Generation WE : The Movement Begins...

Generations are an interesting thing. Each one has its own characteristics...formed out of the crucible of the pressures of the day...each responds and forms a distinct personality. I'm personally on the front end of this generation...part of what's called GenX. Not a Boomer, and not a Millenial.

But church, we need to pay attention to the heart of this generation. If we don't understand what this generation is passionate about, we will never be able to connect with it.

So pay close attention...both to their hope and frustration with this "Present Future."

Peace and all that is good from my Longwood Lanai.

Nathan Swenson-Reinhold

Just Because: Coldplay - Viva La Vida

I haven't posted much recently. Truth is I've been focusing most of my energies on a blog for my congregation called, "The Spirit Porch." You can check it out through the link in this blog, or simply type thespiritporch.blogspot.com into your URL.

In the meantime, this my favorite song in the media right now...and I thought I'd share it with you for kicks.

Peace to you all as you sort out the "postures of leadership" in your ministries and lives.

Nathan

Making Our Marks...

I've been on a trip with my congregation's "Solid Rock" youth group. I've been working with youth groups for over eight years now. I've never enjoyed working with a group of kids as much as these. They are solid...in faith, service, hope...though their lives are varied, and their homes are a kaleidoscope of the suburban realities that assail all who live in such a realities.

But this week, we've been making a unique mark: one of service and sacrifice, of joy and laughter. And it has been showing in the tears, the excited sharing, the warm embraces, the great meals shared. It has been showing in homes rebuilt and rubbish hauled away down here in Bayou la Batre, Alabama...where the flood waters washed in at high tide along with Katrina.

But as Katrina moved, so did the God of the universe...the one who does His best work in crosses and tombs. And he's showing forth life. In our kids. In the homes of the people here who persist.

Jesus is alive. He's alive in us. It is a PRIVILEGE to be his BODY.

From the heat and beauty of the Bayou...

Nathan

OPENsource JESUS: The Priesthood of All Believers in a User-Generated Culture

Something like the above will be the title for my now in the works dissertation. In our open-content/open-source world (or as Len Sweet would relate it: USER-GENERATED), faith expressions where denominations authorities expect the baptized (and unbaptized for that matter) to outsource their faith and mission to professionals is dead. Mission and moneys that get outsourced through denominational centers, synod offices, district offices, dioceses, etc., are seeing their pockets squeezed by a shift in understanding about who is supposed to be generating mission and authentic faith. Let's just say that the movement isn't towards centralization.

For a hands on, reality creating, input generating culture, clerical/denominational structures that insist that ministry (of any sort) be the province of a select few will increasingly find that they can no longer relate to our postmodern world. And I predict that for those of us called to bridge the clerically bound church cultures of the present with the user-generated culture that is morphing around us, the ugliness is just beginning.

Because denominational authorities will not relinquish their power and authority. However, whether they like it or not, the church IS an economy...and the economy of the church says increasingly that it will no longer stand for denominational authorities that cry partnership (i.e. "send the undesignated funds to us and WE'LL disperse them) while refusing to lead in terms of vision, management of the cultural anxieties that are ratcheting up levels of conflict in all congregations, and an articulation of the gospel and ecclesiologies that place it (and authentic contextual mission) first. No...they are all trying to shore up their power. But today, more than even, whether you find yourself in the UMC, ELCA, LCMS, ECUSA, PCUSA, or others, you come to this realization:

It's just a matter of time.

And the switch will be the way that we are knit together as churches, not whether or not there will be the church. It will exist. It will persist. It will even find ways to thrive...just as it has done over two millenia.

But I wonder, (and this is the angle of my thesis) if we might not get ahead of what's happening in the culture...and check our inventory and find that we can relate, equip, and unleash a church that can lead and in fact impact the culture. We have the tools for the whitewater around us. But we're going to have to give up our addiction to control, and give in to the Spirit, to find that we have the power to surf these waters. But these changes won't come from the centers of any of our tribes.

The key doctrine, mostly unpracticed, and certainly never theologically fleshed out (too threatening to our Protestant denominatioanl hierarchies) is the stuff of the unfinished business of the Reformation: e.g. "the priesthood of all believers." And to that I will begin to speak. So stay tuned...

Cardboard Testimonies

Moving and powerful. I know in my own Lutheran Christian tribe we need to reclaim the reality of transformation...not just in the kingdom to come, but in this life...that the Spirit of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah is moving HERE and NOW...transforming, recreating, renewing, restoring, redeeming, rebuilding, and rescinding our sin.

I think my cardboard testimony reads:

My Life: God's Life

I hope that today, as you see and absorb this, you connect to the power of God at work in you...and that the transformation of the living God isn't far away.

Blessings from the heart of Christ, and the land of Sun and palms!

Nathan

A New Pentecost is Coming

I'm new in this call. In my third month here at St. Stephen, Longwood, I can feel the stirrings of the immensity of the immanent movement of the Spirit. Things are stirring in the church...and they are stirring in me.

Recently I've been moved by the Spirit to walk daily. Oddly not for my health (though a look at my waistline will tell you it's time to engage a new exercise program)...but to walk and pray...for this neighborhood that I live in and for the Church I'm called to lead into a powerful new day...a fresh channel of the Spirit of the living God that blows from the doorway of the empty tomb.

I've been moved to pray big. The prayers that I am praying are these:

1. That God would double our worshipping community over the next 12 months.

2. That God would give us twice as many adult baptisms (expressions of conversion) as their are infant baptisms in our church.

3. That our presence in our community would matter...not for the sake of St. Stephen...but that because of our presence here and commitment to deploying the kingdom in our neighborhoods and the places we work...that the radical transformation of Jesus' Lordship would be overwhelming felt and lives changed -- all over the place!

It's a powerful thing to pray these sorts of prayer. I feel transformation in me as I pray them and also the conviction that to allow for these things to happen, the church and I will have to both undergo a radical new sense of mission. We will have to preach the unmitigated "go to the cross Love of Jesus"...and that the work of salvation has already been done for this broken world. And as this is communicated, give people a new opportunity to respond to the working of the Spirit...to step into discipleship consciously and with as much commitment as our sinful human containers will allow...trusting that the Spirit of the empty tomb will work through these steps and will take care of the rest.

I have to tell you this stuff scares me...I feel the power coursing. And at the same time...I know that God's living Spirit is ahead of me in all this. The miracle of Pentecost is already underway.

May the Spirit of the Living God fall afresh...on all of us...and may there be a baptism of the Holy Spirit like none ever experienced in my community ever before.

Amen

Pastor as Catalyst: Four Transformational Postures for Pastoral Leadership, Part 11 of 11

Conclusion

Pastoral leadership has been mired in a model that asks it to surrender the story of the church, that of Jesus crucified and risen, to the wills, whims and needs of the state. As we come into the 21st century and as the church/state relationship begins to unravel, the church has a unique opportunity to reconnect itself and its priorities with the story of the resurrecting God that formed it so long ago. With this reclamation of identity and calling comes the opportunity for pastoral leaders in the church to reconnect with the deep identity and calling of the church and to utilize their systemic presence as a catalyst for the transformation of Christian communities.

Pastoral leaders can do this work of catalyzing transformation through how they function, dream and self-define in Christian community. In this work there are at least four intentional postures of transformation. The first posture is that of discipleship where the pastoral leader understands that his first work as a Christian and as a leader in Christ’s church is that of a follower of the risen Jesus. The second posture is that of perspective where the pastoral leader works to create the communal capacity to frame and see the work and challenges of the church in the present in light of the future reign of God disclosed in the Lordship of Jesus’ resurrection. The third posture is that of birth which asserts that pastors function with an attitude of expectation in Christian community, fostering the capacity to give birth to new ideas and mission and to frame the anxiety and pain related to these changes as temporary signposts that God is up to new life in their midst. The fourth posture is that of engagement which functions to create as much systemic space for people to find meaning, purpose and life in the body of Christ as possible so that the Christian community naturally engenders engagement and community in all who come into relationship with it.

These catalytic postures are not exhaustive, nor has the purpose of this essay been to create another list of “must do’s” for the work of leadership in the church. Rather, this essay has been an attempt to frame the work of pastoral leadership as it was and as I believe it has the potential to be in Christian community, not for its own purposes and gain, but for the purposes of the God who in fact, does make all things new.

Appendix: Practical Outcomes Report

In the book Presence, the authors write, "We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed to access the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and as Salk said, making choices to serve the evolution of life. "

I think that ministry has the opportunity to move in some fundamentally new ways. This vocational movement will be directed by an awareness of where we have come from, the God we are called to serve, and the future he calls us into. The notion of catalyst that I used to shape imagery for the possibilities of a new sort of expectation for pastoral ministry is not some sort of new paint by the numbers technical schemata. Nor should it be downloaded into congregational life as such. It has to do with an adaptation in how I as a pastoral leader think and function in and with God’s people. All I have asserted is that the systemic pastoral role privileges it to work well as a fulcrum for the systemic transformation of God’s people. I have been finding that these postures form powerful lenses that help me shape my questions for maximum impact and prioritize my work.

In seminary I was taught not to take risks, not to push or articulate change, and not to expect too much from God’s people. I believe this is because the model of pastoral ministry I was trained in operates from the premise that pastors are there to shepherd and herd disengaged sheep rather than equip, train, and challenge what Bill Hybels calls God’s fulcrum for the transformation of the world: the local congregation.

The practical application of these four catalytic postures is a new sort of functional awareness for me. It shapes how I am handling preparation for the new budget year. I am asking questions like these. Do we build the budget based upon what we believe God is birthing in and through us this next year, or do we base it upon what we spent categorically last year as usual? Do we risk the financial strain of new buildings trusting that the God who raises the dead can provide for and through us? Or do we duck the opportunity because we believe we simply do not have the capacity to engage the future God calls us into?

I think that the practical application of these four postures is a new sort of awareness that engenders new sorts of questions that challenge us to step consciously into engaged lives of faith for God’s sake and the sake of the kingdom. They are adaptive mental frames of reference through which new realities and possibilities are communicated. The communication event, in verbiage and action and the differentiation that comes through it cause a conscious systemic differentiation in response. The localized articulation of a new awareness and way of seeing in the pastoral leader facilitates a new sort of consciousness in the community at large. In this, its capacity to see and dream anew and to reframe its life together expands and grows. The reality is these sorts of consciousness actually transform people and community and cause wholesale new sorts of functioning. What I am trying to articulate is not some program that can be rolled out into a congregation. Programs are technical and do not demand that people see who they are and what they do in a new sort of light. But a differentiated leader who functions from the perspective of the doorway of the empty tomb does.

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Pastor as Catalyst: Four Transformational Postures for Pastoral Leadership, Part 10 of 11

The Posture of Engagement

In the church shaped by Constantine ministry was outsourced to professionals. In Europe today where this model of ministry has run its course cathedrals are effectively empty at Mass except for priests and a handful of devoted people. For whatever reason, the church and what it points to has lost its relevance and meaning. In contrast, a church that connects meaning to people’s lives engenders engagement and passion. It adds value to life and gives purpose…and purpose more than anything else motivates people to commit and to engage.

Albert Winseman writes about a man named Mike, a family man, and engaged disciple of Jesus who meets in a men’s Bible study over his lunch hours and in the evening heads to church with his family for a family evening of discipleship. He also provides leadership for his church’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity. He is an engaged Christian. Winseman writes, “For Mike, his faith is the organizing principle of his life. ‘I wouldn’t consider myself a fanatic or anything like that, and I certainly don’t press my beliefs on others,’ he says. ‘It’s just that without my faith, my life wouldn’t be as meaningful.’”

The posture of engagement in the church is a leadership posture that believes to its core that ministry in the church should never be done by the pastor. This is not an ethic of laziness. It is simply the insight that what St. Paul maintained is true. The church is alive and empowered by God with gifts for the edification of the body and the world (1 Corinthians 12). Pastor Lou Forney says that one of the most significant and powerful questions pastors can ask themselves in the church is, “What am I doing in ministry that someone else in this body can do as well or better?” Part of the difficult shift that pastors who try and apprehend this posture have to make is that their success is not measured by how much ministry they get done in a given week or by how much their parishioners need them. Instead, the measuring stick is how much ministry can be given away to the priesthood of all believers so that they can find purpose and meaning in the body through their unique gifts and design.

At a deeper level, the posture of engagement understands that the goal of all of our work as servant leaders in Jesus’ church is the creation of people who live with a vision of Jesus and his resurrection ever before them, and who speak and enact that vision with the material of their lives. They create ecclesial environments where people grow naturally in faith and life and in expression of their God-given baptismal identities. They create environments where leaders beget leaders and the circle of participation grows and grows because there is always room for another to share who they are within the purpose and hope of the community.

Pastor as Catalyst: Four Transformational Postures for Pastoral Leadership, Part 9 of 11

The Posture of Birth

To anticipate God’s future and to frame our present in light of God’s work is to know existentially in our present the reality expressed in Revelation 21:5. “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘see, I am making all things new.’” The posture of birth is the posture of a midwife; it sees its never ending work in the Christian assembly as that of delivering healthy and well the new things God is birthing through his body the church. This sort of posture anticipates pain and discomfort and the messiness of delivery and coaches through it. And as midwifes do in homes and delivery rooms, it reminds the body that giving birth is a healthy, normal and natural thing to do…and that the pain that comes in the midst of it is of the sort that does not last.

In my own ministry I state openly and regularly that God expects to give birth to new mission through us, to deeper discipleship and followership, to new disciples brought into our community, and to great hopefulness and trust. What I find anecdotally is that the stated expectation, the assertion of the posture, shifts the Christian community into a synergistic posture of expectation, watching and discernment. Though there may be anxiety over changes and new things occurring in our congregational life, the simple conversation of “expecting” changes and modifies the nature of the anxiety from that of negative murmuring to that of positive excitement. These small communal shifts do something remarkable in community over time as well. In the end, the community of Christ is able to conceive and birth greater and greater amounts of mission and engagement with the world. In other words, the posture of birth in fact gives birth to a missional church.

Pastor as Catalyst: Four Transformational Postures for Pastoral Leadership, Part 8 of 11

The Posture of Perspective

Much can be said for what is called a leader’s vision. Author and researcher George Barna defines vision as “a clear mental image of a preferable future imparted by God to His servants and is based upon an accurate understanding of God, self, and circumstances.” One of the key features for Barna is that vision is imparted to leaders specifically and not to groups. Contrast this with author Jim Collins whose seminal decade long research collated into his book Good to Great has rocked business, social sector, and leadership paradigms everywhere. Collins maintains that vision is something that is discerned when you get the right passionate people, in the right seats, doing what they can do together better than anyone else. So vision gets defined and gains clarity as the organization moves daily towards doing better what it is uniquely passionate about. Len Sweet, adding his own unique perspective maintains that vision is not something seen, but rather heard. Vision in his articulation is “seen” through “hearing.”

I think that the Christian vision is a fixed vision disclosed by Jesus in his resurrection.

The Lutheran systematic theologian Walter Bouman used to tell his students that he was a mystery novel buff. What was surprising however was the way in which he read his novels. He would read the first two chapters to learn the characters and discover the tension that had to be resolved and then would flip to the last chapter to read how it all turned out. He pointed out that inevitably, this changed how he participated with the middle of the novel. In other words, it did not hold the same level of tension for him.

He used this personal peculiarity to make a point. “This is the Christian life,” he would say. “Because we know how it all comes out in the end through the resurrection of Jesus, we have the joy of participating in our present without the same fears and anxiety. God has our future in hand.”

As a posture of leadership, the posture of perspective is grounded in a future held by God. It is leadership that is able to frame in conversation and action the challenges of the present in light of the God who holds the last word, a word of life, in our tomorrow. This posture discerns the work of God in our midst. In light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ it expects transformation in Christian life and community to be the rule rather than the exception. This sort of leadership dreams big for the kingdom because it understands the work of the church to be grounded in the God who is today on the move and who ultimately raises the dead.

Pastor as Catalyst: Four Transformational Postures for Pastoral Leadership, Part 7 of 11

The Posture of Discipleship

There has been so much ink spilled on the topic of leadership both in the culture and the church. Strangely, I have read nothing that grounds our church’s capacity for leadership in what Len Sweet likes to call “followership.” Perhaps this is because it lacks the overt sexiness of the leadership terminology. Followership, in a room full of narcissistic personalities, takes too much of the emphasis off of the self. Nevertheless, it is where we have to begin.

In his comprehensive work called Pastor, Will Willimon looks at the pastoral office and work through a multiplicity of lenses. Interestingly, he does not explicitly come to the topic of pastor as disciple until the last chapter of his book entitled, “The Pastor as Disciplined Christian: Constancy in Ministry.” Even so, it grounds the notion of discipleship through a pastoral lens only.

I want to suggest however that discipleship as followership begins not with a follower’s identity as a leader, but simply in the baptismal calling of a follower of Jesus the Messiah. To be a disciple is to call someone other than oneself Lord, and to call Jesus Lord is ultimately to be subject to him. I believe that a “subjected leader” is the starting point or “enzymatic posture” for all leadership in the church. The daily source of strength for the Christian vocation of the baptized comes not from an office of leadership in the church but through a daily relationship with and following of Jesus. What we are talking about here is the differentiated expression of a life that is being formed and transformed by the movement of the disciple’s life from the story of the world to the story of God’s resurrected future. A life that takes on this shape has Jesus at the head, and is filled with his grace, power, and his Spirit of abundance.

I wonder as I write this if this does not evoke an “of course!” It should be obvious should it not? And yet in my experience, albeit anecdotal, and in the many and varied books on leadership I have encountered related to leadership in the church, the pastoral leader as first and foremost a follower who is subject to Jesus seems to be anathema. Let me state this clearly: followership of Jesus is not only the ground of being for the discipleship of the baptized, but for the Christian leader as well.