You’ve probably heard of Gary Chapman’s five love languages. We typically think of them in terms of our personal relationships. But what if there are ministry applications as well? Read more here on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

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"Whatever the case, it’s hard for those who keep showing up to acknowledge that we might not ever sit in the same pew or gather around the same fellowship meal or Bible study or communion table again with those who are missing. We have shared life with these people, and we grieve the loss of their participation." Read more about how some people aren’t returning to church and what your congregation can do in response at the CBF blog.

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A couple of years ago, one of my coachees introduced me to the work of culture writer Anne Helen Petersen. Petersen helps her readers think about the systems that are often invisible to us but that we all swim in every day. She also shares thoughts about how to live day-to-day in the midst of those (often harmful) systems even as we advocate for their overhaul. (I recommend her Substack here as well as her books on reconfiguring work and on Millennials and burnout.)

One of Petersen’s interests is creating sustainable communities of care. In the United States care infrastructure is piecemeal at best, and caregiving for children and older adults is undervalued and either underpaid or unpaid. That leaves many people - especially those of us in the sandwich generation - scrambling and harried much of the time, with little space to tend to our own needs for rest and relationships beyond work and caregiving, much less room in our schedules for errands or (dare to dream!) play. We need people we can count on for help, but reaching out is so hard. Petersen names some of the barriers as our identities as helpers, our pride in being self-sufficient, our feelings of overwhelm (which of the many pressing to-dos do we ask for assistance with?), and not having a solid friend network or family nearby because of the multiple moves we’ve made for work.

In a recent post Petersen proposes an “emergency/tough times guide” (here’s her template) in which we name the things that would be most helpful to us when we’re feeling stretched too thin. In her piece she also names ways to use the guide. In addition to the options she presents, I want to offer some thoughts on how you could tailor a communal care guide for you or for your church:

• Craft the prompts for church staff and possibly even key lay leaders and ask them to fill out the form along with you. What personal or ministry support does each person need? What helps individuals feel seen and appreciated? Decide and communicate before distributing the form who will have access to the repository of responses. Access might be based on how vulnerable the questions ask respondents to be, how much trust there is in the system, what roles those with access play in the church, and how willing those people are to provide the requested assistance.

• Develop a form that everyone in your church can fill out on a rolling basis. This equalizes all the participants, makes it ok to ask for help, and reveals the care that would really benefit individuals or family unit so that the church can, well, be the church to each other. You can decide whether the responses will be available to anyone who fills out the form or to a specific team of caregivers committed to meeting needs as they are able.

• Develop a form in two parts for everyone in your church. In the first part takers name needs, and in the second part they share ways they could help others (e.g., taking people to appointments, making phone calls to people who are homebound, providing after school care for children of working parents). Everyone can see responses to both parts of the form, so they know whom to contact to give or receive care.

• Create a clergyperson-specific form, distribute it among your pastor peers, and give all the takers access to the responses. There are certain personal and professional needs that only another minister can understand and fulfill, and the guide could open up conversation about what mutual support could tangibly look like.

None of the options above is perfect. The forms would have to be designed thoughtfully in order to meet the intended aim of building an organic, sustainable care structure. But I think there’s something in here worth considering, a means of acknowledging our needs and others’ and working toward helping one another in ways that make a real difference.

Pastors are humans, and we minister alongside humans. We talk about our dependence on God and our interdependence with one another. Yet we can be so hesitant to acknowledge what is hard in our lives and request help accordingly. Perhaps this communal care guide can lower our resistance to know and be known by each other more deeply and share our burdens in appropriate and relationship-building ways.

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A recurring frustration for the pastors I coach is this refrain from church members: “If we could just bring in more young families, our congregation would be vibrant again.” While I have empathy for the grief behind this statement, the idea itself is false. In this piece for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog, I explain why and also give tips for congregations that are willing to put in the work to welcome young families. Click here to read it.

[Note: I wrote this piece a couple of months ago and submitted it to CBF in mid-May. I would now title the article differently, something like “Why bringing in young families is not the cure-all for your congregation.”]

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Today you can find me over on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog with thoughts on why pastoral care is so complicated right now - and how our people can get the care they need. (Click through to read more.)

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Over the past six months I have worked with several congregations and groups of ministers, and I’ve found it absolutely essential that participants process their experiences during the pandemic. Otherwise there is an isolating, suffocating stuckness, a desire to get back quickly to whatever is familiar instead of moving forward faithfully as individuals and collectives. Here's where I believe we need to spend some time during our regathering:

We need to break the ice. As I mentioned last week, in some ways we are semi-strangers to one another. For this reason, we won't be able to go deep if we don't have some sense of safety first. Play is one way to create that, and I suggested a few activities designed to take power back from the pandemic's hold over us.

We need to slow down. The temptation is there to jump right back into all the programming our churches had in the Before, when so many people were constantly on the go. School will start in the next month or two, so we need to gear up Sunday School for all ages! And weekday Bible study! And have a fall kickoff! And…and…and. Instead, we need to add things back in layers, after taking a few deep breaths and considering what we’d be gaining and sacrificing by re-starting each ministry.

We need to lament. There's no denying we’ve all lost a lot: people we care about, jobs, routines, sleep, a sense of security, time in community, places we frequented, and much more. Milestones passed without full acknowledgment. Events we long anticipated were cancelled. It’s important to name these losses and offer them up to God.

We need to express gratitude. Without denying the difficulty of the pandemic, there are some surprising graces for which we can give thanks. We’ve learned new things. We’ve shifted or broadened our perspectives. We’ve received notes and calls and porch drop-offs. And if nothing else, we’re still here, and that in itself is worth a party. Grief and gratitude are both prayerful, faithful acts.

We need to explore how we've changed as individuals. We are not the people we were in early 2020. Some of those differences are minor or temporary. Others go to the core of who we are and how we show up in the world, making us fundamentally new people in positive and challenging ways.

We need to think about what those changes mean for how we are community to one another. In some churches, relatively surface interactions were the norm. Now that we all need to re-introduce ourselves, we can go deeper. Since we've had a shared experience of difficulty (even though the intensity has covered the range), we can have a shared vulnerability in naming what that difficulty has done to and for us. Out of that willingness to be real, our relationships can grow stronger, and we can look at the gifts and needs of our congregations and contexts afresh. We’ll then be able more effectively to live the love of Christ for one another and the world.

But what does all of this good work look like? Some can be done during worship, with leaders helping us make sense of all that’s happened, preaching about the courage in vulnerability, and creating ways for all people to participate in liturgy (e.g., naming grief and gratitude during prayer times or hanging a prayer wall for everyone to write on during or outside services). There's processing that can be accomplished individually through prayer stations set up around the themes named above. Christian education classes and small groups could be given discussion guides. And congregational conversations in ways that feel Covid-safe (and as emotionally safe as we can make them) can unearth a lot of what needs to be said.

My sense is that we will need some amount of all of the above means in the early going - and that the trauma will continue to pop up in surprising ways for a long time thereafter. But if we can just start talking in real ways with one another and God, we can begin to forge a faithful way forward together.

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“I dread pastoral care.”

This is the secret shame of a lot of ministers, especially introverts. For those of us whose energy is depleted at the very thought of making a phone call or scheduling a visit, looking at a list of names can automatically prompt us to curl into a ball or pull our hoodies down over our eyes. If you can relate, here’s what I’d like to say to you:

Not loving pastoral care is not the same as not loving people. I trust the beauty and tenderness of your heart and believe that God would not have called you into pastoral ministry if you didn’t care deeply for those in your charge.

Everyone is gifted differently for ministry. In his book Flourishing in Ministry, Matt Bloom cites a study that identifies sixty-four different competencies pastors are called upon to perform. (Thanks to pandemic, that number has no doubt grown.) You will enjoy and be good at some of these tasks more than others.

There are many ways to show compassion and provide spiritual companionship. Phone calls and hour-long visits are not the only means. Sure, you probably need to be ready to spend time with people going through an acute crisis. At other times, though, you might want to send a handwritten note, which is a tangible, lasting sign that you are thinking of someone, or reach out by text, which might be greatly appreciated by those who don’t like talking on the phone or don’t have time for a lengthy conversation. Beyond individual contacts, you demonstrate pastoral care in the effort you put into tending to the business of the church, writing sermons, and planning ministries with your congregation and community in mind.

Caregiving ministry is not yours alone. Even in small churches it is good to cultivate the idea that spiritual accompaniment is the work of the community. You will not always be the pastor of your congregation, and members in it will need continuity of care through leadership transitions. Your ability to encourage and equip people for this good work ensures that follow-through.

For those visits you do need to make, get help with scheduling. Sometimes calendaring is the most daunting aspect of pastoral care. See if your administrative assistant or a layperson who has a good sense of the church and a love for the phone to set up appointments.

Above all, remember that you are not alone in finding this aspect of the work especially hard and that you are not a bad minister because you find pastoral care particularly challenging.

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For me, emerging from the pandemic feels like the emotional equivalent of walking out of a cave into the sunlight at high noon on a clear day. I blink rapidly. I shrink from the brightness. I consider running back into the cool darkness of the cave.

In other words, I am not ready to be fully out in the world again. In my mask, I don’t have to worry about my arranging my face into appropriate expressions. With social distancing, I am not forced to make small talk with strangers. If large gatherings are discouraged, no excuses are necessary when I don’t want to have my (barely existent) energy guzzled by trying to find my place, my role, in a crowd. It’s true - this pre-pandemic introvert is in danger of becoming a post-pandemic recluse.

It’s not all my fault. I’ve hardly had any time to myself over the past 15 months, which means my battery stays well below a 50% charge at all times. So as the world opens up more, I’m going to need a minute.

I’m not alone. Some people are So Very Tired in body and soul that they can’t imagine budging from their couches. Others have found online community life-giving. A few are simply not convinced that Covid is under control enough to take the risk of public re-entry.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who are ready to give free bear hugs to anyone and everyone they encounter. They’ve been craving non-virtual interaction with other humans. They cannot wait to see real smiles and sing in groups and talk about all the things without worrying if their tech will crap out.

There are people in between these extremes too, of course, and representatives of every point along the range are in your church. It’s important to keep this in mind as you craft your re-gathering strategy. Here, then, are some relational factors to attend to in your plan:

• What are the needs and concerns of those who are hesitant to re-engage?

  • How might we help these people?

  • How do we leave a physical and/or virtual seat open for them until they’re (if they become) ready?

• What are the needs and concerns of those who need human touch and talk?

  • How might we help these people?

  • How do we foster meaningful and safe connection in person?

• What capacity do we have to maintain both online and in-person communities?

  • If we can faithfully manage both, how do we keep the two communities connected with one another?

  • If we cannot faithfully manage both, how do we either increase capacity (such as through delegating) or help one community or the other find what they need elsewhere?

In many ways re-gathering is much more complicated than going into lockdown, and people’s comfort level in being with others is one of the ways that the complexity is showing up. Keep in mind that it’s not because one group cares more than another, it’s because the ways of showing care look different depending on individuals’ personalities and experiences of the pandemic. Let us show compassion by remaining open in eyes and ears as well as in hearts and minds.

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Let’s not mince words. This whole COVID-19 business sucks.

That suckage covers a big range, too. At one extreme, there’s the physical danger to immunosuppressed people and to those living in poverty, who might have difficulty feeding themselves as schools close and shelves empty at food banks and at stores that take government benefits. At the other extreme, people lament the (hopefully very short-term) loss of all that makes life enjoyable, such as birthday parties and trips and worship services and the NCAA basketball tournament. And these are only the immediate impacts.

So we’re all feeling the pinch in some way. The mortal danger is, of course, the exponentially greater concern. That’s why institutions of all kids are taking precautions and recommending safety guidelines to leaders and individuals – including pastors and church members. Talk about the things they didn’t teach you in seminary: many a minister is struggling to tend both to concerns about vulnerable people and frustrations about closures in a context that is now changing hourly.

Fully acknowledging how much the situation stinks, there are a couple of opportunities to keep in mind.

First, the church is not the building where your congregation is used to meeting. The church I attended in seminary had (and probably still has) a sign that said, “Oakhurst Baptist meets here.” It was a way of separating the congregation from the physical location. Many a church struggles to do that. After all, how many conversations about sanctuary carpet or the color the youth want to paint the walls of their meeting space become seemingly all-consuming, to the detriment of actual ministry? With many churches canceling in-person gathering for at least the next few weeks, there can begin to be more daylight between the people and the place.

With that in mind, how can you help your congregation members see in new ways that church is about relationships, not a facility? How will you equip and encourage your people to tend to those connections in the absence of a physical gathering place?

Second, the church as it was has been dying for some time. Many pastors know that, yet it can be hard to imagine what a new iteration of church might look like. And even if we can visualize it, how in the world can we inspire our people to be courageous enough to attempt it? Well, this pandemic offers a laboratory for that. We can’t conduct business as usual. We thus have unprecedented permission to discern new ways of connecting to one another as we seek to grow in our relationships with God.

So what expressions of the scattered church have you wanted to play with but heretofore haven’t dared? If you’re not sure what you’d like to experiment with, how can those who are accustomed to relating to people who aren’t physically present (e.g. youth ministers, digital natives, tech professionals) show us the way?

I am praying for you, pastors, and I am confident in your faithfulness, compassion, and ability to innovate. Lean into those strengths – you might be surprised by what emerges. And as you attempt new things, give yourself permission not to have all the answers immediately. We’re all feeling our way along in this brave new world.

I have the joy of leading two cohorts of clergy either serving in interim ministry or contemplating making that plunge. At one of our online gatherings last week, the participants were considering the questions of what makes interim ministry distinct from settled ministry and why we find transitional work so engaging. One cohort member shared that he considers churches in pastoral transitions vulnerable in ways that congregations with installed clergy are not. He considers it a privilege to minister to churches experiencing that vulnerability, helping them feel their way to hope.

That word - “vulnerable” - put a descriptor to the privilege of being with churches in their liminal spaces. I’ve had three units of Clinical Pastoral Education, which is intensive training for pastoral care. I can make an adequate visit to a homebound church member. I can show up in a hospital room and pray. But care for an entire congregation moving through the grief and anxiety of losing a pastor is where I do some of my best work. I am moved by hearing churches talk about what their former minister meant to them, which almost always covers the full range of emotions. I get excited about crafting worship experiences and conversations that help church members re-connect with God now that the person who was often their conduit has departed. I love helping congregations, especially small or shrinking ones, acknowledge that they are loved and gifted by God. And I revel in accompanying churches as they discern their way into the next season of ministry.

If your congregation has had a long-tenured, beloved, AND/OR controversial pastor, please allow an interim minister to journey with you when that person leaves. You deserve to be cared for, and your well-being will only benefit the pastor search process, the clergyperson who is eventually called to your setting, and the mission you offer in service to God out of healing rather than hurt.

As a minister with standing in my region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I am required to attend boundary training at least every ten years. This is important work, not just because abuse by clergy is (sadly) in the news so much these days. It’s also essential because the emphasis in these conversations shifts. For example, we spent much more time discussing preaching in this iteration of the training than in my last go-round. That’s because the political climate is such that pastors have to check their motivations and their theology every week so that the pulpit doesn’t become, well, the bully pulpit.

The increased attention to preaching was not the only new piece for me, however. The training materials lifted out that boundaries aid ministers’ work; they allow pastors to recover from the emotional, spiritual, and sometimes even physical demands of their roles so that they can come back to lead another day. That seems obvious enough. For the first time, however, I heard that boundaries themselves actually are the work.

I bristled at that statement initially. Surely ministers are not being encouraged to walk around wrapped in caution tape! But the materials clarified that we are constantly crossing boundaries – anytime we step over the threshold into a homebound member’s home or a hospital room, get buzzed into a school to eat lunch with a youth, hear the intimate details of a parishioner’s hurt, embolden our leadership in the midst of conflict, share a bit about our lives to let others know they are not alone, or enter the pulpit to preach. It is the minister’s job, though, to acknowledge those boundaries, to be clear on why we are or are not pushing through them, and to ensure that those reasons are to help the people in our care grow closer to God.

At the same time, spiritual leaders are called to help others recognize the boundaries they have set up between themselves and God and between themselves and their fellow humans so that they can remove these obstacles. Clergy do this through preaching and prayer, teaching and serving the community alongside church members.

Boundaries, then, are in fact the heart of ministry, recognizing and then either holding to or tearing them down. The hoped-for end is the same, regardless: to see and celebrate the image of God in all people and to remember that rootedness in relationship to God is essential for us all.

May we thus be aware of boundaries, sometimes using and other times obliterating them to promote connection and wholeness.

When I think of radical acts, I tend to think of using our voices (defined broadly) to make ourselves heard or our bodies to take up valuable real estate. Protesting, harassing – er, communicating with – our members of Congress, and creating art that reveals stark truths all fall into this category. Lord knows we need to leverage these types of advocacy in this cultural and political moment. They raise the profile of people under threat and put pressure on communities and leaders to act justly.

We have another tool to keep close at hand: deep listening – a kind of showing up in which we’re not just waiting for our turn to talk but being fully present to the speaker. It seems absurd that simply listening could be radical. But so few people feel known and valued, and when we feel disregarded, we tend to withdraw or act out. On the other hand, when we are heard and seen and accepted for who we are, we are able to operate out of gratitude and courage rather than shame. Just as importantly, listening without interruption or judgment confronts speakers with their freedom. This posture says, “You have the floor. Now, how are you going to use it?”

To be clear, people who are being treated unjustly are under no obligation to sit and listen. They have had to listen to those with power without being heard themselves for too long. But among people with like privilege, listening deeply can be a pathway not only for the hearer’s change but also the speaker’s. If you let me talk until I know I am are cared about – and until I can hear myself clearly – I will begin to understand what I need to do differently in order to live in hope.

Whom do you need to confront with their belovedness and freedom through your willingness to listen?

The death of a loved one. A financial catastrophe. The disappearance of a child. A sexual assault. The anticipation of a life-altering diagnosis. A journey into the unknown. These are some of the situations in which pastors and other caregivers are called to provide a ministry of presence – an embodiment of God’s love for those who are lonely, hurting, or anxious – because words are insufficient and our ability to do something is limited.

In the pastoral life, much emphasis is placed on this ministry of presence, and for good reason. Christians are people of the incarnation, in which God put God’s own body on the line so that humankind might feel the divine breath, touch the divine’s clothing, and experience the divine washing our dirty, smelly feet. Through Jesus God was born into the world, moved about the world, and was murdered by the world, yet came back from death to show off scars and cook fish on the beach for friends. Jesus was fully present to us, and in being so he demonstrated God’s own desire to be close to us.

And yet, we can’t always be present. Sometimes the reasons are logistical; time and geography do not permit. Sometimes the reasons are that we have multiple pulls on our ministry at the same time. And sometimes the reasons are that we have nothing left to give at that moment. At this point self-care becomes an imperative rather than merely a good idea. Many of us resist self-care, though, because of critical voices that come from within us and beyond us and because we follow a Christ who made time for others, even when he desperately needed to catch his breath. We equate self-care with selfishness, and we talk ourselves out of it.

It’s time to reframe self-care. Last week at Nevertheless She Preached, I was introduced to the concept of a ministry of absence by Jaime Clark-Soles, professor of New Testament at Perkins School of Theology. The term, however, was coined by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen believed that pastors had become so available that there was not enough space for the Holy Spirit to move in the lives of God’s people. In other words, parishioners have become dependent on pastors rather than on God, and pastors have become too eager to get their needs to be needed met by responding to every care request. Occasionally making ourselves scarce not only gives our bodies, hearts, and egos a rest, then, but also allows our people to strengthen their relationships with the God who wants good for them.

In a faith centered on incarnation and a vocation born out of that faith, how does a ministry of absence compute? The reality that Jesus is no longer physically with us provides a good start. He was raised from the dead, he had a few meetings with the disciples to boost their confidence for the work ahead…and then he ascended. He took off into the clouds before the disciples thought they were ready to discern and do on their own. They had a lot to argue about and figure out, and they did it with the help of the Holy Spirit. They likely wouldn’t have done it at all if Jesus had still been hanging around. For one thing, the Spirit did not descend until Jesus ascended. And Jesus’ presence enabled the disciples’ dependence, whereas his absence activated their boldness. That boldness built the body of Christ here on earth, through which the incarnation lives on, spreads the good news, and cares for the least of these.

There are times to minister through your presence, and there are times to minister through your absence. Prayerfully consider what your indicators might be that one or the other is called for, then go forth in faith that the Spirit will fill whatever space you do not.

[This post is the first of four upcoming reflections inspired by Nevertheless She Preached.]

A couple of weeks ago I wrapped up a three-session course on resilience in ministry with some fantastic clergywomen. We talked about the emotional labor that gets dumped on us by parishioners – bless their hearts – and the ways it siphons off both professional and personal joy. The question that popped into my mind was, “What do we need to refuse to care about more than our people do?” One of the participants anticipated that I was going to use the word “carry” instead of “care,” a leap that took us into rich discussion. Maybe we shouldn’t refuse to care. Maybe we can’t not care. But that doesn’t mean we have to carry all the worry and responsibility – especially around this emotional work – that others offer us.

I can care that you’re in conflict with another church member without inserting myself into the conflict.

I can care that your feelings were hurt by not being nominated for a lay leadership role while remaining clear that the decision was a good one.

I can care that you don’t think I visited you often enough in the hospital without doubting my intentionality around how I spend my ministry time.

I can care that you heard my sermon in a way I did not intend and still trust that the Spirit did its work in and through me.

Caring vs. carrying all boils down to the hard work of self-differentiation: here is where you end and I begin. When we are clear about our strengths, purpose, and role, we can begin to crawl out from the weight of others’ expectations while remaining connected to the people around us.

What burden do you need to lay down?

As a teenager I had an unhealthy affinity for Lurlene McDaniel novels. She writes about young people who have chronic or terminal illnesses. There’s also at least one book about a high school girl dying in a car crash because she didn’t want her seat belt to wrinkle her new dress. These works of fiction were the perfect/worst possible match for my personality: generally anxious with a side dish of hypochondria. I cannot tell you how many times I convinced myself I had diabetes or cancer, thanks to the similarity of my “symptoms” with a Lurlene McDaniel character. I mentally penned my farewell letters and practiced my brave face in the mirror. (Truth be told, I still kinda do these things.)

Which is why I couldn’t wait to read/put off reading Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved. Bowler is an assistant professor of church history at Duke Divinity School who was unexpectedly diagnosed with incurable, stage 4 cancer in 2015. She is in her late 30s. She is a self-professed church nerd. As a Mennonite she is a proponent of believer’s baptism adrift in a sea of infant baptizers at her Methodist seminary. She has a young son. She has a close-knit, irreverent family. In short, I could relate to much of her story. And her humor…oh, how I love her wit.

But Kate Bowler is not a fictional character. She is a real person who is wrestling daily with what it means to inhabit the space between living the dream and actively dying. She is a real Christian who is struggling with her subconscious assent to the prosperity gospel – if you pray hard enough and are good enough, the world is your oyster! – and her fear that death means disconnect from her husband and child.

Bowler’s words did not hit me square in my anxiety. They did something that is rare for someone as head-focused as I am: wriggled their way into my most tender, most guarded inner self. They made me want to be less private and more honest. They made me want to dream about more than control my life. They made me want to love so deeply that I would feel grief acutely. Now, how to do those things…

I guess I don’t have to spell out that I recommend this book, as well as the accompanying podcast.

Thank you, Kate Bowler, for the beauty of who you are and what you share with the world.

Last week this beautiful post by a Presbyterian minister in California popped up in my Facebook newsfeed several times. It was timely for me. A beloved member of my former congregation had just died, and I was deeply grieving the loss of a man who not only left his fingerprints on virtually every ministry in the church, but who was also a giddy grandfather, a mentor to young children, and a friend to many – including me.

Several people made sure I’d heard this hard news. I very much appreciated their efforts, especially since they were so busy with all the care and the details that fill the days leading up to a memorial service. But this influx of info strained my ability to maintain my boundaries. There were so many people I wanted to check on, pray with, and hear stories from. I didn’t, of course. I am a former minister at that church. I wonder sometimes if keeping this kind of distance seems cold to the people I have loved and served, though, and so today I share a few things I wish my former parishioners knew.

I still care about you. A lot. And I think about and pray for you.

I keep up with what’s going on. I subscribe to the newsletters of most of the churches I’ve served. (And I probably read them more closely than many church members!) If you ever friended me on Facebook, I read your status updates, even though I generally don’t “like” or comment on what I read.

It’s really hard for me to let someone else be your minister ... I want to be the one celebrating milestones with you and offering a listening ear when you’re going through difficulty.

… but the line between friendship and pastor/parishioner is razor thin … As time passes – and as you claim your newer minister as Your Minister – we’ll be better able to see each other simply as friends.

…and I believe strongly both in the ethics of separation and in the abilities of your new minister. If I don’t step out of the way so that the current minister can share big moments with you, he/she will never earn your confidence. And because I trust in her/his competence, if I insert myself into your situation, I will have done so myself primarily to meet my own needs.

If this delineation seems harsh, it’s because I’ve seen – and experienced firsthand – the ill effects of predecessors with poor boundaries. It’s hard enough living in the shadow of the one who has served before. It’s downright frustrating when a former minister actively maintains his/her influence so that the new minister’s care isn’t wanted or needed. So I tend to err on the side of holding the line.

I will always carry with me all the experiences that we shared together and the lessons you taught me. You encouraged me, enlightened me, emboldened me, and ministered alongside and to me.

I am and will be a better minister to others because of having been your minister. Thank you for allowing me into your life, your home, your heart. It is one of the great privileges of my life to point you to the holy, and I have often encountered the sacred in you.

Everyone deals with anxiety, some of us more than others. Two typical responses are:

• Overfunctioning – Keeping busy doing something – anything! – to keep our feelings from catching up with us. Not only will we refuse to delegate, we will rip to-dos from the hands of others. (This is my default.)

• Underfunctioning – Allowing emotion to immobilize us. It embodies the attitude, “I can’t fix things, so why try?”

A bit of one or the other might serve us well in the short term. In times of crisis, there’s often a need to TCB (take care of business). Or we may need to stop in our tracks before we do or say something irreversible out of anxiety. But in the long run, neither over- nor underfunctioning serves us well. It’s basic physics – an object in motion will stay in motion, and an object at rest will stay at rest.

It’s not just individuals that are prone to inertia. Communities can over- and underfunction as a collective. A congregation that is so afraid of shrinking numbers that it never takes time to evaluate its many ministries will press on until it has run off anyone interested in innovation. A church that is so depressed that it can’t dream or discern or do will slowly die off (spiritually and numerically).

There is no way to avoid the hard work of connecting the dots:

• What am I (are we) feeling? What won’t I let myself (we let ourselves) feel, and why?

• How did I (we) get here?

• What can I (we) control?

• Given what I (we) can control, what is the first step in moving forward?

Rising strong from tough situations requires us to combine the best aspects of under- and overfunctioning. We must feel, and we must do.



Compassion is the heart of the gospel. When Jesus gives us our charging orders to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner, he is explicitly telling us to note the suffering of others and – rather than turning away from or pitying them – to be as kind to them as if they were Jesus himself. He is implicitly reminding us that we have all known suffering of some sort, that we have all longed to be connected and to be understood.

It’s not easy to see pain in others’ faces, though. Not only do we have to do something once we note the pain, we have to admit that those who suffer are just as deserving (as much as any of us “deserve” grace) of connection and understanding and help as we are. It’s more comfortable to tell ourselves the story that the sufferer made poor choices to get to where they are. That obviously we made much more responsible decisions to be in the position to choose our targets of compassion.

BUT. What if instead we went about our lives believing that people are doing the best they can, that some folks are trapped in systems not of their making? What if we loved these folks as they are? What if we remembered our low points and connected with those in need out of our shared humanity?

This is the framework that Brené Brown suggests we operate out of. It is not a call to doormat-dom, however. It is not wearing ourselves down to the nub. It is a balancing act. It is knowing and honoring our limits so that we can do the hard work of looking pain in the eye and extending compassion.

What would it look like if we believed the people who exasperate or frighten us are doing the best they can? The person who calls the church every month for help with the utility bill. The congregational antagonist. The ministry leader whose life is spiraling out of control. What inner work would we need to do first to be able to extend this generous interpretation? And what difference would it make in our individual and collective lives if we could look at others – all others – through these Christ-colored glasses?

Here is my single biggest takeaway from Rising Strong:

When I am feeling overwhelmed, I need to ask, “What is the story I’m telling myself?”

I am too quick to assume – that the person who just tore into me is irredeemably ornery, that I’m not good enough, or that I am too good to be the one creating the problem. None of these default narratives points me toward reflecting more deeply on the situation, reaching out for help, or looking for a solution. They are interpretations, and narrow, blame-inducing ones at that.

As an extreme introvert, I am especially prone to spinning a whole story in my head without fact-checking it, then acting on it like it is true. “What is the story I’m telling myself?” is a way of getting out of my head and sharing my perspective without making hearers defensive, since I’m not claiming that my outlook is gospel.

Instead, Brené Brown suggests I get at the whole story by asking myself:

• What am I leaving out in my default narratives?

  • What am I feeling? Why?

  • What am I thinking?

  • What am I believing?

  • What am I doing?

• What information do I need to flesh out and own this story?

  • about myself

  • about others

Not only are these the questions that I often neglect to ask, they are the ones that congregations need help raising to address subversive narratives of shame and blame. Churches – especially well-established ones – will have trouble moving forward until they are able to unearth and discuss sources of  resistance. Only when they are well-aware of feelings and dynamics will they be able to love and trust enough to risk doing new things.

In last week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory, the very logic-focused Sheldon was jarred into the realization that he does not have the ability to suppress all emotion. Unlike his hero, Mr. Spock, he has the capacity to hurt. So do we all.

Not all of us are as uncomfortable with emotion as Sheldon is. (Although I find Sheldon to be very relatable, truth be told!) But most of us do attempt to “offload” our hurt in a number of ways. If you’re interested in what those tricks look like, Brené Brown does a great job of identifying and describing them in Rising Strong (pp. 59-66). This unwillingness to feel the feels, though, only kicks the hurt down the road. It will have to be dealt with again later, often in messier form.

So it’s healthier – and easier, in the long view – to look hurt in the eye. But there are big differences between:

• feeling hurt and acting out hurt

• feeling disappointed and living disappointed

• acknowledging pain and inflicting pain

• caring about what others think and being defined by what others think

(Brown names these dichotomies in her introduction and first chapter.)

In the first half of each pair, we acknowledge our humanity and seek to understand what we’re feeling and why. When we can see the issue more clearly, we can deal with it better. If we lean toward the second half of these pairs, though, we’re really looking to avoid pain by passing it on to someone else. We disconnect from our inner life and from other people, making up stories instead about someone else and his/her intentions.

I believe much of the conflict in congregations comes from the desire to pass on pain rather than feeling and owning our discomfort. Church involvement is very personal. We encounter God and mature in our faith at church. We talk about close-to-home and sometimes controversial topics at church. We make some of our best friends at church. We invest much of ourselves and our resources at church. All of this growth-inducing vulnerability leaves us exposed to hurt, and we often don’t have the skills as individuals or communities to handle our disappointments in a healthy way.

In my next post I will outline what I believe to be the most helpful tool Brown offers us for reflection. This examination is the first step toward communicating, understanding, and connecting.