Agent of Change: A Re-frame That Mattered

Change is at the core of our vocation. We hear it in the weighty words like repentance, conversion, redemption, transformation, and reconciliation. But how change occurs is complex, more mystery than not. During my walking around in this mystery I came across a pair of glasses that helped me see from a particular angle.

I came out of seminary excited, feeling ready to be an agent of change. The Search Committee that offered my first pastoral opportunity shared a similar expectation. They proposed: “Here is where we are as a congregation. Here is where we want to be.” The subliminal message I heard: “Your leadership can change us.” So I set about to be an agent of their change?

But along the way — about five years actually — I began to question my capacity to change “the other.” It didn’t work. A particular change might be willed for a period, but when the pressure was released the behavior went back to previous patterns. It didn’t work with my wife, not with my children, not with friends, not with the congregation, and not with myself. Any willful effort to change always invited the counter force of resistance. Clearly, something was missing in my view of change.

What was missing — and it became a re-frame that mattered — is understanding change from a systems’ perspective. It speaks counter-intuitively: focus on yourself, not your congregation, and that, to some degree, will change the congregation. You work on yourself — your clarity of vision, your learning, your integrity, your transformation, your responses, your relationships, your questions, your calling, your presence. It all sounds totally self-serving and selfish until you see the paradox: by working on changing yourself you change the system. By focusing on our functioning in relationships we change the relationships. This perspective — centering in on changing self not congregation — felt like a 180-degree turn.

Let’s review the systems view of change. Imagine a system as a mobile with various hanging, dangling parts. We know from experience that if the height of one part is changed, then the total mobile is changed. All the parts of the mobile are thrown out of balance until the force of togetherness (homeostasis) brings the parts into balance again … but in slightly new positions.

Remember a sermon in which you took a stand that challenged the congregation. It was a new position you were taking, like changing your part of the mobile. The sermon was unsettling. The congregation, like a mobile, was thrown out of balance, however slightly. But you also noticed, either immediately or over time, there was a power in the congregational system at work pulling toward a new stability. The mobile-like congregation eventually settled down into a new balance, somewhat changed.

Or, imagine a number of separate parts connected to each other by rubber bands. Let’s say that you take one part and pull it upward to a new position. Note what happens. All the rubber bands, not just one, are stretched. Then, three possibilities emerge. One, all the rubber bands connecting the other parts could pull the deviant part back to the comfort level of what had been. Or, the deviant part will stretch so far that the band will break, causing a “cut off,” a disconnection. Or, the pull of the adventurous part could invite all of the parts to change in that direction to some degree.

Think again of that same visionary sermon you preached. Notice the options: Did your vision get no traction, no movement of change from the system, with congregants saying in effect, “We are not ready for that”? If so, you go back and wait for another opportunity. Or, was the vision so “far out” it was rejected, “cut off” like the break of a rubber band? Or, was there enough curiosity and excitement from congregants for there to be significant movement toward the vision articulated in the sermon?

Each metaphor illustrates the central point: changing yourself, your position in any relational system changes in some way the relational system as a whole, whether it’s two people or an entire congregation.

While we cannot change the other, we can offer with clarity the changes occurring in us in a way that invites the possibility of significant change happening in them. We challenge by defining our self in relationships. Note this difference. To try to change another is to say, “This is what I think you should believe or do or be.” It’s a “you” message. To focus on our self is to send an “I” message. My message, “Here is where I am with … (issue, situation, belief, conflict). This is what I see or feel,” contains an inherent invitation, “Where are you with this? What do you see or feel?” By focusing on defining yourself and offering that self-awareness, you challenge the other person or persons to do the same, namely, to take responsibility for defining themselves. And these mutual self-expressions create change, hopefully change toward growth and maturity.

This is the essential interaction: This is what I see; what do you see? It’s present in preaching — this is what I see in this text; what do you see? Or in a committee meeting, “This is where I see the connection with our mission; how about you?” These interactions strengthen mutual capacity to take responsibility for our thinking, feeling, and doing.

But this is an important clarity. This focus on self is not to be confused with autonomy or independence or self-differentiation alone. In systems’ thinking, according to Murray Bowen and his interpreter Ed Friedman, a self is a connected self, a self in relationship. The self is always in relationship, like the parts of a mobile and the rubber bands illustrated in my two metaphors. There is so such thing as a separate self. I once heard Friedman muse, “Maybe life is all about how to be a self in relationship.” That’s the heart of it. That’s the challenge of it. It’s the essence of leadership.

I found in this re-frame both a gift and cost. The gift is the energy saved in efforts to change the other. Simply put, willful leadership is exhausting. There is relief in realizing that we cannot motivate people to change, as if we know what others need to become. It’s freeing, not wearying, to stay focused on questioning, challenging, offering, and inviting.

While the gift of this re-frame is huge, I experienced cost from it as well. I did so in three ways. First, because you and others will inevitably “see” differently, conflict can be expected. And if the differences become heated then your work is how to stay connected without agreement. It is costly, hard work to stay in relationship when differences are being mutually voiced and felt. This takes time, emotion, patience, vulnerability, and detachment from outcome.

A second cost. Don’t underestimate the time, maturity and effort it takes to find the space within yourself to clarify your responses. This work of self-definition is demanding. To react from our oldest “reptilian” part of the brain is quick and easy; to respond with thought-through, non-anxious words and presence reflects years of inner work.

A third cost. Challenging others with what you see, along with the invitation for them to do the same while staying in relationship — well, that’s a tall order. It’s an unrealistic ideal to expect such maturity from everybody, including yourself. Leading from self-differentiation will elicit multiple responses: some will be unable to respond with “I” statements; some will experience your self-definition as coercive; some will misinterpret your intent and content; and some will blame you for challenging the status quo. The stretch of the “rubber band” may be too much, too fast, too threatening. No one told me that this expression of intentional leadership could reap so much misunderstanding and loneliness. While systems’ thinking altered my understanding of change, I had to look elsewhere to find the inner strength required to adopt it.

Being a part of change within our multiple relationships is at the heart and in the heart of our call. We are about transformation. In this reflection, like a pair a glasses, I’ve offered one aspect of change I came to see more clearly. For me it was a shift: from focusing on changing others to focusing on changing myself, and from that place stimulate and engage others in their choices. It became a re-frame that mattered.

Being a Leader: A Re-frame That Mattered

Why would “being a leader” qualify as a significant re-frame? Isn’t it obvious that pastors are leaders of congregations? Why would this re-frame make the list of those shifts in perspective that mattered? For me, this shift in self-understanding made a profound difference in the way I came to practice ministry.

“Being a pastor” was my first compelling identity. The memory is vivid when that possibility fell into place. The setting: an introductory course in Pastoral Care, in the large map room, Norton Hall, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1957. The professor, Wayne E. Oates, was up-front unpacking a typical pastoral incident — as I recall, a pastor’s response to a grieving widow. I leaned forward, intrigued and curious, saying under my breath, “I want to do that!” And I have ever since. For me, the title “pastor” has a depth of resonance not found in other titles often assigned to me, such as “senior minister,” or in early days, “Rev,” “Brother Mahan,” “preacher,” or, on occasion, “troublemaker.

My seminary experience gave me additional identities: preacher, teacher, prophet, manager, and liturgist. So, during my first years in pastoral ministry I juggled these roles, valuing them all, attempting them all, but feeling fragmented most of the time. During those years, if someone would have asked me, “Are you a leader?” I would no doubt have answered, “Yes, I am.” But functionally, that is, the way I functioned during those first years was to regard leadership of the institution as the rent I paid in return for the joy of preaching, teaching, leading worship, and offering pastoral care.

This arrangement didn’t work. For a number of reasons my first five-year chapter as pastor came to an unanticipated, precipitous, humbling end. One reason was that my vocational self-identity was fragmented, not integrated. Being pastor proved to be an insufficient pole around which to wrap the many functions of parish ministry. The fragmentation led to over-functioning; over-functioning led to emotional and spiritual exhaustion.

During the ten years between serving congregations as pastor I learned to see myself as a leader. For most of that time I was director of a department within a medical system that included both hospital and medical school. When I returned to congregational life, picking up once again the mantle of pastor, I had changed. I saw myself as pastoral leader. This re-frame, from pastor to pastoral leader, included these shifts:

• from attempting to define others to defining self and self-expression
• from self-defining and losing connection to self-defining and staying connected, particularly with those who differ and resist
• from attempting to change others to changing self in relationship with others
• from preoccupation with content to attending to emotional, relational processes
• from personality-led leadership to position-led leadership, claiming the position in the system (body/church) as “eyes” over-looking, scanning the congregation (body), seeing connections and patterns that others cannot see (aware that others in different positions in the body/church see what the leader cannot)
• from avoiding resistance to valuing resistance, appreciating the energy of inevitable push-back from the challenge to habits, worldviews, and beliefs
• from reacting to others to responding to others
• from the limits of management, Are we doing things right? to include the challenge of leadership, Are we doing the right things?
• from leading confined to problem-solving with current know-how to leading with challenges without current know-how, requiring engaging questions, difficult choices, experimental actions, risking toward what is not yet clear
• from a place of anxiousness (showing up in the congregation as blaming, herding, re-activity, pushing for quick-fixes), to a disciplined effort in non-anxious leading from a Center, an inner freedom from attachment to specific outcomes
• from seeing only pastor and congregation in relationship to frequent triangling in the church’s purpose/mission under which both pastor and congregation respond with curiosity and faithfulness
• from leading for God to leading from God

You might recognize in these statements a number of my influential teachers about leadership: Edwin Friedman, Larry Matthews, Rod Reineke, Peter Steinke, Ronald Richardson, Margaret Wheatley, Ronald Heifetz, and Marty Linsky. These resources showed up just when I needed them.

I entered my last fifteen-year stint with a congregation having internalized this re-frame. Being a pastoral leader, alongside of lay leaders, became my primary vocational identity. I had found a pole around which to wrap the various functions of ministry.

As preacher and liturgist, I was leading, intervening weekly in the congregational system with challenges to hear and embody God’s movement of shalom in the world.

As pastoral “carer” in crises, I was leading, knowing that change in one personal relationship affects change in the larger network of relationships, however slight.

As manager, I was leading, influencing the ways we work together including the decisions we make.

Through my involvement in community concerns, I was leading the mutual impact of church and world.

In each of these functions I was leading; only the forms of expression changed. For good or ill, the spirit-culture of the congregation was impacted by each ministry action. In all of them I was functioning as pastoral leader.

Looking through the rear-view mirror, this shift is noticeable. It’s a re-frame that mattered.

Power-Over to Power-With: A Re-Frame That Mattered

“I’ve been Pharaoh to every liberation movement,” once wrote William Sloan Coffin. “Me too,” I remember thinking when these words passed in front of my eyes over thirty years ago.

I’ve been “Pharaoh” in this sense: I was born into systems — family, church, nation, world — that work to my favor, my well-being and to the dis-favor, ill-being of others. Just being male, white, heterosexual, upper middle class, American — not my choice or achievement — gives me a privilege and power edge. “Born on third base” makes the point. At times this fact has been a source of guilt; at other healthier times, it’s been a resource of influence, an “alongside” resource to mercy and justice making.

During my life-time I have been engaged by the major freedom movements of our day:
women’s liberation; black liberation; gay liberation; class/economic liberation; and liberation from USA as empire. The surprise to me, or more accurately, the grace to me has been the taste of inner freedom these movements have brought to me as well. In my advantages, often disguised, I have found some liberation from the loneliness, constriction, and fear that comes with being in “Pharaoh’s” seat. Or to shift to a biblical metaphor, privileged positions are “logs in our eyes,” preventing clear vision. Every liberation movement is all about seeing clearly and acting from that awareness, from that awakening.

The re-frame that mattered is this: from relationships characterized by power-over to relationships embodying shared power, power-with. Unlike the other re-frames I have named, this change has been gradual and incremental, sometimes painfully so. The older I become, the deeper I see my complicity with domination systems that privilege me. But this re-frame has been clear for decades. It has provided a lens through which I have viewed power. This aspiration for just relationships, which I take to be God’s intention, has been a theme of inner work for all these years.

The rise of feminine power came first to my awareness. In my nuclear family, it was my education that received priority, since my sister would be “only” a wife and mother. There were no females in my seminary classes. At the time, there were no female pastors anywhere except among Pentecostals. And it was assumed that once married, Janice and I would move to where my vocation took us . . . with no questions raised.

But the question was raised soon after Betty Friedan in Feminine Mystique (1964) set fire to a revolution. Around 1968, my wife, Janice said to me, “No longer do I want to be the woman behind the man. I’m returning to graduate school to prepare for my own vocation.”

She did. And we entered therapy. The hard, long work of redefining our marriage began. We relinquished marriage as a one-vote system or one-vocation system while reaching for the capacity and skills to become partners, equal partners. We risked, both of us did, toward a fresh life in this new way of experiencing power. Janice and I were among the fortunate ones, making it through these rapids without capsizing. Beyond marriage, this shift opened me to the gift of women in church leadership, the gift of feminine scholarship, and friendships that have gifted my life and ministry ever since.

Next came the black liberation movement. “Black power” was the awareness finding voice in neighboring Washington, D.C. in 1967. Our suburban congregation, Ravensworth Baptist Church, formed a partnership with a black congregation, First Rising Mount Zion Baptist Church. On many Saturdays about twelve members from each congregation met with a trained facilitator to explore the possibilities of honest, interracial relationships. We keep meeting until they became tired of helping us see our racism. However, during the riots following Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, our church partnership provided a bridge of support during those fearful, divisive days. It was the beginning, a very small beginning, of interracial friendships that allow for difficult, transformative conversations.

Let’s stop at this point, allowing me to name the theological shift that was under-girding this re-ordering of power-relationships. Walter Wink was my primary mentor, in particular his Engaging the Powers, the third book in his trilogy on Powers. Other theological framing, such as process theological thinking, has shaped me as well, but Wink addressed directly the theme of this essay. He notes the rise of systemic domination around 3000 B.C.E. with the city-states of Sumer and Babylon, each system being authoritarian and patriarchal. He steps back, noting the prevailing assumption of “domination systems” for these five thousand years — the fundamental right of some to have coercive power over others (power-over). There developed what Wink calls “the myth of redemptive violence,” the belief that power as violence can save, can solve problems. No wonder, with so many centuries of re-enforcement, this transformation of power in relationships is slow, arduous work, one step at a time.

Domination systems have largely prevailed as the norm during these centuries, but not without challenges and not without alternative options of relational power. The Old Testament prophets denounced the domination arrangements of their day, giving words to the longing for a more just order. In Jesus, God’s domination-free order of nonviolent love is clearly and profoundly unveiled. By word and action Jesus gave flesh to this re-frame of liberation by up-ending assumed power structures of his day. But the domination system proved too strong. Roman imperial forces joined with Jewish leadership to crush the Jesus non-violent movement of compassion and equality. Well . . . not fully or finally. Resurrection, among other things, means that this God movement could not be crushed. Indeed, and in every century since, within domination systems there have always been counter witnesses of Domination-Free relationships. Against this historical background, we can marvel and hail — and yes, join — the multiple liberation movements over time, and in particular our time.

Then came the gay liberation movement in the last decades in the 20th century, another challenge to “Pharaoh.” At that time, when I was a pastoral counselor, some persons came to me struggling with their sexual identity. A few became clear: their orientation was same-sex attraction, not opposite-sex attraction. I was close enough to feel their dilemma — costly to “come out of the closet,” costly not to. There it was again: I, a person of privilege, hearing stories of abusive power, including condemnation from the church. By 1984 I had returned to the church as pastor. Soon I began hearing from some clergy: “AIDS is God’s judgment on homosexuality.” I knew better, I thought. I was, in some sense, forced out of “my closet,” feeling called to offer another voice from the church. Once again, the paradox was at work. In joining a freedom movement I experienced a measure of new freedom and grace.

Economic injustice, another form of abusive power, remains even more entrenched in my life. My privilege of income, house, insurance, and automobile has set me apart, in spite of efforts here and there to come alongside the hungry, thirsty stranger, the naked, sick, and imprisoned — those relationships where Jesus said we could find him. I remain, certainly by global standards, an affluent Christian, just as I remain in systems that favor me and disfavor others.

Within these systems, I can and do attempt to dis-identify, dis-engage, and de-tach from the abuses of power, while at the same time I continue to enjoy the fruits of privilege. Rooted and grounded in mercy within this soil of ambivalence and ambiguity, I can find some laughter at my efforts, even a measure of joy in my half-heartedness.

In this reflection I am not advocating the effort to dismantle hierarchy, even if we could. A hierarchy of roles is necessary in families and other organizations. I am advocating a different understanding of power, one incarnated clearly in Jesus of Nazareth. We know the difference between power that is coercive, dominating, and abusive and power that aligns, comes alongside, empowers, and invites, valuing mutuality, offering partnership. We know that difference.

It’s the difference I saw in the re-frame: from power-over to power-with in all relationships.

This re-frame mattered. It still matters.

Ministry as a Research Project: A Re-Frame That Mattered

Friends, I have revised my website and blog to reflect this time in my life. As a way of leaving this vocation that always exceeded by grasp while filling me with purpose, I’m going back and picking up some tools (re-frames) that I found useful in the gardening we do. These “re-frames” mattered to me in my years of pastoral ministry. I’m passing them along with the hope that some will serve you as well.

…

“Ministry as a research project”—a phrase I first heard from Ed Friedman, the rabbi connecting family systems theory with leadership. But the antecedents for this re-frame go back a way. When I allowed it, this re-frame could change the way I viewed my work.

First, let’s understand Friedman’s point. He spoke of taking with him into a session with a client a yellow legal-sized pad with a line drawn down the middle of the page. On the left side of the pad he wrote factual notes from his conversation that might assist him at a later point in the therapy, e.g. age, work, family members, hospitalizations, medications, etc. And on the right side of the pad he recorded what he was learning for himself from the interactions. Much later, he reports, he would cut the paper down the middle, discarding the process notes while preserving for himself the personal learning gleaned from the experience.

The story stayed with me as a metaphor—the “yellow pad with a line down the middle” with new ideas on the right side to be harvested. For me it was a fresh slant on ministry, asking, “What am I learning here?”

The antecedents to this stance go back further for me. Early in seminary the classic Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl came to my attention. I suspect you know the story. Frankl, a young psychoanalyst, was abducted and taken to a Nazi concentration camp, just for being Jewish. Everything was confiscated from him: his family, his friends, his synagogue, his community, his work, his book manuscript, his clothes, his hair, potentially his life, and even his name, now a number. Everything. Everything . . . except one thing. He discovered that the one thing that could not be taken from him was his freedom to respond. He claimed this freedom. He chose to treat this horrific prison experience as a research project, observing how inmates found meaning or failed to find meaning in this death-dealing existence. The project—what he was learning—kept him alive, gave him purpose, and became the basis of a new approach to psychotherapy that he later developed as Logotherapy or “meaning” therapy.

Let’s review a characteristic frame of ministry. Drawing on the “yellow pad” metaphor, most of ministry is preoccupation with the left side, that is, focusing entirely on the work itself, the people involved, their needs, their possibilities. That’s the way I framed it initially. I was to be available to help, not to learn . . . show up to give, not receive . . . present to serve, not to be served . . . eager to change, not be changed. You can guess where that frame led me. Yes, to over-functioning, over-attaching to results, and eventually to bone weariness of heart and body.

Later I began to experiment with the re-frame—what am I learning here? What am I clinging to that I need to release? What am I seeing in the other or myself or situation that I want to savor, perhaps digest for growth, my own and others? Something is trying to grow here, something trying to emerge, something of the Spirit happening here—where and what?

This re-frame could change my angle of vision. The very question, like a crowbar, could prize open my emotional over-investment in a person or situation. It could release my grip on forcing some quick solution. Just by asking the question—what am I learning?—would grant distance and perspective. Raising the question, either in the moment or later, created space for exploring options. Even better is the question that invites mutual insights—what are we learning here?

An example. The closer I came to my retirement as pastor the higher the level of my anxiety. The prior endings of my predecessors were problematic, so I felt the pressure to help configure a good ending, both for myself but especially for the congregation. By that time I was schooled, as you are, in the impact of pastor endings upon a congregational system for years and years, for good or ill. So I was full of angst, asking: When to announce my retirement? How long between announcement and last Sunday? How will my preaching be different during the last months? What will be my agreements about requests for weddings and funerals? How will I say goodbye? With whom do I need personal time? How will “ending” gatherings and rituals be handled? You get the picture. I was feeling a huge amount of responsibility. And all this anxiety, even before my announcement.

Then the re-frame inspired by Frankl and Friedman came to mind. I began asking myself, “What if I treat the ending process as a research project?” Immediately curiosity peaked. My energy shifted. My anxiety lifted a degree or two. My thinking was invited in another direction. What if I framed the question: “In our fifteen years with you as pastor what have we learned about being church together?” What if I kept journal notes about what I am learning about my leadership over these years? What if I selected an “ending” committee to be with me and share all the planning that must happen?

You can sense the shift from this re-frame. For me the difference is noteworthy. I entered my last months with less anxiety, less sole responsibility and with more curiosity, more inner freedom. There were times when I could pause, take a deep breath, and ask, “What am I learning here? What are we learning here?”

And, you may be thinking, this could apply to other areas of my life—marriage or illness or friendship as research projects, occasions for learning and growth. Try it out and see.

I pass along this shift for your consideration. Occasionally seeing ministry as a research project gave perspective, sparked curiosity, invited playfulness and provoked transformation. It’s a re-frame that mattered.

Ministry as a Research Project: : A Re-Frame That Mattered

Friends, I have revised my website and blog to reflect this time in my life. As a way of leaving this vocation that always exceeded by grasp while filling me with purpose, I’m going back and picking up some tools (re-frames) that I found useful in the gardening we do. These “re-frames” mattered to me in my years of pastoral ministry. I’m passing them along with the hope that some will serve you as well.

…

“Ministry as a research project”—a phrase I first heard from Ed Friedman, the rabbi connecting family systems theory with leadership. But the antecedents for this re-frame go back a way. When I allowed it, this re-frame could change the way I viewed my work.

First, let’s understand Friedman’s point. He spoke of taking with him into a session with a client a yellow legal-sized pad with a line drawn down the middle of the page. On the left side of the pad he wrote factual notes from his conversation that might assist him at a later point in the therapy, e.g. age, work, family members, hospitalizations, medications, etc. And on the right side of the pad he recorded what he was learning for himself from the interactions. Much later, he reports, he would cut the paper down the middle, discarding the process notes while preserving for himself the personal learning gleaned from the experience.

The story stayed with me as a metaphor—the “yellow pad with a line down the middle” with new ideas on the right side to be harvested. For me it was a fresh slant on ministry, asking, “What am I learning here?”

The antecedents to this stance go back further for me. Early in seminary the classic Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl came to my attention. I suspect you know the story. Frankl, a young psychoanalyst, was abducted and taken to a Nazi concentration camp, just for being Jewish. Everything was confiscated from him: his family, his friends, his synagogue, his community, his work, his book manuscript, his clothes, his hair, potentially his life, and even his name, now a number. Everything. Everything . . . except one thing. He discovered that the one thing that could not be taken from him was his freedom to respond. He claimed this freedom. He chose to treat this horrific prison experience as a research project, observing how inmates found meaning or failed to find meaning in this death-dealing existence. The project—what he was learning—kept him alive, gave him purpose, and became the basis of a new approach to psychotherapy that he later developed as Logotherapy or “meaning” therapy.

Let’s review a characteristic frame of ministry. Drawing on the “yellow pad” metaphor, most of ministry is preoccupation with the left side, that is, focusing entirely on the work itself, the people involved, their needs, their possibilities. That’s the way I framed it initially. I was to be available to help, not to learn . . . show up to give, not receive . . . present to serve, not to be served . . . eager to change, not be changed. You can guess where that frame led me. Yes, to over-functioning, over-attaching to results, and eventually to bone weariness of heart and body.

Later I began to experiment with the re-frame—what am I learning here? What am I clinging to that I need to release? What am I seeing in the other or myself or situation that I want to savor, perhaps digest for growth, my own and others? Something is trying to grow here, something trying to emerge, something of the Spirit happening here—where and what?

This re-frame could change my angle of vision. The very question, like a crowbar, could prize open my emotional over-investment in a person or situation. It could release my grip on forcing some quick solution. Just by asking the question—what am I learning?—would grant distance and perspective. Raising the question, either in the moment or later, created space for exploring options. Even better is the question that invites mutual insights—what are we learning here?

An example. The closer I came to my retirement as pastor the higher the level of my anxiety. The prior endings of my predecessors were problematic, so I felt the pressure to help configure a good ending, both for myself but especially for the congregation. By that time I was schooled, as you are, in the impact of pastor endings upon a congregational system for years and years, for good or ill. So I was full of angst, asking: When to announce my retirement? How long between announcement and last Sunday? How will my preaching be different during the last months? What will be my agreements about requests for weddings and funerals? How will I say goodbye? With whom do I need personal time? How will “ending” gatherings and rituals be handled? You get the picture. I was feeling a huge amount of responsibility. And all this anxiety, even before my announcement.

Then the re-frame inspired by Frankl and Friedman came to mind. I began asking myself, “What if I treat the ending process as a research project?” Immediately curiosity peaked. My energy shifted. My anxiety lifted a degree or two. My thinking was invited in another direction. What if I framed the question: “In our fifteen years with you as pastor what have we learned about being church together?” What if I kept journal notes about what I am learning about my leadership over these years? What if I selected an “ending” committee to be with me and share all the planning that must happen?

You can sense the shift from this re-frame. For me the difference is noteworthy. I entered my last months with less anxiety, less sole responsibility and with more curiosity, more inner freedom. There were times when I could pause, take a deep breath, and ask, “What am I learning here? What are we learning here?”

And, you may be thinking, this could apply to other areas of my life—marriage or illness or friendship as research projects, occasions for learning and growth. Try it out and see.

I pass along this shift for your consideration. Occasionally seeing ministry as a research project gave perspective, sparked curiosity, invited playfulness and provoked transformation. It’s a re-frame that mattered.

Meaningful Evaluation

Meaningful evaluation—an oxymoron? Well, maybe not.

Jim Chatham, a retired Presbyterian pastor, told me a story that gives a new angle on evaluation. I wish I had heard the story in earlier days of active leadership.

Jim invited a glass artist, Ken VonRoen to meet with him and some other pastors. The setting: one artist of one medium meeting with other artists of another medium. The conversation included the question of meaningful feedback or evaluation. VonRoen was clear:

I don’t ever let the question, “Do you like it?” be the question used to evaluate my art. No. The question is, “Does my art call you forward to a place where you have not been before? Does it ask you to look at your normal world through different eyes? Does it invite you to a new perspective?” If it does, then I have succeeded! I hope you like my art. I try to design it so you will. But that is not the point.

Upon hearing this story my imagination fired, picturing its application as a pastor.

Parishioner: leaving the worship service saying, “I sure liked your sermon.” Pastor: “Thank you, so much. Could we step aside for a moment (or, more likely, can I call you this afternoon)? I want to hear what you liked and what it meant to you.”

Or, on Monday morning at staff meeting, “Where did our ministry last week, including leading worship yesterday, take us personally to new places in our lives, to new ways of seeing?”

Or, parishioner in a note: “Pastor, during my grief, you meant so much to me. We couldn’t have made it without your words and presence.”

Pastor: calling (not emailing or texting), “Pat, thank you for your gracious note. I treasure as well the time together. Could we talk now or at a later time that suits you? I am curious. What about my words and presence helped you get through that dark time? Also, I would like to share how that time with you, Kathy and Mel, helped me see some new things.”

Or, parishioner or colleague: “I didn’t much like your sermon (or your comment, or what you did).” Pastor: “I’m interested. Tell me more. Where did what I said (or do) take you?

Or, pastor meeting with core leaders at the usually unsatisfying annual evaluation, suggesting, “Let’s talk specifically about where our leadership of the congregation during this year has taken us— perhaps personally or as a leadership team or as a congregation. Are we in new places we have never been before? Are we seeing with new perspectives?

Meaningful evaluation? Yes. Maybe it is possible. But my, what courage and inner security it takes to ask these questions. Do we really want to know?

A Pastor Advantage

“Pastoral ministry is one of the last generalist professions,” it’s often said. And that’s true. You have to wear many hats: preaching, teaching, leading, pastoral care, managing and community leader. And each function calls for a different skill set.

But you are specialists, as well. Your specialty is grief ministry. That’s your expertise. From beginning to end, you are alongside of this sequence: illness, dying, death, funeral/memorial service, after care. Other care-givers, like nurses, funeral directors, physicians, family, and friends have unique roles to fill, but, as pastor, you have access to the whole grieving process. If pastors are faithful in this work, relationships with congregants deepen; if pastors fail here, congregant relationships weaken.

Consider seeing this specialty in a larger sense. Among helping professionals, you possess a distinct advantage. All around us death and decay are being experienced on a much broader scale than persons physically dying. We are daily engaging individuals and families grieving multiple losses. So much of what “worked” is not “working” now — in virtually every area of our lives. Given this historical context, your vast experience with death and dying well positions you to see and offer what is critically needed.

Our moment in time is being similarly named: New Reformation (Phyllis Tickle); New Axial Age (Karen Armstrong); The Great Turning (Johanna Macy); From Empire to Earth Community (David Korten); From Domination Systems to Domination-Free Systems (Walter Wink). This major historical transition, however it’s named, is about change. And change is about loss. And loss is about grief.

The hard part of change is loss because the letting go has happen before the new can be seen. The trapeze act gives us the picture. The trapeze artist must first release the current bar, risk suspension in mid-air, and trust that a new bar is coming. That’s what grief looks like.

Call to mind how many of your pastoral conversations are about the losses that come with change — the external, measurable losses of technical prowess, job, status, income, place, structure mirrored by the more internal, immeasurable losses of self-esteem, confidence, security, control, and trust. The grief process follows, more or less, a pattern that includes denial, bargaining, anger, fear that may, if honored, move to acceptance, letting go, and even gratitude for what was.

You know this process like the back of your hand. You are not afraid to place yourself in the midst of grief’s intensity. Others, perhaps most others, are likely to withdraw for fear of saying the wrong words or doing the inappropriate thing. You have an advantage. You know it’s not about saying or doing the “right” thing. You know its primarily about Presence, being present with listening, mirroring, encouraging, coming alongside like a midwife, patiently and sensitively assisting in the letting go and the birthing of the new.

Of course, change has always been with us, but the accelerating rate of change is the big story of our time. No longer is the rate, 2-4-6-8, but rather, 2-4-8-16-32. Grieving multiple loses may be our primary inner work. People need you — neighbors, family and congregants alike. They need your expertise. They need your presence. They need to experience within their loses the paschal mystery, the very core of your calling: dying/rising; facing into loss trusting that life is rising out of death.

You and I, as pastors, have an advantage. Can we see it, then offer it?

The Wager

You and I often lament the overuse, the abuse, and the misuse of two words: God and love. Some recommend a moratorium on these words. Others suggest substitutes, like “G-d,” or synonyms like, “Holy One” or “Spirit” or “Life Force” or “compassion” or “justice” or “mercy.” But there is no way around it — these words, God and love, are essential, not replaceable, despite our being tongue-tied in naming the unnamable.

Over the past Christmas season I joined these two words, God and love, in a poem inspired by Raymond Lull.

The Wager

“I love you” . . .  “I love you too.”

the universal exchange

resounding around the globe.

Subtract “I” and “you,” “love” remains.

The in-between part

the invisible, can’t measure it, part

the word with many names — justice, passion, compassion, mercy

the Mystery with no names.

Strange: Betting your life on a Mystery.

“Where did you come from?” “From love.”

“Who are you?” “Beloved, be-loved.”

“What formed you?” “Love”

“What’s your practice?” “Extravagant loving.”

“What about difficulty?” “That too . . . hold in love.”

“What’s permanent?” “Only . . . love.”

“What about Christmas?” “Love enfleshed.”

“What about God?” “Love Source.”

“Why are you here?”  “To fall into Love.”

“Where are you now?” “A beginner.”

Strange: Betting your life on a Mystery.

The Pastoral Prophetic Edge

Prophetic is such a vigorous word. It brings to mind the courageous actions of an Amos, Shiphrah and Puah, Ghandi, Day, or King. Prophets stand up, stick out with their actions for justice in the face of oppression.

I have been thinking about the prophetic edge of pastors.

In North Carolina there is currently a ground swell of protest to current legislation called Moral Monday. When legislators were in session, rallies, led by the N.C. NAACP, gathered each Monday in Raleigh to protest legislation that many of us regard as unjust and immoral. Thousands gathered each week. Over nine hundred were arrested in non-violent witness. I joined in both.

Recently I participated, along with my grandaughter, Leigh and son, Mark, in a Walk for Grandchildren culminating in a rally at Layette Park in front of the White House. We were protesting the destructive effects of fossil fuels on global climate in general and the Keystone XL pipeline in particular.

Were my actions prophetic? Hardly. They cost me little. I hold no position to protect. I have the time. I have the health. I have little to lose.

I’m thinking, what about the prophetic edge of pastors? Their prophetic witness is not so obvious or dramatic. Here is a way to see it.

Johanna Macy and Chris Johnstone in their provocative book, Active Hope, lists three dimensions of the prophetic. One is direct action, the kind I just named. This collective witness can expose publicly the damage caused by political, educational, religious and economic policies. Events, like rallies, boycotts, campaigns, petitions and other forms of protest can awaken the larger population to awareness — and possibly to action.

A second form of prophetic witness is changing the system. This involves rethinking the way we do things and, likely in the process, redesigning structures and policies. The current attempt to recreate our health care system would be an example. So would the increasing options for socially responsible financial investing. It’s the hope that these protests of Moral Monday will affect future elections and, as a result, affect future legislation.

There is a third dimension of prophetic action: the change in consciousness. It is probably the most important, least measureable and less noticed of the three. Neither protesting nor changing systems will stick unless there is a change in our mind/heart set. New structures or policies will not survive without deeply embedded values to sustain them. These external changes require a consciousness that both summon and undergird the actions for “mercy and justice.”

This takes us to the home turf of pastors. We are in the business of advocating a new way of seeing. We are all about worldviews, the way we see the world, inviting others to “put on the mind (consciousness) of Christ.” Reality, we declare, is thoroughly relational with no separation from a Love that never ends, not now or later, nor in life or death. Within this network of interdependence, communion, and mutuality, the Spirit is ever present working for just relationships. It’s gospel, good news.

I submit this to be a prophetic edge, even a prophetic wedge toward personal and social change. What is “good news” to us is “bad news” to those seeing Reality as consisting of separate parts with the point of life being individual success, individual gain, individual freedom, individual power, individual salvation. We proclaim partnership, not domination; power-with, not power-over; community, not individualism; collaboration, not binary either-or thinking; non-violence, not violence as problem solving; and grace as gift, not achievement.

I close with what you know all too well. When you talk this way and walk this talk, watch out! Resistance happens next. It’s the prophetic edge that cuts both ways. Count on it. Nothing is more threatening than messin’ with the way people see the world and themselves in it. Those captivated by the Dream always call forth killers of the Dream. The more we live this Way and invite others to this path, the greater the push back, criticism, and yes, persecution.

It was promised by Jesus . . . along with the barrels of joy.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Who am I? . . . a question, like a sinker on a fishing line, that takes you down, down into your depths. For Jacob, in front of a mirror, asking the question over and over again transformed his life.

Here is the story. Jacob gave me permission to share his story as long as I used his real name. He wants to claim it. Jacob is an inmate at Marion maximum-security prison and a member of our weekly writing group. As facilitator, my plan on this particular day was to reflect on transformation stories of other famous prisoners, e.g. Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, and my favorite, Victor Frankl. But before I knew it, our writing circle of five began to tell their own stories of radical change.

Jacob shared his. This is the setting: Jacob in “solitary” for thirty-four months with an hour a day for exercise and shower. A toilette in the corner, bare bed along one side, wash basin in the other corner . . . and a metal mirror secured to the wall. “Yes,” I thought, “mirror, mirror on the wall!”

For two years anger keeps him alive. He spends his little bit of freedom on outbursts of defiance, spewing abusive language with accompanying obscene behavior. “What happened at the two year mark?” I ask.

“It was that damn mirror on wall that got me,” he says. “It was ever-present, always there, as if staring me down. No where to hide. Over and over and over again, it keeps asking: “Who are you?” “Who are you?” “Who are you?”

Over time something happens. He calls it a miracle. I call it grace. Somehow through his mirrored encounters he begins to answer the question on deeper and deeper levels. From identifying himself primary as a criminal, as a angry person, as a complete failure at twenty-seven, he begins, with the help of his new Rastafarian faith, to identify himself as African. (His father, whom he never knew, was from Ghana.) He goes deeper still with the question — who am I really — beginning to glimpse himself as a cherished child of God. In telling the story he keeps repeating the words, “identity” and “home.” There is such mystery to his story, no clear step-by-step path to this deeper place. But no doubt about it — his presence, his spirit, his smile gives evidence of this profound change.

Since that day I have been pondering two questions.

First, why Jacob? There are many, many other inmates experiencing solitary confinement. And they, each one, have mirrors fastened to the wall. What was it about Jacob that led him to see in the mirror these deeper and deeper responses to “who are you?” Why do some — including us all — “get” grace, or better, realize “being graced,” but most people don’t? And why is it so counter-intuitive for any of us to sustain the awareness that our worth as pure gift, not our achievement? For me, there remains such mystery about how, with whom and how long inner transformation happens.

My second question is this. What if I took, as a spiritual exercise, looking in the mirror asking repeatedly “who are you?” Currently I only glance into the mirror, long enough to part my hair, wash my face and brush my teeth. I don’t like reminders of my aging. Now, because of Jacob, I am experimenting with lingering long enough to ask, “Who are you? Whom will you be today? From what identity will you live this day?”

Thanks, Jacob.

Flying Close to the Sun

Over the phone I was hearing a familiar story. Another visionary (not a pastor) flying too close to the sun with wax between the wings melting, intimate relationships dissolving, then the predictable fall from the sky. I hung up the phone, and sat in silence for a while, feeling deep sadness. A profound tragic sadness.

​This is the tragedy: he has been a voice of life-changing news. His vision was eye-opening for many. His five-talent skills were invested for good, much good.

​This is the sadness: he came to believe he was good news. His admirers made the message about him. And, sadly, he came to believe them.

​I’m referencing the familiar Greek myth. Icarus, in spite of the warning from his father, Daedalus, flies so close to the sun that the wax attaching wings to body melts. The wings fall, along with his body, into the sea.

​Flying high is a part of a pastor’s job description. It’s not optional. It’s inherent in the fine print of an unwritten contract. With no small amount of chutzpa, every week pastors stand before congregation being a living symbol of More than they are. They enter into the dark places of human anguish, vulnerable to the raw cries, “Pastor, where is God in this? Why us? What should we do?” Pastors fly high with their humanity on display, becoming the subject of evaluations seldom heard and a Rorschach for outrageous projections — all the while holding confidential information without it showing. What daring, I say. What audacity.

​Most pastors I know fly high with a vision that they cannot but proclaim. They cannot stop themselves from attempting the flight. They seem to heed a compelling summons that will not let them go.

​But they fly high at the great risk of self-destructive and others-destructive hubris.

​But I call attention to the rest of the story. Often left out of the telling of this myth is the other advice that Daedalus gives his son. He also warns him not to fly too low, too close to the sea, less the water prohibit the lift of his wings. This is the counter caution: flying too low, playing it safe are equally self-destructive. Fear of failure, risk, and vulnerability is as lethal as flying too close to the sun.

​This seems to be a cautionary tale in two directions: the danger of believing your service is about you; and the danger of believing it is not about you. One hazard is pride that “goeth before the fall;” the other is low self-regard that lacks boldness.

​I’m left wondering if there is a wax that holds in high flying? I suspect its substance includes humility, not hubris. The few visionary leaders that come to my mind are keenly aware of the Wind that sustains and empowers them. If pressed, they speak of yielding to and working with a force far more than their power or even their understanding. “Success” or “achievement” are not in their vocabulary. “Gratefulness” is.

Shepherd and Manager

Shepherding a family of faith; managing a religious institution. Two hats, two roles, two job descriptions. It seems that way. It feels often like a balancing act. But is it? Or, could these be separate tilts or bows from a single identity?

I hear this polarity in comments like these: “The church pays me to handle staff. The rest (the soul/spiritual work) I would gladly give free of charge.” Or, “You gotta pay the rent (organization management), so you can do what you love to do.”

I remember this self-talk during seminary days, “Just think, when I am a pastor, I will be paid to study/ponder the gracious mystery of God, teach and preach this grace, embody its hope in caring ways, and in following Jesus help a congregation put flesh and blood to this justice/love in the world. Incredible! Paid for that? What a deal!”

Then the rude awakening came at my first call as pastor of Coffee Creek Baptist Church for $50 a week and at all the subsequent congregational invitations to be pastor. There it was in the fine print of an unwritten contract: I was paid to help manage a religious institution. Yes, I was paid for more than that, but not less. And yes, I did not manage alone. But I was expected to work with budgets, funding, policies, records, staff supervision, membership loss/gain, and building maintenance, not unlike a manager of a Walmart or a Hardees or a Ford dealership.

I recall a conversation with a pastor in which I saw a glimpse of how shepherding and managing might be two stances from the same identity. I like it because it is a typical issue that comes to congregational leadership.

The church leaders’ were expressing appropriate concern for the security of the church building, and, in particular the safety of the secretary who is often alone in the building. The building committee took it upon itself to purchase a number of surveillance cameras without checking with the pastor and some other lay leaders. They saw what needed to be done, and did it.

The pastor spoke of being aware of both hats. Her management-head was concerned about the hasty action that left out other leaders, including herself. She knew the leaders would need to review their process in decision-making.

Her shepherd heart saw something else. Their building is a hospitable, anonymous, safe space for the 12-step participants in recovery who meet weekly. The multiple surveillance cameras might compromise this ministry.

What struck me about the story was the pastor’s integration of both process management and spiritual leader. She saw and lifted up what was missing, namely, the witness of their church in management decisions. The solution, a good business decision, might jeopardize the mission value of hospitality. As I saw it, she was bridging the false dichotomy between business issues and ministry issues. In this “bread and butter” management dilemma she saw embedded a faith opportunity, a possible teachable moment. What she saw is incarnational — God’s compassion for the invisible taking on flesh and blood in ordinary church life situations?

Maybe that’s what she is paid for — to keep showing up in institutional/family relationships and asking the faith question, the Jesus question, the mind of Christ question.

On Job Satisfaction

“What gives you satisfaction in your work?” the reporter asked.

It’s probably not the best question. Sounds a bit self-serving. But it was the question asked me by a reporter some twenty or so years ago. I still remember my answer. “I love the privilege of a ringside seat near members making sense of their lives, particularly during hard times.”

My answer still rings true after all these years. My role as pastor invited me alongside when a rug was pulled out from beneath a member’s feet. The sudden stroke, the dying and death, the end of a marriage or friendship or job — losses of every conceivable kind. We see up close the rawness of grief and the groundlessness from pain, watching protective shields shatter before our eyes. But not just crises. Gains too. How do people make sense of the good events in their lives? The birth of a long awaited child, the transformative “ah ha” of some breakthrough, the realization of a personal dream. But mostly the courageous struggle for meaning comes with the hard stuff.

These pastoral conversations might occur in my office or over a cup of coffee. More often they took place in the home, in the “living room,” a safe space.

I was invited to be there not as a voyeur, but as a presence, a living symbol of the More-than-me and a face to a congregation’s care. I could listen to their questions, and add a few of my own. I could watch the resources they turned to draw upon. I could participate, in some small measure, in the fears, doubts, and faith that rose to the surface demanding a hearing. Up close I could feel their yearning for meaning. Holy ground it was. A sacred privilege. And to think, I was paid for doing this.

But, upon reflection, there is a major flaw in the metaphor, “a ringside seat.” Being pastor is more than having a close up view of human struggles in the “ring.” The metaphor denotes detachment. Quite the opposite, in coming “alongside” you go “inside.” We become a part of the action, thrown into the ring, so to speak. There we are, when life events send the presence of God into eclipse. There we are, in the midst of the push-pull energy of relationships — parent-child, spouse-spouse, friend-friend, member-member, parishioner-God. There we are, immersed in the contentious energy in a budget committee or congregational meeting. There we are, preaching a counter-cultural gospel that generates a dissonance that takes some to deeper meaning and drives others to angry resistance.

In that “ring,” we learn — if we are to thrive — to be present looking for signs of the Spirit at work for healing and hope, to receive reactivity and not be reactive, to know a joy not tied to results, and even come to value the energy within conflict. These relationships, especially the difficult ones, kept forcing my ego out of hiding, shining a light on my desire to control, to look good, to achieve. Challenges, lessons and occasional taste of transformation — but not from a detached ringside seat.

If asked today the same question of satisfaction in my vocation, I think I would say, “I loved the privilege of being in the same arena (not ring) with multiple people in covenant, my teachers in disguise, seeking the meaning of their lives — just as I was.” And to think, I was paid for this.

Now it’s your turn. I am the reporter asking you, “What gives you satisfaction in your work?”

Where Saving Happens

This time it was the closing sentence that grabbed me: “In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.” Everything? Everything?

The other parts of Thomas Merton’s letter to friend Jim Forest have for years challenged me. His counsel is still near impossible for me to read:

“Do not depend on the hope of results . . . you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to the idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself . . . You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people . . . In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

I like results. I work for results. I depend on results for affirmation of my worth. I love goal setting and the satisfaction of checking off my list what I have accomplished. I enjoy working with groups, like congregations, who want to go from “A” to “B,” and not deterred by seldom arriving at “B.” I love the illusion of making things happen, making time, making progress, making love, making a difference. I often overhear myself saying, “Don’t be attached to outcomes,” only because that’s the word I need and often forget.

But “in the end,” Merton writes, “saving” is about personal relationships. What did he mean, “in the end?” Well, at seventy-seven, I am coming toward “the end.” Is this a truth that takes time to understand, lots of time, a near life time? Or, maybe it takes coming “to the end,” the breakdown of repeated efforts to “makes things happen” before this truth opens up to us.

For instance, here’s what I am thinking about the pastoral role. As Merton suggests to me, it’s about a particular understanding of “personal relationships” with “specific people.”

As pastor, you are helicopter-ed down into a set of established relationships, called a congregation. These are specific people with specific names with specific histories. You give up the luxury of loving from a distance. You plant yourself there amid all the differences of age, temperament, and interest in God or church. You claim the privilege of roaming around this web of relationships doing one thing — relating. Relating is what you do in all the various roles. In preaching, ritualizing, teaching, managing, leading, caring — you intentionally enter relationships or offer new ones. It’s the string that threads all the beads that, when seen separately, make the job impossible. It’s what you do — appear, relate, and see what happens. In one sense, it’s all you do.

This to me is the bottom-line good news of the gospel: God is relational; Reality is relational; Love is relational, Love never ends, Love is a Force from which we cannot be separated, either in life or death. New science, particularly quantum physics, is helping us recover what is essential gospel truth — there is no such thing as a separate, disconnected part, particle or person. All is connected.

This says to me that God/Spirit/Love/ Justice is found within relationships, within connections, within the inter-being space, within the in-between part. In the deepest sense, I don’t love Janice, she doesn’t love me. Rather, through a measure of trust and vulnerability in our relationship, we know Love, we are in Love, we fall into Love, we channel this Love. This saving experience, as I understand Merton, can only happen within personal relationships. It’s the invisible, in-between power that flows through open connections among living beings.

So, I submit that our job is to show up in these relationships with authenticity, holding, and curiosity.

You show up with authenticity, being present as much as possible in the present with who you are — your gifts, your attention, your listening, your vision, your questions, your humor, your voice.

You show up with authenticity, holding, that is, embracing respectfully the inevitable differences in any relationships, refusing to coerce or sever or quick-fix or polarize, being non-attached to specific results, holding these relationships in the Light, to honor a Quaker phrase. If you can do this, let’s say, 60% to 70% of the time, well, that’s huge!

And you show up with authenticity, holding, and curious about what growth, learning, grace will emerge in these relationships. You assume that within these relationships God is at work. Something new is trying to be born that’s liberating, that’s good news, that’s healing. You show up looking for this evidence of Spirit at work, and when possible, align your energies with that Force, midwifing new life.

This is where I go with these words of Merton: “In the end, it’s the reality of personal relationships [with specific people] that saves everything.” It’s what pastors do: with God, in God, offer a certain kind of relationship, no matter the circumstances, no matter the expectations, no matter the responses, no matter the outcomes. It’s what we hope to do.

Carol and Kenosis

Not many Carols have crossed my path over my lifetime. She is empty of religion, no church background whatsoever, yet hungry, relishing each morsel of bread now extended.

Here’s the story. I met my new neighbor, Carol some months ago while walking my dog, Katie. I discovered that she moved to Asheville to work at Mission Hospital as a nurse in the trauma unit. But soon after her move, she broke her leg which, in turn, precipitated early retirement. Without family close by and no mobility, she was left to herself throughout a long winter recovery.

Alone and lonely she accepted the invitation by another neighbor to attend their church. As she was telling the story about attending, her eyes lit up with excitement. She spoke with delight about what she had found at that church — the Jesus “take” on God’s love within a community that fully accepted her beginner’s questions.

I thought to myself — here is a person full of professional competence in her medical field, plus parenting three children into adulthood, yet speaking of a “hole” being filled with a joy she didn’t know she was missing. I was surprised over her surprise as she stood before me with such childlike wonder over a church and its message.

I added, “I know that church well and the pastor, Guy Sayles, is a close friend. Have you come to know him?” “Oh, no,” she quickly responded. “Why, I wouldn’t know what to say. Besides he might ask me a question. You see, I know nothing, absolutely nothing about God or Jesus or the bible. Nothing! I couldn’t approach him. I wouldn’t know what to say?” “Well, how about me going with you?” I offered. “Oh, yes, yes,” she said. “Would you do that?”

So I arranged the appointment. A few days ago Carol and I had our time with Guy.

I wanted you to meet Carol. For those of us too full of religion, she can be our teacher. Carol is  eager. Open. Questioning. Curious. Not knowing. Awed over the Mystery of faith.

For most of my ministry I have come alongside those sorting out their faith, deciding what to keep from their religious upbringing, what to cast aside and what to incorporate in new life-giving ways. That’s been my inner work as well. I am full of knowledge and, with each new book, I attempt to “shoe-horn” some more insight. And I am richer for it as in rich food.

But I also want to be more like Carol — hungry, curious, not-knowing, amazed, with a large hole to be filled. “Kenosis” is the fancy Greek work for “self-emptying,” used in Paul’s Philippian poem about Jesus emptying himself of status, opening himself up to life as it came to him, surrendering himself, even in death, to the surprising, rising movement of Spirit.

In a manner, I am too full. I know it. I live among people very full of themselves, mostly full of exciting ideas, creative insights, and seasoned convictions. But Carol — in her excitement about good news — paradoxically has become for me some good news. She reminds me of the goodness in un-fulfillment. She points me to kenosis, self-emptying. Her hunger calls out and blesses my hunger.

She laughed with denial when I told her that her emptiness was a gift to us. It was another amazement to her. Radical amazement all around.

Near-Death Experiences

It was a near-death experience, the kind that frequents the life of a pastor, but less frequent for a retired pastor.

Just minutes after Ann died, I stood at her bedside along with her three devoted daughters. For many days, Joyce, Deb and Kay had been loving their mother—embracing, stroking, bathing, changing diapers, feeding, smiling, singing, praying gratitude. “Full circle,” I thought. Here, in this bed by the window, they had been caring for their mother in precisely the same way they were cared for at birth. As we held hands across her bed, the Mystery sank in on multiple levels: ending and beginning, death and birth.

In Western culture death is primarily denied. And feared too. We push the awareness of death down into our unconscious only to experience its projection all over our media screens. But mostly, except when death invades our intimate circles, our conscious thinking does a good job in keeping it “out of sight, out of mind.”

As pastors we don’t have this option. I’m glad. The experience of dying and death is always “near.” Like no other professional, we are expected to show up all along the continuum—from early stages of dying to death rituals to follow-through grief ministry.

Back to Ann lying lifeless before us. I kept to myself the question demanding a response: With Ann, as she was, now gone, is there “something” that lasts? In all the impermanence, is there any permanence? Is there “reality” behind these appearances, “something” invisible, “something” gracious and awesome and beautiful?

For certain, “love” was and had been present—the hard, sweaty, sleepless, earthy, self-emptying kind. No question about that.

I turned to the words I always do, Paul’s bold effort to name this Presence: “Love never ends . . . and no-thing now or later, in life or death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Then I went home and hugged Janice so hard, she said, “What’s gotten into you?”

For Meaning Addicts: An Achilles Heel

You and I are in the “meaning” business. We get our “highs” from someone’s, “Wow! I see what you are talking about. Or, this makes such sense! That is so helpful!”

Of course, we don’t make meaning, but we sure love being around when meaning happens. We like to fan the flames of a person’s passion for understanding. And as they struggle to make sense of a life situation, we are not averse to throwing in a question or two, maybe even a suggestion. What fun. What a privilege.

“Purpose” was the first word that marked my becoming a Christian as a young adult. I was bored, unmotivated and headed toward a job scripted from early days. But the “lights came up” when following Jesus was introduced to me as a grand adventure, as a huge purpose for living, exciting enough to awaken my motivation to learn and serve. I remember the amazement of studying beyond mid-night—just because I wanted to. Then, so seamless it seemed, this curiosity about life’s meaning drew me into our vocation. A journalist once asked me what I liked about being a pastor. My answer came quickly: “I love having a close up, ringside seat to people’s struggle to find meaning in their life experiences.”

But in the spirit of—light has a shadow and every strength has a weakness and every powerful person has a vulnerable Achilles’ heel—within the search for meaning there is a danger for us who love the quest. I felt “ouch” when I read this quote recently.

Treya Killan was blessed with friends, including her husband, Ken Wilbur, people who were profoundly curious about the meaning of life. So, when she discovered the aggressive cancer cells in her body, her friends rushed to help by convincing her of ways to understand her illness and find meaning in her suffering. She writes:

“I needed to be around people who loved me as I was, not people who were trying to motivate me or change me or convince me of their favorite idea or theory.”

Hence the challenge: to love without condition, even meaningful conditions.

On Making a New Year’s Resolution

Are you one of those, at the beginning of a new year, who makes a resolution? I am this year.

From Sue Bender’s Plain and Simple, I lift up a distinction she learned from the Amish during the months she lived with them. She experienced in them the difference in having choices and making a choice. As one who intepreted freedom as having many choices, she witnessed in the Amish the freedom granted by a framework from making a few essential choices.

When I moved from being a director of a department within a medical center to be a pastor, I relished the freedom of many choices. With the exception of worship planning/leadership, plus a sprinkling of “have to” commitments during the week, I could develop my own calendar. Each morning I would wake up to the question: “What is the best use of my time today?” I thought, what freedom to shape my ministry on my own! In time, not long actually, I felt the burden of this freedom. The fatigue of over-choice set in. I missed the framework, the structure and accountability of my former job.

We know this truth. It’s a paradox at the very heart of the gospel: “In God’s service is perfect freedom,” we declare. Or, being bound to our first love, God, is to be free from worshiping and serving other “ultimates.” Or, to promise “yes” to a life partner until death parts us is to free us to say “no” to other intimate relationships. We know this truth: freedom is not having as many choices as possible: it’s the fruit of our capacity to make a choice.

And since we are in a vocation full of expectations, requests, and opportunities coming at us, we are especially vulnerable to expending huge amounts of energy and time determining our responding choices. If it’s going to happen, it is largely up to us to make a few essential choices that frame our life in ministry, a few choices that set in place structures that assist our discerning “yes” and “no.”

Take as a case in point: your “day-off” for self-care. It is your decision what day to choose or not choose a set day-off. I observe that if pastors make a choice and it becomes the norm for them and known by staff and congregation, then the freedom to decline or negotiate requests for your time is greatly enhanced. A structure, a framework is in place.

The same principle works with committees and congregations. How often we want to protect our options, have lots of choices, leave open many possibilities—then experience how unfreeing and time/energy consuming this can be. On the contrary, from all the choices possible, how freeing and energizing making an essential choice can be.

Here is a choice I am making, my New Year’s Resolution: I will practice being present to what is before me—with wonder, love, or at least curiosity. So during times of “wool gathering” (which are many, many, many) I want to practice developing a muscle for bringing me back to “showing up” to what is before me. And I give you permission to ask me, “Mahan, how are you doing with that resolution?”

You, my friend, you with many choices, is there an essential choice you making this year?

Tis the Season . . . for Laughter

Before I make my point, first, a disclaimer: this is not a season of laughter for lots of folks. As pastor, you know the red underbelly of the season’s “ho, ho, ho”—the absence of laughter for many. Even after a decade of retirement, I remember the roller coaster ride, the highs of joy, the lows of grief and loneliness.

Nevertheless, this season does give blanket permission for play—time off from work and school for games in the living room and on the field or court; festive meals with family and friends. More humor, smiles, jokes, laughter, good wishes, perhaps more than any other time of year.

What might this have to say about pastoral leadership?

I offer a hunch.

During the holidays we, along with our congregations, are not so serious about accomplishing. Yes, during these days, you work hard to provide worship celebrations of the Christ child but these efforts are not means to an end, they are ends in themselves.

We have permission to hold lightly the important work we do in the world. And it is important work we do in the world. The church is for others; its witness affects change toward justice and forgiveness and non-violence and healing and reconciliation.
But the Advent/Christmas season invites transcendence. It invites us to step back and claim some distance from our attachment to results. For a spell, “it’s” not about us and our worthy goals. Committees take a break. No meetings for planning. Most everybody, including the church, sets aside their calendars and turns to Grace—the gifts, the gratitude, being, not doing.

And laughter, too. Transcendence restores humor.

Inspired by Ken Wilber, “An Ounce of Laughter”

The Mountain, Not the Weather

“What’s it like, Carl, when you moved from professor to pastor?” I asked. At the time, I was making a similar transition. His response, “Well, your highs will be higher and your lows will be lower.”

Carl was right. The nature of our work makes it so. Even within the same day, you can move from the thrill of celebrating the Wilson’s first born to the shock of Lou’s diagnosed, inoperable cancer . . . from the high of someone “getting it,” hearing grace to the low of another hearing “judgment, I’m not enough” . . . from the charged promises embedded in pre-marital counseling to the despairing news of Al moving out of his house . . . from the synergy of committee collaboration to the fractiousness of committee differences . . . from the hope in Alice’s baptism to the lament of Jim’s exit from the church in anger. What a roller-coaster ride ministry can be, up and down, emotionally high, emotionally low.

In some sense this is life, everybody’s life. In a given day, we are stretched between the poles of suffering and wonder. Our hearts are asked to contain huge amounts of both pain and joy.

For us, the occupational hazard is in the projections. As pastors, we stand up, stick out, and like a Rorschach test, we invite judgments all the way from “You are the best preacher I have heard”

. . .”you listen well, not like our previous pastor” . . .”you are just what we need” . . .”I love the way you put things” to “your sermons are good but I wished you visited more” . . .”you visit, I appreciate that, but I wished you studied more for your sermons” . . .”you talk about money and mission too much” . . .”You don’t speak enough about money. Just lay it on the line!” We are employed by those with the right of evaluation. Multiple employers; multiple evaluations—salted with projections.

Of course, we internalize these projections, even if for a moment, feeling special, feeling inadequate. As if riding on an emotional roller-coaster, “up” we go toward ego-inflation; “down” we go toward ego-deflation. Or as one pastor admitted, “I go from ‘I am so privileged to be doing this,’” to ‘I want to get out of here.’”

Ah, “ego” is the word. Our ego loves the excitement of roller-coaster rides. That’s not bad, but it is so limiting . . . and exhausting. There is another larger part of us, sometimes called the Self or inner observer or inner Witness or Christ within. It’s that part of us that can sit back, stroke our chin with curiosity, and ask, “What’s going on here? Where is the kernel of truth is what’s being said? What’s being ‘hooked” in me that needs the light of day?”

In my case, often lurking in the shadows was my need to be needed, to be loved, to be applauded. So these projections, if I allowed them, could invite me, once again, to thicken the truth of being loved as gift, not achievement.

Working with projections, ours and others, can be this kind of inner soul work. The “highs” and “lows,” like the weather come and go, while the mountain rests secure in its grace. At our deepest identity, we are the mountain, not the weather.

Your Plum Job

It’s September, that non-liturgical beginning of the church year. The summer’s slower pace is no more. School starts. So do church programs, with anxious budget planning/ promotion looming near.

​That was the theme of a recent conversation. As the new pastor, he was especially eager for a smooth, energetic first fall season. He reported a not smooth beginning — gaps in teacher recruitment, complaints from parents of youth, spotty attendance, hospitalized colleague, and resistance to financial planning. He was already weary, “flat,” as he put it.

​My outrageous response surprised him. “I’m thinking, what a plum job you have! You are given a reasonable salary to manage a research project. You get to experiment, along with others, about following the radical Jesus in these times of social upheaval. I know of no other professional who has such a ringside seat on life and has the freedom to follow their curiosities about people making sense of their lives. Just think about it: this is your job. You get paid for this!”

​He smiled. He also winced at my playful counter to his seriousness.

​And I added, “And besides, what better place to learn about yourself, to grow up, participate in a grand movement, have soul friends, and know the thrill of betting your vocational life on a Mystery of grace you cannot see or measure or control. What’s more exciting than that? And it’s full-time with pay! What a plum job.”

​Just now, I am smiling at myself. If you have been reading these Reflections, you know how naturally serious I can be. I know how to do “serious.”

​This is why, many years ago, a “light” came on when I heard Rabbi Edwin Friedman say, “Treat it like a research project!”

​Without fail, this reframe would dislodge me from a stuck position. When at a weary, “flat” place, I could ask: “Hmmn, what are we . . . what am I learning here? Where is the Spirit’s hypothesis of abundant life, compassion, and the ‘courage to be’ showing up?” And you are doubly fortunate if you question with fellow researchers. More fun as well. I have never known researchers to work alone.

​To conduct research, to oversee experiments with the gospel and get paid for it — well, it sure sounds like a plum job to me.

On Giving Our Role a Vacation

Who are we apart from our role?

Three stimuli account for the question.

One, from Barbara Brown Taylor in Leaving Church, “My role and my soul were eating each other alive. . . . Because I did not know how to give my soul what it wanted, I continued to play my role, becoming more brittle with every passing day.”

Two, a recently retired parish priest commented, “I thought I left my job when I took vacations through the years. But now I realize that much of my thinking on “time off” was about “time on” parish concerns.”

Three, this question looms large in my retirement: “Who am I apart from my pastoral role.” I’m learning how much of my identity was and is tied up in this familiar, cherished role.

Before we proceed with this conversation, let me note two things: one, roles are needed and necessary. They make working together possible. To occupy a role, for instance, as a father or mother or teacher or citizen or pastor, is to have a position in a particular system from which to offer yourself. Roles offer boundaries that mark what is yours to do and what is not yours to do.

And second, regarding a vacation or time off, it’s not a matter of “yes” I carry my role along, or “no” I don’t. Rather think of a continuum, from “a lot of time thinking about or doing work” to “little time thinking about or doing work.” Most of us fall somewhere in between the two extremes.

While we are in vacation season, the important question here is not about vacation. It’s about our level of self-differentiation from our role of being pastor. I deem this to be a huge occupational challenge: how to distinguish your soul, your life journey from your role as pastoral leader of a congregation. It’s a huge challenge because you surround yourself with others who identify you with your role. It’s a huge challenge because your role is a conduit through which you express much of your passion, your calling. And it’s a huge challenge because it is up to you to claim your life apart from your work, and some will punish you for trying.

The concept of self-differentiation is from family systems theory. Ed Friedman writes of differentiation as the capacity to define one’s life journey, goals, values apart from the defining efforts of others. While remaining in relationship with congregants, the pastor is able to see himself or herself apart from the pastoral role.

I take this to mean that baptism trumps ordination as our source of identity. Our first and never ending call, our life project is becoming who we are, our form of God’s image, “growing up into Christ-likeness,” as Paul put it in his Romans letter. Our pastoral role ends; our summons to transformation does not. We are so much more than our role.

I found this helpful to remind myself, “I have a pastoral ministry, but I am not my pastoral ministry. I am graced, intending grace.” Or, “Yes, ministry is about me; yet, more profoundly, it is not about me.”

How do you make sense of this role-soul thing?

I have this immediate response after reading this over. Drawing from Jung’s thinking, maybe establishing ourselves in our roles is primarily a first-half of life task; and transcending our over-identification with roles more of a second-half challenge.

On Cracking the Code

This sentence stayed with me: “A church incongruent with its code is the single greatest cause of conflict . . .” (Kevin G. Ford, Transforming Church, pg. 57)

The “single greatest cause of conflict”—well, that’s quite a claim to make. As pastors who spend a surprising amount of time managing conflict, this statement warrants pondering. Typically, in what I read, conflict is framed as heated-up differences over theological concepts or ethical issues or power struggles or misunderstandings.

Ford offers another angle. Conflict can come from changes that are inconsistent with the church’s code, that is, the church’s essence or soul. And every organization, including the church, has a code.

This is certainly true for us individually. Recall a change you were attempting that didn’t feel right. It seemed to be “going against your grain.” Finding it hard to explain, you end up saying something like, “This new look or behavior just isn’t me!” In other words, your code or essence felt violated.

Cracking the code is a right-brained sort of intuition, defying precise definition. Left-brained thinking is more reason-able, as in hammering out a mission statement to initiate and guide changes. But discerning the code calls on another side of us.

I’m reflecting on my last season of pastoral leadership with Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. In 1992, we were deciding whether or not to bless a gay union that had been requested. You and I know this to be the most contentious, divisive issue facing congregations and denominations in our day. Yet in our process of decision-making, we experienced more conflict outside the congregation than we encountered within. Internally, the conflict was intense with about 5% to 7% of the membership choosing to leave. Yet, it was contained. Externally, Pullen was “dis-fellowshipped” from its Southern Baptist family on all levels—local, state and national. I remember wondering, and wonder still, why did our congregation not split down the middle? It was my greatest fear.

Yes, we had in place some clear left-brained statements of identity, in particular, Micah 6:8, God’s requirement of doing justice, showing mercy and walking with humility. But today, after reading Ford’s comment, I am curious if our code, like a keel, also kept us from overturning amid the “whirlwind” of controversy.

And what might be this code that validated the changes occurring? My intuition: most members of Pullen feel different, unconventional, valuing fairness, seeing themselves on the margins of mainstream institutions. Did this account for their inclusion of gays who similarly feel different, on the margins, unconventional, and desiring fairness? Were we being, mostly unconsciously, true to our soul, our essence, our code? Did this congruence keep us from splitting down the middle? I wonder.

So, as Ford suggests, there is detective work within pastoral leadership—cracking the code of your congregation. You investigate clues. You listen for favorite stories of the past. You observe behavior. You notice the architecture. You feel the personality of the congregation. This is intuitive, curious, imaginative, loving work that escapes precision.

And its important work, if indeed lasting changes must be congruent with our code. Lasting changes elicit, “Yes, that’s who we are—at our core, in our soul, from our calling.”

Other questions pop up: In what way does our personal code match or mis-match the code of the congregation? Where does the gospel affirm or challenge the code?

What would you add?

Helping Without Hurting

Here we are, working in one of the “helping professions.” People expect help from us; we expect to give help. However most “help,” I suspect, is hurtful.

Sometimes, but not often, helping actually does mean rescuing, fixing, taking charge. Mary is paralyzed, deep in depression, unable to see options. You help by saying in some way, “Mary, you need a doctor. I will make the appointment and go with you.” Or, someone is controlling the group that you are facilitating. So you say, “Joe, there are others who have not spoken. Let’s hear from them before you speak again.” Or in a crisis, you say, “We don’t have time to process this as we usually do. Lee, will you do this . . . Ellen, would you do that . . . and Eric, do you have time to check with . . . ?”

But most times requests for help and our impulse to help can be saboteurs to genuine helping. Co-dependence looms. “Helper” needs the “helpless;” the “helpless” needs the “helper.”

So what is genuine helping? Recently I was invited to join a healthy, redemptive example of helping. Roy, let’s call him, was struggling with a huge self-defining decision. He came to Jack for help. Jack suggested that Roy invite a few trusted friends to sit with him as he struggled with “what to do.” I was invited to join the small circle of five that met about every other week.

Here is what struck me about Jack’s helping. We began each time with a few minutes of silence that allowed me to get myself out of the way, namely, my desire to interpret, my tendency to offer solutions, my investment in Roy making a particular decision. I needed to be reminded that this is about him, not me. Then Jack, more by example than word, honored, without diminishing, Roy’s suffering. He invited us to be a holding circle, a space without judgment, without advising, without analysis, without fixing, offering instead a prayerful place of trust and not-knowing. Our occasional questions and mirroring kept the inner work with Roy. And work he did! After many months, Roy came to a clearness that empowered courageous action. From his suffering was birthed a Soulful clarity.

This experience reminds me of a question I carried with me as a pastor. When I was in a relationship where I was in the role of helper, particularly when there is no movement toward resolution, I found this question revealing: “Am I working harder than he/she/they are?” If so, I knew my needs—possibly the need to be needed or right or admired—were in the way of their inner work. Then, if I were having a mature moment, I would back off and hold the relationship in grace, asking curious questions, not giving answers, trusting their capacity to discern Spirit, Soul at work in their depths.

Are we not talking about “agape” love here?

Pastor as Overseer (Bishop)

As leaders you can see what others cannot see, not because you have superior eyes, but because you are looking from a particular place. You are an “overseer.”

Consider the function of our eyes. Thank goodness, they are in our head, not somewhere on our arms or legs. They are located in the head for good reason. From that position, they can see most of the body, plus the environment around the body.

Your position as “eyes” in the body/congregation makes your role unique.

You note that I am calling forth one of the New Testament words for church leadership, namely, “episcopas,” (translated overseer or bishop). If we lay this concept alongside of Paul’s metaphor of the church as the Body of Christ and family systems’ theory, we end up having a potent way of conceptualizing pastoral leadership. If Christ is the mind of the Body (the system) whose directives we seek to em-body, then leaders, especially pastors, function as eyes. It is your location in the Body as pastoral “overseer”— not just your education, personality and ability — that makes possible the expression of your ministry.

In your distinctive position, you are given the time and freedom to crisscross your congregation in ways no member can. You can observe and experience the congregation and larger community like no member can. You can study the stories of God like no member can. Your work takes you from committee to committee, from family to family, from one age group to another. From this unique position you are able to see patterns, possibilities, needs that no one else can see. (Of course, from their positions in the “body,” they see what you cannot see.) So, from your “heady” place in the congregational system, you keep offering, “this is what I see,” along with the invitation, “what do you see from your angle of vision?” (Take notice, this be a position from which we invite, not dominate.)

I remember the “ah ha” moment for me. One year I declined to participate in the nomination committee meetings. I decided I was not needed. Capable lay members of the committee could do the work of nominating future leaders of the church. That was a mistake. I learned that I needed to be a part of the nominating process, not to control outcomes, but to share from my perspective. Sometimes, because of my position, I could offer observations and knowledge that helped match members’ gifts with opportunities and responsibilities.

This, too. “Overseeing eyes” call for limits, not just possibilities. If we are “eyes,” then we are not to be “arms and legs.” That would be called over-functioning, while other members of the body under-functioned. God forbid.

I am inviting you to revisit a seasoned word, “episcopas.” Imagine that, being a bishop.

– Mahan Siler