Category Archives: Church

When Notes are Unsigned and the Preacher Still Has a Pulpit

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

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Self-potrait 1988

I had spent a few days in the hospital with some significant heart symptoms. When I returned to the pulpit after my release, I thanked the people for the many get-well cards, encouraging words, and generous offers of help that came to my wife and me, but I told them that there was also one card that had come with the others. Unsigned, it had asked, “What are we supposed to do, if our pastor is ill? We can’t get the help that we need when we have a sick pastor.”

In my notes for that Sunday in winter, 1984, I said that I must try to answer this question, as much for myself as for whoever wrote it. First, my physicians assured me that I could expect to get control of this issue if I took certain steps and continued doing so the rest of my life. I could return to work and have the heart to do it. Second, ministers are human and will get sick, some more often than others. The church will survive, and sometimes it will prosper, as people share more of the load and cooperate with one another in getting things done that the minister cannot do. Third, we are in this church together in all circumstances, good and bad, much like a marriage, and God’s power is most visible when we are at our weakest.  I had certainly felt that power, during the previous two weeks, when so many had taken time to provide what was needed, and I had gained in understanding of what I faced and what I needed to do about it.

I never learned who had expressed those fears in the “get well card,” and I don’t know whether the writer was embarrassed or not about my reference to those words from the pulpit, but the sentiment probably did everyone a favor.

To Pass or Not to Pass… the Peace

12 Friday Jun 2015

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

In the mid-1980’s “Passing the Peace” had been re-incorporated into Roman Catholic worship, but few Protestant congregations were engaged in the practice. I had taken a confirmation class to a Catholic service, noting commonalities with our liturgy, and they had appreciated the Passing of the Peace, asking why we did not do it, too, if it was an ancient tradition of the church. I took the idea to our worship committee, and the consensus was to begin to include Passing the Peace at different points in the service, with brief explanations of its purpose and history. This was done for the next three months before the congregation held its annual meeting.

Preparing for the congregational meeting in this place was always a challenge. The elected leaders knew that some members always made a controversy out of something, but could usually not predict what would be the issue at any given time. That year it turned out to be Passing the Peace. Some members demanded that any changes in the order or content of the worship service should always be presented to the whole congregation first, seemingly not aware of how cumbersome a requirement that would be.  Several comments veered from the issue of Passing the Peace into other elements that should or should not be included in a worship service. Clearly no consensus was present, and it was, as usual, hard to stick to one topic of discussion.

Pro and con statements about Passing the Peace showed the usual divisions in the congregation. Those who advocated for the practice made statements about its celebration of forgiveness, acceptance, and mutual care, but some admitted that it seemed disruptive in the middle of the service, and less disruptive at the beginning or end of the service.

The climax of the discussion came when one of those who objected to Passing the Peace said that it would be a cold day in Hell before he would pass the peace with some of the people in this congregation. He chose to sit where he did to avoid sitting near certain other people, but he didn’t want to shake hands or greet anybody else that just happened to sit nearby. The fact that the six hundred members of this congregation were mostly related to each other could not hide the divisions in the extended family. They would not be healed by a ritual of Passing the Peace or by pulpit teaching about forgiveness.

The vote to exclude Passing the Peace failed, as did the vote for the congregation to pre-approve changes in the service. No one voiced objections to the president’s idea that the next months should include some exploration of the different parts of the ritual and their meanings, including Passing the Peace, so that became the temporary resolution. A fuller resolution would require passing through many more controversies and much more time before a real peace could be shared.

Accepting calls…and divine signs?

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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self-portrait

Soon after accepting a call to serve Zion United Church of Christ in Burlington, Iowa, I looked at the church’s address—412 North Fifth Street. At the time I was serving St. Paul’s UCC at 236 West Fifth Street in Minonk, Illinois, after serving the United Church of Tilton, Illinois, at 520 West Fifth Street. Excluding all of my short-term and temporary church-related jobs, every full-time church I served had a Fifth Street address. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure.

A first parish surely always makes a deep impression on a minister, for good or ill, but often in deep and tender impressions. The morning  I announced my resignation from the United Church of Tilton, I tearfully expressed my gratitude to the congregation for its loving support over the ten years I had  known them. I spoke of the major changes we had gone through and predicted the obvious—that more changes would come. At that moment lightning struck the church, creating an impressive flash in the air above the area where the congregation sat. It didn’t do any damage, but it sure emphasized my point.

Over a career I have interviewed with many congregations and organizations for different positions, especially in those years when I was just getting started and had little experience. For a while I thought I was getting enough background with interviews that I was learning how to do it, but then came three interviews in which I fell one vote short of having the unanimous vote that those committees required. The most disappointing decision came from South Haven, Michigan. The whole situation seemed too good to be true. The congregation’s program and its needs appeared to be a perfect fit, the church building and its parsonage were in good condition, the committee was responsive and cordial, and South Haven sat on the shore of our beloved Lake Michigan, not far from where we vacationed for many years. It was perfect. The one vote against me came from the woman who provided our overnight accommodations in her home. I never was a morning person, but I was on my best behavior. I was severely disappointed when I learned the outcome.

When I accepted the call to go to St. Paul’s in Minonk a short time later, and we looked at the parsonage once again, I looked across the street and saw the new senior citizen apartment complex. Its name was South Haven. Sometimes God’s sense of humor is just too much.

Driving from the Rear View Mirror

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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3 OwlsA few days ago, I again drove my car, leading another driver and her car through a long road trip. I used to do that a lot, guiding groups of vehicles packed with young people, on trips hither and yon. I thought I had a talent for it. Only once in fifty years did I lose a carload of passengers at the tail of a caravan, and that was due to a vehicle breakdown out of sight, and the loss of radio communication with the driver, but I knew he was resourceful and dependable, he knew our point of rendezvous, and he caught up with us at the end of the day.

Driving ahead of another car or cars requires frequent and observant glances in the rear view mirror. It does not matter if one tries to maintain a speed at or five miles per hour above the posted speed limit, someone will always want to go faster, getting between the lead car and the followers. Sometimes it is a truck, large enough to hide the view of cars from front or rear. The leader must find a way quickly to restore the connection, before the next turn or stop, or an additional intruder adds to the distance between the tandem drivers. Changing lanes and preparing for turns needs to be signaled well in advance if possible, but obscured vision may require the use of another lane just to keep each other in view. The process becomes nerve-wracking in heavy, fast traffic.

Often the lead driver spends as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as looking forward. That may sometimes be true in normal driving, when trying to keep a safe stopping distance between oneself and the cars ahead and behind, but with a caravan behind, as part of one’s responsibility, it becomes even truer.

What seems to be required for the lead driver is to know well the destinations and the directions for the trip, to set a reasonable and steady pace forward, and to keep the changing needs of everyone who follows in constant view.  It also helps to have a back-up plan that everyone is aware of, for all the times when the unexpected happens, and contact is,  we hope temporarily, interrupted. That sounds like an ambitious goal for leadership in many contexts, not just tandem  driving.

The Deeper Magic

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, Gullibility, People

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.comHarry Potter’s summer assignments included writing an essay on “why witch burning in the Fourteenth Century was completely pointless.” Not a bad topic, I thought, although author J.K. Rowling’s reasons amounted to a flight of fantasy, not the down to earth responses I had been thinking of. 

For a while I was on the mailing list for the Wiccan Newsletter at the University of Iowa, as I was investigating the religious diversity of our area. My eyes were opened to the creative efforts poured into constructing a new faith in magic and witchcraft as an alternative to creedal and group religion. Their fellowship events and calendar of celebrations, promoted by the newsletter, looked like a bland reflection of many traditional congregations.  

Muggles (for non-Harry Potter-readers, if there are any, those are people with no magical abilities or heritage) can also come up with good reasons not to join in efforts to eradicate witchcraft. Chief among them is the sordid history of persecution and depravity that includes witch-burnings, demonstrating how people delude themselves, act on prejudices, and harm others. We hope we are beyond that. 

Witchcraft and magic have returned to the realm of religious options. And I thought the New Millennium would be a face-off of liberal Christianity and secular humanism. Talk about a bland and unimaginative confrontation! Instead we see a resurgent fundamentalism around the globe, spiced with reconstructed native, animistic, and Old Earth religions. What will people try next? Or revert to? 

In ancient Israel witchcraft was a subversive activity punishable, according to the Levitical Holiness Code, with death, hence the medieval efforts to burn witches. It didn’t do any good. Intent on becoming pure and clean, communities became soiled with their efforts to eliminate alternative faiths. According to most of the New Testament we should leave the purification standards behind. We recognize our communities as impure and our own efforts to clean them up as tainted, unless we let mercy and compassion rule. 

Instead we rely on a Deeper Magic, as C.S. Lewis called it, from before the memories of time, rooted in a loving God who places God’s own self-offering into creation. And we enjoy the fantasies of Harry Potter anyway.

Pentecostal Kerfuffling

24 Sunday May 2015

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Pentecostal banner

From time to time I like to have the experience of a good kerfuffle. Pentecost seems just the right time. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be available all the time to motivate people, set us straight, remind us of what is important, activate our highest aspirations and enthusiasms. Pentecost not only highlights what the Holy Spirit can do. It provides many opportunities. Our world fills with new life and an environment conducive to activities of all kinds. We can work with hours of daylight. We can feel the warmth of the sun. We can enjoy the invigorating waters. All good opportunities for kerfuffling.

The Spirit brings people together and moves people to face each other and work together openly and honestly. We do not have to hide our feelings or our past failures or our present weaknesses if the Spirit of God is present to help. When we see each other as we are and recognize our need to join in animated confrontations and open exercise of our abilities we have a chance to grow. Just like siblings who must engage in horseplay and rivalries we must work through the things that bother us. Though gentleness and courtesy are always needed, the process may be neither quiet nor relaxing. It can be a kerfuffle.

O.K. Kerfuffle is a word I learned a long time ago, but, good as it is, I seldom use it. Like “googol” that became popular a few years ago when the capacity of new computer memory seemed to be reaching for infinity, or at least to 10 to the 100th power. I first saw “googol” used in Ruth and Lewis Ita’s Christmas letter twenty-four years ago, as they described the number of gingko tree seeds that had fallen onto their lawn during their autumn season. New words can be useful, and they can sound even better than anything we have now.

Worship can be solemn and meditative, thoughtful and centering, all of which are important and useful experiences. It can include one speaker, one performance, one actor, to whom everyone else pays close attention. It can be organized and ritualized to the point that we know what to expect almost every minute. But worship can also be surprising, enjoyable, unexpected, exciting, involving, and out of control– to the point that spontaneous breakthroughs of humor and participation and liveliness engage everyone’s spirits. Then we can be on the edge of a real kerfuffle.

It was a real kerfuffle on that exceptional Pentecost that followed Jesus’ crucifixion, according to the story in Acts. The noise distracted casual observers and some guessed that the kerfufflers gathered there were drunk. Perhaps that was and should remain exceptional in our life with people who may misunderstand and misinterpret what we are doing. But once in a while, shouldn’t we get carried away? Into a kerfuffle?

Lest it be artificially limited to those who consider themselves Christian, let the Sufis, the Hassids, and other people of good will join in, and we’ll have a truly universal kerfuffle.

I can’t say that it will be easy for me. Keeping myself and my emotions and impulses under control has been a major discipline of my life. But if I do not quench the Spirit, and let Spirit take control, I suppose I will create a kerfuffle with the best of them.

Old Man Hide and Seek

20 Wednesday May 2015

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Bridge in AutumnWhere, but in the ministry, would you find a 50-something old man sitting in the dark under a table in the anteroom behind the chancel, playing a game of hide and seek with young teens at midnight? Yet there I was at a youth lock-in, listening to the amusing echoes of youngsters and adults at play in a cavernous church.  

The room was pitch black, and I found my way into a space whose form I had memorized from previous visits. It was true and remained so—no one would find me there. I was safe. I could even take a nap if I wanted. 

As I sat there, holding knees folded to chest, a single thread of light found its way from the sanctuary through the doorway, and spread its thin light in a cruciform shape along the tile floor, and shot its way unfailingly to my eye. My place in the utter darkness was illuminated with a steady and incredibly bright light, considering that it came from a dim emergency exit lamp a hundred feet away. I was astonished. 

God does not usually find anyone at youth lock-ins. Things that are sublime and ineffable flee from such events. The most that one hopes for are fun and good fellowship, and these often come in full measure. But not revelation. 

There I was, discovered by a cross-shaped light in my utter darkness, with the young people who were “it” not far off breaking the silence with their name-game, “Who are you? Tell us who you are, and we won’t catch you… this time. I don’t know who this is, but I know someone is there. Is it the red-haired girl? What’s her name? Who is it? Tell us and we won’t give you away.” (It was in actuality another fifty-something minister who remained anonymous until he could no longer restrain his laughter.) 

It was a revelation. Not communicable on that night when minds glass over with sheets of youthful energy impenetrable by thought. Barely expressible even now, when I still wonder at the mystery of that moment. We can try, but we never can hide from the mystery.

The Mystery Buttons Behind the Pulpit Chair at Zion Church

13 Wednesday May 2015

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self-portrait

At Zion Church, along the wooden reredos behind the pulpit chair are four ivory push buttons. They are aligned so that the pastor can reach down and press them when wanting something to be done. Probably most people do not pay close enough attention to notice them. When I was pastor there, during worship, when I wanted something to be done, I toyed with the idea of pushing them just to see what might happen. Maybe a bell or a buzzer or a small shock for someone who just fell asleep? 

Maybe someone from Zion who is still alive might remember when these buttons were still being used and what they were used for. I inquired of two other former pastors but they didn’t know what those buttons did either. Sometime they fell into disuse. Today I do not know what legions of helpers or angels might be called if Pastor Brice pressed those buttons when in need 

I have stolen into the sanctuary when no one was around, and pressed them, one at a time, and two or three together, but nothing happened that I could see. But no worship service was happening at the time. Could they have been disconnected, I wonder? Perhaps they fell into disuse when the first pagers and later cell phones became available. Perhaps pastors or worship leaders pressed them and nothing happened. That would indeed be discouraging if they were truly in need. 

What could occur in worship that would require such emergency intervention, you ask? When Jeanne Tyler, former pastor at Keokuk, was preaching several years ago, she evoked the image of dancing the tango with God. If suddenly many of our worshipers started to dance the tango, we might not be able to handle it. I would have wanted some help. The tango, as an image of holy covenant, is indeed “too close for comfort.” I would have known that I had entirely lost control and everything was up for grabs. Buttons to the rescue!  

There are lesser catastrophic expectations that might summon our desire to press for help. I lost count of the times when I realized that everything that I had prepared for a Sunday service had missed the mark. Rather than make fumbling efforts to change and adapt as I went, it would be wonderful if I could just press the button. When all of the other events of worship had reduced the time that I used to hope I could preach something that I was convinced was needed, the button might have gotten someone else to stop talking and let me have the floor or the pulpit. It could tell the ushers to stand with the offering plates at the door instead of passing them down the pews. It could tell Janice to play a hymn four times faster than normal. It could bring the Holy Spirit in the nick of time. 

Or are those buttons just among the many things that worked for a while and then were abandoned? Things that were tried instead of prayer and preparation? Things like we still try, “to make worship more meaningful?” So we won’t be able to let our fingers do the walking? Maybe we’ll just have to pray after all? Guess so.

Bruce and Cathy Larson opened the door.

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Luna moth

Bruce and Cathy Larson opened their door… to their neighbors who were trying to maintain their homes in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in the face of a major urban renewal project that would wipe out many blocks of moderate income housing and replace them with high income condominiums. They volunteered to work for the Independent Precinct Organization’s efforts to stand with these neighbors and protect their homes and investments in their neighborhood.

Bruce and Cathy opened their door… to me as I went door-to-door canvassing for support for the IPO’s project and resistance to the city plans. They served me herbal tea each time I stopped to talk with them. They loved their multi-cultural neighborhood, interesting people, old houses, and Chicago’s only authentic beer garden. They found the city plans to be disappointing and discriminatory, destroying a a rich culture and replacing it with a moneyed elite.

Bruce and Cathy opened their door…  to the Lutheran congregation they served by choice at the same time that they opened their congregation to  commitments to service with their Latin and African American neighbors, young and old, their old union-organizer, artistic,  political dissident, and nonconformist folks of all stripes.

Many people came in and out of their doors. I was privileged to be among them for several months.

One night, after they put their two small children to bed,  they opened their door…  to someone they probably knew, or whom they believed they should know, as Jesus would have opened the door, or as Jesus came to them in the form of someone in need. That night Bruce and Cathy were stabbed to death in their living room.

As far as I know, their murders, back in 1969, remain unsolved. Holy Week seems a good time to remember such a fine couple in Christian ministry, who opened the door of my heart to the needs of people I had not met before,  and to the sacrifices that sometimes are required in the attempts to  serve.