Susan Cain says there’s no correlation between the best talker and the best ideas.

I’ll stop talking now.

“Break our hearts Holy God by the reality that faces so many of your people. Let the scales fall from our eyes so that we may see how our own choices and passive acceptance contribute to unrest and injustice.”

That’s part of a prayer I used in church Sunday. It was offered by some of the leadership of my denomination following a week of war, refugees, and a downed airplane. Use was strictly voluntary. I scanned it briefly and decided it would be helpful.

Only I didn’t scan it close enough. Because where the congregation heard me pray “our own choices and passive acceptance contribute to unrest . . . ” what the prayer actually said was “our own choices and passive acceptance of U.S. policy contribute to unrest . . . ” I didn’t see those three words until the I was standing in the pulpit leading the prayer.

And I choked.

Moments like that reveal your instincts. You default to your training. My instincts and training are to avoid politicking in the pulpit.

It would be one thing if I’d reckoned with it earlier and stuck through “of U.S. policy” in a conscious decision to omit it. I didn’t. I saw it there on the page charging me like an angry buck, and I dodged it.

After the service I confided in a colleague about it in a text message. She replied, “Don’t worry. Jesus died on the cross so you don’t have to afflict the comfortable.”

It’s much more likely that you’ll choke if you’re not prepared.

I read this book about two years into my pastoral career. It has had a lasting impact on the way I preach.

Sermons are made up of “moves,” discrete units of thought that are trying to say one thing clearly. String four or five moves together and you’ve got a sermon.

When people ask, “What was the sermon about?” the answer shouldn’t be easy. Because there’s a move in the sermon about the depth of God’s love, but before that there’s a move about the reach of injustice. One of those moves doesn’t set up the other; they both–and all the others–stand on their own.

Of course, there’s a narrative that binds the moves of a sermon together. The narrative is made up of a “but” in between these moves and a “Wait!” between these two.

Isn’t this life? Isn’t this work?

There’s the move in high school about finding your people. Then there’s the move after college about learning independence. But wait: there’s another move later about cultivating interdependence in community. And don’t forget the moves about enduring loss.

What move are you in now? Can you see the narrative structure holding all your moves together?

Communities need continuity of participation in order to form connections strong enough to mediate nurture, growth, or change.

Social media can help with this. The comment left on a fellow church member’s Facebook post is no less meaningful than a chat during coffee hour. Both make people present to one another.

But how much is enough? Now that weekly worship attendance, for many, is practically impossible (what with soccer games, visits to ailing parents, work), when do the returns on community participation begin to diminish? After one week away? Probably not. Two? Six? And do social media really and truly make us present enough to one another to still function as a “body” (1 Corinthians 12)?

Though people may be present less, they still may be vitally connected to the body. I suppose that’s their call; if it feels to you like you’re connected, then you are. But it feels very difficult to grow in relationship when a certain minimum threshold of interaction isn’t being met.

So what’s that threshold? And what matters more? An individual’s sense of connection to the community, or the community’s sense of connection to them?

Bias isn’t bad. My high school journalism class taught me that it is. But it isn’t.

The middle ground is as biased a place to stand as either of the extreme ends, only the middle is biased towards oneself and ones own safety.

When discerning the right and the good in a complex conflict, people of conscience are not required to always be “objective.” They are required to listen and to pay close attention, to forswear the chicanery of the zealot and to put away sentimentality. But they are also required to stand somewhere and to have a bias.

A bias is derived either from personal experience of from loyalty to a set of values and the community that asserts them. I have friends who are biased towards the Palestinians because they spent summer’s in Israel learning about the occupation. I also have friends who are biased towards Israel because they value the Biblical promises made to Israel regarding the land.

Neither bias is bad. Constructive conversation and learning, however, growth and transformation, require us to narrate our own biases and to understand others’ biases fairly and not as an excuse to walk away.

After the 11th voicemail of the day from the same person, there’s more listening to be done.

After the 27th blog post about the conflict in Israel/Palestine, there is more reading to be done.

After the 93rd minute of angry group protest, there is more cooperating to be done.

There is always more to be done.

*the incidents behind these sentences are unrelated. There is always more explaining to be done.

Sometimes sitting there and taking it is a measure of maturity.

Getting up and walking out may register your protest, but it will do nothing to advance your own understanding, and it will almost certainly harden opposition to your viewpoint.

Maturity sometimes requires biting your tongue and opening your ears, maintaining an open posture towards things you find offensive.

Of course, if someone is advocating violence towards children or demeaning immigrants, by all means get up and walk out.

I love reading Seth Godin’s blog every day. Today’s post is especially inspirational. Here are some money quotes:

Somehow, I always thought of my career as a series of projects, not jobs. Projects… things to be invented, funded and shipped.

I had a two-part approach to building a career about projects. The first was to find a partner who was willing to own the lion’s share of the upside in exchange for advancing resources allowing me to create the work (but always keeping equity in the project, not doing it merely for hire). The second was to grow a network, technology and the confidence to be able to take on projects too big for the typical solo venture.

The impresario mindset of initiation and improvisation are at the heart of the project. It’s yours, you own it. Might as well do something you’re proud of, and something that matters, because it’s your gig.

The trick is to represent the project, to speak up for the project, to turn it into what it needs to be

Some observations:

“Pastor” is a job. It’s a role that requires some standard work: lead worship, provide pastoral care, teach, etc. Many of the pastors I know experienced a call to this job and this role. So did I.

But I look around at how I’m spending my time now, and it’s a lot of projects. The things I’m choosing to spend my time on are more the projects and less the standard work. Or, I’m trying to reshape the standard work into a project (a worship series, a particular group of youth, a season of adult education).

Pastors in congregations have a built in “partner who [is] willing to own the lion’s share of the upside in exchange for advancing resources allowing [you] to create the work.” That’s called your salary.

Here are the projects getting most of my time these days:

Tapestry–a regional network for Presbyterian youth to experience retreats and work trips. I’m partnering with a handful of really talented and fun Associate Pastors and Youth Directors on this.

The Synod  Youth Ministry Coaching Program Cohort–partnering with our synod and The Youth Cartel to coach a team of 10 youth workers in 12 months.

The Big Picture Project–I’m working with my Head of Staff and a Ruling Elder in my congregation to teach a group of church members about adaptive challenges and to initiate some new ministry experiments. We’re partnering with a consulting group.

The Presbyterian Youth Group (PYGs)–standard work turned project; a weekly gathering of high school students for Sabbath rest and discussion. Partnering with a dedicated group of volunteers and one staff intern.

What about you? What projects are you working on?

This afternoon I had back-to-back appointments that painted the present situation of the mainline Protestant church in North America with startling clarity. I’ll describe them in the opposite order from the order in which they happened.

A funeral planning meeting with the family of a person who taught for 38 years at the local high school and joined our congregation shortly after arriving in town during the 1960’s. The family fondly recalled the high value this person placed on church participation. “You didn’t have a choice,” one of them said. “You had to go to church.” This person led family camps, taught Sunday School, and treated the church as an extension of her own family, all, to hear her family tell it, was to the great benefit to them and church.

But also a lunch with a young professional in the congregation who has moved back into the area several years after attending high school here and participating in all of the high school youth group activities. He’s raising a family here now and working hard to succeed at his job. His spouse, too, is working hard to succeed at her job.  He’s exhausted. The faith he confirmed in high school doesn’t resonate anymore. And the community of the church that so sustained the person described above? Mostly it doesn’t look like him. It doesn’t know how to engage him without requiring more work of him.

The community of the first person isn’t equipped to care for and engage the faith of the second person.

What’s to be done?