Reflections on the Disciples of Christ General Assembly

I'm catching up on my blog after a very busy month.  I wrote the following earlier this month for the newsletter, The Dialogue, of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.

Last week I returned from the national meeting of our denomination, the General Assembly of the Christian Churches, Disciples of Christ in the United Statesand Canada.  These meetings take place every two years and it is a time to learn about what is happening in the denomination, network with like-minded folks and address particular social issues.  Being new to the Disciples, I still feel like a bit of an outsider at these events, but I’m growing more comfortable in my new denomination.  This is only the second General Assembly I’ve attended.  I feel sure those who came up in the denomination, attending Disciples colleges and seminaries, active on denominational committees and boards, could give you a better picture than I of what the Disciples are up to nationally, but here are my reflections.

In an age when denominations like ours are declining in numbers and influence, the Disciples are especially so.  The combined pressures of the bad economy and a shrinking church could be felt everywhere at the meeting.  Yet, compared to my first General Assembly two years ago, I experienced a much more positive and forward-thinking outlook by the church’s leadership.  Last time around, I came away feeling the denomination was in survival mode and merely circling the wagons as it slid into complete irrelevance; this time, I saw some of that but saw a lot more of people forced to let go of ways of doing things that no longer work in today’s context.  The net result was a meeting that highlighted churches who were transforming from dying congregations to communities with new life and vitality.  Granted most Disciples churches continue to die, but it was both hopeful and exciting to learn about churches that had made the right decisions to dream new dreams and make a difference in the 21^st century.

Yes, as is true of most mainline denominations like ours, the average age of participants was somewhere above 175 years old, but compared to two years ago, I saw more younger clergy and laity represented at all events.  Also, throughout all events, the leadership had made a concerted effort to be inclusive in terms of gender and ethnicity.  The result was a program that looked a lot more like the Kingdom of God in its diversity than just a bunch of Caucasian men. 

A disappointing omission in the diversity of people in leadership at the meeting was the lack of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.  With a few exceptions, the elephant in the room that many seemed not to want to discuss remains the full inclusion of LGBT people in Disciples life.  I was encouraged, however, when Sharon Watkins, the Disciples General Minister and President was reelected for a second term and she mentioned pursuing meaningful dialogue as a denomination regarding the inclusion of LGBT people as one of her priorities.  While at the assembly, I attended the GLAD Alliance Banquet (GLAD = Gay and Lesbian Affirming Disciples).  GLAD Alliance continues to be the main voice for speaking up for the full inclusion of LGBT people in Disciples life.  Our church was recognized at the banquet for becoming Open and Affirming in 2010.  I was proud to represent FCC at the event.

Of course, I gained much from hearing wonderful speakers like Holly McKissek ofSt. Andrew Christian Church in Olathe, KS, the dean of Disciples preaching FredCraddock and the celebrated author and leader in the “emergent church” BrianMcLaren.  I also felt blessed to participate in a healthy discussion about immigration reform and an immigration reform prayer walk on the streets of downtown Nashville.  Yet, I especially appreciated the business sessions which took on some difficult issues but did so with civility.  A resolution regarding sexual abuse in the church became a little difficult when different people who had been abused took issue with whether they should be called “victims” or “survivors” of sexual abuse.  People spoke against and for both terms based upon their experience of abuse.  In the end, a compromise was struck and both terms were used, but more importantly the voices of those who had previously been silenced were heard.  My sense was that discussion and debate still mattered at the assembly rather than things being rammed through by a few power brokers in a back room

On a personal note, the General Assembly was meaningful for me because I attended it with my father, who is now also a Disciples minister.  Both of us know the pain of leaving the church we grew up in, yet he lost more than I did when he left Baptist life behind.  He let go of a lifetime’s worth of relationships that mattered to him.  I had only begun my career in ministry when I chose to no longer claim the Baptist label.  On the last night, he sat with a group of ministers who had all previously been Baptist but were now Disciples.  They had known each other in their previous lives.  As they sang and worshiped together, they experienced a sense of healing as they reunited in their new church family.  Perhaps that is what I will take away most from the General Assembly—the belief that at its best, our denomination—just like our local church—can be a place for those who have been rejected and excluded elsewhere.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Stories from Royal Family Kids Camp 2011

I'm catching up on my blog after a very busy month.  I write the following earlier this month for the newsletter, The Dialogue, of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.

Last week First Christian Church held its 19^th Royal Family Kids Camp at Camp FarWesta in Stewartsville.  34 children who have experienced abuse and neglect from their families enjoyed a week where they could just be kids in a setting that was safe and where all attention was on them.  Unlike other camps which have “camp counselors” who take care of many children, at RFKC “special friends” (for these kids the word “counselor” has a particular and possibly negative connotation) have only two children a piece in their care.  At the end of the week, camp staff debriefed and told about their experiences with the children.  Here are a few of them.  (Names have been changed in order to protect the privacy of the children.)

A girl named “Jane1” told her special friend near the end of the week that she wished camp would last for two weeks.  The special friend replied, “Oh, but we have to go back to our families.”  Jane1 then said, “My family doesn’t want me to come back home.”

On the last night, a boy named “John1” blew bubbles with his special friend to whom he said, “I’m going to blow a bubble big enough to take you home to Kansas City with me.”

            A girl named “Jane2” refused to talk all week long until the last two days.  On the last night of the week, the children, who often do not get to celebrate their own birthdays, receive a box filled with presents.  One of the presents was an MP3 player with the camp songs loaded on it.  Jane2, whom had been almost silent all week, put on her earphones and walked around singing songs about God’s love at the top of her lungs.

            “John2” had been difficult all week and often combative.  Toward the end of the week, his special friend spoke sternly to him.  John2 stopped and asked, “Are you going to hit me?  That’s what my dad does when he’s mad at me.”

            “Jane3” asked a special friend at bedtime one night if she was safe to fall sleep.  The special friend assured her that she could fall asleep because she was safe here.  Jane3 responded, “One night I thought I was safe.  My mommy was there with me.  But I wasn’t safe.”

            “Jane4” cried at bedtime, so her special friend stroked her hair and sang to her.  Jane4 said, “God put you here as my special friend, my guardian angel, because no one has ever been able to put me to sleep except you and my mom.”

            “Jane5” opened up her birthday box on the last night of camp to find a box containing a necklace.  Jane5 stared in wonder at it for a moment then quickly closed the box.  She then found some Scotch tape and taped the box shut.  A staff member said, “Oh Jane5, that necklace is yours.  You can wear it.  Nobody will take it away from you.”  The small girl replied, “I want to give it to my mom.”  The staff member answered, “Oh, O.K., but I’m sure your mother has lots of nice things, and this was a gift for you to enjoy.”  Jane5 said, “We don’t have nice things in my family.”

• ·       Almost five children die every day as a result of child abuse. More than three out of four are under the age of 4.

• ·  Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.

• ·       Over 60% of people in drug rehabilitation centers report being abused or neglected as a child.

• ·       About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children.

• ·       About 80% of 21 year olds that were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.

Please pray that the 34 children who attended RFKC this year.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

What I Learned at Conflict Resolution Training

I'm catching up on my blog after a very busy month.  I write the following last month for the newsletter, The Dialogue, of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.

            This past weekend First Christian Church of St. Joseph along with First Christian Church of Maryville hosted a 2-day training on Interpersonal Conflict Resolution Training.  The training was led by facilitators from the Community Mediation Center in Kansas City, and eighteen people attended from St. Joe and Maryville representing social service providers like the YWCA, InterServ, Youth Alliance and the abuse shelter in Maryville, along with MWSU faculty and staff, and other members of the community.  Together we learned about what is necessary if you want to be a peacemaker by helping others work through conflict.  Here are a few of the many things I took away from this important event.

            Start with yourself.  I came prepared to learn tools about helping others work through their conflict, but I discovered that we spent the bulk of our time learning how to manage conflicts within ourselves.  I guess I should have known this already, but it turns out if you actually want to help others communicate and work through conflict, then you have to do things like listen and communicate in a way that makes sense to others.  Huh?  I thought I was just going to focus on other people’s issues, but I found out that can’t happen until I work on my own first.

            Stress changes things.  Again, put this one in the column for things I probably should have known already but never really spent much time thinking about before.  When a person is under stress, that person doesn’t listen as well.  In fact, stress takes strengths possessed by a person and amps them up to an excessive level which can turn them into weaknesses.  For example, a person who likes helping others can become needy and dependent upon others' approval; or a person who is a decisive leader can become demanding and dictatorial.  Conflict is stressful, and even when you are trying to help someone else work through their problems, their stress can become your stress turning you into part of the problem rather than an ally in finding a solution.

            Having winners and losers doesn’t end conflict.  Many of the world’s so-called peace treaties don’t lead to real peace, instead they only continue the conflict.  Whether the stakes are an accord between warring factions or a divorce decree for warring spouses, when only one side wins, the conflict hasn’t really been resolved.  At the training, we talked about the idea of moving beyond winners and losers towards helping people in conflict to create something new.  For example, a divorced couple fighting a bitter custody battle could choose to continue the fight disregarding the needs of their children or they could create a new situation that puts their children first.  Finding that shared purpose is at times a difficult process, but the end result looks a lot more like real peace rather than a simmering continuation of the fight.

            People are people.  A highlight for me was working through some of the exercises with another participant who happened to be African American and Muslim.  He and I have had very different experiences in life, but as we shared our own experiences with conflict in our own lives and talked about healthy ways to deal with them it turned out we had quite a lot in common.  We both struggle with the frustration that comes when we feel misunderstood and effort it takes to communicate with others we disagree with in ways that build bridges rather than deeper divisions.  I was reminded how much alike people really are.  We all wish to be understood.  We all desire others to really listen to us.  We all seek positive ways forward in complicated relationships despite our limited skills.  

            Grace and Peace,

            Chase

Who Would Miss First Christian Church of St. Joseph?

I'm catching up on my blog after a very busy month.  I write the following last month for the newsletter, The Dialogue, of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.

How does a church measure success? A for-profit business can measure its success according to its profit in a given year. A non-profit entity can measure its success in clients served. Yet, a church can have lots of money and members and still not be a success. Why not? A church’s success is entirely dependent upon its faithfulness to God and its decisions to model itself upon the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. A church can be faithful to God and sacrificial in its love—or not!—no matter its membership or money. Of course, at First Christian Church we work hard to respect different points of view and different under-standings of God’s leadership in our lives, so how do we—in our diversity—come to a common understanding of what it means to be faithful and sacrificial in our love? Here’s one idea.

One way of determining if we as a church are faithful to God and sacrificial in our love is to ask the hypothetical question “If First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO were to close tomor-row, who would miss it?” After all, if we are truly be-ing faithful to God then we would be creating a space where people’s lives are transformed by their experi-ence of God, and if we were being sacrificial in our love, then people both inside and outside the church would know firsthand what it means for a community of people to care for them. If not, \then neither those inside or outside the church would miss First Christian if it closed.

From my perspective as FCC’s minister, I do believe the church would be missed by the members of the church who actually attend and have relationships that matter with other church members. (As for those members who either rarely or never attend or partici-pate, I can only wonder if the church matters to them open or closed.) I also believe that the church would be dearly missed by some more recent members and regular attendees who have experienced a welcome at FCC that they have not known elsewhere. These are folks who have felt excluded or judged at other churches but who have found FCC to be a community that truly welcomes them. I also think the church would be missed by people in the community who at-tend other churches or no church, but who nonetheless appreciate that there is a church like FCC in their town, a church that welcomes all people, values freedom of belief and seeks to care for those who are considered “the least of these” in society.  An acquaintance of mine likes to say, “I’m not a religious person, so I don’t go to church, but if I did, I would go to First Christian.”

In terms of outreach (ministry to the needs of people outside the church), however, I wonder how much FCC would be missed if it closed tomorrow. Our church has played a significant role in past years of getting minis-tries started, such as the Open Door Food Kitchen, Faith in Action and others, however the success of these ministries since their beginnings now means (thankfully) that FCC is only one church among many involved in them. While our contributions of funds and volunteers matter and would surely be missed, other churches would hopefully step in to fill any gaps left by our disappearance.

There is one big exception to this rule when it comes to our outreach ministries, however: Royal Family Kids Camp, our annual ministry to abused and neglected children in our area. Although camp directors Sandy and Ken Hamlin do a great job of drumming up support from other churches and area groups and businesses, the fact remains that if our church did not make RFKC happen each year, it would not happen. In the 19 years that FCC has made a RFKC camp happen in our area (there are al-most 200 other RFKC camps elsewhere), hundreds of children who have experienced difficulties that are hard to comprehend have experienced God’s love in tangible and dramatic ways. If FCC closed tomorrow, RFKC would cease to happen in our area and these children who have experienced the worst that life has to offer simply would not know that there are adults in the world who serve a loving God and seek to care for children rather than abuse them.

This Sunday is RFKC Sunday where we as a church will commission this year’s 34 staff members and celebrate what God has done in the camps of previous years. We will be reminded of the difference our church can make in its community when it chooses to be faithful to God and to love in sacrificial ways. Thankfully First Christian will not close tomorrow. I hope you will come Sunday and see one of the most significant reasons why that is a good thing!

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Speaking Metaphorically

This piece was originally written for The Dialogue, the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.)

This past Sunday we began the season following Pentecost.  As we follow the liturgical church calendar, we mark each Sunday going forward by how many Sundays it has been since Pentecost (the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, etc.).  We will do this until we reach Advent (the four weeks prior to Christmas) when we start our annual journey through the church seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost) all over again.  The season following Pentecost is the longest of the year and symbolizes where we are as a community of believers—doing our best to experience God in our daily lives.  According to traditional Christian doctrine, we experience God by means of the Holy Spirit.

The problem with the Holy Spirit is that who and what the Holy Spirit is remain elusive.  The portrayal of the Holy Spirit in the Christian scriptures is vague when it comes to describing what the Holy Spirit is but quite concrete in describing the Spirit’s effects.  Although the characters in the New Testament do not know when the Spirit will visit them or in what way they will experience it (flames, strange tongues, dreams, intuitions, human fellowship, etc.), the early church grows in number and spreads geographically according to the Spirit’s direction.  Furthermore, according to the account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, we the readers are meant to understand the Spirit that energized the early church as the same Spirit of God who was at work throughout the history of Israel and the history of the world.  Yet even this biblical background is not enough for us to adequately capture what or who is the Holy Spirit.

As I shared Sunday, the “Great Schism” between the Western and Eastern Churches occurred among other reasons because of a disagreement over the nature of the Holy Spirit.  The Western Church insisted the Spirit originated with Christ (Christ came first!), while the Eastern Church declared the Spirit as part of the Trinity was always present as an equal “person” of God.  Each view has its strengths; theologian John Macquarrie notes that the Western view maintains consistency with Jesus and guards against extremism justified by a claim of the Spirit’s leadership, i.e. if it is not consistent with the love of Jesus then it’s not truly Christian.  Maquarrie also notes that the Eastern view, however, recognizes that God’s Spirit is at work outside the church in the entire world, even in other religions.  I figure why choose between the two?  Why not believe in a Spirit that is consistent with the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ and that is at work everywhere?

As with most things with God, we humans are left to grasp for language to describe who and what God is.  We are left with metaphors.  When it comes to the Holy Spirit, the church has long spoken of the Trinity or the three “persons” of God or the Spirit of the resurrected Christ, yet each of these terms works only to the extent they help believers to understand their experience of God.  To teach about the Spirit, and thus the Trinity, I have used the metaphor of water (able to be a solid, liquid or gas yet still water) or a metaphor from physics of a “force field” (the field of energy that exists between all living things), yet those metaphors have their limits too.  Even the name “Holy Spirit” only goes so far in helping us understand the presence of God in our lives.  The experience of the Spirit must come first, and language can only trail behind trying to express what that experience was like.

In the season after Pentecost each year, the best counsel I can offer is for believers to be aware of the metaphors we use to describe our experiences of God.  To the extent that those metaphors are loose and enable you to speak of God without limiting your understanding of who God is and what you believe God can do in your life, the metaphors are healthy and good.  To the extent that those metaphors are rigid and result in you placing limits upon what God can do and who gets included in the activity of God, the metaphors are unhealthy and destructive.  As we seek to sense the presence of God in our midst, may our language allow room for what the apostle Paul named as the “fruits” of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”  When our language allows these “fruits” to blossom, then we will know our metaphors are worthy of the God we claim to serve.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Resisting Temptation

(This piece was originally written for The Dialogue, the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.)
At the end of 2010, I wrote the following in my annual wish list for the coming year:

No Celebrity Cell Phone Pics—I don’t care if you’re Brett Favre or a mistress of Tiger Woods, I wish for a year where I don’t have to hear about anyone getting in trouble for taking a picture of a body part with their cell phone and sending it to someone else. In this case, technology is not our friend. (This wish also counts for non-celebrities.)

Ah those were the days—when we only had to worry about athletes taking pictures of their body parts and sending them out for the world to see! So much for that 2011 wish; now we have to worry about politicians. (As I write this, I have turned off the news, because I’m tired of hearing about Rep. Anthony Wiener’s stupidity. He’s only the latest politician to send pictures of himself via his cell phone camera.) What is it with guys taking pictures of themselves naked?

In the light of day (or the glare of TV cameras!), stupid choices look like what they are—STUPID. The dam-age done to marriages and other important relationships, the loss of trust and credibility, and the pain caused to so many are plain to see. Yet, our moments of temptation often do not come in such public moments but in private when we fool ourselves into thinking that our actions and their consequences need not ever meet. As I watched politicians and clergy in recent weeks stammering before news cameras, the words of Jesus kept coming to my mind: “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” (Luke 8:17 NIV) Not every sin we commit goes public—at least in this life, but perhaps it would be a good idea if we lived as if it would. We may not be politicians, famous athletes or celebrities, but each of us is human and not immune to temptation. Here are my thoughts about how to resist temptation.

1. Plan ahead. When word got out that a minister with whom I’d gone to college and seminary had an affair with another staff member at the church he served despite having a beautiful wife and adoring children at home, I was shocked. I recall talking to a friend about it and saying, “I never thought he was the kind of guy who would do such a thing.” My friend replied, “He just never had the opportunity before.” Those words have stuck with me, and I’ve reflected since on how we are seldom prepared for moments when temptation strikes. Opportunity is everything. In calm moments, it’s a good thing to think about what could happen and how you will respond. Thinking actions through ahead of time results in better choices.

2. Avoid tempting situations. When addicts go to rehabilitation, they are instructed to avoid streets with known drug dealers and relationships with people who use drugs.
The same can be said for any kind of temptation—avoid situa-tions where you know your will is weak. This goes for visiting the refrigerator late at night or where you surf on the internet. Most of the time, we know where we are going before we get there, cut short the trip or don’t take it at all.

3. Community matters. There’s a reason why anony-mous groups work—they provide intimacy, accountability and safety. They are safe spaces where a person can be vulnerable and honest with people who understand yet won’t let others excuse bad behavior. We all need such places. The church is supposed to be such a place (but often unfortunately is not). Although there’s sometimes a fuzzy line between vulnerability and exhibitionism, there are appropriate ways for people to share their struggles and gain support in any healthy congrega-tion.

4. Don’t judge. Learn. The sex scandals of politi-cians and clergy illustrate how hypocrisy only increases the misdeeds. My mother always said, “Those preachers who preach about sex all the time are obsessed with it and are the worst offenders.” She was right and the same is true of politi-cians, celebrities and ordinary people too. Often the most judg-mental have firsthand experience of the bad behavior in ques-tion. Our energy is better spent taking the mistakes of others as warnings of what can happen to us in our weak moments.

5. Pray. Each Sunday at FCC, we pray the Lord’s Prayer which includes “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” We ask God to lead us away from temptations and to save us from the many evils that infect our culture—those evils include the unhealthy selfishness which is at the root of all temptations to commit destructive acts. That prayer and others like it make a difference. They stiffen our own resolve while being honest about our weaknesses before God. They tap into a power greater than ourselves—God’s power to accom-plish what is impossible for us alone. Prayer should not be un-derestimated.

We may not be public figures subject to a media-driven sham-ing, but all of us have our moments when what we have done in secret comes out into the open. Such moments are painful—all the more so because they are avoidable.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Memorial Day

(This piece was originally written for The Dialogue, the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ of St. Joseph, MO.)

There’s nothing wrong with grilling out or heading to the lake on Memorial Day Weekend, but come Monday we are asked as a society to honor those who have died and been wounded in service to our country.  I confess that I didn’t do much memorializing yesterday; I spent it trying to get over a miserable head cold.  If you—like me—missed your opportunity to honor those who have served (hopefully you were having more fun), maybe these thoughts will help offer some perspective.

I heard the great documentarian Ken Burns’ interviewed yesterday and it turns out his next work is on Vietnam.  He mentioned that he was of age to be drafted but drew a high draft number and did not have to go.  I thought once again about the differences between generations, and how I, having grown up barely remembering Vietnam, never had to know the fear of being drafted.  Although I cannot know for sure, I feel that the war in Iraq and the length of the war in Afghanistan would have faced more opposition had a greater percentage of our nation borne the pain of war.  If most Americans were truly worried about having a son or daughter killed or about a child having his or her limbs blown off, would we really be so blasé about war and its effects?  As it is, a minority of our citizens knows this pain and makes such sacrifices, so we spend billions to continue these wars and think nothing about preventing future ones.

A few days ago, I received the following forwarded e-mail from a member of my church in New York who asked me to share it with my church here and pray for the family mentioned.  The wounded young soldier described is the brother of one of her students.  The e-mail is written by soldier’s mother.

Dear Friends,

Last Sunday we received word that our son Liam had been seriously wounded by an IED explosion in Afghanistan. Liam has sustained numerous injuries to his upper and lower extremities: his left leg has been amputated above the knee & his right leg is broken in two places. Surgery has been done on both his arms and we are told he may lose his right arm. Liam has a collapsed lung and is not breathing on his own. Liam is stable enough to be transported & will be arriving at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland this evening. We were able to speak with a nurse who is at Liam's side and she tells us that he is "a fighter"...As we get ready for this upcoming Memorial Day Holiday, I am asking all of you dear friends to keep Liam and our family in your thoughts and prayers as we wait for the unexpected. Please also pray for all those men and women who everyday are putting their lives at risk and pray for their safe return! Thank you with love, Marci

            It does not need to be Memorial Day for us to remember Liam and his family in prayer as he seeks to recover from his wounds.  May we remember in prayer him and all those who suffer from similar wounds, along with their families.  May we remember in prayer the families grieving loved ones who have died in these wars.  May we remember those who are serving in harm’s way.  That seems like the least we can do as Americans.  But as we pray for them, I believe the very least we can do as Christians is to not only pray for our soldiers and their families but also for our nation’s enemies and their families.  Jesus, after all, taught us to do so.  Perhaps if we begin with prayer for our soldiers as well as for our enemies, then we will not be content to allow the few to bear the sacrifices for the many nor for alternatives to war to be left untried.

            Grace and Peace,

            Chase