Category: church

by any other name

wonderfulexchange4 Comments

Yesterday, I received an invitation (along with the congregation) to produce an article for a booklet that is being written about LCM. For those spared the tortures of Piskie jargon, that is Local Collaborative Ministry.

Why thank you, said I, only one thing: why us?

I found that I was thrown into an old dilemma. What makes an LCM congregation an LCM congregation? Despite having spoken to all the usual suspects and having read all the relevant documents, I still don’t know.

Is it because in Dunoon and Rothesay clergy and lay people work collaboratively? No, that can’t be it. I can think of many other churches where clergy and lay people work collaboratively, and they are not dubbed LCM. Is it because we are local?? If so, it is the first time I’ve heard anyone from the central belt say that of Cowal and Bute. Is it because both churches have lay worship leaders, a ‘lay ministry team’? Again, no. I would struggle to think of a healthy church that didn’t — though the forms such teams take are manifold.

So is it because the clergy to congregation ratio is 1:3? Is it because sometimes our lay teams lead worship in the absence of a priest? It may be. But if that is what LCM means, then I am all the more wary of being labelled an LCM congregation, for I would not want to imply that ‘no priest’ was a norm we had accepted. It is a situation we cope with. It is occasionally a crisis that spurs growth. But I would not want to encourage it as a long term vision or desired norm.

‘But that’s how it is.’ I can hear you say. ‘There aren’t enough priest to go around, and we couldn’t afford them if there were.’

Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean that’s how it should be.

I have said this before and I will no doubt say it again:

All that stands between where we are now, and where we would need to be for each congregation to gather (priest and laity together) for the eucharist is growth.

More people, more possibilities.
More people, better resources (human and otherwise).
More people, more vocations to ordained ministry.
More people, better funding for ordinand training.
More people, more possibilities to share the gospel.

If LCM is a label used to describe churches who are coping admirably in a less than desirable situation, then so be it. I will take the label up gladly. But if it suggests that ‘people, no priest’ is what we hope for or intend, then the label is not for me thanks.

As for lay involvement… ‘people’ and priest working together?

Well, that is just ‘Church’.

Label enough for me.

one church

wonderfulexchange5 Comments

I have a confession to make.

(Members of the ICRC should divert their eyes… now)

I am not very good at ecumenism. I ‘believe in it’, of course; and will do what I need to to support it where I can. But I do it out of a sense of what is right and theologically necessary, but rarely out of joy or delight.

I’d have said, in fact, that I’d had almost no ecumenical involvement all year. Apart from the services that we have hosted, I have missed all the joint services in all three of my areas. Ecumenical service in Dunoon? Sorry, I’m in Rothesay. Tea and cakes in Tighnabruaich? Sorry, I’m in Dunoon.

Then tonight, I found myself reading a new blog (i.e.– new to me). It’s written by a baptist minister in Washington DC. She writes beautifully. And I found myself thinking ‘this isn’t the baptist church I know…’

And I realised that blogs offer a new sort of ecumenism.

In the past year, I have regularly read the blogs of:

  • a Roman Catholic nun in Middle America
  • a Universalist Unitarian in Massachusetts
  • a Presbyterian (PCUSA) in rural New England
  • a Methodist in Maryland
  • any number of Church of England priests and theologians
    and even:
  • a Church of Scotland minister in Argyll

I’ve also been involved in a private blog for ‘young’ women clergy, which has put me in commenting conversation with dozens of women from all over everywhere, and has led me into a covenant group with:

  • a Lutheran in Minesotta
  • a Methodist in Baltimore
  • a United Church of Christ minister in California
    and
  • a Presbyterian in Washington.

Add to that an unexpected (if occasional) friendship with a world travelling Old Catholic in DC, and I realize that I have had more engagement with Christians from other denominations this year than ever before.And it has taught me a lot.

As I read the blogs and share in conversation, denomination only ‘matters’ when we stumble across terms that are unfamiliar. We may be surprised by what others assume is normal, and we may think each other’s ways equally odd, but usually, the differences lead to laughter and new insights and ideas.

It has been hugely liberating to have a covenant group made up of people who know nothing about my own church structures, and are unlikely to meet anyone I work with, but who share common goals and perspectives and concerns.

Ecumenical blogging has taught me what I would have said I knew all along. We are all in this together. We may worship differently, get hung up on different bits of doctrine, and be shocked by each other’s sanctuary shoes — but that just adds to the fun.

So maybe there is joy in ecumenism after all. And not a coffee morning in sight…

what do you do, exactly?

wonderfulexchange3 Comments

Funny how the strange days always seem the most expressive of priesthood.

It began simply enough — phone calls, emails, a bit of desk clearing, a bit of feline distraction. Then off to a number of visits. Intended conversations: ‘how are you, then?’, general encouragement, group dynamics, graves and funeral hymns. Actual conversations: ‘how are you then?’, patterns of ministry, teams and trials, complexities of relationships, theologies of priesthood, and the incomprehensibility of manuals for electronic wheelchairs.

Yes, that’s right. I spent the whole afternoon fighting with a control panel and a most inaptly named ‘joy stick’. Never were the words ‘pride comes before a fall’ more ominous — since I knew the pride had been mine and the fall would be someone else’s if I got it wrong.

How hard could it be? Surely with manual in hand, I could help this dear woman change the angle of her chair slightly. Continue reading “what do you do, exactly?” →

resourcing strength

wonderfulexchange7 Comments

Once a year, or so, I make a point of browsing at length in a section of the bookshop I don’t usually go to. Business, home, New Age, Self-help, science, biography — anything other than fiction, poetry, cookbooks, or religion really. And then I come home with whatever strikes me. Good or bad, it will open up new lines of thought. So this time, it was Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve.

Friedman has worked variously as an organizational consultant, a family therapist, a White House adviser and a Jewish rabbi, and the book is a mix of all these things. The main thrust of the argument is that when we are driven by anxiety, we tend to make choices that are maladaptive — choices that move us towards regression instead of growth, and that leave us ‘stuck’ instead of freeing us from the problems that threaten to engulf us.

In a society driven by anxiety, therefore, the only hope is for ‘leaders’ (by which he means everyone ‘from parents to presidents’) to gain enough emotional distance from the dominant patterns around them that they can model a different way of being.

So far so obvious.

But he makes one observation that has stayed with me all week. He says that too often, in maladaptive patterns, we herd around weakness. That is, in a poorly functioning group (family, church, community, nation) our group processes adapt to that of the most immature members and we organize around dysfunction.

That seems counter intuitive at first. But it doesn’t take long to think of all the classrooms that fail because of one unruly pupil, all the families that crash because everyone is trying to dance around the most difficult member, all the visions that die because one or two people refuse to engage with change.

Friedman argues that instead of organizing around dysfunction, we should be resourcing strength: throwing all our support behind the strongest members of the group, giving our time, money and energy to those best able to self-differentiate and maintain emotional distance, because it is only when the natural ‘leaders’ are free to lead that the group gets ‘unstuck’ and can begin to grow.

So, I have been wondering: what would it mean to resource strength? Would it mean, in one’s own life, putting more time into the things one does well, and not worrying so much about the rest? Would it mean, in the church, focusing on the points of growth, the points of potential — trusting that the trouble spots would sort themselves out if the climate changed?

It is a strangely liberating idea.

And for a natural pessimist like me (redemption doesn’t allow us to remain pessimists, but we all have an initial base line…) — for a natural pessimist like me, the very exercise of naming the strengths and affirming the points of growth seems like a good idea.

So, that’s the game for this week: what strengths should we be resourcing — in ourselves, in our communities, in our churches?

For those who can be bothered, there’s another bit of the argument and a quotation that made me laugh below…
Continue reading “resourcing strength” →