Seekers and Believers

Over the last little while, I've been continually running into communications about church things that use the language of seekers and believers to distinguish two apparently different and separate groups of people.

To be sure, I've heard this language for ages. But the more I think about it, the more I just don't get it. As I mentioned to a friend the other evening, to use these terms in this way seems to demand that we consider that seekers don't believe and, even more significantly, that believers don't seek. We're probably all used to the first inference, and can probably find reasonable grounds to justify it on some basis, but the second is really scary.

There have been many times when I've wondered if we haven't somehow promoted the idea that believing in Jesus becomes a completed task at some point — after a conversion experience, some catechesis and baptism, perhaps. After that the believer no longer has to seek after God, no longer has to work at making her faith her own, no longer has any need to deepen the relationship. That at least would make some sense out of why so many longtime Christians of my past acquaintance seemed so dis-interested in being challenged in their beliefs or going deeper in their knowledge of God.

I've come to the belief that we are profoundly shaped by the language we use habitually. If that's true, then it's quite possible that long term use of concepts of seekers and believers in the sense I started this post with will eventually lead us to stop seeking after God. Maybe the real problem with "churchy" language isn't that the unchurched don't understand it. Maybe the real problem is that it shapes the churched into something far less than what God intends.

Thank God that at least once in awhile one encounters some different use of language in our churches — language like that in this morning's prayer, acknowledging that we are all still need to seek earnestly after God. And thank God for reminders that deciding to follow Jesus is never just a one time thing, but that it really requires a fresh decision every day, maybe even every minute — in this particular thing that lies before me, whom will I follow? Jesus, or someone else?

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Two Good Thoughts on Trust

Today I read two great thoughts on the subject of trust.

Chris Monroe, the desert pastor, ties together the idea of rest and trust.

Maybe our rest is not deep enough, not effective enough, because we're not trusting enough. Trusting who? Trusting God. Maybe if we were to trust God more deeply, we would find ourselves resting more deeply. Maybe then, what's behind our rest-deficiency would be seen as a trust-deficiency.

To fully trust, we must relinquish the control, the power, turning it over to God. And when we do, it's then that we can truly rest.

Meanwhile, Joy Morris muses on hope, and links faith to giving up control and becoming vulnerable.

Today I've been thinking about hope and faith. Hope and faith create vulnerability in the person who chooses to hope and believe. I usually think of the two acts as empowering, but there is this shadow side. It's making a choice to stay soft and malleable. It's a choice not to have control or even know. Hope and faith admit one's need for help. I need God and people.

The parallels between the two struck me, as well as the timing — both on the same day. Interesting.

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Who Buries the Talents?

This morning's message was based on the parable of the talents. The key idea was that the world's greatest energy crisis is not oil or electricity, but the untapped potential of human beings — specifically God's people. Like the king in the parable, God has given talents to His people, and will ask what was done with them when He returns. But like the one servant, too many people have let their talents lie buried, never utilized for the Kingdom.

While the language of the sermon clearly indicated that the contemporary problem lies with the individuals to whom the talents are given, I started to wonder whether that is, in fact, the whole truth of the matter. Perhaps it comes from a sensitivity borne from my own experience, but I wonder whether perhaps the truth sometimes lies more in the collective — whether perhaps it is the community to whom gifts are given which is responsible for the suppression of those gifts.

I wondered what would have happened in Calculta had the head of the order to which (Mother) Teresa belonged had not given her permission to leave the teaching ministry of her order to go to Calcutta. I wondered what would have happened had the Pope not granted her the charter to form her own order. Would she have been able to do what she did — to be what some call the 20th century's greatest saint?

I know from personal experience that when one is in church leadership, struggling to find resources and personnel for all the ministries that the church is engaged in, that it is natural to assume that the suppression of gifts in the church is due to the individuals' own lack of initiative in implementing the gifts they have been given. But I wonder what would happen if we were to seriously consider the ways in which we do church collecively might actually be as much a barrier to the expression of God's gifts to the church.

There are so many ways in which the collective body suppresses the expression of gifting in the church. Some are related to our institutionalized goverance structures — where too much has to go through official channels before it is allowed to happen — channels that are often clogged with other things. Others are related to the language structures we employ, that subtly denigrate the gifts of the masses.

I saw such subtle language structures at work when I compared the secular and "christianized" versions of a book we were using in Focus 3. The secular book gave examples of people engaging the world in the areas of their particular strength mix — all of which involved significant and respected roles. The christianized book, on the other hand, had downgraded the examples to some of the most minor tasks one encounters in church life — suitability and/or giftedness for (or lack thereof) ought to have been obvious to all involved, except for those with the limited self-awareness of a Junior High kid.

To be sure, the individual whom God gifts for service in His Kingdom is responsible for his or her own attitude and iniative in exercising and expressing those gifts. But we all, as a collective, are also responsible for the way in which the culture we permit to form around us, and indeed actively maintain, encourages discourages the expression of all the gifts God has given to the collective. And those in express leadership positions have responsibility not only not to squelch the gifts they have been given individually, but even more so not to squelch the gifts given to the flock under their care.

May God forgive me for the ways in which I have failed this responsibility in my own leading.

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A Place to Call Home

One of the four components of our local church's vision is to create a place people can call home. So what does that look like anyway? To my mind, a place I can call home has the following characteristics:

• home is a place where, when I am away from it, I want to return
• home is a place where I am known — well known
• home is a place where I fit, as the person I am, not a place where I have to fit in
• home is a place where I am missed when I am away
• home is a place where I can be meaningfully engaged, where there are things to do that make a difference
• home is a place where I can open myself to others, and invite them in
• home is a place where I regain energy and passion for the work of life

The vision of the local church as a place people can call home is truly a hugely ambitious vision. I wonder sometimes if we think enough about just how huge, and simply pass the words by as something that sounds nice.

This vision is also somewhat different from other business type visions in that there really is no way to put a number on it — it is something that happens within the people who are part of this "home". External observations may give clues, but certainly wouldn't be in any way reliable. But in reality, I think the most important things that a church ought to be attempting are of this sort.

I suppose if we were to take this vision component seriously, we'd have to have some more soul-searching conversations with each other as part of the process of evaluating whether we are actually engaging our reality in a way that moves toward or away from this vision. That in itself could be a step forward.

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Leadership in Chaos

As Yvonne is away tonight at an Elders' meeting, discussing matters of transition arising from the lead pastor's resignation, I find myself reflecting on things that Alan Roxburgh raised in his book, The Sky is Falling!?!.

Much of our ideas of leadership are related to our ideas of strategic planning — they work well in environments where there is a sufficient degree of stability, predictability and controlability that one can reasonably move from a vision of a desired future, through the various stages of goals and plans, to achieve something approximating the intended end.

There are other environments in which the underlying presumed degree of stability, predictability and controlability simply does not exist. Some environments are truly chaotic — systems like the weather, where a very small change in initial conditions makes a huge change in the outcome. Other environments are not quite that chaotic, but do undergo periods of significant, unpredictable, discontinuous change — Roxburgh calls these environments times of transition. In these environments the classic strategic planning principles simply don't work. Nor do finely honed, hierarchically based leadership structures where each task is affixed to a specific position or function — even those these structures can be highly efficient in stable times.

In chaotic or transitional environments the highly structured leadership models fail, because they simply cannot bring the right skills, instincts, and perspectives to the situation in a timely and appropriate manner to adapt to the discontinuous changes that occur. Rather, in such environments we need leadership systems that are much more flexible and much more diversely based — who knows what particular collection of strengths and perspectives will be needed for the next thing that happens?

But a huge difficulty, it seems to me, is that such a diverse collection of "leaders" will typically have a hard time listening to, trusting, and following each other as the situations shift, unless a solid core of trust and understanding has been developed before hand, and maintenance of that core of trust and understanding remains consistently a high priority. To be sure, I firmly believe that this neglect of community, or as Roxburgh calls it communitas, is the principal reason for the disintegration of leadership in a prior experience of mine.

If this is correct, then it seems to me that the key leadership trait needed is that of keeping the overall leadership system and leaders, individually and collectively, focussed on maintaining a reality of communitas in all leadership activities and decisions. The key leader, then, for an entity operating in a chaotic or transitional environment is decidedly not an executive leader or CEO, but rather more what Roxburgh calls an abbott/abbess — one whose primary, or even sole, task or focus is in building, maintaining and strengthening true Christian community among the entire leadership team.

Regretably, I cannot point to any good examples in personal church experience that could serve as a model for such a system — and it is extremely hard to get people to buy into a process or system they have never seen in operation.

But it does give me a fresh appreciation of Jesus' high priestly prayer, where His desire for unity and community among His followers flows so eloquently and passionately. Maybe Jesus knew something about the turbulent times and environments in which His church would have to exist.

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Oh My, It's Already July!

The end of June is the statutory deadline for a number of things in the pension world in which I work. So June can be a very busy time — it's sort of like tax season for accountants. The end of June comes in part as a relief — now there's time to breathe, I hope — and part as a shock — where did it go?

It's pretty obvious that it didn't go into writing blogs. Indeed, I'm still mulling over thoughts for a post (or perhaps series of posts) that arises out of some stuff I was listening to at the end of May. Maybe I'll get that down finally.

While I haven't been writing, I have still been reading. Here are links to a few things I've found noteworthy, thoughtful, or just entertaining:

• Alan Creech on What is Purpose?
• Len Hjalmarson quoting Jurgen Moltmann: The Crucified God
• Miroslav Volf's address to the 16th Annual International Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations
• Michael Bells quoting Eugene Peterson on Wilderness with a Map
• Michael Spencer on a former student in She's a Catholic Girl Now
• The ever humorous Lark News

And that's the headlines. Film at eleven.

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