I’m going to try and explain sin to 8th graders for Christmas.

#lumpofcoal

#santahasthesamelettersassatan

My beautiful Confirmation schedule is a mess, so I can’t spare a week of Christmas frivolity, which, I’m well aware, is a stance that requires its own confession. This part of the Brief Statement of Faith was supposed to get covered in November, but the parade of Autumnal weeks followed their own route, not the one I had carefully mapped. So here we are at Christmas, talking about sin.

It’s actually not the worst point of entry you could find. The message of the annunciation is that Jesus will save his people from their sins. The census that sends Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem to be registered is a helpful peek into structural sin as oppressive power. The slaughter of the innocents is the whole horror show. The reality of sin drives the Christmas story.

The main tool I’m using is a “10 Propositions” post by Kim Fabricius on the Faith and Theology blog, later published in a terrific little book. I used one of these posts to teach the resurrection, too. They need a heavy editing hand for teenagers (their intended audience is theologians and pastors), but my students have appeared to respond well to them.

Here’s the presentation I’ve put together for it, to which I am most open to comment.

 

I’m back home after three days with my professional development group. For three years now we’ve pegged a week in early December to gather for mutual support, encouragement, and growth. 75 minute conversations about particular cases each of us present are the scaffolding of our schedule (here’s the format we use for those–it’s super helpful).

We also eat good food and laugh a lot. Like, a lot.

***

Models are enticing. They look so perfect, and they make such promises. Three simple steps. Follow the process. Results guaranteed.

Of course, it’s not all the models’ fault. There’s a whole operation around presenting the model, smoothing out its blemishes, dangling it before a needy audience. Yes, the model is penultimate. It’s there to sell something else: a program. A lifestyle.

Of course I mean organizational models.

I asked my group this week for some models for conceiving of my work and my church and all the programs, hoping for book titles and church websites for me to consult, download, and apply.

Nope.

They said, “You’re the model.” More fully, they said, “What you’re doing is becoming a model, but only for you and only for now.”

We can compare all the models and choose one to define what we want to do: relational. Missional. Emergent. I’ve adopted all of them at one point or another. I’ve read the books, taking furious notes. I’ve subscribed to the blogs and the podcasts, and not for naught; I haven’t learned nothing.

There is a siren song in all of it, though, chanting that the work is merely dutiful application of other peoples’ methods, intoning zero accountability for failure, because you can simply blame the model and pick a new one.

The real work is much more difficult and more more interesting, and that is to do what we know and what we love where we are, trusting that the people who put us there weren’t mistaken, learning all we can–not about new models, but about our craft and our people.

 

 

How constructive is outrage for leadership?

Was Martin Luther King Jr. outraged? Was Gandhi? Dorothy Day? Jesus?

Certainly. But outraged is not the posture we associate with the change they made. No doubt, the injustices they fought were outrageous, and a bone-deep revulsion at them must have driven King and others to lead movements for change. Yet the face they put forward in that effort did not appear affronted or violated so much as resolved.

“This is an outrage!” means there is nowhere left to go, nothing left to discern. It signals the end of conversation and the beginning of opposition. Let it come to that if it must. But don’t confuse your outrage with effective resistance.

And proceed carefully; lead with outrage too often and people lose the ability to hear you. The people I want to follow don’t often proceed from outrage. It’s there, sure, but more as fuel than flame. I want to follow their clarity of vision and purpose, not their indignation, not their anger but their plans.

 

February 7, 2010

Adam:  Good morning. I’m Adam Cave. This week is a special week at CPC. Not only do we have the privilege of welcoming Rabbi Jonathan and Cantor Paul from Temple Beth Israel, but today we’re taking part in the biggest youth-led food drive in the country. The Souper Bowl of–

[Rocky enters waving a bulletin insert and banging a pot, yelling: “Here it is! Here it is!”]

Adam: Uh, Pastor Rocky, here what is? I was in the middle of an announcement about the Sou–

Rocky: —the Super Bowl. Right. I know. Here it is.

Adam: What do you mean, “Here it is?” Here what is?

Rocky: The Super Bowl. I mean, look at this thing: it’s shiny, tough, durable, has a logo on the front. Heck, it even has a cape. If there’s a more super bowl out there, I sure haven’t seen it.

Adam: Oh wow. Pastor Rocky, the Souper Bowl I’m talking about isn’t just a bowl with a cape–it’s a nation-wide fundraiser led by youth. It collects money to help the hungry right here in our own communities. What’s super about it is that was started by a single Presbyterian youth group in South Carolina 20 years ago, and yet last year it collected over ten million dollars to feed the hungry.

Rocky: Ten million dollars! That’s a super amount of money. You’d need a super-duper bowl to hold all that. Where does it all go?

Adam: Every dollar raised goes directly into local communities. For example, everything that we collect here this morning will go to the Beta Center food pantry in Pomona.

Rocky: Ahh, now I get it. Okay, so, after church, everybody needs to climb into our super bus and take our super bowl full of money to the Beta Center!

Adam: Aye aye aye! What seminary did you go to? No, that’s what the bowls are for! That’s what makes them super! Not the cape! After worship, a bunch of us will stand at the back of the church with the bowls, and people can put their donations into them. Theeeeennn, we’ll give it to the Beta Center.

Rocky: Of course! Well, then, since this bowl doesn’t need a cape to be super, I guess I’ll take it off and use it for something else.

Adam: Pastor Rocky.

Rocky: What?

Adam: Leave the cape.

Rocky: Really?

Adam: Yeah, it’s a nice touch.

[both exit]

February 6, 2011

Rocky: Good morning and welcome to Claremont Presbyterian Field, the site of the 2011 Souper Bowl of Caring! Alongside Adam Cave I’m Rocky Supinger, and we are anticipating a real slug-fest this morning, as two perennial powerhouses–The Claremont Presbyterians and The Hunger– square off against one another for the umpteenth time. Adam Cave, this is a storied rivalry, isn’t it?

Adam: It absolutely is, Rocky. In fact, the 2011 Souper Bowl of Caring is at least the 11th meeting between these two teams going back to the year 2000. And you don’t have to remind Hunger that The Claremont Presbyterians have got the better end of these battles the last few years. Their game plan really revolves around getting the most out of their generosity . Since 2008, the amount of money raised by the Presbyterians on Souper Bowl Sunday has increased; their 2010 total was an all-time high for them: $720. You can be sure they’ll be looking to top that today.

Rocky: I’m sure they will. And yet Hunger isn’t backing down, is it?

Adam: No it isn’t. The Los Angeles times reported in October that the poverty rate in the Inland Empire rose from 11.8% in 2007 to over 15% in 2009. Among residents of LA County that number now stands at 16.1%. Requests for emergency food aid were up an average of 24% in cities across the country last year, and those cities reported a 17% increase in the pounds of food they gave away.

Rocky: Wow. If anything, Adam, Hunger seems to be gathering strength from year-to-year. But the Claremont Presbyterians have an important weapon on their team, don’t they?

Adam: Yeah, the Presbyterians utilize a versatile weapon in their attack on Hunger: the Inland Valley Hope Partners or, as its fans call it, “IVHP.” IVHP is the total hunger-fighting package: it maintains food banks in Claremont, Pomona, San Dimas, and Ontario, where families in need can receive a five day supply of food once every 30 days.

The Presbyterians use IVHP in a number of formations: regular mission giving, weekly food donations to the red wheelbarrow in the narthex–several of the Presbyterians even volunteer their own time at IVHP’s food banks.

Rocky: But today, you expect the Presbyterians to go early and often to IVHP with a trademark move–the soup kettle.

Adam: Rocky this move is unstoppable. There’s no defense for it. As they head out the back of the sanctuary today, watch for the Presbyterians to go deep . . . into their pockets and purses and score over and over again with direct deposits into the large soup kettles that youth will be holding. Every single one of those donations goes directly to IVHP.  

Rocky: No doubt,  IVHP is a star, and the Claremont Presbyterians know it. Watch and you’ll see them waving their IVHP lunch sacks in the air, which were handed out out the door today. (I said “Waving their IVHP lunch sacks in the air!). When they eave here today, the Presbyterians will take those bags with them as a reminder that their struggle on behalf of the hungry in the Inland Valley is an every day battle.

Adam: Well it looks like the teams are ready. As always, this promises to be a hard fought battle. Hunger may have got most of the headlines this season, but if what we’ve seen from the Claremont Presbyterians the last few years is any indication, Hunger will have its hands full. Game on!

Some parts of ministry work are design: sermon preparation, planning a youth gathering, making a meeting agenda. These pieces require creative thought. They demand a minimum of undisturbed time.

Other parts of ministry work are not design. Submitting receipts. Updating rosters.

There are things I enjoy about both the design and the non-design parts of ministry work. There are things I dread about both of them too. The ratio of each that I’m doing at any given time is an important signal, I’ve learned.

If I’m filling my to-do list with mostly non-design tasks, I’m tired and feeling ineffective. I want a checked-box induced energy boost.

I’m learning to treat more projects as design than not. The annual calendar, for example, needs a sensitivity to the range of experiences being offered, the space they have between one another, and the non-calendar forces affecting them. It’s design, not simply the plugging in of events on dates.

This week I need to design components for a worship service, a wedding, a discussion guide for Confirmation, and a junior high youth group gathering, and I’m all out of checked boxes.

The church I serve used to allot 30 minutes on Sunday mornings to bagels for youth. From 10:30-11:00, just before youth groups, a big box of Einstein Brothers would show up in the youth room, and 6th-12th graders would spend half an hour gnawing on plain and asiago dough while socializing.

Well, some socialized. Others sat in a corner by themselves. Still others took a bagel and left the room to be alone with their phone.

For that reason, and because of the mounting cost, we pulled the bagels when youth programming resumed in September. We’ve been hearing about it ever since. Youth and parents have lamented the loss of the unstructured social time, since most of students’ weeks are programmed full of school and related activities.

So we talked about it. And talked about it. Weekly. I got emails about it. The Youth Ministry Committee discussed it. But the bagels stayed gone.

Until last Sunday.

We’re bringing back bagels for a limited Advent run, but we’re tweaking it to address our concerns over cost and over the failure of unstructured social time to engage many youth. First, the cost. With the leadership of a parent, we set up and publicized a web link where parents could sponsor a week’s worth of bagels. Within 48 hours of sending the link out in our newsletter, every week of bagels had been paid for.

Second, groups get bagels to themselves–jr. high bagels in one room, sr. high bagels in another. They are a kind of “reception” time before the beginning of each youth group, and not an all-ages free-for-all. Also, since several of our students don’t do gluten, we added some fruit and granola bars for them.

We haven’t solved it, I don’t think. But we’re trying. It’s an experimental step toward being the hospitable, generous community we’re called to be.

Bagels are boring. But important elements of ministry and community building are hiding in the boring stuff. Ignore them at your peril.

 

 

 

How well is the thing you think is working actually working?

How do you know?

I use a meeting format in almost all of my gatherings with youth that ends with evaluation. I don’t always get to it (due to poor time management), but when I do there is usually something useful that gets shared. I usually ask two questions:

1. What about what we did here today was useful for you?
2. What about it would you change?

Yesterday during evaluation a student told me that she probably wouldn’t do the game next time. Surprising. Useful.

If we’re really curious about the effect our work is having on the people we’re doing it with, simply asking is a easy and surprisingly effective way of starting to find out.

I’m in this routine since September where each week I’m designing Sunday curriculum for two different youth gatherings. My colleague spent a couple of August weeks designing all of his for the whole year. I wish I had done that. Next year it won’t be as much of an issue, because I will have the material I made this year to work with.

Having something to work with feels like a great benefit. Having to create ex nihilo is challenging and rewarding and important, but set yourself up with too many of those projects at the same time and you’ll burn out.

And, of course, everything is a project. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a project, so store up material to work with this year by doing the turkey or experimenting with green beans, so that next year, or three years from now, when the whole thing unexpectedly falls to you, you’re not starting at zero.

Knowing what’s going on in the world is a project, too. Reading reliable news reporting on Syria or health care policy today gives you material to work with when one of those issues suddenly becomes urgent and everyone else is scrambling to learn about it.

Accept and seek out elective challenges when you don’t have to, so that when you do have to you’ve at least got something to work with.

I have no history with Young Life. I didn’t know about it as a teenager. I first started to hear the terms “Campaigners” and “Do life together” around the year 2000, while I was participating in a church full of the group’s volunteers.

In seminary I met some more Young Life volunteers, along with some alumni and even staff. I also learned the organization’s history as a mid-20th century evangelistic para-church operation, it’s “relational” and “Win the right to be heard” strategy.

Since then: books by Andrew Root and Mark Oestreicher have expanded my understanding of what Young Life has always been about; a youth ministry coaching cohort surrounded me with enthusiastic Young Life boosters; a story last year about a volunteer who quit over the organization’s ban on gay leaders caught my attention.

But in all that time I have had zero actual experience with any activity related to the organization. I am a pastor in a progressive church that belongs to a mainline denomination. My theological convictions differ significantly from those of the evangelical sub culture that Young Life represents. Evangelistic tactics like recruiting teens into clubs at their school where food and games set up talks about Jesus are simply not in my repertoire.

So when the new area director for Young Life emailed me and asked to meet, I nearly deleted the message without replying. Instead, I sat on it for two days. I remembered an invitation in 2010 to bring my church youth group to an evangelistic revival another church in town was hosting and how I had responded to that invitation with a superior note to the organizer about how we Presbyterians didn’t do that sort of thing; how he then replied with a curt, “I guess you’re too good for us”; how seeing that organizer around town for the next six years was never not awkward.

I replied that I would be happy to meet with the Young Life guy.

Sitting down with someone who represents something that gives you pause, something, even, about which you have values-based reservations, is not open-mindedness so much as grownup-ness and professionalism. Hiding behind what you’ve heard as an excuse to decline invitations made in good faith is a bad leadership strategy.

Also, John Vest is right: progressive youth ministry has to become more evangelistic.

So we met. He’s delightful and curious. He knows where my church is coming from, where we obviously disagree in our approach and values, and yet he’s eager to learn about our work with youth and the community. Our conversation made me want to be equally curious about him and his work with youth.

We’re having lunch in January. You know, to Do Life Together.