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Monday, June 15
Clergy Business Session - Sermon

A motion was carried to post this sermon on the conference web site.

By David A. Baker
Chair, Board of Ordained Ministry

“Alongside Babylon’s rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion. Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps; That’s where our captors demanded songs, sarcastic and mocking: ‘Sing us a happy Zion song!’ Oh, how could we ever sing God’s song in this wasteland?”  Psalm 137 . The text that I want to lift up from the reading is this: “How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

Among the books I have been reading is one called The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World by Alan Roxburgh, Fred Romanuk, and Eddie Gibbs.  The book describes change.

There is the kind of change says the book that is continuous.  Continuous change develops out of what has gone before and therefore can be expected, anticipated, and managed.  The maturation of children is an example.  A baby begins to crawl, then walk, talk, goes to school, learns skills, starts to read, becomes an adolescent, chooses a career, makes friends, moves out of the home, hopefully does not move back in, and on and on. Change to be sure but it is constant change, expected change, change that at least to some degree we can predict and prepare for. Oh sure there are curve balls that come our way, but by and large, it is change that we can deal with. Our learned skills help us with this kind of change. We have been trained to deal with this kind of change.

Discontinuous change though is disruptive and unanticipated; it creates situations that challenge our assumptions.  The skills we have learned aren’t helpful in this kind of change.  Working harder with one’s habitual skills, using the methods we have been taught, do not address the challenges being faced.  There is no getting back to normal.

We may go to our parents to talk to them about some stage our child has entered into. But with discontinuous change there is no one to go and seek advice because no one has ever seen change like this. It is like living on roller skates or walking on ice. You take careful steps, slow steps, cautious steps, and just about the time you gain some confidence, there goes your feet out from under you. And you are lying flat on your back. Discontinuous change.  Ever feel like that? 

“Alongside Babylon’s rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

I’ve noticed a few changes: People don’t think about going to worship as their first option on Sunday mornings. Our competition is not the Presbyterians or the Baptists or the new upstart non-denominational fellowship.  Our competition is the mall or sports or physical exhaustion or a church that is consistently characterized as impotent for the most pressing needs of the day. 

As a pastor I have worked with people for years, caring for them, loving them, marrying their children, burying their loved ones. Yet if another church pops up with a worship service that is 15 or 20 minutes different to their liking, they will leave my church and go to the other one. 

What have you done for me lately is the predominant attitude of our culture rather than commitment to a person or a church or a task. 

Our culture rejects tradition and embraces novelty.

“Why can’t God fix my problems?” we are asked, but seldom if ever has someone come to me and said, “Teach me the spiritual discipline of lamenting for the world’s violence and for the inhumanity to humanity that I experience in the world.”  

We turn to Oprah faster than we turn to the Bible for the deepest questions of life. 

Our culture is overspending, living in the red zone, with no margin in our lives.

We are a culture that believes that the right toothpaste will make me smarter, and sexier, and I will build relationships faster.

Significant relationships will be ours if we use the correct tooth whitener.

We live in a culture that says the only thing that will give you life and satisfaction is if you buy something.  Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” Our culture teaches us: “I buy; therefore I am.” I am nothing if I am not consuming. Consuming food, consuming clothes, consuming cars, consuming people, consuming alcohol, consuming oil, consuming the latest electronic gadget, consuming power, and we even package God as a consumer product.  

“How can we sing the Lord’s song in such a strange land?”

Discontinuous change is in the church just as it is in our culture.

Every time we raise minimum salary for pastors we lose guaranteed fulltime appointments because the church doesn’t think it can handle the increase. 

The reasons are diverse but we have lost 70 full time appointments in the last five years. 

We thought we were doing okay with a good pension plan and a stable hospitalization plan, and then the house of cards fell and the stock market tanked and our plan to care for the unpredictable flew out the window. The value of our portfolio, which was our security for the future, was cut drastically.

 “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” In this place of discontinuous change?
We try every trick in the book to bring people into our building. More people will take us back to normalcy we say to ourselves, back to the change I am accustomed to, back to the good old days in Zion so I can do what I have been trained to do.

One church even advertised that the pastor was going to preach a series of sermons encouraging husbands and wives to have more sex.  The parishioners were assigned homework: not go home and read the Bible together but “Go home and have more sex.”  If that doesn’t bring in the people what will?

Discontinuous change affects relationships.  Such change can build fear which can result in the decline of community. So my colleagues I observe that we as an order (and I can only speak for the order of elders) that perhaps we would describe our relationship with each other as competitive rather than community. How is that affecting your life?

Some days, colleagues, some days, don’t you just want to hang your musical instruments on the poplar trees and in exhaustion cry out, “How can I sing the Lord’s song, in such a strange land?”
If the prodigal son is the most famous biblical story of home coming, the most famous home leaving is probably that of Abraham. What is so remarkable about 75 year old Abraham picking up stakes and moving is that he was not a victim of change but an agent of change.

Most of us find familiarity a powerful need. We cling to routines; we are tied to our patterns of life. Innovation we greet with the enthusiasm of a root canal. The Psalm says: “Alongside Babylon’s rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion.”

We cling to the good old days and so do our churches. If you have to check on how much we cling to the way it is, just remember what you felt like when your District Superintendent called you during appointment season. And among all the feelings you felt, behind it all was this question: “Can I handle all the changes that a move brings?”

Innovation, creative imagination takes work. It takes a miracle to change us as individuals; we contract an illness; we lose a job or a spouse. If we allow the miracle to change us, not from what we were so much as toward what we are, really are—more profound, loving, sensitive people—that’s no easy achievement.

But Abraham, as I said was not a victim of change, but an agent of change.  Nothing happened to him to force him to move and he could so easily have said, “Look Lord my major decisions are all behind me. This is my life, my home.” At seventy-five doesn’t a person have a right to think of his life primarily in the past tense?

There are churches in our conference who say one way or another, “I have worked hard for this church. This church is mine; it is my life. Don’t I have the right to think of this church as primarily mine?”

The answer to that question, according to Abraham is, “No, not if you are a believer.” 

Believers know that while our values are embodied in tradition, our hopes are always located in change. So even 74 year old Abraham gambles everything and founds a whole new nation.  Hear it again: our values are embodied in tradition, our hopes are always located in change.  Or another way of saying that is:  it doesn’t have to be this way; it can be another way.  We as clergy don’t have to be burned out and lonely. There can be another way. We don’t have to carry the burden of the whole church on our shoulders; it can be another way. You don’t have to depend only on your own ingenuity and genius. It can be another way. It can be an invitation for God to call you. It can be an invitation for community.  It doesn’t have to be the way it is; it can be another way.

Now before this time together sounds too much like a sermon of high platitudes, if it doesn’t already sound like that, the question is:  “How do I sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?”  That’s a problem isn’t it? 

It is one thing to say “let justice roll down like mighty waters” and quite another to work out the irrigation system. I realize there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than in the prescriptions for the remedy of those wrongs.  Memory is always easier than imagination. Remembering how it used to be is easier than creatively imagining a new future. Faithfulness is more difficult than success. 

Yet I suggest to you, with all of the difficulties it entails, that we clergy members of this conference with each of the churches and ministries that we serve is going to have to discern the song the Lord wants us to sing in our own context. Gone are the days I believe when one size fits all.

Haven’t many of us gone to a place to listen to speakers who have “made it.”; however you may describe “made it.” And we have taken notes and picked up books and made a plan and devised a strategy. Our mission statement is in place, our vision statement is perfected, our values statement is published, our strategic steps are outlined, but we haven’t done the hard work (in some cases) of listening to God’s call for us. Discernment has always been a part of church life and ministry. Does God want us to sing jazz or pop? Blues, or rock and roll? Is our song in 4/ 4 time or syncopation?

I hesitate to be this transparent with you……..If I have a negative critique on my ministry of the past 15 years or so, it is that I too quickly went for the quick fix solution. I lusted for success, to use Bishop Willimon’s words. I watered down the gospel whenever I thought my call was about getting the trustees to agree to fix up the bathrooms, or the ushers to smile when someone came through the door, or to get the web page up and running.  Important  things I suppose, but I remember also the marching orders of Jesus, “Love God, and love your neighbor and then of course he adds that zinger, “pray for your enemies.” Or we have been using these words lately:  Do no harm; Do all the good that you can: Stay in love with God.  Love God: Love your neighbor.  Who is my neighbor? That is the question each church must discern. 

So if I have anything to offer to the question, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” it would be this. We will find God’s song for ourselves and for our ministry when we explore that question in community.  For years we have been told that you as the leader are the one with all the answers. You are the one who comes up with the vision, the marching orders, the song to sing that will put the church on the map.  I suggest to you that it doesn’t have to be that way; it can be another way.   

I dare to believe that we clergy as we enter into communal  conversations with our congregants and with the community at large, we will begin theological conversations, in which God begins to stir the pot and we are surprised what comes forth.  When we do such things we find we are not the victims of change but we are agents of change within community. It’s called church.  

If you want to read a book that puts some meat on those comments, may I suggest Claiming New Life: Process-Church for the Future by Dr. Lisa Withrow. –a member of our conference.  In that book Dr. Withrow offers the church a process to discern the calling of God for each local church. The book invites us to enter into a process where we can discern with others the mission field(s) where God is calling us. The book describes a systemic approach to creating a movement instead of propping up an institution as Bishop Hopkins has challenged us to do.

The numbers that we report on various forms as United Methodists are important. They tell us something about the health of the church. But if we measure only those things which can be counted, we may neglect other aspects of our calling like when God uses a mustard seed to grow a huge plant, or when God blows across the community with a gentle wind reminding us that the spirit is at work, or the people who are tugging on the garment hems of the church wanting to know something about this Jesus whom we proclaim. People want to know if the church can be with them as we work together to address the most pressing needs of a community and of the world instead of a church that fusses with each other about who is right and who is wrong.

We tend to emphasize what we can measure. But there is so much of our walk with Jesus that is immeasurable which we tend to downplay and in our downplaying we may be neglecting the resurrected life that Jesus wants to give to the community where each of our churches reside. The church is not some entity that we are in charge of just to make bigger. Sure we are an incarnational movement. Numbers are important. Sure we use buildings and space and words and actions to live our faith. Our building ought to reflect the God we serve, but when we pay attention only to the incarnated piece of the faith, we can lose the spirit that the incarnation is supposed to proclaim.

The church is placed in a specific community in order to be open to the community where it is placed.  We get teary eyed when we read on the statue of liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor……” but it was the church who first said it, because it was Jesus who formed a relationship with the poor, the tired, the hungry, the sick.  Much of Jesus’ ministry happened as Dr. Robert Tuttle says, because Jesus showed up and he paid attention.  Am I showing up in my community? As a clergy person, am I present in my community in more ways than just attending a Kiwanis meeting? Is the Church paying attention to anything besides itself? I don’t want to stay too long at that question because I fear the answers; Is the church paying attention to anything besides itself?  

Dr. Tuttle also says that the way we view our neighbor will influence how we relate to our neighbor. He suggests that we view each person we contact by using the acronym HALT:  People today are Hurting, Angry, Lonely and Tired. The Gospel has something to say to people like that. How you view people will influence how you relate to people.

In our community we provide a hot meal every night of the week for whoever wants to come. Hot meals particularly targets working poor, homeless, and unemployed persons.  Each church in town has a turn. Our turn is on Friday night.  Fifty-75 people come each Friday night to the Gay Street United Methodist Church fellowship hall and they eat and have conversation with each other and with members of the church.

Some of us were together talking and I suppose you could call it praying about that ministry and out of the conversation we said, “Why don’t we offer communion to anyone who wants it on Friday nights?” “Why not?” we said?

So at the meal time we announce and invite folk to join together in the chapel for communion.  We use the great thanksgiving from the hymnal. We hear the ancient words that have been spoken for centuries: “This is my body given for you.”  And I was shocked at the kinds of theological conversations such an experience invites. Prayer requests are gathered and prayed for and then shared with the Sunday morning worshipping community. “Here is what is on the hearts of those who gather on Friday nights,” I say to the Sunday morning crowd seated in the gothic cathedral-like church setting.  And we pray.  One person with tears streaming down his face hands over his cigarettes and lighter after taking communion. “I am done with this,” he said. And we announce that to the Sunday gathered and we rejoice and we pray because we know how tough an addiction can be.

Another person says, “If you knew everything about me you would never invite me to the table.” And we have a conversation about that.  That it is Jesus who invites us to the table. And the person is unbelieving that Jesus wants her to come to the table. But we know that the Eucharist is not only social but subversive.  It is a sacrament of equality in an unequal world. She works hard trying to get the church to reject her but we continually offer Jesus to her.

I don’t know if I am to count that Friday night group in my year end statement about church attendance or not but I think we are working within community and I trust God is the one leading us in the songs we sing.

It may or may not “work” at your church but the deeper question is what is the song God wants you to sing in your place of ministry?

Another offering that I have for you is a book that has been instrumental in my life and ministry, Diana Butler Bass, Christianity For the Rest of Us. Among the things she says in that book is that every church ought to attend to the 10 signposts that have historically described the church. The church is not differentiated from other institutions by whether we have contemporary worship or traditional, by whether you wear a robe or shirt sleeves, by whether your church looks like a cathedral or a movie theatre. The church has historically been distinguished by these 10 signposts and if these 10 signposts are alive in your church, then it doesn’t matter the strategy that you use: contemporary or traditional, robed or not, praise music or Beethoven. 

Here are the signposts: hospitality, discernment, healing, contemplation, testimony, diversity, justice, worship, reflection, and beauty. Is your church known for these signposts?    It is these 10 signposts she says that distinguishes the church from any other institution. We cannot sell nor neglect our identity.

Finally, The Board of Ordained Ministry is working on a plan to place each provisional resident with a spiritual director.  It is our intent to help form spiritual habits in pastor’s lives so that these spiritual habits can follow them throughout their ministry. As clergy we still hear those loving jokes about only working one day a week, but the truth is, it has never been more demanding to be a clergy person than it is today. The church must help in the development of skills and spiritual life habits that will sustain a person in full time ministry 30 or 40 years.  

It is the Board’s belief that while we want to form effective professional skills we also want to form the person spiritually.  You may notice that those 10 signposts revolve around spiritual issues. In the middle of discontinuous change, skills will only take us so far, but imagination sparked by a healthy spiritual life is the need for many of us in local church ministry today.

Our plan is to keep provisional residents with a spiritual director during the 3 years of provisional membership.  This will require money.  We pay for what we think is important. We are discerning whether we as a conference have the will to reallocate resources so that we can help form new pastors both professionally and spiritually. We believe it is a song that the Lord wants us to sing.
As a board we are not sure what to do with those of us who have been ordained for several years.  We observe, among some of us:  burn out, spiritual emptiness, lack of passion and what some would call sloth or acedia.  As an order of the church how can we sing the Lord’s song with each other?

Jan Yandell and Hazel Partington are working and praying to form us as a community.  What are the ways God is calling ordained people to be in community so that we are spiritually formed and we don’t hang our musical instruments upon the tree limb because there is no song left to sing?

Discontinuous change. How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? I don’t have a one, two, three answer that I can place in a power point presentation. The board has carved out two days this fall to spend together in community and in prayer asking ourselves how do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?  I am convinced that we will discover our songs with God’s help within community.  For whenever two or three are gathered  together God is with us and from those conversations eye has not seen nor has ear heard what the church of Jesus Christ can do. 

We find our identity in God. We are redeemed to become redeemers. We are not saved until God makes us saviors too. In church we are loved into being lovers everywhere else. Don’t say you’re too old, too tired, too busy, too any of these things to keep moving, stretching, growing. For I say to you the same God which calls forth shoots from dead stumps, a people from dry bones, sons and daughters from the stones of our feet, babies from barren wombs and life from the tomb, this same God daily can call forth in each of us a new creation, and a new song.  Thanks be to God. Amen.