Thanksgiving is an odd holiday. I am conflicted about it’s historicity, or lack there of. But I do embrace it’s spirit. Somehow it has managed to remain a mostly unexploited, noncommercial holiday, unlike even Halloween or Easter. Thanksgiving has it’s hallmark traditions and food items, but no candy that can easily be packaged and sold at the CVS counter. Cranberry bubblegum and pumpkin breath mints are acquired tastes.

But, in addition to Thanksgiving’s resistance of consumeristic trends, I like the idea of taking a moment and saying “thanks.” “Thanksgiving” has always been an integral part of the church’s liturgy, and rightly so. Our lives are lived in constant gratitude for the generous offerings of a a loving God; offerings we experience through our family and friends, our community and neighbors, our fortunes and dreams. When we offer our thanks in a community, whether the church gathered at worship or the family gathered at dinner, we give voice to our thanks and hear the grateful expressions of others. And within that communal expression of gratitude, we come to realize that someone else is grateful for us, that we are a generous offering of God for others.

My family used to gather around the table before a big, wonderful Thanksgiving meal, and pause for a moment to offer thanks in the form of a makeshift prayer. There were a few Thanksgivings where it was hard to be grateful – like the ones we spent in the hospital with my mother as she fought off leukemia. But gratitude is a discipline. Even in the face of loss and grief, we were always able to find something to be grateful for.

Thanksgiving is an odd holiday. We are the only nation that observes it. Yet “thanksgiving” with a small “t” is part of our daily life. Each day brings a new joy, a new hope, a new possibility. Each day offers another chance to express our thanks. This Thanksgiving morning, as the sun rises on yet another new day, I give my voice up to expressions of gratitude in union with all the saints who offer their thanks today.

I have to admit that the great experiment has been  harder than I imagined.

I thought with a bit of time and some consultation with friends, I would find my way to my future career. After all, I always had worked it out that way. But for whatever reasons, this journey has been longer and more difficult than I imagined. At times I’ve felt lost, confused, clueless. At other times I’ve felt liberated, excited, hopeful.

Now I am setting myself to the task of writing a job description for a job I hope to find. I’m not going to wait for someone to hire me. I’m going to try to define my interests first – in a very clear and direct way – and then see if there is a place where I can realize my dream job. In other words, I’m taking the bull by the horns!

I think I thought at first that I would find an opportunity that matched my interests. But what I’ve come to realize is that I need to make the opportunity. If I really want to pursue my dreams and do what I really feel called to do, I need to make that happen, and not cede the responsibility for my dreams to any one else.

So, what is my dream? Well, I will post the job description here when I’m finished with it. But the rough outline is that I want to help churches develop leaders within their congregations. I want to help churches create systems that encourage people to explore, define and exercize their unique leadership role. I want to help churches produce great people who make a big difference in their communities. I want to help pastors better understand their role as leaders and engage their congregations effectively. I want to help pastors realize their full leadership potential for the sake of their churches and the communities they serve. I want to help congregations form their vision and realize their mission. I want to lead congregations through a process of discernment that helps define their mission and purpose but also gives them a road map to success. Finally, I want to help congregations engage their participants fully in the mission of the church. I want to create mechanisms for including the full congregation in the work of the church, so that everyone who comes to a church is fully engaged in a meaningful experience that deepens their relationship with God, their family, their church and their community.

Ok. That’s a lot I know. So I’m going to work to make it a job description that is specific and clear. And then, I hope you will help me make it even better and more clear, and then help me find a church that wants someone to do it!

 

I remember the days after 9/11.

I remember the long days in front of the church, just talking with people. Holding their hands. Praying with them. Sharing their grief and their confusion.

I remember the long nights, in restaurants and bars, talking with strangers as we all tried to understand what had happened and what was happening.

And I remember being so angry.

Early on the morning of 9/11 I met with a young Chinese-American couple who were planning their wedding. It was our first or second meeting. He had a job in the financial industry, and after our meeting he took a subway downtown to his office. But he didn’t get there.  On his way down, a plane flew into the World Trade Center and his subway train stopped in its tracks.

A few months later, I remember presiding at his wedding. I remember the elaborate reception afterwards, that included a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and a multi-course meal comprised of dead animals I could not identify. I remember thinking at the moment, as this couple began their new life together, that this was the way to respond to terrorism: to continue living, to embrace each other, to trust in the fundamental goodness of life, even with the bad parts. This wedding, and the countless other little ways that we mark the moments of our lives, were small forms of resistance. It was a way of saying “our intentions have not been inturrepted.”

I thought that 9/11 presented us with an opportunity to do something different. I thought we had a chance as a nation to respond to terror in the only way terror can truly be defeated. I honestly hoped that we would return the terror with a new resolve to be agents of peace throughout the world. As the drum beats for war increased their volume, I realized that war was not the answer, but war was inevitable.

I can’t help but wonder what would be different if we had made different choices over the past ten years. What might we have done if we had invested in something other than two ill-conceived wars?

The worst thing about terrorism is what it does to your soul. It shakes your faith in your basic safety. It inspires you to lash out. It makes you feel unsure, like you can’t trust the world. This is the poison that seeped into our hearts on 9/11. And we have made the entire world feel our pain.

When 9/11 happened, I remember thinking one thing: Stop! Stop this violence! Stop this destruction! Just make it all stop! I didn’t want revenge. I didn’t even want justice. I just wanted it all to stop. And I couldn’t help but think that for other people in other lands, where events like 9/11 happen on a regular basis, where war is just a way of life, that their suffering and fear must have become part of their souls. And maybe this was a moment for me to feel what that felt like.

I am still afraid. And I am still angry. I’m angry mostly for what we have become, for what we let this terror do to us. I’m angry because we didn’t resist it, we succumbed, and we turned the wheel of violence and passed it on to distant lands and people we don’t know. I hope someday the wheel turns back around to someone – or some people – who have the strength of character and the power of faith to stop the wheel from turning again. I wonder where such people might be, or how such people might become our leaders. I wonder how long we must wait for it all to stop.

I have been lucky to have a number of great mentors over the course of my life. As I grow older, I’ve watched my mentors age as well. This week, one of those mentors died during surgery at the age of 80.

Rev. Richard S. Parker was my first real mentor in the ministry. I served with him at the Port Washington United Methodist Church right after I graduated college and moved to New York to attend Union Theological Seminary. I remember my first meeting with Dick after I had been hired as the student pastor, in his office at the church, when he looked at me, at 22 years old, and said, “So, you’ll be up for preaching in a couple of weeks.” I freaked out, but sure enough I preached in a few weeks. Dick put an awful lot of trust in me – and gave me the courage to believe that I could be an effective pastor. He saw in me much more than I saw in myself, and he helped me discover my strengths. Though I was enrolled in seminary, I was intending to pursue an academic career. Dick helped me to see parish ministry as a rewarding, important, transformative career. I would not have pursued ordination in the New York Annual Conference had it not been for Dick’s thoughtful shepherding.

Dick also showed me the ropes of the political life of Methodism. He knew the ins and outs of Methodist politics better than almost anyone. He was still going to General Conference as a delegate back in those days, and I think he held a record for the most consecutive General Conferences as a delegate. Not sure – but he would have been in the running. He represented us well – reading ALL the material and advocating for the causes he passionately believed in. The only person I ever met more passionate than him about social justice was perhaps his wife Grace, who was also one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. Her passion for justice lacked some of the intellectual sophistication of Dick’s, and I remember many “discussions” over lunch when Grace would be pressing a point that Dick didn’t buy….but Grace rarely budged. Dick might have thought the issue through carefully, but Grace was committed and writing letters to whoever she thought might read them. They made a powerful couple and loved each other in a way that is rare to see these days.

In later years, when I was pastor at the Washington Square United Methodist Church, Dick again generously provided his guidance and support. He had served at the church just before I arrived in an interim capacity. I invited him to join a “think tank” of leaders who would help me think through the challenges that congregation faced, and Dick provided essential advice and compassionate care for me and the church. As before, I was able to navigate challenging waters in large part because of Dick Parker.

Finding myself in the curious position that I am in now – of re-evaluating my call to ministry and my place in the church – I hope I choose a future that honors the enormous contribution I’ve received from my many mentors. Dick was no romantic. He knew well the frustrations of ministry. He once shared with me a story that I often reflected on during my frustrating moments in the parish: A pastor in a small town drove out to the train tracks every afternoon, just in time to watch the daily train roar down the tracks. Noticing this pattern over a few weeks, one of his parishioners asked him why he went out every afternoon to look at the train. The pastor replied, “I just like to see something move in this town without me having to push it.”

Dick, thanks for that story. Thanks for the many gifts you gave me that are buried in the secret places of my heart. I am so grateful for the blessing you were to me – and even to my family and many of my friends. May God receive you now and place you on an important committee where you can contribute much. Or better yet, may you sail on the seas with the charisma God shared with us for a while.

 

 

What does it mean that the mainline church is in such obvious decline? The fact of decline is no longer in dispute. The statistics are clear, and the efforts to reduce the trend are transparently desperate.

And yet, at the end of the day, the only reason the church is in decline is because we in the church have made poor decisions. We made bad investments. We made mistakes. Our intentions have been good, no doubt, but our effects and results have been – on the whole – disastrous.

It is good to remember that the church does not belong to us. It belongs to God. We are ultimately accountable – not to the statistics that we hold dear – but to the God that first called us and formed us as a body. I suspect that “decline” will define the church for most of the rest of my life. There is little sign that the institutional United Methodist Church is embracing the magnitude of change that would be necessary to change our reality. The fact is it took us decades to get to this point. It will take us decades to get out. I am confident we will get out – and that a new day will dawn for us as we respond more faithfully to the call of God and the needs of the communities we serve.

But for this time now, we need a theology of decline. We need to see in our decline the workings of God – perhaps in the cracks on the facades of our buildings. I do not believe that it was God’s intention for the church to fail so miserably. But I do believe that the decline we are in will be used by God to bring forth a transformed, revived, relevant church. That is a statement of faith. And it requires belief – not in bishops and conferences and denominational reports – but in a powerful, loving God who is not finished with us yet.

Gil Rendle describes this moment as a wilderness journey during which we have benefited much because we have learned much:

Our time in the wilderness has been spent productively searching multiple paths that might lead us to our more purposeful future. We now stand on the shoulders of those who have led and gone before us in this wandering. We now can claim and use with confidence their lessons, particularly in explorations of church growth, congregational transformation, and leadership development. (Gil Rendle in Journey in the Wilderness)

The question is whether we rightly apply what we have learned over the last forty years of decline. The way we answer that question will give expression to the theology of decline we have adopted. Is decline a meaningless result of cultural changes all around us? Is decline a unavoidable consequence of a scientific, technological, materialistic age? Is decline the product of a lack of faith in the “right” theological position? Or is decline an opportunity to learn, to more deeply engage with the historic triumphs of our tradition, to reflect on the deep truths of our scripture, to summon our greatest thinking and creativity, to respond pragmatically to the experiences of the real people and communities we are called to serve?

Rev. Dr. Robert Allen Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, reflected on the meaning of Pentecost in the context of decline. His sermon is one of the best, most relevant pentecost sermons I’ve heard in a long time. Though highly critical of the current moment in the UMC, Hill points out some key areas of focus that could lead to transformation and that are no doubt the result of careful learning in the wilderness.