tabletalk

Your Church's Story: The Heroes

The heroes of our churches embody the "dna" or "code" of our congregations. The heroes of the church are those we look to for guidance and wisdom. They live out the character that is being nurtured in our congregations. In telling their stories, why we consider them to be heroes, what things they did that exemplify the qualities we admire, we can unlock the code that we live by as an organization. "Heroes can be living legends or departed saints." - from Transforming Church by Kevin Ford.

One of the heroes of my former church, Trabuco Presbyterian Church, is Tom McFadden. I should include Anne his wife as well, because they work in tandem, but the story is mostly about Tom at this writing.

Tom was close to retirement age when he started with our new church. He worked hard to find us and when he did he was always there. Not merely on Sundays, but Tom was engaged in growing as a disciple. A lifelong Presbyterian, but not a person stuck in his ways. As a pastor I could wish that all pastors would have at least one Tom McFadden in their life. Tom encouraged, corrected, listened, shared. Tom was fiercely loyal.

In one conversation that took place near the beginning of our church, Tom shared that he and his family, which dated back to the early days of Orange County. His relatives had come on horseback in the 19th century to be the early pioneers of the real OC! They built McFadden's Landing (Newport Pier area) which is where much of the lumber used to build up the county was delivered. They were teachers and farmers and help pioneer this new territory. Tom revealed that his immediate and extended family had always been members of the Presbyterian Church. In particular, they were members of 1st Pres. Church of Santa Ana. (It took on other churches in mergers etc, but this was the congregation their family served through.)

What was of most interest to me in the story was this observation. Tom said that he was the first of his family to leave 1st Pres and become a member of another church. When I asked him why he said, "McFaddens start things. And I want to be part of that legacy." Tom is a pioneer at heart. Which means that at the heart of Trabuco Presbyterian Church is a pioneering spirit. That spirit is seen in the likes of Tom McFadden.

It makes it possible for a church like TPC to consider starting new things and not just getting stuck in doing it the way they always have. This aspect of their code is integral into moving forward in a positive light.

For any congregation, the heroes hold part of the story of their dna. In a church I worked with recently, one of their heroes was a man who followed up on all visitors in person. He went by their homes and introduced himself and invited them into the life of his church. He owned the ministry. This is a great code, a great legacy for a congregation. Who are the heroes? Tell their stories and learn what part of the code they embodied through their actions.

Your Church's Story: The Myths

Kevin Ford in his book "Transforming Church" says that one of the symbols that holds the "code" of an organization is its myths. It's important to note at this point what a myth is and is not. A myth is not a made up story. It is not necessarily fictional. Tolkien reminded Lewis that the Christian story was like all the Nordic myths and Greek myths that he so loved. Only in this case, the Christian myth is real - an actual historical event. A myth is, of necessity, large - exceedingly large. Part of the reason is that it is trying to capture the truth or truths of human experience on a universal scale.

When a church examines its myths in order to try to understand its codes, it is looking at stories that represent a deep seated reality for the organizations. Stories can carry a lot more meaning than a simple mission statement.

An example of this comes from my former congregation. If you would talk to the people who were part of the work in the earliest years, one of the stories you would hear is about our nomadic existence. We worshiped in 7 locations in two and a half years. We went from a high school chapel, to a multi-purpose room at an elementary school, to an outdoor amphitheater, to a YMCA aerobics room. Each move meant communicating excessively with others about where we were and where we were going. We grew in every location. (Most significantly in the aerobics room because the mirrors on the wall doubled our attendance every week!) The stories abound about this wandering time of our church's history.

Our next to last move was an unfortunate decision to move to our church's property and worship outside for what we thought would be six weeks. It turned into sixteen weeks. People will tell you of holding Sunday School on blankets in the dirt. Of setting up the stage on the corner and all the beach chairs. Mostly, people remember bracing themselves against the Santa Ana winds that, like a good fish story, get more powerful with each telling. (By now they are certainly gauged as hurricane force winds!)

This is one of the myths of Trabuco Presbyterian Church. What does it say about the church's code? Well, deep in its "dna" the church learned to value telling others where they were. The church grew as a result of word-of-mouth communication. Long after we stopped moving this was still true. If you were to ask those members what story in the Bible they most identified with it would be the story of the Exodus. They were God's people wandering in the wilderness. Deeply rooted in their "dna" is the idea that God will sustain them. God didn't bring them into the wilderness to abandon them but to prove his faithfulness to them. My guess is that they are a remarkably resilient and resourceful congregation in their heart.

One of the remarkable aspects of this myth is that they can see their own story as part of God's larger story being written in the world. TPC can write their own story as part of the meta-narrative of the world God is in charge of.

What TPC takes from all this is up to them to discover or remember. But by remembering the stories, they can get in touch with God's provision and believe into the future based upon what God has already done among them.

All churches have their myths. They reveal both the character of the church and the character of God. In re-telling the myths, you can get at the "Code". For churches like TPC, the wilderness is not a daunting place, or at least it should not be. God is with them.

Our myths of our lives can do much the same. They tell the stories that reveal our character and also the character of God in us. One of the things we get to do as Christian people is to help others see where God is at work, past and present. We get to come alongside individuals as well as churches and reveal the Great Narrative or Myth that is the Christian story and show how our lives and the lives of others fit into that Myth. This Story is our reality and it has much to tell us.

Your Church's Story: Symbols of Your DNA

This is completely stolen from "Transforming Church" by Kevin Ford. It's a great book and quite helpful. What I hope to do here is give you examples of things that reflect the "dna" of a particular church. Why? Because when the chips are down and we feel stressed we will return in our behavior to the patterns of the past. Also, though these things are always operating in the background and even the foreground of our institutions, these symbols, actions, values, character, they don't need to be responded to in the same way as we might have a few years ago. For me as the son of an alcoholic, I won't change that or how it has shaped my life. But the reality is that I no longer respond to that past in the same ways I did when I was 16 or even 50. But if I don't know how the alcoholic past plays out in my life I am at its mercy and can live out the same craziness. Don't know if this makes sense. But the reality is there is no value to ignorance and knowing our "dna" as a church is critical to being able to respond to it with intelligence and not be victims to our pasts.

Ford suggests there are four symbols to explore that will show us our "dna" or as he puts it our "code" as a church. For him these are the myths, the heroes, the rituals, and the visuals. Over the next few posts I want to explore each of these and give them legs as I understand how it works. My hope? That we'll take a more serious view of the things that have shaped our life together in our congregations so we can respond to it in the light. So that it doesn't operate in the shadows but out where we can see it and make healthy choices and habits.

I believe in my version of "Transforming Church" you can find this around page 82....

A Church's Story - Your Part

It recent months I've been spending a lot of time with leadership groups from various churches. All of them want to know how to move forward. Many are anxious about where they are and question their viability over the next decade.

In these next few posts I want to muse a bit on what can be discovered in a church's story.

One of the techniques for discovering a church's story that I have been using comes to me from Linnea Nilsen-Capshaw from Deep Shift, Brian McLaren's group. She asked the leadership of our former church to write a few things on some butcher paper. The questions were: Your Name; the date you entered your church's story; the significant people you remember when you arrived; the significant ministries that were taking place; were you aware of any conflict.

These questions have become the backdrop for me to investigate with church leadership the dna of their congregations. This is a non-threatening and simple way to begin a self-reflection that doesn't need to end in navel gazing. In fact what it begins to uncover are patterns and perceptions that have been present for a very long time. It does this without passing judgment on those things.

What is always humorous to me is that each person will get their turn at the time-line. I give everyone instructions that we're not trying to get it right, we're trying to hear the perceptions that each person had as they entered their church's story. The humor is that you can't go more than a minute before somebody steps in to correct or add or comment on the story. People's memories are jogged. Sometimes old wounds are opened. Most of the time, I have found a shared fondness for many of the significant people that they share in common.

This sets the backdrop for the next steps. A church's dna is their character. In new churches we consciously and unconsciously set the dna. In older congregations we consciously and unconsciously respond to it.

A good first step is understanding your part in your church's story. Remember your part in your church's story is also your part in the the greater story that God is writing not only in you but through you.

A Musical Teaser - Enjoy this along with Mark Hanson, Doug Smith, Laurence Juber and many other talented guitarists. Great new cd.

Mark Hanson's version of Breakdown (a nice mid-week groove)

Adaptability and Flight

This photo is the Langley Aerodrome A model that is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It is beautifully intricate and gives the appearance of a graceful flying machine. Read the description below.

Samuel Langley's successful flights of his model Aerodromes Number 5 and Number 6 in 1896 led to plans to build a full-sized, human-carrying airplane. Langley's simple approach was merely to scale up the unpiloted Aerodromes to human-carrying proportions. This would prove to be a grave error, as the aerodynamics, structural design, and control system of the smaller aircraft were not adaptable to a full-sized version.

This description reminds me so much of what has happened with denominations and particularly with my own PCUSA.

The sign on the actual exhibit in the museum said that the design was too complex and this led to a structure that couldn't support human flight. In many ways this is the challenge to the PCUSA. The weight of all our special interests and activities can't be supported by the structures we have. In fact, they are a model that can't be adapted for the future. We need some new approaches. Many people around the country are working on this challenge. They key will be to discover again what we are made for.

One of the axioms of marketing, I'm told, is that the narrower the focus the broader the appeal. The more complex our focus the more difficult it will be to accomplish our basic mission. Right now our denomination is in need of focus. Mission is the point, and narrowing that mission will allow us to get off the ground and broaden our appeal.

What is that focus? I believe it is church development - churches that see their call to make disciples who follow Jesus; who in turn see their call to make disciples - who will in turn start new communities that make disciples to follow Jesus. The result is a culture of discipleship and church planting.

We need to be more like the Wright brothers. Not getting caught up in our systems but our purpose. 9 days after the Langley crashed for the last time, the Wright brothers flew this simpler aircraft at Kitty Hawk. Oddly enough the Langley is supported from the ceiling as though it is flying above the Wright Brothers aircraft that is on the floor below. Isn't that ironic. hmmmmmmm

Lewis For Lent 2: A Welcome Into the Heart of Things

Lewis For Lent 2: A Welcome Into the Heart of Things

Posted using ShareThis

Lewis For Lent 2: A Welcome Into the Heart of Things

“But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view,, the promise of glory, in the sense described,, become highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door upon which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” The Weight of Glory p. 40-41

Giving things up for Lent. I’ve never been very good at it. It almost always resulted in a trivial act. By trivial I mean it was always about me losing weight, or eating healthy or going to bed on time or reading the right things so I will feel better about my life. It almost always resulted in what Lewis described at the beginning of his sermon, The Weight of Glory, “as if my abstinence [and my happiness] and not others’ happiness” was the important point Many times we Christians stop in our development at what we get from God, rather than what God intends to do through us.

Lewis at this point of the sermon, touches on a very real intuition – “The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers….” And this being “part of our inconsolable secret.” The we, Lewis refers to, is all of us - humanity. We are all longing to be acknowledged, to be met with a response, to know we are part of an ultimate reality that takes us seriously. When the door to Christ is opened we are no longer strangers to the universe, to God, to each other or ourselves. We fit in. We are part of something bigger.

When we become aware that God in Christ regards us, acknowledges us, meets us and makes us part of an eternal reality that he has created, we also become aware that it is not just for us, but for US! The bigger ‘US’ called humanity. We become aware that our invitation to come through the door is not merely to feel good about being insiders. Our inclusion is all about coming and going through that door. To go out and meet those who are still strangers and regard them, pay attention to them, to include them in the same way that God has included us. We share the glory of God, cast upon our lives, with those around us. We show people the door….not to usher them out but usher them in. We want to extend “a welcome into the heart of things” as Lewis says.

Lewis for Lent 1

"If you asked twenty good men [people] today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has a lot to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself." C.S. Lewis - The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 2001 Harper Collins San Francisco p. 25-25 - The opening words of the sermon.

I find myself in more and more conversations where this statement by Lewis is most relevant. Many in our time believe the Christian faith to be about denying people things. We deny them fun, approval, attention, even heaven itself. We withhold and withdraw. We become a people who hold on to God’s love as though it were a possession not an action.

Aristotle defined a prodigal as one who has wasted their substance. We see this clearly in Luke 15. The flip side of that same coin is the story of the elder brother. It seems that the religious problem is not in wasting our substance but in withholding it. This is one of Jesus’ points. You can be outside of what God desires for humanity by wasting what you have. You can also be outside of it by withholding your resources from others.

In this time of Lent, it is especially significant that we understand that our abstinence is all about securing “good things” for others. When we “give up” our time, our energies, our safety, our ‘fill-in-the-blank’, we do it with an eye to what we can do for others. I can lower my grocery bill by clipping coupons. Does it result in greater generosity?

Love, like Faith, is a verb, not a possession. It is an action to be taken, not a commodity to collect. Let’s consider how to “do good things” in this season that leads up to Easter, so that others will give glory to God.