Episcopal Abundance: the great mystery of poverty

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor"~Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay

Under the leadership of Presiding Bishop John Allin in the late 1970’s until 1985, a mission funding process called Venture in Mission was developed and fully realized in hundreds of local, national and international projects for a monetary total of $175 million. It was the largest single capital funds project in North American Church history and stands as such, as far as I know, to this day. Ward, Dreshman and Reinhart, the fund raising consultants, who managed the VIM, have stated that only one other effort was ever bigger that they had handled, the Red Cross. The genius of VIM was its basis in grassroots mission definition and project development. Its theological vision roots probably go back a hundred years but was directly related to the Anglican Communion vision, document and process called Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI) of 1963. MRI was a practical and theological approach to mission stating that all God’s children have gifts to give to share and that our mission was to enable this abundance. The practical effect was creating autonomy for national Anglican churches all over the world and it final fruition in VIM. The synergy created by MRI and VIM is still sustained and carries on in a variety of ways for instance locally in Kansas and Missouri organizations that continue to support volunteer efforts to the serve and support those is need.

MRI pointed out what I call the mystery of poverty:  the paradox that much poverty is a false image of empty desire born of fear that calls us all to false needs, desires that never can be filled which can only be remediated by intentional, decisive acts of generosity. When we share with others that sharing synergistically not only returns and reaps greater giving but increases the material and financial resources available. MRI and VIM proved the point many times over in the lives of literally millions of acts and dollars given and shared in grateful giving.

In many ways such MRI/VIM generated abundance and generosity continues all over our local, national and global Anglican mission. However, little to no intentional consciousness of this dynamic seems to be known by many of our own clergy and lay people who have entered the life of the Church in the last thirty years.  Further if known by title, MRI and VIM are not known in practice. So as a result, our understanding of generosity is a thin and vapid reactive sense of “it is nice to help others.” Or in the case of our governance structures in many parishes, dioceses and national body, the actual opposite, the false desire for more, that perverse sense of poverty is once again virally and infectiously active in decision making.

We wish for more money, more people, more financing our episcopal structures, more control to keep what we see falling apart. We must keep every bishop and diocese funded, keep our “headquarters” at 815 2nd Ave. in NYC, must litigate to keep our properties from breakaway Anglicans bodies. This is all poor talk. It is unworthy of our Anglican tradition. The tools of regeneration, of vitality, of abundance and generosity are available for us Episcopal sinners who wish to repent and find joy in mission once again. . .

"Lost in the Fities Tonight"

The title of this blog is also the title of a nostalgic popular song about the 1950s.  For those of us who
came of age in this decade, it takes us back in time to sock hops, white buck shoes, big bands and a girlfriend who wore pleated skirts and cashmere sweaters.  It also takes us back in time to the church of this decade, when Christian churches were either full or almost full on Sunday mornings.  World War II veterans, many having gone to college on the GI Bill, married their sweethearts, got a decent job, started a family and joined and attended a church.  This was the Eisenhower era of "peace and prosperity" despite his warnings about the military-industrial complex.  Sermons seemed to be either about the eschatalogical fulfillment of the Kingdom of God now or a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Episcopal Church was no exception.  Our churches were full too.  We were mainly a church of the upper middle class or the wealthy.  Many of the community leaders, industrialists, leading business people in town, politicians and professionals were members of The Episcopal Church.  Many of our clergy came from these same groups and were sophisticated and well-connected.  We also had our share of middle class and poor folks too, but they were not the majority.

When I was ordained in 1961, there was still a marvelous carryover from the fifties and the future of TEC looked good.  We had one Holy Communion service and our members could be certain that anywhere they worshipped, the liturgy would always be the same.  Consistency, uniformity and Via Media were the hallmarks of our faith.  The vast majority of our clergy were seminary trained and there was even a shortage of priests.  We knew the service by heart and we were respected members of the community.  As Archie Bunker so plaintively sang, "those were the days."

Things began to fall apart in the mid to late sixties.  The church moved from emphasizing a personal relationship with God through the Sacramental life to a horizontal stress on positive and equitable human relationships.  The church did some great things under this umbrella.  We worked diligently for civil rights of women and minorities, we protested the Viet Nam War, we introduced new worship services and we became purveyors of positive human relationships.  All of these things were good to do, but we went over the edge as they became the official guiding policy of the national church and many dioceses.

Demographics aside, these were the principle internal changes that fostered a climate of decline for TEC.  Here I am not judging or second guessing the church of the sixties.  After all, I was active in and supported all those ministries.  But I am merely stating the obvious.  The less we stressed our relationship to the Holy Trinity through the Sacraments, teaching and pastoral ministries of the church, the more we declined.  However, I am not suggesting that we return to the church of the fifties.  We can never go back.  But I do have an idea.  If we are going to "reinvent" the church for the 21st century, perhaps we could look back to that more docile time and recapture some core principles upon which to build our future church.  Are you ready?  Here we go.

1.  While we will probably never have one liturgy again, we can present carefully crafted worship services, minimizing informality and refraining from extraneous comment.  Emphasize our relationship to God through prayer, the Sacraments, and personal relationships.
2.  Preach lectionary based expository sermons that elicit of response of faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Please minimize personal stories.
3.  Instead of planning "seeker friendly services," seek to draw people into the very heart of God through excellent liturgy, utilizing good music and the arts.  Believe me, small churches can do this too.
4.  Tell your Bishop to encourage the House of Bishops and General Convention to drastically reduce Executive Council, make a Diocesan Bishop the Presiding Bishop and structure the national church in a way that stresses mission as the conversion of souls.
5.  Appreciate our historic efforts to promote social justice but eliminate them as Executive Council Mission Statements.
6.  Clergy, get out of your offices and do personal evangelism.  Target your prospects and show people the way to God and how to have meaning in their lives through a personal relationship with Jesus.  This may sound crass, but there is no shame in evangelizing the wealthy and upper middle class as well as the middle class and the poor.
7.  Promote the unity of TEC in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

In no way are these suggestions meant to be taken as a panacea for TEC.  None of my suggestions will in and of themselves reinvigorate and increase membership.  But we do need a baseline and anchor for mission.  Perhaps these and other "old" ideas can guide us as we try to practice obedience to the Lord, salvage what is left of TEC, and move us forward into the rest of this century.

The Bishop Speaks Talk of the Kingdom

The Bishop Speaks Talk of the Kingdom

It was at the point of the Nicene Creed that began “We believe in One God . . .” when the stranger whispered to me saying, “I don’t like this new form of the Creed.” He preferred the one that began with “I believe in One God.” I just smiled at him and nodded my head signifying nothing other than that I had heard him and I think that was all he wanted anyway. I was just a visitor in his church.

It did send me thinking back to when I was serving a congregation that used the I believe form of the Creed. It was a precious thing to a number of the people apparently and so when I began to raise questions about that usage, I encountered resistance.

The response about the Creed was usually offered in anger and went something like: “I don’t know what you believe. I can only speak for myself.” Given this perspective, that form of the Creed made perfect sense. That was the statement of the church for these persons.

So, I began to do a little different kind of teaching. I began to talk about the Creed. The teaching was really quite compelling for a completely unexpected reason. It did not have much to do with the whole notion of Creed. It did not have anything to do with what I believe or what anyone else believed. The thing that was actually compelling was the information that the “We believe” form of the Nicene Creed is the more ancient form. The “I believe” form is a later Latin or Western version.

Once these people understood that I was calling them back to the ancient way, it was all fine. They said, “Well, of course, we would want to do that.” So, they began to use this old form of the Creed with great joy and it was the first step on the journey to an experience of corporate worship.

The thing we need to remember is that doctrine is not delivered by God. We think that God gave us doctrine sometimes and often we behave as if that were the case. Doctrine is not delivered by God (at least not directly). Doctrine is an expression of our experience of God. That is us. That is people. Doctrine is us talking. It is the action of the great councils of the church trying to hammer out the corporate experience of God.

Some of these councils lasted hundreds of years. Some people want to get everything settled, but it is just not going happen that way. This takes a long time because, among other things, people do have different experiences of God. We need not be confused about that. This is why doctrine can change. God does not change, but our experience of God changes all of the time. It is always based on what we bring to the table, what is going on in our lives, and what is going on in the world. This is why doctrine changes.

I believe that leaders in the church need to confront the kind of fear that leads people to worry about the church somehow being preserved. People are worried about the church falling apart. They are afraid that something precious is going to be lost in the shuffle.

This is what I want you to know. Our task is not to save the church. Our task is to be the church. We are the church by being of use to God. That is our purpose and our calling.

The real issue is not be the form of the Creed we use, but rather what we actually believe. It is not as if we hold all of our beliefs in common. It has always been a concern as to how we manage the events of the life of the church. We do this as if it were the ultimate reality. We sometimes forget the nature of our calling.

Jesus did not come to found the Church. Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand. This is the message we must not lose. The Kingdom of God is at hand, but there are a few problems with it.

One of the nasty things about the Kingdom of God is that it is filled with all kinds of people that you and I might not choose to have there. That is why it is the Kingdom of God and not your kingdom. Your kingdom (and mine I might add) would be much smaller.

So, there you have it. The word of hope. Be of good cheer and know that when you experience the joy of the Christian life that befalls us on the occasions when we actually behave as if we believe, then the Kingdom of God has come near you.

A Time to Reconsider Bultmann's Protestant Existentialism

 

Bultmann died in July 1976, and he was the last of the theological giants of the Kaiser’s Germany. His major teaching position was as professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg from 1921 to 1951. Bultmann, along with Karl Barth, was a major pillar of the neo- orthodox movement in European Protestant in theology after World War 1. Even though Bultmann and Barth had major hermeneutical and theological differences, they agreed on the rejection of the popular classical liberalism of the German theological establishment.

Classical liberal theologians, inspired by Hegelian idealism, had reduced the message of the Christian gospel to a series of moral lessons, with Jesus as the great teacher and exemplar of ethical behavior. As a key figure of the existential neo-orthodox movement Bultmann sought to restore the direct intention of the scriptures themselves and read them as the proclamation of what the real God, acknowledged in all his transcendent sovereignty, had done through Jesus Christ for real and therefore for sinful and undeserving man. The Gospel message is not a series of ethical principles but the announcement of an extraordinary, redeeming event. Man who could not make his way to God on his own is told that God has come to him. The God who is beyond history has acted in history. Through the Christ he has made himself and a saving relationship with him possible for all men. Thus the New Testament is not a set of ethical stories whose morals one might well learn from conscience, though in the Gospels they have an appealing Semitic drama and color. The New Testament is the unexpected good news of God’s work for man. This proclamation, this announcement, this declaration, this promise, this demand is called the kerygma in the New Testament Greek, and it was the neo-orthodoxy concern for the kerygma that became central to New Testament research.

 

It is in Jesus Christ and Mythology, a small volume of his lectures delivered at Yale Divinity School, 1962, that we get to clearly meet Bultmann, the devout evangelical Lutheran, leading scripture scholar of his day, pastor preacher and significant Protestant existentialist. “We have seen that the task of de-mythologizing received its first impulse from the conflict between the mythological views of the world contained in the Bible and the modern views of the world which are influenced by scientific thinking, and it has become evident that faith itself demands to be freed from any world view produced by man’s thought, whether mythological or scientific. For all human world-views objectivize the world and ignore or eliminate the significance of personal encounters in our personal existence. This conflict shows that in our age faith has not yet become aware of the identity of its ground and object; that it is has not yet genuinely understood the transcendence and hiddenness of God as acting.”

Primarily, I am suggesting a reconsideration of Bultmann’s attack on classic liberalism. James Kay, in his work Christus Praesens, A Reconsideration of Rudolf Bultmann’s Christology, addresses the need to return to the Protestant existential biblical critique of contemporary biblical liberalism. “Bultmann, therefore, regards modern reconstructions of the “historical Jesus” which typically speak of his ‘natural origin,’ his ‘messianic consciousness’ ‘his inner life,’ ‘his heroism’ and his ‘faith’ to be futile exercises in ‘Christ after the flesh.’ In light of Jesus destiny as the turning point of the ages, to portray his personality is to betray his eschatological significance. Such portrayals are now anachronistic for Christian faith…the word proclamation is no mere report about historical incidents or teaching…which could simply be regarded as true

 

without any transformation of the hearer’s own existence. For the word kerygma, personal address, demand, and promise; it is the very act of divine grace.” (Kay, James F., 1994, P. 44-45)

            The classical old liberalism of Herrmann and Albrecht Ritschl has reappeared in Dorothee Solle’s, Political Christ, Jurgen Moltmann’s Eschatology of Glory, Marcus Borg popular return to  an ethics grounded on the evolution of the Jesus personality doctrine. Bultmann, on the other hand, gives the local community grounded on the kerygma a heft that no other theology in this century provides; it is a profound understanding of the pastoral ministry and the preaching of the word as the primary locus of Christ’s presence in the world. Christ is our contemporary, addressing us with the demand and a promise of grace. Christ presides over our time, and every time, from his place in the pulpit. (Kay, James, F., 1999, P.176)

            Finally, I suggest the reading of James Wellman’s book Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures; it is a well-done piece of research on the failure of the new liberal theology. Also, in the Barna Study of Religious Change since 1991 to 2011, people are looking for churches where they feel a personal relationship with Jesus that is highly applicable to their daily life, i.e. their existential biblical quest.

 

                                               

                                               

 

 

 

 

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10 Things You Should Know About Fasting (Ash Wednesday/Lent 2013)

1.         Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life. These moments maybe found in personal grief, distress, repentance or petition.  These grievous sacred moments also maybe communal and kept through established liturgical days or seasons.             

2.         Fasting means to deny oneself of food and possibly water for a time in response to a sacred moment.  The length of the fast maybe brief such as a sunrise to sunset, or a twenty-four hour period; Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fasted forty days. 

3.         Fasting is not abstinence, which is a choice not to eat or drink specific items even though one is still eating and drinking other items. 

4.         Fasting is not a diet or a health regimen.  Nevertheless, fasting must be done intelligently and in-line with sound medical principles. Many groups of persons should not fast. 

5.         Fasting is found in all the great world religions and philosophies, especially in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  The Bible mentions fasting over 70 times. 

6.         Fasting is not a manipulative tool that guarantees results; it is not a behavior we invoke to get something we want.  ‘God, I fasted; you owe me.’  Fasting is about food!  Be aware that some may attempt to misuse fasting as a form of political protest, such as a carbon fast.  Christians are admonished to fast secretly rather than seeking public notice; therefore fasting as a fund raiser, even for a good cause, is suspect. 

7.         Fasting can liberate us at the deepest level; the tendency is to think that God will love us if we change, but God loves us so that we can change. 

8.         Fasting is an ancient spiritual discipline that calls us to recognize the sacredness of the body. It is not acceptable to believe the body is a monster of desires that needs to be tamed, or a celebrity that needs to be glorified, or a cornucopia which needs to be filled, or a wallflower to be ignored.    

9.         Fasting on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and during the Season of Lent is a voluntary practice of committed Christians; additionally many persons of faith fast on the other Fridays of the year and prior to receiving Communion.    

10.       Fasting does not have to accompany prayer but prayer must always accompany fasting.       

 

Rector@garygilbertson.org

The Episcopal Patchwork

In a group that has met for years in Kansas City, the varied reasons why the Episcopal Church has become radically different have been discussed over hundreds of occasions. Many of those reasons have been topics of our blog, and perhaps more reasons will be presented. I think each reason has had some validity and usually have had substantive evidence in favor of it. Each reason has also had some tie on to others so that a fabric of explanation seems to weave together. This fabric is what I am most interested in as I see it as a matrix evolving and connecting the whole.

I think a major change in the matrix  began at the ordination of eleven women in Philadelphia on July 29, 1974.  One of the ordaining bishops was Robert DeWitt who had only recently retired from the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Lyman Ogilby was then Bishop of Pennsylvania and who did not participate in the unapproved ordinations at Church of the Advocate in north Philadelphia where Paul Washington, as Rector, allowed them without permission in his church. The justifications for the ordinations had to do with the moral and social  righteousness of the actions by bishops who decided to act individually on their own  opinions of  episcopal authority.  This radical breach of the fabric of tradition and canon law by the bishops was unique insofar as it  had to do with episcopal authority over presbyterate ordination in the Episcopal Church, a central and critical role canonically allowed by a diocesan bishop through the jurisdictional process that  depended on the final and single authority of the bishop to actually ordain someone.

At the time, I lived just a few miles away from the ordination and could have gone as many of my friends did. I did not because of my formal and very personal relationship to Lyman Ogilby as my bishop and very dear friend. While Lyman’s Connecticut Yankee upbringing gave him quite a bit of  lip stiffening, I knew him well enough to know that his friend, Bob Dewitt, and the other participating bishops hurt him deeply as did Paul Washington’s violation by allowing the event in his church. However, Lyman was an old school and loyal graduate of the Episcopal Theological School (EDS) who firmly believed in social justice and therefore sucked up his hurt with little complaint about his violated jurisdiction and authority to manage it.  

Of course, in 1976, the ordinations were regularized.  Soon the new righteousness over female ordination was focused on gaining approval in General Convention to breach noncompliant  jurisdictions. Focus was  on and against dioceses that would not ordain women. By 1997, a committee was formed to go into and check on the status of women in offending dioceses. The three "noncompliant" dioceses were San Joaquin, Quincy, and Fort Worth.  Approved search parties to check on  the status of local women were launched into them to admonish and  gain correction from  the local area native leaders from their aberrant practices.

By the 1980’s with the ordination of women being enculturated and a new Book of Common Prayer becoming familiar everywhere, a new twist in the fabric was occuring. The conservative forces realized liberals had revealed that jurisdictional and traditional lines of all sorts were really no longer solid nor apparently of paramount importance.  As taught to them by the liberals’ actions, dioceses and parishes began to see themselves as more autonomous from bishops with whom they did not agree and General Convention and House of Bishops’ decisions they found offensive. New affiliations were sought across all sorts of lines and the oceans into various dioceses that  are Anglican but certainly not in the Episcopal Church.

By the late 1990’s, an old fabric was fully and finally rendered torn and worn out, one of somber respect for parochial and diocesan jurisdictions and diocesan episcopal authority. A new fabric was designing itself, and an odd matrix of grand variegated associations and authorities became a weaving. The Episcopal Church  was being discarded in its once coherent matrix  for a more elusive pursuit of very particular and atomized ecclesiastical options and autonomy, a patchwork of sorts. More of the story is unfolding. . . .

Incarnational Preaching

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "Christianity conceals within itself a germ hostile to the church."  Wow!  The truth of the gospel authentically proclaimed is actually opposed to the institutional church is it now stands, according to Bonhoeffer.  I believe that this "germ" likewise effects preaching when preachers are not rooted and grounded in the Incarnation.  Here is what Bonhoeffer has to say about this.  "First of all, a sermon can never grasp the center, but can only itself be grasped by it, by Christ.  And then Christ becomes flesh" in the preacher.  A true proclamation of the good news of the Kingdom of God comes about when the preacher senses Jesus in his or her flesh when preparing and delivering the Word of God.  The incarnate Lord in the preacher results in carefully crafted words that reflect the power of Jesus in Creation, Redemption and in the world.

Whether or not we are always aware of it, even after seminary, we are often view reality in terms of a bi-polar division between the "spirit" and the "flesh."  When we think or pray to God, we visualize God above us in heaven, apart and distinct from that which we empirically know, the world that we observe.  We don't consciously think this way, it just happens.  Since few of us believe in a hell below anymore, we are pretty much stuck with a two storied universe, unless you believe in an intermediate state.

When preaching is caught up in the dichotomy of "spirit" and "flesh/matter/earth", the preacher is trapped in a yo yo spin that reaches up into the "spirit" world for inspiration and then swings down into the real time activity of the sermon.  In sermon preparation, we reach up for the biblical narrative, then pull the words down into the world of real preaching without necessarily making the incarnational connection between the two.  Fundamentalists are really good at this.  They present the bible as the ideal, literal and absolute revelation of God.  This preacher yanks biblical phrases from above, out of context, and throws them verbally at the listener, often presenting an angry God who brings down wrath on something or somebody.  Homosexuality is their favorite enemy in our time.

To make the exegesis into an incarnational unity, the preacher needs to abdicate the two storied universe by understanding that Christ is in the preacher in creation, life experiences and the sacramental life of the church.  Christ embedded in the preacher wipes out the duality of homiletical Platonism, and takes on the character of an Aristotelian, or incarnate preaching style that is complete with Grace, power, relevance and earthiness.

This is not to negate a Pauline view of salvation that he presented in Romans.  Indeed Christ did die for the ungodly and we are justified by Grace through faith.  But the debt theory of the Atonement, which started with Anselm a thousand years after Paul, is not the beginning and end of the proclammation of Jesus Christ.  Some evangelicals have grabbed ahold of this and tried to make it the only message of salvation.  Incarnationalists respectfully disagree.  We view salvation like the writer of the fourth gospel; salvation begins in creation and culmnates in the process of the incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, the gift of the spirit in the life of the church.  The incarnational preacher is thus grounded in process; an evolutionary system of salvation that embraces the created universe as well as the life and ministry of Jesus.  This is why Anglicans see grace in great art, music and science.

Anglican/Episcopal preachers who are well educated, intelligent, thoughtful and mature, understand that preaching biblical literalism is wrong.  Whatever the hermeneutic, our best preaching is evident when we link the incarnate Christ to the cosmos, the earth, the political and economic world, its people and the church.  From the spiritual point of view, it means that the preacher believes that the Word made flesh came in creation, in the salvation work of Jesus, culminating in the resurrection and the Holy Spirit in the life of the church and the world.  The preacher knows and proclaims that the embedded Word of God continues in the ongoing revelation of God not only in the bible, but throughout history and in these times.

The Bishop Speaks of A Blessing Indeed

The Bishop Speaks of A Blessing Indeed

They called it the “Dog and Pony Show” in the olden days. Those would be my days. It was the time when the final candidates, the persons in consideration for selection for the office of bishop, would gather and go around the diocese to be interviewed/examined by the clergy and lay persons who would be voting in the election convention.

The formats tended to vary a bit with each place, but the action was pretty much the same. Sometimes the candidates would be put into a waiting area and then examined one at a time. Sometimes there could be several rooms provided and all of the candidates would move from room to room. The clergy and the laity of the diocese were always separated. Of course, there were other ways to do it.

The outcome was always the same. The candidates would leave exhausted thinking the whole thing would probably be like a turkey shoot. We sometimes blame the outcome on the Holy Spirit. I was always a little light on that idea because there were some pretty nasty things which could go on in this process and some very narrow thinking.

My belief was/is that God will take whomever is elected and try to put a blessing on that person with the hope that it would do some good and further the kingdom. Some people do not seem to take that blessing and end up making some gross mistakes.

Now things have been cleaned up a bit and we have something called a “Walk About”. It has pretty much the same type of people making the decisions and they still ask the same old questions, but it seems a little more organized.

So, I have a friend who is now involved in such a process and I am seeking a way to be helpful.

Lo and behold, I found a 20 year old VHS tape of the “Dog and Pony Show” made when I was being considered by the diocese where I eventually was elected and served for 13 years before my retirement. It showed each of the candidates being interviewed (questioned) by both clergy and laity. Each person had 30 minutes with the clergy and 30 minutes with the laity. I wondered if this would be helpful to my friend. I had never watched it so I did and it took me a little over two hours. I decided to share some of this with my friend.

One of the things which surprised me was that the candidates were not all asked the same questions. I kind of wanted to check in with the Holy Spirit on that one, but I did not know what to ask.

There were always a few questions on youth ministry, church growth, deacons, your spiritual life, and such. There were other questions which were always asked by the same persons, but not every one was asked these questions.

Then there were the rest of the questions. They were always there and always asked by the same persons and asked of each candidate. This was 20 years ago, but I have a hunch you might be able guess these topics.

Always at the top was “Would you, as the bishop, ordain a practicing homosexual?” Followed by “Would you allow same sex marriage in this diocese?”

In my process two of the candidates said “No!”. The others were a little more open to change, but recognized the church was not yet of one mind in these matters. No one mentioned we have been doing that ordination thing for a long time without making a lot of publicity about it.

In any case, the person asking these questions was pretty sure the correct answer was “No”.

I came away from my video screening and I just sat down and said, “Oh, dear. We have come a long way in the last 20 years”.

Now, for the rest of the story. The next day, which is today, my wife and I joined several hundred others at our church (where we have no status except as parishioners) to attend “The Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant”.

This was a remarkable and wonderful service. It was very dignified with beautiful music, and a great sermon. The couple has been together 20 years. They have longed for the Church's blessing on their lifelong covenant. There was a powerful sense that what we were doing was living out our commission to “respect the dignity of every human being”.

I have long believed the church should not be in the marrying business. That is a matter of the state. It is a matter of establishing order to the action of inheritance. It is the creation of a contract. It is the business of business, but it is not our business. I know many will hate these words and probably me for saying them. Go for it. I believe this is the truth.

The church is in the blessing business. That is what we do and we do it well. We, the church, must be the place for people who particularly desire to receive the blessing of their relationship. This is not about a contract, it is life. It is beautiful and it is open to everyone.

I saw hundreds of people blessed this day. The couple did not make a contract, they made a promise and we made it with them. We will love one another.

A Blessing Indeed

A Move Forward Dynamic Spirituality

A Move Forward, Dynamic Spirituality

            Sharks are the most powerful and agile creatures of the ocean, but they have to keep moving forward to live. A slug on the other hand looks simply for moisture and sits. We always have the choice to sit like a slug or move through life like a shark. I love to read about Jeremiah who is called to become a leader, but he has every excuse in the world why he can’t take on the responsibility.

            Yet, he must face the call from God to move forward. Furthermore, he is not only called to move forward, but he is also called to lead his people forward. Jeremiah is told that he will be given the strength to move forward from God.

             If he does not accept this strength to move forward, he will lose his heart, and he will become like a shrub in the desert, “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes and its leaves shall stay green.”

             In other words, God expects His people to be like sharks; he wants us to keep moving forward. If we are children of God, then we must be people who are always moving ahead with our lives, and, at the same time, we are pulling others along with us.

            In the eyes of the world Jeremiah would be considered unsuccessful. In responding to his call from God, he was only to know rejection. He would spend his life in poverty, prison and rejection by his family and friends yet he continued to move forward. Even in his sense of failure and disappointment, he continues to move forward with a message of encouragement,           

            In Mark 10, we meet Bartimaeus the blind beggar who is sitting at the roadside and hears Jesus is coming, so he shouts out, “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me!” Everybody said “Be quiet,” No, he kept moving forward and Jesus answered “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus gave the man his sight and said, “Go your faith has made you well.” We could say that Bartimaeus kept moving forward in faith.

            We have this picture in our minds and hearts of this Jesus who is standing still. We see Jesus on the cross, but He is still. We see pictures of Jesus in our churches, but He is a still image. Back in the sixties, we began to realize how important it was to express Jesus in a dynamic art form. I can remember the exhilaration that I experienced, when for the first time I heard the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. It was a bold proclamation about the true nature of Jesus Christ. In the musical we met a dynamic Jesus. We met a Christ who had come to move people ahead. He brought a dynamic message that the world could be better if only we accepted His teachings. I am afraid that we are getting complacent, and we are no longer like Christian sharks, constantly moving ahead in life.

            The psychologist Madeline Uddo who is with the Southeast Louisiana Veterans’ Health Care System in New Orleans finds that it is “dynamic” people who can take action and face any situation in life, no matter how oppressive. These Dynamic Move Forward people have three things in common:

 1) They embrace a challenge

 2) They do not run from long term commitments

 3) They believe that they can get at least some small control of the situation.

             

            An expression I often use is, “When you are in hell, the worse thing to do is stop. Don’t give up!” It is the driving nature of the soul to move forward. Spirituality is about caring for and touching the soul. Our soul is the powerful moving force of our life. It is where we find our driving energy. We have heard the expression that person has “real soul”. When we say someone has soul, it means they have the ability to carry on, no matter the circumstances. Today, in Episcopal congregations, we need a spirituality of soul-based optimism that life of our Episcopal community can grow and move forward.  We must have the soul of a spiritual shark.

            Frank Lloyd Wright designed many famous buildings and when asked near the end of his career about what building was his most favorite he answered, “The next one.” He understood the principle of moving forward. God has done wondrous things for us, but God never performs his greatest feats in yesterday.

            Bartimaeus knew rejection. He lived with rejection, but he did not give into it. Instead Bartimaeus learned that from his greatest rejections by the crowd came his greatest direction from Jesus, “Go, your faith has made you well.”

 

            In our Episcopal journey of hope let us have a spirituality of a shark. If we have a dynamic Move Forward spirituality, in all our concerns about the future of our denomination and its congregations we will:

1) Embrace the challenges in front of us with a dynamic shark like spiritual energy,

 2) Will not look for easy answers; we will continue, like Jeremiah and Bartimaeus, to move

     forward in the face of all small and great obstacles,

3) We will take some small action step everyday towards solving the problem.

 

            As a result, if we are asked about the best year our parish ever had, we will not say, “Oh, our best year was back in 1980. We had 400 hundred members, and everything was flourishing.” Instead, we will answer like a spiritual shark, “Oh, our best year as an Episcopal parish is next year.”

 

 

 

Stewardship 101 in 2013

Episcopal couples talk finance just like other couples; they budget just like other couples. Experts tell them the three largest items in their budget will be housing, transportation and food; over spending in these categories is a proscription for doom and gloom.  So we find this nice Episcopal couple sorting out their financial plan for 2013 and discussing stewardship – how much of their blessings will be returned to God, through the Parish and to the other charities they support.  It will be a stretch but they are committing themselves to 14% of their gross income.  The largest proportion will be their church pledge, but dollars will also go to support a child in Guatemala, to assist two local food pantries, to fulfill cultural and fine arts pledges, to support service club Foundations, plus a number of other donations. 

This nice Episcopal couple feels good about their decision making; it is a spiritual decision and they believe an appropriate one.  Their signed pledge card to the Parish will equal 8.5%, with the remaining 5.5% going to the other worthwhile charitable endeavors.  Good people, great plan, everyone is happy; drop the pledge care in the offering plate and all is well.  If only that were true!

Two Sundays into the New Year they hear the Rector announce an anticipated budget shortfall and suggest everyone just add $5.00 a week to their pledge.  (In the trade this is called the “Numbers Game”.)  Wait a minute our nice Episcopal couple thinks to themselves; we have already talked to God about our stewardship and now you tell us we are wrong?

Two more weeks and the Rector again announces that the budget shortfall still continues and admonishes the congregation to consider what they spend on fancy clothes, nice cars, grand vacations. (We clergy know this as the “Guilt Trip” approach to stewardship.)  Our couple discusses this at home and again believes that to increase the total percentage to stewardship is inappropriate; equally inappropriate would be to cut the amounts going to other worthwhile charities.

The Rector next announces that unless the members dig deeper, the Parish will just fade away (the “Poor Us” approach).  Of course, that can’t be God’s will -  therefore the Rector and Vestry have decided on a “Faith Budget” which means that they are going to spend at the predetermined  budget level and have “Faith” that “God will provide.”

Some Rectors will cry “foul” and plead they have never used the Numbers Game, or the Guilt Game, or the Poor Us Game, or the Faith Budget Game.  But Rectors do play games with the congregation every time the bulletin lists or they announce a fund raiser or a special offering.

Nothing is more frustrating than to make a meaningful pledge to a congregation and then be nickeled and dimed to death.  God Bless the Rector who tells the congregation that the Parish will operate on pledge/plate giving and there will be no special offerings or fund raisers - period!   One Parish I lead endorsed this policy and allotted $50,000.00 to the Out Reach Committee; they handled all special offering requests, some were funded, others were not.

It is time to trust that congregation members are telling the truth when they make a pledge and to write a budget accordingly.  To keep asking for more is to view them as dishonest cheaters that have to be manipulated.

What happened to our nice Episcopal couple?  They moved their membership.

 

Rector@garygilbertson.org