Doing is on the way to Becoming

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse.  'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become ….’”

The Velveteen Rabbit

I once was asked why I didn’t title my sermons.  

My not serious, tongue in cheek, quip was that I was a closet Episcopalian, and while I believed in Jesus, I didn’t believe in titles.  Episcopalians do not title their sermons, Methodists normally do.  But I assure you, I am not a closet Episcopalian.  Their Sunday duds are just not me.  I might become an Episcopalian, but I doubt it. 

The real answer is titles box me in. 

Here at Hilltop, we print the bulletin on Thursday, and I am often, very often, not ready to put a title on a sermon at that time.  A title forces me into a direction I am not always ready to be go. Yes, I can be stubborn at times with the Holy Spirit and the direction of a sermon. 

When I have a good title and know with great certainty where the Holy Spirit is carrying me, it’s easy.  Look at the bulletins for Sunday worship in September; titles will be present. But that title creation prompted me to think about a lot of stuff. 

The act of creating a title for this Sunday’s sermon produced a jumble in my head.  As we look at the book of James in September, that jumble is stirred by contemplating the answer to the question:  “What does it mean to live as a Christian?”  

The theme for the month, “Doing Church” is also messing with me. Several weeks ago when it was proposed, it generated no dissonance in my head at all.  Now, for some reason, it keeps clashing in my head.  (To be clear, this a good dissonance, like in Jazz or the Blues or Stravinsky). 

I was glad to read that the theme had an impact on Mary Jean Davison as she wrote her excellent Music and Arts article in our newsletter. Mary Jean suggests that by doing church, we start to experience transformation and get to a place of becoming where we are the church.  You don’t stay at doing. At some point, you become. 

Spanish has two verbs to be.  One has an element of permanence, and the other is understood to be temporary.  If you use the wrong verb to say someone is smart or beautiful, you are actually suggesting it is not part of their normal state.  I see this doing/being in the same way.  We have to do the church enough, that at some point it stops being doing, and it becomes a vital statement about who we actually are. 

I assure you that after having prepared right at 500 sermons I am not the same person I was 500 sermons ago.  Church is a different reality for me than fifteen years ago, sometimes even fifteen minutes ago. 

Being the church is, in the sense of the two Spanish verbs to be, permanent and temporary.  Gradually as we become real in terms of being little Christs, the meaning of Christian after all, he becomes permanently part of who we are, and we leave more and more of the temporary behind. 

I suspect it is never completed, that in this life we are never fully 100% finished.  To paraphrase Paul from 1^st Corinthians 13, I suspect it is a state of constant becoming, a state of seeing in the mirror and just getting it dimly, always seeking more light, more clarity, moving from doing to a state of becoming. In the words of the Skin Horse, you become real. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Pronouns Matter

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ.  1 Corinthians 12:12 (ESV)

In my time in the Army, I often heard leaders say while pointing to the US Army strip on our uniforms “there is no me in Army” then point to our name tags, mine of course saying SHAW and offering “there is no I in Team.” Sometimes they would close that lesson with “Go Army, Go Team.” 

There is no me in Army, there is no I in team. 

The preamble to the Constitution doesn’t say “I the person” it starts, “We the people.” 

          The New York Yankees do not allow names on the backs of their jerseys, only numbers. 

               Some coaches tell basketball, football, and baseball players to play for the name on the front of their jersey rather than the name on the back.  The back has their last name, and on the front, is the team name. 

All of those ideas point to the same concept that Paul was pointing to in his ongoing philosophical dispute with the church in Corinth: when you sign on to be a follower of Christ, you leave the stuff behind you previously held on to. For Paul, the image of a healthy human body was helpful to understanding the idea of team: the team worked together and the eye was the eye, and it didn’t try to be the ear, mouth, or ankle. 

There is no me in Church, there is no I at Hilltop. Me and I are called pronouns, which mean they can be used as a substitute for nouns. There is no me in church surely sounds better than ‘there is no Dennis in church.’ 

Here is my point: Pronouns matter, they matter a lot. 

How many times do we hear national leaders over the last twenty years get into extended dialogue where the pronouns used are I, me or my. Those are all first person, singular pronouns. Somehow when Jesus says “I am the light of the world” that is positive, but when a leader pronounces “I am the light of the world” it is jarring. 

Personally, I always try to make sure the pronouns at Hilltop are to the maximum degree possible, if first person, plural. We.  Us. 

But that is so hard. Look at the very first sentence of this thought piece: quickly it gets to first person, singular. Sometimes the I statement is unavoidable. First person singular isn’t automatically sinful.  But other times, it would be more true, more helpful, and more kind to go to plural pronouns. 

Reading European sports writers talk about the recent World Cup was interesting. England are something. Not England is something. My word processor gives me an error on are following the singular noun, England, but England in the context meant is a team, a plural. 

Maybe we need to think of the Body of Christ in a European team concept: The body of Christ are …

English teachers will freak out but in reality the plural verb makes an excellent point – a team is intrinsically plural, not singular. You want the team to get to a place of unity, oneness, functioning as one. But even in perfect oneness, perfect unity, it is still a collection of me’s and I’s. 

I used The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown last year for sermon illustrations. Boys in the Boat is the story of the University of Washington Rowing Team and how, spoiler alert, they won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1936. In part, the book is about how one man, Joe Rantz, neglected and abandoned by his family, had to learn to sacrifice his personal individuality for the unity of the team. When Rantz makes that psychological, spiritual shift in his understanding of how it all fits together, the crew is one with each other.  The nine members of the Crew becomes one. 

For Paul, this thing called church is a one.  He sees it in terms of the complexity of the human body, many diverse parts and roles, but still functioning as a single thing. All of this diversity of function and role still serves to keep the body healthy and viable. Every member of the body, that is eyes, fingers, feet, stomach, ears, all function in support of the one that is the entire body: the entire body of Christ. 

This Jesus stuff isn’t easy. It isn’t going to happen without effort and hard work and a willingness to make that psychological, spiritual shift in understanding of how it all fits together. You’ve got to sacrifice much of our individuality to make it all fit together.

One of the barometers in how we assess how we are doing on this “body of Christ” stuff is the pronouns. When first person singular dominate, we are probably focused on the wrong things. When the dominant pronouns are plural, we are probably functioning consistent with what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 12. 

There is no me in Church, there is no I at Hilltop. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Going Over the Ground Rules

2 Corinthians 9:6-7 (NRSV) -- The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

 

As many of you are aware, I love baseball.

 

Before every game, the teams meet at home plate to exchange lineup cards and go over the ground rules of that stadium.  For example, Wrigley Field in Chicago has ivy covering the outfield wall, and a ball “stuck” in the ivy is out of play, and the batter is awarded second base. This is a “ground rule double.”

 

Let’s go over the ground rules for our coming stewardship campaign.

 

Handouts, the newsletter, and my blog pieces will be the primary place where we discuss elements of the money story.  Money is head talk, and head talk will be primarily something for you to read. For example, on October 1^st when we talk with the Trustees about the building, we are not going to talk about utility costs.  The handouts will address that.

 

Handouts will also identify who you might talk to about a particular area. Current people are identified as they know the story, new people will not.

 

Our ground rule is head talk is reserved for reading, and speaking will focus, we hope, on heart talk.

 

Our speaking will focus on our hearts with why the church exists – change. The people called Methodists call this change transformation. Change is local, regional, national and international. Change is also personal.

 

Drawing from the scripture above, we are called to sow in a bountiful, grace-filled manner, so we can have a bountiful, grace-filled harvest. We have all heard, you reap what you sow. That is true both on what commodity comes back in the harvest, and how successful you are. Sow love and grace generously, and we harvest both, generously. 

How do we speak to the next topic in love and generosity?

 

If we look at the seven predominantly white churches in Utah with a full-time pastor, we apparently are sowing sparingly because we are reaping sparingly. If our giving were consistent with the others, our congregational giving would be in the $530,000 range. It is not. Our congregational giving is for 2017 is expected to be about $405,000 (or plus $35,000 over 2016).  I will say that there is some good news here:  that amount is almost $100,000 higher than at the end of 2012.  We are making progress here.

 

Let me return to the ground rules. 

We know there are those who have limited flexibility to step-up here.  Our ground rule is we will honor and respect that.  We do hope those in this situation will pledge and be faithful, and regular, stewards.

You may pledge for 2018 at anytime in October.  You do not have to wait until the last Sunday, and in fact, we hope you will step-up here early rather than later.

 

We have for many years been compelled to keep asking people into January if they intend to pledge.  This is generally focused on those who have pledged in the past.  We want to get to a ground rule that says the campaign is finished on Commitment Sunday (this year, October 29^th).  That knowledge will help us in our budget building. We are people of faith, but we do not approve faith budgets.

 

We do need more of us to pledge, and those that pledge, to pledge a little more.  If everyone who last year’s pledged increased their pledge by $10/week and everyone else who did not pledge increased their unpledged giving by the same amount, we would be right at $500,000 which would allow us to accomplish many, long deferred goals. We will speak those thoughts over the month of October.

 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Gifts of the Spirit

1^st Corinthians 12: Verses 4–7: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Galatians 5:22-23: By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

Galatians 5:19-21: Now the works of the flesh are obvious:…impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

 Scripture is NRSV

Paul is big on the idea of the Spirit. The Spirit is clearly an important theological idea for Paul. References to the Spirit fill Paul’s letters as he coaches his far flung flock. Three are quoted here. Paul was having trouble with both Corinth First UMC and Galatians Community UMC. Things had fallen apart after he had left.

 

Things are not falling apart at Hilltop UMC, let me assure you. We are doing well.  We can do better. 

I personally like to think of the two Galatians readings in terms of car dashboard lights. When we are in proper relationship with God, our fellow co-laborers in the church and ourselves, our dashboard lights are green. Love, joy, peace and other good things are displayed consistent with what Paul enumerates in Galatians 5: 22-23. The machine should work well when the lights are all green. However, we need to check our spiritual engines when the dashboard lights are red with strife, anger, factions, envy and the like. In the car dashboard world, green is normally good, red is normally a problem. Fruits of the Spirit are good; Works of the Flesh are not. Galatians 5 helps us understand and measure how we are doing with this relationship stuff. The passage is an indicator of relationship.

 

If Galatians 5 is about how we are doing, 1^st Corinthians 12 helps us frame what it is we should be doing.

 

Paul’s specificity in Galatians is largely absent in the Corinthians. In Galatians Paul gives us the names of lights we can read as green or red. In Corinthians Paul resorts to an illustration of the church as a body and points to body parts as how the body should function. An ear listens but it does not see. His illustration is very good.  I augment the body illustration from Paul in terms of team, and as a baseball fan, I see it in terms of baseball. You need a variety of different skill types to play baseball, and a team made up of Yogi Berra’s, a Hall of Fame catcher and pontificator, might be a good one for providing pithy quotations, but it might have trouble pitching effectively. 

The church, like a team, like the human body, needs different skills, as given to us by the Spirit, to be put to labor on behalf of the Kingdom of God.

 

What are your God-given gifts? Sometimes we know what they are: I am good at numbers, and I am not particularly good at small engine repair. But I didn’t know I was good at numbers until I got dropped into a position in 1973 that called for me to be a numerical analyst. I struggled for a while but mentors and coaches helped me and turned that struggle into strength. What we now see as a gift was at one time not a gift. It was honed and developed by others, enhanced by my own willingness to be coached to success. I had to be a numbers disciple, a student, for a while. In reality, I am still a numbers disciple, constantly looking at web sites and articles about how to better display data so that it becomes information, but I digress.

 

I had to trust others to see that gift in me that I didn’t know that I possessed. 

In my learning and growing here, I didn’t become angry or exercise poor self-control. In fact, this endeavor became an object that lead to joy. When it comes to being a numerical analyst, my dashboard lights here were never red, always green.

 

Here are some thoughts:

• Gift Assessment Axiom: When you don’t think something is a gift, you might be mistaken. 
• The Converse to that Axiom: When you think something is a gift, you might be mistaken. 
• The Corollary to that Axiom: Listen to others about your gifts. Another might see your gifts more clearly than you. 

Look to the dashboard lights and crosscheck them against Galatians 5.  Green is good.  Red is not good.  Listen to your heart.  Listen to others.  Listen for God.  Remember that God sometimes speaks in a small, still, voice, except when small, still isn’t working. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Team and Hilltop

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.  —2 Corinthians 3.18

Being a member of a “team” has been part of the fabric of my life for a long time. I started my musical life when I was about twelve.  Most of that early time was spent in a band (or “wind ensemble”) driven by my age, grade or ability. Choirs became a part of my life in my early twenties and still are a part of my life. I started military training at eighteen, and before I was twenty-three was in the U.S. Army. We used to say in the Army “there is no I in team, there is no me in Army.” Who I am draws strength from a life as part of teams.

My sermon of April 21^st was about recognizing that there is an organic connection that invites everyone to be part of the fruitfulness of the vine. At its core, it was a sermon focused on unity of purpose and teamwork. Our purpose is to be fruitful in our faithfulness. 

The theme article on passages this month is at its core about teamwork. It uses material from Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth (reintroduced at the start of this article) where Paul is laying out for the church an opportunity to live out their ministry in a new covenantal relationship drawn from the gifts of the Spirit.  Paul says to choose life, Spirit, righteousness, and a permanency that is drawn from the Light of Christ.  That might sound like individual tasks, and to be sure, there is an element of individualism in how those are applied but Paul’s pronouns throughout the material surrounding the quoted passage are uniformly plural.

Paul is saying that being in relationship with Jesus leads to profound and deep transformation in community.

We are approaching a number of special and potentially transformational days. (You might wonder what would happen if we treated them as days about passage, as days about transformation, within a framework of team?) Might we look at these days of passage as a framework for transformation as a team? 

Mother’s Day is for many a remembrance of transformation from couple to family. That is transformative. For many, parenting moves them to a different understanding of the importance of community on the idea of nurture.

 

Pentecost this year will in part be about confirmation, where individuals will move from being an individual to being part of a larger community.  For many, that movement is transformative.  We fully intend to use the diversity of the community as a reminder that while we may be different, we do actually understand each other.

 

Memorial Day weekend will in part be about remembering where individuals gave up their lives for the larger community. For many, the sacrificial element of that movement is sacred, leading to transformation. For many, the depth of that sacrifice leads to a different understanding of community

  

Senior Recognition Day will in part be about celebrating a change in a key element of their individual stories. Our music and our proclamation will be about blessing the transition and simultaneously acknowledging that the quest for adventure may take some away from this community. The community supports that adventure, and will proclaim that we are praying for them and will welcome them back when their adventure is complete.  That element of the story may require a different understanding of community.

 

There will be other passage days this summer, fall and winter.  What might they say to you about transformation?

I am not the same person I was four hundred sermons ago.  I see the world differently.  I see that we are consistently being invited to see that all of us are, hopefully and prayerfully, “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”  It is more than a little scary.  It is also more than a little biblical.

 

To be clear, I am not advocating blind assimilation into an unthinking hive.  There is tremendous power in the varied intellects of Hilltop, intellects created in different places by different experiences that draw strength from diverse traditions.  We are richly blessed with high quality leaders.  I am advocating reflection on the idea of community.

Let this coming time of multiple passages invite you to go deeper into your faith and explore what it means to be part of this community, to be part of the oneness of Christ, to be part of the “true vine” that is Jesus Christ. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Leadership and Coffee Pots

At the church, we have about five of the 10 to 12 cup coffee pots. They are of varying ages and functionality.

One of the older pots is about 40 years old, and doesn't get real hot. We use it to make water so people can have tea or cocoa. It may be the hubris of coffee drinkers to believe that tea or cocoa drinkers don't really like it too hot, but frankly, no one has come up and said "this isn't hot enough for tea". Silence in this area is probably good ....

A couple more of the pots are from the early 80s or so, and while looking a little like the older one they each present their own challenges. One has a place for a cone filter, the other a basket one. Their pots aren't interchangeable either ...

These pots don't get used every week, and I am not exactly sure why ...

We also have two brand spanking new coffee pots. New here is a relative term, and in reality means less old than the other three or so. They look just spectacular, all shiny and modern. The funny thing is that while these two look a whole lot alike, they aren't in fact, anything alike. Different manufacturers. They are beyond their color and modern appearance, nothing like each other. I'll bet Eli Whitney had this kind of manufacturing problem in mind, when he invented the manufactured cotton gin (and the manufactured rifle, but that is a bad image for a pastor to use) where all the parts for the various gins could be disassembled and then reassembled into different machines. Or is my memory bad and he did this with guns only?

Here's the bottom line: If you put the wrong pot under the wrong basket, you get lots of coffee all over the place.

And, to make it even better, the first three pots are all ten cup pots, and these are twelve cup pots. They take just a little more grounds in order to ensure you have coffee and not tea. At least that is what the people who are looking for bold coffee call it when what they get is hot but tasteless -- they insult the product by calling it "tea". Is tasteless an absolute truth or is it relative?

Paul must have had this very situation when in his first letter to his miscreant church in Corinth. He commented to them that everybody gets to make a contribution in their own way, and it was important to be part of the organic whole.

It takes some effort to get the organic process for this production into good working order.

Isn't church leadership a lot like that?

Isn't it about putting the right elements of the pot together so that all the parts are working as a team?

Isn't it about being sure that the new, slick idea doesn't swamp out a perfectly good idea that has been working and producing for a while, and while it isn't as pretty or new anymore, it still works.

Isn't it about being sure that all are trained in such a way that they recognize the strengths and weaknesses of all those who wish to help build up God's kingdom ....

Oh ... did I mention that a lot of the volunteers don't actually drink coffee themselves, so are always at a loss as to how much coffee to actually put inside the filter ...

I would elaborate on that, but I think you get the drift ...

Peace ....