putting your money where your mouth is... even if it hurts

Recently there has been a call on some of the social media outlets I follow... a call to take money out of the big banks. 

As a part of the larger "occupy"movement, people are being asked to put their money where their mouth is... literally... and close their accounts with the the big guys on Wall Street and to move that money to local banks and community credit unions.  A link to the pledge can be found here: http://www.rebuildthedream.com/move-your-money/

I like this idea.  I appreciate local businesses. I like the accountability that comes when you are in personal contact with the people who take care of your money. I like that it is more than just feet on the ground complaining about things they don't like, but people willing to make changes in their personal lives based upon the message they are preaching.

I don't like what doing this would do to my personal credit rating. 

When the pledge first crossed my desk, I immediately went and started searching for information on the statewide United Methodist supported credit union.  I looked at loan rates and credit card rates and started doing the math to see what kind of a personal financial impact it would have if I closed my accounts with the "big banks" and moved my debt and my checking account somewhere more local. 

My Bank of America credit line has been around for over 11 years.  As a freshamn in college, I caved to the credit card pressure... but it was a "Working Assets" card - and they donated 1% every year to non-profits that you get to choose.  At the time, I justified my decision, thinking it was the "conscientious choice"... if I was going to have a credit card, that's the one I wanted.  But they were bought out by the big guys and I've been with BoA ever since.  Because I have been with them for a while, and pay my bills faithfully, it is also my largest line of credit.

The only line of credit I have with Citigroup is fairly new... and I opened the card to transfer some balances with no interest so that I could work on paying off debt from college/seminary/long-distance-relationship-plane-tickets...

To close the first account and to open a new one would drastically reduce both my average age of open credit lines and my open card utilization percentage... thereby significantly affecting my credit score (especially since I have that newer line of credit from only a year ago).

To transfer balances would involve fees and especially with the Citigroup account, I still have another year of no interest and would rather spend that time paying off that little amount, rather than incurring another fee and having to pay interest.

Argh...

Sometimes, doing something that is seems right, hurts. Taking a stand involves personal cost. Finding the courage to literally put our money where our mouth is... priceless.

(sorry, I couldn't resist).

But we should spend time wrestling with financial questions.

• Where is my money invested? 
• Who benefits from my money/debt?
• What kind of transformative change does the power of a single dollar have?
• Does my bank align with my values?
• What kind of damage does debt do to my spiritual life?
• What does your spending say about your spiritual life?

All sorts of thoughts are rolling around in my head, all as a result of a little tweet.

Knowledge and knowledge

Many have been discussing lately social media monitoring of clergy and candidates/ordinands. A post by sheyduck on Everyday Theology got me thinking about my one hesitancy regarding the issue.

As I posted there...

There is a tendency of some who do not understand social media, to use it as an evaluation method, rather than understanding online discussions as works in progress. 20 years ago if you were to publish something, it was final and complete and authoritative... Now, you push a button and your best understanding of something at a particular moment is out there... But it can be edited and critiqued and the knowledge can grow in comments and follow-ups. It's a different way of thinking about what is true, and I worry that some who monitor ordinands conversations won't understand that.

Earl Creps described generational differences in knowledge in his book, Reverse Mentoring: How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and Why We Should Let Them. I heard him talk about the book to a small group at University of Northern Iowa's Wesley Foundation.

One of the things that struck me most was an analogy he used regarding knowledge.

He described folks his parents age (60+) who saw Knowledge as something important, rare and treasured. It was kept inside of beautiful buildings that you had to have special passes to access, aka, libraries.

People in his own generation (40-60) started to have access in much more profound ways. At the library, a whole world of microfilm was available, the internet started making its way in and so the scope of Knowledge expanded. Tools helped you to access what you needed.

But younger generations see knowledge in a completely different way. Knowledge itself has become a tool. There is so much knowledge, and all of it at your fingertips, that it is almost a worthless, commodity. Instead, its about using the hacking the system, using the knowledge for other things like community, status, work, etc. It is chopped up into bits and bytes and reassembled in a thousand different ways on blogs and forums.

I understand that Knowledge isn't one right answer out there, but the way that knowledge changes and grows and expands through conversation, exploration, experience, revelation, and any number of other means. That means my answers will never be complete. That means I will probably have more questions than answers. That means what I write or say or do might never end up in a vault of information we call a library.

And that means that there will be doubt, waffling, changing stories, confessions, errors, and growth shown on these pages... And similar pages from my peers.

My only fear is that someone "monitoring" our interactions will mistake our quest for knowledge through these forums as not living up to the standards of truth from another generation...

emergingumc2

Perhaps a few too many days have passed since the event for me to recall everything clearly.  I would have gotten to the blogging right away but a few things got in my way.  I watched with much excitation the Iowa/Ohio State football game while I was waiting for my flight.  Then I got up and did church Sunday morning.  And then I helped move a friend.  And then I was sick, sick, sick the rest of the day.  Monday I was a zombie.  And since then I have been playing catch up.

But there are some key things I want to get down before they slip away completely. 

--ONE--

The church and the congregation are not the same thing.  The congregation is part of the church, but the church... the Kingdom of God... the bride of Christ... is SO much bigger than the congregation - or the denomination.  I knew that, but the way that we talked about the specific role of the congregation last week (public worship, teach core doctrine, care for congregation, institutional player) I realized both how limited that role is and also how important.  

To be honest, as I look at my gifts for ministry - I am gifted to be a leader and a pastor within the congregation.  I love worship and I want that worship to be available to all.  I strive to be an institutional player in my community and build connections between my institutions and our schools and our city government and our state agencies.  I'm a good ambassador in that sense.  I'm a good representative.  I have the gifts to care for people in my congregation - I did it this afternoon as I sat with a family around their dying father.  I love to teach and I have the gifts and abilities to take complex ideas and help people understand them. 

I also deeply feel called to be a part of small communities of people who are trying to live the gospel with each other.  And I think in part what I realized this weekend is that I may not be called to be a leader of a group like that, but I am called to join one.  I'm called to help create space for them to happen.  I'm called to equip others to lead them. 

As an institution, our congregation can be a hub for missional activity.  I love that imagery.  and I want to make THAT happen.

--TWO--

As a part of the conference experience, we were at Lockerbie Central UMC/Earth House.  This is a church that has converted its basement into a vegan restaurant, its middle floor into office space and a coffee shop, and it's top floor/sanctuary into a blank worship space and flexible auditorium/stage/performance space.  I am in LOVE with the whole thing.  I love the beautiful old stained glass windows and the homemade chai lattes and the organic fair trade coffee and the gorgeous hardwood floors and the fact that so many different types of people are trying to figure out their lives and their faith in that space.  I love the fact that yoga classes and cooking classes and films about social justice issues and conversations about salvation are happening in the same space.  I love that people enter that community (enter THE CHURCH) through all sorts of different venues.

I stayed with a young woman who come to the community in part because of a yoga class.  And she worships there sometimes.  She helps non-profits across the state find the resources they need personnel wise to be effective.  And she's finding community and hope and inspiration there at the Earth House Collective AND the Lockerbie Central congregation. 

--THREE--

Our hosts coordinated homestays for many of us, and that in itself was a blessing.  I got to know December, even if just for one evening of really deep and vulnerable conversation over a cup of tea. It was amazing to experience that and to know that there was someone, a stranger, who had a similiar story to me.  It was a reminder of how small the world is and also a reminder of how powerful the gift of hospitality can be.

--FOUR--

I'm really struck by the difference between the inclusiveness of what the public congregation should be and the exclusiveness of a committed group of disciples who are trying to live the gospels.  I'm not sure if this quite came into focus for me completely until this morning as a sat around a table with pastors from other traditions.  I had said something about our open communion table and realized how sharply that contrasted with my LCMS colleagues.  Ironically, I was at the same time arguing for committed exclusive discipleship groups.  We were having a discussion about the limits of God's kingdom, and I realized the beauty of the Methodist/Congregational structure.  We can HAVE the absolute openness of the Kingdom in the congregation, in the sacraments, in worship, in teaching... everyone is welcome.  And then we can invite those who want to take deeper steps into discipleship groups.  The problem with a lot of churches with rigorous discipline is that it creates and us vs. them mentality, you are in or you are out.  If we instead have a partnership that lets us know all who believe are in, and then invite everyone to go deeper, we get around some of that exclusivity. 

What I am trying to figure out is how to translate that back into my institutional congregation.  I believe we have the structure within our language already.  We have baptized members and professing members - and TECHNICALLY professing members should be people committed to living out their baptismal vows through specific practices.  And if someone decides they aren't ready to commit to those practices, they can still be baptized members of our church!   Really, what that takes is for us to take our vows seriously and to seriously hold one another accountable AND to value baptized membership in a new way.  To realize there is a difference between those who follow Jesus and those who are disciples.  Ideally, everyone would be a disciple.  But not everyones ready.  Not everyone's ready to take that risk - but they still believe.

Link to a United Methodeviations post

Dan Dick makes a distinction between what he sees as mainline emergent and the roots of the emergent conversation and people out there who are living it

Weekly Lectionary Reflection

** I'm giving up on my other blog where I only post lectionary reflections... my life, the life of the church, and the texts are not seperate - they all intertwine, so they might as well on my blog too! **

I'm quite far behind this week, as far as sermon preparation goes. I'm increasingly thankful for my local pastor's lectionary study, as we always look at the texts a full week and a half in advance.

This week, I'm thinking a lot about the confrontation that is proposed in this week's reading from Matthew, but also how that is only possible when you are bound together in Christ. So, in continuation with my "ABC's of Being the Church" theme, this week is B for Bound Together.

I visited with a woman recently about these kinds of confrontations when your neighbor wrongs you, and we agreed that it is a horribly difficult thing to do. BUT - in our families, we have no problems telling someone if they have hurt us, or other people. Especially she said as a parent and a grandparent, or as a sibling, there is a lot of intervening going on (some of it not so healthy). But we treat those people who are in the church with us as strangers, as people whose lives are private and none of our business.

Our text this week reminds us that we are bound together. And the Romans passage makes that even clearer as we hearken back to the 10 commandments. While the first commandments are all about honoring and loving God, the rest are about how we are supposed to live in community - take care of one another - don't do anything that would harm the fragile balance of our togetherness - because we all need one another to survive. In the United States, we are so individualized into our family units that we can't see the way that our actions affect other people. Or we ignore the effects. This week, as we talk about being bound together, we have to face the responsibility and accountability that goes along with that.

roundtable preaching

This past semester I got to work on my senior project with Dr. John McClure, a professor of homiletics at Vanderbilt Divinity. My project has been on the intersection of so-called postmodern church practices with rural churches in Iowa and one of his suggestions, as a homiletician, was that I incorporate some kind of collaborative preaching model.

And to be honest, with my leadership style and my own values, I desperately want to do so. I truly believe that the Holy Spirit brings us to and reveals to us the Word of God as we read scriptures and as we pray about what to preach. And I also believe that I am not the only person the Holy Spirit speaks to in my church! There is a word to be proclaimed and who knows who might have the message from God this week. I think there is also something that we each bring to the text, experiences that we have that need to be shared with others. And that whenever two or more are gathered, Christ is present.

So I made the invitation to people in the church to join me on Monday afternoons for a "roundtable" discussion about the text for the week. And unfortunately the weather both weeks so far has been awful - snowy, icy, foggy. And as I might have expected this early in my ministry at this church, the participants are all the same faithful people who show up for each and every other church group. The good thing about this group is that it is designed to change completely every few months, so in May I will be asking those individuals to stop coming and to help me recruit others.

One of my greatest temptations in this group is to talk too much. I really want to hear what their perspectives and their questions in relation to the text are. I spend monday afternoons doing some serious research so that I can at least begin to address whatever might come up. So far, there have been good outcomes! Last week we were looking at Jesus in the wilderness and the temptation, but because the lectionary places that text alongside Adam and Eve in the garden we got to talking about how as humans we can resist temptation... and that got us thinking about holding each other accountable. I don't know that I ever would have gone the direction of accountability with the sermon had it not been for the group, but they are aware that as a church we need to be more actively supporting one another. It turned into a great message!

I'm still learning how to incorporate their ideas into the sermon in more compelling ways, however. I realized halfway through the sermon that I said "in our roundtable group this week we discussed.." or some variation of that too many times. I need to refresh myself on the last chapter in McClure's book "The Roundtable Pulpit"