How is it that after two thousand years of meditation on Jesus, we’ve managed so effectively to avoid most of what he taught so unequivocally?

He then goes on to show how this is true by stating:

All of us, for example, have evaded most of the Sermon on the Mount.
All of us have evaded the unmistakable teaching of Jesus on a simple life-style, non-status-seeking, non-greed.
All of us have evaded Jesus’ teaching on non-violence (except for the Amish, the Quakers, and the Mennonites).
All of us have evaded his straightforward teaching on loving our enemy.

Richard Rohr, Adapted from Simplicity, pp. 161 – 162

This is a truth that I often ponder when I consider my own life and the lives of the churches I have served.  It is so easy to pick and choose what we want to take seriously and base our lives around.  Likewise, it is also easy to ignore or discard the teachings of Jesus we find too difficult or impractical for modern (or postmodern) life.

I am left to wonder how different my life and the church’s life would be if we actually started paying attention to everything Jesus said.  And I am all but sure that my wondering will not end in this lifetime.  That, my friends, is more than a little sad, if you ask me.

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Quotes taken from Unequivocal Avoidance posted by Mike on Mon, 18 Jan 2010.  Click the link to read his original post.

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The other day my friend Julie mentioned that she would be attending a different church today.  She posted the website and upon visiting it, I found that this church was named “Current.”  Now I ask you, when did we start naming churches after radio stations?  In the last few weeks I have run across several of these Churches on the web, including:

• The River
• Edge
• The Mountain
• The Valley
• The Torch
• The Rising
• Revolution, and the church which started this reflection
• Current

Do these names even make sense when applied to churches . . . especially the more geographical of them?  Here are some names I’ll bet you’ll never see, but which may be more appropriate for many churches:

• The Culvert
• The Ditch
• The Plateau
• The Sinkhole

On instead of a name like Current, I think many more churches could be more accurately named “Stale” or “Best Attended Before 1960"

Then there are churches that have names with Biblical allusions, like:

• The Narrow Gate
• The Cross Walk
• Tree of Life
• Sword of the Spirit Worship Center, and wait for it . . .
• Lamb’s Quarters

I have a few more suggestions in this vein as well.  How about:

• Hen’s Wings (Matthew 23:37, for those of you less biblically literate)
• Elijah’s Mantle (for the Spirit-filled congregations out there) – 2 Kings 2
• Elisha’s Bears (for church’s that specialize in Judgment) – Also 2 Kings 2
• Tree of Good and Evil – Genesis 3
• Balaam’s Ass – Numbers 22

One of the silliest names I saw was “I Am’s Way.”  If it were me, I would go with “Yahweh’s Way,” which is more poetic, or just “Yah’s Weh.”

Then there are those churches which emphasize how “new” they are, even if they have been around for years. 

• New Life
• New Day
• New Hope
• New Faith

How about this one instead?  New Version of the SOS Church

Hand in hand with “new,” are churches that focus on living, life or alive, such as

• Living Stones
• Living Faith
• Living Hope
• Alive in Christ
• Faith Alive

As for me, I would prefer:

• Living Large
• Living Loud
• Living Life

or more accurate for some churches:  The Living Dead

Many churches nowadays use the imagery of houses or other dwelling places in their names, like:

• House of God
• House of Worship
• House of Praise
• House of Hope               
• Ransomer’s House (Hmmm . . . right)
• The Lighthouse
• The Light’s House (Puhlease . . . )
• House of Christian Worship
• The Rapture Room (Lord, Have Mercy)
• Grace Place (Cute, huh?)
• The Hope Station

Here are few more I have come up with to add to this list:

• Christ’s Cottage/Condominium
• God’s Garage or The Holy Ghost Garage
• The Spirit’s Space or my favorite in this category: 
• Jesus’ Joint or Jehovah’s Joint

And then there are the church’s that name themselves after a worship and praise song.  I am talking, of course, about “Heart of Worship.”

But instead of focusing on the praise song aspect of this name, how about going with the anatomical allusion instead.  Then we could have churches like:

• Spleen of Sanctification Holiness Assembly
• Tongues of Praise Pentecostal Temple
• Fingers of Faith Fellowship (where foot washing is a sacrament along with Communion and Baptism, and where every service features that ubiquitous staple of Christian youth groups: the mass back rub)
• Eyes of Eschatology Edifice (A Pre-Tribulation, Pre-Millennial, Rapture-Centered Fellowship)
• Adonai’s Appendix
• Live(r) of Love and my fave: 
• Bowels of Belief

In looking at these trends in church names, I have decided that should I ever start a church of my own it would be called:

“The New Life Rising Fellowship on the Edge of the River in the Valley by the Mountain”
(AKA, “The House of Faith, Hope, Love, Worship, and Praise with a Foundation of Really Big Stones and a Cross Light set on the Hill, not under a Bushel”)

Or maybe I would just go with:

“The Church Where Their Worm Dieth Not, and the Fire Is Not Quenched” – a reference to a refrain Jesus uses in Mark 9:44, 46, and 48 (King James Version naturally – since modern heretical versions often leave out 44 and 46).

And then there is the church that my friend Jim Jannotti and I have often threatened to start, named simply “Will and Jim’s First Church of Jesus.”  “WillnJims ChurchaJesus".”

What do you think?

My problem is the emphasis on growth as the be all and end all of pastoring.  For me, the be all and end all is faithfulness to our calling to follow Jesus.  If growth accompanies faithfulness, great.  But sometimes faithfulness means that we will not see growth and often experience decline.  Nowhere is this more evident than in Jesus’ own life.  David Hayward’s cartoon (see link below) readily illustrates this.

From David Hayward, The Naked (or Nekkid) Pastor

One of the most damaging things about the popular view of love is that it requires being nice all the time. I don’t think that I am a particularly nice person. In fact, one of the reasons that I count myself among the believers is that I cannot rely on my being nice to pull me through.

Being nice is closely allied, of course, to being liked. The two go together. If I’m not nice you won’t like me, and if you don’t like me then there is no chance of love springing up between us. This kind of reasoning breeds dishonesty because it means that “love” becomes a code word for avoiding confrontation or disagreement.

True love requires a strict and accurate regard for truth. We lie in an age that would prefer the smooth lie to the hard truth. The result is that we are very poor at honoring genuine feelings and hard-won convictions. In the name of caring for each other we often do everything we can to diffuse one another’s passion. We are embarrassed by strong expressions of emotion.

Love, therefore, can easily become a device for avoiding unpleasantness and denying tragedy. In the name of love we tend to deny pity, joy, grief and passion and all for the sake of an egocentric “peace.” [There are] dire consequences in ordinary human life when these great Invisible Things are denied. Love is reduced to niceness and the passion and the grief are driven underground….

Please note that Jones does not go on to say that we need to become meaner people.  Rather, he feels that love requires honesty.  We need to be truthful to each other, and, as we know, though the truth can set us free, it can can also hurt at times.  Further, many of us, and I know that this is true of me, want to be liked.  We love being appreciated and loved, and we fear losing the love and respect of others if we are, at times, honest and truthful with those we care about.

Naturally our model in these situations ought to be Jesus, who spoke and acted truthfully at all times, and sometimes did so in ways that offended those on the receiving end of his actions and words. After all, who can forget his calling of some of the most religious people of his day “white-washed tombs,” and his driving out the money changers from the temple, using a whip of all things?  And then there is also his rebuke of Peter:  “Get behind me, Satan!”

The key, it seems to me, is that everything Jesus did was informed by his love of people and the world, as well as his desire that world and people be all that God desired both to be and become.  And again, the goal is not to be hurtful or hateful in our words and actions, but to make sure that both have their foundation in love.

For those of us who are pastors (and this really applies to all Christians), we need to learn to speak and act the truth in love.  This is a mark of a mature follower of Christ and of a maturing Christian community.  As Paul stated in Ephesians 4:15-16:  “Instead, by speaking the truth in love, we will grow up completely into the one who is the head, that is, into Christ, in whom the whole body is united and held together by every ligament with which it is supplied. As each individual part does its job, the body’s growth is promoted so that it builds itself up in love.”

Anyway, her post reminded me of a gentleman who has frequented First UMC in Pottstown three time over the last two weeks.  But first, some background.  First Church is in the middle of downtown Pottstown, and though Pottstown is by no means a big city (less than 25,000 inhabitants), it does have some “big city” problems, and First Church is right in the middle of where many of these problems can be found.  In any given year we have a couple of murders, usually drug-related, and just before I came here seven years ago a supposed crack-house on the corner of the block the church sits on burned down.  A member of our church was also severely beaten and left for dead in the alley behind our church at about the same time.  There are people who won’t come to downtown Pottstown at night because of events like these, though I think things have gotten much better in the years I have been here.

Pottstown also has a sizable homeless population for a community it’s size, and perhaps one of the reasons for this is the multitude of social agencies in our community for folks on the edge of society.  The churches and synagogue in our town run a cluster ministry that has a clothing bank, a food bank, and which also provides hot meals five days a week in area churches.  First Church hosts the noon meal every Friday.  The Salvation Army maintains an active presence here, and we also have a “One Night at a Time” ministry that provides shelter for the homeless during the winter, which, again, is hosted by area churches.  There are also several free clinics in town, and just one block from our church is a social agency called Creative Health, where you will find a number of the homeless and/or down and outs milling about on any given hour of any given day.  The block our church is on also has a short-term drug and alcoholic rehabilitation center, our church provides meeting space three days a week for one of the Narcotics Anonymous groups in our community, and we also lease space for an alternative school in our building for students who can no longer attend the regular Middle and High Schools in surrounding school districts due to discipline problems.

I say all this so that you might understand that there is no telling who might show up at First Church on a Sunday morning (or whenever the doors of the church are open for that matter).  For awhile our services were blessed with the presence of Michael/Michelle, the friendly neighborhood transvestite.  Bob (not his real name) attended church off and on for over a year, and we were treated to the various manifestations of his manic-depressive disorder, including the one Sunday when he stood up while I was preaching a sermon on joy and shouted “f you!” before abruptly walking out of the service.  Let me tell you, it’s not easy to continue preaching after something like that happens.

A few years ago, another woman named attended our church for quite a while.  I still remember the service that featured my singing several songs instead of preaching the usual sermon.  I was in the middle of rousing rendition of “Sinners, Don’t Let This Harvest Pass,” when this woman proceeded to come up to the front of the church not once, or twice, but three times to present me with some commemorative plates that she had collected over the years.  I guess my singing so moved her that she was unable to wait until I was finished before handing them to me, so there I was singing away, turning my sheet music and trying to find a place to put each plate as it was ceremoniously handed to me by her.  A few months after that she showed up at the church one evening and would not leave, insisting that she should be allowed to sleep there (even though she had a home to go to).  We eventually had to call the police to force her departure.

There was also the day when a young man stood outside the door to the church office and proceeded to undress himself completely.  This was during the rehearsal time of a group of singers called the NIfty-Fifty by the way, and yes, that means everyone in the group was 50 or over (and most of them were well into their late sixties).  Alerted to the situation, and wanting to resolve the problem before these fine senior citizens finished their singing and would face being greeted by a very calm though thoroughly naked doorman, I cautiously approached the young man and asked if there was anything I could do for him.  He told me quietly and politely that I should call the police.  I did after some further conversation and several pleas with him to put something on.  He refused to do so, and later I learned why.  It seems that if you want to be admitted to one of the institutions in the area, the most sure-fire way of doing this is to be found naked in a public place.  This young man knew exactly what he was doing and what he had to do to get the help he needed.

I could on and on about similar experiences, but let me get back to the gentleman I spoke of earlier in the first paragraph.  Two Sundays ago he showed up in worship and tried to speak with several people both before and during the service.  Since people here are used to these kinds of things, no one was shocked or shaken by this.  The trouble was that the man was so obviously out of it because of drugs and/or alcohol that no one could understand a word that he was saying either.  I went to the back of the church to speak with him myself, and I too could not comprehend a single syllable, let alone word, of what he said.  I asked him to stay until after the service so we could talk, but he left before it ended.  “Case closed,” I thought.  But it  was not.

Yesterday we had a wedding at First Church.  The service had not yet begun, but people were beginning to arrive.  One of the ushers sought me out and said that a man was going around asking various guests for money.  I came into the sanctuary, and you guessed it, the man was back.  And yes, he was hitting up everyone he could for a few dollars.  And though he was able to better communicate on this day, I naturally had to ask him to leave, which he did.

This brings us to today.  The 9:00 am modern worship service is about 15 minutes from starting, and the only ones in the room are myself, Rob (our drummer) and my daughter Desiree.  She is practicing a song she will sing during worship when she looks over at me and says, “That man just took your coffee.”  Sure enough, the guy was back and I was just able to catch a glance of him (with my coffee in his hand) as he left the room, door closing behind him.  Now, if I was a nicer person, or if I was a better person, I no doubt would have let him take the coffee.  But I was in no mood, I guess.  Plus, the coffee was not in some paper cup from Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks.  No, it was in one of my own 24 ounce, thick plastic, orange tumblers (Jim, you know the ones of which I write), and though I didn’t mind the theft of the coffee, there was no way I was going to let him have the container it was in.

I moved quickly to the front of the room, fully prepared to chase the coffee and cup thief down if I had to do so.  Luckily (or not) I did not have to do this.  I had just gotten to the front door when said thief reappeared, with purloined goods still in hand.  He asked me if what he held was my coffee, and I answered, “Yes, it is.”  He then apologized, handed the cup back to me (with much less coffee in it now), and then, as if he had done nothing untoward beforehand, he asked if he could have some money.  Though I rarely do this, I gave him a couple of dollars in cash and promptly reclaimed my cup, with its remaining beverage (which, of course, I did not drink).

And now for a confession.  You see, during this whole time, I have to admit that I did not think of this man as “one of the least of these” that Jesus refers to in Matthew 25.  He was thirsty, and I did not offer him a drink.  In fact, I took his drink away.  Further, I was so consumed with retrieving a stupid plastic tumbler that I did had trouble seeing him as a person in real need at all.  In the end, the man simply pocketed the money I had given him and left, and I continued with my worship preparations without much thought about him until I read Julie’s post a couple of hours ago.

But now I am struck by the fact that, like the goats in Matthew 25 (a passage I preached on myself not even a month ago), I failed to see Christ present in a person standing right in front, and it was a person with real and obvious needs to boot. I was oblivious of the opportunity that I had in that moment to practice what I preach.  My actions showed how, at times, I fail to be the hands, the mouth, and the body of Jesus in my own little part of the world.

Realizing this leads me to a simple question:  “What will I do the next time?”  And given where First Church is located, there will be a next time, and a next time, and another next time after that.  And so I wonder, “What will I do?”   And for that matter, what would or will you do in a similar situation?  My prayer is that we always do what Jesus would do in these situations, and my hope is that we remember (as the writer of Hebrews states) that we never know when we might be entertaining angels unaware.

Image by wallyg via Flickr

Yesterday, on his personal blog (see link below), Will Willimon, Bishop of the the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, wrote about characteristics of effective churches. Willimon says that the list below was developed by the leaders of the Southeastern Juridiction of the UMC and wondered how various congregations might embody or be in conflict with these characteristics.

Here is the list the leaders came up with:

EFFECTIVE CONGREGATIONS:

1. Love their particularly community. Their pastors have found a way not only to love their congregations but also their neighborhood. Effective pastors help their congregations move beyond love of themselves, turning their congregations outward.
2. Rise above mere contentment with things as they are and do what is necessary to expect and welcome change, disruption, and movement, similar to that of the Risen Christ.
3. Find a way to welcome the stranger and to practice radical hospitality in the name of Jesus Christ. They find a way to be as interested in those who have yet to join the church as those already in the church.
4. Have a clear sense of their primary purpose and keep focused on their primary God-given missions.
5. Enable lay leaders to lead, not just manage. Lay leadership that feels a strong sense of responsibility for the future of their congregation.
6. All have a strong, change oriented, gifted pastor.
7. Make growth a priority and figure out how to grow.
8. Keep focused upon Jesus Christ as the originator of, and the purpose for the church (rather than church as just another human oriented institution).

Now don’t get me wrong in what I am about to say.  I mean no disrespect to Bishop Willimon or the leaders who devised this list of effective congregations.  As far as these things go, it is a fine list.  But I have read over 50 books on church growth, renewal and effectiveness.  I have attended more seminars on the same subjects than I care to remember, and over the past 20 years or so, I have grown tired of all the emphasis on these things.

For me there are only two marks of an effective church, which can be phrased as questions.  First, does the church provide ample opportunities to worship God and connect with the divine?  Second, is the church making disciples for Jesus Christ?  Everything else flows out of these two things.  At least that’s how I see things.

Effective Churches
William H. Willimon
Posted on Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:10:00 GMT

It seems to me that one of the best times for ministry to a family is in the careful planning and conducting of a church service in honor of the deceased.  In a church a true worshipping community can gather, songs of the faith can actually be sung (instead of taped music or hymns being played before or after a service in a funeral home), and the departed’s life can be celebrated in a place that had real meaning for him or her.  And while funeral homes may be familiar and comfortable settings, none of the above statements hold true for them.

As a minister for over 20 years now, I have seen increasing numbers of church members have their funeral services conducted in the funeral homes.  Why?  I don’t know, for sure, but perhaps it has to do with a possible added cost for transporting the coffin to a church for the service.  And I also know as well that some church sanctuaries are located on the second floor of church buildings, making the placement of a coffin in the sanctuary problematic.  But I believe such problems can be solved, and I am of the firm opinion that every active church member should have his or her memorial service in the church where he or she worshipped or prayed.  I encourage my church members to do just that.

I was therefore interested to read a post recently in the GetReligion blog (see link below).  In it a funeral director is suing a priest and the Archdiocese of Louisville for undercutting his business by implementing (or I should say enforcing) rules for conducting funerals in the priest’s parish.  This funeral home is located in Nelson County, Kentucky (the county in which I grew up), and the story was reported on by Pete Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal, it’s religion reporter.  Smith wrote:

A Nelson County funeral home director is suing the Archdiocese of Louisville and a Roman Catholic priest, whom he accuses of undercutting his business by implementing new rules on conducting funerals at his parish.

The Rev. Jeffrey Leger, pastor of St. Catherine Church in New Haven, put a new policy into effect last month, stipulating that funeral directors can no longer solely plan funerals. Instead, they must now plan them with Leger, who has final say.

The new policy, which Leger outlined in a 10-page letter to funeral directors, strictly enforces church law and liturgical practices that limit such things as the types of readings, music and eulogies at funeral Masses.

Ron Rust, owner of the William R. Rust Funeral Home in New Haven, said the policy will interfere with his longstanding business of coordinating funerals that are held at St. Catherine.

Smith goes on:

In his letter to funeral homes, [Leger] said the purpose of a funeral Mass is to “illumine the mystery of Christian death in light of the risen Christ,” and that everything must focus on the Christian hope of resurrection.

Anything that could distract from that should be avoided, he wrote, adding that eulogies, recorded music and nonbiblical readings such as poetry and letters are forbidden except under limited circumstances.

Such personalized features should take place at the vigil service, typically held the evening before the Mass at either the church or the funeral home, he said.

I particularly like what Mollie Ziegler, the writer at GetReligion, has to say:

It’s the dirty little secret of church life that some funeral directors are responsible for exerting a great deal of power over funeral services. Sometimes that’s a net blessing for the parties involved. Grieving family members don’t always make the best decisions about funerals. But for churches, such as mine, that approach funerals as worship services in which the Word of God is proclaimed in order to comfort those who grieve with hope in the resurrected Christ — meddling from non-members can wreak havoc. I say all this as a descendant of successful funeral home directors on one side of the family and the daughter of a pastor on the other side of the family.

I couldn’t agree with her more. What do you, my gentle readers, think?

The business of death was written by Mollie Ziegler on Thursday, 21 August 2008.

In a recent post on Emergent Self, Judith Hougen wrote:

Some years ago I sat at a sidewalk cafe with Barry, a pastor from San Francisco, during a break at a spiritual formation conference in Denver. I was interviewing him for a phantom book project. I sipped iced tea and described to him my ideas for the book and reported the results of the Barna survey [in which] . . . evangelicals scored just above prostitutes as a favorable group, his initial laughter lapsed into sober reflection. Barry can get this Buddha-like look, and you know something profound is on the way.

Finally, he leaned across the table and said, “One reason we’re right next to the prostitutes is that we’re in the same business. We don’t offer love, we offer services. We look good but we don’t know how to love and, unfortunately, society will settle for that to get what they think they need.”

“We don’t offer love, we offer services.”  Now that is a powerful indictment of the Church, if it is true, and unfortunately, in my experience, this is true for many congregations.  Churches become the place to go if you need to get a baby done (baptism), a beautiful setting for a wedding, or a place to view the recently deceased besides the funeral parlor. Many churches also provide their members with services like pastoral counseling, fellowship opportunities, and comfortable, non-confrontational worship for little or no cost.  And many people now treat congregations as just another shopping experience, seeking the church that best meets their needs.

Some, not allm but some successful churches are those who have learned to prostitute themselves to consumers looking for best value for their tithing or offering dollars.  And if love – the preaching, teaching and practice of love – has anything to do with congregational life, it does so only secondarily to the overwhelming need the church has for new participants and their much needed money.  I cannot tell you how many meetings I have endured in which the primary conversation was centered on this question: “How can we attract new members to our church?”  And why does this question come up?  Only because the church in question needs these new people and their money in order to survive.

It’s like the Church has a bad habit it needs to feed, and in order to keep getting its fix, new infusions of cash are necessary to score the drugs.  And in the church’s case the habit primarily has to do with maintaining itself and especially its building(s).

I have no desire to see this charade in my ministry or in the ministry of any church with which I am involved.  From now on conversations that start with "how can we we get new members/money into the door?" will be shifted to "How can we show the love of Jesus to those around us?"  Rather than being a love-less provider of services, I want the Church to share the love of Christ in as many ways as is humanly possible.

In short, we need to stop prostituting ourselves and start giving ourselves away. Those, at least, are my thoughts for today.  What do you think?

Thanks for Sonja Andrews for pointing the blog post above a "tweet" yesterday on Twitter.  You can read Sonja’s blog here.