LINGO

See the reason that pastors are out of touch with the faith of their congregations is because the congregation does not lead a cloistered life. They are out there in the untamed world with their bodies and souls butting up against the unseemly and ungainly.

But  you... the pastor.. has the inherent need to be all things congregational. No matter your appreciation of the congregant's life and lifestyle, you are not afforded the luxury of having your faith develop except by the proxy of those who are out in the world.

Don't protest.  Even if you are meeting one group of 'worldly' people for breakfast or offering a sympathetic ear to someone going through a tough time, or maybe your marriage is on the rocks, your kids are rebelling and your in laws drive you nuts, or the denominational competition for 'pastor of the year' is a pressure, the fact is you get to speak in the LINGO of the church all the time. And then Sunday you roll in for the really big show and it seals the deal

Give it a week without speaking any Christian Lingo at all.... Can you do it? What happens when you do?

The church doesn't need your defense, but the Body of Christ may need you to perform CPR.  Could you do it? Can you breathe life into faith?  Can you give a witness?  Would you?
Let's start a conversation. Tell me about it.
Love,
Deborah

Taking the Gloves Off and Putting Them On

There are two things a person can do when they are up against it; you can put on your gloves and fight, or you  can take off your fighting gloves and put on your garden gloves.

It is disturbing to see that the structure of 'church', the organization created to substantiate the indwelling of power within religion, is so firmly constructed after so many thousands of years of being proved so far from the heart of God.

Like the Jews on the desert who insisted on creating a Golden Calf, and the Israelites begging for a King when God said, "Really I'd rather not" and the disciples who argued about who was going to be on the left or right, and the early church that included a leader who made everyone convert thereby instituting a state religion, and the wars that ensued, and the reforms that just morphed into samo , samo, and the revivals that ended up creating a whole new samo, samo, we are still learning that God wants us to be the Body of Christ not an institution.

I watched in horror on Palm Sunday as a youngish pastor instructed his elders to strip the Altar and asked everyone to exit in silence and then place a nail in the cross on the Narthex. How could someone skip through Holy Week like that?  In the interest of a very trendy, Seder he had scheduled on Maundy Thursday where people were instructed to bring only Kosher dishes ( yet was there two sets of dishes? Was the kitchen cleansed appropriately?).

Form , not substance, law, not Spirit, eludes us.  The week ended with a young enthusiastic seminarian leading a supposed Sunrise Service on Easter morning only it was actually a Vigil and not concluded with the lovely pronouncement 'He is Risen!!" and the lovelier response "He is Risen Indeed!!"

How can that be? How can there be even two Christian leaders who have missed the most basic thread of the story? How can it be that even once this should happen, yet alone so many millions of times? It's a simple story, deep but simple. The story line is not difficult to follow.

It's time to take off the boxing gloves... no more reformations, no more reviewing of the by laws. It's time to put on our weeding gloves. It's time to take out all that is choking out healthy growth as the Body of Christ. Whatever is keeping us from breathing, shedding old skin for new, cramping our internal organs, causing our vision to be older than it is, destroying our circulatory system, we need to weed out.  We need to recapture every thought for Christ. We need to encourage leaders to surrender their hearts. It's time. What are you doing about it?

Love,

Deborah