Out beyond ideas...

Christ the King Sunday... Again!

Christ can be both King and Baby

    I always struggle with the image of Christ as the King, and thanks to my deep love and commitment to the liturgical calendar its time to struggle again.   This coming Sunday, November 26th is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and it’s the day we celebrate Christ the King Sunday.   Liturgically speaking it makes logical sense we have to get Christ up as King before we can get him down as baby Jesus.  It’s a Yen and Yang thing.  So this last Sunday of the year we celebrate Christ with the most transcendent and “lifted up” image – Christ sitting on the right hand of the throne of God.  This symbol and Sunday celebration has it place within the calendar.  It can simply remind us that Christ and his path does (can) lead to restoration and wholeness.  Christ does bridge the gap between the universal and the particular, between the sacred and profane.  Between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Christ can be, must be, both King and baby. 
    However, this image is potentially abrasive and even abusive.  For those of us in patriarchal recovery groups – testosterone anonymous, this image of Christ the King is also a tough one.  I can only image how difficult for those who have been on the other end of patriarchy.  So, there are many obvious reason to struggle with this image, but it seems important to claim it, integrate it and transcend it.  Especially in the unique times in which we live.   
    We have an opportunity and responsibility at this time in history and in this context of religious integral pluralism and its opposing force of exclusive Christianity, to claim again this person of Christ and this Christian path.   With a renewed intention and seriousness we can claim a Christian path of radical embrace leading to the wholeness and healing for all of creation.  There are those who will use this Christian path to exclude others, often using images such as Christ the King and doctrinal propositions, to separate and divide us from each other, or as a tools for individual ego aggrandizement or to back a worldview of privilege and dominance or simply for food for spiritual narcissism. We can and should celebrate that others take Christianity seriously and that we stand together in a shared tradition of practice and yet we should not allow that partial message to be confused with the full message of this path, which is one of a radical all inclusive love and grace that leads us beyond ourselves.
    I say this not to continue to draw lines between sects and forms of Christianity which only continues our alienation form each other.   All expressions of Christianity have their place and value in the mosaic of Christian expression.  Instead, I say this,  and I claim this Sunday, to strengthen the resolve and commitment of those who are struggling to forge a new faith - a serious, inclusive and integrative Christianity.  I say this to support those who want and need an inclusive Christian path to ground and center them in a community of love and acceptance.  And who need this path to help them get over themselves just at invites them to love themselves.  I say this to energize the Christian social field of inclusion so that it might embrace even that social field of exclusion. 
    To affirm and celebrate Christ the King Sunday does not mean we must accept it as a symbol of exclusivity or affirm a form of Christian triumphalism.  Christ the King is also the Cosmic Lover which takes many forms and expressions in many different traditions to reveal the inclusive love of God and the essential unity of us all.
    So this Sunday I will celebrate with enthusiasm and joy Christ “high and lifted up” with the full knowledge that only a few weeks later I will celebrate Christ born in a manger as a simple, particular baby.  For me, the meaning and power is in this paradox. 

Planning For An Identity Crises

Do you ever get the feeling you are ready for good depression?  I have only had one and it lead to a profound reorientation of my life, spirituality and identity.  I am deeply grateful for it … on this side. But, I feel like I am ready for another.  Maybe a good midlife one… I am do!  Maybe I will cut my hair, take out my earring and grow up…. or maybe not.  Maybe it will be an identity crises depression.  Who am I?  That is a good bewildering question? 

In some ways, this not-yet-but-maybe depression feels related to my pastoral identity. What is a pastor anyway?…  especially these days when the church is in its own identity crises. Who am I as a Pastor?  Who am I as a Pastor of Covenant Community?  My community is in a time of transition, moving form a Pastor size church – when I was center and central to a Team size church where multiple leaders and good process are center and central.  Do you see the problem… I LIKE being the center.  (some would say LOVE being the center)

I am reading an interesting book, that doesn’t help!   It’s called the Art of Pastoring: Contemplative Reflections by William C Martin.  Here are a few excerpts.

Thought 3 - Visions
“I wise pastor does not inspire the people
with grand visions
for the visions will become idols.
A prudent minister will not call attention to achievement
for that will separate people into “achievers”
and “non-achievers”
The follower of the Spirit will not encourage
displays of wealth
for all will be dissatisfied.
But the one who serves the Spirit
will quiet the noisy heart,
clarify sight,
simplify the busy life,
and reduce the plethora of needs
so the people may see clearly and with purity
without being pushed or pulled.

The parish becomes holy on its own.”

(Here is another)

Thought 17 – Congregation
“When your congregation despises you,
it is a great sorrow.
When your congregation holds you in awe,
it seems somewhat better.
When your congregation praises you for and wide,
it seems even better still.
But when your congregation hardly notices
that you exist,
you have become a pastor.

How do you feel about your congregation
deep within your heart?
That is what thy will become.

When the pastor’s work is done,
the congregation will truthfully say,
“We did it ourselves.”
and the pastor will rejoice.”

(One more)

“You are not called to bring inspiration to people.  Rather loosen the tightness in their chest that restricts their breathing, and their lungs will gratefully expand of their own accord and they will inspire themselves.” 

Did you hear those crazy words,  “don’t inspire with grand visions,” and “when your congregation hardly notices that you exist you have become a pastor”  – what the hell!   

I know its true though.  Covenant was built with Liz Kaznak and I at the center, but we can’t continue to grow that way. I do think Covenant needs me, maybe more than ever, they just need me in a different way.   

So maybe a good depression and identity crises will be good for all of us.  Bring it!

Maybe the Next Messiah Will Be a Collective

Maybe the Next Messiah will be a Collective… is a Collective…. maybe its us?

The other day I found myself wishing for Jesus to come back.  Not something that crosses my mind much, but I caught myself thinking it.  If not Jesus, I thought, then maybe a new anointed one (Messiah) to emerge on the world scene to make things right.  Why not! I wondered.  Isn’t it time for a little Fleshy Divinity again.  Why can’t it be like the good ol days…  when God would respond to the cries and chaos of the world with an embodied Messiah.   Maybe, a women this time… to settle the argument once and for all about the gender of God. I Also briefly wondered if it was Barak Obama!??! – but that is yet to be seen? 

As I worked with my “wishing” a little more, I realized that Divinity is getting fleshy... all the time getting fleshy.  That is what the Christian tradition celebrates during Advent - God has a tendency towards fleshy particularity!  The universe somehow gets into a grain of sand... and into Bethlehem... and into us.  Every time the conditions are right… after a little whoooopy… God seems to actualize that tendency and gets particular.  And there are those who are waking up to this reality.  The reality of who we really are… and then working like hell to actualize that reality in the particularities of their daily lives.  But that isn’t enough it seems.   There are gurus, saints and avatars around today, and more waking up all the time… and yet the cries and complexities remain.   

So, I wonder if the world we now live in will require more than individual Messiahs to save us from ourselves.  Maybe our time requires a collection of Messiahs.  A network of the “wide awake.”   The world seems too complex and the challenges too global in nature for an individual Messiahs. 

This is where I hold out great hope and promise for communities of practice and the spiritual community which Christianity calls the Church.  After communion at Covenant (where I worship) we often say, “Every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim and remember Christ until he comes again and again and again.”   The word “you” is really a “ya’ll” - a collective “we.”   Every time “we” eat this bread and drink this cup “we” re-member Christ... “we” re-embody Christ.   The church as a collective is the re-membrance and the re-embodiment of Christ in the world.  And we are given the same task and responsibility of as Christ to be the vehicle for Kingdom of God in the world, to "be" God’s Shalom. 

In John, Christ says to his disciples before his death and fleshy departure, “just as God sent me, so I send you.”  It’s a collective you, a ya’ll.  Christ is now the collective not the individual.  I believe this is true… I trust that this is true.  Maybe at one point it was enough for God to just get fleshy in a particular body, but it seems now that all those fleshy particularities must not only wake up to who they really are, but then come together in the power of a collective love… A Community of Practice... A YA’LL.

The collective is the window to the world, not the individual.  A community opens up beyond itself in ways and patterns that are not possible for the individual.  This space of community is the playground of the Spirit.   Christ says, “Where two or more are gathered I am there.”  Access to Christ consciousness is not an individual experience but a communal one.  A particular church or spiritual community is locally grounded and non-locally connected making it potentially a fuller reflection and agent of God’s Shalom than any individual Messiah could be.  A community is the channel to the universal not the individual.  This is also true in the Jewish tradition as well, where God chooses a “people” not a person as the vehicle for reconciliation.  Maybe the Jewish and Christian stories involve communities and collectives because they hold greater potentiality for transformation than any one individual - even a highly awake individual.   This is not to diminish the responsibility for us to all do our inner work of transformation, it just challenges us to complement and fulfill that work by entering into deep and committed communities of practice.    

May we all wake up and get connected!

Peace,
Jud

Churches in Transition

This is a post I put on another blob, but thought it might be interesting for the wider public.

Changing Organizational Structures and Authority

Covenant is experiencing some significant shifts.  Below I am attempting to give us some lenses for understanding what might be going on.

Numerical Analysis
One way to analyze and understand these shifts taking place at Covenant is through looking at it from a numerical perspective.  Basically the idea is this - How many people are in the community effects the way in which the community behaves and organizes itself.

Church organization folks, sometimes categorize churches in the following way.
Family Size – 0 to 50 participants
Pastor Size – 50 to 125 participants
Program Size – 125 to 350 participants
Corporate Size – 350 to 500 participants

Each of these types of churches has its own dynamics of power and leadership and requires different organizational tasks and skills.

Alice Mann, from the Alban Institute has studied communities in transition and provides a description of some of the changes that happen with communities in transition.

• Congregations almost always encounters difficulty when they arrive at a new step- the boundary between one size and the next- because the culture of the congregation is in flux.
• Congregations that can manage the transitions will fall back or become stagnant.
• In transition formal and informal relationships are being reshaped and renegotiated; 
• Key structures are changing
• Key processes are changing.

Sound familiar?

Mann also describes some of the characteristics and challenges of different size churches. 

Pastor Size and the Pastor

• a key figure of the Pastoral size congregation is that members experience having their spiritual needs met through their personal relationship with a seminary trained pastor.
• Small enough that everybody can know the pastor personally
• Leadership revolves around the pastor and a small group of leaders
• Strong personal skills are important
• Difficult to maintain for more than 150 members
• Growth depends on the skills of the pastor-pastor is in control
• Pastors experience burnout frequently

Program Size and the Pastor

• the program church has many cells of activity headed by lay leaders…that includes pastoral functions.
• Pastor is still at the center but its role has shifted dramatically
• Need for planning, visioning etc.
• Key skills is to pull together diverse elements of the parish into a mission statement-to find consensus
• needs to motivate and train lay persons
• Pastors with a “pastoral” mind frame will feel flat and a lack of fulfillment

So where is Covenant you might ask?  Well as of today we have 126 people on our egroup list, not including children.  Not all of those on the egroup participate in worship or in an intentional community, but they are in some way connected to our community and they an effect on how our system operates.  So we as a community are right in, what they call the “groan zone” of church type transition – moving from a pastor size church to a program size church. 

So from a church size perspective we need to be aware of and attentive to the shifts that are happening and work together to discern how we might facilitate some of these transitions in a healthy way.

In short, from a church size transition perspective it looks like we need to focus on a few things.

• re-organize and empower the session and teams and facilitate equipping of lay leadership.
• re-image my roles and responsibilities for the community – decentralize me!
• clarify identify, core values and  guiding mission
• I wonder what else….

Systems Analysis Perspective
Another way to analyze our community is from an organizational systems perspective.  Basically what kind of organizational system will most effectively facilitate our vision and values – somewhat independent of our size.

Here are a few explanations of this from the work of Otto Scharmer.  (from: Theory U: Leading From the Future as it Emerges)

Centralized Structures
“Most young companies, founded and driven by one or several pioneers, are simple structures.  The coordination and growth of this type of organizing depend primarily on the skills of the founder(s).  The more successful the organization becomes, the more its strength (being organized around one person) can become a weakness.”

Decentralized Structures
“When shifting from centralized to decentralized structures the primary source of power moves from the center toward the periphery; in other words, decision-making power moves down the hierarchy and closer to the customer (participant).”

Networked Structures
“When a company (community) shifts from decentralized structure to a networked structure, coordination happens through mutual adjustment in networked relationships.  Unlike the structures of hierarchy and competition, mutual adjustment depends much more on the quality of the relationships among the key players, Accordingly, the quality of conversation becomes a central issue when organizations move into this field of coordinating.”

Ecosystem Structures
“The movement from a networked system to an ecosystems requires seeing from an emerging whole.  This fourth type of coordination is called the ‘innovation ecosystem.’  In order to tune in to an emerging field of possibility, an organization needs to go beyond itself – to systemically tune in to the relevant emerging contexts, which can be identified only in the collective context of a larger ecosystem.” 

So what does all this mean when applied to Covenant?   
Covenant began about six years ago.  In fact it was six years ago in November that the Launch Team first started meeting weekly.  We began mostly  as a centralized system where vision and power were held by the founders, (Liz Kaznak and myself).  However, from the beginning we valued shared power and authority using the statement, “Authority at the point of gift.”  Meaning that power was shared as people stepped forward to offer their gifts and discerned their calling.  This manifested in diverse leadership and the beginning of intentional communities.  In some ways we have functioned as a centralized system – to the degree that Liz and I have held and shared the vision and direction for the church. AND in some ways we were a decentralized system – to the degree that intentional communities have a great deal of autonomy for what they do and how they do it.  As our Intentional Communities have grown we have also develop Networking structures.

Now, we seem to have elements of three different structures operating at once

• Centralized  - I still have a great deal of authority and influence in the community.  Which could, if we are not aware, become a hindrance to our growth.
• Decentralized – the session has authority to make decision and intentional communities have a great deal of autonomy.
• Networked – As our intentional communities grow and diversify the relationship and flow between these communities becomes more important and influential. For example when a community like the Just Mothers dissolves the whole community feels the ripples.  We can say it like this “Covenant is as our Intentional Communities are.”

What I see (and probably want to see) emerging is the possibility of developing ecosystem structures.   This would involve cultivating structures that keep us organically and interdependently engaged in what is happening in Louisville and the world.  Covenant would become and develop out of relationship to what is happening in the wider community.  We can say it something like this “Covenant becomes as Louisville is”  or “Covenant becomes as the world is.”   This means that we balance my leadership and vision, with the leadership and vision of the whole community, with the leadership and vision of us as a networked community of communities with the leadership and vision of what is emerge and happening in Louisville and the world.

Again, So what does this mean for us as a community?

I don’t really know, but I feel a few things…

• Energize and Cultivate The Core – If the core of CCC, the center of the swirl, is not strong, energized and life giving we will not be able to “look outward” to develop networked intentional communities and structures of an emerging ecosystem.   So, what is the core?  - the core is …
  • Covenant Partners (your commitment to the whole of the community),
  • Worship and Sunday night participation,
  • Leadership – Session, teams, and pastor (me – redefine my roles). 
  • What else is core for you?

• Develop Our (CCC) Structures of Communication and Conversation – In order to evoke vision, decentralize authority and empower leadership we need to cultivate healthy and open channels of communication and conversation so that everyone may act from what is emerging in different places in our community rather than just from a centralized person or group of people (i.e. me or the session). The more information, thoughts and opinions we take in from the community the more we can act from the whole rather than from our limited thoughts and opinions.
  • Host and Participate in Conversation
  • Conversation Café
  • Egroup Blogs
  • Harvesting – sharing widely what is learned in these conversations.
  • Use “Airset” as shared networking tool
  • Report on what your community is doing at worship

• Develop Structures of Communication and Conversation with Community and World
  • Develop ways of communal listening and “presencing” to determine what is happening in the world an how that might help us become locally.
  • Spend more time in silence discernment – what is the spirit doing and how can we join in!
  • Host conversations with local organizations and leaders to determine how we might join in what they are doing. 

• Equipping and Training – We need to continue to become a learning community that empowers and equips everyone for ministry and action. o This is the vision and purpose of the Ecclesia Project that is currently being developed.  Stay Tuned!

I would love to hear about your thoughts and comments.  Again participating in a blog is a great way of developing a strengthen the social field called "Covenant!"

Peace,
JudCh