A More Compleat Tool Belt

If your only tool is a hammer, all problems are a nail

I am advocate for a good tool belt.  Good.  Not perfect. 

In the last decade I have become far more competent at household repairs than I was before that.  YouTube has been invaluable in this.  Where before I would enter a new task with trepidation combined with a lack of knowledge, I can now only deal with my own trepidation.  My knowledge is much higher. 

In effect, I am increasing the number of tools, and skills, associated with my tool belt. 

My tool belt is become closer to good.  It will never be perfect.  There will be times when what is needed to repair things in my home exceed my skills, my tools, and truth be known, my interest factor.  Some of these things I am just not interested in.  I am sure some of my pastor colleagues are just not interested in increasing their knowledge in numbers because their interest factor is so low. 

For now, I want to focus on the number of tools in our tool belt, and less about analysis of numbers as a wrench, screwdriver, or hammer. 

When I was introduced to the leadership at Hilltop United Methodist in 2012, one of the questions I was asked was focused on me as if I were the sole leader responsible for transformation.  I attempted to turn the conversation around to leadership as a cooperative, and communitarian, adventure.  One of the tools in my perceived tool belt is leadership development.  Jesus developed twelve and that development changed our world. 

In that same conversation, I was asked what I had learned in Colorado Springs that would work in Salt Lake.  My answer was while some solutions might transport, I expected issues at Hilltop were different than in Colorado Springs, and we needed to be adaptive in our leadership, rather than technical.  One of the tools in my perceived tool belt is adaptive leadership.  Jesus displays his adaptive ability on multiple occasions, often in his use of parables and storytelling as a way of teaching and leading. 

Clarity on purpose is another tool for that tool belt.  Our focus in the military focused on mission, and clarity from leadership as to what was important and what was less important in our missional focus.  One of the tools in my perceived tool belt is a laser focus on our purpose, our why, our mission.  Jesus missional focus was on Calvary and the Empty Tomb. 

The ability to absorb criticism is a critical tool.  It doesn’t mean that you don’t let criticism bother you.  All of us want to be liked and respected.  And you can get too far in front of those you are leading.  You must stay in contact with them, while, I believe, leading from the front.  I once asked a key leader why I was getting a particular task and he said “you don’t let other people bother you” and I replied, “Another person I have fooled.”  The truth of course is that like all of us, I want the respect and admiration of others, but there is a time for our skins to be a little thicker than it often is.  A United Methodist District Superintendent once told me my leadership task at my church was as pastor to lead my sheep to faithfulness.  Easy to say:  hard to accomplish.  A tool in my perceived tool belt is a thicker skin.  Notice I said skin, not a coat of armor.  Do I need to offer any specific Jesus example of a thicker skin at times? 

Other examples exist of tools and skills.  That is just four.  

I like the ancient English word:  compleat.  It suggests finality, and the reality is that I have discovered that in reality, the more I know, the more I know I don’t know.  So when I think back to this tool belt image, it isn’t a compleat tool belt, it is a more compleat tool belt.  Closer to finality, and perfection but still a mirror that gives me an incomplete view of the world around me.  Better but not perfect. 

My hope in my blogs is that elements of this completeness in creating and managing our leadership tool belt will emerge. 

A more compleat tool belt.  With more tools than a hammer. 

Selah, Dennis

Listening in order to Understand

Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

James 1:19-21, The Message.

I use a quote from Stephen Covey a lot:  “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

We all regularly encounter those who start sentences with something like “I don’t understand” but then complete what began as a quest for understanding with why what they don’t understand is clearly wrong, stupid, or something they strongly disagree with. 

This is basic human nature:  it is part of the human condition. 

My reaction when this happens is to think “you must think you understand enough about this to say you don’t like it.”  I hear the religious authorities of Jesus day saying to “I don’t understand this Jesus dude, and I don’t like him.” 

I confess I find this type of conversation jarring.  I operate in the faith that optimism, enthusiasm, and hope are contagious. 

May I invite all of us to lead with our ears and follow with our tongues? 

May I invite everyone to replace replace negativity with the "help me understand.” 

Bonhoeffer nails it (as he usually does):  "The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them."

He also writes:  "There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that .... is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person."  It almost sounds like the Covey  above!  Maybe I need to change who I am quoting from Covey to Bonhoeffer?  

Rise above basic human nature: listening is not part of the human condition.

In the 1951, John Huston movie “The African Queen” the character played by Humphrey Bogart laments that how he behaves is “only human nature” to which the Katherine Hepburn character answers:  “Nature … is what we are put in this world to rise above.” 

We are Easter people. 

Let us endeavor to spread the joy of the empty tomb in all that we do. 

John Wesley wrote: “I have often repented of judging too severely, but very seldom of being too merciful.”

It can be argued that judging too quickly is a form of judging too severely.

Perhaps in seeking understanding, we might reduce the need to request mercy later.

Selah, Dennis

Understanding our Nature

There is a story from Medieval times  ...

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung. The other monk asked him, "Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know it's nature is to sting?"

"Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

I see myself in this story as both the scorpion and the monk.

For about half of my life in the military, it was my called nature to be a scorpion.  Leaders used my nature to sting people who messed with the policy views my corner of the military was putting forward.

Let's make no mistake about my effectiveness:  I was a very good scorpion.  My scorpion nature was recognized on the day of my retirement with a Legion of Merit, the second highest level of recognition for non-wartime competency.  For sure, it doesn't say 'we are recognizing Dennis for being a scorpion' but that is what it was for, pure and simple.

But I confess, I did not like that nature of myself that was called to be a scorpion.  On July 1st, 1994, I decided I was being called, invited perhaps, to have a different nature. The road from that day to this has not been easy, but it has by and large, been fruitful.

I am still working on the exact details of what it means for me to "save" are but at the end of the day, the nature of who I am is more about nurture and care, than stinging and pain.  I am still a work in progress here.  

I would hope that we can agree that our nature is not static, fixed and locked up for life. Isn't change what we expect to happen when we take part in spreading scriptural holiness across the land? Wesley saw it as this beautiful threefold fullness of Grace which is Prevenient (preceding bending our knee to God), Justifying (saying to God, 'Abba, Father') and then getting started on our life project of Sanctification ('thy will be done')? 

Paul is dealing with the basic nature of the church in Corinth when he discusses with them the idea of the "body of Christ" in 1st Corinthians 12.  The debate is about gifts and how those gifts fit into lifting up the body for its true purpose.  The issue is how this body works in totality, not in its individual parts. Our nature is to see ourselves as the most important but Paul is trying to bring this group of individualist focused leaders over to a more communitarian, common good, approach.  

I love sports, and Paul's 1st Corinthians 12 passage works in terms of sports -- baseball in particular -- but it also works in terms of music.  The church is an orchestra and the woodwinds are not more important than the strings. Yes, we could have an entire orchestra of woodwinds, but if we did, we wouldn't ask the other sections to show up for that piece of music.  The church is like an orchestra but not only in terms of instruments themselves, but also in terms of the need to listen to each other and to perform together.

Music performed by groups that is about 97% right, can still sound pretty bad.  

Music has a high expectation for suppression of the individual for the nature of team and community.  A man with perfect pitch who couldn't count, once told me that I was not singing an A flat in the right sequence, and while he was right, he was singing the right A flat at the wrong time. The right note at the wrong time, is the wrong note.  

I bring all of that up, just to explain that my nature is to focus on the group, the community, and trying to stay in harmony and on pitch at that time.  

My nature is also to endeavor to try and honor the community rather than the individual.  

Offering a team oriented thought to Paul's imagery from 1st Corinthians 12, a former left fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Manny Ramirez, would do odd things during a game.  When asked why Manny was doing this, his manager, (now) Hall of Famer Joe Torre would say "it's just Manny being Manny."  

Paul is saying to the church in Corinth that 'Manny just being Manny' is not the way for us to be church.

If Paul were in the 21st Century, he would probably see by and large the nature of the US Congress in his dealing with nature in the church in Corinth.  I have heard Congress described as 535 Valedictorians who still think they are the smartest person in the room. 

To my way of hearing some of the current debate in the (almost) Untied Methodist Church, it is this "Manny being Manny" at one level (it's just who I am after all), meeting "I am the smartest person in the room."  And the meeting at times has collateral damage.  People -- logically I believe -- feel cutoff, estranged, and not welcome.  

Here is what I aspire for as it relates to  all focused on a constructive dialogue about a hopeful future i.e. #nextmethodism, #dreamumc, & #CurrentUnitedMethodism, is that we can alter the nature of our dialogue so that we can truly speak to each other.  I hope that we can speak to each other in such a way that opens space for dialogue, rather than closes it off.  Please know that my observation here is not restricted to "either side."  The nature of vitriol is not isolated to one side.  The other day, I took a generic invitation to be in dialogue on this topic to be totally sincere and welcoming; I replied; and felt welcomed.  Thank you.   

I personally have gotten to a place where I think retaliatory jousting with sharp spears is making all of us blind. At some point, the 'he started it' must give way to shared values within the social capital built up over time. The Common Good matters. Or at least it does to me.

We seem to be using the US Congress as the model for dialogue, rather than Paul/1st Corinthians 12. At some point, our using the US Congress as the model for how we are in dialogue needs to be rejected, discarded and called out for what it is: sinful. 

The UMC through all of these renewal efforts -- #nextmethodism, #dreamumc and remembering where we are #CurrentUnitedMethodism -- should model what we aspire to, not sink to increasingly lower and lower levels of snark and combativeness. 

As soon as somebody says 'but they started it, and besides that have you been reading how mean they are' dialogue leaves the room, and we move to monologue. In effect, they might be saying the right note here, without regard to time, is this offering [whatever it is], and I wonder if they understand the idea of the right note, at the wrong time, is still the wrong note? 

I am in. I want to be in this conversation. I was invited in by inference by Dr. David Watson, but I was also invited in by colleagues across the connection: "your voice needs to be present here." 

But I return to my confession at the start of this: 

I did not like that nature of myself that was called to be a scorpion. On July 1st, 1994, I decided I was being called, invited perhaps, to have a different nature. The road from that day to this has not been easy, but it has by and large, been fruitful. 

My purpose with this particular blog today is to frame the nature of how I hope we can converse, and what the nature will be that I will use in this conversation ... 

Peace be with you ... 

Selah, Dennis

What are our Assumptions?

Assumptions matter.  They matter a great deal.

 

There was a story I heard years ago about a physicist, a chemist, and an economist who were stranded on a desert island with no tools and a can of food. The physicist and the chemist each devised an ingenious mechanism for getting the can open; the economist merely said, "Assume a can opener"!

David Watson in a recent blog comes to this idea by a different route.  He notes when he was obtaining his PhD part of what he learned in intellectual argumentation included the art of deconstruction:  “The most common and effective route [to deconstruct an argument] is to attack the assumptions upon which an argument rests. Once you destabilize its foundational assumptions, the argument itself tends to fall apart.”

For years, I was taught the way to examine any critical issue was to be sure you knew what the issue was (a clear definition of the problem), what do we know with certainty (the facts) and what do we have to factor into the calculus for which we are less certain (the assumptions).  Almost every broken mathematical model I was exposed to broke down because of the assumptions.  They were generally flawed.

 

Here is an assumption – my first - I make about #nextmethodism:  it will have elements of the past joined in the present in anticipation of what God is going to do in the future.

 

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  We call it “the mystery of faith” for a reason.  But it is our faithful assumption.  And as we faithfully operate, those assumptions bear up under a rigorous deconstruction, as they have for two thousand years. 

The late Robert Webber addresses this in terms of worship – worship is bringing together into the now, a remembrance of what God has already done in the past, with an anticipation of what God will do in the future.  Scholarly articles may talk about this in terms of anamnesis (remembrance) and prolepsis (anticipation).  We ritually reenact this through Holy Communion – God has acted in the past, remember it, and God isn’t finished, be in a state of anticipation.  We then take the “mystery” and we use past tense, present tense, and future tense verbs to help us see the past and the future in terms of our now.  And Christ IS risen, is the central thematic statement upon which all of the variations in the symphony that is the church are developed.

 

Doing so faithfully, then calls us to a place where we examine ourselves against the plumb line that is God’s ancient word and are we then being faithful to God’s call, rather than culture’s call.

 

Allow me to offer a second assumption that I think need to be clearly stated:  we are supposed to be surrounded, and we are surrounded not by an enemy but rather by opportunity.

 

C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:  “Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”  Major Dick Winters in the HBO Mini-Series Band of Brothers understood this clearly when told that he and his unit are about to be surrounded at Bastogne in December, 1944.  “We’re paratroopers lieutenant, we’re supposed to be surrounded.”

 

My proposed assumption is that we recognize that we are supposed to be surrounded and we are supposed to be offering a counter cultural message.  Yes, both the Lewis and Winters illustration might lead one to believe I see those as outside of the church as “the enemy”.  I do not.  I frankly see them as an opportunity.

 

But here is the key:  Kent Ingram of Colorado Springs First writes of us often waxing nostalgically for the time church was culturally normative.  What if that maybe that time of heightened numbers and cultural acceptance was really and truthfully Egypt or Babylon.  How is this for a news flash:  Nostalgia is a Golden Calf.  So much of what we have attempted to do over the last decade (at least) has been driven by a flawed assumption that what once was, can be again.  I hear it as we need to get back to Egypt as fast as we can, life is hard out here in this wilderness.  Making bricks without straw wasn’t really that bad, was it?  I say yes, it really was, and if we decide to worship that Golden Calf, we will continue to decline.

 

If we can agree on that 'surrounded by opportunity' assumption, and it was an operative assumption for 18^th Century English Wesleyans, then we can effectively cast aside what the world, however that is defined, thinks of us as a cultural value.

 

Watson offers another very valid assumption:  “People are spiritually hungry, too. The problem is that they just don’t know it ….What they’re hungry for is Jesus.”  At some point, stuff doesn’t fill that ‘hole in our souls.’  It has been my experience in my seventeen years in ministry that Watson is right – people are spiritually hungry.  Wesley understood that.  Jesus understood that.  I pray we understand it in our communitarian futures.

 

Our past has given us keys for our future – scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.  And let us be crystal clear, scripture is framed in part by tradition or we would be reading The Gospel of Thomas in our lectionary readings. 

I love serving this United Methodist Church.  I do so in tension over the fact what is United may become Untied.  That tension is driven by an assumed can opener.  There seems to be an unstated assumed can opener that many operate from as it relates to looking at #nextmethodism and that is that we can continue to do the things in the world that we are doing.  I hope that assumption is accurate.

 

Several years ago, I got used to watching news broadcasts from Liberia where the Ebola crisis was in full ravage mode.  Rarely, if ever, did the announcer make the point that the interview was being conducted outside of a hospital with a large cross and flame on it.  I watched with pride:  I knew.  We didn’t put those hospitals there to brag about it, we rather put those hospitals there because that was where the greatest need and our Grace filled hearts had a collision.  We answered that call.  Some assume a #nextmethodism can still do that.  I hope they are right.  Just as I am not sure the economist can opener can open any cans, I am not so sure that once untied, we can continue to provide hospitals in Africa beyond where the road runs out.  Among other things, that isn't my only assumed can opener.  

 

I heard a quote in the last few years that keeps resonating with me:  “Too often we listen in order to respond rather than to truly understand.”  I want to assume that in #nextmethodism, we will endeavor to truly understand.

 

Peace ..

Selah, Dennis  

A Scarlet Letter

Jesus says in Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life” (ESV).

Paul writes in Philippians 4: 6 “do not be anxious about anything” (ESV). 

Our theme at Hilltop, where I serve the people of Sandy, Utah, in October, 2015 was “Let your faith be bigger than your fear.” Great idea and I promise not to advocate exiting a perfectly good aircraft without a parachute: with a parachute is an act of faith, without a parachute is an act of lunacy. Safety is important. I always fasten my car seat belts for even the shortest trip, well, almost always. But are we sometimes overly safety conscious? The late Rabbi Edwin Friedman offers we live “in a ‘seatbelt society’ more oriented toward safety than adventure.” I think he is on to something here. Let's hold that thought briefly and come back to it later. 

Many of the clergy I interact with have reached a place where one of the harshest direct criticisms we can level on another clergy is, “you are an anxious presence.” It has a mystical, red letter, scriptural authority. Immediate penance and repentance is expected when this is uttered, immediate. Hester Prynne, Hawthorne’s heroine in The Scarlet Letter, was required to wear a Scarlet A, for adulteress, on her dress. In my world the Scarlet A is for anxious, and we within the clergy world avoid that A as if it were a virus. A leader endowed with non-anxious presence boundaries repels anxiety as a virus. 

Here is the issue: who gets to define what anxiety is? 

Anxiety might actually be a reaction to another’s desire for urgency. Urgency is often required to bring about change. Some of that change could be altering the status quo. Anxiety might be our preference to hang on to that comforter that is the status quo.

Is it a good idea to let anyone and everyone be the true definer of what is anxiety? Friedman urges us not to give excess power to the most anxious presence in the room. I posit conversely should the one in the room with the largest stake in the status quo decide what anxiety is. If we don’t want to allow the most anxious presence to have the power, I don’t wish to empower one person to define what anxiety is. Dialogue is called for, and honest disagreement may emerge. But a dismissal with the remark, ‘you are just an anxious presence’ needs to be expunged from our leadership tool belt. 

Your anxiety may be my urgency. Your anxiety may be my raising the temperature in the room to bring about change. 

John Kotter is an expert in leading change. To paraphrase Kotter: ‘The first step in leading change is creating a sense of urgency.’ Urgency might mean we need to move from a too comfortable world. The poet Brian Andreas writes: “Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable; fall asleep ; miss your life.” Overcoming comfortable and missing our life’s call might require urgency. 

I believe the church may have reached a place where we need to listen to angels that endeavor to be sure we are not too comfortable and wake us up.

Jesus and Paul and Friedman urge us not to be anxious. What element of our leadership life have angels looked at and said “wake up, you are letting comfort dictate what is going on, following the call of Jesus may not be comfortable or safe.” 

There is an irony in my use of Hester Prynne: she is arguably the person of most character in The Scarlet Letter. Her Adulteress A is gradually transformed to an item of beauty, embroidered as a reflection of her inner character. What if allowing others to brand us with an Anxious A is actually a mark of our own transformation, an item of beauty?

Returning to Friedman: What might it take for us to leave the 'seatbelt society' and instead seek a holy adventure in some presumed unsafe wilderness? (Exodus meets contemporary safety standards.)  

To be clear, Jesus says to not be anxious. Paul says to not be anxious. It is scriptural to not be anxious. As we jointly tackle an uncertain future, let’s understand that the issue here is urgency and moving from the status quo, and not allow anxiety to define us.

But we need clarity within community as to why and what defines us as anxious. For Hester, her Adulteress A became a scarlet letter of distinction and honor. Maybe if others label you with a Scarlet Anxious A, but you are, in holy humility, confident that you are a Jesus-like and Paul-like non-anxious presence, let it be a scarlet letter of honor. Urgency and raising the temperature in the room so that the status quo is chased does not immediately equal anxiety. 

If the issue is urgency and changing the status quo, I believe we can wear that scarlet letter with honor. 

Selah, Dennis

David ... A Man for our Time?

This is week number two of a series focused on David: A Man for our Time. I had really thought that the sermon would be, given the Independence Day theme, about David as Priest over King. It seemed like a good passage to remind each of us that church and state are not truly equal, separate, yes, but not equal. The passage selected is from 2 Samuel 6 and it is where David dances at the entrance of the Ark into Jerusalem.

Instead, I feel called to talk about why Michal, his wife, has become estranged from David.

By all appearances, he seems to want her for what she can bring to him in the way of power. Gradually, as the story unfolds in 1st and 2nd Samuel, she grows less enamored with David and here, finally, as he dances into Jerusalem in front of the Ark, genitals showing to all who want to see, even 'slave girls', he has crossed some kind of emotional Rubicon for Michal and she says enough.

David seems to have brought this on himself. He treats her abominably over time, seemingly wanting her for what she brings to him in the way of power and prestige, and she keeps giving him slack, and finally, enough.

On a day where our hearts and minds will be looking for the pastor to speak in some kind of illuminating way about freedom (Fourth of July weekend), the words seem to be pointing this pastor towards a reflection on how we can lose our way towards political leadership by treating others shabbily on that journey to kingship.

Peace ...