This is entry can be thought of as an extension of a point I was trying to make in last Thursday's post (where I remarked that we pastors, contrary to the beliefs of folks who put us on pedestals, do not have infinite wells of faith to draw on). See, a number of other pastors have, in the past couple of weeks or so, offered up their own indexes and top ten lists of things they wish everyone would remember about them as human beings, rather than just as the pastor, aka SuperChristian.
This post, then, represents me throwing my proverbial hat into the ring with an attempt of my own at gently reminding everyone--clergy or not--of what is important to know about your pastor, whoever that person may be... (and, to be clear--this post was not catalyzed by any situation in my church at all, but simply by what I've been reading in the Christian blogosphere!)
1. We're human.
This is a biggie, and it's also first because I think the following nine all stem from this singular fact. We're human. We make mistakes, we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, we lose the forest for the trees, and we even get angry and jealous and all those other bad things. Try to not simply see past those traits, but to allow us to wrestle with them. We try to guide you, not fix you. Please do likewise for us!
2. We work at all hours of the day (and night).
Just because I keep only 16 hard-and-fast office hours per week does NOT mean that I only work 16 hours a week. I always work a couple of evenings a week, plus Sundays. I may be returning emails at 9 or 10 at night. I do some of my best sermon writing early in the morning, when I've just had my coffee. As an aside, I think stuff like this is also why we're so annoyingly insistent on keeping our days off as actual Sabbaths.
3. We don't have a direct phone line to Heaven.
I never understood that metaphor anyways, because the most famous direct phone line was the Washington-Moscow red phone during the Cold War, and I'd like to think that we're not in a Cold War with God. Either way--communicating with God can sometimes be just as challenging for us as it is for you. We don't have a standing tee time with Jesus...even though that'd be really, really cool if we did.
4. Sermons take a lot of time and energy.
I probably spend ten hours each week on my sermons, easily, and that's to say nothing of the time I spend vision-casting the sermon series themselves. Preaching them is also usually the most draining work-related task I have each week. It's a frightening thing for us--not the speaking in public part (at least, for me), but that I am sharing my innermost beliefs about God, Jesus, and Scripture without any reciprocity--you are under no obligation to share those similarly deepest beliefs with me if you don't want to.
5. We're required to be patient about the darnedest things.
There's a reason why the term "moving at the speed of church" means "slow as molasses." It has the side effect of calling us to moments of utter serenity, even at things that annoy us. Like, right now, I am writing from my office while this Jupiter-sized housefly buzzes around, like he has for days, bonking his head against my window trying to escape. Trying to swat a fly is an exercise in futility for me, and I thought he'd have left or died by now, but nope. I call him Gus. Gus the Housefly.
6. We don't remember anything that you tell us on Sunday.
Both of the outside posts I linked to at the start of this entry mention this one as one of their ten, and it is worth repeating here as well. It isn't that you (or what you have to say) don't matter to us, it's that our minds are racing like mice on Red Bull going through a maze with cheese at the end. And this includes EVERYTHING told to us on Sundays--my complete, utter inability to put names to faces has quickly become legendary at my church (though surprisingly, I never forget Gus the Housefly's name).
7. We may not be as good as you are at a particular part of our jobs.
A pastor, especially a solo pastor like myself, tends to be a jack of all trades but a master of none. For instance, one of my congregants is a professional chef. I know I'm supposed to have a hand in organizing fellowship opportunities for folks, but in creating a welcoming spread (because no church event can take place without food), I am light years behind this guy. Other colleagues of mine may have a congregant who is, say, a Bible professor. I can only imagine the trip that leading a Bible study in that situation might be!
8. We're not necessarily musically inclined.
I know the stereotype is that the pastor (or their spouse) should be able to sing or play a worship instrument, but you know what...nope. I play the saxophone, which I have used in worship before but only infrequently, and my own singing voice is self-taught, so it is relatively rough and not really conducive to the role of lead vocals (plus we have a very dedicated lead vocalist already!). One of my seminary professors told me how he was told to take voice lessons in seminary because "churches expect their pastors to be able to sing." I'm glad many churches have moved past that mentality, but I also preach, pray, and lead communion, so me singing would come pretty close to turning worship into The Eric Show. No thanks.
9. We know when we're on our game and when we're off it.
It doesn't take something as blatant as you playing block breaker on your cell phone, or doodling on your bulletin from the pew. The vacant "Have I bought milk yet?" stare is usually enough. After we have given enough sermons, we tend to pick up a sixth sense of knowing when what we're saying is hitting home and when it is falling flat. I would borrow from stand-up comedy and say that we know when we're killing, but that isn't quite what we go for with a church.
10. We're worldly.
And I don't mean in the sense that we love money--we don't (unless you're a prosperity preacher). But I'd say the ratio of secular to "Christian" music on my iPod is about 85/15. I own very few "Christian" movies. I love following soccer, baseball, and cycling. I live and breathe the church when I'm on, and so when I'm off, I'd just as soon talk about basketball as I would about the Bible. I swear with not uncommon frequency. I love a good scotch, microbrew, or locally grown wine. And I'm a-okay with all of that.
So that's my list. Do you relate to any of these yourself, whether if you're pastor or are in another line of work or ministry?
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
This Week's Sermon: "Alpha to Omega"
A revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. Christ made it known by sending it through his angel to his servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the witness of Jesus Christ, including all that John saw. 3 Favored is the one who reads the words of this prophecy out loud, and favored are those who listen to it being read, and keep what is written in it, for the time is near. 4 John, to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace and peace to you from the one who is and was and is coming, and from the seven spirits that are before God’s throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ—the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To the one who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 who made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and always. Amen. 7 Look, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. This is so. Amen. 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the one who is and was and is coming, the Almighty.” (CEB)
"The Greatest Movie Never Made: The Book of Revelation," Week One
The man’s weathered, whiskered face was a case study in emotional agony. Peering at me from inside his wire-rimmed glasses, he looked from a distance as any typical, run-of-the-mill, middle-aged father would—some salt and pepper in his hair, maybe a wrinkle here or there, but still in good shape. But once you fail to meet his gaze, to let your eyes drop from his, you notice the mighty scar that runs across the entirety of his throat—an artifact of his most recent attempt to take his own life, and hard proof of why he was talking to me in that moment.
Sitting across from him in a tiny room in the inpatient psychiatric ward at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, the most ministry that I could muster at the moment was to actually maintain that eye contact as he unpacked his entire life for me, from his Ivy League education to his failing marriage and even how he used to hit his children and how deeply he regrets it now. Especially now, now that he has been involuntarily committed to a 72-hour suicide watch. For him, for many people who are incredibly smart and delightfully articulate, time in the suicide prevention psychiatric ward draws out slower and slower like an eternity. With nothing but your thoughts—of which there are many—to occupy you at moments, such folks wrestle with the meaning of life, love, family, and God, and invariably are left contemplating one simple, profound, but incredibly difficult to answer question: “How in the heck did I end up here?”
So they ask to see the psychiatric ward’s chaplain. And my pager would go off, I would walk across the street from the main hospital campus, and I would hear the stories of people living in the margins, people whose own thoughts were as fantastical and wondrous as those of our author of the book of Revelation, John of Patmos. And the resemblance, I think, is hardly coincidental.
Today marks the beginning of a brand-new summer sermon series for each of us. After all, summer is the season of blockbuster movies about superheroes or thrilling heists or action-packed military exploits, and at first glance, the Bible wouldn’t seem to stack up well to such epic storytelling. Jesus preached a lot of turning the other cheek, the rest of the New Testament are a bunch of letters, and the stories of the conquest under Joshua, or of the wars with the Philistines under Saul and David, are far off in the dusty recesses of the Bible’s past. So, enter the book of Revelation. After decades of subjugation by Rome, which included the sacking of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple in the year 70 CE, Saint John writes this final letter of the Bible from his lonely exile on the Greek island of Patmos some roughly twenty years later. His letter is a vivid, harrowing vision of what the future may hold in store for God’s people, and it has often been misinterpreted by Christians since, often in, frankly, wholly incorrect ways. I can’t promise you the right answers in this sermon series, but I can at least promise you a lot of interesting questions to debate during our fellowship time after worship is over!
In allowing ourselves into John’s vision, we must, absolutely must, accept this singular fact as price of our admission into the book of Revelation—we are not John. Each of us, by right of being here on Sundays, belongs to a mainstream religious community that John no longer has. To the extent John has any community now, it is simply with God. John has been cast away, shunted off to a sort of psychiatric ward—not one where he receives treatment for mental illness, but one where he is isolated from the more ordinary members of society.
Our challenge, then, is to meet and recognize this lonely, mystical apostle for who he is—not who we want him to be. Because that, I promise you, is where nearly every other Christian who has come before us and attempted to say that they know exactly what Revelation says falls into trouble. It may trouble us to admit, but by this point in his career, John is an extremist. He does not fall neatly into the camp of any other New Testament theologian—he is not at all like Paul, or Peter, or James, or the writer of Hebrews, and he bears no resemblance to the writings attributed to him in the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John. In Revelation, John marches to the beat of his own drummer, and over the next eight weeks, I would ask us, and I would ask you to hold me to account on this, to not force him into marching to the beat of our drum.
Probably the most common way we have fallen into that trap is the ways we have divided ourselves over what exactly the End Times, that moment when the Second Coming occurs and final judgment is upon us, really looks like. You’ve got people who believe in the tribulation, or in the rapture, or in the battle between heaven and hell. You have your millennialists and your premillennialists and your postmillennialists, and then you’ve got people like me—the panmillennialists. See, I’m a panmillennialist because (to borrow from Nadia Bolz-Weber) I think that everything will pan out.
And in this way, Revelation is an excellent sort of Rorschach test of how you take the rest of the Bible. Are you a person who claims to have all the answers, to possess the key that unlocks the doors to all the right interpretations, or are you a person willing to admit that the scope and grandeur of God’s grace is beyond yours or ours understanding? Or, most likely, are you some of both, and perhaps not exactly sure where you fall on that spectrum?
If so, I think that the opening lines of Revelation are a pretty good indicator that it means that the reason we aren’t getting anywhere is because we are asking the wrong questions. We treat Revelation as something that is meant to divine these sacred mysteries of the future, when in truth, John is speaking of the present. As he writes about himself: “ the servant who testifies!” As he writes about us: “blessed is the one who reads, and blessed are those who hear it, and take it to heart!” As he writes about Jesus Christ: “To Him who loves us!” And finally, in verse 8, what John writes about God, in God’s own voice: “I am who IS,” not simply who is to come.
What John is writing about is not simply the Alpha and the Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet that signify the beginning and the end, no, John is writing about the Alpha TO the Omega, of everything that is happening between beginning and end. It is not merely the destination that Revelation speaks of, but the journey as well, from sin into redemption, from death into grace, from darkness into light, and from earth into heaven. No sooner would you want to flip to the very end of a good book to see how it ends (unless it's Harry Potter) than would you flip immediately to the end of your life and of your faith journey on this earth, and that is what John is avoiding here. His visions may deal with the world to come, but his reality is still firmly planted in the present.
Which is where we too must ground ourselves, if we are to accept John for who he is, the isolated, visionary, mystical, devoted sage that he is. Because just like a patient in a hospital psych ward, John has hit his rock bottom. And it is so, so very tempting for him to skip straight to the end, to leap over these trials and tribulations, these hurts and hang-ups and pains that he is experiencing, and as we will see over the next seven weeks, he entertains those hopes to skip straight to the end a great, great deal. But before that, and before God Himself, John reminds himself—and in doing so, reminds us as well—that his current situation, and his current ministry, is rooted in the present moments of time, where sin and strife still very much exist, and not in the future, much as he would wish for that to be so. In this way, John is echoing the depths of the serenity prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr, that includes the lines that we take “this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that God will make all things right.”
That is the trust that John places in God in the present moment. It is the trust we place in God as well in our own present moments. And it is that trust that leads us to our own salvation.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longivew, Washington
June 3, 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Well is Dry
If I'm honest with myself--and with all of you--sometimes, I just don't have it.
Sometimes, I don't have the energy to do my ministry.
Sometimes, I don't have the strength to pick myself up.
Sometimes, I don't have the faith that God will indeed make all things right.
And so sometimes, I just want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up until I am less battered by the world and everything that is broken with it.
Most of the time--the vast majority of the time, even--I love what I do. I am paid to study the same Bible stories that fascinated me as a child and to teach them to a loving audience every week. I still can't believe how good I have it.
But when I look at the world outside of my loving congregation, the congregation I continue to serve out of my own admiration for them...my joy in what I do sometimes dries up faster than a Samaritan woman's well.
First, I read about a fellow pastor who wants gays and lesbians to be rounded up, fenced off, and allowed to die through attrition.
Next came reading about another fellow pastor who suggests that the government should simply get in the business of killing gays and lesbians.
After that came reading about a church in which a little child was given a standing ovation by all of the adults in the audience for singing a song whose refrain was, "ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven." (Watch the video, notice the kid's age and bearing on the stage, and it's clear that he was coached by an adult or adults.)
Then, there was the story of how Cardinal Timothy Dolan, arguably the most prominent American Catholic leader today, authorized payoffs of $20,000 and annual pensions of $15,000 to pedophile priests who would agree to voluntarily leave the priesthood.
And I just want to retort at these stories, "Stuff like this is why we can't have nice things."
And I just want to retort at these stories, "Stuff like this is why we can't have nice things."
Now, I can take a certain amount of bad press for Christianity in any given day. I might even have made myself numb to it to a certain extent, if only as a defense mechanism so that I can continue to do my work without getting so affected by everything that is happening that I lose my faith.
But this time...when it rains, it pours.
I'm not asking for a pity party here, I'm really not.
But I do want to use this post to disprove the notion that we pastors have an infinite well of faith that we can draw from.
We don't.
And my personal reserves have run dry at the moment.
I'm trying very hard not to replace those empty reserves with anger. I've been praying constantly to avoid falling into the trap of letting my temper rule me, and of violating Jesus's commands about not judging others.
I know that it would be very easy and very cathartic for me to respond to these stories with the wrath of God's own thunder.
Because even though I do not think that any of these instances should be taken as at all representative of the entire Christian tradition in all of its splendor and diversity, I also know that there are other churches out there like the one of that singing child, churches that are teaching their children nothing but to condemn people who aren't like them.
I want to know how I can work at changing their hearts and minds (and they, no doubt, likely feel the same about me). I want to know how I can preach justice without dividing the voice of Christianity.
And I want to be able to do my ministry without feeling like I have to turn my blog into a single-issue blog that is devoted to using my moral authority to do damage control every time another pastor says or does something that turns away the many people who are justifiably skeptical of the church today, people who I want to bring the message of the incredible love and good news of Jesus Christ to.
So...like I said--I'm really not asking for your pity here.
Only your prayers.
Thanks, y'all.
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Letters from the Soul: This Month's Newsletter Column
...plus a brief note about Memorial Day.
"School's Out--Here's Some Summer Homework!"
If you are anything like me, summer is a time to try to take a step back, take stock, and smell the proverbial roses. Part of that process for me has always involved reading—I’m a lifelong bookworm—and given the number of teachers, librarians, and other education-related professionals we boast in our congregation, I hope that you may potentially appreciate me plugging the value of reading by offering a brief list of books that I highly recommend right now:
“It’s Not All About You: Young Adults Seeking Justice,” edited by Julie Richardson Brown and Courtney Richards, 2012
One of the characteristics I love most about our church is our commitment to mission in the local community, and this newly-released book is a compilation of accounts from many people my age about their own efforts to make the world a better place in their respective communities. Read their stories, be inspired, and hear how our generation talks about outreach and mission!
“Blue Like Jazz,” by Donald Miller, 2003
This isn’t a new book by any means, but the movie adaptation of Donald Miller’s compilation of memories and essays was just made into a movie this spring (with the same name), so I plan on revisiting his book soon. His words are insightful, funny, and uplifting all at the same time.
“The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock,” by Fred Craddock, 2011
In the world of preaching, Disciples pastor and professor Fred Craddock is a superstar. He has ministered for many years, and his wit and sense of humor makes his preaching very engaging to both hear and read. I saw him preach last year at our General Assembly and loved it!
So, that is what will be on my shelf this summer. What about you?
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Eric
"The Last Full Measure of Devotion"
Several years ago, I visited for the first time ever the grave of my uncle Albert at my family's plot in a cemetery in Troy, Michigan. He is buried across a small, grassy way from my grandmother and great-grandparents, surrounded by fellow veterans who, like him, were killed in action in World War II. It was a profound moment that is difficult to describe in words, but thankfully, we have a day set aside to give space for such profound emotion and honor on behalf of those who have given what Abraham Lincoln calls "the last full measure of devotion."
This past Monday, we and the nation commemorated another Memorial Day in honor of those veterans who have passed away. Most, if not all, of you have veterans either in your family or your circle of friends, and we count a number of veterans as members of FCC.
To those veterans, and those who have come before us, thank you. ~Pastor Eric
Finally, on a more personal note, it is 364 days until Memorial Day 2013. Please do not let it be 364 days before you thank a veteran for his or her service. So to my late uncle Albert, and my grandpa George, and my aunt Leanne--veterans all--thank you.
"School's Out--Here's Some Summer Homework!"
If you are anything like me, summer is a time to try to take a step back, take stock, and smell the proverbial roses. Part of that process for me has always involved reading—I’m a lifelong bookworm—and given the number of teachers, librarians, and other education-related professionals we boast in our congregation, I hope that you may potentially appreciate me plugging the value of reading by offering a brief list of books that I highly recommend right now:
“It’s Not All About You: Young Adults Seeking Justice,” edited by Julie Richardson Brown and Courtney Richards, 2012
One of the characteristics I love most about our church is our commitment to mission in the local community, and this newly-released book is a compilation of accounts from many people my age about their own efforts to make the world a better place in their respective communities. Read their stories, be inspired, and hear how our generation talks about outreach and mission!
“Blue Like Jazz,” by Donald Miller, 2003
This isn’t a new book by any means, but the movie adaptation of Donald Miller’s compilation of memories and essays was just made into a movie this spring (with the same name), so I plan on revisiting his book soon. His words are insightful, funny, and uplifting all at the same time.
“The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock,” by Fred Craddock, 2011
In the world of preaching, Disciples pastor and professor Fred Craddock is a superstar. He has ministered for many years, and his wit and sense of humor makes his preaching very engaging to both hear and read. I saw him preach last year at our General Assembly and loved it!
So, that is what will be on my shelf this summer. What about you?
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Eric
"The Last Full Measure of Devotion"
Several years ago, I visited for the first time ever the grave of my uncle Albert at my family's plot in a cemetery in Troy, Michigan. He is buried across a small, grassy way from my grandmother and great-grandparents, surrounded by fellow veterans who, like him, were killed in action in World War II. It was a profound moment that is difficult to describe in words, but thankfully, we have a day set aside to give space for such profound emotion and honor on behalf of those who have given what Abraham Lincoln calls "the last full measure of devotion."
This past Monday, we and the nation commemorated another Memorial Day in honor of those veterans who have passed away. Most, if not all, of you have veterans either in your family or your circle of friends, and we count a number of veterans as members of FCC.
To those veterans, and those who have come before us, thank you. ~Pastor Eric
Finally, on a more personal note, it is 364 days until Memorial Day 2013. Please do not let it be 364 days before you thank a veteran for his or her service. So to my late uncle Albert, and my grandpa George, and my aunt Leanne--veterans all--thank you.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
This Week's Sermon: "Babel Undone"
"When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. 4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. 5 There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. 7 They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? 8 How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” 12 They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” 13 Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”" (CEB)
Pentecost 2012
While I was in the town of Akko, Israel, in July of 2010 to work on an archaeological excavation, I and my fellow amateur archaeologists stayed at the Israeli Nautical College—sort of their equivalent of Annapolis, but for high school aged cadets as well—next to the Crusader city of Acre. We slept on tiny beds, did battle with mosquitoes the size of my face, and ate the same food at the dining hall day…after day…after day.
And sharing that dining hall with us was a group of young Israeli Sea Scouts. We sat on one side of the dining hall, they sat on the other. But at every meal, we could still hear the prayer they prayed before they ate because, well, they sort of yelled it. In response to what the leader would shout, all the Scouts would yell back, “Yahm! Yahm! Yahm Yahm Yahm!” Being the space cadet American that I am, I thought that they were shouting, “Yum Yum Yum!” before eating…which, I mean, it sounded like a fairly militaristic way to praise your food, but it is something I can get behind—my own preferred pre-meal prayer happens to be “Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub, Amen.” So, while shouting “Yum Yum Yum” might seem like an odd choice of prayer, far be it for me to question it. But towards the end of the trip, one of the students on the dig with me, who actually knew Hebrew, told me that “yahm” is actually Hebrew for “sing.” So these students were replying to the call to prayer by saying, “Sing, Sing, Sing!”
Sometimes, the way to serve God is as simple as to sing, as to speak, as to testify, but communicating that command to sing, to serve, is anything but simple—and certainly not simple for the ignoramus American student who doesn’t know a lick of Hebrew. I would like to blame my ineptness with foreign communication on the whole Tower of Babel story--we'll get to that in a minute--but as you will soon see, that should no longer be the most convenient excuse!
But the language that God uses to talk to us is also…for lack of a better term, organic, dynamic, growing, and changing. After Noah and the flood, God sees the destruction caused by the floodwaters but declares that never again will Earth be destroyed in such a way. Moses has to talk God out of smiting the Israelites during the Exodus journey in the wilderness. And the miracle of Pentecost, of the speaking of “God’s deeds of power,” undoes another primeval event—the Tower of Babel. In Genesis 11, to prevent us from building a monument into the heavens, God cast us about with different tongues and dialects, but with the coming of the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus Christ, Babel has been undone, we can once again understand each other in the common language of divine love, and the re-emergence of unity in God has triumphed over human-initiated sectarianism. If that is to be drunk on the “new wine,” as the Apostles’ detractors refer to it, then may the intoxicating power of the new wine be enough to continue to overcome the divisions we have built up!
And if you ask why we may praise a potentially changeable deity with the devotion that we do to God in the Scriptures—especially the way that Peter does in his inaugural sermon in Acts 2—as well as in church every Sunday, you may well find yourself on the wrong side of the judgmental glances as people wonder to themselves, “Exactly what is the temperature that this heretic will burn at in hell?”
But such condemnatory questions are largely beside the point. We praise this God that is organic and dynamic because of the gifts that He bestows out of an unknowable love for us. After breaking us apart by giving us separate languages and dialects, God builds us back up because He realizes that He has withheld something from us—the Holy Spirit—and it is given to us because we have finally realized that our first attempt to build a bridge to Heaven—a literal bridge in the tower of Babel—we realized the foolishness of that first attempt. And like all rough drafts, whether of school papers, or construction projects, or, ahem, Sunday morning sermons, we have broken it down, taken it apart, and come back to God with something that we hope and pray is far greater, and in this case, that thing is something to be truly grateful for: the post-Resurrection church.
Yet when we look around the world and see its complete lack of unity—its discord, its strife, its seemingly eternal iniquities in the form of poverty, violence, and inequality, we can lose our gratefulness to God in a big darn hurry. All of the sudden, our dialogue with God becomes, “What have you done for me lately?” We shout out, “You absentee landlord who created earth and sky and sun and moon in six days, who spoke through your prophets and raised your son from the dead, where are you now, when children die by the thousands from malnutrition and preventable disease, or when hardworking adults go years without a decent job?” We become latter-day Doubting Thomases, whose own disbelief occurs when he is not present to receive the Holy Spirit from the Risen Christ. How appropriate a mascot for many of us today—if we worry that we have missed out on the gift of the Holy Spirit, if we are scared deep in our bones, in our souls, that we are not filled with the spirit the way that we were supposed to, then we in turn begin to doubt!
We become Doubting Thomases, we become the naysayers who would stifle the moving, breathing vitality of the Holy Spirit in today’s world. We become the skeptics of a generation that hopes, rather than prays, that tomorrow will be better than today. And the God that many preachers tell us to have faith in, and pray to, is a God that is altogether horrific for us to contemplate, a destructive, apocalyptic deity who eagerly counts down the days until fire and brimstone rain down upon the Earth…and you just know that the Left Coast is going to get hit first! (Well, Seattle and Portland, really, but since we’re sandwiched in between them, we’re pretty much toast as well.)
However, the Pentecost story is, at its core, one of how God has not lost faith in us yet. For, only 52 days after the killing of His Son, God sends to us the Holy Spirit. And within the church, peace is the best means we have, because this post-Pentecost church is one that has to take, as a prerequisite for its existence, a desire for peace and for unity. We praise God for everything we have been given, and it, too, is in language that sounds very similar from church to church—for, I promise you, other churches sing many of the exact same songs that we do, and they even read the exact same Bible that we do! Their praise sounds like our praise, and that is the entire point of the Pentecost story—that the coming of the Holy Spirit can indeed unify our hearts and minds around God no matter our language.
So whether it is with the Hebrew “Yahm,” or “Yah Chai,” or the English “Hallelujah,” we are all speaking this same language of praise. Only this time, instead of speaking the same language so that we may build a tower to the heavens, may we speak the same language to bring the peace of the heavens down to our weary little world. And if our reward for such works of praise comes not in this world, may it come in the next, for it is not merely enough to be taught God’s goodness—we are called to witness it, to proclaim it, to testify to it, and most importantly, to live it.
And so I pray, and I pray, and I pray, that there will be a day when eventually God will look upon the hurt and pain caused in the world, and call out to us, and set bushes on fire, and jump up and down and scream, “Enough! Love! I want love!” And I can hear our excuses now…we might reply, “But we don’t know how.”
And God will simply say to us, “Sing!”
We might say, “That’s impossible,” and God will reply, “Sing!”
And we might say, “We might fail,” but God will keep coming back to us, over and over and over, whispering in our ears, “Sing! Sing! Sing!”
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
May 27, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Pizza Funds and Whippersnappers These Days
My mom's theory is that if you offer food, young people will come to just about anything. And speaking as someone who is innately predisposed to consuming vast amounts of free food, I tend to agree, especially since I'm pretty sure food tastes even better when it is free.
But it's also a very simple variable in what has become a complex equation of calculus-esque proportions--how does the church welcome back the young people (Generations X and Y) who have voted with their feet and left the church?
The issue that this question is predicated on is (in my eyes) a lot more simple to answer--why have young people left the church to begin with? I can say that in my experience, it is because young adults see the church as irrelevant--we either have a rap for being extremely unwelcoming (and yahoos like this guy aren't really helping at the moment), or we have a rap for caring only about propping up the same boring, dreary institution that sings the same boring, dreary hymns on the same boring, dreary pipe organ every single Sunday.
I keep telling people I meet, though, that my congregation does not fall into either camp. I am constantly amazed and impressed at the dimensions of the hospitality my congregants offer to our visitors, and our worship is becoming more and more dynamic--we almost never sing out of the hymnals anymore (this Sunday will be the first time since Lent that we'll be using a hymnal, as our praise team will be taking a well-deserved holiday weekend off), our praise team itself has been exploring with more folk-oriented arrangements of contemporary music with the addition of a banjo to our regular lineup, and my own preaching takes place not from the pulpit, but in the round, as I walk about with my sermon laid out on my iPad.
Rock and roll with a kick drum and bright lights it ain't, sure. But that also isn't really us, and truth be told, the stereotype that what young people want is a rock concert of a worship is not completely correct.
I have come to believe that what people my own age are seeking from a church, more than anything else in the world, is a sense of meaning, and this is actually being borne out in our increasing participation other unconventional, but certainly not technology-heavy, worship traditions like the Taize tradition out of continental Europe.
For my part, I spent my four years in college at Lewis & Clark immersed in the Taize tradition through the regular worship services led by Sr. Loretta Schaff, a Franciscan sister who served as one of L&C's chaplains. Coming to Longview, and at the behest of my congregation, I began work a couple months ago on an unconventional evening service, and I borrowed heavily from the Taize tradition in doing so; I essentially took the contemporary prayer styles I had been exposed to in college and seminary--Taize, Quaker, and emergent--and threw them all into a blender to create a new sort of hybrid worship that also brought in elements of confession, repentance, and forgiveness. There's no sermon, but there is room for extemporaneous testimony. There's no Eucharist, but there is a time to gather and take hands together around the Cross.
And when we put it on, for a very small crowd, the first time on Sunday, May 6, I felt what was indeed lacking in other churches I have experienced over the years--I felt the authenticity that comes with the Holy Spirit being present.
It's a pretty powerful thing.
And trust me, it is not as though my generation has turned our backs to it...we just need to know that the church can help us find it once again.
But offering us free pizza sure doesn't hurt, either.
How have you seen--in your church or elsewhere--young people be brought back into the embrace of Jesus Christ?
Yours in Christ,
Eric
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The De Facto Associate: A Retrospect One Year Later
(Author's Note: Apologies for my one-week hiatus, and my thanks to all of you for indulging that brief vacation from the world of Christian blogging. It was a great moment of time away from the everyday demands of ministry, and I am glad to be back. -E.A.)
The last two-thirds of 2011 was an absolute blur for me—I graduated from seminary, was ordained, saw my childhood congregation get ripped apart by a destructive (and likely unnecessary) schism, and I went from being a Bay Area graduate student intending to write a master’s thesis in Biblical Studies at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University to being a full-time solo pastor in semi-rural southern Washington.
But all of those massive life changes began with one other change, and if I was completely honest with myself, it was a change as formative as any of the above—exactly one year ago today, I formally stepped down from my work as the student associate minister at First Christian Church in Concord, California, following two years of ministry in that post.
And I will be honest—I truly doubt that if I began my full-time ministry somewhere as an associate pastor of a larger church (as opposed to my current calling as the solo pastor of a smaller church), that I would be enjoying ministry as much as I am after all of said life changes.
This is not ego talking—just a worry of the reality that a supermajority (between 60-80%, depending on who you ask) of newly-minted pastors leave ministry within five years, and my guess is that many of them are (or were) associates, departing the ministry after a singularly bad experience as an associate pastor.
I know that there are other denominations with a more centralized polity than the Disciples (whose congregations are fully autonomous, as opposed to, say, having a pastor assigned to them by a bishop) have what is called a “curate” associate pastorate in their parishes for newly ordained pastors. A curate pastorate is designed to be filled for only two years—presumably, in those two years you will learn so much that you will outgrow it and need to move elsewhere for your own professional and spiritual growth. For associates who feel called to a church only for a short time because they are being groomed for a future senior pastorate, it’s a pretty good model.
I feel extremely lucky in this regard, as I have come to view my two years of part-time student associate ministry at FCC Concord as a sort of in-seminary curate post. I was at a parish that took immense pride in being a teaching congregation—my senior pastor there, Russ Peterman, had been there for about five years when I was hired, and I was his third student associate—and that pride and identity showed, even in how they referred to me.
Some of my classmates at seminary were referred to as “Ministers-in-Training” by their parishes, which to me sounded extraordinarily patronizing and brought to mind images of a poor student having to go up to the pulpit to preach while wearing water wings over their robes.
My title at FCC, in contrast, was “Student Associate Minister.” It denoted my student status respectfully, without patronizing me, but it also labeled me an actual minister of the church, rather than just one who is training. I have to think that, at least unconsciously, it made me feel more like a full member of that community for the two joyous years I spent with them. At a bare minimum, I know that I carry a fierce loyalty to them that I am not apt to lose anytime soon.
Now, please don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying I just liked a place more because they gave me a better title. I’m only saying that, in my case (and my case only), that title was a reflection of the place in their fold that this community had given me.
But unlike other associates—student and ordained alike—I was not simply given the dregs of the job to do. My job description was not “everything that Russ does not want to do,” which was a far more tangible way of demonstrating this faith community's affirmation and acceptance of me. While I did do ministry that was meant to meet the needs of the parish—like starting a youth Sunday School and chaperoning a lock-in or two—I was also given a free rein to poke around in almost every aspect of the church’s life, from finance to mission, and I was never asked to stop using pop culture materials, even television shows like South Park or Family Guy, in my Sunday School classes.
Perhaps most importantly, I was being taught by a senior pastor whose talent was never eclipsed by his ego. I preached, on average, once every six weeks, and attendance would drop only negligibly, if at all, on my Sundays. I was included in long-term worship planning meetings. On the Sunday I was away in Kansas City, awaiting approval for ordination pending graduation by my region’s committee on ordination and standing, Russ began his sermon by talking about me, of all people. And most memorably, I went from being too fearful to even preach one Sunday in the first multi-week sermon series during my tenure (if memory serves, it was six weeks on the Sermon on the Mount) to, in a 90-minute, caffeine-fueled brainstorming session, hashing out the entire Lent 2011 sermon series with Russ, complete with texts, titles, and themes.
In This Odd and Wondrous Calling, the fantastic 2009 book that she co-authored with fellow pastor Rev. Martin Copenhaver, the Rev. Lillian Daniel wrote about her time as an associate minister early in her career, at the same age as me, saying, “The relationship among clergy at the same church is profoundly intimate. When it works, there can develop something close to telepathy.” In those sorts of vision-casting, sermon-planning sessions, there was a hint of a sort of shared vision, I think, between Russ and myself, owing in no small part to his own influence upon me. After all, we each simply saw sides of each other we would have never seen but for both of us serving on the church staff. And because of this, I would echo Rev. Daniel wholeheartedly in one other sentiment--that I firmly believe that associates should feel called based on who their senior pastor will be as much as any other factor, if not more so.
I still think a lot about my time at seminary, of what I learned and wished that I had learned. But I learned the most about how to actually do ministry not from any seminary class, but from my two years at Concord, because there, I had finally caught a glimpse of the minister I could become, and of the minister I am today.
Yours in Christ,
Eric
The last two-thirds of 2011 was an absolute blur for me—I graduated from seminary, was ordained, saw my childhood congregation get ripped apart by a destructive (and likely unnecessary) schism, and I went from being a Bay Area graduate student intending to write a master’s thesis in Biblical Studies at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University to being a full-time solo pastor in semi-rural southern Washington.
But all of those massive life changes began with one other change, and if I was completely honest with myself, it was a change as formative as any of the above—exactly one year ago today, I formally stepped down from my work as the student associate minister at First Christian Church in Concord, California, following two years of ministry in that post.
And I will be honest—I truly doubt that if I began my full-time ministry somewhere as an associate pastor of a larger church (as opposed to my current calling as the solo pastor of a smaller church), that I would be enjoying ministry as much as I am after all of said life changes.
This is not ego talking—just a worry of the reality that a supermajority (between 60-80%, depending on who you ask) of newly-minted pastors leave ministry within five years, and my guess is that many of them are (or were) associates, departing the ministry after a singularly bad experience as an associate pastor.
I know that there are other denominations with a more centralized polity than the Disciples (whose congregations are fully autonomous, as opposed to, say, having a pastor assigned to them by a bishop) have what is called a “curate” associate pastorate in their parishes for newly ordained pastors. A curate pastorate is designed to be filled for only two years—presumably, in those two years you will learn so much that you will outgrow it and need to move elsewhere for your own professional and spiritual growth. For associates who feel called to a church only for a short time because they are being groomed for a future senior pastorate, it’s a pretty good model.
I feel extremely lucky in this regard, as I have come to view my two years of part-time student associate ministry at FCC Concord as a sort of in-seminary curate post. I was at a parish that took immense pride in being a teaching congregation—my senior pastor there, Russ Peterman, had been there for about five years when I was hired, and I was his third student associate—and that pride and identity showed, even in how they referred to me.
Some of my classmates at seminary were referred to as “Ministers-in-Training” by their parishes, which to me sounded extraordinarily patronizing and brought to mind images of a poor student having to go up to the pulpit to preach while wearing water wings over their robes.
My title at FCC, in contrast, was “Student Associate Minister.” It denoted my student status respectfully, without patronizing me, but it also labeled me an actual minister of the church, rather than just one who is training. I have to think that, at least unconsciously, it made me feel more like a full member of that community for the two joyous years I spent with them. At a bare minimum, I know that I carry a fierce loyalty to them that I am not apt to lose anytime soon.
Now, please don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying I just liked a place more because they gave me a better title. I’m only saying that, in my case (and my case only), that title was a reflection of the place in their fold that this community had given me.
But unlike other associates—student and ordained alike—I was not simply given the dregs of the job to do. My job description was not “everything that Russ does not want to do,” which was a far more tangible way of demonstrating this faith community's affirmation and acceptance of me. While I did do ministry that was meant to meet the needs of the parish—like starting a youth Sunday School and chaperoning a lock-in or two—I was also given a free rein to poke around in almost every aspect of the church’s life, from finance to mission, and I was never asked to stop using pop culture materials, even television shows like South Park or Family Guy, in my Sunday School classes.
Perhaps most importantly, I was being taught by a senior pastor whose talent was never eclipsed by his ego. I preached, on average, once every six weeks, and attendance would drop only negligibly, if at all, on my Sundays. I was included in long-term worship planning meetings. On the Sunday I was away in Kansas City, awaiting approval for ordination pending graduation by my region’s committee on ordination and standing, Russ began his sermon by talking about me, of all people. And most memorably, I went from being too fearful to even preach one Sunday in the first multi-week sermon series during my tenure (if memory serves, it was six weeks on the Sermon on the Mount) to, in a 90-minute, caffeine-fueled brainstorming session, hashing out the entire Lent 2011 sermon series with Russ, complete with texts, titles, and themes.
In This Odd and Wondrous Calling, the fantastic 2009 book that she co-authored with fellow pastor Rev. Martin Copenhaver, the Rev. Lillian Daniel wrote about her time as an associate minister early in her career, at the same age as me, saying, “The relationship among clergy at the same church is profoundly intimate. When it works, there can develop something close to telepathy.” In those sorts of vision-casting, sermon-planning sessions, there was a hint of a sort of shared vision, I think, between Russ and myself, owing in no small part to his own influence upon me. After all, we each simply saw sides of each other we would have never seen but for both of us serving on the church staff. And because of this, I would echo Rev. Daniel wholeheartedly in one other sentiment--that I firmly believe that associates should feel called based on who their senior pastor will be as much as any other factor, if not more so.
I still think a lot about my time at seminary, of what I learned and wished that I had learned. But I learned the most about how to actually do ministry not from any seminary class, but from my two years at Concord, because there, I had finally caught a glimpse of the minister I could become, and of the minister I am today.
Yours in Christ,
Eric
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