Symbolic Exemplar: A Re-Frame That Mattered

I didn’t know what I was getting into. I thought being a pastor was similar to being a teacher or social worker or father. These roles give you a position from which you can contribute. That’s the way I saw it.

I went to seminary with the excitement of a seeker who had just discovered a new map of unexplored terrain. This joy of a larger purpose freed me from an earlier vocational direction assumed by my family. I knew no one at the seminary when I arrived. Being Baptist had little substance. Church experience was limited. My knowledge of clergy was almost nil. To be “called” felt strange and remote. But the idea of some kind of paid work that allowed further exploration into the realm or kingdom of God was promising.

Surprise happened in an introductory class on pastoral care. The professor had recorded on tape his pastoral conversation with a grieving widow. I heard his gift of empathic listening and skillful questions that helped her find a measure of release and hope. On that day, in that moment, sitting on the fourth row of a large class in the “Map” room at Southern Baptist Seminary, I whispered to myself, “I want to do that!” And I have for forty-eight years.

What I felt then, and never lost, is this: the role gave me a way into those holy places of people’s lives, where I could offer a presence with a caring curiosity about their pursuit of meaning. A reporter once asked me, “What do you like most about your job?” I heard myself say, “I love having a ringside seat on how people make sense of their lives.” This was the constant joy—the role unlocking doors to these sacred places of presence and conversation.

You can anticipate my shock at running into the full complexity of this vocation. Immediately I protested the “difference,” the “set-apartness” that came with the role. I resisted the various titles—Brother Mahan, Preacher, Reverend, Pastor Siler, Doctor Siler. “Just call me Mahan,” I sometimes said. “I’m just a regular guy with a huge curiosity about life and faith in God.”

My ordination, with its language of “being set apart” to serve the church, declared more about my future than I could absorb at the time. I was wonderfully challenged by the vows yet felt broadsided by the loneliness and projections that came in their wake. The new role changed how people perceived me, including my neighbors and larger family. Even my pre-ordination friends didn’t quite know what to do with my new identity. I felt placed into a separate category I didn’t understand.

Eventually a re-frame came to me, in the form of a gift from a rabbi friend, which described with clarity the role I was assuming. The gift was a book from another rabbi, Jack Bloom, in which Bloom describes the tension: as rabbis (or pastors) we are both living symbols of More than we are and ordinary human beings. We are both. Both at the same time.

A symbol points beyond itself to some other reality from which it draws power. Take our national flag, for instance. We know it’s not simply a colored piece of cloth. It draws our attention powerfully to the “republic for which it stands.” Or, even more familiar to us, we regularly participate in the transforming symbolic power of water (baptism) and bread and wine/grape juice (Eucharist).

But acknowledging our symbolic power is another matter. Imagine the scene: rabbis, priests, or pastors in the pulpit beneath a robe and stole (or dark suit) with Scripture in hand. Note the symbols. Note the symbol we are. Yes, we remain very human under the robe, with all our peculiar human traits. But we are so much more. We feel it. We know it. We are symbols of More than we are, signs of a narrative and worldview we call Gospel. Or to say it boldly: You and I are symbols pointing to God, the ultimate Mystery. By just being a clergy person you announce a huge wager. You and I dare to wager that God is real, a loving presence in us, with us, and through us, active in the world making love, making justice, making shalom. And furthermore our symbolic identity deepens with each passing funeral, wedding, worship service, and pastoral visit. We are walking, talking representatives of More than ourselves. The projections abound. The symbolic role opens doors; it closes doors. We are different. Not better, but different.

And, if that is not enough to carry, as pastors we are not just symbols, we are symbolic exemplars. Certain ethical behaviors are expected of us. As the ordination of Episcopal clergy words it, we vow to be “wholesome examples” of the gospel. Leaders in other fields are also symbols of more than they are, but few leaders carry such additional moral pressure. Pastors, and in some sense their families, are expected to show, as well as tell, what loving God and neighbor looks like.

Bloom puts the two together: The pastor or rabbi as symbol and as exemplar. Then he mixes in the third reality: we are symbolic exemplars and ordinary human beings. It’s a re-frame that has mattered.

Let’s place these truths on a continuum — symbolic exemplar on one end and human being on the other end. The extremes are easy to see. On the symbolic exemplar end we have observed pastors and priests overly identified with their symbolic role. Behind the role so much of their humanity is hidden. Their sense of self is fused, it seems, with their pastoral identity. “He must sleep in his collar,” I recall hearing about a Lutheran pastor in my neighborhood. At retirement these ministers have the toughest work of discovering who they are apart from the role that has identified them for so long. I admit, when I retired this inner work was necessary for me as well.

The other extreme is protecting our humanness, so much so that we discount the authority and appropriate power invested in the role. To insist, “I’m just me, a person like everyone else,” is folly. I found, as you have, that there were times when this transcending power was undeniable. You know it when, on occasion, while preaching, the message comes more through you than from you. Or standing by the bed of a very ill parishioner, or sitting across from a person in crisis, you palpably experience being a symbol of More than yourself. When they see you they see the faith community you represent. When they see you they “see” the un-seeable you represent, namely, an invisible Reality. In those times it’s so clear—the person is relating to you but also to so much More than you.

There are times when we consciously, intentionally call on the full authority of the role. I am reminding you of those times when you are face-to-face with persons, usually in the safety of your office, who pour out their sense of “not being enough,” who are feeling particularly victim to relentless, self-condemning voices rising from their depths. In those times we deliberately wrap the role around us like a robe. Our voice is up against the self-despising voices we are hearing. In those moments you too would claim your pastoral authority and say something like, “What you tell yourself is not true. Your deepest truth is this: You are a child of God, loved and loving, totally forgiven and full of worth just as you are.” By claiming this authority we hope that the Power we symbolize undermines and eventually replaces the power of these self-condemning voices.

Or, the best example is the obvious one. Every time you and I rise to stand behind the pulpit to lead in worship, we intentionally wrap ourselves around the privilege and courage of being both our authentic selves and More than our authentic selves.

We know multiple examples of those in our vocation who have abused this symbolic power to the great harm to others, to themselves, and to their congregation. The examples are legion. But the longer I was a pastor the more I understood and appreciated this power to bless and speak in the name of God. But it always felt uncomfortable. The audacity never left me. Each deliberate attempt was not without a good measure of “fear and trembling.” I was flirting with danger, and I knew it. Speaking from ego, for ego, or speaking from God, for God—which was it? No doubt it was a mixture of both. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Precisely; that’s the point! When we embrace this tension of being both symbolic exemplar and the very human person we are, you and I are reduced to prayer. We are driven to our knees. The chutzpah demands mercy; the mercy makes possible the chutzpah.

Naming the un-nameable Mystery … Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Putting on, like a robe, the privilege, ambiguities, set-apartness, projections, and loneliness of this work … Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Embracing the tension of being both living symbol of More than I am and a human being not more than I am … Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Being a flawed leader of an imperfect institution that frequently contradicts the compassion it espouses … Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Bearing the symbols of God, even being a symbol of God, at the perilous risk of playing God … Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

I leave you with a paradox — being both fully, uniquely human and fully, uniquely a symbolic exemplar. Embracing, not resolving, this paradox became for me a re-frame that mattered.

Reference: The Rabbi As Symbolic Exemplar: By the Power Vested in Me, Jack H. Bloom

 

On Time: A Re-frame That Mattered

As pastors we have time in our hands. Not a stethoscope. Not checks or prescriptions to write. No goods to sell. No papers to grade. No legal documents to consult. We have time, time to show up, be present, and invite others to find themselves in the Story as their defining story.

The congregation says to us: “We free you from having to spend part or all of your work time earning money. We are buying your time to lead us.” Then with no clear expectations, no structure, no supervision, no schedules offered, they walk away, trusting our use, not abuse, of this time given. It’s an awesome trust; it’s burdensome freedom.

Time, my relationship to it, was the blessing and bane of my pastoral ministry. I loved the freedom of choice; I felt the burden of its up-to-me stewardship.

A pastor was describing his thirteen-hour Sunday: the early review of his sermon; leading worship, including preaching; a pastoral response to a family crisis; a late afternoon committee meeting; a hospital visit; and then another meeting at the church that evening. Most disturbing was that, while driving home after a long day, his mind was still working, thinking of things not done and people not seen. “Always more, no endings, never enough,” he said out loud to himself. Later he left our vocation, in large part, he said, “for lack of time.”

Granted, such long hours are typical for many workers caught up in a job with high expectations, either self imposed or imposed by others. Thirteen-hour days are not so extraordinary. We all live and work in an environment that applauds over-functioning. “Not enough time” is a refrain sung by most adults I know.

But, and this may surprise you, for pastors the issue is not about having enough time. It looks that way. It feels that way. But insufficient time is not the problem. The truth is, we have time. Time is the gift that awaits us each weekday morning. It is ours to fill, to spend. We are paid to show up in time with presence.

This is the way I see the covenant between pastor and congregation:

We set you apart (ordination) to lead alongside us from a different angle. We give you time to understand, define, and offer yourself in the role of pastoral leader. We free you from some, if not all, the obligations to earn a salary outside the church. We pledge adequate personal and financial support for you to have the time you need to fulfill your calling. We make it possible for you to have time to study, reflect, and pray in ways that nourish your season with us as pastoral leader. Together, as pastor and people, we seek to embody in our historical moment the extravagant compassion of God, made most clear in Jesus.

Note the freedom. Let’s acknowledge up front the uncommon freedom we have as pastors. Yes, it can be a burdensome freedom, but it is freedom nevertheless. Most laborers, including professionals, have limited to no control over their schedules. Their time is carefully measured, sometimes in 15-minute increments. Most workers adapt to schedules largely set for them by others. Not so with us. We have an unusual freedom of choice.

This difference I felt keenly when I moved from being a director of a department within a medical center to becoming again the pastor of a local congregation. In my hospital context my work schedule had structure—office hours from 8:00-5:00 Monday to Friday, many standing committees, one boss, with weekends usually free. I could still over-function, but I knew when I was working beyond the agreed-upon boundaries.

In contrast, the congregation offers minimal structure, vague and conflicting expectations, and fluid boundaries. Apart from Sunday morning worship and a few fixed committees, I was on my own to figure out my best use of time. Unless our misuse of time is flagrant, we are our own “boss” when it comes to time management. It’s up to you. It was up to me.

That’s my first preliminary point: we are given time along with the freedom and responsibility to invest it. There is a second point to make before I record the re-frame, namely, we are employed by people who don’t understand our job.

I’m not complaining or blaming, mind you. I am naming a lack of understanding that comes with our profession. Most of our work is invisible to the congregation that employs us. How could this lack of understanding be otherwise when much of pastoral ministry is private? For instance, most lay members seem surprised to learn that preparation for leading a worship service, including crafting a sermon, usually requires at least twelve hours. And how would members know that a funeral service takes six to eight hours of pastoral care, preparation, and leadership of the service? And there is the care we give to individuals and families that is appropriately confidential.

Technically, in some situations, congregational members are not the employer. For instance, in the Methodist system the pastor is appointed. But functionally, I’m assuming that in all parishes the power that allows us to minister belongs to the people. If congregational expectations of the clergy are not met, then it is only a matter of time before the bishop or superintendent or representative lay leaders say, “We think it is time for you to move on. The match is no longer a good one. It’s not working.”

Furthermore, with each “employer” (member) a pastor has a slightly different contract, a difference in large part unacknowledged. For example, some members insist on certain standards in liturgical leadership, especially preaching, yet seem less demanding in other areas. Others, however, expect availability and effectiveness in pastoral care. These members can tolerate less quality in worship leadership. Still others look for efficient management. Above all else they expect effective oversight of the staff, budget, programs, and building. A few members give top priority to pastoral leadership in the community, expecting their pastor to be a connecting link between congregational resources and community needs.

Again, I feel the need to say that I am not blaming. Members do not intentionally participate in these competing pulls on a pastor’s time and energy. These overlapping member-pastor contracts are expectations that live beneath awareness and only occasionally are brought to the surface in conversation.

This is the nature of our work. We offer ourselves in the midst of conflicting contracts, unconscious assumptions, and unnamed expectations. Our vocation is not for those who require detailed agreements, tight structure, and precise boundaries. Simply, we are employed by those who don’t understand our job. To the extent that this bold statement is true, we are left with a daunting responsibility. Our relationship to time is left up to us.

Now, to my point. This is the re-frame that mattered: giving top priority to prioritizing my calling in order to prioritize my time. This may sound counter-intuitive—taking time, lots of time, to prioritize the focus of our ministry as prerequisite to decisions about our use of time.

I’m advocating that the place to start is not a to-do list for the day. That’s too late. The to-do list comes last, not first. To begin with a list of what to do today leaves us vulnerable to the immediate, pressing, short-term needs. Left out of the list would likely be the larger arc of our calling.

Perhaps, at this point in this reflection, my own experience would be helpful. I hesitate because, as I have admitted, my relationship to time was my greatest single challenge. I reference my efforts in managing time not as a model to follow but as a set of assumptions and practices against which you can review your own stewardship of this gift.

First must come the work of self-definition. The on-going defining of call precedes and informs defining the use of time.

This means setting down before us a set of questions and working them toward focus, not once but repeatedly. I offer these primary questions that invite clarity of call, which in turn clarify management of time. They fall into three contexts ranging from macro to micro perspectives: church and world, congregation, and your personal life.

These are balcony questions. Getting to the “balcony” happens when we leave the dance floor of the complex movements of congregational life and step back, way back, in order to see the big picture. From the balcony we look for patterns, noting the connections and disconnections in order to weigh our options for re-entering the dance floor.

Context: church and world. Balcony questions: What’s the call of God to the church in our moment in history? Within our time in American culture, what is the prime purpose of the church? How does our perception of our local community shape the church’s witness? What resources, including interpreters of our time, stimulate your balcony reflections about the church in the world?

Context: your congregation. Balcony questions: With congregation as partner in ministry, what am I called to give? What is being asked of me? Where do my gifts and the needs of the congregation meet? What is it time for in our congregation’s life and mission? What are the resources within and beyond the congregation that can help me clarify the focus of my leadership?

Context: your personal life. Balcony questions: What time is it in your life and the life of your family? What’s being birthed in you? How do you nurture your soul within this role? Where’s the gladness? Where’s the sadness?

Priorities of importance arise from working these kinds of questions. And from these ABC priorities comes direction for the best use of time.

Key to this process, as you can see, is setting specific “balcony” times for this inner work of discernment. This key is non-negotiable. I tried but never could do this inner work on the run. It requires a different space and sufficient time. Here is the plan that worked for me.

During the typically low-maintenance week between Christmas and New Year, I worked with these balcony questions. First I would read through my journals from the past year, looking for patterns and themes. Journals, kept regularly but not daily, served as a catcher for ruminations about where I sensed God at work, what I was learning from my reading and life experiencing. For me my journals became the place I tracked the changes in my call, both to inner transformation and to outer work of the church. Out of these annual days came a revision of priorities for ministry, self, and family to guide me during the next year, sometimes years. Every month or so I would review and update these priorities.

All the better if this discernment can include others, in particular, your spouse, close friends, colleagues, congregational leaders, and the congregation itself. They join you in living the question of calling or purpose or mission, reason for being. The question, of course, never gets fully answered. It’s the asking that distinguishes “good” action in order to discover the “necessary” action.

Finally, I come to the daily to-do-list. Each day, for around twenty minutes, with the priorities before me, I prayerfully asked, “What is the best use of my time for this day, for the rest of this week?” This meant that I could enter the day with a measure of clarity. Of course, unexpected interruptions, the “bread and butter” of ministry, would occur. But with my focus for the day in place I was more likely to respond, not react, to the events coming toward me. I had a frame.

And now a last word, lest my thoughts blind us to reality. Everything will work against what I have suggested. Sabotage awaits any effort to claim the time for prioritizing your call as prelude to prioritizing your time. You will hear the resistance in these questions: Where will I find the time to work with my call and time? Who cares enough to ask, to understand, to support this effort? Can I embrace the conflict this will bring? This inner work will likely create dissonance simply because the clearer your self-definition, the more precise your “yes” and “no,” the more difference will surface. Your clarity will call for the clarity in others. It’s the way of growth, with more and more people taking responsibility for their agency. The energy released invites maturation both within the person and within the congregation.

You and I are fortunate recipients of time with few strings attached. How to unpack and offer this gift from your congregation for your congregation is an exceptional challenge. This was the assumption that crystallized in my struggle: on-going defining of one’s call into priorities precedes the daily use of this gift of time. It is a re-frame that mattered and matters.

 

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.

The Powers

“I’m so tired, so very tired,” she said. “Physically, but more emotionally and spiritually. I feel exhausted. I know what to do but I don’t have the energy to do it.” Let’s name her, Linda.

I remember the feeling. When I was about her age, also a first time parent and first time solo pastor, that same dark tar settled in my soul to stay for a long while. “I can’t go on like this,” she said. And I said.

I wish I had known then about Walter Wink. He was the gift that made a second round of being pastor a different, more understanding, more liberating experience. In Engaging The Powers, he writes about folks like us—persons caught up in the good, exciting work of healing and justice and mercy. He names the time when the wells of compassion run dry, when the very love that gave birth to our vocation is exhausted. “If you feel powerless,” he says, “then it’s a sure sign that the Powers have your spirit.”

The Powers? What does that mean? What are the Powers? The Powers are the third factor in every situation. The first two factors we can see. Factor one is ourselves; factor two is the other person or group of others, for example, a colleague, family, committee or congregation. People, along with the physical environment, are what we see. Do you remember the ditty with movements: “Here’s the church; here’s the people. Open the door and there’s all the people.” That’s it, I thought. Ministry is about people and me.

But there’s a third factor, always a third factor. It’s invisible, a spiritual reality we cannot measure, control or name precisely. These Powers are supra-human, transcendent forces, the more than “flesh and blood,” what the Apostle Paul named “principalities and powers” against which we contend, lest they capture our spirit. (Ephesians 6:10–17)

You and I experience this truth—the Powers—but seldom name it. We feel it in a cheering, crowded stadium and call it “school” spirit. Or, it may be a mob spirit that we name “demonic.” We enter a home and sense hospitality or hostility, formality or informality. The same when you worship in a church that is new to you. Immediately you take in the spirit of the place coming from the architecture, the congregants, and leaders. When we speak about the personality of a congregation, we are referencing its culture, its collective spirit—that is, the Powers. And Powers, whether for good or ill, whether life-giving or death-dealing always influence what’s possible in a system. They can be so dominating they virtually determine what’s possible. Wink names this the “domination system” in which, along with divine Spirit, we live and move and have our being.

Back to Linda. She is not primarily contending with “flesh and blood” congregants. Actually, most members, she says, are supportive, collaborative and appreciative. She is contending with supra-human forces. She is breathing in and internalizing the thick messages of her family, church and cultural context. She is inhaling its imperatives: “It’s up to you to pull out of this exhaustion” . . . “you are not enough, spiritual enough, doing enough” . . . “pull yourself together, try harder” . . . “your worth is on the line” . . . “after all, you are paid to carry the anxiety of this church” . . . “to ask for help is weakness.”

Then there is the larger pervasive assumption: what Wink calls the “myth of redemptive violence,” that is, coercive force (violence) solves problems—internally or externally. Linda was violating herself, condemning herself, trying to force or coerce different behavior and feelings.

All this and more are the unacknowledged waters we swim in. It’s the air we breathe. These invisible powers press upon us, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. They are the third factor, always present. When we give in to these oppressive, dominating Powers, we feel powerless—like Linda.

“Great,” I imagine Wink responding to Linda. “Now, you know a freeing truth: by yourself you can not fuel your good work even with your gifts, stimulating insights, superior training, ‘try it again’ efforts or a self-willed determination. Simply, you are being reduced to prayer. He writes, “Unprotected by prayer, our social activism [ministry] runs the danger of becoming self-justifying good works, as our inner resources atrophy, [and] the well of love dries up.” Prayer, for Wink, is opening up to the transcendent possibilities of God always pressing for realization in every situation. Praying is aggressive, joining God as partner in the struggle for Shalom against the anti-human Powers ever pressing us down. This struggle against “principalities and powers” is so challenging, Paul writes, it demands “the whole armor of God.”

“Linda,” I hear Wink saying, “You have over-estimated your will power in overcoming the oppressive messages, both internal and external; you have under-estimated the prayerful resource of alignment with the power of God. Paul even provides a sample prayer (in the same Ephesian letter) that, I like to believe, includes us as well.

I pray that, according to the riches of God’s glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3: 14–21)

Eschatology as Provocative Re-frame

Plan with the end in mind — a piece of advice I keep coming across in leadership material.

This bit of wisdom came to mind during two recent conversations with pastors getting clear about their retirement. While not time to announce their plans, their clarity was internal. I asked both of them, “What’s this like for you?” They both made similar responses, “I feel lighter.” And, I noticed this in both. They were working the same questions: “Now that I know the end time, what is most needed from me now? And what do I most want to give?” 

Let’s pull off our “theological shelf” and dust off this esoteric word — eschatology. Yes, both of these pastors are living in a personal scatological “end time.” And obviously this awareness is bringing clarity, and with it an exchange of one kind of energy for another. The difference is striking.

Then I began to ponder my own pastoral experience. In my first flight as pastor I served a seven-year old congregation. We both had little flight experience. Jointly we felt the exhilaration of a new beginning with no awareness of endings. Our sense of limitless horizons contributed to an eventual “burn out” in my case.

Later, much later, I became pastor of an almost hundred year old congregation. What a difference! I knew immediately — no matter how long I stayed — that I was an “interim” pastor. I served that congregation for fifteen years, a longer than usual ministry in one place. Yet, in terms of its history, fifteen years granted a very short privilege to come alongside this congregation rich in heritage.

Then, with that same congregation, I entered my 60′s with a deep weariness setting in. I went to the lay leaders saying two things: one, I felt I had more work to do with them; and two, I needed a few months to step back and catch my breath. During that time I asked to relinquish worship and committee responsibilities. We came up with a plan.

What surprised me during that mini-sabbatical was the “eschatology” that kicked in. I knew my time as pastor was coming to an end. This awareness forced the questions: for these next few years what does this church most need from my leadership? And, given my excitements, what do I most want to give? The clarity — a result from this sense of end-time — contributed to my final years being the most joyful and creative.

It’s something for you to think about. You are an interim-pastor. Your congregation was there before you came; it will continue after you leave. It is as if you come on board of a train at a particular station platform. Then somewhere down the tracks you will depart at another station, waving back to all the well wishers until they are out of sight.

This scatological re-frame, working with that end in sight, raises generative questions: Given the limited time, what does this congregation most need from me? And, given my gifts, concerns and interests, what do I most want to give?

It just may be a fast track to some joy, lightness, energy and clarity.

P.S. I’m playing imaginatively with this scatological re-frame. I picture myself at my death-bed, hearing this question from my grandchildren: “What were you thinking to left us a planet damaged beyond repair?” I want to be able to say, “Regrettably I woke up late, but when I did, I took action.”

Hierarchy: Blessing or Bane?

“Hierarchy” is a loaded word. In my circles this word can spark fire in the eyes with quick examples of oppression that follow. Feeling uneasy, if not hurt from both coercive power and hierarchy, many in my “tribe” want to organize our lives and life together free of both. I submit, this is dangerously simplistic.

Hierarchy: blessing or bane — which is true? I argue for a “both/and.”

First, the “bane” side. Some of us know, up close and personal, the abuse of power from a parent, parents, older sibling, teacher or other faces of domination. Decisions are made, demands given; obedience is expected. Add to this, all of us have experienced working within domination-systems, including the church, where coercive force, directly or indirectly, is the norm. Particularly, women, gays, African-Americans and the less privileged among us know the sharp edge of subjection in a way that I have not experienced. And, daily we watch across the globe the countless instances of top-down decisions that benefit the few at the immense suffering of the many.

Because oppression often comes packaged in hierarchical structure, it’s understandable that hierarchy and coercive power become joined together at the hip. As we awaken to the freedoms inherent in partnership and inclusion and equality, the conclusion seems obvious — we must free ourselves of hierarchies as well. Yes, I agree but only if they are domination hierarchies.

But there are natural hierarchies that appropriately structure differences. Given their position in biological life, molecules function at a higher level than atoms. Given their position in evolution, humans function at a more complex level than monkeys. Parents, given their position in a family, function at a higher level of responsible caring than children, that is, until the children become adult.

A human body needs a head — the very image for Paul of the church. He plays off the metaphor, challenging the Philippian Christians to “Let this mind [consciousness] of Christ be in you. . . “ And he writes of the “body,” the church, as having separate, very distinct, unequal parts brought together in joint desire to embody the mind or Spirit of Christ.

Additionally, a favorite concept for church leader in the early church was “over-seer,” translated as “bishop.” Bishops are titular heads of large sections of the church, hierarchical in structure. But the original word, “over-seer” deserves a second look. An “over-seer,” sees over much of the body, not because of its superiority, but because of its position in the body. If the eyes were positioned, say, on the arm or leg, their capacity to over-see would be severely limited. Eyes in the body function to encourage cooperation, note growth, see dysfunction, and scan the environment — just what a good parent or good bishop or good pastor or good leader does. The role names the position; it does not grant powers of domination. The role as “over-seer” is for empowering, for powering-with, not for powering-over, not for coercive force.

The question for me, as I look at organizations, is — what kind of hierarchy? Those who, by their position in a system, are leaders will lean either toward being empowering or toward powering-over in controlling, coercive ways. By itself, hierarchy is neither blessing nor bane. It’s a matter of how power by leaders is understood and used: one with humility, challenge and support; the other with control, self-inflation and manipulation.

Don’t you find examples of both coming readily to mind?

Locating God

Where is God? Where do we look for God in our secular age?

I was asking these questions out loud while driving home from a recent discussion group. In the group one person was telling the Jonah story, treating it like a myth or parable. The presenter was asking: where is the Jonah in us? What are the ways, like Jonah, we flee from a God so radically loving of “the enemy,” Nineveh in this case?

A few in the circle quickly self-identified themselves as “secularists.” They interpreted the story literally, dismissing as fanciful any God who stages an ocean storm, including a large fish to swallow fleeing Jonah, later regurgitated on the land. “We can’t relate to this story. We don’t believe in God, especially that kind of God,” they all said in various ways.

Later in the conversation, a member of the circle (let’s call her Kelly), one of the “secularists,” spoke movingly of her long history with an elder in a remote Mexican village. Once a researcher in this village, she remained his friend through the years. When she heard of his dying, she made the long trip to be at his side. It seemed that he was staying alive to have his last moments with her.

By the time of her arrival, the elder has slipped into a coma. “Too late,” she lamented. But Kelly stays, remaining at his bedside, holding his hand in hers. She spoke of a profound, palatable presence of love that pervaded the room. Even the animals seem aware of this difference. Hours pass until the unexpected happens. Her mentor opens his eyes, fully and clearly, smiles, squeezes her hand and the hand of his son, then closes his eyelids, and stops breathing. It was a brief moment, so full, so unexpected, so unexplainable.

I blurted out, “Why God was all over that!” She smiled with a puzzled acknowledgment that neither of us pursued.

While driving home, I imagine saying more to Kelly. I wanted to add: “Kelly, in my way of seeing, what you experienced was God. The invisible, loving presence, so palatable to you, I name Spirit. The name is not so important to me, but naming the experience is. Your love for and from this Mexican elder, culminating in that sacred moment, is a Reality more than just you and him, more like a magnetic field, a Mystery that pulled you beyond explanation into awe.”

I assume most people have such profound moments igniting similar responses: “Wow! What a gift. And surprise. A presence, too deep for words!” Every one, from time to time, gets knocked off their feet with unexpected goodness. But I’m sad when these life-shaking experiences are left without symbols, story and metaphor, without rejoicing in community. Naming, I think, gives these spiritual experiences a marker, a container, an anticipation for more.

Isn’t this what church, at its best, does? Church, as corporate worship and caring relationships, can provide the context where such experiences are named, appreciated and expected. Of course, we cannot make these extra-ordinary events happen, but within community we do offer liturgy, story, and silence where openings to gracious/terrifying Mystery are invited and celebrated — the very fuel for acting compassionately in our worlds.

This is my assumption: Kelly, and many “secularists” like her, do have spiritual experiences. She strikes me as a person open to wonder over breakthroughs of kindness, beauty and self-giving acts of compassion. But with her image of God so tied to an other-worldly figure removed from our humanity, she may miss the connection so obvious to me.

I am thinking of the preachers among you. Probably you have a congregation full of those who still worship a God separated from this world who intervenes from time to time according to whim. I keep being surprised about how imprinted in our psyche is a deity “up there, out there,” not in here, the invisible, in-between part, the love energy in relationships.

I suppose I am a literalist at this point. I take this truth at face value: “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love.” (I John 4:7). There’s where I look for God.

A Spiral Upward

I experienced, and I have noticed this paradox in pastoral ministry. It was about me and up to me; yet it was not about me, nor up to me. A strong ego on one hand; a transcended ego on the other.

Maybe this dynamic is more of a spiral movement, round and round from one side of the paradox to the other. The hoped for direction of the spiral is this: ministry happens more and more through us, not just from us, more letting it happen than making it happen.

In one sense, ministry is about you, and its up to you. That’s the way it begins. During the season of pastoral formation, the seminary and early years as a pastor, you need to be self-focused. After all, you are preparing for a particular vocation. There is so much to learn, so much knowledge to take in, chew and digest. You are busy ingesting church history, systematic theology, biblical studies, Christian ethics, liturgy, and church polity. It’s all foundational to the work looming before you. In addition, there is the “practical” side of the curriculum, the skill-set of pastoral care and congregational management required. Hopefully, all this adds up to a strong sense of self.

And, upon assuming leadership in a congregation, it’s all the more about you and up to you — your preaching, your leadership, your personality, your pastoral visits or lack of them. On the surface, that is the way it looks, about you and up to you. You are visible, up-front, public, employed, hence a convenient, obvious rack on which to hang unending judgments.

But occasionally, and increasingly so, we experience pastoral ministry as impossible. For all our heroic efforts to meet expectations, both ours and others, we come to the end of the day whispering to ourselves, “I can’t keep doing this. I don’t have what it takes.” How often, it seems, what worked doesn’t work any longer. Or those insights we glean from this book or that conversation are insufficient for long term travel. Even the conference we attend or lectures we download grant short-term benefits that dissolve like cotton candy.

I remind you what you know. These times of “impossible” can be times we trust the More than we are. Likely, we ask our will power and personal acumen to take us as far at they can. But it’s never far enough. Our finest efforts break down, in small and, for some of us, in big ways. It’s the heart of 12-Step wisdom: only at the point of admitted powerlessness can we experience the Higher Power, God, that is.

Recall those “impossible” moments when you fell into a wisdom not your own. It could be in the midst of a sermon or counseling session or interpersonal conflict or contentious committee meeting, when the “possible” surprisingly emerges from the “impossible.” You know this experience. I imagine it as being a violin making music you didn’t compose.

I am suggesting that maturity in ministry, as in life generally, is yielding to this spiral upward — from our ministry being about me and up to me to it being not about me or up to me. It seems, if we allow it, that increasingly we experience creativity and strength coming more through us than from us.

Think of the mature among us. They speak less about striving, controlling and trying so hard, and more about allowing, being carried, graced as an agent of intentions much larger and wondrous.

This spiraling movement from self to transcending self calls for poetry, not prose. Rainer Rilke names it beautifully.

The Swan

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

I’m left with a question. I’m asking myself, and now you, what helps us die, to let go of clinging, allowing the giving of our selves to the Water that receives us gaily and flows joyfully under us, granting us pleasure in being carried? What helps us do that?

A Story to Steward

Evidently mystical, spiritual experiences are common. I am referring to those times when you seem lifted out of your limited self-preoccupations and feel a part of Something larger. You experience, even if for a moment, the extraordinary in the ordinary. That experience seems widespread.

I am thinking of times like these: in a crisis – feeling held together by love you can’t generate, a strength given you cannot explain; or, a typical day in the garden feeling suddenly a part of growth beyond your control or understanding; or the poignant awareness of loving someone as an extension of yourself; or, those moments of “wow,” when you feel the wonder of what is before you.

 These common experiences are sometimes transformative, that is, they change the way you see the world. A shift in perspective occurs, however slight or major. We walk away from these experiences never to be quite the same.

 This is what I am wondering: How many of these self-transcendent moments go unrecognized? And do they go unrecognized because there is no story or worldview to name them? Is a transforming change from these mystical moments undermined because there is no container, no narrative, no worldview to hold and sustain them?

Actually, these are statements, not questions. I think what we have as Christians, along with holders of every other religious narratives, is a framing story, that, like a string, can tread these spiritual experiences. It’s being a part of a larger Story that grants them definition, continuity and context. Otherwise, these potentially transforming moments will fall to the ground, like separate beads, left behind.

We have a Story that connects, that names, that incorporates. To the ones experiencing the sense of loving another as an extension of themselves, I think of Jesus’ saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself (not as you love yourself).” To the ones enthralled in gardening, I think of creation spirituality as in Jeremiah’s vision, “Their life will be like a watered garden.” To the one’s held by love in some devastating crisis, I think of the biblical refrain, “I am with you . . . with you . . . with you as Love from which no-thing in life or death, now or later can separate you.”

We live within a historical context of competing Stories or worldviews to live in and from. Defining narratives plead for our allegiance, such as, the myth of redemptive violence (violence saves, solves problems), or the story of progress (we are getting better and better, bigger and bigger, or should be); or reality is limited to what you can see, touch, feel, taste or hear (secular materialism); then our Story of God as force of Love, most clearly embodied in Jesus, ever seeking connection, healing, reconciliation, justice, mercy — in other words, Shalom. And, being human and inconsistent, we live within all of these stories. We claim no purity. Yet, I have the desire, likely you do as well, for the Jesus story to define our way, hold and motivates us.

Once I pridefully thought that it was my job to help people have transforming experiences. Now I assume that these openings happen, though often unacknowledged. As steward of a Story, I feel the privilege to look for these spiritual openings, to recognize them, to expect them, to name them, and assist their sustenance in community.

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.

On Being a Change Agent

The term “change agent” has been around for a while. We all want to be agents of change. Our faith perspective is full of “change” words, like repentance, conversion, growth, formation, transformation. But being a “change agent” is tricky, even down right dangerous.

I was talking with a pastor about the difference between two congregational experiences. The earlier one ended in disappointment and early resignation. The current pastoral relationship seems to be thriving. I asked about the difference.

He noted that in the earlier experience he came to the congregation with changes in mind. The search committee thought that they knew what the church needed and persuaded my friend to join them in reforming their system. End result? Disaster, as you might have guessed.

I thought of Menken’s comment: “Every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow citizens, usually by force; this messianic delusion is our national disease.” You and I know this delusional disease. We have “caught that cold” more than once, believing by willful force lasting change can occur.

This pastor approached his current congregation with a different stance. He assumed that church members had within them, though not yet named, the best sense of their direction. So the first year he listened and listened and listened, including listening to his own responses as well. In it all—and this is the faith part—he assumed that the Spirit was nudging, ever trying to give birth to something new. Some patterns and possibilities emerged to which he, along with lay leaders, could align themselves.

Let me linger for a moment with the “birthing” metaphor. It’s obviously a gift from feminine consciousness and experience. I find it provocative to think of leaders as midwives who assist in the new life wanting to be born.

Back to the phrase, “change agent.” Maybe we should retire the phrase. It implies we can make change happen. But we learn, sooner or later, in every relationship that pushing for change only, and inevitably, invites a push back. Oh, we may be able to force the “rubber band” to stretch a bit, but as soon as the pressure is released, it goes back to where it was.

We are left with a paradox, one I learned from family systems theory. And its so counter-intuitive. The best chance for meaningful change is working at staying in relationship while changing ourselves, The dynamics of change are much more than this, but not less. It’s true, whether we are talking about leadership of a congregation or surviving in a marriage or working on a staff. It’s our best chance for meaningful change.           

 

Over and Over Again

“And what will be the focus on your prolonged retreat?” I asked. His response: “I want to allow this truth to deepen within me: I am profoundly loved, delighted in, graced unconditionally. I have believed it on occasion, but mostly end up judging myself unmercifully.”

“How simple,” I thought. “How profound. Yet, how difficult to believe, really believe.”

I asked: “How will you practice internalizing this truth?

For most of my life I have sought personal change through insight. If I could “see” it, I would change, so I believed. How often, with great anticipation and excitement, I turned to books, articles, lectures and conversation in search of awareness. I loved, perhaps to the point of addiction, the excitement of a breakthrough, that eureka moment when the “lights come on.”

Yes, insightful awareness is the first step. It opens up options. But for the longest time I assumed that insight, by itself, was transformative. I thought that awareness produces behavioral change. It doesn’t.

When it comes to learning a language or a musical instrument, we don’t make this mistake. It’s understood that progress requires about 20% understanding and 80% practicing. Only on-going practicing and more practicing, preferably with others, can deepen habits of speaking or reading or playing an instrument.

The recent research of neuroscientists helps me understand the power of practicing “over and over.” In their article, The Neuroscience of Leadership, David Rock and Jeffrey Schwatz address how behavioral change happens.

Let’s imagine this example. Our pre-frontal cortex (the hard working part of the brain, the insight part) decides to make a significant change in behavior, such as, learn to drive a car or change one’s diet or master a new song on the piano or, in my friend’s case, treat oneself mercifully, not judgmentally. However, another part of the brain, basil ganglia, is hardwired for routine, set habits and familiar activity. So when the pre-frontal cortex begins to focus on the desired change, the basil ganglia rises up with a resounding, “No. Don’t do that! Come back to what is familiar!” Usually, as with New Years resolutions, the effort to change a particular behavior is too uncomfortable to sustain. More often than not, the sabotaging pull from the habitual part of the brain will prevail.

Initially, it seems, a particular practice is the work of the pre-frontal cortex. It requires a sustained focus of repetitive attention on the desired changes—until new patterns and connections of the brain are formed. Eventually, with “over and over again” practicing, the new pattern becomes familiar and routine. Then basil ganglia takes over as primary motivator. The new behavior in time—it may take a long time—becomes an old habit.

My friend hopes to move the insight of being Loved, abiding in Love, and conduit of Love from his pre-frontal cortex to his basil ganglia where loving and being loved in more habit than idea.

I wonder what practices he is calling on. That’s my first question upon his return.

On the Dark Side: Attachment to Outcomes

I don’t know where this truism came from, but it stays stuck to my frame like a worn out label. It goes like this. Life consists of four challenges: show up: be present; speak your truth; and don’t be attached to outcomes.

The zinger for me is in the last one—don’t be attached to outcomes.

I am such a future oriented person, off the Myers-Briggs chart on “intuition.” I love to plan and prioritize goals and dream of possibilities. I delight in casting the anchor way out in front of my boat and pull the rope in that direction. There’s good in that. Besides, it is just who I am. I can’t help it. But, as with all things good, there is a shadow side.

The dark side is attachments to outcomes. Of course, we hope for outcomes. I’m talking about our identity, our well being being attached, “nailed” to results. For instance, when I was pastor, I could be so caught up in where the church ought to go that I would miss appreciating where it was. I could be so invested in someone’s growth that I, laying aside evocative questions, would focus on where they needed to be. With regard to myself, how often my expectations, plans and goals could conveniently distract me from the messy, difficult, vulnerable present. Underneath, way down deep, I suspect attachments to results come from feelings of not being enough, not loving enough, not doing enough, not worth enough.

Wendell Berry, as he often does, gets to the deep place of loving. He describes this kind of “nonattachment to outcomes” love in his character Dorie Carlett’s relationship to forever-drunken Uncle Peach. “She had long ago given up hope for Uncle Peach. She cared for him without hope, because she had passed the place of turning back or looking back. Quietly, almost submissively, she propped herself against him, because in her fate and faith she was opposed to his ruin.”

Sometimes we love just because we have to in order to be who we are. That’s what I see in Dorie. Being true to her core self, loving, not changing Uncle Peach, is what motivated her.

Leading from the Heart

Leading from the heart, what might that look like? My last posting addressed leading from the mind. It highlighted that wonderful capacity within us to detach, step back, getting to the “balcony” and observe both patterns and options in a given complex situation.

Leading from the heart offers a different perspective. In this reflection, I am attempting to translate some teaching from Cynthia Bourgeault and apply it to leadership. Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest steeped in the contemplative tradition, defines the heart as the organ of alignment. This is in contrast to our accustomed thinking of the heart as the seat of emotions. Rather, see the heart as that cultivated capacity within us to discern and join the Spirit at work in a complex situation.

In a lecture about the Trinity, Bourgeault refers to the “Law of the Three.” This differs from the more familiar Hegelian schema: thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. With thesis and antithesis as conflicting forces, we look for some synthesis, a compromise usually not satisfying to either side.

The Law of the Three is different. It posits that in many, if not most, situations, there are affirming forces and opposing or denying forces. But, according to this Law, there is also present a third force, the reconciling or creative force. By aligning with the third creative force the result can be, not just compromise, but a new thing, a new creation that is more satisfying to all parties.

Bourgeault offers two metaphors. There is the wind and the water, both opposing forces. There is creative movement only when the helmsman with tiller in hand works respectfully with the opposing forces in ways that move the sailboat forward in the desired direction.

Or, there is the sperm and the egg. By themselves, nothing happens. Only with love-making are they joined in a way that creates the new, the formation of a person.

In this Law of the Three paradigm the leader from the aligning “heart” intentionally places herself in the midst of opposing forces. Within the chaos she looks for creative possibilities that are attempting to form. She values the differences, honors the resistances and works to avoid “either-or” stances. You are willing to “hold” both sides with care. All the while, as leader, she looks for commonalities. In Genesis 1:1 fashion, she assumes that a creative Spirit is brooding within the chaos, working to bring forth fresh creations. In other words, something new is trying to be born. So, much like a midwife, the leader searches for ways to align with this birthing Spirit. And, I assume, this midwifery capacity can be cultivated over time.

With the Law of the Three in mind, I have been working on a point-of-view article for the local newspaper. With the coming spring ballot on amending the N.C. state constitution to further outlaw same-sex marriage, soon the media will be full of strident voices “for” and “against.” Along with acknowledging both opposing forces, I am wondering, might there be a creative third force at work? Where is the creative force, besides “yes” and “no” that I can align with?

I am thinking that within this divisive conversation, one truth may be overlooked: both sides value marriage. Both movements care about the sanctity of marriage. Both opposing voices are speaking for marriage in a time when the institution of marriage is itself being questioned by our society. For many, gays and straights alike, marriage looks unduly confining, an option they choose to avoid.

I go on to argue that faithful promises of covenant love in one relationship strengthens this capacity in us all. I suggest that the increasing number of same-sex couples, documented by the U.S. Census, just may enhance, not diminish, the institution of marriage. They help us hold high the “bar” of covenant love.

My point is not for you to focus on gay marriage, a topic more complicated than my few comments. Simply, I am illustrating my effort to practice the Law of the Three, this process of leading from the heart. I found it intriguing and worth playing with. Hope you do as well.

Behavior Change: How Does It Happen?

Change. You and I are in the change business, more typically called by us—conversion or transformation or repentance. In our preaching, teaching, leading and pastoral care, we assume that, with God, positive/healthy/redemptive change is possible.

Yet, we lament how hard change is, how little significant behavior change actually occurs in ourselves and in others. Apostle Paul names it: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7: 18,19)

I found some help from the current research on the brain. Specifically, I pass along some findings noted in an article, “The Neuroscience of Leadership,” by Jeffrey Schwartz and David Rock (Strategy and Business, Spring, 2009)

Let’s begin by understanding the pain in change. One part of the brain (basil ganglia) is hardwired for routine, set habits, and familiar activity. It will set up a fierce fight against desired changes in behavior. When the prefrontal cortex, the hard working part of the brain, wants to implement some important change, expect the basil ganglia part of the brain to rise up with a resounding, “No. Don’t do that! Stay with what’s comfortable and predictable!” This part of the brain makes strong efforts to sabotage. Because of this persistent resistance, Skinner’s incentives, “carrot and stick” approaches to changing behavior do not last. Neither do, according to Rock and Schwartz, the approaches to change from humanistic psychology that depend on empathetic listening and self-understanding.

From this brain research, what is required in change are three things. One, from the prefrontal cortex, there must be a sustained focus of repetitive attention on the desired changes. This means practicing this new behavior regularly, even daily. From such focused attention, even in the face of discomfort and impulse to return to familiarity and routine, new patterns and connections in the brain will be formed. And eventually, the new pattern drops to the basil ganglia, becoming habitual.

Think of learning to drive a car or learning to play a song on the piano. If the repetitive focus of the prefrontal cortex remains strong during the disorienting phrase and does not yield to the resistance, eventually our driving the car or playing the song becomes more routine and comfortable. That is, the behavior comes more from the basil ganglia than prefrontal cortex.

A second insight, relevant to our work, is the place of small peer-learning groups. For example, the Toyota company has fostered behavior change through workplace sessions in each unit that occur weekly, even daily. In these meetings, workers talk about how to make things better. In the interactive, collaborative process, they are training the brain to make new connections. In fact, Rock and Schwartz note, “These shop-floor or meeting-room practices resonate deeply with the innate predispositions of the human brain.”

A third finding I find significant is the importance of self-direction in change of behavior. Any pressure to change from others, as in advice-giving, will be resisted. So for lasting change to occur, a person must choose it. This is why coaching is effective. A coach supports and honors the self-direction of the client by asking curious questions and wondering with the client about options. The motivation for change must be from self, for self-chosen goals.

I take away from this article these three things to ponder: the crucial role of regular practicing; the importance of peer-learning; and the importance of self-direction, for our change and the change we hope for in others.

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?”

Leadership That’s Relational

Maybe its our cultural love affair with individualism that distorts our view of leadership. Say “bold leadership” to someone and I wager that on the inner screen of their mind will pop up an individual who sticks up and stands out. Leadership comes from within the individual, it seems. Not wrong. Just limited.

This, I submit, is a deeper truth: bold leadership is relational. It comes from human interaction. Most often leaders do not stick up and stand out. Leadership is taking a stand within relationships—“this is what I see;” that invites a stand from the other(s), “what do you see?” Or, often the reverse, “what do you see?,” then, “This is what I see?” From the interaction, synergy occurs, an insight surfaces, next steps appear, a direction forward emerges. Leadership comes, not primarily from within a individual, but from a community of interactive, respectful relationships.

For pastors, it may look like this.

In sermons, “This is what I see in this text or where I think the Spirit in this text speaks to us;” implying, “What do you see in this text? How is God engaging you through this text?” From the internal dialogue, not voiced, synergy is occurring, perhaps awakenings and new resolves. Through these faithful interactive relationships of text, preacher, people, I believe the Spirit is at work leading.

In committee meetings, “This is what I see [as the problem, as a direction to take, where this discussion connects with our mission, etc.]” An invitation is implied, “What do you see [making sense of our dilemma, possibilities, etc.]?” Back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes as pastor you hold back, first wanting the insights from others before you offer you own. From the synergy, likely new options forward will appear.

In pastoral care, “Ted and Martha, this is what I see [or what I hear or wonder about, etc.]?” The invitation, “What do you see [getting clearer, becoming more complex, possible options for action, etc.]? From the synergy, new awareness, next steps, a direction may be discerned. It’s the way of “a leading.”

Little risks, undramatic, mutual “stands”—spoken and heard—within relationships is where I look for bold, creative leadership to break forth.

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.

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.

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.

Preaching from Astonishment

“The way to faith leads through acts of wonder and radical amazement. Awe precedes faith.” (God’s Search for Man, Abraham Joshua Heschel)

I heard it first from Heschel: awe/wonder/ radical amazement precedes faith. Astonishment comes first.

Did you not find it so? At some point, and many points after, you were overwhelmed with the outrageous generosity of God. You got it! You realized with heart and mind that all living beings, including yourself, are enfolded in a gracious Mystery, most clear but not limited to Jesus. Amazing! You “saw” it, that the love you are wired for is already present, a gift to be received and lived from. In those moments that interrupted times of doubt and despair, you turned (repented), trusting yourself to this “hold on to your hat,” astonishing Presence. And your initial “turnings” led you to ordination then on to pastoral leadership.

But astonishment is hard to sustain. Like love, astonishment is both an effortless happening and the result of constant effort. We fall in love; we create love. Love happens to us; we make love happen. So it is with astonishment, awe, radical amazement.

With this in mind, let’s think about preaching. It can be difficult to sustain astonishment in our preaching. After all, as pastors, you preach—say, forty sermons a year, not counting the funeral and wedding messages. How can something so regular maintain its mystery and wonder?

Let’s get even more specific and practical. And personal too. I’m remembering a typical week of sermon preparation. For me it started on Monday. I loved, well mostly, I loved the discipline of wrestling with a text. It’s a spiritual practice I miss. Early in the week my pattern was to live with the text—think, pray and play with it, carry it around with me to the hospital and committee meetings. The text for the week was always just over my right shoulder.

Then about Wednesday I would pull out the commentaries and take some notes. Thursday, for me, was “fish or cut bait” time, because Sunday was a comin.’ With earnesty now, I looked for a path within the forest of possibilities in my head and notes before me. If sermons make one basic point, then by Thursday I was agonizing over the question, “What’s the point in this text that pierces? Where am I going with this? Where is it taking me?” This could be a very anxious moment for me. Sunday is coming closer and no clear point is emerging. No clear path could be seen. By now it might be Friday or even Saturday.

Over the years I developed this practice: With various ideas and the text before me, I kept asking over and over, “What’s astonishing about this text? Where am I being surprised and radically amazed by this passage? What about this scripture both summons and confronts me, and through me the church and community?”

Recently I was overhearing a debate about how much of the preacher’s life should show in the sermon. I think this is a confusing question. If this means lots of personal references, then we should wonder about ego promotion. But if this means the passion of the preacher about the text, then that is another matter. I assume the person in the pew benefits from our open and lively engagement of the Message. This invites their lively engagement with the text. They want to feel our passion, our curiosity, our questions, and, yes, our excitements.

I’m saying that the most important aspect of sermon preparation is your wrestling with the text—however long it takes—until it blesses you with astonishment. It’s the place to preach from.

How do you hear this?

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?

Getting to the Balcony

It’s summer, a good time to reflect on “getting to the balcony” above the “dance floor.” This provocative metaphor is Ronald Heifetz’s way of challenging leaders to balance immediate action (the dance floor) with larger/deeper perspective (the balcony).

A congregation can look like noisy activity on a “dance floor.” Some members are into “line” dancing, others dancing in two and threes, or even solo. Everyone is attempting, sometimes successfully, to dance the same tune. Some sit along the sidelines, contented or discontented observers.

And there we are, (staying with the metaphor) moving in and out of these dances, frequently not sure of next steps. The pressure to stay focused on the immediate is severe: deadlines to meet; phone calls, text messages, e-mails to answer; visits to make; tasks to complete. All apart of the dance.

The metaphor is theologically suggestive. Only the Divine Music makes dancing possible. In multiple, creative responses, we dancers seek through movement to embody (incarnate) God’s vibrations of shalom.

Heifetz laments the failure of leaders to frequent the balcony. From the balcony, you can see the big picture — notice patterns, sense discordance, detect direction, gain perspective, observe movement.

This helpful as far as it goes.

As pastors, we go farther. Once in the balcony, we look within as well. We ask, are we still able to hear the Music? Just as the pressure of immediate demands can undermine larger perspective, so can the noise of the dance floor drown out our “ear” for the Music. In these moments, we allow into ourselves again the joy and gift of our calling. The balcony is for both: other-observation, self- observation; or, external assessment, internal renewal.

You know this practice. In sermon preparation you withdraw from the dance floor and place yourself in the balcony. You ask how does the Word in this text address these people at this moment in our life together. You have the congregation in mind.

But there is more. In preparing a sermon, you are prepared. You allow the Word in the text to address your longings for approval, for brilliance, for appreciation or other ego claims on the pulpit. The sermon in formation is rightly your soul in formation. A musician without an “ear” for the Music is a “noisy gong” or “clanging cymbal.”

Then, in rising to the pulpit to preach, you return to the dance floor, the dance with God.

This is the challenge: working this rhythm—moving between balcony and dance floor—into our way of leading. Sometimes it means removing ourselves physically to a different kind of space. At other times, it means removing ourselves for a moment in the midst of the dance in order for the outer and inner work to occur. Perhaps in time a “double vision” develops, keeping one eye on what is before you and one eye on the forces within you and the larger system. I submit this is a skill worth aiming for, one I wish I had treated as priority during my years of pastoral leadership.

Your thoughts and experience?

[The metaphor, “getting to the balcony” comes from Ronald Heifetz in his books, Leadership on the Line and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership.]

Friends That Form You

“You and I are different because ____________  lived among us.” I liked to include this sentence in the opening statement of a funeral or memorial service.

Andy, my first long-term friend died last week. Suddenly that sentence became intensely personal.

It’s true. Without Andy I would not be me. I am different because he lived. But how? How has our friendship of 46 years formed me?

I have begun the pleasure of living that question. I mark his disciplined naivete, leading with curious questions; his gift of listening others into being; his relational understanding of reality; his discovery of dying as birthing; his authority/authenticity that authored hope in others. There is more, much more to be harvested from my grief. But this awareness startles me: these are not primarily ideas. These are embodiments that, to some extent, are being embodied in me. I see him in me. These, and other revelations to come, hint at the difference in me because Andy and I were friends.

I confess. I am an “idea” junkie. I relish, like the bite into a fresh peach, new “insights” or fresh perspectives.  Over the years I have fallen in love with theories, and only with stubborn reluctance have I been able to acknowledge the limits of each one. I’ve assumed that it was ideas that formed me.

More to the point, I am suggesting to you, we are being formed by friendships. Maybe the ideas and theories that stick to our bones, those that become transformative, are the ones embodied in relationships. Maybe our friends create us. Or better said, they provide containers in which God’s on-going creation and creativity occur. Friends are “believing mirrors,” to use Julia Cameron’s phrase. They mirror back to us our competency, craziness, possibilities, limits, options, and encouragement — all marinated in laughter and wonder.

Intuitively I have known this. From the first “cell group” in university days, I have always been a part of a circle of peers that met regularly to befriend our lives and work. And now in retirement, I am still at it, fostering clergy collegial communities — yes, named AnamCara (soul friend). In addition, there are the less structured friendships along the way, nurtured by an occasional e-mail, coffee or vacation together, or telephone call. It’s clear to me now  — friends, including familial friends, are our truest social security.

We are trained to think of the lonely artist or lonely pastor. It is their name we see on the book, or portrait, or sermon. But if you look closer and inquire, any artist or pastor “worth their salt” will talk about the circle of friends who make their work possible.

Not surprising, this reflection has been formed with friends.

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