Category Archives: Building community

I, for one, have a big stake in it

Building community, Leadership, ,

I have been learning a lot about our life together as Circle of Hope at Broad and Washington from the Stakeholders discussion, both on and off the blogsite.  For one thing (since I can see the stats) more people than ever have visited the site this year.  That’s a good thing. What’s more, I think care-filled, intelligent and vulnerable comments have been offered as part of the dialogue.  I am re-learning what a treasure chest we are.  We are people who have applied ourselves to learning the way of Jesus, like the Lord says, ”Every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old” (Matthew 13.52).

Working a little stake

One of the things I’m learning, again, is that there are a lot of little stakes being worked out there. Some people are bringing up treasure that is old, which is that much better for being seasoned. Some people are discovering new treasure in themselves and it is all very exciting. I think it would be great if we could get it all together into a big mining company with Jesus as the CEO. He is actively making that happen.

stakeholders

Sometimes people start using the word “stakeholders” with just a vague notion of what it means. It has the general sense of someone who has a stake in something. They care. They are the people who feel they “own” the organization.  That’s a good way to look at it.

I use it in a more direct way. Being a stakeholder is like mining gold — like 49ers in California staking a claim in a territory they were sure had gold in it and being crazy enough and determined enough to keep digging until they find it — only our territory is the human “goldfield” of the Philadelphia region.

Still direct, but looking for deeper gold, being a stakeholder is like Jesus claiming us and us claiming him back, Jesus settling right into us and us settling right into him,  everyone expecting to see glory and digging in until they find it, like He prays in John 17, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;  I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” That’s treasure.

Big capacity

I think it would be better if we perfected a big, diverse operation with Jesus directing the whole thing. I suppose we are as far along as anyone in that pursuit. Many people are “digging in” at different levels. I’d say people are stakeholders “according to their capacity,” but that seems demeaning to me – I think we can all make a choice to serve with our whole hearts and not be restricted by an estimation of our “capacity.” We can’t really predict what the Spirit of God might do with us, whether we think we can do it or not.

For some people, capacious or not, their stake really is just dust in the wind, but some are working well with spoonfuls of dirt, others are immersed in the mud to good effect, and still others have learned how to move the dirt with heavy equipment. For instance, some people will read the title of this blog post, that’s a start. You obviously got this far in the text and may have even delved into what’s behind the words. Then there are people who will click the link and go to the BW Stakeholders site. Some will dig in and read it. Some will give of their treasure, new and old, there, with a comment. Then some will go to the meeting January 4. Some will bring glory to the meeting when they speak. Others will listen to others and not feel bad about talking or being talked to. Then many will do something about what is being said more than talk about it. Some will actually lead us to fulfill the goals we’ve discerned. And so on. There are a lot of levels. And I think the sum of the little stakes may be greater than the whole.

I admit, I love the chaos of the whole process of mining spiritual gold. Becoming a stakeholder always invites the moment of creation. I don’t think it is too grandiose to say we are exercising the image of God in us when we “hover” over the new year and then unveil glory by deciding the year is important and recognizing that what we do matters. Whether the stakes seem small or we get a glimpse of all the treasure around us, we are important in the process of bringing life to 2013 and should feel and act that way because God has made us so. It is always a good lesson to relearn.

Some Perils and Proverbs of Parties

Building community, , , , ,

It is party season. Several of my friends are complaining that they have to go to them. Every time they complain, my heart aches a little for anyone who overhears them and compares:
“How many parties is this complainer going to?”  vs
“How many parties am I not invited to?”

It is an art to be a part

I’ve already been to a couple of parties at which I felt like a very bad guest. At one, I did not have the energy to break into various circles of introverts who make parties within parties so they feel safer. And I think I left a couple earlier than the host expected I would. I think I should be a good guest.

Throwing parties is something of an art form. They tend to reflect their host’s sense of self. They benefit from having a plan. Nevertheless, they are often just an invitation and an open door with food, so the guests make them up as they go along.

Attending also takes forethought and skill. It is an art to be a part.

All we do is party

Instagram from Frankford and Norris last night, I think.

As the church, we have weekly, public, open-the-door-and-y’all-come parties on Sunday, great for so-called extroverts. We also have weekly cell meetings that are smaller parties, much better for so-called introverts. [Sorry for the “so-called,” I’m pretty much dead-set against binary labels applied to people]. We try to be good hosts and good attenders. It is one of the main skill sets we need to work with God, the consummate host. Then there are all the many other parties people hold. A week can get full for some of us! And a week can seem very empty to others who think their schedule ought to be full.

I think Jesus was way into parties and he is still attending ours, regularly planned as the church or spontaneous. I invite him every week to the church’s parties and I think he is a great guest. After Jesus made his first disciples by walking around Capernaum and calling them into his traveling band of comrades, he was invited to one of Matthew’s notorious parties. The Bible doesn’t explicitly say that Matthew’s parties were notorious, drunken brawls, but I was just at the ruins of Capernaum and it is a small place. It is no surprise that Pharisee-types heard that Jesus went to one and disapproved.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” — Matthew 9:10-13. This is still one of the best things ever filmed about this party:

I have always admired Jesus for how he worked with this opportunity. God certainly knows how to relate! But the poor man can’t even have dinner with new friends without someone criticizing him! I can’t really go to a party either without someone having something to say about it. I can’t not go either. And once I get there I am going to bump into tax collectors and sinners, on the one hand, and Pharisees on the other. This happens in the weekly church parties and it will likely happen at every holiday and birthday party I go to this month (or don’t go to with unpredictable results).

If there really is an extrovert/introvert spectrum. I am leaning extrovert, but not as much as people think I do. So I tend to like parties. When I am travelling with Gwen I often cause her a lot of anxiety, since I will instinctively veer into a crowd of people to see what is going on and she will instinctively find a new route around them. My problem is mostly that I like people too much and I don’t have an easy time going to a party to merely drink and chat. I tend to listen and care. So if I bump into a faithless “tax collector” or “sinner,” it is hard to not feel something about that.

In Jude, he goes off on the faithless who are “blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm – shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain” Jude 12. That’s a big, biblical reaction to what’s going on at the parties! I feel his pain, a little. In the little village of Philadelphia it is easy to run into the faithless who are sure to eat all the emotional food at the party without the slightest qualm. They will again boldly ask me to absorb the trauma they cause, and to accept the oppression they perpetrate. And they probably won’t mind criticizing me for being a bad Christian when I have problems with them. In some ways they are like the sick Pharisees outside Matthew’s house, who Jesus tells to find a doctor.

Bring Jesus to the party, he goes

I am glad to bring Jesus to the parties I attend. At least he’s good at it. And we need some help because we have a lot of holiday Swiss cheese before us during the next month. I didn’t even mention the family parties to which many of us will be invited! It will be very tempting to eat the holes, and call the rest cheesy, won’t it?

So here are my personal proverbs for parties in light of all this

  • Don’t let anyone steal your joy. Give it away.
  • Expect sin. We’re getting saved, here.
  • Let people be who they are, not who they are supposed to be.
  • Life is too short not to love someone. If you get invited to do it, that’s good.
  • You better have a good reason not to attend a party. At least ask Jesus if He wants to go. There are good reasons, but have one.

Loving Women Leaders

Building community, Leadership, , ,

Lately, we have been having an interesting discussion about women in leadership among the Circle of Hope. It centers around our drive to have a woman pastor someday. And what people mean by a “woman pastor” is like the four congregational pastors, I think — the person who is the Christian equivalent of the CEO, COO, CFO, something C with an O.

I have been sharing two main responses to our dialogue:

1) We have women leaders, two of them are named “pastor,” many of them are cell leaders whose job is pastor. Why are they so invisible?

2) Women face the same roadblocks among us that they face in other institutions. We need to become conscious of those obstacles to leadership and stay conscious. Women please don’t stay invisible.

First, let’s celebrate the women leaders we have.

Hild Day was last Saturday. It gives me an excuse every year to focus on women in leadership. Hild was a great leader of the church during the 600s. In a day when women rarely led men, she did.

Below is a composite picture of some of the “Hilds” of Circle of Hope. These are just the women who are either named a pastor (Gwen and Rachel), who are leaders of the core teams that make up our network Leadership Team — all three are presently women (Vanessa, Megan, Alison), or who lead cells, the basic building blocks of  our church.

There are further women who lead mission teams and compassion teams, too! We are blessed with a lot of dedicated people. (There are probably some better pictures, too — sorry).

Second let’s keep thinking about how to get the roadblocks out of the way of our women!

I still think our recently-vinted proverb makes sense: “We are diverse in many ways and we will cross boundaries to become more so. Don’t bean count us.” Merely having a discussion of the rights and identity of women is not up to Jesus’ standards. Our equality is not measured by the world’s measure. We are growing up gifted people of both genders to be leaders and we are growing everyone down so we don’t think leaders are the most important people in the room.

But while we hope to decrease the sense of competition for power among us, acting like there is no assertion necessary to lead will likely just leave the leadership to the men, who already dominate it throughout our society. I think we all need to pay attention to what it takes to lead as a woman among us and help people succeed at it when Jesus calls them forward.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is stored on youtube  giving a TED talk about why a smaller percentage of women than men reach the top of their professions. She offers three good pieces of advice for women who aspire to leadership that I think apply in our setting, too.

1) Sit at the table. Women tend to underestimate their capabilities. They are more collegial in their assessment of how they became successful. They defer instead of reach. If you need data to back up these facts, she has it – but you can usually see how we relate at a meeting and it will give you enough evidence for the same conclusions, I think.

2) Make your partner a real partner. If a woman is going to do more than make her husband’s career succeed, he is going to have to be a partner at home in a significant, mutually-agreed-upon way. This has to be true for a woman who leads the church, too. Her husband will have to help make that work.

3) Don’t leave before you leave. Sandberg mainly talks about the tendency women have: they consider what it will be like to have children and a job and then mentally opt out of working hard. We don’t hire the vast majority of our leaders among Circle of Hope, so she is not thinking about our context. But I think women react in a similar way when given the opportunity to serve or lead in the church in some significant way. They are committed to their parenting in a way that makes them feel ineligible.

Being the leader of a congregation, cell or team is not what most people are going to do. But I think we should all be ready to take on the challenge to lead when given the opportunity if we are given the grace to do so — since, as our proverb says, “Women and men are co-bearers of the image of God and therefore fully gifted and responsible to lead, teach and serve.” Most of us are not leading, we are being catalyzed, equipped and steered by leaders, and we only need a few of these crucial people. There is a lot to do; and most of us are doing it.

Women have significant roadblocks to leading us to do it. Sheryl Sandberg implies that many of the roadblocks are self-imposed. But we know that no one gets where they are going alone. If we hope for women to live and give according to the fullness that is in Jesus; we can all contribute to the success of each woman we recognize as gifted and called to serve us as a leader. If there are roadblocks, inside or out, let’s lovingly knock them out of the way.

What is required of me?: What if I don’t meet the church’s expectations?

Building community, Leadership, , ,

Someone asked:  “What does it mean to be involved with Circle of Hope — like, what does it require? Am I required to make the community part of my social life? Why is the community so important to you guys? Can’t I just center on God as an individual without centering my life around a community?” Good  questions.

In some ways, I think the feeling that “something is required” is like when you go to visit a relative or maybe someone you don’t know very well —  but you are going to be in their house for a little while. Unless you know what is required, it is hard to feel comfortable. “Do you expect me to get up and eat breakfast with you? Am I expected to stay up and watch TV with you? Would you like me to pay for some of the food I eat? When you are vacuuming, should I dust?” Good  questions.

There are similar questions when one visits Circle of Hope’s extended family. “If I am hanging around Circle of Hope, how long before you expect me to be important? When am I supposed to sign up with Jesus? How long before you start thinking of me like I am a slacker who doesn’t contribute? Since you keep inviting me to things, can I still do what I want instead of coming to all your cell meetings and parties and projects and not be seen as a recluse or a curmudgeon?” Good questions.

Non-coercive is important

First off, let me say, I (and I think we) think everyone is a free, choosing, potentially-honorable human. We would not have the audacity to try to make you do anything. We like to think we are creating a non-coercive atmosphere where you get to become all God wants you to become on your own time schedule. So if the question I am trying to answer is your question, thanks for caring about what we might want.

But we are inevitably intimate

One of our friends was thinking about this a little bit as she pondered her time in Colorado Springs. She went to a big megachurch with her relatives and it felt strange to her. The pastor was on a jumbotron, and that felt distant. But what bothered her the most was that the music was so well produced that she couldn’t hear people sing. She’s been involved with Circle of Hope for a long time and we made sure we would stay small enough so people would be likely to hear one another sing most of the time.

I suppose one of the reasons we are not a big mega church is because we can hear each other sing! We’re kind of intimate right away. Some people don’t like that. At one point during a Riversharks game last year I called my son to find out where he was in the stadium. He finally said, “Can I call you back? I can’t hear you.” The loudspeaker was so intrusive we were not even able to talk! People like that no-talking togetherness, like when you have to shout at a bar. But we are a people. We are an organism. In our public meetings we like to give people space; but it always looks like relating could be imminent. We can hear you. If we were like a store or a sporting event more people might feel comfortable. But we are more like a village. Dialogue is likely.

People sense expectations

So, again, I think these are good questions. Because there is a sense that something is required just by getting to know us. People sense expectations; and they are right. We expect to be friends. We are going to love you, and most people think that loving back is required. We are going to make a connection, and the connection implies that mutuality is required. Not being anonymous or impersonal implies that being known and personal is required, doesn’t it? So that might be a problem for some people.

So let me try to sort this out a bit. Because, being practical, there are levels of relational “requirement.” I don’t think any of the levels are imposed, they are agreements, conscious or otherwise,  about how involved you want to be right now. And I think all the levels are OK. I made a chart.

Everyone

The first level of involvement does not include any agreement. Circle of Hope is a rather large circle. There are a lot of people who are part of us who are not in the room at any given moment. For one thing, there are three other congregations! Plus, only about half the regular attenders of the public meetings are there on a given Sunday. There are people in cells who have never made it to a PM yet and vice versa. We touch people through our thrift stores, counseling offices and other compassion teams who are part of the larger Circle. So the constituency is very large and diverse; we can’t even know everyone. I think it is safe to say that on the broadest level of connection nothing is required. We accept you totally as you are at this moment. I suppose you could say this is a requirement to be yourself. We like the fact that we know and love a lot of people who are still deciding about Jesus and still deciding about relating to us. God is in charge of all that and we are not trying to control it.

Cell and PM regulars

The circle keep getting more intimate as we travel toward the heart of us where we make agreements that require a great deal from one another. I think observing the fact that a lot of people are really connected around here is what the questioner wanted to know about. If you are regularly part of  a cell or PM, you are relating closely enough to form the community called the church. People dip in and out of these meetings and that is quite all right. People start being a part years after they first connect, or after they move to Seattle and back. We’re keeping the light on for them. We care. Ultimately, being in the red part of the circle implies that you are knowing people and connecting. I think it could feel like a requirement to love. But we know that we all have different capacity to love and we are in different states of preparedness to care. God is watching over it all and we leave it up to him.

Covenant members

Within all these meeting attenders, somewhere between 100 and 200 people at Broad and Washington right now, over half of the adults, have made a covenant to be the church and to share our mission.The covenant is mainly about responding to what Jesus requires of us — to love one another like he loves us and to be a part of his redemption project. We don’t get much more specific than that because we don’t know how to specifically tell everyone how to live in Jesus. But the fact that we think it is important to make our mutual commitment to a covenant undoubtedly  feels like a requirement to reciprocate. Most people who make a covenant are devoted members of the body — and that makes us the strong church we are. But, of course, people go through stuff; they fall out — and in and out; they doubt; they get hurt and leave. Jesus is at the center of any love we have, so we rely on him.

Intentional households and families

I included a few more circles in the middle of the covenant circle. Because at the heart of us there are households of people who keep an even deeper covenant within the covenant — they are families and they are intentional households that live like families. Plus, our Leadership Teams are also groups who live at an even deeper level of commitment. All these people have rather elaborate requirements that they take on. Especially if you are not married — like so many us us aren’t, if you live alone, if you feel like you are passing through, or if you aren’t sure about how you relate to Jesus, these deeply committed people might seem a bit much. Don’t worry, they aren’t the ideal people. It isn’t like one day you are in a meeting and the next day you might be required to lead a cell or create the next radical good business.  I don’t think that is the way it is. But there is  a deep yellow pool in the middle of us that makes us strong. At the same time there is a large blue “shallow end” that is no less part of the pool. It is OK with me if you are wading in the shallow end right now.

Relationship with Jesus required?

We are really trying not to stack on too many requirements. But they are there in an unstated way. I was talking to a man at a wedding one time and he said he liked Christianity better than all the other religions. But he could never really be a Christian because he could not love his enemies. He knew that was a requirement. But he hates his enemies and right now and he doesn’t see that changing. So he didn’t think he could travel with Jesus. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him more about it because I had to go sing a little duet. But of course you can’t meet the requirements of Jesus if you aren’t travelling with Jesus. He didn’t say those things and leave us alone to follow them. The relationship is required.

If I thought that someone was feeling like they needed to meet whatever requirement they sensed from the church out of their own capacity or imagination, that would be terrible. We can’t make ourselves be good or creative or committed; those character traits are the work of the Holy Spirit in the world. We can’t be demanding enough or controlling enough to make you be in love with Jesus. Your heart has to meet his heart. We are going to create a safe place — and a disciplined, intelligent place, where we all get the best chance to move with the Spirit. But our meetings and disciplines can’t make us anything if Jesus is not drawing you into fullness.

Ultimately, it is about what God requires, isn’t it? If you are running away from God and you want to be on your own, then there is not much we can do to make that better. We would hate to have you doing a bunch of things for us when all along we thought our life together was about worshiping and serving God!

What does God say is required?

Let’s end up practical. What does God say is required to be part of his church — in this case, Circle of Hope?  See if you think this is it:

1. Time is required. The question might be, do I have to come to all these meetings?

Of course you don’t have to come to all the meetings and events. The requirement is mainly in you, how many meetings do you need to go to be yourself in relationship to God and his people and mission? How valuable has God made you to us?

2. Talent is required. The question might be, do I have to be on one of the many teams?

Of course you don’t have to be on a team. The requirement is mainly in you. How do you need to be organized to do what God gives you to do? You are not necessary until you think you are, but you might be more important than you think.

3. Treasure is required. The question might be do I have to share money?

Of course you don’t have to share money. Having a common pot of money to do great things is good. But the real treasure is you. Money is just the tool in our hands. Sharing makes us strong.

A final teaching from Jesus

In Luke 12, Jesus told a parable about a wealthy man who was coming home from a wedding feast. He expected his servants to be guarding his house, their lamps lit and all of them  ready to open the door when he returned. Even if he came at midnight or three in the morning, he expected them to be alert, with their lamps lit. Jesus said, “If a householder knew when the thief was coming, he would certainly be ready. And I will return like a thief, so you need to be ready all the time.”

Peter immediately asked him if he was talking to everyone, or mainly his followers.

So Jesus continued the metaphor. A servant of a master will be rewarded when he or she is found doing what the master commands when he or she returns. Here is the little moral Jesus added that I think is a good way to end this post. Peter asked him, “Are we all required to be so responsible for your life and work?” Jesus answers: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48).

The question I have to ask back at our questioner is, “How much have you been given?” — that’s what will determine how much is required. I have been given much and all the requirements I meet to be a part of Circle of Hope are being a responsible servant. Circle of Hope is like a lamp I keep burning, waiting for the master to return.

The fact that you feel like a lot is required of you may mean that a lot has been given to you. Maybe you are resisting the reality that you are valuable, important, gifted, or necessary. Maybe you think so poorly of yourself that it is a sin to see yourself as useless or irrelevant as you do. Maybe what you have been given is being wasted serving other masters than God. The requirement is in you, in relation to Jesus — what is God calling you to care for until Jesus returns?

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Radicals Discerning their Direction

Building community, Leadership,
Wednesday night cells at BW

Getting from “here” to “there” is always difficult, especially when it is a group that is going! A healthy process of dialogue not only helps us, as individuals, get somewhere, speaking the truth in love helps the whole church cohere and move together. Discerning our map every year is an ambitious process of engaging people at a deep level of personal responsibility, group discernment and covenant action. We are blessed with covenant members and devoted friends who have personal care for our goals and who create an atmosphere of healthy dialogue.

A basic reason for seeking discernment and making a map:

We need discernment in the middle of fear and oppression.

The wicked flee though no one pursues,
but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

When a country is rebellious, it has many rulers,
but a ruler with discernment and knowledge maintains order.

A ruler who oppresses the poor
is like a driving rain that leaves no crops. (Proverbs 28:1-3)

All these proverbs stand on their own, of course. But it is interesting to note how they came to be collected; in this case, I think it is very telling. On the one hand we are dealing with fear in the first proverb. On the other hand we are dealing with oppression in the third. That seems to be the general state of the population in the Philadelphia region – fearful and oppressed. In the middle of that condition is discernment. When wisdom rules, community can flourish; otherwise, we are all our own kings and queens fighting it out.

If the upcoming election can be understood, I think it might be safe to say that the oppressors are promising that we will all be kings and queens and we have nothing to fear. I question their discernment. Watching the candidates work makes it even more important to be an alternative to what they are producing and to learn the ways of life in Jesus. Our approach to discerning our direction every year is all about being that alternative.

Seven reasons for discerning our map the way we do.

1) We map the way we do because we believe the voice of the Spirit is heard in the body of Christ.

Direction should not be set in a board room but in our meeting rooms. We either learn discernment or die at the hands of the data. It is not that anyone really wants to Google their lives, but we are being trained to do so – to not think, to not listen to the Spirit, but to listen to the most expert person in the world, virtually. The Apostle Paul was so exasperated with one of his church plantings that he said: “Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?” (1 Corinthians 6:5). We have to keep listening for God; hearing his voice in the other believers is a crucial way to do that.

Tuesday cells ranking the brainstorm

2) We map the way we do because we need to elevate the dignity of each individual as they presently are, right now.

Everyone’s voice has value. Everyone matters and their power should be honored:  “To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7).  We think people have the God-given capacity to discern together, as the body, at a very deep level. Everyone has the Spirit of God and they should offer what they have to our common understanding and we should all listen. Whether they are right or wrong, whether we think we should follow their lead or not, listening is the right thing to do and makes us people after God’s own, listening heart.

3) We don’t want to encourage people to merely follow the leader. We want to produce leaders of other people.

We are always working out 2 Timothy 2:2. Paul tells his protégé Timothy: “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” Every believer is entrusted with the truth about Jesus and inspired by His Spirit, so they are, by nature, an influencer who leads others to know and follow. Our mapping process is another exercise in deepening that capacity. It requires us to resist leaving it up to someone else and taking the luxury to complain about what we aren’t doing.

4) Likewise, we need to build a trust system of partners.

The leaders may have good sense, but if the body does not own a common vision, their leadership isn’t going to make much of a difference. Our pastors think of our work as mainly facilitating what God is doing among us. We’re not just trying to get people to do what we want. We all have to own what God is doing, not just the leadership team. And I think that in order to own what we are doing, we need to have a chance to change it. We all have to drive the car at some level. We all need ways that we connect at a level of trust or we will sink into sitting in meetings and consuming church products, fearful and oppressed.

5) Community is our strong suit for evangelism.

One of the main problems the people of today have with the church is that we don’t seem to be able to get along. We avoid conflict or have unhealthy conflict. Our discerning process teaches us how to have conflict in a healthy way. To be cells forming congregations in a region-wide network, we have to master loving communication. Creating a network might be one of the weirdest things about us, but it is also one of the most attractive. We have to keep explaining it to our neighbors by how we act. Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”(John 13:35). Coming up with the map helps us answer the question: “Still love each other?”

One of the groups among the Thursday cells and their neat list

6) Discerning for the map teaches a basic missional skill— how to help people get people from here to there. 

It is tempting to think faith and service just “happen.” But it is, in fact, very hard to get anything done in the world – especially when it is resisting Jesus! Mapping helps us all figure out how to make the most of what we have and to direct our energies where we should make the most difference. We each need to keep growing and changing and so does everyone we know. Mapping helps us answer the question: “What does God want us to do to get where we are called to go?”

7) Discerning for the map teaches a basic conservation skill – how do we develop and maintain the capacity to do what we have the opportunity to do? 

Mapping has a “farming” aspect to it. We have to assess how much people power we have to extend our “acreage.” We need to understand what it takes to fulfill the goals we set. We map because we want to make sure that our basic structure — cells and PMs — is still intact and makes sense. We map because goals motivate us to invest what we have achieved in what God has given us to do next.

I think we are pretty successful at discerning. Our mapping meetings last week encouraged me and inspired me! Themes emerged as different groups met each night. Brilliant, spiritual people revealed themselves and shared their gifts. People felt conflicted and threatened and dealt with that. People felt loved and affirmed and celebrated that. It made me think that authentic Christianity had a good chance of surviving in the middle of fear and oppression.

Attachment issues in the church: People move away sometimes.

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People do this. They ask: Why did you move out of town? my neighborhood? our shared apartment with five people in two bedrooms? They get a look on their face and a tone in the voice that implies — shouldn’t you be apologizing?

When I went back to Riverside, CA, this past summer, which I left in 1991, people were still talking about me leaving. When my friend from Riverside came our way to visit this summer, she took me aside and asked, “Why did you leave?” Paul had a similar experience when he left Ephesus, I think. People were crying on the beach (Acts 20). Even if you leave town because you are a Christian, because you think God wants you to do it, people cry and wonder if you should do it. We are important.

But for some people it is, “For crying out loud! You’re leaving?!” Some might even get huffy or pouty if someone seems to be leaving for less than holy reasons. “You don’t love South Philly? You don’t love me? What about what we were together? What about what we were doing together? The community garden! Brunch at Sabrina’s!” We are a community in mission and each player makes a difference.

The Bible talks about moving

This seems like kind of a “light” question for the Bible to talk about it so much. But it does.

  • Paul says: I am with you even when absent: “For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit” (1 Cor 5: 4, see Colossians 2:5, too).
  • Paul also says — I long to be with you to share my life.  “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. (Romans 1:11-13, see also 2 Cor. 10:10-11).

Present is better than absent. We are not pictures on Facebook, we are people. It does matter when we are physically together. We gain strength and comfort from the presence of others. Paul knows he can’t be who he is or give what he has unless he shows up. What we build together and give to each other really is irreplaceable.

We always have to talk about how spirit and body go together. We are both. We are spirit. We are spiritual beings longing to connect in love. We are also body. We are physical beings who cannot be every place at all times and need to be present to fully connect.

Be careful about how people attach. It’s complex.

I think some people might rely more on being physically present to connect. They need the physical. If you leave town, or maybe even the room, they might get anxious. I study attachment theory quite a bit these days. These kind of people might be like one type of baby Mary Ainsworth identified when she was testing to see what would happen if a baby’s mother left her one-year-old in a “strange situation.” A majority of children she studied had some concern about being left by their mothers, but they were secure, they explored, they were basically happy because they trusted that mom would come back and needs would be met.  About a fifth of the babies were anxious. Apparently, they experienced their mother as sometimes sensitive and sometimes neglectful. They were upset until she got back because they weren’t sure she was coming back! It might be the same if you up and leave town, a good number of people will be upset. You are just one more unreliable person! Some people might be really hanging on to your presence and getting some needs met. It is a loss for them.

One the other hand, I think some people might rely on spirit, maybe too much. They are kind of out there floating and are not attached securely. For about 20% of the Ainsworth’s crawlers, when mom left they were distant and disengaged. They just sat there and didn’t explore and would not connect emotionally. They had a subconscious idea that their needs would not be met. It made them avoid attachment altogether! It might be the same when you leave town. Some people might not say anything because they can’t really bear to feel more needs not being met. Maybe they never got close to you in the first place because they didn’t want to be left alone.

The marriage covenant causes similar issues to surface. Some marriages have a lot of problems from the very beginning because as soon as the intimacy begins, the attachment issues become evident. A person who has always trusted that his needs would be met, might be very insensitive to a person who never could trust her needs to be met. If you have a person who is avoidant and doesn’t instinctively attach connected to a person who is anxious, and so always wants to get closer and get reassured, that can take a long time to figure out.

In the church our covenant often works out in just the same way. That is why many people would not want to make one. They don’t expect it to be anything but trouble and disappointment. We get people connected in our cells and for some people that is a real stretch because they are allowing themselves to trust and to work on loving people, which includes becoming attached in a family-like way. Secure people are fine for the most part — it doesn’t take too much to convince them that there is enough love to go around. But for about half the population, it can be very trying to multiply and experience people separating into another cell. Then the whole congregation multiplies! And then you move away! Maybe they can’t really complain about God and the church but they can complain about you leaving town.

It is OK to have a problem with how love feels. Community doesn’t always feel good, but if we have any life in the Spirit at all, we will be patient with one another as we figure these things out. And even if we don’t seem to be figuring them out too well, we will still be patient.

Get securely attached to God and other things sort out

In soul-health terms, the goal is to be your true self. On the one hand that means being able to say, “I am who I am,” and feel like you are OK with that. You are free. You are yourself in Christ. At the same time it means you can be intimate. You are part of a “we” and able to say, “We are who we are.” You can choose to connect and choose to leave.

I think it is good for lovers of people to understand the processes by which we connect, or don’t. If someone is upset because you are leaving they may have several reasons that seem good to them, and they may have reasons that seem good to God. It makes sense to deal with them all and not just cut them off and move on with your life. They may be clingy because they are insecure. If you need to go, go. But they may object to being devalued because you did not connect. You may not be able to retrofit the relationship, but you might want to note the reality. You think you didn’t make a difference, and you did.

I hope their biggest reason for feeling loss when you leave is not just a personal feeling or a revisiting of an old grief, like the time their mom left them with Mary Ainsworth and they were an experiment! I hope they just longed to be knit together in love.

One last thought from Paul that shows his conviction that being one in Christ is central to be ing one’s true self:

“My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united (knit together) in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ,  in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2-3).

When a part of the body it lost, it is a loss. Because when we are knit together, eternity is opened up in significant ways.

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Sorting Out Cohabitation and Marriage

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Cohabitation has increased dramatically in recent decades in the United States (and in Circle of Hope, too!). In the U.S. it climbed from 500,000 couples in 1970 to nearly 6.8 million couples in 2009. Most young adults today will, at some point, live with a romantic partner outside of marriage, and the majority of couples now cohabit before they marry. It looks like a generation with so many divorced parents is deciding not to get divorced by never getting married. We should consider this a new stage of development in marriage. It is a new era with a host of new issues to sort out.

Many Christians think the 21st century increase in cohabitation without legal, covenantal or public recognition devalues marriage and undermines its goals. If recent research is a true indicator, Americans, as a whole, have not fully decided whether they agree or not.  Since 1960, cohabitation, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have become increasingly common and culturally acceptable. But even though there are very few negative social consequences for practicing these things without being married, Americans overwhelmingly choose to marry, eventually. I don’t think I can answer all the reasons why they do this. But I do want to respond to the reality of it.

New reasons to marry

In the past most people married for economic, political and social reasons. Today they marry for love. Postmodern people seem to think relationships save them. The love songs say it. The script of New Girl taught it in a recent sitcom episode.

Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and now it is an arrangement based on mutual attraction. Once religion provided the sacrament, then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences define the arrangement. The cultural change that made this happen was the same one that gave us science, technology, freedom, and capitalism: the Enlightenment. It made human reason the measure of all things, throwing off ancient rules if they fell short of new scientific reasoning. The greatest accomplishment of the Enlightenment was the creation of the United States of America.

Among the many things the scientific advances of the creative era called the Enlightenment spawned were the increase of divorce and cohabitation. The capacity to marry for love and participate in infidelity provided by birth control shook old foundations and new foundations are being built in response. In 1900, two-thirds of marriages ended with the death of a partner, particularly when women died during childbirth. By 1974, divorce surpassed death as the most common way to terminate a marriage. By the end of the 20th century, divorce was considered both a common and culturally acceptable way to terminate marriage.

Purpose of marriage

Although the purpose of marriage has changed over time, the definition has not.  Americans still define marriage as being sexually exclusive and lifelong, but many engage in infidelity and divorce. They want the connection, but they have slowly become accustomed to being totally individualistic.  They choose to marry or exclusively cohabit and then have extramarital sex or divorce, even though they no longer have to get married. “Freedom” is the slogan but they seem to still be pondering with the Apostle Paul: “Yes, everything is permissible. But not everything builds up!” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

As a result of all this confusion, family law has lost any moral basis. It is easier to get out of a marriage than a mortgage. This change in culture is made clear when one looks at court decisions. At the end of the 1800s, the Supreme Court referred to marriage as a “holy estate” and a “sacred obligation.” (Reynolds v. U.S. 1878). By 1972 the same court described marriage as “an association of two individuals” (Eisenstadt v. Baird. 1972).  The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) attempted to remedy the Supreme Court’s philosophical direction that accelerated the change in society. But the adaptation of marriage has continued anyway and that law is being whittled away. The Obama administration selectively enforces it. As a society, people are still sorting this out.

For Christians who have not tuned their faith to the varying pitch of government, such as I am, the lack of federal protection for marriage merely serves to increase the integrity of marriage as an expression of faith: not of sex, finances or even procreation, but of commitment. Couples do not need an excessive wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment. But they do need the sanction and participation of a living community in Christ to make a long-lasting covenant that is centered in the covenant we keep with the Lord.

Do we need it to be official?

The question is: Do believers need a wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment? The essence of marriage is not sex, or money, or even children: it is covenant. Does the covenant need to be made in traditional ways — especially now that those mostly-extra-biblical ways are becoming discredited? A new look at the spectrum of how people are changing marriage from covenant to cohabitation might come up with some advantageous ways to adapt.

  • Maybe we could free some people from the ceremony trap — some people don’t marry because they are saving for the bling and the spectacle!
  • Maybe we could honor people by acknowledging their cohabitation before the covenant is publicly committed – that would be something like embracing people as members of the church community before they make a covenant with the body.
  • Maybe we should more clearly express our understanding that people who have sex are, essentially, married, albeit poorly and dangerously. But then, some of them are better married than some people who live together with a publicly affirmed covenant, just secretly. Why would someone get married secretly?

When someone told me recently that they were about ready to have sex with their girlfriend, I said if he was going to get married, I’d marry them immediately, if he liked. We’re still sorting that out, too.

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I think we should not get the drift, at least in a bad way

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The “state” has sucked up the majority of everyone’s allegiance and made the church a private, leisure time matter. That makes our public covenant-making with the people of God a radical, countercultural act. We still think Jesus is Lord and he personally leads a kingdom. On vacation I read a stimulating book that stoked the fires of my covenant convictions. I’ll get to that in a minute. But here’s the gist: I got excited about how it made me think about a piece of our “about making a covenant” teaching that has just become more radical since we started teaching it.

The covenant is a life, not a concept

It should be an obvious teaching — elementary Christianity. In my estimation, it is stating the obvious to teach that a Jesus follower will not be one in name only but will, by nature, demonstrate their covenant with Jesus and His people with some basic activity. In the case of Circle of Hope:

  • they will obviously be part of our weekly meeting when the community shows herself to the world in worship and truth-telling (1 Cor. 14);
  • they will obviously be part of a cell where we share our gifts face to face, are given basic care,  and share in basic faith dialogue (Acts 20:20);
  • they will obviously be  part of some expression of our mission as part of one of our many teams or, if they are blessed, through their occupation (1 Cor. 2:4);
  • and they will obviously share their money in our common fund (Acts 2:44).

In our teaching about what it means to make a covenant with real people in real time, we note that we all have resources of spiritual gifts, time, care, and money. We actively put these resources into practice as a part of the body. All this seems like basic Christianity to me. But I think it has become radical. Circle of Hope is a community of activists in a lowest-common-denominator Church and world.

Are most American Christians followers in name only?

I’m coming to the conclusion that American Christians love nominalism; they like being Christians in name only. They are having a tough time right now because the culture changed on them and the nation is less inclined to protect their “freedom” to sit in their Christianity, having it unmolested by any need to exercise it. When Circle of Hope got started, we flourished by picking up a lot of the radicals who could not find a place in a nominalized Church, and a lot of new believers who never found Jesus from knowing inactive Christians. We are still going against the grain. But our capacity is going to be tested in postChristian America. Circle of Hope has also had some freedom to sit. Now we might have to mean what we teach.

The drift away from consensus building

Rachel Maddow explains driftThat brings me to my book. I have been reading Rachel Maddow’s Drift. It documents how the presidents have slowly become the sole deciders of when the U.S. goes to war, without the approval of Congress and certainly without the input of us citizens. The book shows how the privatization of what used to be soldiering and the expansion of secret operations has led to perpetual war that is off the radar of the nation. The leaders make sure we aren’t disturbed by war. Maddow is generous enough to say that this was caused by “drift,” not decision, starting with Ronald Reagan and added to by every president since.

I could not help but think that in the same era the BIC leaders have drifted the same direction (and I think that includes a lot of us pastors). They also do more in secret and ask the constituency to trust their advertising. We are not disturbed by our body life. It seems that the BIC started going this direction when people misapplied John Maxwell’s leadership training. I don’t think Maxwell meant to install the “my way or the highway” style that characterizes congressional debate these days. But it got installed.  I think the leaders drifted out of what they considered ineffectual consensus-building and into “over-anointed” leadership.

The radicality of covenant

I’m thinking about that drift in relation to maintaining ourselves as a group of activists. What I am working on is that Circle of Hope is growing up in an era where radicals are less likely to float to the top of a placid sea of nominalism and collect as a new, cool church. The sea of the nation and the Church is too stirred up, and the people who lead the nation and church have drifted into an authoritarian style that keeps people from handling too much reality. We might need to really choose to live by faith. We might have to be thoroughly disturbed. Honestly, I am delighted with that challenge. Good trees need to bear good fruit (Matt. 7).

The Jesus way honors us all as crucial “members of the body.” Our way of life as Circle of Hope demands that we act on the reality of our life in Christ – at least that is what we teach. We are going against the grain when we insist that we all make a difference, not just the leaders, in a world where Occupy sputters into distrust and ineffectiveness, and we don’t take to the streets when the president fights secret, debt-exploding wars that no one is required to pay for while the bankers run us into the ground economically with impunity. It is good to go against the flow if the flow is going down the spiritual drain.

When the thirty-or-so people showed up to consider making a covenant with us the other night, they were exploring something that has become even more radical than when we imagined it. Imagine! – people who would consider coming right out in the public, as it is now, and pledging their allegiance to Jesus and his people in a way that is not just in their secret thoughts but in their hands and feet and relationships, in a way that impacts their loves and their finances. That’s not a surprising thing in the Bible, perhaps, but it seems rather rare these days.

Lessons on leading learned and re-learned at the BIC General Conference.

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I loved being with the Brethren in Christ at the recent, brief conference in Ontario, CA. We are full of creativity, wisdom and energy for mission! Stories from the congregations in the United States and Canada, as well as stories from around the world from Brethren in Christ World Missions and the Mennonite Central Committee were inspiring!

I am always inspired to go home and do the best I can to serve Jesus after the conference. That alone is worth the airfare. This time I also learned a lot about leading in two ways: 1) I got to meet many new, young leaders who are hungry to do well and to do well as the BIC. They are inventive and eager. Good traits. 2) The other way I learned about leading came from being led by my General Church Leaders and Board. They were having an instructive time of it, trying to navigate their way through the mess we are in as a denomination. I will have plenty more to think and say about the actual issues at hand. For now, I have a list of things I need to reaffirm for myself, and for others who are listening, about leading the church (or your cell, family, workgroup, community garden, etc.).

Respect people.

We are all members of one body and we all count. Leaders need to act like that. No, I take that back. Leaders need to believe that we are all members of one body and we all count and then act on that from their heart. The BIC, and most local church bodies, like Circle of Hope, have mutual respect built into their structures. We shouldn’t give that fact a high five and then do what we want. For instance, the BIC General Conference is made up of pastors and delegates. The people at the meeting were most of the best players on the bi-national team. A leader should assume that experienced players can run plays with even slight facilitation. We need to demonstrate respect, not just talk about it.

Share the process.

Like Ronald Reagan getting away with secret, illegal arms deals, it is easy to think that what is done in secret will not eventually be shouted from the rooftops. But what some people think is better kept under wraps is crucial to building the body — the process is also elemental to the goal. Bad means can come to worse ends. During our conference we found out that the Canadian regional conference of our bi-national church had effectively “seceded from the union” long ago and we were asked to affirm that. They even changed their structure and nomenclature long before they were not part of the whole. Interesting process: the no-contest, no-communication divorce.

Offer a complete proposal; don’t just say “trust us.”

Obviously, detailed proposals cannot be engineered in a group of 500 (or five, in the case of some of our cell groups!). That’s why a proposal is detailed-out and dialogued-over long before it gets to the final decision-making. We got a proposal for major restructuring that had so many holes in it that I wonder if we can get through the next two years alive. We approved it because “they worked hard on it” and we “want to trust them.” But we have lots of structures that are designed for dialogue and for building consensus. The leaders should be masters at using them. We should have a good idea of how the Spirit is moving in the church before we test our discernment at a group meeting.

Get along for Jesus’ sake.

We still don’t know, for sure why the BIC leadership fell apart last year and why the top leaders are being sent packing. The word from the lectern was, “We messed up.” They wouldn’t really define what “messing up” means, which has been characteristic of the whole “mess up.” At one point, our Moderator spent fifteen minutes trying to waive the bylaws so two leaders could be considered in an election. The two leaders stood up and declined to be considered. That was just one instance of apparent infighting, or at least scant communication. Poor relating happens; in leaders it is even costlier.

Never isolate people by how you talk about them.

In the BIC, the leadership regularly talks about “new” people and “Spanish speaking people” as if they were not fully BIC yet. It reminds me of moving to Waynesboro PA and being told by my neighbor that I would never be a part of the town because I wasn’t born there. I’ve got a feeling that I am still “new” to the BIC, twenty-eight years after arriving! I have spent nearly twenty of those years trying to get the leaders to accept the people from South Florida and elsewhere who are not-of-the-BIC-cradle as bonafide members of the denomination. They are still singled out like they don’t yet belong at every conference. They still aren’t “us.” Back to a previous point — it appears  that being a delegate makes little difference anymore in the practical BIC process; it appears from what is often said that being a Spanish-first delegate makes even less difference.

Never ignore things that might cause conflict.

I never heard so much gratitude for being “Anabaptist” at a BIC General Conference as I heard last week! It was as if people did not get the memo that certain elements of the denomination have been fighting the oldest parts of our distinctives for a long time, so we keep them as distinctives but downplay them in practice. I think our Anabaptist stream makes us ever-more perfect for meeting the challenges of post-Christian America. Thus, we should act like we are MCC, since we are MCC (get them to change their name!). And we should practice our theology of peacemaking even if we have to dialogue with veterans.

Learning lessons is not a passive aggressive way of saying, “I want to criticize the leaders in a clever way.” I hope my criticisms are straightforward enough. I imagine most of the GC Leaders already agree with most of what I have said, anyway. I really do want to learn. I think leading is hard. Barack, Mitt and the Congress are regularly horrible, but ever-present examples of what leading is like these days — disrespectful, secretive, singular. I want to do better. I want us, as the BIC, to do better. In the next decade, as all those new leaders get their full footing in the new era that is forming, we need to help one another represent Jesus well.

Doing Something About It

Building community

I have a bug in this computer. I am slowly finding my way to a clean it out. I used my old malware program and it found a couple of things to fix. But it did not get to the one that is bothering me. So I have to do something about it. I am.

Of course this made me think about my relational system and the “bugs” that are infecting my friends and how sometimes, even they become “infections” in our body. The “malware program” in our body of Christ is probably the cell leaders. They do things about things.

I had a couple of small connections with cell leaders recently that made me glad that we have downloaded some good software to protect us. By exploring the boundaries of life in Christ and of our life together they are doing something about what might diminish community.

Doing something about illness

For instance, one of them is wondering how to care for a member of the cell who hasn’t been feeling well for quite a while. The person needs to make a realtionship with a therapist — it is not unusual to be depressed and therapy is good for the long-term depressed. But most people resist making a commitment to therapy, often for the same reasons they need therapy — so we need to be careful and gracious with each other as we walk with our friends in the direction of the counseling office. But a cell leader, or any caring friend, will need to do something. We don’t need to leave everyone alone, as if that is loving them, or as if we will be invading the sanctity of their individuality if we are concerned. Or worse, we don’t need to leave them alone because we don’t want to take responsibility for someone and steal their freedom — or even worse, because we fear we aren’t supposed to think we can actually influence someone for good.

It remains to be seen what this cell leader can accomplish. But it makes the world a better place when people try. It makes the body better when we try to catalyze change for the better — like the change we are promised in Christ.

Doing something about motivation

Megan said a couple of things in the meeting last night that made me glad for cell leaders and for women leaders, in particular. For one thing, she talked about what she was learning from Circle of Hope Daily Prayer about doing the word. She got people to raise their hands if they were using it. That kind of honest curiosity could be considered kind of pushy. But it is what leaders do. They don’t violate our boundaries to dominate us (if they are leading with Jesus, at least), but they don’t assume: 1) we are hiding or 2) that we need to be protected or 3) that we are not available to be ourselves and tell the truth. Assuming we are present, open, and willing to participate is good for us. Sometimes it even changes our minds about what we are capable of doing.

It remains to be seen if anyone further avails themselves of our daily discipline tool because she talked about it. But it makes the atmosphere of our church more authentic to know that some people think that daily prayer is crucial and that doing the word with the others who are using our daily prayer guide is important.

Doing something about hospitality

Another Cell Leader brought a neighbor to the PM ast night. This is not the most unusual thing that ever happened, but it takes quite a bit of effort every time it happens. I know she had to cross some human boundaries to get into a relationship with her neighbor; she needed to make time to include a new friend in her life, which always sounds easy until you do it. She had to make it known that she was deeply involved in her church, which might have seemed scary. Then she had to extend an invitation to the meeting, make the logistics doable and then usher her friend into the room. This seems like a theoretically small thing to do – it is perfectly natural to include someone socially. But it only seems natural until you try to do it again. Most of us don’t do it.

It remains to be seen if her new friend becomes a comfortable, then reproducing, member of the church. But it generates life when a leader, or anyone, goes out of their typical way to make a new relationship.

Boundary pushing, not breaking

There was some boundary-pushing, not breaking, going on with these cell leaders. They were doing something about it. One was probing the possibilities of deeper spiritual and psychological health. One was stepping over the edge of the safest parameters of our typical dialogue. One was moving off her normal track and making a new relationship. It all took the courage to take a step that seemed a bit ahead of the rest of us. It was daring to push the boundaries out a little, to include a person in possibilities for psychological health, in mutual spiritual discipline, or in community.

Walking ahead or beside someone into new territory and establishing new boundaries might be the essence of leading. My example of the malware program is too static to be fully applicable to the organism we are. Isn’t a malware sweeper just trying to keep one’s system free from something that disrupts it or takes it in a direction we don’t want it to go? Our Cell Leaders might detect what “bugs” others, but their technique is more about opening up the system to the greater possibilities of life in Christ, not just eradicating bothersome stuff.

It remains to be seen what will result from the work of these good people. But it also remains to be seen whether what Jesus did will result in what we hope it will. Jesus is certainly probing, moving us toward the edge of what is better and consistently holding out his arms to receive a new friend. He’s always doing something about it. So far, his efforts have made a miraculous impact. We don’t know what’s next, for sure, but I think we could expect more of the same. Our Cell Leaders, for sure, are doing something about it.