Tom Ehrich, Author at The Presbyterian Outlook

Confronting fear and selfishness

May 28, 2019 by Tom Ehrich Leave a Comment

The most fraught time in a congregation’s life is transition. A new pastor arrives, a new cohort of leaders emerges, the world we serve demands new ministry from us — and things fall apart. The new pastor is often gone within 18 months. The new leadership cohort gets frozen out and leaves. We ignore the emerging world outside our walls. When I began to see this happening, I developed strategies and methodologies for handling change more effectively. I led workshops, leadership trainings and spiritual retreats. I wrote a book on the subject and a weekly newsletter. Others were doing the same, because we all recognized the same problem: poor transitions were killing our congregations. But nothing worked — because our dilemma isn’t methods or strategies or training. It’s fear and selfishness. Here’s a story: On a drive through rural Ohio, I stopped at a restaurant that was a shrine to the 1950s. Red and chrome decor, leatherette booths, perky waitresses slinging burgers and … [Read more...]

Tagged With: transitional ministry

Tackling tough topics

April 18, 2019 by Tom Ehrich Leave a Comment

When I trained to be an emergency medical technician, this was a paramount lesson: Identify the life threats. Your patient might be complaining about a sore shoulder, but if blood is spurting from a ruptured artery, deal with the bleeding first. Don’t pursue the problem you understand, like splinting a bone, but fail to see the problem you don’t understand, like inhalation of toxic fumes. When well-meaning believers want to work on having conversations about tough topics, we need first to see what is truly tough — not the issues that make us squeamish or angry, but the issues that are life-threats: the ones destroying human lives and drawing our neighbors and us into the orbit of evil. We will disagree on what the tough topics are, but one thing is clear: Tackling the issue we tackled last year just because we know how to have that conversation is a mistake. The point isn’t to get better at having a conversation, but making sure we are talking about the right things. I know … [Read more...]

Can you check the boxes for retirement?

January 18, 2019 by Tom Ehrich Leave a Comment

If you can check all of these boxes, sally forth into retirement and relax: You enjoy excellent health. You are happily married. Your children are close to you, both emotionally and physically. You have friendships outside your workplace. Your home is affordable and suitable for senior status. You belong to a lively, always-changing, always-challenging faith community. You have a capacity to try new things and learn new skills. You have adequate pension income and investments. Most of us can check some of these boxes, but probably not all. Some of us have no checkmarks. Here’s what the categories mean and what, if anything, you can do about them as retirement looms: Health. The body inevitably fails, early for some, later for others. You can give yourself a break with three basic steps:Lose weight now. Stay far away from obesity.Exercise more, including walking, cardio workouts, lifting weights, strengthening your core, improving balance and … [Read more...]

Advent politics

November 9, 2018 by Tom Ehrich Leave a Comment

They almost seem to come around together: Election Day and Advent. A secular moment and a sacred moment, moving in tandem, as always. In our congregations, pastors are reminded not to “bring politics into the pulpit.” No endorsing of candidates or parties, not even a discussion of the year’s critical issues. Leave that to the experts, some will say. Don’t make people uncomfortable, especially large donors. Then will come the four Sundays of Advent, and what will we hear? Politics, politics, politics. Issues of power and wealth, control and freedom, corruption and redemption. We will discover that Jesus devoted an estimated two-thirds of his teaching to wealth and power — the very topics that we want to avoid in Sunday worship. Advent 1: “Justice and righteousness,” said Jeremiah. “Distress among nations,” said Jesus, “fear and foreboding” among the people, “dissipation and drunkenness” springing a “trap.” Advent 2: Exile after defeat in battle, but now a glorious return to … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Advent

Parents: Be not anxious

May 29, 2018 by Tom Ehrich Leave a Comment

Generations disagree about almost everything — from music to hair to food to the ideal places to live. I wonder if any disagreement can match the perplexity, disdain and harsh words erupting over how to parent. Each generation looks at other generations and at their neighbors and marvels at the wrongheaded ways parents raise children. Parents are either too permissive or too controlling, too lax in table manners or too persnickety, too casual about sex or too puritanical, too uninterested in their kids’ school performance or too obsessed with it, too hands-off in religion or too compelling. I remember encountering the phenomenon called “helicopter parenting” where parents are over-involved in their children’s lives — to the point of suing teachers to get better grades for their children and sitting in on college admissions interviews. One high school teacher says the hardest job he faces is dealing with parents. I saw the outcome: entitled children with minimal … [Read more...]

Tagged With: family life • parenting

Two questions for church planning

May 15, 2018 by Tom Ehrich Leave a Comment

Of the several factors that go into church program planning, four need to be abandoned right away. We’ve always done this. We can’t stand the whining and conflict that will ensue if we drop a program. It doesn’t cost much money, so why not continue it? New ideas are too expensive. Think about it. In 1850, the United States had always had slavery — did that make it worth continuing? Women had no rights — worth perpetuating? Churches forced the poor to sit in special galleries or to have their own churches — accomplishing anything? Progress didn’t come from perpetuating the known, but from asking two questions: Is it working? Is it worthy? Those are the two questions that ought to guide church planning today. Our record on asking the is-it-working question is spotty. In many cases, we just don’t know if something is working. We don’t have the metrics to measure success or failure, or to get inside outcomes and understand their meaning. And we often lack … [Read more...]

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