My Litany of Thanks

My litany of thanks:

            For my sons, and being able to see them grow in maturity;

For my granddaughter who looks so much like her daddy;

For my brother who gives so much of himself to his family;

For my sister-in-law and her droll sense of humor, and her great nursing skills;

For my nephew and his fiancée, and their families;

For my niece and her growing family;

For my great-aunt who taught us so much; rest in peace, Annie Sue;

For my friends who teach me how to love;

For my coach whose laughter and questions help me see more clearly;

For the nurse practitioners and nurses at the Wound Care Center;

For access to good medical care;

For the people of Christ Crossman who challenge me to grow;

For the best staff people to work with--sharing ideas, and learning together;

For the ability to go back to school and discover that I can still learn and grow;

For music and beauty;

For love and hope;

For vision and God’s call;

For prayer and for rejoicing;

For grace and mercy;

For more than I can name;

For things I cannot name;

For life, even in the midst of it all;

For eternity—past, present and future—in God.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Have I Got a Story for You...

Stories are so important. I guess I’m thinking along those lines because I miss getting to hear the stories of my family. My parents died 11 and 21 years ago; my grandparents much long ago than that. Our last link with the generations that went before us, my Great-Aunt Annie Sue, died in October at nearly 104.

Stories connect us to one another. We learn about ourselves as we hear them, not only about events in our lives and in our families, but about how we see the world, how we interact with others, about our sense of purpose, and other things.

I have a friend, Lou Ann Homan, who is a great storyteller. She keeps her community and family connected through her stories. She tells stories from the past that connect us with those who lived then. She tells stories from her family’s life that bring us in touch with a young family’s experience. She tells stories from life today that help us pay closer attention to the world and people around us.

I have said that stories “people our imagination.” The characters and situations from the stories—whether factually based or fictional—allow us to see them in action as though on a stage. We can try on different characters and roles, as though they are costumes. We experience responses from a somewhat safer distance. This can help us be more reflective, so that when we actually encounter something like it in our lives, we will have made preparations and maybe even some decisions about how we want to respond.

Our Director of Christian Education became concerned that while our children, and we adults, may learn particular stories they and we don’t really have a sense of them as a part of a much larger story. She is providing lessons each week that include “the connective” tissues. We are learning in our community life to talk about the “so what” of why we do what we do, or what we are trying to do. All this is to help us become more deeply aware of God’s story and of our part in it.

Now, have I got a story for you…

Joel 1:2-3

Hear this, O elders, give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? ³Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

10 Lessons from Nonprofits

Who said that learning ever stops? Not me! Here are some things I learned, or re-learned, this Fall in my online class in Pastoral Leadership Feedback. The references are to chapters in The Jossey-Bass Reader on Nonprofit and Public Leadership. Ed. James L. Perry. (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2010).

As you read these, which three do you think are most important for Christ Crossman or your own congregation?

1.When leaders rein in their egos and share power with others in their organization, the entire organization benefits and grows in strength, enabling it to have a greater ability to fulfill its mission. (Chapter Nine, "Shared Leadership")

2.Succession planning is crucial to the long-term vitality of the organization. (Chapter Nine, "Shared Leadership")

3.Strategic planning is not a static process; rather it involves active engagement, reflection and action at every step of the process which might mean that the middle sometimes appears a bit chaotic but is really creative and challenges every participant to be fully engaged. (Chapter Eleven, "The Strategy Change Cycle")

4.When the imagination is engaged, helping planners dare to dream large, an organization is more able to take steps that move it towards real change. (Chapter Eleven, "The Strategy Change Cycle")

5.Knowing who all the stakeholders are for an organization and its mission, and including them somehow in the planning process is vital to the success of that process and the realization of the mission. (Chapter Eleven, "The Strategy Change Cycle")

6.Daring to redefine and even narrow the mission of an organization can help make its accomplishments more evident, and bring others into a supportive and/or collegial relationship with the organization which can deepen the change desired. (Chapter Twelve, "delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits")

7.Embracing evaluation of how an organization is accomplishing its mission, or not, can improve congruence between stated values and how those values are put into practice. (Chapter Twenty-Three, "Nonprofits and Evaluation")

8.Ongoing evaluation is important in strengthening mission and relationship in the community. (Chapter Twenty-Three, "Nonprofits and Evaluation")

9.While imagination and passion are vital in building towards real change, without a workable organization, the initial brightness might soon be overwhelmed and diminished or even extinguished. (Chapter Twenty-Four, "Sustaining Impact")

10.Investing in recruiting and training leaders for an organization is important in the long run even though "staffing for growth" ahead of the growth can be hard to justify when resources are limited. (Chapter Thirty, "Understanding the Nonprofit Sector's Leadership Deficit")

Exodus 18:23

If you handle the work this way, you’ll have the strength to carry out whatever God commands you, and the people in their settings will flourish also.

   The Message

An Evening of Challenge

On Tuesday night, our Office Manager Kate Hoing and I went down to Calvary Baptist Church in DC to hear Nadia Bolz-Weber and Amy Butler. You may have seen the article in Monday's Washington Post on Nadia. She's the weight-lifting, tattooed Lutheran pastor who often uses very down-to-earth salty language. She is also a recovering alcoholic and former drug user. She grew up in a family that attended the Church of Christ, a very conservative denomination that does not allow women to teach boys over the age of twelve. Her recently published book Pastrix is a memoir.

I first heard Nadia in May of 2012, and have quoted her in a couple of sermons since then. She would never claim to have all the answers or to get everything right, but she seeks to be a real and faithful follower of Jesus.

Following are some of my tweets from Tuesday night. If there are typos, just know that it's hard to type accurately while following someone's talk. For more, see here.

• making it hard, challenging, not crazy posturing
• We want God's answers but what we get is God's presence
• my job is not to worry about why my people believe, but it am responsible for what they hear
• Don't tone down the Jesus!
• there is welcome to anyone who wants to be there, but not the LowestCommonDenominator theology.
• a lot of folks are not really into denominations. nadia: I'm not post-denominational.
• Theological particularity is important in a missional sense. Don't give up on that,
• How do you define success for yourself in terms of your congregation?
• Success does not look like numbers, but moments of holy grace.
• Filling out a mission church report: "how many doors did you knock on this month?" Nadia's answer: "Zero. That's creepy"
• corporate American values--have to be good in every single area--BS. We don't have to awesome at everything.
• So not into consumer church. That is not success.
• faith is a gift. Stumble in and out. Stumble in and stay. Never stumble in. Who knows why?
• in urban setting , how do you let people know that this is a place they might find a home?
• Out and about in the community. Not outreach strategy. Not a means to an end. Marketing is resented.
• thinking about the building--our mission, open the doors. Calvary Baptist
• liturgy has it's own integrity; it doesn't depend on my integrity.
• listen to your external sense of call before you emphasize your internal sense of call which can be kind of sketchy.
• don't spend or waste your authority defending it; you will end up losing it.

Esther 4:14

“Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”