August 12, 2010
Part 2 of 2
The early church was not a practical idea. Apostle Paul admitted that
our proclamation was foolish. Even Jesus’ contemporaries thought he was
crazy, if not a madman. People have invested in and died for more
preposterous causes in the church’s history. But they were willing to
face the ridicule of the masses and risk the uncharted waters of the
future, even if it meant their livelihood, if not their life, for the
church’s sake. What are you willing to do?
The vitality of the church and its future is dependent on the quality of
its leaders and their break from an addiction to messianic leadership.
The church’s vitality and future requires that you and I risk being
changed and transformed. I long to see the day when congregations and
their leaders all across this land, if not the entire church, have gone
wild and are set loose in the world as the presence of God’s healing and
Shalom.
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August 10, 2010
Part 1 of 2
In a New York Times article this past weekend entitled “Congregations Gone Wild,”
the author claimed that clergy are “suffering from burnout,” “working
too much,” and attending too often to “their congregation’s daily
wishes,” behaviors which may lead to greater job security in a
profession that is severely underpaid. This news is not surprising
especially among those who work with clergy and congregations.
However, what I do find surprising is a prevailing belief among many
clergy and congregations that one pastor is equipped and able to attend
faithfully to the needs of an entire faith community. What I find most
alarming is an underlying assumption that clergypersons are somehow
endowed by God with...
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July 20, 2010
Consider these two statements on leadership:
"Strong people don't need strong leaders."
"Leadership never ascends from the pew to the pulpit. It always descends from the pulpit to the pew."
The first quote is a famous line from Ms. Ella Baker, whose masterful work in organizing and leadership development helped to launch and stabilize the early work of many of the most significant civil rights organizations of the 20th century: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and MFDP. The second quote is a lesser known line from a better known figure: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ...
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February 12, 2010
I recently introduced Calling Congregations’ Vocation Care practice to my home parish in Atlanta. The way I presented it was telling our stories as a way to care for our lives. Our conversations have had a surprisingly rich character. Though the identified object of that curriculum is vocation – yours, mine, and ours together as the church – the way to a calling, it seems, is less systematic than textbook theology and closer to a practice of careful attention to our lives, to their warp and woof, formed and fashioned as they are by our Creator “in the depths of the earth” (Ps. 139:15) as well as by our choices. If the Psalmist’s phrase suggests a kind of mythology it may just be the needful imaginative platform that helps our thinking about our lives, about who we really are—creatures who belong not only to ourselves but to others and to the great Artifacer. Our divine origin is a given.
Thomas Moore in his now-famous Care of the Soul says that “care” is a more appropriate posture toward our lives than heroism, however desirable heroics may be to the ego. We engage the stories of our lives, he says, not to make them problem-free but to “give to ordinary life the depth and value that comes from soulfulness.” Our lives just as they are with their story-woven content just as it is. Our attempts to heal, says Moore, “can get in the way of seeing.”
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November 23, 2009
The congregational development model Jesus follows in the gospels to prepare the next generation of leaders can be stated this way—a long conversation, on the way together, as life happens, between meals. It’s a simple pattern, so lacking in complexity as to go unseen. It’s also hard to imagine that conversation can be so important (think of Mary and Martha). But this is the way Jesus cared for his own vocation and those who would follow him. That’s it. And it worked.
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July 20, 2009
The stuff of legend – that’s how one young person described C.T. Vivian after meeting him at a Sunday morning gathering, having heard him recount his experience on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. We can never say thank you enough for his courage, his fortitude, his unwavering commitment and his seemingly endless energy. Like so many of his generation, Rev. Vivian has been the kind of transformative leader that our world so dearly needs. And I want to let him – and everyone else know – we’re with you Dr. Vivian.
This past weekend, the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a story about the work of Dr. Vivian and his continuing efforts to inspire the next generation of pastoral leaders for the African American church. He continues to strive through his C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute to notice, name and nurture leaders for society with the kind of vision and values that will not only honor the work of the first generation of civil rights leaders but will also imagine the needs for the next generation, that will not simply rest because we have come so far, that will empower the kind of collaboration necessary to sustain the fight against injustice.
We know these efforts as well through our work at FTE.
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June 12, 2009
Three years ago, a few colleagues and I began to wrestle with these
questions. That wrestling has become a signature pastoral leadership
development program for young clergy, Project Rising Sun (PRS).
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