Editor's Note: This article is based on the second chapter of the author's book: Azure Wind: Lessons for Ministry from Under Sail.
I am a planner. I have learned to think ahead, to anticipate, to consider various options and possibilities and to make choices that meet a goal. I've planned programs, workshops, meetings, fund-raisers, and construction projects. When I began planning for my sabbatical, I brought those same skills to the table.
For eighteen months I had been working toward a sabbatical that was to include an active adventure--sailing--and a reflective experiences--reading and writing. I wanted to do this with friends and family and I knew that I would have to organize and plan for this moment with great care. I looked up charts and measured miles and averaged boat speeds, based on the reading I was doing.
Editor's note: This article was written in response to "What the amended PUP report actually means" by Clark D. Cowden, which appeared in the September 4 Outlook issue.
Much has been written about General Assembly's new Authoritative Interpretation of Section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order. Among other things, that Authoritative Interpretation provides that sessions and presbyteries, in conducting their examinations, must determine whether a candidate for ordained office "has departed from scriptural and constitutional standards for fitness for office" and "whether any departure constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity." Chief among the questions being debated is whether a candidate or officer-elect can declare a scruple with respect to matters not only of belief, but also of practice. The answer is clearly "yes."
I have been suggesting that, while Mark's Gospel aims to bring disciples into ever more full and mature faith -- to turn them into those who faithfully confess Jesus to be God's Son, both with their lips and with their lives -- the irony is that disciples do not model faith in his Gospel. It's "little people" who do. It's a "little person," in the form of an unnamed, Roman soldier presiding over his execution, who models the faithful confession of one's lips. Similarly, it's a whole string of "little people," making mostly cameo appearances in the narrative, who model the faithful confession of one's life.
In the Gospel accounts, some of these "little people" have names, but most remain nameless. Only two can be imagined moving among polite society. Quite a few are women. Their number could comprise all the human characters who are not Jesus and who are neither family, nor opponents, nor disciples of Jesus. At a minimum, they include a leper (1:40-45), friends of a paralytic (2:1-12), Jairus and a woman with a hemorrhage (5:21-43), a Syro-Phoenician mother (7:24-30), a half-believing father (9:14-29), blind Bartimaeus (10:46-52), a sympathetic scribe (12:28-34), a poor widow (12:41-44), Simon of Cyrene (15:22), and the women at the cross and tomb (15:40-41, 47; 16:1-8).
Both less and more than family and good friends,
still you belong there at the high moments and the low,
included in the laughter and the tears, all
the embraces,
words and gestures of delight and consolation,
across the years even participating in remembering,
noting the absences, the gaps among the circled chairs,
the ones who couldn't make it for whatever reason,
glad or sad.
What to make of Maher Arar? A Syrian-born computer engineer, now a naturalized citizen of Canada, an ordinary man with a wife and family, Arar was detained by American authorities on September 26, 2002, while changing flights at Kennedy Airport. Arar's infraction? He had a co-worker, who had a brother, who had connections to people whom officials suspected of having links to al-Qaeda. Based on this thin thread of suspicion and without being charged with any crime, Arar was taken from his family, put in chains, handed over to the government of Syria, and for ten months subjected to acts of extreme physical and mental torture. We now know that Arar was completely innocent.
How could something like this happen? Why America's resort to torture? Seasoned interrogators have long known that torture is a poor tactic to elicit reliable information. Under torture a person will say whatever his tormentors wish. In fact, a classic military text on interrogation, based on concrete experience gained during World War II, says that the best way to extract useful information is through kindness, not brutality.
©Ruth Haley Barton, June 2005.
Used by permission.
"The soul is like a wild animal--tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently by the base of the tree, and fade into our surroundings, the wild animal we seek might put in an appearance."
-- Parker Palmer
I will never forget my first experience with extended solitude. It was a field trip, of sorts, that was part of a seminary class on spiritual formation; our class gathered at a nearby retreat center to spend the day under the guidance of our beloved professor. The morning was wonderful but, in some ways, very similar to what I had already been experiencing in shorter times of solitude. However, when lunchtime came, we were told that we would eat lunch in silence so as not to interrupt our attention to God by being pulled into social interaction.
"Preach the gospel at all times," urged Francis of Assisi, adding, "if necessary, use words." And we may wonder that the truth he administers -- that actions preach louder, and better, than words -- doesn't paralyze proclamation altogether.
Still, the example of the canonical evangelists should nerve us to keep on. After all, if they knew and observed Francis' rule (and who can believe that they did?), then, by whatever calculus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John judged the necessity to be great. For, of words -- gratias Deo, such marvelous words! -- they used plenty.
Over the years of teaching seminarians and leading them later in continuing education seminars, I have come to realize that we have not prepared clergy to handle criticism.
Nothing seems to demoralize clergy more than personal and professional criticism. It hurts. It throws us off balance. It causes us to question our competence. Long after the initial sting there lingers a smoldering resentment that a parishioner could be so unloving, unjust, and unfair. This resentment grows and deepens in the absence of offsetting affirmation and praise. Often, too, the resentment festers when there is no one to talk to about the injustice except one's life partner who must also endure the insult and pain.
c. 2006 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly
Barbara Brown Taylor has been an Episcopal priest, a teacher, columnist, author and -- according to Baylor University -- one of the best preachers in the English-speaking world.
Her new book, Leaving Church (HarperSanFrancisco), describes her experience of burning out as the priest of a parish she had wanted very much to serve and then leaving not only the pastoral ministry but also many of her former beliefs.
"I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real," she said in an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. "And I'll capitalize both of those R's, because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might agree it's what is most real."
c. 2006 Religion News Service
When church members describe their ideal pastor, they often prefer "a nice young man with a family," as one denominational official said. Nice young men and women do become pastors, but they are a minority in the pool of American clergy. I concentrate here on the word "young." Whether male or female, young clergy are in short supply.
In one sense, this is no surprise. For at least the past 25 years, an increasing percentage of seminary students have been second-career students; that is, they have worked in at least one other occupation prior to seminary.
The hardest task for a minister is being the former pastor, especially if you were beloved by many.
While pastor of the church, you were invited in for the most intimate and special events in people's lives--baptisms, weddings, illnesses, death. Not only were you honored by being trusted to share in those times, you were needed by individuals and families during those marker happenings in their lives. You formed deep and lasting friendships with people in your congregation.
Leaving the pastorate within that congregation means leaving all those meaningful connections behind. That can be painful, difficult, and lonely. But just as a family doctor does not continue to prescribe or perform surgery on former patients after retiring or moving to another community, so a minister is no longer a pastor to those who used to be his/her parishioners.
Biblical stewardship is a many-sided, multi-dimensional discipline, a lesson I learned during 25 years working with rural, town, suburban, and urban congregations in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. If employed, they potentially will bring forward the gifts necessary for vibrant ministry within the congregation and vital mission to the world.
1. Stewardship announces that everything we are and have belongs to God. It is an antidote to the power of avarice and consumerism. It guards against the idolatry of things, from being possessed by our possessions. Members are managers, not owners, of all the Creator has entrusted to them. The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it (Psalm 24:1).
2. Stewardship's first and final standard is Jesus Christ. A faithful response is not measured by what the member(s) gave last year or what our neighbor might give. The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming again of Jesus Christ are stewardship's only sure standard and measure. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus ... who emptied himself (Philippians 2:5).
I remember David Steele's thoughts when he retired from his pastorate. In his inimitable way he spoke of a beloved parishioner who was sick, and of the strong pull to go and see him, so that the member's needs would be met. After some consideration, and probably a bit of prayer, Steele made the wise decision to stay put, and not to visit this fellow. Others would have to do the task.
He stayed away.
Steele faced the concern that many retired ministers do. A long pastorate is filled with relationships built over time. They are deep and meaningful. Some of these pastoral relationships become friendships. And, yes, some of these friendships endure over time.
What does a seminary education cost?
Full time attendance at a theological school is expensive. A visit to the Web sites of two Presbyterian seminaries reveals that a single student living in the Princeton Theological Seminary dorm will probably spend about $25,400, excluding health insurance, during the academic year. Students with dependents face steeper charges. The estimated expenses for married San Francisco Theological Seminary students with two or more dependents, depending on childcare costs, easily exceed $40,000.
These and other student budgets aren't lavish. They often include lower-than-market rent for housing provided by the seminary, and they do not include "extras" like dance lessons or sports camp for children. Ominously, in typical cases, nothing is budgeted for savings to fund children's college expenses, adults' retirement, or unforeseen emergencies.
Editor's Note: This article was first presented at the Montreat Conference "The Hope of the Church: Celebrating Common Ground" July 5-8, 2006.
By the grace of God, the next generation of pastors will serve the church as passionate/compassionate believers of the Christian gospel. Surely this is one of the warmest and most profound pastoral blessings of an education offered by all of our Presbyterian seminaries. Surely this is the passionate and teaching legacy of our seminaries: at our best, Presbyterians are thinking people with warm hearts.
Why? Because our people in the pews long for pastors who passionately/compassionately believe what they preach and teach. Indeed, from a parishioner's viewpoint, one of the most priceless affirmations a preacher can receive is: "I can tell you really believe what you preach." That is, our congregations deeply yearn to call good pastors who will articulate with passion the belief that Jesus Christ is incomparably the most significant event in the history of the human race; that Jesus is God's own heart of flesh who crawled into the cradle of Bethlehem and who climbed onto the cross of Golgotha; that Jesus, in the words of Joseph Sittler, "comes to us in the world where we are, where we have been, and where we are going. ..."; that Jesus is the risen Lord and Savior of all times and all places; that to know God now in Jesus Christ is to know God forever.
One year ago, while reading through Isaiah in prayer, I saw a vision that has haunted me throughout this difficult year. As I read Isaiah 10 and 11 in The Message, the Lord brought to my mind an incident that had happened years before.
When I lived up in Sylvania, Ohio ("Tree City, USA"), I used to walk, talk, and pray with my arborist reunion group brother in the woods around a Franciscan convent/college. One day in early spring, we had just prayed and were heading to our cars when the air was shattered by an explosive CRACK. We looked, and saw a beautiful tree under which we had just walked break in half, and fall. How could a perfectly healthy-looking tree fall so catastrophically, I asked my friend.
He told me that trees grow from the outside, but their structure is the heartwood--the inside. We walked over to the tree, and saw that the heartwood had rotted out of the trunk. Green and alive, the tree was vulnerable to the next gust of wind. One small breath, and it failed, and fell--not because it was dead, but because it was hollow.
I have been struggling with this vision, and the verses of Isaiah from which it sprang:
(Editor's note: This paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13 was prepared for the memorial service of a 106-year-old retired registered nurse. It is one of 33 such paraphrases in the book, Love's Letters, A Poetic Book of Confessions (Library Lane Press, 2001).
Even if I speak in terms of Medicare or guardian angels, but do not offer caring with love, I am a ding-a-ling or a muted song.
And if I have the powers of a guardian and understand the mystery of each illness, and have knowledge of geriatrics, and even if I have such faith in quality care so as to remove mountains of anxiety, but do not show love, I am nothing.
If I give myself away in selfless service and if I wait on my patients hand and foot but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love, in caring for others, is patient and kind. Love does not envy other callings or boast of going the second mile. Love is never intrusive nor overbearing.
In a new book about the challenges of undergraduate education, Harry Lewis, former dean of Harvard College, writes, "The greater the university, the more intent it is on competitive success in the marketplace of faculty, students, and research money. And the less likely it is to talk seriously to students about their development into people of good character who will know that they owe something to society for the privileged education they have received."i
While theological schools are not in the same situation as large research universities with respect to the competition Lewis describes, educational institutions always face the challenge of identifying and remaining true to their core mission. Helping seminaries and divinity schools do this is one of the goals of the Association of Theological Schools of the United States and Canada (ATS).
From 1990-2003, 5 percent of our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s 11,000+ churches grew by net one member. In the years 2001-2005, that number slumped to less than 1 percent demonstrated growth in worship attendance and membership.
To put that in other terms, 70 percent of our fastest growing churches in the 1990's have lurched into decline in membership and/or worship attendance. The slide proved remarkably omnipresent, as though a field of thoroughbreds suddenly pulled up winded.
What follows are my early ruminations on this millennial effect. Perhaps no single factor accounts for this dispiriting downturn among even vanguard churches, but together they may help explain the phenomenon.
It is widely felt that too many ministers are leaving local church ministry today, and often for preventable reasons.
As part of the Pulpit and Pew Project at Duke Divinity School we were commissioned to gather new data on why this is happening. We carried out a large study in 2002 and 2003, and we published Pastors in Transition in 2005 (Eerdmans Press). Here we summarize some findings.
We studied five denominations: Assemblies of God, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Presbyterian (U.S.A.), and United Methodist. We defined the target group:
"We are interested in everyone who was ordained in the past, who served in parish ministry full-time or part-time, and within the last eight years has left parish ministry in either of two ways: (1) left parish ministry for non-parish ministries recognized by their ordinations, especially hospital chaplaincies, military chaplaincies, campus ministers, teachers, and professors; or (2) left church ministry entirely. We will not study (1) persons temporarily without a job who are now actively seeking a parish ministry job, (2) persons who have retired or who have moved from full-time to part-time parish ministry, and (3) persons who left the parish to take denominational jobs such as presbytery staff or district superintendent."
We aimed for a random sample of about 200 from each denomination. Each denomination helped with sampling and mailing. No names were asked. Questionnaires went out in spring 2002, and the response rates varied from 19 percent in the Assemblies of God to 54 percent in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Presbyterian response rate was 38 percent. The numbers of cases were: Assemblies of God, 174; ELCA Lutheran, 291; Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, 106; Presbyterian, 173; and United Methodist, 219. Later we interviewed 90 of the former pastors by phone.
How will we reach the next generation of Presbyterians? As we strive to grow our congregations and get the attention of younger families and singles, it may be time to look at how we tell our story.
Today, almost every household has a personal computer. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project April 2006 report (www.pewinternet.org), more than 147 million Americans (73%) are Internet users. Ipods, cell phones, e-mail and blogs have become a way of life for most of our younger generation. Yet so often we only offer our sermons on cassette tapes and our announcements on flyers. Are we missing an opportunity to connect with the under thirty segment of our population?
When I think of the classical Nicene marks of the church, I tend to think of four immovable inscriptions pointing to intimidating standards: "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic." Somehow these marks seem very distant and removed from our church life. Pondering these marks we need to be reminded that the life of the church is rooted in the Triune God whose life is not marked by immovable, petrified divinity but by shocking, self-giving, other-embracing grace as revealed through the life, death, and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God does not exist in some kind of divine solitary isolation. The very heart of the divine life is community, the relationship of mutual self-giving love between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Dynamic images of a dance rather than that of rigid hierarchy better expresses this understanding. The Triune God becomes the model for the life of the church. It, then, ought not be a hierarchical, self-seeking institution, but a community of self-giving and loving people, called, gathered, and shaped by the Triune God.
In the waning hours of the 217th General Assembly--the last morning, when nothing much of substance is brought to a tired bunch of commissioners ready to put their packed bags onto planes go home after an intense eight days--former moderator Rick Ufford-Chase rose to the microphone for a point of personal privilege. He had lain awake troubled by one statement the Assembly had approved and that concerned a matter close to his heart: borders. Most people know of Ufford-Chase's heart-felt work in Border Links. We have heard the stories of desperate people risking, and sometimes losing, their lives just for the opportunity to work in the U.S. so their families in impoverished areas of Mexico might live.
Circus-goers munching on pink cotton candy watch their favorite performing animals. At center ring, elephants saunter in, doing some heavy prancing as each links its trunk to a mate's tail ahead, lumbering in a circle. With music blaring, a trainer tosses them treats for standing on their hind legs. Sometimes, these gargantuan animals of the Midway are decked out with lacey pink sashes around their necks. How harmless and lovable they appear.
In the wild where elephants may become savage, a safari guide sternly warns tourists not to get near them. A charging bull elephant on the rampage is a killer beast.
Preachers recognize an elephant has invaded sanctuaries as it monopolizes every sector in national life. The elephant is the war in Iraq.
Preachers who desire longevity in their pulpits intentionally avoid mentioning the elephant. They fear pointing their gospel guns at the war, lest parishioners get upset and leave. Worse, disgruntled worshippers possess power to give a minister who preaches the "whole counsel of God" a pink slip.
Three recent developments have been of particular importance for efforts to uphold the rule of law and end the scandal of U.S.-sponsored torture and abuse in detention facilities abroad.
The first is the epoch-making Supreme Court decision, handed down at the end of June, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The Court ruled that the president is not authorized to create special military tribunals to conduct the trials of Guantanamo detainees. These tribunals failed to meet minimum standards of fairness as required under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or in a federal district court. Creating tribunals with inadequate legal safeguards oversteps the bounds of executive authority.
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