aintsobad

Governance Change: A History Lesson

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve or any other person.  

 My time is limited today. I wish to point out something from history. Governance does not change willingly.

   The most extreme examples are the holocausts of the last sixty years; Germany, Cambodia, the Sudan, et al. Once a population group in a locale becomes an isolated sub-group, their lot does not change without people who step in from outside. 

   Governance does not change willingly. People do not give up caste easily. The people howling most loudly about what we propose are those who fear they would lose caste. 

Governance of Religious Bodies in the Free Church

Opinions expressed here are mine, not those of the church I serve or of any other person.  

 Bloggers and young pastors who will not pay obeisance to the used to be catch a lot of blame for the death of associations and conventions in Free Church life, as though those things are sacred. Historically, one could as easily contend that conventions are anomalies, dominant once because they were the most effective way to organize efforts, doomed now for their failure to keep up.

   I reserve that argument for another day.

   My contention today is that we are not killing those bodies. They are worn out themselves. We are just watching them die. We wonder what comes next. 

   I suggest a Ministerial Guild. Yes, we need a better name for this quasi-organization of called, vocational, trained ministers. So long as you are not scatological you can make suggestions here at aintsobad. I do not expect to do much more than suggest some of the possibilities and (potential) problems of such a formation. I will not lead you and may not join you in its pursuit. 

   Here are some of the possibilities of benefit for a Ministerial Guild (name change pending).

• Called ministers take responsibility for themselves, their conduct and their (continued) training. The prolonger adolescence of ministerial staff ceases to be an irritant for Christians and churches.
• Called ministers take responsibility to "police" their colleagues. Pedophiles, sexual predators, thieves and church killers cannot hide in the weeds any longer. They are not exposed. They are just not recommended by the Guild. Background checks are extensive and updated.
• Called ministers take responsibility for the care and support of displaced ministerial staff, when the staffers are displaced by age requirements, church disruption or any other factor not related to their own bad behavior.
• Called ministers take responsibility. Responsibility, with its corollaries authority and power are not abdicated to other forces, over which called ministers have no control but for whose actions called ministers must constantly answer.

   This is already too long for a blog, I suppose. I will continue tomorrow. God being my help.

Religious Fundamentalism: Governance Needs to Change

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve or any other person.  

 By governance, I mean the way we relate to one another, we way we make decisions, the way we evaluate decision making, the way we spend money. I fully realize it is absurd (from the French, meaning "without hearing") to write of these issues in the singular. There are so many ways we relate to one another, so many ways we make decisions, evaluate and spend money, the social dynamic is a giant, double helix, a loop of constructional, determinative, characteristic forming genetic information.

   What we now do in governance does not work. We lose ground on the associational level, on the state conventions and national conventions levels daily. The para-church organizations that once may have "come alongside to help" (para-kaleo, from the Greek, the same word used to describe the Holy Spirit) simply cannot be afforded any longer, in terms of time or money.

   The local association to which my congregation nominally relates is a bad joke (in my opinion), repeatedly perpetrated on the local churches in the interests of traditional practice. The state convention we relate to is doing little more than paying salaries and benefits just now because their revenues are so low. The ripple-down effect on real ministries, like the colleges and seminaries, is potentially devastating.

   The way we do governance right now is simply impractical. A one or two day meeting of messengers, more poorly attended each year, representing fewer and fewer churches each year, will not suffice to right the ship. Placing semi-retired pastors in executive positions as life-time achievement awards will not suffice. 

   In fact, there has to be a change in governance and it cannot come from some para-church apparatus. In fact, it cannot come from the increasingly feeble local congregations themselves.

   Our change in governance has to come from the preachers and staffers. The professional clergy is dying and the churches will (and are) suffering as  a result. 

   Ministers, called men and women, have to change the way we govern our vocation (from the Latin "vocare," a holy calling, usually associated with the divine). We have to do this in addition to and not in place of our local expressions of calling, we have to work harder, we have to do it in a way that counts but no one gets paid and it has to be a royal pain to participate in it, so that people run from this office, not to it. 

   So, let us start.

Religious Fundamentalism: Governance

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve, or any other person.  

 If God is to take us through this time of rising fundamentalism, on earth, it will be because we get our governance right. Religious governance in Western culture is a matter of adopting corporate actions, ten to twenty years after the corporate model passes out of acceptance. In the last decade, some of us watched (and interfaced) with a Christian corporate culture that ballyhooed a very expensive restructuring, which had as its center piece moving to an incoming and outgoing phone bank and some field operatives. It cratered, the old administration left and the new had to undue all the "improvements."

   That is not the worst news of the story. The worst news is this; no one held still while waiting for the Christian corporate culture to catch up. The rest of mankind sped on, to emails, texting twitter, you-tube and facebook, while the poor Christians were left wondering why their phones did not ring.

   This is one small example. The point it illustrates is simply this; if you do not get the governance part right, you are fairly certain to mess up the rest of it all.

   In the next few posts, I am going to pound again on the subject of the ministerial guild. I am going to take a page from the black pastors I met over the years as my inspiration. When I would try to send some operative to them, the black pastors would ask me, "Where is he pastor? Does he have a church?" Their point was simply, beautifully profound. If the fellow matters at all, he is not a secretary or a consultant or an ivory tower guy. He is a gritty, heart-struck, in the trenches guy, or he does not help much.

   Let us learn together.

Religious Fundamentalism: A Man at a Table

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve, or any other person. 

  The story of a man at a table is now done. Or is it?

   He is left, there, actually, to ponder. If he is ever to leave the chair at the table in the dark room near a single, bare light, he has to resolve some issues. The resolution of all of them require some thinking and certain faith actions. He has to decide about the passage of time, if there is time when time cannot be measured, and, in so doing, he can also determine if his actions in time have validity.

   He has to decide about validity in actions and in time. Do his actions mean something now? Do his actions give him hope for later? When he is all he is going to be, what is he to be? What is it he must do when he finally comes to the point where the one thing he cannot do is to stay where he is, the way he is?

   Somehow, he must begin to quest for the whole truth. He is where he is, he thinks, in part because he once offered opinions about matters he could not actually influence. What does he do now? He remembers a defenseless being he victimized. His self-hatred for this act is appropriate, but what can he actually do with self-loathing, without forming of it an idol, as if personal repugnance is sufficient penance?

   

   

Religious Fundamentalism: The Literal Truth and the Whole Truth

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve, or of any other person.  

The literal truth does not allow for questioning of any kind. It solves all dilemmas, except the real ones.

   The whole truth requires questioning of all kinds. It resolves no quandaries and, so, ultimately leads to life.

Religious Fundamentalism: A Man Sits at a Table

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve or any other person.  

 A man sits at on a chair at one end of a table in a room with a single bare light. He holds a paring knife in one hand. An apple sits on the surface of the table in front of him.

   He does not reach for the apple. Hunger eludes him.

   The apple vanishes. His face does not change. 

   He checks to ascertain the presence of the knife. It is still with him, set in one hand.

   After a time, an apple appears on the surface of the table before him. He does not reach for this apple. He is alone, except in his mind. He does not know if he exists, or if the apple is the same one as before or if there is such a thing as before or after or during. Time is neither his ally nor his enemy.

   He is alone.

Religious Fundamentalism: A Man Sits at a Table

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve or any other person. 

  A man sits on a chair at one end of a table in a room near a single bare light. He holds a paring knife in his hand.

   An apple sits on the surface of the table in front of him. He is not hungry, or tired or imaginative. He looks at the apple from time to time but makes no move to grasp it.

   After what might be a long while, or might be only an instant, he begins to consider the apple more closely. 

   The apple is not perfect. One side of the apple seems to rise higher than the other. The symmetry is spoiled. The apple looks right to him but he cannot say why, since it is obviously less than the perfect apple. He considers his willingness to accept the apple on the surface of the table even though it is only pleasingly, not perfectly proportioned.

   A man sits at a table. He has definite feelings about beauty. For him, beauty is at the center of the core, and out from there. He wants to see the core of the apple but he does not know why he wants to see the core, and so he sits, quietly, as ever, as never, and holds the paring knife in his hand.

   The apple sits on the surface of the table. Does the apple know a man is waiting? Does the apple wait as well?

Religious Fundamentalism: A Man Sits at a Table

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the church I serve or any other person.  

 A man sits on a high back chair at one end of a long table near a single bare light. 

   He is alone.

   He holds a paring knife.

   An apple sits before him on the surface of the table. The apple is fresh and cold. It is easily within his reach.

   He cannot conceive of hunger.

   He can conceive of literal truth. He does not know, or imagine, or idealize, whole truth. He must, he apprehends, know literal truth.

   Literal truth is versatile. From literal truth, a man at a table can go on a line in any direction, and still rest on the line. He may touch any point on that line, as needed, and maintain the integrity of the line. He may companion himself with others along the line, as he has need.

   Except he has no need.

   The apple is easily within his reach. Yet, he holds only the knife.

   Whole truth is not linear, so he rejects whole truth. Whole truth is free-floating, in orbit about a central core and may demand a wide-eyed look, rather than a narrow gaze.

   He holds the knife. He looks at the apple.

Religious Fundamentalism: A Man Sits at a Table

Opinions expresseed here are my own, not those of the church I serve or any other person.  

  A man sits at a table. He discovers an apple and a paring knife on the surface.

   He is not hungry. He does not remember his last hunger pang.

   He knows he must eat. He reaches for the knife, instead of the apple.

   A man sits at a table, holding a knife and looking at an apple on the surface.

   He remembers a woman. Or is it a woman he imagines? He remembers, or creates, an incident during which he strikes the woman.

   He remembers, or devises, the look of fear and submission on her face.

   She is not pretty or ugly to him. She is someone he strikes.

   He recalls, or creates, the feeling of power he feels in bending her. He remembers, or imagines, the revulsion he feels after the power.

   For her.

   He is revolted by her.

   He feels his victimization.

   He holds the knife. He stares over the top of the apple.