Blessed Be the Tie that Binds

I live a tethered life. That’s become my working shorthand for the complex web of relationships that have created and connected me in this life. And those of you who know me know that when I commit to a relationship, professional or personal, I tend to go all in. There’s not any part of my heart that is left fenced off, with a “do not disturb” sign on the gate. I associate this “all in” willingness with not being a lukewarm Christian (as we read in Scripture, lukewarm persons of faith make Jesus want to throw up – “"I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:15-16).

This past summer, I almost lost the feeling of all my tethers. I was like some ridiculous life-sized balloon, adrift in the atmosphere, until I felt the steady tug and tie of two bright stars, grounding my life and calling me home – the love of my son and husband. Of course there were other tethers still there, but in that bleak moment, I confess that I felt like I was coming undone, all the knots were slipping. It is often the relationships we knit together in our lives that can become the echoes of God’s love for us. And sometimes we need those echoes to be as loud as a freight train!

So now, I find myself in another time of transition. I have been appointed to serve as the senior pastor at Krum First United Methodist Church effective January 1. You can read more about this transition from the perspective of the Krum church’s current pastor, Christy Thomas, here. For my part, I am so humbled and honored by the opportunity. I am also simultaneously breathlessly excited, shaking in my boots, and snipping the beautiful tethers that have bound me in ministry at First UMC-Denton. It brings this hymn to mind:

          Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love;

          the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
          Before our Father’s throne we pour our ardent prayers;
          our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.
          We share each other’s woes, our mutual burdens bear;
          and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.
          When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain;
          but we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.
                                                                      United Methodist Hymnal #557

I was looking over the order of worship planned for January 5 at the Krum church, so I could have an idea of what lies ahead. Tears pricked my eyes as I read the liturgy through which that body of faithful people will welcome me as their pastor – that I shall baptize new Christians, that I shall preside at the table to feed the family of faith, that I shall lead them in ministry to the community and to the world – these are all things I knew in my head, but I feel blessed beyond compare that they are receiving me for this ministry. I am tying all sorts of new tethers of relationship.

This is the church I chose, our United Methodist Church, and this is what I signed up to do. Our theology is sound and we are still called to spread Scriptural holiness over the land. Despite all the global church’s warts and failings, the movement of pastors, so that each one’s unique gifts and graces might continue to build up of churches (i.e. the people of God) can be an amazing, Spirit-filled thing. And I’m all in!

Clergy + Woman

This year, I am serving as the co-convener (i.e. vice chair) of our conference clergywomen’s group. It is quite an honor for me since this was one of the key groups that helped me through seminary and the ordination process simply by their presence. I was invited to a lunch when I was still a candidate and found the wisdom, courage, and faithfulness of the women in the room extraordinary and inspiring. I felt like I could do because they had done it.

So here I am, miles down the road, helping to lead the very group which was such a means of grace to me. This year we’ve done a few new things – we’ve devised a purpose statement and a logo. The purpose of the North Texas Conference Clergywomen is to advocate for and build relationship with other clergy women. And this is our logo:

There are a few significant things about it to me. There is a deacon and an elder/local pastor represented by the stoles, signifying that both are ways that clergywomen live out God’s calling in their lives. The stoles are red, which is the same color given and worn during an ordination or Pentecost service, symbolizing the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon the individual. The shoes are red, too, in fond remembrance of many clergywomen who have had the courage and audacity to be women in the pulpit, all the way down to their shoes. Finally, one hand is reaching up while one is reaching back, signifying how we are always in a mentoring relationship, receiving wisdom from those who have gone before us and offering it to those coming after us.

This year, we’ve also informally decided to have a “red shoe Monday” at Annual Conference to bring our logo to life, as one of my clergy sisters put it. They don’t have to be heels, they don’t have to be high, they can just be red. A statement of solidarity and support with and for one another. And I couldn’t be more excited. Because, in all truth and honesty, I am both clergy and woman.

I am clergy because I have been called by God to be set apart for this responsibility of leading in word, order, sacrament, and service. I am clergy because other brothers and sisters in faith, from the SPRC that first approved of my candidacy to the Board of Ordained Ministry that recommended my ordination, have agreed that I am called by God. I am clergy in my church, where I preach, teach, laugh, hug, cry, plan, advocate, lead, and serve. I am clergy in my community where I advocate for others and partner with others of various stripes and hues. I am clergy even when folks of other churches say I’m not.

And, even in the midst of all these ways I am clergy, I am a woman. There’s no denying or getting around it, and I don’t want to! From the bra snaps in middle school, to the arguments with my mom about what I could and should wear in high school, to the adventures of college, to the awakening to the femininity of God in seminary – I am a woman. It’s challenging and wonderful and simply the hand that I’ve been dealt. I embrace who I am as a woman, all the curves and power of my body, all the ways my embodied experience informs my knowing and theology, and how my presence and leadership can be different (in a good way) from my male colleagues. I know great prices have been paid by others so that I can stand to preach today; like my right to vote, I acknowledge the sacrifice of others.

Now, just because you get a body, doesn’t mean you get a typical personality. I don’t like stereotypes. But I have talked with a couple of clergywomen colleagues who have either forgotten or want to dismiss that they are women. It baffled me, so I dug to find out more. For the one who had forgotten, she didn’t think of being a woman as a key part of her identity. I can understand that; we all build our identities from the various roles we assume. For me, being a woman is key to my understanding because of my relationships as wife and mother. I love those relationships, although they are probably far from what some would consider traditional, so I embrace who I am in them. For the one who would dismiss, she said that she wanted her embodiment to be secondary to the presence of God through her. And while I appreciate her humility and understand the motivations, I don’t know that we can ever get around this embodied experience of life.

God put us in these bodies! We are created male and female. And while there are layers upon layers of stuff – perversions and traditions and stereotypes and God alone knows what else – there is something to be learned and cherished from life in a body. It is in bathing bodies, our own and those who are dependent upon us – that we can learn to appreciate the gift of baptism. It is in feeding bodies, our own and those who are dependent upon us – that we can learn to appreciate the gift of communion. We have a God so great and so amazing that humbled God’s self to the experience of human life – from birth to death and all the great messiness in between.

So, while I will never imago Christi as my Catholic brothers explained is key to their understanding of priesthood when we spoke as chaplain candidates years ago, I know I am created imago Dei. I bear the image of God, from my blow-dried hair to my polished toe nails in high heels in church. I bear the image of God, from my ponytail to my sneakers on mission trips and playgrounds. I bear the image of God, from my tangled hair to my bare feet when I comfort my son in the middle of the night. I am clergy + woman, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Do you think about your embodied life? Where are the challenges and joys? Where is God in the midst of it?

We Believe in Salvation for Sinners

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been teaching this chapter of Will Willimon’s book, This We Believe, to one of our adult Sunday school classes. Last Sunday, when I put up the first slide of my nifty powerpoint presentation and read the title, one of the class members cheered. This class is a delightful blend of wit, intelligence, and deep faithfulness. So I agreed with the tongue in cheek gesture. Yes, it is a good thing we believe in salvation for sinners – we know ourselves that well.

We, as United Methodists, are accused fairly often of having an underdeveloped doctrine of sin. But, as Willimon writes and I paraphrase, we need to fully appreciate the problem of sin to appreciate God’s remedy in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If sin were no big deal, why did God come among us? Jesus might as well have taught a self-help program so that basically nice people could become nicer.

Of course, one of my other source documents for these lessons was John Wesley’s sermon, “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” Wesley may have been a better preacher than he was a systematic theologian, but he lays out his understanding of the work of salvation very nicely in this sermon, although he amplifies certain points elsewhere.

One of the things I had forgotten, but that struck me powerfully in my preparation was the past-present-future aspect of salvation. Salvation was accomplished once and for all in the work of Jesus Christ (past tense). Salvation is a reality that can be lived into here and now (present). And, salvation is that entering into glory with God after death (future). It troubles me how much thought and speech centers around the past and future aspects of salvation with little mention of the present. It seems contrary since our “now” is all we really have before us. It is in this “now” that we can make a difference, experience life, and life abundantly.

Then, tonight, in my Disciple Bible Study group, our text just happened to be the first half of the gospel of John. This gospel, which assumes we all start in a state of death, but have the opportunity to come to life through Jesus. Jesus comes to speak life into our death-ridden existence. But, we would rather have the safe answers, the actions kept at a distance in the past, or the promise of comfort to come.

It was a helpful coincidence as I continued to mull over this idea of salvation, so different from what some of our brothers and sisters might understand it to be. Today, in Sunday school, I invited the class members to take different versions of the “sinner’s prayer” and study them theologically – what points are being made, what do you find troubling or out of sync with our doctrine, what is the purpose, what are the benefits or pitfalls?

I brought this exercise because I remember a time when I was a child that I visited a relative who convinced me to pray this prayer. I was away from home, I was out of context, and she made the case with impassioned belief. She constructed the image of my own heart, locked from within, that needed to be opened to Jesus. This prayer was the way to invite him in. Afterwards, she took me to the jewelry store and bought me a cross necklace, which I still own.

I think that she thought that she saved my soul that day and had done her duty by me. I had received my ticket to heaven. But, Wesley also writes “Christianity is essentially a social religion; and that to turn it into a solitary religion, is indeed to destroy it” (Sermon 24: Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount). Perhaps, nominally, I was a Christian, but there was no community to nurture me, like so many who are invited to click whether or not they became a Christian by praying the prayer, now offered online.

To this day, I don’t point to this event as my “conversion.” That event was many years later, in a community of faith that nurtured me, allowed me to ask questions, and loved me, whatever my decision may have been. Christianity is a social religion, not just a checked box that I have accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. Surely, he is that, too, but my soul would wither without the company of other sinners and saints.

Clergy are like a box of chocolates…

…you never know what you’re going to get. We were in worship planning today with the new senior pastor who will be coming to our church on July 1, and this is maybe the funniest thing I said. Forrest Gump was on TV the other night, but this comment came after our new SP said something about him being “plug and play.”

I’ve been keeping my head down when it comes to General Conference. It’s a paradox in my mind – there’s so much at stake / there’s so little at stake. How will things that change in that stratosphere of polity really affect the day to day life of ministry and mission that I know best? This is the first General Conference to occur since my ordination last summer, so I thought I would be more engaged, not less.

But in this information age, I feel myself glutted and gagged by the constant influx of information via Facebook, Twitter, and even the weekly United Methodist Reporter that lands in my physical inbox. It’s just so much to process, changing by the second, and all second-/third-/fourth-hand from folks who know more than I do. I feel paralyzed in the land of unknowing, fearful to put a toe in the riptide of legislation.

I broke this relative silence today when I saw a couple of Facebook friends (read: not real friends, not people I would call in the middle of the night with a problem, or even during the day for a ride to the airport – really colleagues, one of whom is being considered to be a bishop…) posting about the guaranteed appointment legislation. Apparently, the more acceptable way to talk about it is in regard to the security of appointment for elders. While this made good sense a few years ago, to keep bishops and cabinets from benching ordained women and persons of color, it is now keeping ineffective clergy shuffling around from church to church, leaving a trail of dysfunction behind them. Or so that seems to be the thought process to one who, admittedly, is not following the news closely.

This morning, legislation was passed that means that ordained elders, who have agreed to go where they are sent by the bishop of their conference (i.e. that they will itinerate), are no longer guaranteed an appointment. Of course, since we are Methodists and still fearful of the human element of divine discernment, there are a couple of checks to balance and affirm the process of putting an elder on transitional leave, approval by the Board of Ordained Minitsry and clergy session of the annual conference.

I don’t know how I feel about all of this. I still wonder how “effectiveness” is measured – “in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?” I wish it could be measured in love. During the last round of annual evaluations, I was teary-eyed as I told my SPRC chair that the best ministry I do is stuff that no one usually sees. And I’d love to tell a story here, but most of it is also held in holy confidence between the parties involved, me, and a loving God.

I guess the worry I have is that we, as clergy, at least as elders, are expected to be “plug and play.” While what we do is deeply relational ministry, at least if you’re doing it right in my mind, you’re supposed to be willing to be uprooted for the sake of the Gospel and bloom in unfamiliar, perhaps even hostile, soil. It’s scary. I’m watching as our current SP untangles his life from the life of our church. It’s not overt and it’s not wrong, but I can see the leaning away as conversations drift to the time in just a few weeks when he will not be playing a part in this family of faith.

A few weeks ago, we met with our new SP for the first time to begin planning worship for his first few Sundays with us. Afterwards, my clergy sisters and I were reflecting on the time together. They have seen senior pastors come and go before, at this church and others. This is new to me. I was baptized at a Wesley Foundation, but didn’t join a local church until 2003. My first appointment was set in 2009 at the church I currently serve. So maybe I was the one struggling to navigate the unfamiliar waters the most as I said it felt like trying to do marriage work when you’re on your first date. Here we were, trying to collaboratively and creatively plan worship that would glorify God even as I realize this relative stranger across the table doesn’t know anything about me. Not that it matters, I guess, but it feels weird all the same.

I was talking to a confirmand today, a 7^th grader who has completed 2 years of study and has come to the point to decide wheter or not she will join our church. We went over the renunciation of sin and confession of faith in the liturgy. I asked her what each section meant, as though she were explaining it to a 3^rd grader, which goes something like this: 1)  Don’t do bad things; 2) God gives us power to not do bad things; and 3) We believe in and follow Jesus, along with anyone else who wants to be a part of the church. We went over the 5 parts of the vows of membership – prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.

At the end of our time together, I asked her if she had any questions and she thought a long time before asking me when our current SP was leaving. I gave her the date of his last Sunday. She asked me if I knew who our new SP was. I told her his name, his current church, his wife’s name and profession, his kids’ names and the schools they attend. I stopped there, figuring that was probably more than she would remember and less than she wanted.

Then I told her the same story a very wise district superintendent, who is now a bishop, told me. This was the DS I met with the share my call to ministry. He told me that in some churches, the people center around the pastor, which usually doesn’t end well when that pastor is no longer there, for whatever reason. Our church, the United Methodist Church, is structured so that the people (hopefully!) center around God and the pastor circles the outside parameter, encouraging and redirecting.

All I can figure is that clergy exist in paradox. We engage in deeply relational ministry to build the trust necessary for growth in holiness. And yet we must be “plug and play” components, possessing the deep personal reserves to serve a variety of appointments with grace, spreading scriptural holiness across the land. Clergy are as clergy do. I pray we do well, no matter the under/over-lying structure.