When The Church Should Not Be The Thing That Backs Down

Yesterday’s post generated a constructive conversation both in the comments and on Facebook about what churches expect from members, including youth, and what those expectations convey about the importance of what we’re doing. One commentator observed, ” I have never yet heard anyone complain that working on something they were truly passionate about made them too busy.”

Let’s add some nuance to the claim that “Church Should Be The Thing That Backs Down.” Because not everything the church does is the same. Backing down on worship attendance and youth group participation in favor of all the other things people are committed to is a move toward health. I’ve never once felt the need to coerce worship attendance over soccer, or even the “personal retreats” everybody needs now and again. 

But churches also commit to serving the poor and doing valuable work in the world, and backing down on those commitments is less healthy. That doesn’t help anyone. 

I had a student years ago who was prone to pulling out of commitments in the 11th hour. I finally had to hold the line with her and say, “No. You have to do this now. You committed to it and people are counting on you.” She honored the commitment and she thrived. I think that approach served the student’s long-term growth. 

Compare that to the way I failed at this when three students cancelled on last summer’s youth work trip just a few weeks beforehand. I didn’t hold their feet to the fire. Mostly, that’s because I was painfully aware of how poorly I had prepared students to go on the trip; precious little community had been built among participants, and students (and their parents) knew far too little about what we would actually be doing. It was a date on their calendar not difficult to swap for something else. That was on me. 

We have to pick the spots where we don’t back down. That means we have to do our work in advance, so that quitting is the last thing people want to do. 

And always grace and mercy abound. 

Church Should Be The Thing That Backs Down

The students I work with are busy. They are debaters, soccer players, and high achievers in the classroom. So when they have a game the same Saturday as a youth retreat, they miss the retreat, and if Monday morning’s homework isn’t finished by Sunday at 7:00, they’re not coming to youth group either.

I’m over being annoyed at this. For a long time I carried a kind of chip on my shoulder about playing second fiddle to all of my students’ more important commitments. I’m convinced now that a youth leader who begrudges kids the things that take them away from church is doing nothing to help them grow. 

Most of the commitments my students take on are zero sum operations when it comes to student’s participation; water polo expects 100% of your effort and loyalty, just like theater does, and just like–lurking in the background–teachers do. My students are conscientious and driven, and I can see them striving to give what’s expected of them. And heaven help them when a game conflicts with a performance or a test, because none of the adult leaders–not the coach, not the director, not the teacher–are backing down from their demand for 100%. The student will be penalized by whatever she misses. 

Maybe my students need church to be the thing that backs down and that expects whatever percentage of themselves they’re able to give–today. Maybe we should celebrate the community that God has gathered today, this weekend, or this work trip, without regard for how it compares to the group we had last week or last year.

My student communities are all appreciably different every time they gather, because their responsibilities and extra-curricular opportunities shape a shifting landscape that barely any of them can manage. Almost none of them prioritize church over everything else. I’m okay with that. Because they’re here today. 

Rather than 100% of their effort and loyalty throughout a season or production, maybe church youth groups and events should make more of the asset we actually have when students gather, something more durable than loyalty and more valuable than their fear of getting cut: the 100% they are offering of their desire to be here now.  

And when they’re there, let’s give them 100% of our attention and connection without expecting future participation in return. 

The (Former) Moderator’s Colloquium on Ecclesiology Videos Are Up!

Several months ago I was invited to take part in (then) Moderator Neal Presa’s thrid Colloquium on Ecclesiology held at Fuller Theological Seminary. I was asked to respond to a paper presented by Dr. Jennifer Lord of Austin Theological Seminary entitled, “Preaching for Liturgical-Missional Congregations,” and I posted a piece of my response here.

All of the videos from the colloquium are now online, and Dr. Lord’s presentation is below. It’s well worth watching. Scrub ahead to the 32 minute mark for the start of Dr. Lord’s presentation, and then to the 120 minute mark for the thrilling response of my co-panelist (and seminary classmate and Shook Foil Books publisher) Erik Dailey.

For what it’s worth, my response begins at 128:45. Some demonic trickery must have caused the marvelous Chineta Goodjoin’s response to Dr. Lord to be omitted. I’ll see if I can find a copy that has it, ’cause she’s that good.

#shareacoke, You Had Me At . . . Steve?

I have without shame gobbled up Coca Cola’s #shareacoke marketing campaign. There was a day when I would heap scorn on such an acquiescence to corporate coercion. I may yet again. But I’m all in on this one. Here’s why.

#shareacoke is a platform for friendship. I am buying these named Coke bottles just so that I can post pictures of them to Facebook and tag all my friends with that name. It’s detrimental to my health, sure. But it’s an easy gesture of friendship that, while hardly earth-shattering, is better than the distance and isolation that reigns over much of modern life. 

If nothing else, the name of the bottle is bringing to mind people I haven’t thought about in ages and wouldn’t otherwise. Encountering their existence anew is worth being perceived as a brand sellout.

 

Listen Or Don’t.

If they say you’re not listening, you’re not listening.

You can protest all you want. You can line up the evidence: the meetings they failed to attend, the surveys they stuck under a pile, the voicemails they neglected. You can assemble a dazzling exhibit of attempts you’ve made to listen that they have missed or flat-out snubbed, all while maintaining that you’re listening. 

But you’re not. 

Sometimes people burn through our energy and we have to stop listening to them. I think that’s okay. I think some people should be told they’ve lost the right to be heard in certain circles. Don’t assure these people you’re listening, because you’re not and you shouldn’t be. 

But I’m finding that more and more of my work is to understand how to listen to different people, and contemporary life is making it so that the pool of those who are easy to listen to is shrinking. Fewer people reply to emails and phone calls–even texts– ,and fewer still come to meetings to have their say. I spend more energy soliciting conversation than I ever did before, and the list of media I’m using to do it grows almost weekly. 

It’s exhausting, but the rewards are manifold. Not only is our work enriched by the listening, but we turn would-be adversaries into partners and disinterested observers into leaders. 

What’s your favorite listening strategy?

 

And The Tap Drips All Night/Water Torture in The Sink (or Sarah Harmer And Growing Up)

I spent a lot of time with this track back in 2000, when I was 24.

It came up on my iPod the other day, and I played the whole album through in a fit of nostalgia.

Richard Rohr thinks people need to “Learn from each stage [of growing up].” But he adds,”and yet you can’t completely throw out previous stages, as most people unfortunately do. In fact, a fully mature person appropriately draws upon all earlier stages.”

I met some of my best friends in my Sarah Harmer stage: my Best Man and the preacher at my ordination, for starters. My one bedroom apartment wasn’t in the basement, but the tap did drip all night, and one of the busted slats on the donated futon I used for a bed had to be propped up from underneath with a coffee mug.

I helped start a weekly meetup (before that’s what they were called) at a pub. I lived for an Emergent church (before that’s what they were called) even as I snobbishly judged it for its sophisticated cultural posture and insisted on a more Old Time Religion. I endured a breakup with my college girlfriend, met someone else, then got back together with the college girlfriend (our 12th wedding anniversary was two weeks ago). I decided to go to seminary, though with a mocking dismissal of the pastorate.

I was insufferable. I was broke. I was miserable. I was deliriously happy.

I’ve spent the last couple of days probing my memories of that stage of life looking for things to draw upon for the challenges and opportunities of this one.

Here’s another piece of the memory elixir.

In Honor of Dr. Craig Gannon

One of my mentors died yesterday. 

Rest in peace Dr. Craig Gannon.

When I was a doofus of an 18 year old college freshman more interested in what girl I had a shot with than academics of any kind, Dr. Gannon endured academic advising sessions with me that must surely have caused him to wonder what the Hell he was doing with his life. With folded hands on his crossed legs, and with the ubiquitous classical music of Kansas Public Radio playing behind him, he made gentle suggestions of ways to fill my schedule with core requirements. What a thankless chore. 

That spring I took his Language Studies class. It was an overview of linguistics, and I was totally and hopelessly lost. 

Still, two years later I decided on Language and Literature as a major, and over the next four semesters Dr. Gannon taught me Shakespeare, Kipling, Wordsworth, Woolf. He made me analyze prose and memorize poetry. The work I do now as a preacher and teacher derive directly from a sensitivity to tone and context, rhythm and diction, that I learned at his feet. 

In 2002 he came to my wedding.

In 2006 he retired, and I was honored to write about it for the alumni magazine. The phone interview I did with him from the Memphis airport was the last conversation I had with him. 

Today I recommit myself to the ideal of the literary life in honor of Dr. Craig Gannon. 

Vacation Is For Teaching Your Daughter To Shuffle Cards

I’m back from a week of vacation, and I’m thinking the most important parts of it were not the parts we planned but rather the parts in between the plans. 

Who doesn’t want to lay on a white sand beach or visit a spider monkey sanctuary? That we’re able to enjoy such activities places us in privileged sector of the human family, do doubt. Yet vacation revealed to me just how lacking our life is in another valuable human commodity: unscheduled leisure time. 

When else do you teach your kid to shuffle cards? 

Persistence

I’m working on persistence. It feels like a game of whack-a-mole.
For two weeks now I have persistently blogged posted a daily blog. I have also spent time with the daily paper. These are both habits I committed to.
During the same stretch my exercise regimen has evaporated, and my diet has tanked.
Is there a limit to the things you can persistently perform? Does committing to something new mean you have to give something else up?
Note: I’ll be on vacation next week and not posting at all. Be well.