I invited a handful of college students from our congregation over to my house yesterday afternoon for chili and conversation. We did this a few times last year, and I am eager to establish it as a fun gathering that keeps post high school youth attending local colleges connected to one another and to the church and that curates meaningful conversations about God and faith.

I’ve even got a Biblical scholar coming.

I made chili. I made cornbread. I put on cider. The scholar had a conversation about creation all teed up.

And one student came.

One.

No doubt it was a valuable time for him, what with a free meal and some one-on-one prodding from an Old Testament expert, but it’s not the scale of participation I envisioned.

Before he left, the solitary participant observed that not enough had been done to invite people. I know he’s right, but I’m exasperated by the increasing complexity of communicating with individuals and groups using an ever-expanding network of digital and analog tools.

Three weeks ago I posed this gathering to a group of students using Facebook Messenger. Their reply was positive. So last Tuesday I posted the day and time on the Facebook page I’ve set up for college students. Yesterday I sent text messages to individuals to remind them.

That strategy feels scattershot, and it depends on me remembering to initiate communication pieces in the middle of doing lots of other things, none of which involve actually talking to these college students face-to-face. Is that what’s missing?

I asked my lone attendee for help in spreading the word about this the next time we do this, and with some insight as to the best possible day and time to do it. But it’s my job, ultimately.

That job is not to come up with event ideas to throw at people but to reach out to them with interest and to build relationships with them based on curiosity. That requires face time.

So, back to school with me then.

(One more time: not Rocky. But he’s on his way back!)

A few weeks ago, I was on vacation. (And it was glorious.) Part of my trip was to southern California – Fullerton to be exact (southeast of Los Angeles) – where Prof. Lisa Long, a friend of lo-these-many years, is making her mark with the faculty and students in the College of The Arts at Cal State-Fullerton (go Titans!).

It was great to see her new home, her office, the campus, the studio (where she teaches modern levels 1 and 2 in Graham-based technique and composition). I even sat in on two classes, meeting her students (terrifying them with the introduction that I was in from out of town, casting for a production – a conceit we could only hold for about 15 seconds, their fearfaces more than I could bear … but a good lesson, as she shared, in always being ready to say ‘Okay. Fine. I got this. Bring it.’), watching her work with them, seeing them absorb her passionate leading, internalize their learning, and respond in expressive wonder as their own creative light-bulbs ignite. It was gorgeous and meaningful in ways I’m still putting together.

In one of our many conversations about how much she loves her work at CSUF, and how wonderful her students are (reflecting their teacher, I keep reminding her!), I asked Lisa about how you ‘grade’ something so personal and creative. Is it based on how unique the work is? How well the dancer takes correction? The technical clarity and precision?

Yes, that. But also, she said, ‘One of the evaluation principles written in my course description is ‘risk’. I want to see what chances they’ll take.’

Holy cow.

My brain has been rolling that around ever since.

Risk as an EXPECTATION. Not like ‘oh yeah this could be dangerous so buckle up all your protective gear and sign six pages of waivers before you go’. But ‘Show me.’

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Show me what you’ve got, Risk says.
How you dream,
what it sounds like,
where it moves,
how it feels,
what it imagines,
that it breathes,
if it lasts,
or doesn’t,
or has to.

Show me you can risk.

(Rev. Courtney Richards, leaving the keys under the mat.)

(Pastor, preacher, fancies-herself-a writer, maybe-eventually-DMin-student (yikes!). Connections Pastor at Harvard Avenue Christian Church, Tulsa OK. Lover of food, beverage, laughter, high heels, the people she works with, and the community she serves. Find her on Twitter @c_rev, where she’ll ramble about church stuff, rage over social justice stuff, throw around pop culture stuff, and occasionally rant about crummy customer service.)

(Still not Rocky, btw.)

So … about that bold, risk, almostdanger thing.

You’ve seen this, right? If you haven’t, please please please see it. I’ll wait.

Okay then.

Amy Pence-Brown (who, as it turns out, is a friend of one of my good friends – who knew?!) is my absolute shero. I covet that kind of boldness … about my body, about my life, in my career, in the lives of people I know and love, for all of the things for which they covet boldness too … that kind of risk and danger and whooooo putting it all out there. Covet covet covet.

The bazillion views and shares, the press coverage (‘coverage’! ha!), the celebrity responders (Kevin Bacon!), the notes from moms and friends and strangers and everywhere. Bold. Risk. almostDanger.

And the pay off.

• If she can do it, why couldn’t I? (After all, even Amy borrowed her inspiration from another group somewhere else.)
• If the people who picked up markers would do what they did, why wouldn’t I?
• If they would leave water for her to drink … offer a hug that included even more physical contact that usual (I mean, skin! eee!) … encourage a friend to leave a heart, write a word, share the story …

… why wouldn’t we?

I don’t mean why wouldn’t we take off our clothes – although if that’s what works for you and what you need, then … drop ‘em, baby! …

But when we see others who are bold … who risk … who are faithful … who are courageous … who do the almostdangerous …

Is our reaction to assume ‘sure they can, but how would I?’
Or do we think ‘YES! That’s me too! ME! TOO!’

Well?

(Rev. Courtney Richards. Pastor, preacher, fancies-herself-a writer, maybe-eventually-DMin-student (yikes!). Connections Pastor at Harvard Avenue Christian Church, Tulsa OK. Lover of food, beverage, laughter, high heels, the people she works with, and the community she serves. Find her on Twitter @c_rev, where she’ll ramble about church stuff, rage over social justice stuff, throw around pop culture stuff, and occasionally rant about crummy customer service.)

(Not posted by Rocky Supinger. No matter what it says above.)

Earlier this year, I was invited to join some friends – all clergy (and all Presbyterian), in various roles – in an informal peer group. (They needed some diversity, so they invited a Disciple.)(Insider church joke FTW!)

We check in with each other during the day – not for any reason in particular, but just to have touchpoints in very full days and careers. Several travel extensively, many have children (from kindergarten to college); we are parish and university and denominational office ministers. In the midst of it we cherish connection with those who get how wonderful crazy different unusual sometimes unspeakable exciting challenging ridiculous mundane emotional tiring invigorating every single day of ministry is.

Yesterday, one criticized an article he’d read, saying it (among other things) lacked substance.
I said: While I agree with one point the guy made, the rest IS pretty cloying and thin.
He: Cloying and thin is exactly the kind of language that post is missing.
Me (joking): Let me know when you’d like a Disciples guest writer (and I’ll see if I can find you one!).
He (not joking): Well, MY blog is quiet this week, here’s my login and password, have at it. #carefulwhatyouwishfor
Me: Danger Will Robinson!
He: Blogs need danger.

So. I’m going to invade Rocky’s blog a few days this week.

It won’t be world-changing. It will be fun, and different for me, and a chance to say a few things and write a few things to share with friends who’ve encouraged me to write. And while it’s not REALLY all that dangerous (I hope! for Rocky’s sake! please still love and adore and read him after this week!), it IS a reminder that we called not to be timid, but to be bold. Not to sit idly by, but to risk.

I love this spin on Paul’s words (2Cor6:12 MSG):

Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way.

Why do we make ourselves small? Why do we hide a Light that was made to be seen?

So. What’s your bold? What’s your risk? What’s your not-really-dangerous-but-maybe-a-little-bit thing that needs doing? Personally? Professionally? Faithfully?

Write. Invite. Show up. Call. Come back. Offer. Laugh. Sing. Play. Apologize. Read. Practice. Give. Try. Go. Do.

“Blogs need danger.” Maybe … so do we.

(Rev. Courtney Richards. Pastor, preacher, fancies-herself-a writer, maybe-eventually-DMin-student (yikes!). Connections Pastor at Harvard Avenue Christian Church, Tulsa OK. Lover of food, beverage, laughter, high heels, the people she works with, and the community she serves. Find her on Twitter @c_rev, where she’ll ramble about church stuff, rage over social justice stuff, throw around pop culture stuff, and occasionally rant about crummy customer service.)

The TED Radio Hour is a great podcast. Subscribe to it now if you haven’t already. Listen to this episode first. It features Sugata Mitra and his School In The Cloud idea and his philosophy of “self-organized learning environments” (SOLEs). Want to hear the whole talk? It’s here.

Mitra’s basic conviction is that children can organize themselves to learn really complex skills and information without a traditional teacher functioning in the way that traditional teachers function, namely giving lessons and assessing for comprehension. He has done multiple studies where he’s placed a computer in the middle of a rural village that has never seen one and then stood back and watched in wonder as the children from that village used it to learn at a level comparable to Mitra’s control group of elite private schools, but without the aid of a trained teacher.

Here’s the most interesting part though: adults still have a role in these SOLEs that tremendously impacts learning, but it’s not to instruct. It is to encourage.

The story from the talk is great. Mitra asked a 22 year old accountant to stand by the children as they played with the computer and to frequently remark things like, “Wow, how did you do that?” and “I could never have done that when I was your age!” He calls it the “granny” method, and it increased the learning of the kids in his SOLE’s by 50%, even though the young woman knew nothing about the subject the kids were exploring.

There’s some brain science behind this about how we function cognitively when praised versus when we’re threatened with punishment, but I’m less interested in the mechanics of that than the application for the church. What community of people is better positioned to “granny” children and youth into their own learning and growth than a church?

Is this not the main thing we’re asking adult volunteers to do when we invite them to help with youth group? With Sunday school? Encourage kids in their own exploration of God and faith and the Bible and the Church? That’s so much less intimidating than being asked to authoritatively teach some body of truth, because, really, who feels competent to do that? I certainly don’t.

But words of encouragement don’t mean anything if they don’t proceed from a person who is earnestly interested in the learner as a human being. I asked some 12th graders yesterday if they perceive that the adults in their life are actually interested in them as people. They do, happily. And they named particular teachers who express that interest. Their faces glowed talking about them.

The main thing granny does, after all, is like you.

The more I hear myself say that, the less I know I’m owning my ideas. Like most verb clauses prefaced by “just,” this one wants to do something without seeming to want to too strongly (my last favorite such clause is, “I’m Just Saying“).

Sometimes I’m so afraid of being perceived as pushy that I’ll soft pedal an idea I care about. “I’m just putting this out there” allows me to share the idea, but it shifts the responsibility for caring about it to some other person or group. And if my lukewarm presentation fails to win any support, well, that’s on them. I tried.

No I didn’t.

Nothing is more likely to make me care about something than seeing that you do. Don’t just put something out there for it to die for lack of nurture. Present it with care, and guide it into my consciousness so I can see it the way you do.

About a year ago I wrote a post here called, “The Church Should Be The Thing That Backs Down” in which I argued that, in the stampede of activities and demands on teenagers time, church activities should make the fewest demands. The post generated more conversation than any other post I’ve written. One blogger even wrote a post of her own to discuss it.

Another year of school and church activities has passed, so I want to revisit the post.

I still think it’s a mistake to coerce participation. Making kids feel guilty is just as bad as promising them some reward if they come, which is just as bad as threatening to bar them from future participation, and all of those are tactics I’ve seen school and extra-curricular activities employ against teenagers. I don’t ever want to do any of those things.

And yet the thing that I see now that I didn’t a year ago is that, for some of the youth I work with, there’s no need for the church to back down. Some collectives of teenagers need the church to step up, not back down, to match their level of energy for the things they’re passionate about. Sometimes that’s hanging out with one another in a welcoming space, and sometimes its’ leading a community service project.

These youth don’t need multiple text reminders for meetings. They’re calling you on their lunch break at school to make sure youth group is still on. And when you cancel they let you have it.

On bad days I even wish some of these kids would back down.

The difference between groups like this and groups that need coercing to keep meeting together is that the former exist outside the church as well as inside; they don’t depend on congregational activities as a means of being together. The church gives them time and space, and the church accompanies them in a unique way in activities that they initiate and lead, but they were a community before they met the church. We’re helping them to be a better one.

And they’ll never ask us to back down from doing that.

I’ve started working with my presbytery to develop new leaders, new skills, and new worshiping communities.

Leadership development requires someone to decide on a set of skills needed by leaders (say, public speaking) and mechanism for imparting those skills (say, a list of books to read). So what skills to church leaders need today, and what kind of mechanism do we need for developing those skills?

My sense is that today’s church leaders need fewer of the skills our predecessors relied upon for building and maintaining the mid-20th century church, things like program administration, budgeting, and staff management. Not none of those. Fewer of them.

Instead, I think we probably need to get better at things like making connections with existing communities, groups of people who are already organized around something that matters to them. We need skills for listening to those people and experimenting with ways to add value to their work. We need these skills if we’re installed in a congregation as much as if we’re starting a new worshiping community as much as if we’re performing validated ministry work outside a congregational context.

How do you develop those skills? Surely there are books. But I’m kind of obsessed with cohorts at the minute. I participated in a year-long cohort recently, and now leadership development cohorts are all I think about: a small group of people gathering for a season to work together on particular areas of development under the leadership of a skilled facilitator.

Am I overly giddy about cohorts?

Am I dismissing those mid-20th century organizational skills too quickly?

And what about those books? What do church leaders today need to be reading? What are you reading?

I had a long conversation with some people yesterday about bi-vocational ministry, where pastors of congregations have extra-church employment that pays their bills. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one that seems to be gaining urgency as, for example, many of the Associate Pastor calls available to seminary graduates are being phased out.

I have a couple of thoughts about this. First, even though a pastor’s church work is not her main source of income, I have yet to see a pastor engaged in “part time” ministry. Ministry is most often full time, especially during liturgical seasons like Advent and Lent.

I also think this shrinking of church jobs is an opportunity to do some work on the bigger question of work. Because churches aren’t the only places where jobs are going away. The “gig economy” is only growing, and more and more people are having to find ways of making money outside the security of a full-time job with benefits.

So what does it mean for people with calls to the ministerial vocation to find ways to do that work and be paid for it outside the structure of called position in a congregation that can afford them?

That’s a big question, and I don’t have many answers right now. But I see people writing, creating publishing companies, podcasting, and chasing other creative pursuits. I’m inclined to watch those folks. They’re working on more than a job to fit into a bi-vocational arrangement. They’re working on work.

*updated October 10th

There are lots of women in important leadership roles in the PC(USA) right now. This is one of the most promising signs of vitality in our denomination. Here are 14 female Presbyterian leaders I have worked on projects with and who have made me a better pastor. Who would you add?

• Karen Sapio, Head of Staff, Claremont Presbyterian Church (and my colleague)
• Wendy Tajima, Presbytery Executive, Presbytery of San Gabriel
• Ruth Santana-Grace, Presbytery Executive, Philadelphia Presbytery
• Millason Dailey, Associate Pastor, Calvary Presbyterian Church of South Pasadena
• Becca Bateman, Associate Pastor, San Marino Community Church
• Jessica Tate, National Director, NEXT Church
• Mihee Kim-Kort, Director of Ukirk, Bloomington, IN, author
• Carla Pratt-Keyes, Pastor, Ginter Park Presbyterian Church, Richmond, VA
• Doska Ross, Synod Executive, Synod of The Pacific
• Erin Thomas, Co-Pastor, Calvary Presbyterian Church, Riverside, California
• Marci Auld Glass, Pastor, Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho, and Co-Moderator of The Covenant Network of Presbyterians
• Chineta Goodjoin, Pastor of New Hope Church, a Presbyterian New Worshipping Community in Santa Ana, CA
• Libby Shannon, Associate Chaplain, Eckerd College, and Co-Moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship
• Jana Blazek, Associate Editor, The Presbyterian Outlook