“Who needs me to do it?”

October 29, 2011 · Uncategorized · (No comments)

When I first started working with college students on vocation discernment, we were guided by Three Key Questions: What gives me joy? Am I good at it? Who needs me to do it? In my work and ministry since then, I have often talked more about joys and gifts than about needs. (There are some reasons for that, but those aren’t the point here.)

Yesterday, I had the honor of presenting the address at the Founders’ Day Convocation at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. In addition to being just a really great day in many ways, the address turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to reflect more on “what the world needs” from individuals and institutions discerning their vocation for the sake of others–the ones Martin Luther called “neighbors.”

Our text was Matthew 5:13-16: You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. You can read the address here.

The treasure hunt never ends

June 20, 2011 · Discernment, Vocation, ministry · 104 comments

This has been my longest blog-silence since I started writing several years ago, but I’ll claim this reason: I’m a grad student once again, this time studying for a Masters degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Nonprofit Management. It’s not where I thought I’d be at this point in my vocational journey, but after the first two classes, it still seems like a good idea, so I’ll keep forging ahead.

This isn’t the first time my own vocational treasure hunt has taken an unexpected turn. And it’s not the first time the treasure hunt pointed backward at the same time it led forward. Here’s the story, at least the part of it I can see. (The treasure hunt is like an iceberg in that way: One only sees a small part of the story compared to what’s going on under the surface.) Continue reading →

How we ‘rocked’ Palm Sunday

April 18, 2011 · Bible, Worship, ministry, spiritual life · 57 comments

3415677543_3a004d22f0_oIn worship at my congregation we try to engage all of the senses, but that’s not easy. Hearing is the easiest one to engage in traditional Lutheran worship; that’s what we tend to do best. But when we get out of that comfort zone–how do I put this?–cool things happen. Especially when the original worship plan doesn’t work.

Yesterday, on Palm Sunday, we decided to engage both eyes and hands in the experience of the Passion Story—Jesus’ suffering and death as told in Matthew 26:14-27:66. It’s a long story and difficult to just listen to all at once, but it’s central to Christian faith and central to this Holy Week leading up to Easter. Our congregation has experienced various and powerful dramas in past years as well as choral readings. But this year I wondered if our imaginations could be freed up to enter the story, and let it enter us, by a different use of the senses:

  • Hearing the story read,
  • Seeing thematic images and words on the screen (a palm branch, a garden, a rocky path), and
  • Holding a large rock in our hands as a concrete focus for our imagination.

Instead of trying to digest the story all at once, we broke it up with brief interludes from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, played live. (Many people in our congregation had recently experienced the musical when it was produced in town.) Those interludes became times to imagine the place our own rock might have in the story: underneath Jesus as he threw himself on the ground to pray at Gethsemane, for example. (You can read the script of readings and reflections here.)

Lutherans say we worship in “Word and Sacrament”—“Word” meaning both the Word of Scripture and the Word who is Christ—but people aren’t all wired to receive “words” in the same way. Some of us are much more visual than auditory, and some of us learn with our hands. (Touch regularly happens in worship through sharing the peace—handshakes or hugs—and receiving communion, which engages smell and taste too.)

But all of that is background to what I really wanted to say today, which is what I learn from such multi-sensory worship experiments. Every time you bring objects into worship, you open up Pandora’s box of what the objects will actually turn out to mean to people. In the context of corporate worship, the objects don’t always mean what you had envisioned, and people don’t always interpret your instructions the way you had envisioned, either.  Continue reading →

Question-ing ministry, part 2

March 21, 2011 · Bible, Community, ministry · 60 comments

Also last year, we asked some questions about how people come to belong (to this congregation, in the Christian Church, with the Lutheran tradition, etc.) We began a brand new ministry called “Journey with Christ” (in the tradition of the catechumenate, preparing adults for baptism or affirmation of baptism), and we were also asking parallel questions in existing ministries. How do people come to belong to the Biblical story, and know/feel that it belongs to them? And, How do young people specifically—kids and teens—come to belong?

The second question was addressed in a new confirmation curriculum called re:form. Rather than being organized by what teachers want young people to know about faith and tradition, it begins with (appropriately!) questions: what young people themselves might actually want to know. Video segments that go with each session have titles such as, “Why do I have to follow Jesus, can’t I just say I believe in him?” and “Does God still create stuff today?”

Beginning with questions has made a remarkable difference in our Wednesday night confirmation gatherings. The quality of engagement and real-life discussion rivals any adult education I’ve ever been a part of. And, the challenge for us as confirmation leaders now is one that the whole church faces in every area of ministry: if we start with the questions people actually have, do we ever get around to talking about the Bible and Lutheran Christian tradition? For example, I’m used to teaching the Bible and Luther’s Small Catechism in confirmation—now, can I still do that (i.e. “teach them what we want them to know”) AND address their actual questions?

So far, I’m hopeful that we can. Which is good, because if I (and we) can’t identify the connection between tradition, Bible, and the real lives of people of all ages, then the church really does have a problem. As another example, in preaching I’m used to starting with Scripture and then applying it to life—but what if people’s actual questions don’t start with Scripture, but somewhere else? The dilemma reminds me of my favorite quote from German theologian Dorothee Solle: “I am often afraid that theology is answering questions that people are not asking.”

Could this be why it’s so important to pay attention to the questions, even more so than the answers? How would ministry change if we not only asked good questions, but also listened better to the questions that surround us in our various communities, families, nation, and world—among people of all ages? And wondered together what the Bible and Lutheran Christian tradition might contribute to the conversation, through individuals and through the ministries of a congregation?

Question-ing ministry, part 1

March 16, 2011 · Community, Vocation, ministry, spiritual life · 138 comments

I’m seeing lately how much ministry and church life are characterized by the questions we are asking, perhaps even more than by the ways we are answering them. Each year about this time I have to write an Annual Report as a church staff member. This time, rather than just listing “what we did,” I’ve been pondering the questions that emerged in and through the ministries and relationships I’m involved in. Not surprisingly, there’s lots of overlap with the things I blog about here—young adult spiritual journeys, vocation discernment, belonging—so I’ll post the report, in two parts.

Two related “umbrella” questions span the whole year: How can a church like ours be a resource for young adults (ages 18-30) on their life journeys and spiritual travels? And, perhaps even more importantly, How can the church learn from and adapt to the resources and creativity that young adults offer? This is not the same as asking, “How do we ‘hold onto’ teens and young adults?” It’s not asking, “How will the Church survive if the current trends of declining membership and attendance among young people continue?” Rather, it’s a question about what we value and communicate as a congregation, who finds it possible to belong here, and how open we are to new generations’ own questions and answers.

In 2010 I had the privilege of traveling to several colleges, congregations, and young adult ministries, where I had this conversation with many others who are asking similar questions. Continue reading →

Welcome to the humus race

March 10, 2011 · Uncategorized · 108 comments

255424140_e06b54d002_m“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That’s what many Christians heard yesterday on Ash Wednesday as their foreheads were marked with ash in the sign of the cross. Ever since I was very young, I have found this ritual powerfully encouraging. Yes, I know that ashes are a reminder of our mortality and a traditional sign of penitence, regret, and mourning. So…encouraging? Yes, and last night I think I may have gotten it: way back when Pastor Susan said to me, “Remember that you are dust,” what I heard was, “You belong here.”

I was primed for “getting it” by our church’s women’s retreat last weekend, where the topic was “Belonging to God, Others, and Ourselves.” On the retreat, we explored how often our weakness and brokenness—more than our strengths–enable us to connect with others. We looked at films such as Martian Child and How to Train Your Dragon, seeing how the people who are misfits themselves are enabled to reach out to other misfits. The left-out ones are the ones who let others in.

At worship on Ash Wednesday, anyone and everyone can get ashed with the cross. We all get marked in the same way, just as we are all marked by the world’s brokenness and suffering. When it comes to perfection or wholeness, none of us fit in.

The ways we are broken vary in their particulars, but from now until Easter (and beyond!), Christians proclaim that the way we are healed is the same: through God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ, accomplished once and for all on the cross–and still being done, over and over, through the work of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus’ living, healing, feeding, forgiving, dying, and rising from the dead, Christians say that he “saves” (a word that also means “makes whole”). In his saving, he gathers a community in which all the misfits—all us humans made from dusty earth, all of us who are “divinely-inspired dirt”—belong.

Where we belong, Sorting Hat-style

February 21, 2011 · Uncategorized · (No comments)

sorting hatThe annual women’s retreat is coming up at my church, and the theme this year is “Connections: Belonging to God, Others, and Ourselves.” So I have “belonging” on my mind, and maybe that’s why I recently noticed the “sorting hat” in the Harry Potter stories by J. K. Rowling in a new way: It’s such an attractive idea, to have something that just tells each person where they belong.

Here’s how the sorting hat works: Each new school year, when Harry and his friends arrive at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they witness the first-year students being assigned to one of the four “houses” that make up the school. These assignments are magically made by an ancient, talking (and singing) hat who says:

There’s nothing hidden in your head
The Sorting Hat can’t see,
So try me on and I will tell you
Where you ought to be.

Each new student puts on the hat in turn, and based on what the hat discerns in the student, it declares the house to which the student belongs.

A “sorting-hat” idea of belonging tempts us to seek WHERE we belong. If something or someone else could just tell us, so much the better. But fixating on WHERE we belong takes our focus off HOW we belong. Continue reading →

Becoming a better lover

February 10, 2011 · Discernment, Vocation, spiritual life · 106 comments

3333536996_b2b0742476_mI spent last weekend on the California coast with a group of college students on a retreat called “Seeking Your Calling, Finding Yourself.” I’ve been leading such retreats for more than seven years now, and while every group is different, it’s interesting to see how certain themes keep surfacing and resurfacing in various retreats. With the group last weekend, I spent a lot of time pondering the possibility of “wrong” choices. Can a choice be “wrong” if you learn something important from it or if something good comes out of it? If not, can you really call anything a “wrong choice”? And if there is no such thing as a wrong choice, why do we bother to seek our calling and practice discernment at all?

I wrote about this in Chapter 4 of my book, but it’s been a while since I talked about it with people. Here’s where the conversation ended up over the weekend: Perhaps there are no “right” or “wrong” choices, only ones which are “more” or “less” loving–toward others and ourselves. Perhaps that is the very best reason to engage in discernment and pay attention to our own clues on the treasure hunts of our lives: so that we can keep practicing love, both giving it and receiving it. We never become perfect at this (something to keep pondering as I prepare a sermon on Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect…”), but we can become more “practiced” and more open-hearted. God loves us no matter what kind of choices we make, but becoming able to give and receive more love makes a big difference in our life, relationships, and work.

As we practice discernment, we gain trust in God, ourselves, and the journey itself–which helps us to love better, as fear loses its grip on us. And as we gain freedom from self-centered anxiety, we become more free for love. We “love” in all kinds of ways–this isn’t just true of romantic love or love shown to family, friends, and strangers. It’s also about the love we practice in our work, learning, faith and worship, and the ways we inhabit our communities and planet.

So with the weekend’s retreat in mind, with Valentine’s Day approaching, and with today being the ninth anniversary of my ordination to pastoral ministry, I’m recalling this hope: “Hope that with the skills we learn on our search for treasure, we will one day love God, the world, and ourselves as passionately as we are loved” (The Treasure Hunt of Your Life, p.158). May it be so.

(Photo by gigaman, flickr/creativecommons)

Hello! You’re welcome to belong

February 2, 2011 · Community, Discernment, ministry, spiritual life · 54 comments

Many things related to “welcome” are crossing my path these days. With last Sunday celebrated as “Welcome Sunday” by many in the Reconciling in Christ community and this recent thought-provoking blog post by Pastor Keith Anderson, I have been pondering what it takes for someone to feel “welcome”–in particular, welcome in a church community or at a worship service.

Much of the church talk about welcome and hospitality that I’ve seen over the years focuses on first impressions–what happens the first time someone comes to worship, for example, and how follow-up happens from there. First impressions are crucial, I agree, but that seems more like “greeting”–and “greeting” may or may not deepen into “welcome,” and “welcome” may or may not become “belonging.”

Perhaps these are false distinctions. Perhaps they happen simultaneously, or perhaps they happen in a different order for some people. Perhaps neither greeting nor welcome works very well if there’s no potential for a deeper belonging down the road. In fact, perhaps it’s the potential for belonging that defines a good greeting or welcome.

But then how does belonging happen, and more to the point, how quickly does it happen? Continue reading →

Grace & requirement, Micah & Annie Dillard

January 25, 2011 · Uncategorized · 1 comment

3152875826_032e1ff6e4_mOne of the reasons I’m grateful to belong with Martin Luther’s spiritual heirs is the inheritance of his preaching about grace. I rely on his unshaking focus on what God has done in Jesus and does through the Holy Spirit, in my life as well as in my preaching. So, like others of his 21st-century heirs, I get a little antsy when called to address something besides grace.

Most of the time, I prefer preaching about grace and “what God does” as a counter-balance to a very human sense that it is all about us and “what we do.” But we can get off-balance in the church, too, if all we talk about is what God does, and say or imply that we don’t have to do anything. Serving others, responding to Jesus’ call, following God’s commands–sure, those are nice ideas if you have the time, but in the life of faith they’re more like extra credit–which, as our school experiences tell us, the majority of people don’t do. We need a more subtle and nuanced language for “have to,” and it’s a language that this Sunday’s reading from Micah (6:1-8) invites us to consider.

Micah asks a key question which makes us grace-people squirm: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Wait a minute–doesn’t grace mean there are no requirements? Can we blow this off as mere extra credit, or is there something to these “requirements”? Continue reading →

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