Week ends, work begins...

Not the building we met in, but absolutely stunning!

This past weekend was a new and exciting experience for me. I was invited with several other young adult leaders to do a bit of visioning with the leadership of the church down to the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in North Carolina. It was certainly a unique and humbling opportunity to gather with these other very capable peers and leaders to share our experiences and perspectives from the membership in the field and put those experiences into action. Here's a bit of what stuck with me:

Relationships - The North American culture and society has gradually become more and more individualistic. Busy schedules are one minor cause, but perhaps a greater cause is a personal sense of superiority. In an effort to "keep up with the Joneses" and project this image of having everything all together, interpersonal relationships have suffered; how can I make you think I'm the bees knees if you know that my (sibling/parent/friend/self) struggle with (addiction/money/lust/etc)? Essentially, we need to turn upside down those expectations that we place on ourselves and on others to project a sort of "withitness". We need to find a place where we are comfortable to share those pains in our life - the brokenness that we all experience.

Recently a friend of mine in church leadership shared an experience in which he went to the bar where his 20-something son works. While he was there, he couldn't help but notice that the people there were engaged in deep, meaningful conversation; parents sharing about struggles with their children, spouses sharing about challenges in their relationships, people celebrating the joys in their friends' lives and weeping over the concerns and brokenness. My friend shared about how this experience was more similar to what a church should be than anything he had experienced in church in years.

We have to make that shift. Church can no longer be the place where we put on our Sunday best - whether it's out of reverence to God or not - and leave our week-long "worst" at home. Church needs to be a compassionate, comforting community where people come together in the midst of their life's struggles to share their burdens, receive support from the community and healing from their Creator.

Enduring Principles: Grace and Generosity, Sacredness of Creation, Worth of All Persons, Responsible Choices, Pursuit of Peace (Shalom), Unity in Diversity, Blessings of Community.

Mentoring - There was quite a bit of discussion on how these relational issues could be addressed and the idea of mentoring relationships was suggested. After a bit of discussion on the appropriateness of the term "mentoring", one of our resident experts (a consultant in leadership and mentoring) helped us identify mentoring not as training one's replacement but rather preparing one's equal. This is not to suggest that the aforementioned relational issues are going to or even can be addressed in a mentoring relationship. However, we recognized that many of our leaders at the congregational and mission center level could use a bit (or even a lot) of training on how to facilitate an environment of healing and reconciliation with our Creator and with each other. Mentoring was seen as an appropriate way to achieve that task.

Enduring Principles: Grace and Generosity, Sacredness of Creation, Continuing Revelation, Worth of All Persons, All Are Called, Responsible Choices, Unity in Diversity, Blessings of Community.

Peace and Justice - This is one area that is relatively new for me in my discipleship and exploration. While taking a course on ethics this past Spring, I read a book called The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays. There was a chapter entitled "Violence in Defense of Justice" which was immeasurably helpful for me in the "Just War" discussion. This also came around the same time that my wife's parents' church (The Meeting House in Ontario) was kicking off a multi-week series called "Inglorious Pastors" (I see what you did there!) on the radical non-violent pacifism of Jesus Christ. She and I listened to a few of the podcasts from it and I was very impressed with the conviction of the teaching pastor.

And so, our conversation on P&J this weekend turned into more than I could have hoped for. We explored how they might be independent of each other (inner peace, outer justice), but codependent on each other. We discussed the various ministries the church already provides and visioned what the Peace Colloquy could be if we ran it (which was pretty unanimous that it would be much larger, more educational and possibly have a different name). The biggest takeaway for me in the entire conversation, however, was how each of our Enduring Principles is a reflection of P&J issues. Our basic beliefs are informed by the very nature of Community of Christ as a "peace church" (though has not always been the case for us). There is a lot of work to be done in this area, but the disconnect between Community of Christ as a peace church and how that is lived out in congregational life no longer disheartens me - it encourages me to be more active, ever exploring ethical questions (i.e. violence or pacifism in defense of justice) and engaging people from all experiences in conversations of depth surrounding these issues. As Jim Slauter said (in reference to something else, however), "Enough is enough!" It is no longer excusable for this disconnect between the church's mission (in thought) and church's mission (in practice) to exist. It is time for serious engagement in peace and justice issues!

Enduring Principles: Grace and Generosity, Sacredness of Creation, Continuing Revelation, Worth of All Persons, All Are Called, Responsible Choices, Pursuit of Peace (Shalom), Unity in Diversity, Blessings of Community. (Yea, that's right - all of 'em!)

Work - Now comes the part that I'm most excited about. The people that were gathered exhibited an enormous capacity to do this. The talents and gifts present would be able to exact the vision, not just at an IHQ level, but down to the very relationships necessary for a burgeoning church plant in suburban Toronto or aging congregation in rural Iowa. However, the retreat ended yesterday and we all went our separate ways. Technology will keep us connected - Facebook, Twitter, texting, whatever - so we can continue to bounce ideas off of each other and work on projects at a broader level. However, the most exciting part for me as I looked around the circle at our final sharing for the weekend was that I could identify people in my area with similar giftedness and passion. Sure, there is no way that I can replace Scotty, Tricia, Heather, Shane, Tave or Dan (or Dan, Alli, Erica, Adam, Kat, Becky, Van, Sean, Todd, Matt, Steve, Becky, Dave, Jim, Steve or Cathi). I can, however, identify people that have gifts, qualities, passions, skills, resources, etc. that can come together to do this very important work.


It is time to do this work. The mission of Jesus Christ is what matters most for the journey ahead (164.9f), and all are called upon by God to live that mission faithfully.