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.

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.)

Early in 2011 I went from working full-time to three-quarter time at church, thinking I could spend more time writing (ha!) while the church’s finances balanced out in a year of transition in our community. While that furlough plan was working its way through the church’s organization, several other things were playing out: I was

• Seeing and hearing about present and future financial challenges at all levels (congregation, synod, national office) of the denomination to which I have always belonged and in which I am employed, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
• Reading Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad on a friend’s recommendation and pondering my need to support myself for (I hope) at least twenty-five or thirty more years of “working life” and then retirement.
• Remembering what I wrote in my book: “One’s financial situation can be a helpful outside clue” (p.12); in other words, it’s okay to consider financial information as one piece of the puzzle without making money the only (or even the most important) clue.

 As those came together, I thought about the Church’s future (capital C, the broader Church encompassing all styles and denominations and brands) and was

• Confident that God will continue to take good care of the Church,
• Doubtful that in twenty years the Church will look exactly like it does right now, and
• Curious whether, in decades to come, I will still be able to make a full-time living as an ordained denominational minister.

So, then I started wondering about and then researching “bi-vocational” ministry, pastors who work part-time in ministry and do other work too. I discovered websites like this one. I found stories of those who are counselors or social workers along with pastoral ministry. But it was immediately clear to me what kind of work I could personally envision combining with pastoral ministry: nonprofit management.

Here’s the “pointing backward” part: This was precisely the kind of work I had planned to do right after college, work in the nonprofit sector on community development and social justice. That was back when I still thought ministry would be my “second career” instead of the first career it became. Of course, you could argue that ministry is pretty close to that kind of work in community development and social justice. But in the church we use a different theological language for that work than many people do in the nonprofit sector. As I considered what it would take to be able to work together with people outside the church in the future, it seemed like some language-learning was in order. I wanted to learn to “speak business.” That would prepare me not only for future work, but it would also provide skills and knowledge to use as a present congregational pastor as well.

From there it was a relatively short journey to finding a program that offered both a Nonprofit Management component AND the ability to do the entire course of study online. I only found one program that offered both, so that part of the discernment was easy. I realized that I wasn’t really going to know if it was going to work until I tried it, so I jumped right in (in the spirit of Luther’s “sin boldly, but believe in the grace of God more boldly still”). The best way to discern whether it was the right thing, was to do it—and keep paying attention to the clues that would continue to emerge.

Less than two months after those first “I wonder what ministry will look like in twenty years” thoughts, I had applied and been accepted to Marylhurst University’s Accelerated Online MBA Program, received financial aid, and started class in the spring term. To all the identities and vocations I continue to hold as pastor, writer, friend, etc., I’ve added this one: a Marylhurst University MBA student.

I’ve missed blogging over the past few months, but now that I’m starting to get the hang of the work + study equation, I’m hoping that will change.

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. (Here’s an example: Yesterday, as people processed into the church with their palms, they were instructed to grab a rock from one of two buckets. As people first arrived and saw the buckets of rocks, several joked, “Who are we stoning today?” I hadn’t foreseen that interpretation.)

The objects don’t always behave the way you envision, either. They look too small in a large space, or they themselves take up more space than you thought. (Mark Pierson’s recent book, The Art of Curating Worship, is very helpful on this topic, both theologically and practically.) In the case of the rocks, 120 of them weighed much more than I’d expected, and this meant a last-minute change in plan.

I had pictured people carrying the rocks with them to communion and dropping them in a bucket on the way, sort of like trading the rock for the bread. I hadn’t worked out yet exactly what this would symbolize (although it reminds me now of Jesus’ temptation, in which the Devil suggests that Jesus turn stones into bread—perhaps not the best image!). But it turned out that the full bucket of rocks would be just too heavy then to move out of the aisle after communion. So, we needed a new plan both symbolically and practically, as we needed to collect the rocks for reuse in the next worship service.

I pictured people carrying their rocks to communion in one hand and receiving bread with the other. What could that mean, then? Suddenly 1 Corinthians 11:26 came to mind: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Could these rocks which had symbolically “held” our experiences of the Passion Story, be literally “held” as we received the body and blood of Christ? After all, we always carry the Passion Story with us when we participate in the communion meal—and here we would have a concrete reminder of that connection. Very cool.

That’s just one example of the cool things I learn every time we try to engage the Word—or better, let the Word engage us—in a new way, even a simple way such as rocks. Even beyond the benefit of letting God get our attention in a deeper way, such engagement usually surprises me—such as when the surprisingly heavy rocks lead to a better connection of the Passion Story with the communion meal.

Photo by Sarah G…, licensed by Creative Commons on flickr.

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?

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. My book, which came out in late 2009, gave me a chance to talk about this with people in southern California, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis. The book has allowed me to test out a hypothesis that developed in my work with college students in vocation discernment: That multiple generations in the church can resource each other by sharing stories about their vocational journeys in work, relationships, and faith. Multi-generational small group conversations around the country confirmed that, yes, there are powerful possibilities there.

Some of those conversations helped clarify that as our congregation approached “young adult ministry,” we needed to consider young adults in very different situations: 1) Those who have grown up at the church and stayed in town for college or work; 2) Those who have grown up here and still consider this “home” but are currently away; and 3) Young adults who have grown up elsewhere and moved to the Reno area for school or work. (There are plenty of individuals who don’t fit in any of these groups, of course, but these categories were a place to start.)

For the second group, we began a Mailing Ministry in Fall 2010. Every few months, a group gets together to send a card or care package to the young adults out of town in college or the military (a mailing list of about 10-15). With the third group, “Faith on Tap” was born in the spring (similar to many such groups I encountered around the country). Meeting at a pub on the first Wednesday of each month for “an open discussion of faith and life,” the group has explored a different topic each month (with the help of resources from The Wired Word) in a relaxing environment.

Of the three groups, the first one seems to be the biggest challenge for us. “How do we minister to and with local college-age young adults?” needs to be a more intentional and wider conversation for our congregation in 2011 and beyond.

We took a huge step forward when we noticed another question emerging from others we had been asking: “How can the church be a place for young adults to ‘try out’ their gifts in a supportive and challenging environment?” During Summer 2010, we brought four young adults (all local college students) onto the church staff as Interns in Faith Formation. The process began with some excellent conversations with a great group who designed the program and interviewed potential interns; part of that team has continued to guide the program as evaluators and support the interns as mentors. Charged with making a difference in the lives of children, youth, and families, the four interns began in September and quickly became a part of Kids Community and youth groups, special events and the monthly Parent Date Night/Kids Fun Night.

Three were brand new to our congregation; two were brand new to the Lutheran tradition. By the end of the internships’ first half, it became clear that the interns needed some more structured ways to develop relationships with other adults at church and create some more intergenerational “space” in our community—ways in which everyone from children to older adults can be formed in faith together. That’s what we’re working toward these days.

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.

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. How do we connect with other people? What do we do that supports our connections with other people and helps them connect with us? What do we do (consciously or unconsciously) that makes those connections more difficult?

Looking at the HOW takes at least some of the responsibility for connecting upon ourselves, and there are advantages and disadvantages to that. When we’re having trouble fitting in or connecting, that responsibility can seem unfair or unwelcome. But when a community or relationship we belong to changes (which they inevitably do), or when we have to find new places to belong, knowing HOW to belong can offer us a lot of freedom to adapt.

Because it accepts at least part of the responsibility ourselves, learning HOW to belong is a very grown-up way to be in the world. It’s also a lot more secure than seeking a place we fit in, because each person’s uniqueness will always mean something about us doesn’t fit. So when we have confidence in our own skills of connecting and being a part of something, even if we don’t “fit” in every way or even in any way, we don’t have to be afraid of not belonging. With such skills, we can belong even when we don’t fit. Conversely, if we are only looking for WHERE we belong and a place where we can comfortably see ourselves reflected by others, we face the anxiety of finding NOWHERE.

The good news is, skills of belonging can be learned. I’m pondering them for my next book–and not only what the skills are, but also how we learn them. As a pastor, I’m wondering how my church can intentionally be a place that teaches those skills of belonging. That’s both harder and easier than trying to be a place where everyone “fits in,” but we might end up with an even more interesting and compassionate and diverse community.

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)

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? Like relationships themselves, a sense of belonging can take much time, and as with anything else that requires more time than a fast-food drive-through, our speeded-up society teaches us that we shouldn’t have to wait or work for it. So in their greeting/welcome, churches have to account for people’s expectations, which can be too low (having decided “I’ll never fit here” before even walking in) or too high (”I should immediately feel at home”). To walk into a church and feel like you have belonged there for years–that’s a pretty high expectation for a greeting, especially since so much of what happens in church is foreign to what happens elsewhere (school, home, workplace, popular culture, you name it–traditional churches are different from them all).

A sidenote here: Personally, I sort of like that about church; I rely on its counter-cultural differences. But I’m also aware of that many churches and leaders are removing the foreignness of liturgy, language, worship space, and music–making worship and church community much more like what happens outside of church–for the sake of welcome. That makes sense, and I respect that too, especially when it’s done with great care. For those of us in more traditional churches, it also highlights the different work we need to do in welcoming and helping people belong.

Anyway, my colleague pointed out to me yesterday that the way you get into a relationship isn’t the same as the ways you sustain it over time, and maybe that’s part of the issue here: Dating is different from marriage, in church community as well as in romantic relationships. But some of the issues in long-term relationships are similar, whether it’s a community of two or hundreds. For example, in a long relationship, it’s easy to lose track of the attraction that brought you together in the first place, if you don’t keep finding ways to keep dating too. (In a church that could look like a phone call to see how someone is doing, a note of appreciation, or an event that one can simply enjoy without having to be in the kitchen all the time.)

But it’s also easy to forget the day-to-day work that sustains the relationship. That’s risky in a church, if people aren’t supported to step up and do the work required by ministry and community. Communities, like households, suffer when not enough people are willing to take out the garbage and do the dishes and take care of the finances–in church terms, show up and participate regularly, contribute time and money, take part in teams or committees.

When you do those things, you know you belong to the relationship. We need to be honest about what it takes to belong and to sustain community, and that’s one thing I hoped to express in my sermon last Sunday. But then, does that honesty become part of our welcome? Or greeting? Or does the work of sustaining community simply remain a potential in the beginning stages, intuited but not acted on until some kind of commitment is made to the relationship?

Or, as in some romantic relationships, does the commitment follow the realization that you’re already doing the work? You’re helping to sustain the community…therefore, it must be that you belong to it.

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”?As I was talking with high schoolers about this text, one of them reminded the group that “because it’s required” isn’t the only reason to do something. A teacher might suggest a reading, for example, that would enrich one’s learning or help connect with someone else in the class. It might not be required for the grade, but that doesn’t mean it has no other consequences.

This might be the key to a more nuanced language of requirement in faith too: asking ourselves and the Bible, “Required FOR WHAT?” Does the Lord require these things of us to be loved, or saved, or worthwhile? Not at all. But there are many things required–or if not “required,” then at least very helpful–for spiritual life, a life with Christ, life in Christian community, and a life that’s good for others as well as ourselves. If we fail to talk about those “requirements,” then we fail the people who have come to church looking for what they can do to have such a life.

For years now I’ve relied on a passage from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk to help me think about this:

God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity, that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life God which demands these things. Experience has taught the race that if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means but the condition in which the means operates….They work on you, not on him.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it (1982, Harper & Row, p.31).

“Habits of life” are important–such as doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God. You might even say they’re “required”–if you want to experience a life with God. They’re not required to be saved, or loved, or worthwhile. Those are things we need do nothing to earn. That’s what grace means, and we can cling to that and rely on it. At the same time, our actions have consequences for life in community, our self-esteem, and our sense of belonging. If those three things aren’t panning out the way we’d hoped, we might be able to do some things that make a difference. Such as…Doing justice. Loving kindness. Seeing what “walking humbly with God” might mean for our own lives. Getting together regularly with others who are trying to do the same, to join in worship and study and service.

Maybe it’s not so much that I’m preaching something “besides” grace, but rather something beside grace. They do belong together–what God does and what we do. Preaching grace simply ensures that we don’t get the order mixed up and start thinking, arrogantly, that what we do elicits some kind of response from God.

But “what we do” still belongs there, as our response to what God does. God invites us, after all, to participate in our own lives and in God’s transformative work in the world–whether we deserve that invitation or not, whether we think we have anything to offer or not, whether we respond to it or not. Perhaps that invitation, given over and over, is one of God’s greatest, most grace-filled gifts.

(Photo by Jared Tarbell, flickr/creative commons)