Ritual for even the smallest fingers

The congregation I serve has an annual Turnings Service, recognizing the births, deaths, and other transitions in our community.  

This service is meaningful and emotional for many, and we encourage older children and youth to attend.

For our youngest children we have Turnings, Too- a parallel chapel service where we talk about the turning of the year and all that may have changed in our lives. For each sharing the children can drop a glass bead into this dish of water--light blue for the joys, and the darker colors for the struggles of life.

Every child has known joy and sadness. They welcome new cousins and aunts and cats and turtles into their lives. They feel the loss of death, of friends moving away, of changing family configurations. They recognize that some things are a mix of good and bad--a hospital stay and then recovering, missing loved ones while on a long but exciting trip.

And we build community in our sharing, knowing that church is a place where people want to celebrate our joys with us, support us through our struggles, and take interest in our hopes and dreams. 

Church Weekends

'Tis the season of concerts and youth services, auctions and plays atop the usual rich tapestry of meetings. And so very much of it takes place on the weekend.

Here's my starter list to myself--ways to maintain some sense of life:
1) Share responsibilities whenever possible
2) Date on Thursdays (or whenever you don't have a meeting)
3) Figure out what you can say no to
4) Bubble bath or what creature comforts you can fit in
5) Keep in touch with the people you live with. You need them for #1 and because you like them
6) Vegetables, water, sunlight. Not just melted cheese, coffee/beer, dank cave.
7) Sleeeeeep

Productive Leadership

Forty-seven US Senators took it upon themselves to write to Iran, going around accepted structures and practices. 

And then the Iranian foreign minster Javad Zarif gave them a wee bit of a crash course in international law.

Other than being glad that Zarif is an international law expert, I'm pretty appalled by all of this.

When leadership cannot come together to find truly workable solutions for life's issues and instead they decide to go rogue and escalate situations unnecessarily? Ugh.

And yet we find these conflicts outside of the Senate. 

Heck, we see it sometimes in churches and other nonprofits. Figuring out a communal good and trusting one another takes time and flexibility and maturity. It requires a certain level of relationship, which we need to explicitly support.

Surely we can do better than the Senate.

Breakfast and Transformation

Behold - a farm fresh egg, gently fried, served over cheese grits, with a big dot of chipotle Cholula.

Whenever I can, this is what I make for breakfast. Isn't it lovely?

Of course, lovely doesn't get us fed.

The dish becomes delicious when I break the yolk and stir everything together. 

At that point it is far less aesthetically pleasing.                        Indeed, it is MESSY.

Delicious is often messy.

This is true not only of food, but of community. Especially religious community.

If we all showed up pretty and sat carefully and kept to ourselves, we might make a glossy postcard.

But we would miss out on shared talents and sorrows, wisdom and gut-expanding laughter.

Take a chance. Get messy. Be transformed and be delicious.

Stop Making Sense*

11 PM on a Sunday night and I'm starting tomorrow's sourdough bread.

Bread making is not efficient. It takes hours and hours. Sourdough especially.
It's not the easiest of things either--it's persnickety and requires attention.

I could go to the store and for less than $5 get a lovely loaf--probably more consistent than my batches have been thus far. (Yes, my ingredients are less expensive. Until you add in the time and effort, and having to do dishes.)

It would be sensible enough for me to give up this hobby, to spend the time more appropriately--catching up on housekeeping, remembering the dry cleaning, becoming a well-rounded person, or you know, sleeping.

But sometimes life isn't about a direct goal or what is most efficient and obvious. You might need to follow a passion, to have a place for experiments and growth. It may or may not make sense on paper.

This is true of our church lives as well. For all that it's good to have a clear mission and a long-term plan, there will come opportunities, relationships, passions. I find that these often come as interruptions, often in the middle of a hectic afternoon/week/year. It may very well be more sensible to stay the course, to say "that's a lovely idea, but we don't have the capacity for it right now." To give the short greeting and have every intention of getting back to that person later. All the things that create community.

What is rising in your soul?



*Yep, I just referenced a thirty-year old Talking Heads movie. Goofball Gen-Xer...

Quiet Service

The church I serve has this half court in the back parking lot. 

It's a simple, relatively inexpensive, and passive community service. Most every Saturday there are games going on out there. 

We also have some lovely green space in an area that's quickly reaching saturation--plenty of neighbors walk their dogs here, or just take themselves for a walk around our gardens. We recently added a Little Free Library, because let's face it--we all have too many books.

What are the easy and passive ways your congregation can serve the community, simply by sharing what you already have?

What Cook's Illustrated Teaches Me About Ministry

The latest issue of Cook's Illustrated is a reaaaaaally good issue--I intend to try almost every recipe, except one that would set off my shrimp allergy. 

The same day I opened the magazine, I went to the grocery store to get the ingredients for their mushroom bisque recipe. I adore mushrooms and I really liked the write-up.

See, I adore the way the test kitchen folks approach a dish.

They consider what they're looking for--what would the optimal mushroom bisque feel like? Taste like? How much time are we willing to spend? How much money?

Then it's time to start cooking. Sometimes they try several recipes they've found, and sometimes they just make a basic batch of the item.

And they have taste tests and consider how it works with the criteria they've determined. They identify surprises and problems and consider how to refine what they're doing.

Then they set out on their own recipe--sometimes coming up with some colossal failures. They tweak and tweak, more taste tests and technique shifts, until they get it where they think it best matches their criteria. And even then, they sometimes revisit techniques and ingredients in years to come.

In this case, they had to figure out a reasonable mix of mushrooms, how to make the dish taste more of mushrooms than cream or chicken stock, and their wild and crazy finding? You could skip the time-consuming step of slicing the mushrooms, and just microwave them to pull out enough of the moisture to get good browning. (No worries--that reserved mushroom essence was returned to the pot.)

So, what would America's* Test Congregation look like?

• Clarity around what they're looking for
• Considering what's already out there, and what they think they know
• Checking in and getting the opinions of a variety of stakeholders
• Realizing that failure is an opportunity for lessons, not the end of the world
• Willingness to try something outside the norm
• Knowing that this stuff is DELICIOUS!
• Sharing their results
• Coming back to their program from time to time, considering what might be tweaked

*The PBS show related to the magazine is America's Test Kitchen. I'm riffing on that, not purposely excluding my colleagues outside the US.

Glitches, Grace, and a Generosity of Spirit

May  5, 1819

William Ellery Channing gave the revolutionary sermon Unitarian Christianity.
Due to his soft voice and the poor acoustics of the church, only the first three rows of folks could actually hear the sermon.

October 5 (and 6), 2014

The Church of the Larger Fellowship switches to their new online worship platform with Adobe Connect. It did not go smoothly. Some elements froze entirely, or went in fits and starts.

And yet, people stuck with it, and it truly felt like community.

Some elements I witnessed (watching quite passively as a congregant) that made it work:

*Clear reporting ahead of time—

•   Why we’re switching to a new format
•  What platforms were supported by Adobe, and what you might need to do ahead of time
•  Recognizing that there might be glitches, and that leadership was committed to working with the vendor to fix things over the coming weeks.
•  Asking membership to please share their experience of what did and did not work. Amazingly, those emails were to be sent to the senior minister, Meg Riley.

*Leaders logged in early and were available for level one tech support.

*Collaborative spirit— Soon enough congregants were joining in with their suggestions and what worked for them

*Personal responsibility and flexibility- some congregants, when one device/browser wasn’t working for them, made the effort to try another way, rather than shaking their heads and leaving

*Reminders that all the video segments would be on YouTube as well, so anything missed was not gone forever! (As I write this, I see links going up on Facebook, directing us to the segments that were hardest to hear/see.)

*And through all the chaos, the message was vitally important and people’s pastoral needs were still being met.

Kudos to the folks at Church of the Larger Fellowship. I look forward to what is to come!

Old Jeans And Congregations

There's a certain alchemy to blue jeans. They start out rugged and unyielding, and slowly break in to the ultimate in practical comfort. 

I had a pair of jeans I just loved. The fit was great, the denim had a bit of a pattern, and oh, the texture was just perfect. After years and years, though, the jeans were nigh threadbare.  And while some holes can be mended, well, at a certain point there is no structural integrity--no way to anchor a stitch into a morass of what's basically blue wisps of nostalgia.

I dragged things out too long, but eventually I took a deep breath and tossed those pants in the trash, and got that trash bag out of the house before I could reconsider.

In our congregations we have our comfortable blue jeans, too. They might be programs or positions or events or even physical objects, no longer attractive or even practical, but things we just can't bring ourselves to cull.

Warning signs that there's a need for culling:
*Nobody wants to plan an event, but people can't imagine the year without it
*When describing the program, people say, "Well, it used to be..."
*There's a particular person associated with the thing, and we wouldn't want that person to feel bad. Or get angry. Or act out in any way.
*The main reason the thing still exists is that we don't know how to get rid of it.

This is by no means a comprehensive list.  What would you add?

You Can't Micromanage The Snow Cone Guy

Today was Homecoming Sunday, the official start to a new church year. It's a big deal and among my program responsibilities is renting a snow cone machine for the picnic after the worship service.

Lessons I've learned-

• Rental comes with 100 pounds of loose ice in a big cooler. No, you cannot rent the machine without the ice, and they want to give you all that ice, even if you only need thirty or forty pounds of it. (Maybe there's a critical mass to keeping things cold enough in this semi-tropical Houston weather?)  We scatter the extra on the grounds, hoping the water trickles to our trees.
• Rental comes with four syrups of the company's choosing. Some years there are two syrups of the same flavor. Today one of the flavors was "Turtle"...thankfully it tasted more like green apple than anything involving my pet turtle.
• There's a delivery window, but chances are the machine will come a little before or after the window. Schedule it early enough that fifteen minutes after that window isn't too late. And have plenty of busy work to occupy yourself at 7 AM. Muttering darkly about 7 AM is not especially productive.
• Eighth graders love to operate the machine, and ninth graders love to teach the eighth graders how it is done. 
• You can sort of make snowballs out of snow cone ice.  They hurt more, though.
• Eat enough snow cone and your mouth will freeze and you won't care quite so much that it's still too hot outside.
• Filling a mug with snow cone ice and covering it with cold brew coffee?  Awww yeah.

The Secret is Egg Salad

You spend enough time at church, you learn to host a lunch.

For the past few years, we've done a lunch for Sunday School teachers before the church year begins.  Since it's a 'Back to School' sort of thing, we just serve the sort of things you might pack in a lunchbox. 

Sandwiches - assortment of breads, lettuce, tomato, cold cuts, cheese, egg salad, pb&j (as allergies allow).

Fruit, a treat, fresh veggies, maybe some chips. 

This year beverages were a choice of milks (fat-free or chocolate), apple juice, or milk.

It's relatively inexpensive, not much time to prep, and most anyone can get something they enjoy. 

Clean up is easy, and any leftovers go home with someone who can definitely make use of them.

Everyone wins!

Recycling

Tomorrow morning I'm in the pulpit, and for the first time I'm recycling a sermon.

I don't mean that I'm repeating the same sermon--I've done that before, mostly when I was doing sermon supply. 

No, I'm taking a sermon I wrote four years ago, for a very different congregation, and I'm updating it in some very specific ways. 

When I agreed to an August sermon date, I assumed it would be a pretty quick rewrite.  You know, just make the references more current, and adjust things to match the liturgical style.

But then I considered the personality differences. The congregants' and my own--I'm not the same person I was four years ago. (Thank goodness.)

Not that I sew, but it feels sort of like taking apart an outfit I haven't worn in years, and adjusting it to fit my grown body and new styles.*

After staring at a screen for far too long, I admitted I was stuck, printed the previous version plus my pages of new ideas, and played jigsaw to put it together again.

Cutting out the parts that no longer fit? That hurt. Quite honestly, I excised A LOT. Yes, excising. That's what it felt like. The final product is probably a little short, but it's the summer--no one will mind getting out of the worship service before noon.

It's too soon to say if the recycling is a success, heck, there might still be a 5 AM gutting and rewrite, or an on-chancel ad lib.

But right now I've saved the document and am heading out for the evening. All will be well.


*I'm really hoping this isn't a Pretty in Pink moment, because that dress was HIDEOUS. Chances are I'll post the sermon in the early part of the week. 

Paying For Ministries

Clergy finance is a big topic these days, with articles in magazines, blogs, Facebook conversations and more. Seminary and other formation costs can be staggering, student loans are painful, and churches struggle to pay a professional wage. It's a perfect storm.

And yet in many congregations, ministers have the best compensation package. I would love to see a fuller conversation of compensation and financial wellness for all who work in churches. Yes, as a religious educator, I've got an interest here. But it's also about our music directors, administrative staff, sextons--whatever positions make up each congregation. 

Sure, many (but not all) of these folks haven't been to seminary, but that doesn't mean that they aren't carrying student loans, or that they don't have their own formation expenses which may or may not have been covered by a congregation. And with no faith requirement in most of these positions*, we cannot be expecting a vow of poverty. 

Pragmatically, retaining trained quality staff is critical to the stability of our congregations. 

Theologically, economic justice needs to be practiced in our houses of worship.

The Unitarian Universalist Association's Office of Church Staff Finances has done considerable work. Fair compensation guidelines including not just salary, but parity of benefits, and a full listing of best practices. 
It's a pretty strong list, and the office has different levels of recognition for congregations to strive toward. 


*My experience is with Unitarian Universalist congregations. Other churches/denominations may have a faith statement.

Potato Salad and Welcoming All

Potato salad just might be one of my favorite things in this world.

AND, I am exceedingly fussy about my potato salad. There should be no pickles. There should be hard boiled eggs. A mayonnaise-based dressing. Celery, not too much onion. The potatoes should be on the firm side, and stay intact--mashed potatoes, while awesome, are a very different dish.

Each of my requirements above is really just a preference. I will not die if someone slips some diced pickle into the mixture, though I will likely grumble.

My mother, on the other hand, is seriously allergic to mustard. She NEEDS to know if a recipe contains mustard, if she'd like to keep her airways open.

When I can, I keep mustard out of food when she's around. But this evening, after I made a gallon of my beloved dish, without the usual scoop of stone ground mustard, I found out that the Kraft Mayo already in the batch?  Well, the company reformulated their mayo.  Despite my best efforts, Mom will need to skip the potato salad at our family barbecue tomorrow.

This example involves just a couple of people and some pretty clear-cut boundaries. We live in a great big world, though, with so very many relationships to balance, so many variables.  What do we need to consider for the safety and comfort of all in our communities? 

Coordinating Sunday School, I have an extensive list of allergies, health conditions, and needs of our students--things to consider as we plan events and lessons. 

In the wider church community, we are often balancing needs--how might we decorate for the holidays without throwing anyone into an asthma flare? How do we need to shift culture and find equipment so everyone can hear? Are all of our doors and hallways and restrooms accessible to people with mobility issues? 

There are so many questions with financial, logistical, and relational angles to consider. Sometimes there's an easy technical solution, something we could solve in ten minutes, or before the next worship service. Other times there are meetings with stakeholders and maybe even architects and engineers, then a capital campaign and lots of dust.

Draw the circle wide.
Welcome whenever and however you can.
And remember, Epi-pens do not take the place of medical attention.