Over the years I have worked with teenagers and now live with one, and almost without exception ask them what they want to do, want to eat etc they look at you with that infamous blank face and shrug. It is my all time frustration when I ask friends what they want to do and they defer to my choice. I hate choosing!!! I want people to make decisions.
Over these past 12 months or so where we have lived with restrictions and route maps out of lockdown 1, 2, 312(!), there has been comfort and frustration so maybe there is just no pleasing me. We want to be told what to do and at the same time we don’t. My reading since last week’s talk has been How to lead when you don’t know where you are going by Rev Susan Beaumont. I am only 2 chapters in but it is a good read so far. Yet I finishing chapter 2 I find myself struggling, and to be fair the author is honest that what she is offering is a tension for any leader. How do we step back from goal setting, striving for whatever markers of success we carry, relying on our knowledge and experience? How do we embrace wonder, listening, actively laying down our knowledge and experience in order to hear, see, ponder anew?
In the Church of Scotland as the General Assembly approaches rumours abound. And at the heart of these rumours are cuts, closures, and closed power circles. Rumours are never to be trusted but the pressures on the institution of the church cannot be ignored. And this for me is where the tension arises because in order to be missional we need to invest in it. And I don’t necessarily mean money although obviously that would help! To be missional, our author and many like her would say that we need to stop doing stuff (striving) in order to start doing the right stuff (attending). And the right stuff (yet to be defined) is not necessarily quantifiable. How do you quantify relationships? How do you measure seeds planted or know whether they have landed in good soil or not?
We are in the midst of planning for the future and face the challenge of keeping the ‘right buildings in the right place’ and determining the ministry allocation. You can bet your bottom dollar that we use statistics because they never lie! Okay being flippant! It is our natural instinct to measure and quantify, and if we don’t do something ASAP we will cease to exist. Of course we want to work together but put a bunch of us in a Zoom and ask what we want to do and there are blank faces, including mine. Actually that’s not true. I have lots of ideas for the place I recently left because I know the place. My new place is more of a blank because I am still listening and wondering. However, what is apparent in all my years in the church is that we have forgotten to nurture our ‘defining’ feature - that we are all in this together. I grew up with more sense of togetherness across denominations than I see within the Church of Scotland. The pros and cons of parish ministry, which is meant to be territorial in the sense that everyone has access to a minister, but then we put in so many boundaries!
I do love how we support each other through our ‘ministry and mission fund’ but somewhere we lost the art of being missional together. And so when we are put together we look with a blank face and hope someone else knows what do to. Or we batten down the hatches and protect what is ours.
There are plenty people at the centre of the institution looking out to the edges wondering how on earth to hold it all together. I don’t envy them. We want them to tell us what to do and yet we don’t. They are limited because when you live in the centre you can only see the fringes from a distance. Those of us living on the periphery of the institution really need to embrace the reality and truly push for what we want missional church to be. We need to model it. Build the relationships again which might mean ‘...accepting the past for what it was, embracing the present reality, yielding to the mystery of the future and the mystery of God in the future.’ (p.43 - How to lead when you don’t know where you are going).
Once you get a bunch of teenagers engaged by giving them some level of ownership, respect (good food works) and time, you will get more than blank faces. In fact often the wonder of teenagers is how passionate they are, full of energy and vision. How do we get folks in the church engaged again? Trust me, form filling and bitter pills will not do it. If we start from a place of fear we will never truly be open to what might be, can be and is already within our grasp through God himself.
We like to quote the Jeremiah verse ‘For I know the plans I have for you....’ but do we, do I truly ever stop striving long enough, trying to look like I know what I am doing, to actually find out what God’s plan is? And then when we do realise his plan can we embrace it even if it means death and resurrection?
Thanks for pondering with me - no answers here, just hope that there is more...
God bless you
Love Sarah
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