May God bless you with discomfort …
At easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger …
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears …
To shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And to turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with foolishness …
To believe that you can make a difference in this world,
So that you can do what others say cannot be done.
Amen.
— A Franciscan benediction for challenging times
At easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger …
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears …
To shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And to turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with foolishness …
To believe that you can make a difference in this world,
So that you can do what others say cannot be done.
Amen.
— A Franciscan benediction for challenging times
In his book The New Realities (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) Peter Drucker asks seven questions of leaders. They are as applicable to church leaders as to managing directors.
1. How well do we know our people? There is no substitute for "management by walking around" -- not just in the church but in the world outside. This puts oneself in the position of ordinary people -- whether in the congregation or outside. Do we give ourselves time to think through methodically each role within the church, evaluate the people who are fulfilling it, see the strains they are under and decide what help they need? At the same time we need to look at people outside the life of the church. Is there anything in the habits of our church which makes it difficult for them to hear and respond to the gospel? Is our personal ministry to them evangelistic? Who is best placed to communicate with them? A prayerful "walkabout" can be immensely significant, either done alone or with a group of other leaders.2. What information do we need to do our job effectively? Are we getting unnecessary information which merely overloads the system? Often churches are awash with the wrong information, e.g., finance, organization, charities and structures and not enough about people and the local community.
3. Which tasks do we do which advance the kingdom -- and which have we merely got used to doing? Cut out the latter: maximize the former.
4. Are we communicative? "Remember, what is obvious to us may not be obvious to others." The management expert, John Humble, said, "If you are an accountant, don't talk to them as though they were also accountants." He might have said that ministers should not talk as though everyone else were ministers, Anglicans as though everyone else were Anglicans, and old-agers as though everyone else had been in church for all their lives.
5. Has what we expected to happen, happened? Check that what you expect to happen has happened. If not, find out why.
6. Are we still learning? Keep learning. Continuing personal development, in spiritual depth and in human maturity, is necessary if we are not to become stale and dull. If one is working in technologically based industry, it is obvious, but no less necessary, for the Christian leader.
7. Are we taking care of ourselves? If we are, we will last a long time. (Peter Drucker is himself a good example of this. New Realities was published when he was 80 and he still keeps up a punishing routine of lecturing and writing.)
--John Finney, Church on the
Move: Leadership for Mission (London: Daybreak, 1992),
122-23, 178.
I have to look in cracks and crevices.
Don't tell me how God's mercy is as wide as the ocean, as deep as the sea. I already believe it, but that infinite prospect gets farther away the more we mouth it.
I thank you for lamenting his absences--from marriages going mad, from the deaths of your son and mine, from the inescapable terrors of history: Treblinka. Viet Nam. September Eleven. It's hard to celebrate his invisible Presence in the sacrament while seeing his visible absence from the world.
This must be why mystics and poets record the slender incursions of splintered light, echoes, fragments, odd words and phrases like flashes through darkened hallways. These stabs remind me that the proud and portly old church is really only that cut green slip grafted into a tiny nick that merciful God himself slit into the stem of his chosen Judah. The thin and tenuous thread we hang by, so astonishing, is the metaphor I need at the shoreline of all those immeasurable oceans of love.
-Rod Jellema
Don't tell me how God's mercy is as wide as the ocean, as deep as the sea. I already believe it, but that infinite prospect gets farther away the more we mouth it.
I thank you for lamenting his absences--from marriages going mad, from the deaths of your son and mine, from the inescapable terrors of history: Treblinka. Viet Nam. September Eleven. It's hard to celebrate his invisible Presence in the sacrament while seeing his visible absence from the world.
This must be why mystics and poets record the slender incursions of splintered light, echoes, fragments, odd words and phrases like flashes through darkened hallways. These stabs remind me that the proud and portly old church is really only that cut green slip grafted into a tiny nick that merciful God himself slit into the stem of his chosen Judah. The thin and tenuous thread we hang by, so astonishing, is the metaphor I need at the shoreline of all those immeasurable oceans of love.
-Rod Jellema
The Rev. Richard Schauper shared a story with the congregation of St. Clare's that has stayed with me. It goes like this:
A billionaire threw a part somewhere on the Eastern seaboard shore. While there were many at the party, two of the guests who struck up a conversation were authors Joseph Heller (of Catch-22 fame) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, etc). Kurt says to Joseph, "You know Joseph, our billionaire friend has earned more money in just one night than all the sales of your book, Catch-22! Heller shook his head and said, "You know, that's probably true." Heller then replied by saying "Ah, but I have one thing that he does not." "Oh," says Vonnegut, "What's that?" "Enough!" says Heller.
I find this story profound.
For years I have heard the rant of the theology of abundance. And I must tell you, I'm sick of it (I never liked it from the beginning and have used it grudgingly). For me, the theology of abundance plays right into the same game that the rest of the world plays: spend more, cause I have more! Or as the Dorritos chip commercial used to say: "We'll make more!" Only in this case, it's not the chip company making more, but rather God is making more.
While it is true that God gives and gives and gives again, what I like better is that God gives enough. Let me explain.
I woke up this morning, and it would have been enough for God to stop at that. I was owed nothing by God to permit me to rise up today, but who-hoo!, here I am and doing fine! Ah, but it would have been enough for God to have stopped there...but God didn't!
It would have been enough for God to not only allow me to rise, but to do so in my right mind (many of you think I'm out of my mind, but that's another subject). God owed me nothing to allow me to rise up and to be in my right mind...but ah, God in God's goodness gave those gifts to me (and even more) but it would have been enough.
A time is coming and in some sense is now here where I have less now than I did in the past: I'm wearing glasses these days, and while the body works wonderfully, it doesn't run like it did in my late teens and early twenties....but it is enough. Indeed, a day is coming when my health will fail, I won't own my house, my children will leave, loss is an inevitable part of the human condition. Ah, but it will be enough because I know that God is consistently loving and kind. No wonder the apostle Paul said (using God's voice) "My grace is sufficient for you..." More than sufficient, it is enough!
Yours for the reign of God,
Ron
A billionaire threw a part somewhere on the Eastern seaboard shore. While there were many at the party, two of the guests who struck up a conversation were authors Joseph Heller (of Catch-22 fame) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, etc). Kurt says to Joseph, "You know Joseph, our billionaire friend has earned more money in just one night than all the sales of your book, Catch-22! Heller shook his head and said, "You know, that's probably true." Heller then replied by saying "Ah, but I have one thing that he does not." "Oh," says Vonnegut, "What's that?" "Enough!" says Heller.
I find this story profound.
For years I have heard the rant of the theology of abundance. And I must tell you, I'm sick of it (I never liked it from the beginning and have used it grudgingly). For me, the theology of abundance plays right into the same game that the rest of the world plays: spend more, cause I have more! Or as the Dorritos chip commercial used to say: "We'll make more!" Only in this case, it's not the chip company making more, but rather God is making more.
While it is true that God gives and gives and gives again, what I like better is that God gives enough. Let me explain.
I woke up this morning, and it would have been enough for God to stop at that. I was owed nothing by God to permit me to rise up today, but who-hoo!, here I am and doing fine! Ah, but it would have been enough for God to have stopped there...but God didn't!
It would have been enough for God to not only allow me to rise, but to do so in my right mind (many of you think I'm out of my mind, but that's another subject). God owed me nothing to allow me to rise up and to be in my right mind...but ah, God in God's goodness gave those gifts to me (and even more) but it would have been enough.
A time is coming and in some sense is now here where I have less now than I did in the past: I'm wearing glasses these days, and while the body works wonderfully, it doesn't run like it did in my late teens and early twenties....but it is enough. Indeed, a day is coming when my health will fail, I won't own my house, my children will leave, loss is an inevitable part of the human condition. Ah, but it will be enough because I know that God is consistently loving and kind. No wonder the apostle Paul said (using God's voice) "My grace is sufficient for you..." More than sufficient, it is enough!
Yours for the reign of God,
Ron
