The Sensible Church

Church leaders are sort of freaking out these days.

There are many reasons for this, and I am sure you can relate to more than a few of them. The uncertainty of participation in a COVID world. The decline of membership. The decline of finances. The reckoning of Christian nationalism. The nationalization of everything. The intersection of justice and mercy. Denominational splits and local church infights. New theologies and new mediums for communication…

The uncertainty of the sea change prompts church leaders dive into the resource reserves in the hopes to find something to help navigate the choppy waters. The way we typically think about how to solve problems is to either look to the past or to the future. Generally, conservatives look to see what has worked in the past to solve present problems. Progressives scoff at conservatives and say something like, “what got us here cannot take us there.” And so, progressives tend to look to the future to solve present problems.

This way of framing things overlooks the flaw that conservatives and progressives share. If we look to the past or the future church leaders are looking for what is sensible.

And that is a problem.

Sensible is attractive because, well it is sensible. Our minds tend to gravitate toward what makes the most sense and go in that direction. The sensible option is often an easier option to “sell” to others and get people on board. That which is sensible is also well supported by loads of books and resources, so it gives the impression that the sensible way is the best way.

Of course what is sensible to a progressive may not be sensible to a conservative. The Bible is full of examples of people doing the sensible thing but it is not what God desires. And for as easy as it might be to “sell” the sensible, it also instantly sets up an us/them divide where the “them” are idiots because “they” don’t do what is sensible able. In fact we often look to the other and say that their actions “don’t make sense.” It is also unhelpful for church leaders to be looking for the “best” way when we should be looking for the “faithful” way. But these are not the deeper problems with the sensible church.

It does not take any courage to be sensible. Faith is not needed to be sensible. In fact, courage and faith can be liabilities to the sensible church.

The call of Jesus to the church is not to be sensible, but to have courage to be faithful. The way of the cross is not sensible. Trusting that God is alive is not sensible. Resurrection is not sensible. Unconditional Grace is not sensible. Forgiveness is not sensible. Rejecting many leadership principles is not sensible. Reconsidering the core mission of the church is not sensible.

Desiring to be the sensible church is the symptom to our lack of faithful courage. We look to the past and the future for what is sensible, but the Good News is that we are liberated from being the sensible church. We are freed from having the answers, the best plan, the business model, the strategic vision, the marketing campaigns or any other action an organization might consider sensible. We are freed to be the foolish followers of the folly of God in Christ Jesus.

Maybe Paul was writing to the Sensible Church in Corinth when he wrote 1 Corinthians 1.18-25:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Personal Disciplines and Communal Practice (Video)

Recently, I had the chance to speak to some of the leadership of the church I serve about moving from a deciding body to a discerning body. In an effort to guide the group toward discernment, there are both personal disciplines and communal practices. This video was an effort to teach different disciplines and practices.

You may not care to watch this entire video, I do not blame you - I don’t like to listen to me, too. However, if you are interested in some of the disciplines and practices, I have put minute marks below for your reference.

• Description of the soul - 1:00

• Discipline vs. Practice - 3:00

• Difference between prayer, contemplation, meditation - 4:00

• Why we would rather choose to decide than discern - 9:00

• The discipline of breath prayer - 11:00

• The discipline of centering prayer - 12:30

• The discipline of the Jesus Prayer - 16:00

• The disciplines of contemplation 23:40

• The Examen - 24:45

• Lectio Divina - 27:00

• The disciplines of meditation - 29:00

• Parable of The Useless Tree 30:30

• Prayer for indifference - 35:40

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I hope this teaching is helpful for you to either participate in these disciplines and practices or at the very least give you something to push against and discover your own Lenten disciplines and practices. (These minute marks and links are also in the comments of the video on Youtube.)

Pastor, I know you are busy...

About every fourth or fifth email I receive and about half of every phone conversation I have, I hear something like, “I know you are busy, but…” I cannot speak for every pastor but I believe that this modified story from the spirituality of the desert story might speak for many clergy - including myself:

There was a student who went to a teacher and asked for a word. The teacher shared a word with the student who went back home. The next day the student forgot what the teacher had said, so the student returned to the teacher.

“I am sorry teacher, but I have forgotten what you said yesterday. Can you share a word with me?”

The teacher spent a little more time with the student this second time, and then the student went back home.

A week later, the student returned and said, “Teacher, I am so sorry to bother you and I have asked now two times, but I have forgotten and would you share a word?”

The teacher sat all day with the student before the student returned home.

After two weeks, the student returned to the teacher. The student felt ashamed and was embarrassed to ask the teacher, yet one more time, “I know you are busy, and I know that I have taken a lot of your time already, but I have forgotten what you said. Could you remind me again?”

At this point the teacher took the table lamp that was to his right and asked the student to pass him a candle that was on the entry table. The teacher lit the candle, handed it to the student, and asked the student for a second candle from the entry table. The teacher lit the second candle, handed it to the student who was asked to retrieve a third and then a fourth candle.

The teacher lifted the lamp up and looed at the student who was now holding four lit candles. The teacher said, “Is the lamp diminished because it gave some of its light to the four candles?”

The student understood and said, “No.”

Never again did the student hesitate to visit the teacher and both of their homes became full of light.

What Your Mask Behavior Might Reveal About Your Leadership

The mask has become a symbol. They can be a symbol of your support of the president. They can be a symbol of your distrust of the “deep state”. They can be a symbol of freedom being infringed. They can be a symbol of the dumbing of America (those with masks are “sheeple”) or the proof of a conspiracy that Lizard people cooked up a virus then fabricated the story. Personally, I struggle to see how Christians would find wearing a mask is asking too much or demanding something irrational. Christians have preached for a long time about a God man who said that we should take up the cross for the sake of a Gospel that is irrational (grace is always irrational).

However, you “feel” about masks I have seen three practices of mask wearing that seem to reflect three different leadership styles. I call them the Imperatives, the Imperials, and the Invitationals.

The Imperatives are those you see who wear the mask because that is the law or the rule or the expectation. They are the people who follow the rules and they are the ones who generally display pro-social behaviors. They don’t even talk much about their masks because it would be as pointless as talking about why you stop at a red light. But if they do they might say, “You should wear your mask.” The danger with the Imperatives is self-righteousness can creep in and can be easily justifiable because they are following the mask rule and everyone else should be as well. Of course they do not have to follow the rule themselves, but they do because it is the right thing to do. I am an Imperative leader. I follow the rules and when I fail to do so I feel awful. I want to do better and I want to ensure that I am doing my part. I kick myself when I fail and I also can be very self-righteous in my rule following skills.

The Imperials are the mask wearers who come into the presence of another and then say, “You can take that mask off around me.” These folk talk about masks like they are dumb or that the rules do not apply to them. More to the point the Imperials are those who want to tell you how to live the rule out. Unlike the Imperatives (above) the Imperials say the quite part out loud. If the Imperatives have an inflated sense of righteousness because they follow the rules, the Imperials have an inflated sense of righteousness for bucking the rules. These leaders like that there are rules for others to follow, but are less inclined to follow the rules themselves because they know better. I am an imperial leader. I like to tell people what to do and boss them around so that I am in control of situations that I have little control over. I roll my eyes at someone following a rule that I consider dumb and I wonder why some rules even exist to begin with. I know better than other leaders - especially leaders that follow the rules.

The Invitationals are the people who may or may not want to wear a mask but will ask if it okay with you if they take their own mask off. These folk are the people who may really desire that everyone wear a mask or they might be people who just follow the rules to comply, but they still find it important to ask the others around them if it is okay to remove their mask. They are mindful that permission seeking and consent are key ingredients to relationship building and fostering. They are mindful of the interconnectivity of all things and that everyone’s actions impact everyone else. They hold their position lightly while also making their preferences known. They try to protect the agency of the other, giving them a say in the decisions. Perhaps more than other postures, the invitationals are relationally aware of who to ask and when to ask. They make notes of people who would not be comfortable to remove masks and they would not ask them to do something that is outside the others desires.

Like any generalization, the way that one wears their mask is not prescriptive of every action of their leadership style. And yet, in my small sample size of interactions, there is a bit of truth in these behaviors. It is notable that I find that I am repulsed by the Imperials, as they are repulsed by others. Ironically, I judge the Imperatives as being too judgmental. Perhaps most appropriately, I am drawn to the invitational leaders as they make space for others to be drawn into.