Hope for Lutherans’ discernment

Last week, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in which I am an ordained minister, decided to open the ministry of the ELCA to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional church workers living in committed same-gender relationships.

I’ve been surprised to find myself connecting this juncture in Lutheran denominational life with a strange, uncomfortable, and heart-breaking period in my own life–a period of discerning separation and divorce in my marriage. To me, it feels as if the ELCA right now is like a “marriage on the rocks.” Even more surprisingly, this gives me tremendous hope for the future.

Subversive acts

“In our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts.”

This is from Michael Pollan, whose book In Defense of Food I just finished reading. As my status update on Facebook, that quotation received so many comments from friends (many of whom had also read the book) that it seems worth further exploration.

Here are some photos of my own little “subversive” garden (complete with the subversive beans and zucchini that keep getting further and further outside the boundaries). It may not be the White House garden, but so far I’ve harvested some beans, tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs. I’ve also been thinking about what else I do, or could do, that qualifies as “subversive” in similar ways.

Here’s a partial list:

Young adults emerging…or leaving

I just returned from a conference on Emerging Adulthood in the church, and am pondering how to share what I learned with my congregation (which sees more attenders in the 18-25 age range than many mainline congregations–but still not many of them). I’ve been around young adult ministry for so long that most of what I heard made perfect sense to me, but in a place where people are accustomed to young adults’ absence, I’m not sure how to make the translation. Here’s an attempt:

Conventional wisdom makes sense of young adults’ absence by saying that “people leave the church after high school, and they come back when they have kids.” That may help us make sense of the situation, but it doesn’t help us address it. In fact, it may even prevent us from thinking about it very hard. In other words, saying “young adults just don’t attend church” helps us not worry about their absence. While it’s statistically true, I think we as a church should be worried, for these three reasons:

Appropriate/ing Passover?

After Easter comes the inevitable Holy Week debriefing: what worked well, what should we do differently next year, etc. I’m particularly focused on the two events for which I was responsible, the Passover Seder (Wednesday) and the Easter Vigil (Saturday).

In both those events, we “learn by doing”–eating the special Passover foods, for example, which remind us of God’s great liberating act in bringing Israel out of slavery in Egypt. In the Easter Vigil, for example, we read Romans 6 and make the sign of the cross with water on each others’ foreheads to remember our baptism–the moment when we “passed over” with Christ from death to life. The “doing” is what I love best about both events–the ways in which our community appropriates old stories and rituals and sees them come alive for us, today.

In that appropriation, however, there’s a big difference: whereas the Easter Vigil is a centuries-old Christian ritual, the Passover is a centuries-old Jewish ritual. So what does it mean for a Christian community to “appropriate” the Seder for our own purposes, which have everything to do with Jesus? Is that, so to speak, “appropriate”?

This is a great question related to building New Houses of faith out of Old Bricks of tradition.

More on small-scale ministry

In light of my last post, teaching confirmation last night made me want to say a few more things on this subject.

First, watching people of all ages learn and grow is the best job I can imagine. To have any part of that at all is a huge privilege. What actually got me thinking about this “small-scale” business in the first place was something I heard recently at the local food co-op, one woman’s observation about gardeners/farmers and their gifts: “People who grow things make good teachers.”

Ministry on a small scale

It’s been a busy week since my last post, in the ministry-hyperdrive that is the Lenten season. Last Sunday managed to hold 1) the high school youth group planning for the Easter Vigil, 2) an afternoon “retreat” for our congregation’s 5th-graders to learn about the sacrament of communion, and 3) our third late-afternoon Breathe worship–in addition to the usual Sunday morning worship services.

All three of those gatherings had at least two things in common: They required some significant prep work by at least two staffpeople. And they were each attended by fewer than 20 people.

From those two facts it is possible to go in many directions. Some might see a waste of time and expect a disappointed response. Others might see an opportunity to laud The Small- to Medium-Sized Church Experience. At different times in my ministry and life, I could have gone either of those directions.

Instead, I find myself contemplating what makes something “worth it”–in general, and to me. 

Church & 20/30-somethings

Ever since I finished reading Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation a few weeks ago, I’ve been wanting to blog about it. But I’ve had so much to say, that I haven’t known where to start.

There are many things that I find incredibly helpful about Carol Howard Merritt’s book. For one thing, I appreciate (perhaps because I agree with) her conviction that many young adults are indeed seeking the kinds of community and spirituality found in small- to medium-sized, traditional churches. (I admit, this is not only agreeable to me but also convenient, since that’s exactly the kind of church I pastor.) I also particularly appreciate (and yes, agree with) her explanation of the significant debt and insecure employment that make household economics so difficult for people under 40–thus hindering their ability to make or sustain a commitment to a faith community over the long term, and to act on that commitment in the short term.

Path most traveled #2

That image of snowshoe tracks won’t leave me alone, so I guess I’m not done with this topic yet. As someone dedicated to finding and offering community on the journey of discerning vocation, I need to keep wondering what is actually desirable for actual people, and what just seems like it should be good-for-you. With the metaphor of a spiritual journey, it seems two different issues are at stake here, though my previous post addressed them together.

1) Is it “better” to wander (“tramping around in the woods”) or to strive toward a goal (“heading toward a great view”)?

2) Is it “better” to go it alone, carrying all the responsibility and reward of the journey oneself, or to seek out community–those who have seen a bit of the path ahead (or taken some paths less traveled themselves) and have wisdom, comfort, or encouragement to offer?

Choosing the path most traveled

I went snowshoeing this afternoon with a friend near the Pacific Crest Trail. Fresh snow from the past few days made for perfect conditions, and we clearly weren’t the first ones out there. My friend basically knew where we were headed(enough to have promised great views!), but we still relied on others’ previous footsteps to find our own way. When the trails of footprints branched and rejoined, we generally took the road-most-traveled. (Or, if we couldn’t tell, the less steep option.)

After a while, though, we weren’t really sure if we were going to see those great views. The path was confusing, and we weren’t sure if the one we were following was actually going to get us anywhere we wanted to go. I sensed a spiritual-journey-metaphor coming.

Communion, hope, & the food co-op

I’m a member of my local food co-op, though you’d barely be able to tell; I haven’t bought much there since I joined, and I’ve never attended a members meeting or even met any other members. I bet I have much in common with a few of the other 1,000+ members: the ones who love the theory but come up a little short in practice.

I recently got on the email list, and discovered that the co-op store is moving within blocks of my church. So I decided to show up at a visioning/planning meeting last night, to listen and learn. Here are three things I learned:

1. It’s really difficult to make connections with people when you only “cooperate” in theory. It’s much easier in practice–by actually showing up, even if it might be boring or irritating or frustrating. (After all, people trying to cooperate can be all those things.) I know this, in theory.