Don't Make Me a Target

There's a small part of me--a small, petty, resentful, peccatory part of me--that thinks the worst possible thing you can do to a person is to hire him or her onto the staff of a church.

I don't have that thought at all times; far from it, actually. In my more idealistic moments I think it's probably a privilege to serve a faith community in such a formal capacity. But there are days when I observe the challenges that church staff endure, and I wonder what they did wrong in a previous life. And I don't even believe in that sort of thing.

I used to attend a church whose pastor spoke very openly about his view that, if you want something done, you should ask a busy person. That pastor oversaw a congregation full of very busy people, for which he was largely responsible. Burnout ensued on a grand scale--the kind of burnout people seek therapy for, the kind of burnout people oust pastors over. I left that church suspicious of such a rather rosily presented paradigm.

Since then I've wondered, in my smaller moments, whether that pastor's strategy was simply pre-emptive self-protection. I've occasionally encountered the opposite extreme: if you want something done, you should ask a pastor, or a youth director, or a church secretary, or anyone with an in-box at your place of worship. No church activity, under this model, should take place without the watchful oversight of church personnel; no event should pass, no prayer should be uttered, without the explicit "Amen" of a person of the cloth. The result, I suspect, is similar: burnout on a grand scale. And so I'm suspicious of such a superficially devout paradigm.

One thing I notice about both poles of this continuum is the hidden clause of the contention: "If you want something done (and you don't want to do it yourself) ask . . ."

Now, I'm sure churches aren't the sole domain of this sanctified sneakiness. There's a sense, in fact, in which it's a basic principle of leadership:

(1) Identify what you want.
(2) Identify what you're not willing to do about it.
(3) Delegate.
(4) Repeat 1-3.

It may even be elemental to the human condition. But there's something small, petty, peccatory in such a model when laid out so starkly.

There's a power dynamic in play: to delegate is the privilege of the enfranchised, not the disenfranchised. The weak serve the strong; the strong target the weak. That's social Darwinism in a nutshell. Churches are not immune to such power dynamics, and for that reason at least churches--from the staff to the laity, from the elder to the newer--are called to an ethic of service, something like

(1) Identify what is needed.
(2) Identify what you're capable of doing about it.
(3) Do it.
(4) Repeat 1-3.

In my more idealistic moments I might call that leadership, but I'll be honest: it's midnight and I'm in a bad mood.

I've also recently been gently chastened about leadership being a virtue to which far too many people aspire. By the simple rules of capitalism, tyranny and other such elemental forces, it's clear that most people cannot lead; most people must follow. By the simple example of Jesus, however, it's clear that all people--even the Lord of heaven and earth--can serve. And so, in those moments when I am feeling particularly paradoxical--simultaneously snarky and saintly--I pray, "My kingdom for a kingdom of servants!"

I'm going to need a good night's sleep to figure out what that even means.

The Church Is A . . .

My wife has just joined the staff of our church, which means she now occasionally needs to use the church's tax-exemption number. Like today, for example, when she had to buy some supplies for the office. No big deal; the cashier simply enters the number, assigns the appropriate category and completes the transaction.

The question, however, of which category the purchase falls under is not so clear. Is the church a government agency, or is it a charity?

It struck me as a pretty simple question, actually, but it completely stymied our cashier, which I suspect offers a clue into the church's reputation in the broader culture. "It should be government, right? Because the church is a government agency."

"No, it should be charity, because the church is a charitable organization."

Any self-respecting churchgoing evangelical, such as myself, knows down to the bones that the church is most definitely not a government agency. The government, in fact, is out to get us--stripping away our God-given right to tax-free purchases and scheduling our children's park-district sporting events during our times of worship--all of which complicate our divine mandate to do charitable things like get together and eat donuts while we complain about taxes.

An outsider to the church, on the other hand--who has not been blessed with a parochial education that explains how the government has persecuted the American church and how the church has persevered in its charitable work of televangelism and lock-ins--might be inclined to perceive the church as a government agency, since every time a representative of the church is on TV he or she is telling people what to do and how to do it.

I should mention at this point that the cashier was a lovely young girl, showing no animosity whatsoever toward my wife for daring to work for such an oppressive organization as a church. No, I think she'd just never encountered the question of what a church is, and went with her gut.

I've started reading the book Unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, which reports on a broad survey of non-Christians ages 16 to 29. I'm not too far into it, but what I've read thus far suggests that people see the church doing much more governing than charity work. I'm not sure what to do with that information--maybe it comes through in later chapters--but generating more press releases trumpeting the charity work our church is doing doesn't smell like the answer. It smells like something, that's for sure, but it doesn't smell like the answer.

Any thoughts? Read the book; so far it's interesting, and I suspect I'll post more about it before I'm done . . .

Dave Does Impressions

I suppose it’s laudable that a church would have a “director of first impressions”; it suggests that the church recognizes and bravely undertakes the uphill climb it faces as it pursues a redemptive relationship with an increasingly dubious culture. It strikes me as unusual, however, that this same director of first impressions would wait to respond to an e-mail until two weeks after it was sent.

In defense of the director, I will aver that that a church big enough to have a director of first impressions probably has to categorize a lot of e-mails week in and week out, and in one sense my e-mail was likely difficult to categorize. Not impossible to categorize, however, in that two weeks after the fact the director of first impressions rightly concluded that my e-mail should be forwarded to the office of the person I was requesting a meeting with in the first place. Something tells me not to hold my breath waiting for that meeting; I suspect this new office has more than one layer of bureaucracy for my e-mail to penetrate.

I can’t wait to hear from the director of second impressions.

My wife and I are just back from vacation. In Las Vegas. I learned a bit about myself in the weeks leading up to our trip; we began to realize that we couldn't mention where we were headed without immediately offering some sort of caveat: "It was a special offer" or "We don't know what we'll do there, since we don't gamble." It became a spiritual discipline for us to simply say, when asked where we were going, "Vegas."

I came back from Vegas to a churchful of inquiries--"What did you do?" "How much did you lose?" From there I went back to work, where my evangelical colleagues asked me similar questions, complete with awkward hesitation, stern, disapproving looks and nudge-nudge-wink-wink presumptiveness. So I'm now inclined, rather than to immediately respond to such questions, to ask people what they think I did in Vegas. It'll be interesting to hear what people think of me.

So I'll start with you, gentle reader: What do you think I did in Vegas?

Drama-rama

In case you're in the Chicago area and are looking for something to do around Eastertime, consider coming to one of the performances of Living Waters, my church's Easter play. We're a little neighborhood church in Lombard, on Madison Road just east of Westmore/Meyers (becomes Fairview in Downers Grove). See a map here.

Show Times
April 5 (tonight) at 7:30
April 6 (Friday) at 3:00 or 7:30
April 13 (next Friday) at 7:30
April 14 (next Saturday) at 7:30

Childcare is available. No tickets needed. Watch the trailer (featuring my wife!) here.

Hope you can join us! I sing a solo--so low you can't hear me.