More Networking

If you are one of the few people that bother to follow this blog you will have noticed that the activity has picked up recently. I'm making an effort. However, I must admit that I am not able to do the sort of well polished and crafted posts that used to be common here. Back in the day, when I first started at Messiah, I had a half-time Administrative Assistant and a half-time Lay Pastoral Associate. As a result I was able to spend a lot more time in my office at my computer thinking and reading and writing. These days I spend less time in my office and more time out and about either running errands for the church or attending meetings or simply working from home. The leaflet, alone, represents about a full-day's work, but I mostly do it at night (usually Thursday night) because that's one of the best times for me to get uninterrupted time at my computer. Here is the leaflet from Lent 3, to give you a sense of the sort of thing I'm creating in my basement at 1 AM.

I'm sure that a professional designer would have lots of improvements to suggest to increase readability and to be attractive, but it's not bad for the work of a amateur who is totally self-taught when it comes to InDesign. This leaflet is obviously designed to be much more than a crutch to bridge the gap between Prayer Book, Bible, and Hymnal. I'm actually trying to do some teaching through this thing, as you can tell from the exegetical margin notes next to the scripture readings. When I have more time I'll often add material about the origins of well-known hymns and other things.

Quick aside: far too few churches use InDesign or other professional layout programmes to design their leaflets. Sure, the software is expensive and you need people able to learn it, but it's well worth the investment in both to have nice looking publications. Also, it can save a lot of time to make the equivalent layout versus Word or Publisher or something like that where you constantly have to fight the programme to get it to obey.

Anyway, back to my day. I spent a sizable chuck of it having coffee with a guy with a lot of great ideas (and some experience) with Missional Church. He has been a part of number of different Christian Communities and has a lot of insight to offer. He has recently gotten pulled into the orbit of Anglican-land Fresh Expressions, NCD, Natural Church Development, and the "Crazies in the basement." I'm still in the "Initial Networking" phase of the Café Messiah, Road Map. Everything is still in flux. In fact, in my mind I'm switching the name from "Café Messiah" to "The Commons." As we threw ideas around and brainstormed I realized that the problem with "Café Messiah" is that it is a little too narrow and a little too business-focused. I played around with something like "The Free Place" to try to see if the anti-consumerism vibe would strike a chord, but not quite. "The Commons" is the best name we've come up with so far. The bones are still the same: a third-space/community centre that would have a light concession to support itself and would run some programmes designed to help people with life issues from a light-touch Christian perspective. It was a very useful talk to help me clarify some of my thinking as well as lay the ground work for future collaboration with this individual.

After the coffee I had time to go home and change and kiss the wife before dashing off to to do a Communion Service at Hazelton Place--a local retirement home. I do these sorts of services in retirement homes about once or twice a month on average. I could do more, but they are time consuming. (Actually, there is another retirement residence not too far from my church whom I'm planning to approach about starting a monthly Communion Service for the Anglicans.) The folks at Hazelton Place were gracious and lovely, as they often are in retirement homes. We sang some hymns to music played on a CD and I preached a better-than-average sermon about the Isaiah 55 passage from last Sunday. When it was said and done I felt that particular professional satisfaction of having done a good job. I have impossibly high standards for myself, so high that I rarely achieve them on a Sunday, but for some reason I am still able to pass the mark sometimes when I do I weddings, funerals, and nursing home services.

I suppose the problem there is that I freight Sundays down with an impossible burden. We simply can't accomplish all the things we want to in one short morning. I've tried to create events and services during the week with mixed success. For the people that attend the Wednesday morning Contemplative Eucharist and the Saturday Healing Prayer service, for example, are terrific, but it's often people who don't come on Sunday mornings who have found their way into that other groups. Funny how that works!

I've been tempted to start something in a local pub. But, again, it takes more time and energy to do such a thing than the casual observer would suspect. I've been trying to find and develop a volunteer base, but most of the folks in my congregation simply don't have the extra time to give. Like many congregations I have a handful of key volunteers who move heaven and earth to do God's ministry, and I am loath to ask them to take on yet another project when they do so much. So that means going to people on the periphery of our community to find the enthusiasm and gumption to try new things.

Often when people are training to be Priests the focus is on things like theology, biblical interpretation, history, and liturgy. That still makes sense to me--these things are fundamental and even a three-year degree barely has time to scratch the surface in the scheme of things. But 95% of the challenges that I face have to do with working with people. I constantly find myself asking some version of this question, "Where is John encountering God?" Straight out asking people usually leads to a certain amount of awkward squirming. People are embarrassed when they don't have an immediate answer. So I try to ask other ways. "What gets you most excited in life?" is a good one. But, still, it's often hard to get to the root of things.

Anyway, enough rambling for tonight. The main point I wanted to make is that church work is complex, and that I'm making progress.

#CHSOCM

One of the best ways to learn about Church and Social Media is to use Social Media to engage in conversations about Church and Social Media. There lots of people to follow on Twitter, Facebook, and other channels who share practical tips and inspire with examples of their work. There are also certain hash tags that are useful to keep tabs on. "Hash Tags" are those little bits of texts that start with a # key. People use them on Twitter to "tag" a tweet as belonging to certain subject. This is very useful, as it gives you a way to look up a subject and see what others are saying about, even if they aren't people you normally "follow."

One such hashtag is #CHSOCM which stands for "Church and Social Media." I can create a link that just searches for that term like this. Now that link is generated dynamically, meaning that what appeared when I wrote it just now is different what will appear when you click on it. And ten minutes later it might be different as more and more people add to the #CHSOCM tweets. Indeed, as I write this there are lots of tweets being added to that hashtag because there is a "Chat" happening right now that is using that hashtag.

That is, there are about two dozen or more people currently talking about Church and Social Media, as they do every Tuesday night at 9PM EST. This discussion is moderated, meaning that someone volunteers to lead the discussion with structured questions. Usually they announce the subject ahead of time, and sometimes even suggest people read certain things in order to discuss them. After the chat is over (which takes about an hour), the transcript is later uploaded as a kind of archive.

The nice thing about a chat like this is that it's somewhere between a phone call and an e-mail. Things are written down so you can always go back, but it's also very immediate and conversational. Topics ebb and flow as people make suggestions, share observations, and generally do the sort of things people do when talking.

Another thing I appreciate is that one can have one window open on their computer with the chat running, and use another for a task like creating blog posts!

Tempura

I made a Japanese Feast for some friends this evening. The first course was Miso Soup. The I served a main course of tempura, beef teriyaki, wakame salad, and rice noodles. Dessert was a cheese and fruit plate. Sourcing the ingredients was pretty easy in Toronto. What I couldn't find at No-Frills, I got at Sanko. Sanko is our local Japanese grocery. It's not a big store, but he carries a surprising amount of stock, including all the basics of Japanese cuisine. The manager on duty when I was there was quite pleased to see my selections--he said that the Dashi I had selected to make Miso with was particularly authentic. Then he proceeded to tell me about how most Japanese restaurants in Toronto get miso wrong. "It makes me sad... It used to make me angry, but I've pushed through that and now I just feel sad." I told him my basic recipes that I was planning and he approved of them, making a few minor suggestions to maximize authenticity.

I'm particularly proud of the tempura, the batter came out nice and light this time. Here's the recipe:

Tempura
by Alton Brown (my notes in parenthesis)

Ingredients
5 ounces unbleached cake flour
5 ounces white rice flour
1 1/2 quarts vegetable oil
1 large egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups cold seltzer water
1/2 cup vodka
5 to 6 ounces sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1/8-inch thick slices
Kosher salt
1/4 pound fresh green beans, trimmed
8 stems flat-leaf parsley
1/2 pound shrimp, 31 to 35 count, head and tail-on, peeled and deveined
1/2 pound tilapia fillets, cut into 1-inch pieces
Ice

Directions
Whisk the cake flour and rice flour together in a medium glass bowl and divide it in half. Set aside.

Heat the vegetable oil in a 5-quart Dutch oven over high heat until it reaches 375 degrees F on a deep-fry thermometer. (I use a super-accurate digital device designed for lab use--but it works for me!)

Once the temperature reaches 365 degrees F, whisk the egg, seltzer water and vodka, in a medium mixing bowl and divide it in half. Put half of the mixture in the refrigerator to reserve. Pour half of the liquid mixture into half of the dry mixture and whisk to combine, about 10 to 15 seconds. Some lumps may remain. Set the glass bowl in a larger bowl lined with ice.

(I found that the batter was far two thick at first. I added more liquid to get it right, and found that I had plenty of batter without having to mix another batch--but your mileage may vary.)

Dip the sweet potatoes into the batter using tongs, drain for 2 to 3 seconds over the bowl, and then add to the hot oil. Adjust the heat to maintain between 375 and 400 degrees F. Fry 6 to 8 pieces, at a time, until puffy and very light golden, about 1 to 2 minutes Remove to a cooling rack lined with 3 layers of paper towels set over a half sheet pan. Sprinkle with salt, if desired. Repeat the same dipping and frying procedure with the green beans and parsley leaves. Put the fried vegetables on a serving platter and serve the as an appetizer while preparing the seafood.

Whisk together the remaining halves of dry and liquid batter ingredients as above and repeat dipping and frying with the shrimp and fish fillets. Sprinkle with salt, if desired, transfer the fish to a serving platter and serve immediately. (source)

So that was good. Here is the recipe I used to make the teriyaki beef. Super easy, and not too sweet or thick.

BTW, I've made miso using all-in-one packets in the past. No more. Making it from scratch takes hardly any more effort, and the result is far superior. The same thing goes for the teriki sauce. It's just soy sauce, sake, mirin, ginger juice, and brown sugar: and yet the real thing tastes ten times better than what you get out of a jar.

-t

The White Board

I love white boards. Here is what mine looked like today.

-t

Meetings, meetings, meetings

I had back-to-back meetings today. They were productive, good meetings. The sort where like-minded people get together and share creative ideas and insights and build on each others' gifts. I wish I could be more specific, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be prudent at this juncture to share, other than to note that they were all mostly related to the two big projects I am working on at the moment for Messiah. One of those projects is already public: the Café Messiah idea. The other idea is still being kept secret for the time being. Look for an announcement in a few weeks.

It occurs to me that a really important part of my own home-grown methodology to get anything interesting done is to network with a lot of like minded people and get their input and assistance. Most of the time that's about all people are prepared to contribute in our busy age, but I've learned to appreciate good will and good ideas. Even more importantly, I've come to appreciate the kind of creativity that comes out of an essentially social or transactional creative process. I thrive in the context of social exchange, I'm an extrovert, and so I need to talk my ideas through or else they whither from lack of nourishment.

I'm certain that not everyone is like that. I'm sure there are people that just work through ideas in the privacy of their own minds, and communicate them once they are fully thought through. There are many advantages to that approach, as well, but I'm not wired that way. So, as part of my process for developing these two parallel projects for Messiah I've scheduled a lot of meetings with people who I think can help. Some of these people may be able to help very directly, others will be offering moral support or just companionship along the way. One must scatter seed, however, if they expect to find a harvest come spring.

If one or (God willing) both of the projects succeed, it will be interesting at some point to look back at my appointment book and see which conversations moved the direction of things one way or another. Certainly my own thinking is evolving I hope the people I've talked with today realize how much influence they are having on future events. Conversation, even of the blue-sky day dreaming variety, is a sacred trust.

Spending all day talking and planning for the future of my church is not an extra part of my responsibilities as the Rector. I actually think it's probably my most important responsibility. It may mean sacrifices in other areas (a classic example is pastoral care), but I was struck at VCP this year by how many leaders whom I respect made a strong case for such sacrifice. Judy Paulsen, for example, spoke powerfully about how she simply doesn't visit people unless they are basically dying. I often feel guilty about not doing more visiting and one-on-one care of that sort, but then I hear people like Judy and others who talk about how developing the Mission of the Church is going to mean that the congregation, itself, is going to have to take on some of the functions that used to be the responsibility of the pastor. In other words, you can have a priest who simply takes care of everybody, or you can have a church where the priest is working to transform the parish into an instrument of God's mission, but being focused on both is pretty much impossible. Thus, the parish must take responsibility for one or the other of these functions.

I realize this is a controversial claim. I'm not saying we should abandon pastoral care at all. I'm just saying that the George Herbert model of priestly ministry is long dead and buried. Those of us that went to conventional seminaries or who grew up in the inherited church have a hard time letting go of the fantasy of the priest spending his days going from home to home in the village. These days pastoral care needs to be the responsibility of the whole congregation. In my case I have two volunteers in particular who provide great care and attention to several members of the congregation who need to be looked-in-on. I really don't need to visit them, and I should probably let go of the guilt of not being "a better priest" in that regard.

Funny, even as I write this I feel awful. One part of me certainly feels a strong obligation to visit some of these folks. Then another part of me feels overburdened as it is trying to manage the day-to-day operations plus take on two major strategic initiatives plus other duties like teaching Fresh Start to my colleagues and producing videos for the Diocese. I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to describe one of the tensions inherent in parish ministry. Sometimes it is referred to as the tension between the prophetic and pastoral aspects of priesthood. Those of that minister as ordained clergy occupy a strange place that mediates between two worlds. We are constantly asked to translate back and forth between universes. I'm not just talking about the human-divine, but also the parish-community and parish-wider-church divides.

Part of the way I maintain those balances is to cultivate relationships that pluck those chords and thus create some kind of harmony. That is, the more fully I develop the prophetic vision and the fully I engage the Saturday Afternoon Healing Service, then the richer the chord that sounds. I worry some people might not see the balance as important. Certainly I know parishioners who are more Congregationalist than Anglican, and would gladly chuck the Diocese and bishops if they could. Yet for me, one of the essential (and, indeed, classical) "marks of the churh" is that it must be "catholic." That is, local parishes do not exist in isolation, but enjoy a certain unity and common mission.

I guess that's a long way of saying that I had a lot of meetings away from the church to talk about the church, and that's okay!

-t

Environics - Initial Meeting

Sometimes I worry about colleagues that get too caught up in metrics and data. There is a way in which mathematical abstraction can be such a powerful narrative that it actually changes the questions to ask so as to be answerable by what you can measure. In truth, most of what makes church holy is simply not quantifiable in a helpful way. So I'm always cautious about approaches to mission that don't begin with questions before looking at data. The other problem with "big data" is that having too much information can be as detrimental to good decision making as having too little data, as many studies have demonstrated.

(A classic example of this is how Doctors can make a more accurate differential diagnosis between stroke and heart attack if they are only given five pieces of information than if they are given an entire chart's worth of test results.)

In our case, we have some questions in mind. Questions like, "What sort of people are near our church during the day time?" and "What are the most important social values to the people who live within a 5 minute walk of the church?" There are many ways to find out, but one of the best (arguably) is simply to hire a company to do some serious data mining.

The company we have chosen to work with is called Environics Analytics. They are a market research firm that provides data and analysis to support decision making to companies and other groups. I chose them based on the recommendations of two priests whom I trust. They did a lot of work for St. Paul's Bloor Street, and the staff there was thrilled with the results. Since then, Environics has done an extensive, long-term project for the United Church of Canada.

When Catherine, the company rep, came to the church, I was impressed by how thoroughly grounded she was in the culture of church and the sorts of questions we might want. In fact, she is a church-goer herself, so she has an inside perspective from both worlds. She discussed in detail the sorts of products available from her company, and after two hours walked away with a plan. She is writing a proposal that will go in stages, which means that we will have time to digest one chunk of data before we commit to the next piece we wish to investigate.

That's important, because we don't need every piece of data at Environics disposal. It would be overwhelming, and might even lead to a kind of paralysis. Better to have the questions, first, and then seek the answers.

Nor will this be the only tool we will employ to understand the neighbourhood. I definitely want to do some other research. Wandering around with a camera and taking interesting snap shots be a start. So would sitting in one place and making notes about everyone who passes. I'd like to do some traffic and pedestrian counts. I already have a volunteer who has promised to look into some of the nearby coffee shops and see how much they actually charge for coffee, among other things. I don't think we are in direct competition with them, but it is useful to know what they are up to (just like I think it's important to know what other Anglican churches are trying).

So "with the blessing" I'll write more about the experience of using this demographic tool as the process unfolds.

Looking for a Pioneer Minister

Subsequent to my last post.... I am very much looking for a Pioneer Minister/Church Planter type interested in being the on-the-ground point person to manage this space once it is created. Could be ordained or not. Could be Anglican or not. Actually, there is much to like about a non-Anglican, non-ordained person leading a Fresh Expression of this sort. I suppose the perfect candidate might be a combination of Pernell Goodyear and Nadia Bolz-Weber. And you if you don't know who they are, take a look, I'll wait.....

BTW, Pernell has lots of tattoos, too, you just can't seem them under his long sleeved shirt on the Hillside Church website. Before Hillside Pernell was the Pastor of a Café Church run under the auspices of the Salvation Army. His way of describing that experience at the Vital Church Planting Conference a few years ago was influential on my own sense of vision for Café Messiah--however there are lots of other examples of this sort of Fresh Expression I have also encountered in the last six or seven years of really paying attention to Missional Church.

A fresh expression is a form of church for our changing culture established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.

• It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.
• It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context.

(Source)

That definition is a good place to start. note the emphasis of being a benefit to people who are not yet members of any church. It's not just that we cannot assume any kind of previous church experience of theological/biblical literacy; we in fact must orient ourselves to expect the exact opposite. That means tossing much of how we do things out of the window for the sake of going after these wandering sheep.

There are such things as wild sheep, you know. They are notoriously difficult to hunt because they occupy high ground, well defended by the sheer difficulty of approach. What I need is a partner to help me climb those cliffs. In fact, I hope to find someone that can climb higher and faster than I can!

So, I'm developing proposals on multiple fronts. I have some meetings this week, and I'm praying that they will bear rich fruit. I am also putting the word out that I am looking for a pioneer minister with gifts for hospitality and this sort of Fresh Expressions ministry. I can't promise any pay initially, but I'm hoping to create a business model for the space that will generate enough income to pay this person (and, indeed, I think this is quite reasonable considering the low overhead of operating out of a church building that is already paid for, insured, and heated).

If your are reading this in 2013 and you know anybody, or consider yourself to be led by the Spirit in this way, give me a shout out through the usual means: phone/e-mail/twitter/facebook/blog-comments/google+ etc.! I'm not a hard guy to reach!

Sermon: Vestry Sunday 2013

Here is my "Charge to Vestry" from this year's annual meeting of the church. I was excited to talk about my ideas for the future of the parish, but was far sloppier here in my presentation than I had intended. The fact that I hadn't slept the night before at all probably had something to do with that, but still the ideas were there even the articulation was not! Actually, my thinking was that I wasn't really out to carefully argue the point, anyway, but to present the idea and convey my passion for it--and I think I did those things very well.



-t

Annual Vestry: 2013

The Annual Vestry meeting of the church is equivalent to the Annual General Meeting of most Canadian non-profit organizations. The authority for most decisions (including, critically, the budget/expenditures) actually belongs to the gathering of all voting members of the church (known as the "Vestry"). Of course, it would be extremely inconvenient to convene Vestry every week--so they grant the authority to spend money to the Wardens by approving the budget. There is lots of other business to do and discuss, as well, and it is a time for the church to take stock and layout priorities and plans for the next year.

Perhaps these means that this is religion at its most organized, and I know that is unfashionable. But on the other hand it means that our process of governing ourselves, in the Anglican Church, is consultative and participatory. It may be the case that I strongly suggested a direction I think we should head, but if the people don't agree that have an easy way to reign me in! Church's are not dictatorships!

So her is a copy of the Annual Vestry Report. You can see that I make an effort to make it look somewhat attractive and readable by laying it out in InDesign and adding some pictures. If I had more time or a design-gifted volunteer I could have made it even more beautiful, but it's better than 80% of the Vestry Reports I've seen, and that's a start!



Note that I am asking the church to commit to a major project: to develop a Community Centre/Coffee shop/Third Space on the first floor of our church. I believe strongly that creating such a space has the potential to transform our church into a place of heightened relevance to our neighbours. We can a need in this community by providing a safe "third-space" of hospitality. Doing so will, of course, provide a platform for appropriate evangelism. By "appropriate," I mean that it is suited to the particular people in this time and place, and not some other. That will entail a period of listening and observation.

I spoke passionately about this in my sermon. I believe, strongly, and in my gut, that the time has come for us to launch this Fresh Expression of church. I believe that the resources are now available to us, and that the people are available to us. I also believe that I am now the leader now ready to do this work.

Exciting times at Messiah! I'll blog a lot more about my ideas on a day when I'm not supposed to be thinking about my ideas (Mondays are my sabbath).

The Messiah Website Relaunch

The last few weeks have been a time of heightened productivity for me. Lent has always been a good time for me to knock through a bunch of projects, and part of that comes the place it occupies in the church year: things have settled in after the fall (when people come back to more frequent attendance), and the congregation has gotten through Christmas. By the time Lent comes around you, as the Rector or Pastor, know pretty well who you've got and what they are capable of. Also, you see the spring unfolding before you are realize that summer will be here before you know it, and advancing projects then will be difficult.

So.... for a long time I've wanted to re-do my church's website. The original website, while not bad, was "hard-coded" in HTML/CSS. That meant that in order to change the site, someone (me), had to manually edit each page or stylesheet. That wasn't a problem for me, I have Wordpress and know HTML well enough that I could easily make the pages do what I wanted, especially when I used Dreamweaver to do it. However, I quickly found the limitation to this approach: only I could change the site! So much for involving the people, let alone having another staff member do it, let alone delegating the various parts of the site to the people that might be passionate about them.

For several years the solution has been obvious. What I needed was a Content Management System (CMS)--preferably one that was open source and free. I considered Joomla for a time, but then Brian Bukowski (web manager at the Anglican Church of Canada) told me that I should look at Wordpress and I've been hooked ever since. It's dead-easy to install and customize, and there are tons of pre-designed "themes" available at all price points (including free). Modifying such themes is pretty easy, as well, as long you know HTML/CSS and a little PHP.

The problem, I found, was that my church's website was hosted by Bell, and their standard business webhosting package for medium-sized companies doesn't give you a database. In order to get that feature you have to upgrade to an exorbitant package. I asked a sales rep about purchases this service a la cart, and the price was similarly ridiculous given that most webhosting companies (like GoDaddy or iPage) throw that in with even their most basic plans. In general, Bell's webhosting sucks, anyway, with antiquated tools and interfaces. Even their webmail interface is terrible.

So I decided to switch the hosting over to iPage and I'm glad I did. I've used GoDaddy to set up websites in the past, and they are fine and very cheap. But I don't love the politics of their advertizing campaign (too sexist) and I've heard some rumblings around the web about some of their business practices. Ipage, on the other hand, had very good reviews on the web, and is said to be particularly good for non-US customers. I've been pleased with the results so far, and found the set-up to be straightforward. Like GoDaddy, iPage has a feature that allows you to automatically set up a WordPress installation on your site without having to upload the package and execute it manually.

After that I picked a theme. After spending a few hours looking at various themes--many of them developed especially for churches, I went with Epic Church by Organized Themes. Key features for me for this theme (and the others that made the final list) were these:

• Responsive design: it must display beautifully on any screen (desktops, smart phones, tablets, etc.)
• Built-in podcasting: it must have a sermon-media management tool
• E-mail newsletter support: it must have a way for people to subscribe to the parish newsletter
• Social media integration: it must have a way for people to like or share almost anything

Epic had all of those things, plus a neat little widget for "contact us," an attractive slide-show feature for the homepage, and a few other goodies. Not bad for only $50.

Some other themes I liked:

• SilverOrchid
• Trinity
• Malachi
• Micah

Once I had the theme installed I had to spend a few hours uploading content. In a few cases I was able to copy and paste some content developed for the old site, but most of the time I simply rewrote the copy to reflect our community's current situation. I have quite an archive of photographs, so I pulled out some new ones for the new site. I had to a little work in Photoshop in a few cases, but not much. Mainly that was just to get the photographs for the "slideshow" into the correct sizes. I created a macro in Photoshop to make batch-process files a snap.

I had to do a bit of troubleshooting to get a few features to work like I wanted, but it all did. So, presto, we have a new church website. I still have some features to implement and, of course, I'll need to add a lot more content. But at least we now have a workable platform. Now I can create separate logins to allow various members of the church to add content. They can even do so using apps on their smart phones!

The old Messiah site

The new Messiah site

You can check out the current site and see how it's coming along. Of course, if you are reading this sometime in the future, than the site will likely have gone through yet another face lift!

Rector's Charge To Vestry: 2012

I never got around to posting last year's charge to Vestry, which is too bad, because I rather liked it. Reading it again took me right back to that very difficult year, 2011. Here it is...

-t

Dear Beloved Parishioners and Friends of COTM,
There is a whole pile of books written for wannabe CEO’s with titles like, “12 Keys to Successful Leadership,” and “Leadership Made Easy.” In my experience, these books generally say everything that anyone with common sense would learn long before they were put in a position of even modest responsibility (or, so we hope). A good example is the sage wisdom that good leaders, “leave the dance floor from time-to-time to get the balcony view.” One imagines an elegant waltz with the orderly swirling beautiful dresses: neat geometric patterns folding and unfolding under a the protective paternal eye. Would that it were so easy!

In truth, my experience is more like a square dance where the band is high on Crystal Meth and the calls are in a heavily accented Burmese dialect no one at the dance can understand. Frenetically we go from one partner to the next, staying with one just long enough to get some kind of synch before being tossed off to the next.

Church land, these days, is full of leaders who not only don’t know the steps of the crazy dance we call “parish leadership,” but can’t even figure out what the time signature is. So most of us (me, my colleagues, our Bishops, too) are simply improvising as best we can–stumbling and lurching as we go. The old ways simply won’t hold: everybody knows the tune is changing.

The wise ones say that new patterns will make themselves known–after all even a mosh pit has boundaries. “Follow the Holy Spirit,” they say, “Look for the Spirit’s work.” “Make a fresh wineskin.”

“How on earth do we do that?”–the question has been preoccupying me for some time.

Maybe we start by trying to stop. Is it possible to carve out some islands of stillness on the swirling dance floor of life? Can we find our centre of gravity and take a breath? Just one breath?

This past year has been incredibly challenging for me. After the heartbreak of the collapse of what had been a wonderful partnership with Eric (our former Minister of Music), I had to go through some wilderness wandering. I had to rediscover and reconstruct what I believe to be true about music and worship in the church. It was not an easy process, but it was a necessary one–for me and for the parish. We quickly discovered that leaflets are good and that leading hymns is hard.

With very limited administrative support, I had figure out what was essential about that, too. Some days the essential thing is unclogging a toilet. Other days it’s ordering cleaning supplies or scheduling space-bookings. At one point I prayed in frustration, “I’d like to get back to being a priest.” In response to that prayer I found myself having to clean up a particularly nasty mess left by a parishioner, which reminded me right quick what God thinks of “being a priest.” “Being a priest” is about creating a safe space for people and teaching them about Jesus, and sometimes that means changing light bulbs and cleaning up messes and filling out paperwork. Get over it.

I found some solace in Theological Interns. Poor Nancy, one time we spent a whole hour talking about how to move in worship. “This is essential,” I told her, “To master worship you have to learn to move like ninja ghost walker tea ceremony priest.” It was wonderful to rediscover the fundamentals!

By the time the summer came I was very nearly burned out. I made the most of my vacation, visiting family in the States, but quickly found my self back in the dance at Messiah. Things didn’t really turn around until the Labour Day weekend.

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in the woods. I was a country boy who took naps on the chicken shed and was a crackshot with a BB Gun. I spent hours and hours exploring the wheat fields around my childhood home in Kansas, and I think I’ve missed that wildness. So I decided, somewhat abruptly, to take Betsy and Henry on a canoe camping trip. After a great deal of preparation (including weathering the concerned expressions of people who thought we were nuts to take an 18-month-old on a serious camping trip), we strapped a friend’s canoe to our car and headed for the woods. One of the blessings of this fine country is that you can go from a Sunday morning worship service to a remote campsite (by canoe!) before nightfall.

It was amazing. As soon as we settled down into camp for the first night I knew I was tapping into something very deep and essential. A solid of core of mystical juju that had been temporarily obscured by the orbiting dust of fleeting concerns. I breathed easy.

As Henry slept in the tent and Betsy and I enjoyed wine by the fire, we talked about the church and about life and about what is true and essential. Two days later, as we paddled back to the boat ramp, Henry fell asleep on a pile of blankets in the bottom of the canoe. The craft felt light and the air was crisp and cool. Betsy and I settled into a fast, efficient stroke. We arrived so early that we ended up hovering a few hundred metres from shore letting the wind spin us in lazy arcs.

The Buddhists have a saying, “Before Enlightenment we fetch wood and carry water; after Enlightenment we fetch wood and carry water.” When we came back to Toronto there were still leaflets to write and musicians to hire and projects to manage. But it did feel lighter.

The grief for things left undone was just where I had left it. So to was the promise of things to come. There were chairs to arrange and reports to write. Planning. Coaching. Begging. Worrying. Praying. All of it was just where I had left it. But it was all a little different, too.

I have no idea what the steps are to this crazy dance, but I’m not sure it really matters. The point of dancing was never to make pleasing geometric patterns of swirling tulle. The point of dancing is to have fun. It’s about joy and about life.

Jesus didn’t come to this earth to give us a divinely inspired self-help book. Twelve easy steps to being a worthy person. Baloney! No one could live up to that, read the Old Testament if you don’t believe me. He came to give us Life, and that abundantly. Life is messy and clumsy and awkward and sometimes painful. There are “hellos” and “good-byes” and stinky messes. There is also beauty and truth and love and peace.

God is love. And we, God’s Church, are in the business of sharing that love. There is no other worthy criteria for success. Everything else–budgets and staffing and programmes and even worship–serves that mission. It is the essential thing.

So go ahead and dance your crazy dance. Flail your arms around like a spasmodic white boy at the Junior Prom. “Dance, dance, or we are all lost,” says the poet. Dance your grief away. Shake off your doubt with a shuffle and find your groove. Don’t just walk out of your deserts of temptation–dance out of them.

If you can’t find your step, give me your hand and I’ll pull you along. But for God’s sake, don’t sit out. Don’t hide behind the punch bowl and miss out, because God is playing our psalm!

150
1 Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy temple; praise him in the firmament of his power.
2 Praise him for his mighty acts;
praise him for his excellent greatness.
3 Praise him with the blast of the ram’s-horn;
praise him with lyre and harp.
4 Praise him with timbrel and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe.
5 Praise him with resounding cymbals;
praise him with loud-clanging cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath *
praise the Lord. Hallelujah!

Dragonfly Racing: 2012 QCYC Open

This was a crazy, fun day of sailboat racing on Lake Ontario. The occasion was the Queen City Yacht Club's annual Open Regatta. We are racing "Dragonfly"--an Erikson 30-2. The winds were 25 knots and gusting higher, and we were working hard that day. I was the tactician, which is why you sometimes hear me in the video discussing the relative position of other boats ("they don't have overlap") or marks ("2 boat-lengths to the mark").

Notice a little boat (called a "Dragon") at 1:32? That boat sank not long after I took this video. The two guys on board were easily rescued by a powerboat belonging the race committee. It was an intense day, for sure!


-t