statewide, national, and international. Worshipers were urged to select broadly to become informed about differing points of view. Few left church without a stop at that table.
A second strategy emerged during a season of run-up to war, when the mission committee was leading worship one Sunday. After fifteen minutes of typical liturgy, worshipers were dismissed to one of two rooms prepared for their arrival. In one waited a representative from the Quaker Annual Meeting of Philadelphia to speak against the contemplated war; in the other a general from the War College to advocate for the war. The instruction was to choose the speaker and point of view opposite to the one you held and, once there, to speak only to ask questions for clarification. Your task was to become as fully, deeply understanding of that viewpoint as you were able. We returned to the sanctuary for a closing liturgy that urged open-mindedness and prayer for discernment and wisdom for all key decision-makers.
Third, I remember how familiar it became to see petitions on various issues circulating in the coffee hour, sometimes several petitions, often on differing or even opposite sides of a given issue. On one particular Sunday, members learned that the following Saturday two rallies were scheduled at adjacent locations in Washington, D.C.—a pro-life rally and a pro-choice rally, and each group had arranged charter buses to carry participants. Sign-up lists for each rally appeared at coffee hour. This would surely test the limits of our tolerance. I watched, a twinge of anxiety stirring, as individuals, approached by others with clipboards in hand, promptly signed up. That was easy enough. But I also watched a conversation that left the sheet unsigned—clearly pro-life and pro-choice women chatting. I’m no stranger to strained, coarse, and hostile exchanges between adversaries on this difficult and delicate issue, and so my anxiety spiked. Such exchanges typically end, at best, in cool and dismissive silence. My anxiety dissipated and my eyes teared watching these women of divergent and strongly held views smile warmly, embracing. I wished the world were watching.
Over time and after lengthy and patient discussion, the congregation reached consensus on a basic principle—the affirmation of a fourfold process for relating our faith to social issues.
First, become broadly informed on issues at hand, open to as many points of view as integrity and conscience allow. Second, study Scripture and pray, bringing neutrality and openness to that exploration. Third, as study, biblical research, and prayer yield sufficient clarity, articulate your position, boldly and humbly. Fourth, advocate for that point of view unapologetically, speaking and listening with equal care.
It is important to note, as we ponder this invitation to assume the prophet’s mantle for our time, to distinguish two kinds of biblical prophets. There are the bombastic prophets, who speak from outside the political and religious establishment, who sweep in from hometowns far away, their message sharp and explosive, uncompromising and unrelenting. Then there are the pastoral prophets, who speak the prophetic word from within the political and religious establishment, along the streets and lanes of familiar neighborhoods, in the town square and marketplace of their hometown. The bombastic prophetic voice must be sounded, but becoming a steady, sensitive, unhesitant pastoral prophet may be the more pressing challenge.
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Adapted from Gifts of an Uncommon Life: The Practice of Contemplative Activism by Howard E. Friend, Jr., copyright © 2008 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
Read more from Howard E. Friend, Jr. »
Faith and Leadership
There is no prophetic witness withouconfrontation
MISSIONS & EVANGELISM
Alton Pollard: There is no prophetic witness without confrontationThe dean of Howard University's divinity school challenges church leadership to answer the theological mandate that we be in the world even as we are not of it.
Religious leaders must have the courage to witness to social problems while remaining faithful to our common humanity, says the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard III, dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity(link is external). "There is no prophetic witness without confrontation." As dean, Pollard says he is willing to take the heat from religious colleagues and school administrators for engaging in social and political issues, in order to stand authentically before God.
Before becoming dean at Howard in 2007, Pollard served in both religious and educational institutions. As an ordained Baptist minister, he was pastor of John Street Baptist Church in Massachusetts, New Red Mountain Baptist Church in North Carolina and AME churches in Tennessee. He also has directed the Program of Black Church Studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and held faculty appointments at St. Olaf College and Wake Forest University.
Pollard earned a B.A. in religion & philosophy and business management from Fisk University, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. from Duke University’s Department of Religion.
He spoke with Faith & Leadership while at Duke Divinity School to deliver the annual Gardner C. Taylor Lecture.
Q: Howard is known for liberation theology; what role does that play in leadership, particularly in the 21st century black church?When we're talking about the black church community at large in the early 21st century, I think there's not much question that the church’s leadership would not have liberation theology as a first or second priority. For them, the focus on salvation remains preeminent, but that perspective is much more about the individual life in the here and now. The liberation perspective is much more about the communal life in the here and now, and therein lies a tremendous difference between the two.
So for me, when you consider ecclesial leaders who have pronounced impact in their ministries and communities via television, radio, movies and other media these days, we're hard-pressed to say that liberation is a significant motif.
But then, many of our churches don’t have a strong relationship with graduate theological education. They are more interested in a focus on the pragmatics, the how-to, the nuts and bolts. But in graduate theological education we're committed to a preparation that is critical and analytical that will enable students, whether conservative, moderate, liberal, progressive, etc., to think large when they leave here and make the applications in their specific context, rather than to have a kind of one-size-fits-all model.
Q: How do you navigate the divide between your institution’s prophetic tradition and the pragmatic world critique?The African-American cultural context provides for recognition that there’s not a disjuncture between our scholarship and our practice. We live in the uneasy tension of needing to address both the prevailing ecclesial norms and the theological possibilities that the liberation perspective offers; that makes for some interesting programming. Interesting because liberation ideas are grounded in a tradition that is very biblically consistent and they are also grounded in the history of foremothers and forefathers. There is a willingness to engage with that [in our churches]. If you don't have exposure [to liberation theology] you can't wrestle with it, and for those students who do have the opportunity [to learn about liberation theology], and go on to become pastors, they can make a difference. It's the Martin Luther Kings and those types of persons who are still upheld as exemplars, as the icons that the rest of us aspire to but never quite reach.
Q: Do you have any examples of where you've had to navigate the conflict between the prophetic role and your role as an institutional leader?There is no prophetic witness without the possibility of confrontation, but if there is a consistency about your witness then there's also a confidence about the long-term possibilities for human community that will come out of it. One constantly weighs the long-term projection against the short-term fallout. The immediate response can be anger, hostility or getting called on the carpet; I'm accustomed to that.
During the last election a son of our university became quite infamous in the media. The beloved Jeremiah Wright. When we brought him to the divinity school in the midst of the maelstrom there was considerable consternation that this was going to be injurious to the school. There was a lot of negative response, but hide your gifts under a bushel basket and that's where they will remain. We try to practice transparency as much as we can. We try to be authentic. Genuineness within and without, a consistency of life, no matter the tensions that are created. At the end of the day the tension that you have to reconcile most is: Can I live with myself?
Q: To what degree do you see your leadership role as a public one to the outside world versus an inside the institution role?I see my role primarily as an internal one. There was no permanent dean at Howard University School of Divinity for five years. I came into an environment that required, and requires still, a lot of internal morale building, foundation laying, before we can go out there full-fledged to make that singular impact on the world. Once we take care of those internal matters, I fully expect that we will turn our attention to public witness. We are in Washington, D.C., in the nation's capital and, as a theological institution, we must be prepared to engage proactively in the public policy issues of the day. The theological mandate requires us to be in the world even as we are not of it.
Q: Have you received criticism for the degree to which you have taken on a public role?Always. I can't remember when I haven't. In our personal lives, to paraphrase the language of King, we speak most vigorously about and to the country that we love. The country may respond with some venom and certainly in King's case responded with death, but no less than the Nazarene himself. Many of us can safely say that the greatest arguments we've ever had have been within our own households; we have struggled valiantly to make sure that we don't lose persons we love, even as we are at odds with them. It is scarcely any different in the social context.
God calls us to love and the old language about speaking truth to power is insufficient if you do not add “in love” to the phrase. Otherwise you depersonalize, you dehumanize, you caricature. As long as you remember that these are persons of flesh and blood like you, fallible and likely to make mistakes, then that leaves you room to dance with others in the public square. To not cut off the possibility of finding rapprochement. That's a holistic, healing and salvific thing.
In my pastoral days, in my early 20s, I informed the leadership of our Baptist church that I was going to begin putting women in prominent leadership positions, as well as inviting women to do public worship pieces from the pulpit. The largest opposition was from a woman who was the head of the deaconess board, the women's traditional leadership body in the Baptist church. She was fiercely hostile, yet when I announced several years later that I was stepping down as pastor, she came and apologized profusely for all of the venomous things she had called me, and she thanked me.
The examples are endless. Right now I am deeply committed to marriage equality; there are colleagues of mine in the church who will certainly have a very different point of view.
Q: Explain what you mean by marriage equality.Marriage equality means that persons of the same gender have every right to legal marriage, as do those of us who are heterosexual. It distills down to the basic requirements inherent in every religious tradition around the world: to love your neighbor as yourself. This is clearly an issue that creates great consternation. For me, it is a matter not only of biblical text but also of civic responsibility. If we cannot recognize the broadening implications, again, the long-term vision of the democratic impulse, no less than the Christian, then I think we are all in trouble in the end.
Q: I can't help but notice as you talk, especially when you speak about conflict, you're full of smiles and laughter. You seem to take a lot of joy in your work.I do, because God called me to it. When I think about where my ancestors came from and the brutality of their days, yet God still enabled them to have hope, how can I not? Because there’s no doubt we've got issues. We've got a bad economy and soaring unemployment; you can't sell your house, can't get a job. We've got all kinds of things going on, but they had chains and searing brands placed on their flesh. They were ripped from home and taken away from families and community; everything was stripped from them. Still, without the benefit of the legislative, legal and educational support that we have today, they were able to turn around and build colleges and universities, establish mortuaries and banks. Why should I, who has so much more, not be confident in the God of my ancestors?
I am extremely confident that God takes care of babies and fools; I move forward knowing I'm going to do something foolish today and trying to be consistently in the presence of the divine. The divine is very much about the collective presence of humanity. It is creation that is groaning. It is the cries of the people, the cries of those who have been victimized. Most of us are candidates for victimization -- because of our skin color, because of where we grew up, because our diction doesn't sound palatable enough or because we come from the wrong side of the ocean. Somebody's going to make fun of me because I wear glasses, or because I don't have any hair, or too much hair. We are all in one way or other candidates for victimization and the question is, do we remember what it is like to be on the receiving end? If we remember, then we will be careful to be compassionate with our sister and our brother no matter how they may receive us.
Read more from Alton Pollard »
Faith and Leadership
VOCATION, DISCERNMENT
Richard L. Floyd: “Prophetic” pastors who don’t love the church"Prophetic" pastors who don't love the church
If the main reason you become a pastor is to promote some cause, then your soul is in danger, and so is the congregation's.
Being pastor of a congregation is hard work. I was one for 30 years. It’s not a day job. It's a vocation that takes up most of your waking hours.
A pastor's life and family are necessarily involved in their congregation “in season and out of season.” I often say being a pastor is the best vocation there is, but the worst job. If you are not called to it, you really don't want to do it.
When I started as a pastor, I learned quickly that you have to love your congregants, even the unlovable, of which there are far too many. These take up a good deal of your time. Some of them you will just never learn to love, and you have to turn them over to God, who does.
I had been a political activist in college and seminary, and had gone to jail for my causes, but when I got into the pastorate I learned very quickly that you can’t be a prophet until you have earned the peoples' trust. This means years of marrying and burying and sitting by hospital beds.
If you do this well they may be ready to hear hard truths from the pulpit. Or they may not. Certainly Isaiah’s prophecies fell on deaf ears.
New ministers who have grown up in the church have a leg up, because they know its rhythms and customs, its “grandeur and misery.” But today many of our ministerial candidates haven't grown up in the church. They often come to seminary in a process of self-discovery. Most of us did that to one degree or another. Seminary is a good place to learn many useful things. What seminaries are not so good at is forming men and women into Christians, much less teaching them how to be faithful pastors. Don’t blame seminaries. It’s not their job. Christian formation is primarily the church's job.
Many come to seminary not only to find themselves, but because of a passion for a social cause, which is fine. In seminary the flame of their passion is often fanned by others who share it, which is also fine.
But if all you know of the faith is what you learn in seminary, you are at a distinct disadvantage. And if the main reason you accept a call from a congregation is to promote your cause, then your soul is in danger, and so is the life of a congregation. The congregation you go to may or may not share your passion. It can be dangerous either way.
If they agree with most of your views, the temptation is to self-righteousness, a tendency to see sin and evil “out there” in your ideological adversaries, and not also in your own soul. Then you have lost the great insight expressed by the Reformers' wise axiom simul justus et peccator, that we are both justified and sinners. Some ministers risk this danger for their entire careers and they don’t even know it.
The other temptation is perhaps more dangerous: to go to a congregation where they don’t share your cause, and you scold them for it. You do not learn to love them, and they do not learn to love you, and eventually your ministry fails.
Some of our pastors sadly seek out this kind of martyrdom, and when they are inevitably cast out, they can then turn and say how stiff-necked and hard-hearted their congregation is. Congregations can be stiff-necked, hard-hearted and even abusive. This is nothing new. Read Exodus or First Corinthians.
But congregations can also be wonderful, supportive, gracious, and long-suffering, especially if they sense you are really trying to be their faithful pastor.
If you’ve the diligence and patience, you can be both a prophet and a pastor. But you’d better be a pastor to the people first. Because that is your primary calling.Read more from Richard L. Floyd »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Gifts of an Uncommon Life: The Practice of Contemplative Activismby Howard E. Friend, Jr.
This book of ten essays is a breath of fresh air, a source of inspiration, a wake-up call, and a bold challenge for pastors, congregational leaders, and church members --both active and lapsed -- who long for a new perspective, even a touch of creative irreverence. With an invitation to quietness and stillness, inner strength and resilience, audacious hope and insistent confidence, it welcomes those among the people of God who do not belong to a church or even name themselves as Christian. Yet it does not shy away from raising difficult questions.
Howard Friend offers forthright, at times disarming, candor as he shares his personal pilgrimage of activism rooted in contemplation. Convinced that God still seeks to work in and through the church, Friend shows us where God is present -- at times despite the church itself. In his opinion, the church needs to stir the pot, upset the apple cart, and dare to welcome the new and refreshing. Yet Friend remains hopeful for and committed to the church, calling and equipping it to become its highest and best. Drawing on a range of stories from the Bible and his own lived experiences, Friend invites us to meet real people--pastors, leaders, everyday folks--who dare to dream a new dream, journey toward a far horizon, walk with tireless determination, and press on with awesome hope.
Learn more and order the book »
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
1 Mark Chaves, How Do We Worship? (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 1999), 1.
Copyright © 2008, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share Alban Weekly articles with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
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The art of worship planning
Worship planning is an art. It's a discipline. It must be done over and over and over again in community order to get worship "under our skin." How we plan worship reflects what we believe worship should be - a transformative, communal experience of observing, trusting, trying, reflecting, and taking chances for the sake of experiencing the Holy One.
Worship planning is an art. It’s a discipline. It must be done over and over and over again in community order to get worship “under our skin.” How we plan worship reflects what we believe worship should be — a transformative, communal experience of observing, trusting, trying, reflecting, and taking chances for the sake of experiencing the Holy One. At Church of the Pilgrims (PCUSA) in Washington, DC where I am Minister for Spiritual Formation, we have created a process that has cultivated our skills for planning worship.
Worship at Pilgrims has been called a “wild mess” by Andy Wassenich, a church member at Pilgrims. While working well within the boundaries and framework of the Reformed Tradition, our worship changes liturgical season after season, with nuances each week. Walking meditations? Check. Pilgrims singing in three-part harmony? Check. Prayer stations, compost pile as communion table, Biblical storytelling, and bubble machine for Pride and Pentecost? Check, check, check. Over a decade, we’ve opened ourselves up to improvisation and spontaneity in worship allowing ourselves, at the same time, to be cracked open by the Holy Spirit and her empowering and prophetic ways. How did we get to this point? Of course, it wasn’t always like this.
I arrived on the Pilgrims scene in January 1999 after graduating from Union Theological Seminary in NYC where on a daily basis I experienced profoundly creative and ever-changing worship. Pilgrims’ was in dire straits in the late 1990’s: crumbling building, shaky finances, lack of identity and purpose, and existing without a called pastor. The congregation was small, getting smaller, and depressed.
Their worship reflected their existence—it was deathly, put-me-to-sleep boring.
A year and a half later, Pilgrims called Jeff Krehbiel who is still serving. Pilgrims re-grouped, started getting involved in community organizing, became a More Light congregation, and re-designed our administrative structure (good-bye standing committees!). While revitalizing worship incorporated many of the same principles of those endeavors, it was a different task altogether. Instead of consulting worship planning books or creating more rules on how to run an efficient worship meeting, we accessed ourselves, harnessed our own creativity, and started planning and creating worship together.
Over time, we developed an art of worship planning that has transformed our Sunday liturgical landscape and the entire eco-system at Pilgrims, the interconnected processes and structures that make up our life together.
The Process of Our Worship Planning
In worship planning we begin the process of sharing responsibility for worship as broadly as possible, shifting the dynamics of “worship leader” and “worship participant” in order to break down the barriers between “provider” and “receiver,” so that worship truly becomes “the work of the people.”[Jeff Krehbiel, pastor at Church of the Pilgrims]
Four to six weeks prior to the upcoming liturgical season, Jeff, myself, Rob Passow, our music director and Lauren Dwyer, our Elder for Worship, along with interns, currently Jess Fisher and Dana Olson, brainstorm names of four to six Pilgrims to invite to worship planning. Invitees could be folks who have been at Pilgrims fifty years or five months.
We send an email that includes a link to the lectionary texts to the upcoming season and any other relevant links or an article. We are clear in the email we are asking them for a one-time commitment of brainstorming on a specific evening. We ask invitees to read the texts prior to the evening and choose one that stands out to them for any reason. We’ve realized that is all the prep work that’s needed. Less is more.
Before the meeting, Jeff, Rob, and I divide up the responsibilities of who is going to lead what part of the gathering. At the start of the meeting, we give an overview of the planning process, liturgical season and the texts. Then we move into liturgical storytelling, sharing stories of worship from the past season that have stuck with each person. This creates a shared, collective experience right from the get-go and lifts up experiences of worship that have hits our hearts for one reason or another. We’ve moved away from the “I like” and “I didn’t like” evaluative response of worship experience. In the storytelling, we are asking people to dig deeper into an experience that challenged their participation or disrupted their own thoughts and patterns of living.
After the storytelling, Rob teaches us a new song that he envisions could be used somewhere in the service based on the texts. We sing as a small group, a cappella, feeling the music more than performing it at that point. From there we jump into the texts, offering people time to look over the texts again and identify something that stands out to them because of an image, word, phrase, or social context. Then it’s time to go deeper either through a short, exploratory Bible study having individual time to ponder some questions or break into groups of two to three to explore.
After the reflection time, the group shares thoughts on the texts, taking time to identify patterns, connections, and contradictions and scribbling it all down on newsprint. When we’ve exhausted our wonderings, we start another piece of newsprint and share about on what’s going on in the life of Pilgrims, in DC, in our culture, and the world-at-large. How do these texts speak to our life right now? Soon, all the papers are up around the room, surrounding us.
We stand back and take a look. We ask, “how can worship make these experiences come alive?” We consider if there are sparks from recent Sundays that we want to continue, and whether there are things we want to stop doing for now.
With the doors of creativity opened, the Holy Spirit starts to flurry around the room, and improv, the artistic methodology of saying “yes…and” comes front and center. Ideas get tossed into the air, each affirmed and clustered to form a foundation from which we work. During the recent planning for Lent our intern Jess Fisher created a map of the sanctuary, distinguishing its moveable and stationary parts. When it came to placement of the liturgical furniture, the map facilitated an explosion of ideas related to our chosen theme of “The Body.” I sat in awe, listening to people give critical analysis in the weaving together of liturgical space, Christian ethics, and theology.
We leave the gathering with a pretty good sense of where the upcoming season of worship is headed. We’ve primarily spent time sitting with the macro-image of worship; we haven’t struggled with the nitty-gritty details of the service that can bog down creativity and create power struggles. But the big picture is all that Jeff, Rob, and I need establish our own marching orders to give life to participants’ ideas. We take the ideas, cycle through a number of more detailed conversations about responsibilities and delegations, and then toss the whole enterprise up into the sky and let the Holy Spirit continue on with her work.
The Method of Our “Wild Mess” Madness
We collaborate. We think outside of the box. We touch. We listen. We share. We’re vulnerable.
Sometimes we cry. We incorporate our experiences, our lives and our personal work into worship planning. We brainstorm and then make it come alive. We’re interconnected. We taste, touch, smell, listen, feel. We do all of the above in worship planning and I think that this process makes it all happen in worship itself as well.[Lauren Dwyer, Elder for Worship at Church of the Pilgrims.]
What does our worship planning create? What kind of culture has it created at Pilgrims? How does it impact worship?
Worship planning has let Pilgrims find its own unique voice not just in our expression of Sunday liturgy but also in Pilgrims eco-system at-large. How we brainstorm and “do” liturgy has impacted the web of life and interconnectedness at Pilgrims. Indeed, the intentionality of our worship planning method is not isolated to those evening planning sessions. Our methodology has now infused itself throughout the congregation, impacting how we run meetings, share meals at Open Table (our Sunday lunch for hungry neighbors), welcome first time worshippers, and plan our Capital GLBT Pride events.
Improvisation: Improv is a state and being of creativity that involves saying “yes….and….” Improv involves structure (like the structure in our worship planning and order of worship) and that structure creates safety to say “yes” to new ideas. The “yes…and” results in the creation of new patterns, behaviors, actions, and structures. There are no mistakes in improv; only risk-taking. We say “yes” to new ideas in worship planning and beyond all the time at Pilgrims. This doesn’t mean that all ideas are used. It means all ideas are welcome, noodled around with, explored, and honored.
Improv has also taken us “off script” more often than not in liturgy. We use the “call and response” model a lot; use an improv communion liturgy when it fits the service; and if the liturgist “messes” up like sharing a prayer of dedication before the offering has been taken, it’s not a mess-up. It’s liturgy. It’s life. It’s human. We stop what we are doing, re-group, and move forward without judgment or evil looks from the pew.
Safe, Welcoming Space: Improv is almost impossible without safe space. Improv connects to creating a safe space whether in the sanctuary, coffee hour, or a planning meeting for the Capital Gay Pride parade. Cultivating a safe space where ideas, bodies, spirits, stories, life histories are valued is crucial to taking risks that take us beyond our edge as individuals and a community. A safe place lets us find our edge, that emotional, sensory place within us that tells us we are moving beyond our comfort zone. It isn’t a place of pain or suffering; it’s a place where we move beyond our own, personal norms and socially constructed ways when we can die to our old ways, and rise to the new. Caitlin Bousquet, a recent member at Pilgrims, “in the couple of planning meetings I’ve attended, the people leading and participating have been very open to listening to, validating, and considering all input, no matter how out there it has been. This openness has led to some really creative practices and experiences in worship.”
We can say “yes…and’’’ because we’ve created a safe, permission-giving environment to plan worship. This doesn’t mean we are void of discomfort, tension, or anxiety in our planning process. But we learn to live with these feelings as we come face-to-face to express our trust in the stories of faith.
Power: This is huge. Power and liturgy go hand-in-hand. Our worship planning has deconstructed power and constructed power in new ways. First, as clergy and a music director, we see it as our job to get out of the way. Deconstructing power means dismantling constructed sources of power—clergy, in particular, are socially constructed sources of power in a congregation. We provide a certain type of leadership and guidance in worship planning and then make sure our egos and any power tripping are taking a nap. The center of worship planning isn’t us as clergy, it’s the Biblical narratives which exist to agitate and heal our lives. Worship planning lets the texts do the work needed on us.
Power in worship planning is then centered on the texts and community, as the Spirit moves, does her thing, and creates a “wild mess” of a liturgical season. Liturgy can affirm hierarchical, dominating, and life-sucking-can’t-afford-rent-because-minimum-wage-is-so-low kind of power. Liturgy demands relational power–the kind that creates space for people to connect and feel their own capacity to create Holy change. This means having a worship planning process that reflects the kind of worship we want to experience.
Impermanence: Each Sunday, eighty impermanent beings sit in Pilgrims sanctuary. That’s eighty human beings. We are born. We die. We are impermanent. As the scriptures and those around us show us, we are soil, and to soil we shall return. If we are impermanent, then why do we try so damn hard to keep worship the same week after week? Why do we bolt down with all our might the pulpit, pews, organ and whatever else when we ourselves will be released into the great, swirling energy of the universe? Why do we hunker down with nostalgia, like it’s been guerrilla glued to our DNA? Why do we have liturgy that works against our human nature of transformation?
We are born. We die. Our worship planning and the ever changing nature of participants is an impermanent experience. We can’t get too tightly wedded to the group because within an hour, the group will cease to exist. People from the group might take on leadership in the liturgies they’ve helped plan but the group dies at the end of the night. The nature of our planning and liturgy mirrors our human impermanence.
Janet Walton, my Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, has remarked if worship is the same week-after-week, if worship never changes, it reflects our view on the world. We don’t want the world to change. If we seek transformation, connection, fluidity, and social change for the world then our worship must be of that same nature. When people experience their own individual and collective power and grace in worship planning, worship is an ever-changing for the sake of the ever-present need for justice and liberation for the planet which is the body of God.
Creativity:
People who are not “professional” worship planners frequently approach the planning with a more open mind—or at least with fewer pre-conceived ideas. Their response to worship is usually more visceral (and less intellectual/analytical) than those of us with formal seminary and/or conservatory backgrounds; and they often ask better (or at least more straightforward) questions.[Rob Passow, Music Director at Pilgrims]
The questions we ask near the end of worship planning: “how do we make these experiences come alive in worship?” followed by “what have we experienced lately in worship that we want to keep, what do we want to stop doing for now?” are crucial to our creativity. The questions focus on keeping actions in worship that are meaningful to us right now, breaking through unquestioned habits done in the name of nostalgia rather than connection and relevancy.
Our worship planning has evolved in participant’s confidence and questioning. Both confidence and questioning involve risk-taking. Do the Advent candles have to be purple? Can we build a wailing wall for the sanctuary? Can we worship without the lights? Can “non-ordained” people be at the communion table? Do we need a communion table? Can we have a compost pile as a communion table?
David Gauntlett, in his book, Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and knitting to Youtube and Web 2.0 writes that creativity “helps us to build resilience….and the creative capacity to deal with significant challenges.” The discipline of worship planning, and the experience of Pilgrims liturgy, builds layers upon layers of creative experiences. Not only is creativity part of resiliency, “creativity is an act of defiance,” says dancer Twyla Tharp, as creativity breaks through the status quo and pushes our imaginations to explore, dream, and imagine a world made new.
Congregants-as-Liturgical Artists
“The connection I see between our worship planning and our worship services is the inclusiveness and participatory nature of it. Through our many open and collaborative parts of our services the entire congregation is given the opportunity to add to the experience and the service.”[Andy Wassenich, member at Pilgrims]
With Pilgrims “liturgical ecology” or the connections, relationships and systems that reflect our methodology of liturgy, we’ve created congregants-as-liturgists. News flash! Liturgy isn’t about the clergy. It really isn’t about those participating either. It’s about taking the Biblical narratives and the Reformed Tradition that’s been passed down to us and, as a community, seek to interact with it in order to recognize the Holy One in life and the organizing of justice.
The ownership and participation in planning and liturgy that’s been cultivated through our process means we have particularized our liturgy, found our unique voice to enable us to deepen and nourish the continued wrestling of faith. Congregants-as-liturgists means those participating substantially infuse themselves into the liturgical experience. Pilgrims have learned to design the liturgical experience and greatly impact the content of the liturgy.
When we improv our Prayer for Great Thanksgiving, those at the table offer prompts that create space for thanksgivings. “What aspects of creation do we need to give thanks for? “What acts of Jesus do we live with gratitude?” Those gathered around the table call out their responses, moved by their own experiences and the Spirit at work.
Recently we’ve been using two questions to reflect on worship: “What did you notice in worship” and “what do you wonder about?” Both get away from the “it’s all about me” attitude about worship, and pushes us to reflect critically within an artistic framework. In this type of reflection process, Pilgrims are thinking critically and imaginatively about their experience. We also get insights into how to nuance upcoming services.
Liturgy as a “Wild Mess”
When we create a “wild mess” in worship, we experience what change feels like, looks like, smells like, and tastes like. We learn to take risks for the sake of justice. We push through age-old, conventional, status quo driven boundaries of worship. We sing new songs, we engage the Biblical stories in multi-sensory ways, and the sacraments are authentic, ancient expressions of grace within. “Wild mess” of a worship service breaks through social and ecclesiastical norms so we can embrace the hope and possibilities of the Commonwealth of God. We learn what it looks and feels like to take a stand.
Liturgy as a “wild mess” means critiquing Empire, the powers-that-be, and the social structures that oppress, defile, and disfigure who we are as created in the image of God. It means offering a liberating way of being together, practicing in-the-moment ways of being equal, compassionate, vulnerable, and powerful. When we started this type of worship planning at Pilgrims, we had no idea what kind of liturgical journey we were embarking on, that it would impact our congregational eco-system like it has. We are inherently experimenting with our life stories and the story of the movement of God. With this type of planning, you can’t expect what will come at the end, you can’t predict. One of our long time members, Gerry Hendershot, puts it, “Every time something is added to our already symbol-laden worship, I think, ‘That’s it, we can’t add anything else.’ Then we do.” As in the process of creating social change, we engage in a process of creativity and critique with an outcome yet-to-be seen or experienced. It’s wild, messy worship full of integrity, intentionality, and experiences of change. It’s also a hell of a lot of work. And we love it.Read more from Ashley Goff »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Many churches have active worship committees or planning teams, and an abundance of books and resources guide pastors and laity. Encounters with the Holy offers a conversational model of worship planning that was developed to train practitioners to be more reflective in their planning of worship experiences. The model (planning, ordering, worshiping, reflecting) is a flexible, fluid pattern. It provides a more circular, spiraling practice of imaginative planning, preparing the leaders and the space, and reflecting theologically to understand more fully the experience of worship. It has been tested in congregations, seminaries, and campus ministries amid a wide range of denominational and cultural styles.
An underlying theological assumption of this approach is that we are engaged in holy work when we plan and prepare for worship. Leaders' study, preparation, and training are themselves an encounter with the Holy. Therefore, we are called to become more informed and better prepared liturgical leaders.
The language and encouraging style of the book is accessible to student pastors, pastors, and lay people interested in learning to think more deeply about worship.
Learn more and order the book »
Preaching and teaching about gun violence from Alban Weekly at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States for Monday, 24 April 2017
PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Preaching and teaching about gun violenceBIBLICAL THEMES DEMAND A PROPHETIC WITNESS
Lisa L. Thompson:
Preaching and teaching about gun violence
Photo courtesy of Union Theological SeminaryGuns and gun violence may not be addressed in Scripture, but human dignity, the sanctity of life and other matters that speak to the issue and resonate with Christians’ core beliefs are, says the Union Theological Seminary homiletics professor.
You can read the Bible through and you will never find anything about guns or gun violence. But Scripture is rich with resources that speak to those issues, says Lisa L. Thompson, assistant professor of homiletics at Union Theological Seminary.
“It’s not going to have a verbatim answer, but if we read the text, there are principles that come up over and over. One of those is violence, and how we connect and live with one another,” she said.
Part of the task of preaching about gun violence is to draw upon texts that illustrate God’s disposition toward violence and the sanctity of life and human dignity, she said.
“If the text, and our faith, values life -- the sanctity of life, the imago Dei in every individual -- then somehow that has to hit the ground today,” she said. “If we say that gun violence leads to disregard for human life and dignity and does not recognize the image of God in every person because it takes life away so carelessly, then we begin talking about gun violence as people of faith.”
Thompson was a featured speaker last fall at “God and Guns: Faith Leaders Address Gun Violence,”(link is external) a conference at The Riverside Church in New York. She and the Rev. Amy Butler, senior minister at Riverside, co-led a session on "How to Preach and Teach on Gun Violence." An ordained Baptist minister, Thompson has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in religion from Vanderbilt University and an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary.
Before joining the faculty at Union, she was an assistant professor of homiletics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a Lilly Faculty Fellow at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.
Thompson’s publications include “‘Now That’s Preaching!’ Disruptive and Generative Preaching Practices,” in Practical Matters Journal, and “In Search of Our Mothers’ Healings: Holistic Wellbeing, Black Women and Preaching,” in Homiletic, The Journal for the Academy of Homiletics. Her forthcoming book is entitled “Sacred Imaginings: Black Women and the Practice of Preaching.”
She spoke recently with Faith & Leadership. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: So how does one preach and teach about gun violence?The hope in preaching is that at some level, the message lands in the lives of the listeners and connects in terms of what I call contemporary veracity -- it holds true today in a way that it has implications.
Traditionally, we use illustrations, images and metaphors to touch and make bridges and connections between the message and the listeners, so we have to reframe gun violence. One thing that I always go back to is that this is not just about gun violence.
We have to think about our approach to Scripture. If we were to mine it for matters related to this issue of gun violence, there are some key things there. There are ideas around violence and connection, our relationship to neighbor and others, and how this connects to our relationship with God and our belief and understanding of Christianity.
If you go to Scripture, you’re not going to see anything about gun violence. It’s not going to have a verbatim answer, but if we read the text, there are principles that come up over and over. One of those is violence, and how we connect and live with one another.
One thing that we have not done well -- and sometimes are even afraid to do -- in our congregations and pulpits is to tackle biblical texts that are violent. And this is also why we hesitate to talk about gun violence -- we haven’t figured out how to talk about violence, and violence in Scripture. Talking and teaching about gun violence has to begin with our willingness to tackle texts in the Bible that are violent.
We can’t say that guns exist in the Bible, but we can think about parallels between how we interpret violent texts, or how we interpret God’s disposition toward violence and the sanctity of life and human dignity. Those are things we can talk about and make parallels to what we do today.
If the text, and our faith, values life -- the sanctity of life, the imago Dei in every individual -- then somehow that has to hit the ground today. If we say that gun violence leads to disregard for human life and dignity and does not recognize the image of God in every person because it takes life away so carelessly, then we begin talking about gun violence as people of faith. We can then work backward to say, as people of faith, that this might be something we need to tackle. Does it resonate with our core beliefs as people of faith?
Q: Are there particular scriptures that are useful in that interpretation?I think about the narrative of creation, where we see God breathe into adam and creation is called good and the human being is called good. Then if we go back to the commandments, “Thou shalt not kill” is there for a reason. It dictates how we are in relationship one to another but also says something about the value of life.
And if we look beyond texts in general, if we look at the ministry of Jesus, it was fundamentally about attending to the people in his midst, sitting with everyone, meeting the needs, feeding. Feeding was not just a spiritual practice; the body needed nourishment. The body was valued. The person was valued as a whole person.
The echo behind this idea of gun violence is that something is at stake. It’s curious that we talk about gun violence and we’re not just speaking about gun rights. This is the way that you frame the conversation, which says, “There is something there.”
Q: Speak some to that -- the distinction between talking about gun violence and talking about gun rights. I can have a right to own guns, but it’s a different question to say, “Do I have a right to gun violence?”That’s the way that we often hear the conversation in the media and on political platforms. When the conversation of gun violence comes up, the pushback is the idea of gun rights, and those are two different things.
At the end of the day, the question about gun rights isn’t whether or not someone can own a gun. It is just what you said. Is there a right to gun violence? And then, what is the responsibility that we have in even claiming the right to own a gun as a nation or individually?
There are lots of Christians in our nation who are adamant about gun rights and being able to carry their guns, so that any infringement on that seems like a threat. But part of the key to working across difference -- and where preachers have missed the mark -- is to translate what happens in the public square into the theological narrative.
For me, that means we have to figure out how to say why this matters to people of faith. What does it have to do with life? What does it have to do with faith? What does it have to do with our lives and our relationship with God?
This is where we miss the point in the pulpit -- the divide that happens in the message because we are not able to help people of faith translate between faith and everyday life. We tend to distance that stuff out there in the world, as though we do not have to be close to it.
Q: So how do clergy do that?I always say that if we are not attentive to the world in which we live, then our sermons will not be attentive to the world in which we live.
Do we read the news? Do we watch the news?
Pick up a newspaper. Watch the news. Be in conversation with people who are different from you and might not have the same perspective.
We do that also reading the text. In the classroom, I always say that in the first reading of the text, before you even get to thinking about the sermon, just let the free association flow. It’s amazing what happens when we’re reading something and all the connections are happening in our mind that sometimes lay dormant or are elusive, beneath the surface.
If I read something -- I don’t know, say, “the Ammonites went in and possessed the land, and they destroyed all the inhabitants of the land” -- if I’m reading that attentively without just thinking that I know the answer to the text, something happens when I hear “destroy.” There are associations in my mind with “destroy” and “land.”
“Well, wait, people were in the land? So does this mean that the people were killed? And what are the implications of that?” There’s a way where I think we have to let the text jar us, and that happens as we read it closely, and it’s what shakes us from the world in which we live.
Q: Many people now are trying to figure out the role of clergy in talking about political issues. Gun violence and gun rights are clearly political issues, but are they also more than that?It is absolutely political. But I’m not sure how we’re not supposed to get political when it’s the world in which we live. If we look at the Bible, our sacred texts are political. From the beginning, they are about trying to figure out life as people of faith and interacting with other people.
Then if we go to the Gospels, if Jesus wasn’t political, I don’t know who was political. When you say, “The kingdom is at hand” in the middle of the Roman Empire, that is a political statement. That’s a statement about this kingdom that Jesus is speaking about and the literal kingdom of the empire. The turning over of the tables of the money exchangers in the temple -- all of that is political.
It’s just a matter of our willingness to read it that way, even down to the crucifixion of Jesus, which I’ll even call an execution. The gospel is political at heart.
Q: How do clergy help their congregations think critically about all of this and about gun violence?One approach is taking the long-term view in preaching and teaching. Change does not happen overnight, so I always suggest to preachers that they think about, “What are the hopes for your ministry over the long term?” Every congregation is shaped by what it hears over time. This is how we develop our values. Over time, the narrative that comes from the pulpit and the Christian education ministries shapes the values in the congregation. This is a long-term change. We take it small steps at a time, and we need to think about it that way.
Another way is to think about that underlying narrative that I spoke about earlier, the underlying narrative in all of our sermons. If we say we value life, then we need to think about how we preach the value of life over the long term and teach about the value of life in our congregations and context.
The third way I want to think about is, how do we teach in the midst of resistance? In preaching and teaching, there’s always going to be resistance or obstacles to the message being received.
If it’s a congregational context that says, “It’s my right to own my shotgun or my rifle or my M16” -- OK, fine. It’s your right to own it.
But is there a way that the preacher can find something that his or her listeners can agree with, where you can draw a parallel? If somehow in the sermon you’re able to get people on board to say, “Oh yes, we value life, and God values life, so we have the responsibility to take care of life and to take care of one another” -- if they can say yes to that, then the preacher may be able to introduce, “Well, look at this tragedy. A young boy was taken by gun violence, by a random drive-by or a domestic-violence incident.”
It’s about figuring out how to create parallels for people where there is resistance. What can they not disagree with? If we can get them to say, “Yes, I cannot disagree with that,” then by the time we get around to the tough thing that is really the same thing, they’ll also say, “Oh, yeah. That too.”
Q: You’ve written about “disruptive and generative preaching.” Isn’t that what all sermons should be about?It is, but then we have to also recognize that every disruption is not generative. Does it help the community thrive in its life together in ways that continue to foster life more abundantly? Sometimes, we can do things that can be disruptive in the preaching that do not lead to the well-being of the congregation.
In teaching these tough topics, those of us who go and get all sorts of education and knowledge around texts know there are plenty of things we can make Scripture do if we decide to preach it. At the same time, the question on the other side of that is, “How do I do the least harm even as I tackle these tough topics?”
Because we’re not just tackling a text. We’re tackling a text that has authority in the community and the community’s way of life.
Read the interview with Lisa L. Thompson »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: PROPHETIC MINISTRY
The prophet calls for civil discourse
The bombastic prophetic voice must be sounded, but becoming a steady, sensitive, unhesitating pastoral prophet may be a more pressing challenge.
For three hundred years, the voice of prophecy had been silent in the land until John appeared, brusque and outlandish, one “crying in the wilderness.” How odd that they came to him in droves, even as he addressed them as a brood of vipers, announcing an axe poised to cut them down at the roots. Even hard truth catches some inner, discerning ear. They were baptized by the hundreds, Jesus among them.
The voice of prophecy may not be totally silent in our time, but where is it being sounded with vigor and volume, with relentlessness and outrage? Then again, who would choose the role? In a time of escalating fear and hopelessness, will we nurture a new generation of prophets? Will they be unafraid to stand against the empty promises and illusions of security offered by an ethos of domination and power? Who will arise to boldly trust in God’s promises of fullness and grace and reconciling love?
I remember a workshop participant at a church with a history of tension and discord, who even as she said these words laughed at herself, “I wish we could do everything with graciousness and goodwill like they did in the Bible.” The Old Testament narratives are rife with dissension and rebellion, competition and conflict. The positioning and rivalries among the disciples dismayed Jesus. And virtually no one signed aboard for a second missionary junket with Paul. It doesn’t take reading between the lines to see how deep the conflict was between Peter and Paul, though Acts 15 narrates its resolution. Biblical characters, failing to close the gap between differences, bridged them. The issue is not whether there will be broad and ardently held differences of opinion, but how those differences will be expressed. In a time when civility is in collapse, when public discourse is riddled with innuendo or outright assault, the church can model an alternative. Sometimes it does. Too often it does not.
A sad tale unfolds in a downtown church in a major East Coast city. It is not pretty. And it is not unfamiliar, but I find it infuriating. A denominational judicatory is holding its monthly meeting, three hundred delegates in all, clergy and laity, a six-hour agenda at hand. Although the chatter accompanying coffee and pastries seems innocent and amiable, smaller circles of kindred spirits tighten, whispering tactics anticipating the engagements of the day. The “issue that will not go away” is on everyone’s mind—you can fill in the blank yourself. At day’s end, with everyone weary and bloodied, the issue looms larger and more potent than ever, and ardent adversaries are more wounded and divided than when they began. Given an opportunity to speak and listen with open minds and hearts, even as they speak their truth with vigor and persuasiveness, they collapse into a cacophony of name-calling and assault.
Imagine they had called a mission agency in advance of that Tuesday meeting, offering three hundred people to be deployed around the city for six hours. Eighteen hundred person hours! Imagine the senior citizens they might have visited, the kids they might have read to, the meals for the homeless they might have prepared! They might have attended to homes that needed to be weatherized for the approaching winds of winter or patients in a mental hospital who would benefit from a visit. It was no one’s conscious choice, but choose they surely did—to do pitched battle in a musty old sanctuary, in take-no-prisoners combat, impossible as in most wars to declare victors or vanquished.
As I look back over my longest pastorate, one of the things that stands out is the members’ ability to face and engage one another even in the face of sharp and potentially destructive differences of opinion on even the most divisive of issues. The congregation marshaled a sensitivity and courage in fully integrating the prophetic mandate with a gentle and loving pastoral ministry. Though in many cases my political leanings were rather transparent, I made a commitment not to advocate partisan positions from the pulpit—a decision that was not received with universal appreciation. I maintained the right to speak my biases vigorously and persuasively, but only when my preaching robe was off.
Three particular strategies employed across those years are worthy of sharing. In the midst of some national debate, a member felt prompted to place a large table in the back of the church, with a sign that read Faith and Social Concern, inviting people to place reprints of articles that articulated their point of view on any pressing issue. Soon the table overflowed with reprints advocating opinions on various issues, local, statewide, national, and international. Worshipers were urged to select broadly to become informed about differing points of view. Few left church without a stop at that table.
A second strategy emerged during a season of run-up to war, when the mission committee was leading worship one Sunday. After fifteen minutes of typical liturgy, worshipers were dismissed to one of two rooms prepared for their arrival. In one waited a representative from the Quaker Annual Meeting of Philadelphia to speak against the contemplated war; in the other a general from the War College to advocate for the war. The instruction was to choose the speaker and point of view opposite to the one you held and, once there, to speak only to ask questions for clarification. Your task was to become as fully, deeply understanding of that viewpoint as you were able. We returned to the sanctuary for a closing liturgy that urged open-mindedness and prayer for discernment and wisdom for all key decision-makers.
Third, I remember how familiar it became to see petitions on various issues circulating in the coffee hour, sometimes several petitions, often on differing or even opposite sides of a given issue. On one particular Sunday, members learned that the following Saturday two rallies were scheduled at adjacent locations in Washington, D.C.—a pro-life rally and a pro-choice rally, and each group had arranged charter buses to carry participants. Sign-up lists for each rally appeared at coffee hour. This would surely test the limits of our tolerance. I watched, a twinge of anxiety stirring, as individuals, approached by others with clipboards in hand, promptly signed up. That was easy enough. But I also watched a conversation that left the sheet unsigned—clearly pro-life and pro-choice women chatting. I’m no stranger to strained, coarse, and hostile exchanges between adversaries on this difficult and delicate issue, and so my anxiety spiked. Such exchanges typically end, at best, in cool and dismissive silence. My anxiety dissipated and my eyes teared watching these women of divergent and strongly held views smile warmly, embracing. I wished the world were watching.
Over time and after lengthy and patient discussion, the congregation reached consensus on a basic principle—the affirmation of a fourfold process for relating our faith to social issues.
First, become broadly informed on issues at hand, open to as many points of view as integrity and conscience allow. Second, study Scripture and pray, bringing neutrality and openness to that exploration. Third, as study, biblical research, and prayer yield sufficient clarity, articulate your position, boldly and humbly. Fourth, advocate for that point of view unapologetically, speaking and listening with equal care.
It is important to note, as we ponder this invitation to assume the prophet’s mantle for our time, to distinguish two kinds of biblical prophets. There are the bombastic prophets, who speak from outside the political and religious establishment, who sweep in from hometowns far away, their message sharp and explosive, uncompromising and unrelenting. Then there are the pastoral prophets, who speak the prophetic word from within the political and religious establishment, along the streets and lanes of familiar neighborhoods, in the town square and marketplace of their hometown. The bombastic prophetic voice must be sounded, but becoming a steady, sensitive, unhesitant pastoral prophet may be the more pressing challenge.
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Adapted from Gifts of an Uncommon Life: The Practice of Contemplative Activism by Howard E. Friend, Jr., copyright © 2008 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
Read more from Howard E. Friend, Jr. »
Faith and Leadership
There is no prophetic witness withouconfrontation
MISSIONS & EVANGELISM
Alton Pollard: There is no prophetic witness without confrontationThe dean of Howard University's divinity school challenges church leadership to answer the theological mandate that we be in the world even as we are not of it.
Religious leaders must have the courage to witness to social problems while remaining faithful to our common humanity, says the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard III, dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity(link is external). "There is no prophetic witness without confrontation." As dean, Pollard says he is willing to take the heat from religious colleagues and school administrators for engaging in social and political issues, in order to stand authentically before God.
Before becoming dean at Howard in 2007, Pollard served in both religious and educational institutions. As an ordained Baptist minister, he was pastor of John Street Baptist Church in Massachusetts, New Red Mountain Baptist Church in North Carolina and AME churches in Tennessee. He also has directed the Program of Black Church Studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and held faculty appointments at St. Olaf College and Wake Forest University.Pollard earned a B.A. in religion & philosophy and business management from Fisk University, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. from Duke University’s Department of Religion.
He spoke with Faith & Leadership while at Duke Divinity School to deliver the annual Gardner C. Taylor Lecture.
Q: Howard is known for liberation theology; what role does that play in leadership, particularly in the 21st century black church?When we're talking about the black church community at large in the early 21st century, I think there's not much question that the church’s leadership would not have liberation theology as a first or second priority. For them, the focus on salvation remains preeminent, but that perspective is much more about the individual life in the here and now. The liberation perspective is much more about the communal life in the here and now, and therein lies a tremendous difference between the two.
So for me, when you consider ecclesial leaders who have pronounced impact in their ministries and communities via television, radio, movies and other media these days, we're hard-pressed to say that liberation is a significant motif.
But then, many of our churches don’t have a strong relationship with graduate theological education. They are more interested in a focus on the pragmatics, the how-to, the nuts and bolts. But in graduate theological education we're committed to a preparation that is critical and analytical that will enable students, whether conservative, moderate, liberal, progressive, etc., to think large when they leave here and make the applications in their specific context, rather than to have a kind of one-size-fits-all model.
Q: How do you navigate the divide between your institution’s prophetic tradition and the pragmatic world critique?The African-American cultural context provides for recognition that there’s not a disjuncture between our scholarship and our practice. We live in the uneasy tension of needing to address both the prevailing ecclesial norms and the theological possibilities that the liberation perspective offers; that makes for some interesting programming. Interesting because liberation ideas are grounded in a tradition that is very biblically consistent and they are also grounded in the history of foremothers and forefathers. There is a willingness to engage with that [in our churches]. If you don't have exposure [to liberation theology] you can't wrestle with it, and for those students who do have the opportunity [to learn about liberation theology], and go on to become pastors, they can make a difference. It's the Martin Luther Kings and those types of persons who are still upheld as exemplars, as the icons that the rest of us aspire to but never quite reach.
Q: Do you have any examples of where you've had to navigate the conflict between the prophetic role and your role as an institutional leader?There is no prophetic witness without the possibility of confrontation, but if there is a consistency about your witness then there's also a confidence about the long-term possibilities for human community that will come out of it. One constantly weighs the long-term projection against the short-term fallout. The immediate response can be anger, hostility or getting called on the carpet; I'm accustomed to that.
During the last election a son of our university became quite infamous in the media. The beloved Jeremiah Wright. When we brought him to the divinity school in the midst of the maelstrom there was considerable consternation that this was going to be injurious to the school. There was a lot of negative response, but hide your gifts under a bushel basket and that's where they will remain. We try to practice transparency as much as we can. We try to be authentic. Genuineness within and without, a consistency of life, no matter the tensions that are created. At the end of the day the tension that you have to reconcile most is: Can I live with myself?
Q: To what degree do you see your leadership role as a public one to the outside world versus an inside the institution role?I see my role primarily as an internal one. There was no permanent dean at Howard University School of Divinity for five years. I came into an environment that required, and requires still, a lot of internal morale building, foundation laying, before we can go out there full-fledged to make that singular impact on the world. Once we take care of those internal matters, I fully expect that we will turn our attention to public witness. We are in Washington, D.C., in the nation's capital and, as a theological institution, we must be prepared to engage proactively in the public policy issues of the day. The theological mandate requires us to be in the world even as we are not of it.
Q: Have you received criticism for the degree to which you have taken on a public role?Always. I can't remember when I haven't. In our personal lives, to paraphrase the language of King, we speak most vigorously about and to the country that we love. The country may respond with some venom and certainly in King's case responded with death, but no less than the Nazarene himself. Many of us can safely say that the greatest arguments we've ever had have been within our own households; we have struggled valiantly to make sure that we don't lose persons we love, even as we are at odds with them. It is scarcely any different in the social context.
God calls us to love and the old language about speaking truth to power is insufficient if you do not add “in love” to the phrase. Otherwise you depersonalize, you dehumanize, you caricature. As long as you remember that these are persons of flesh and blood like you, fallible and likely to make mistakes, then that leaves you room to dance with others in the public square. To not cut off the possibility of finding rapprochement. That's a holistic, healing and salvific thing.
In my pastoral days, in my early 20s, I informed the leadership of our Baptist church that I was going to begin putting women in prominent leadership positions, as well as inviting women to do public worship pieces from the pulpit. The largest opposition was from a woman who was the head of the deaconess board, the women's traditional leadership body in the Baptist church. She was fiercely hostile, yet when I announced several years later that I was stepping down as pastor, she came and apologized profusely for all of the venomous things she had called me, and she thanked me.
The examples are endless. Right now I am deeply committed to marriage equality; there are colleagues of mine in the church who will certainly have a very different point of view.
Q: Explain what you mean by marriage equality.Marriage equality means that persons of the same gender have every right to legal marriage, as do those of us who are heterosexual. It distills down to the basic requirements inherent in every religious tradition around the world: to love your neighbor as yourself. This is clearly an issue that creates great consternation. For me, it is a matter not only of biblical text but also of civic responsibility. If we cannot recognize the broadening implications, again, the long-term vision of the democratic impulse, no less than the Christian, then I think we are all in trouble in the end.
Q: I can't help but notice as you talk, especially when you speak about conflict, you're full of smiles and laughter. You seem to take a lot of joy in your work.I do, because God called me to it. When I think about where my ancestors came from and the brutality of their days, yet God still enabled them to have hope, how can I not? Because there’s no doubt we've got issues. We've got a bad economy and soaring unemployment; you can't sell your house, can't get a job. We've got all kinds of things going on, but they had chains and searing brands placed on their flesh. They were ripped from home and taken away from families and community; everything was stripped from them. Still, without the benefit of the legislative, legal and educational support that we have today, they were able to turn around and build colleges and universities, establish mortuaries and banks. Why should I, who has so much more, not be confident in the God of my ancestors?
I am extremely confident that God takes care of babies and fools; I move forward knowing I'm going to do something foolish today and trying to be consistently in the presence of the divine. The divine is very much about the collective presence of humanity. It is creation that is groaning. It is the cries of the people, the cries of those who have been victimized. Most of us are candidates for victimization -- because of our skin color, because of where we grew up, because our diction doesn't sound palatable enough or because we come from the wrong side of the ocean. Somebody's going to make fun of me because I wear glasses, or because I don't have any hair, or too much hair. We are all in one way or other candidates for victimization and the question is, do we remember what it is like to be on the receiving end? If we remember, then we will be careful to be compassionate with our sister and our brother no matter how they may receive us.
Read more from Alton Pollard »
Faith and Leadership
VOCATION, DISCERNMENT
Richard L. Floyd: “Prophetic” pastors who don’t love the church"Prophetic" pastors who don't love the church
If the main reason you become a pastor is to promote some cause, then your soul is in danger, and so is the congregation's.
Being pastor of a congregation is hard work. I was one for 30 years. It’s not a day job. It's a vocation that takes up most of your waking hours.
A pastor's life and family are necessarily involved in their congregation “in season and out of season.” I often say being a pastor is the best vocation there is, but the worst job. If you are not called to it, you really don't want to do it.
When I started as a pastor, I learned quickly that you have to love your congregants, even the unlovable, of which there are far too many. These take up a good deal of your time. Some of them you will just never learn to love, and you have to turn them over to God, who does.
I had been a political activist in college and seminary, and had gone to jail for my causes, but when I got into the pastorate I learned very quickly that you can’t be a prophet until you have earned the peoples' trust. This means years of marrying and burying and sitting by hospital beds.
If you do this well they may be ready to hear hard truths from the pulpit. Or they may not. Certainly Isaiah’s prophecies fell on deaf ears.
New ministers who have grown up in the church have a leg up, because they know its rhythms and customs, its “grandeur and misery.” But today many of our ministerial candidates haven't grown up in the church. They often come to seminary in a process of self-discovery. Most of us did that to one degree or another. Seminary is a good place to learn many useful things. What seminaries are not so good at is forming men and women into Christians, much less teaching them how to be faithful pastors. Don’t blame seminaries. It’s not their job. Christian formation is primarily the church's job.
Many come to seminary not only to find themselves, but because of a passion for a social cause, which is fine. In seminary the flame of their passion is often fanned by others who share it, which is also fine.
But if all you know of the faith is what you learn in seminary, you are at a distinct disadvantage. And if the main reason you accept a call from a congregation is to promote your cause, then your soul is in danger, and so is the life of a congregation. The congregation you go to may or may not share your passion. It can be dangerous either way.
If they agree with most of your views, the temptation is to self-righteousness, a tendency to see sin and evil “out there” in your ideological adversaries, and not also in your own soul. Then you have lost the great insight expressed by the Reformers' wise axiom simul justus et peccator, that we are both justified and sinners. Some ministers risk this danger for their entire careers and they don’t even know it.
The other temptation is perhaps more dangerous: to go to a congregation where they don’t share your cause, and you scold them for it. You do not learn to love them, and they do not learn to love you, and eventually your ministry fails.
Some of our pastors sadly seek out this kind of martyrdom, and when they are inevitably cast out, they can then turn and say how stiff-necked and hard-hearted their congregation is. Congregations can be stiff-necked, hard-hearted and even abusive. This is nothing new. Read Exodus or First Corinthians.
But congregations can also be wonderful, supportive, gracious, and long-suffering, especially if they sense you are really trying to be their faithful pastor.
If you’ve the diligence and patience, you can be both a prophet and a pastor. But you’d better be a pastor to the people first. Because that is your primary calling.Read more from Richard L. Floyd »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Gifts of an Uncommon Life: The Practice of Contemplative Activismby Howard E. Friend, Jr.This book of ten essays is a breath of fresh air, a source of inspiration, a wake-up call, and a bold challenge for pastors, congregational leaders, and church members --both active and lapsed -- who long for a new perspective, even a touch of creative irreverence. With an invitation to quietness and stillness, inner strength and resilience, audacious hope and insistent confidence, it welcomes those among the people of God who do not belong to a church or even name themselves as Christian. Yet it does not shy away from raising difficult questions.
Howard Friend offers forthright, at times disarming, candor as he shares his personal pilgrimage of activism rooted in contemplation. Convinced that God still seeks to work in and through the church, Friend shows us where God is present -- at times despite the church itself. In his opinion, the church needs to stir the pot, upset the apple cart, and dare to welcome the new and refreshing. Yet Friend remains hopeful for and committed to the church, calling and equipping it to become its highest and best. Drawing on a range of stories from the Bible and his own lived experiences, Friend invites us to meet real people--pastors, leaders, everyday folks--who dare to dream a new dream, journey toward a far horizon, walk with tireless determination, and press on with awesome hope.
Learn more and order the book »
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