My Take On Congregational Development: What I Said To The Diocese Of Idaho Convention

It is a sweeter thing for me to be here with you
than most of you would imagine.
I may appear to be an alien visitor
from that surrealistic din of iniquity, Las Vegas.
And so today I am -- but I was not always the prelate of depravity,
the bishop of Sin City.

In the late 70’s, I was a young lawyer who found his way to Boise.
It was around the time when Carol King was moving to Idaho City
and the Braun Brothers were first singing Yankee Fork and Mass. Woman.
In those days, I was a lapsed Buddhist who didn’t believe in much of anything.
I had just wrapped a mantle of cynical despair around my heart
as a way to get through life.

But several things happened to break my dark philosophy.
One of the spiritual catalysts was a case I was defending.
It was a contract murder in small city in Western Idaho.
The state’s version of the facts included about half the town
in a dark conspiracy.
My version of the case suspected the other half of the town
in an even darker conspiracy.
I sometimes wondered if we were both right.
The pervasiveness of cruelty and corruption
exceeded anything my cynicism had suspected.
Under the weight of that discovery, I needed something.
I didn’t know what it was but I knew I didn’t have it.
Today, I would say my life had entered into a grim chapter.
What I needed was a story big enough to contain such a chapter
and still be, on the whole, beautiful.
I was to find that story in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I found it at St. Michael’s Cathedral, corner of State and 8th street, Boise.
It wasn’t a quick or easy conversion.
I didn’t believe what I was hearing and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
But I gave it a chance.

I received the sacrament with not so much belief
as a willingness to doubt my disbelief, to entertain a possibility.
Much that I heard rankled me.
But each day, I said the Prayer Book devotions.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
for by his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope . . . .”
Like a scalpel, the words cut my mantle and I bled and I bled until I believed.

Jim Dwyer was the Dean in those days.
Herb Runner was the resident good hearted sage.
Allen Dingell was the chancellor.
Judge Bail taught adult Sunday School.
Tudor Cushman instructed our children.
Each summer we sang campfire songs with the Zimlikas, the Manns, and others
at Paradise Point.
.
The Episcopal Church in Idaho saved my life.
I was born here – through an at risk spiritual pregnancy,
and an arduous labor.
So it is good for me to be in Pocatello with you.
Thank you for inviting me to come home this weekend.
Thank you for inviting me 30 years ago to come home to Christ.

It has been 21 years since I was ordained in this diocese.
So perhaps I have come of age.
Perhaps I can offer some small lessons about Congregational Development.
The first is: when you think about Congregational Development,
remember my story.
I don’t know who I would have become if you had not been here for me.
But you were here.
You were here because people loved the Church and served her.
They did not just love seeing the same faces every Sunday.
They loved the openness of the church doors.
They loved the porch light burning for lost souls.
They loved the witness for justice and the heart for mercy.
When I couldn’t see God, I saw them.
Congregational Development is a fancy term for loving the church.
We love her for the sake of the people who are here
and the people who need to be, but don’t know it.

The second thing I offer is more of a strategy for vitality.
Nevada elected me as bishop because
I had been priest to a little church in Georgia
that had about declined to the point of failure;
but during my time there, they doubled in size, tripled in budget,
and quadrupled in mission.
I didn’t make that happen, but I watched it up close
and I can tell you the key.


So let me tell you what I learned in Georgia.
There is a sociological axiom about churches.
You’ve all heard it.
20% of the people do 80% of the work.

In our passion for Baptismal Ministry we sometimes try to tinker with that.
We think we need 100% participation in everything.
For awhile I forgot the 20%/80% rule.
We have a congregation of 10 people
in a small mining town in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada.
I had all sorts of plans and programs to pump life into the place.
First they all had to take a basic discipleship class.
Then we were going to discern all their gifts and talents.

Well, it didn’t happen.
They stayed stuck, and I got frustrated.
Then I counted the number of people in the congregation
who had rolled up their sleeves to do the work of the church.
Can you guess? It was 2. They were doing just fine.
That’s when I remembered what I had learned in my little Georgia parish.

Once the 20% / 80% balance is struck, it is impossible
to add people to the outer edges of the congregation.
In the mystical physics of the church,
we cannot extend the circumference too far beyond the central core.
The foundation will not bear it.
So the 20%/ 80% rule constrains us.

But we can make it work for us.
This is precisely how we halted the decline of the church in Georgia
and set it on a course toward vitality and growth.
Instead of doing all the work themselves,
the inner core can gradually draw someone else into it.

We have to be intentional and strategic to pull this off.
People in the 80% will not volunteer. They have to be invited,
yea coaxed and lured, into the center.
There are two important things to remember
as you invite people to the inner circle.



First, you cannot draw in people who are on the outer edge
– not the Christmas and Easter people.
Find the folks nearest to the core and bring them in just a little closer.

The second point is tricky and paradoxical.
The people we want to recruit into the center
will feel welcome there only
if you can discover the actual need for their help.
But you have to invite them to do the things that give them joy,
not the jobs you are trying to get out of.
We need people doing the ministries that feel authentic for them.
If we drive them like square pegs into round holes,
both the church and member get hurt.
So first figure out what they enjoy doing or would enjoy doing;
then figure out why your congregation needs it.

When David Birney was here interviewing for the Bishop job,
Becky Dwyer picked him up at the airport.
He asked her, “What can I do for the Diocese of Idaho.”
Becky replied, “I’m sure anything would be appreciated.”
That’s a good attitude to have toward whatever someone offers.
So we entice, we cajole, we beg to get another person or two
to join the faithful 20%.
What happens next is not rational in a cause and effect way.
You may call it miracle or even magic.
I call it the mystical physics of the church.
If we can grow the core of the congregation, if in my church with 10 people
– 2 of whom do all the work
– if we could bring a 3rd person into the core
-- the circumference will expand to preserve the 20% / 80% balance.
New members will come. I don’t know how or where from.
But they will come.
If we can draw a 3rd person into the core of our 10 person congregation,
it will become a 15 person congregation.

If you have 20 people doing the work in a 100 person congregation,
add 2 to the core, it will become a 110 person congregation.
I can’t explain it; but God as my witness, I have seen it.
And once it starts, it tends to snowball.

Now to do this effectively, we have to get our heads straight
about the 80% of the congregation who don’t do much in the church.
They are not spiritual slackers.
Most of them have authentic Christian ministries in daily life and work.
If we guilt and pressure them into doing too much church work,
we pull them away from their Godly calling
and do them more harm than good.
So draw the folks who are already near the core just a few steps closer.
Let the people in the outer circles orbit as God calls them.

Now two more vitally important footnotes:
First, if a church wants to thrive, not just survive,
it has to be engaged in its community.
The town has to know you are there
and that you are serving them.

So adopt a highway, be tutors in a public school,
host the meals on wheels program.
Do something visible for your town
and sign the church’s name to it.
It is not enough that individual church members are good citizens.
The congregation needs to be a good citizen in its own name.

Second, when you think of people outside the church walls,
don’t look at them as sheep to be fleeced.
Don’t see a Sunday School teacher, a building and grounds chair,
or a pledge unit.
See a person who needs Jesus and be Jesus for that person.

If you love the Church – and I know you do –
then you will tend and nurture her.
These a few pointers on how to do that well.

Thank you again. I am blessed to be with you.

Saturday Morning

Driving out from sky black Reno
White mountain ringed.
Down down to Carson Valley
Sun inchoate, unrisen.
Dawn light gentle
On Washoe Lake, tan fields, horse flanks.
Winding up up through Jeffrey snow pines
To Alpine Tahoe blue.
Newborn sun trumpets,
"Day! Day! Day!"

The Right To Exist

“Ever since the “Holy Land” was invented as a pilgrimage-center by the
Empress Helena in the fourth century, it had been the scene of acrimony
and violence among the rival religious groups. . . . Throughout four centuries
(15th- 19th) it had been the task of the Ottoman sultans to impose, for the
sake of civil order, a culture of mutual tolerance . . . . Where religious difference
was in question there really was only one political option: live and let live. Muslims
and Jews were nearly always able to accept this in relation to one another
and to the Christians. The followers of Christ, however, while finding
it possible to live at peace with . . . monotheists of the Islamic or Jewish
persuasion, could not always resist outbursts of violence against their
co-religionists (fellow Christians) . . . .” A.N. Wilson, The Victorians

For a long time, it seems, Christians have been more tolerant of other people of other faiths than we are of each other. Strange, how proximity breeds intolerance. I suspect it is that the closer people are to us, the more they make us nervous about our right to be here.

Today, a sticking point in the search for peace in the Holy Land is “the right to exist.” Israel insists on one key point before making major agreements with its neighbors – that the neighbors acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Palestinians want to be recognized as a state with the right to defend its borders and preserve its sovereignty, which is essentially the same thing. The situation is admittedly complex. Both God and the devil are in the details. But the threshold question they cannot seem to get past is simple: acknowledging each other’s right to be present.

To deny someone the right to exist is the primal attack. In Madeleine L ‘Engle’s sci-fi book, A Wind In The Door, the galaxy is threatened by death-eater-like beings called Echtroi who go about x-ing or un-naming things, denying their existence. L’Enlge insists on the innate value of each of us and on our right to be here. She challenges us not only to acknowledge that each other belong on this earth but to actively defend each other’s right to exist.

One may well wonder: why is this an issue? Why do we deny each other’s right to exist? Why is there genocide? Why is there war? Why are the different oppressed? Why are English speakers so distressed by the sound of Spanish?

If we are secure in our own place, confident that we belong on this earth, we can allow others to be here too. We can even enjoy the wild diversity of creation. We can delight that God is a unity who proliferates into diversity and that the diversity of creation is rooted in one existential ground, God. But if our self-worth, our sense of belonging, is fragile, then the presence of someone a bit different from us becomes a threat. We need to be the only ones here; or if we cannot be the only ones, then the others must be entirely like us. By being like us, they reassure us that we are the right way to be.

One way to avoid feeling threatened by people who are different is to avoid them. In his book, The Big Sort: Why The Clustering Of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, Bill Bishop demonstrates that our nation is dividing up into smaller and smaller conclaves of people who look, think, and live more and more alike. Our gated communities are populated by racially, economically, socially, and politically similar people. The new social ghettos are far less porous than the ethnic neighborhoods of old, perhaps because they so intentionally formed out of fear of encountering someone different.

We invest a lot of energy and money so that we can at least pretend each other do not exist – to make for ourselves a seemingly safer but smaller and less interesting world. A political consequence of this fragmenting of society is the polarizing of our politics. Each congressional district has a cohesive ideology and elects people to represent that ideology. A think tank that rates congressional representatives as liberals, conservatives, or moderates notes that the number of moderates has steadily declined until the current congress, which for the first time in their studies, does not contain a single moderate. The moderates are the folks who broker the deals and work things out of gridlock. Without the moderates to negotiate the compromises, each side seeks to make the government work by subjugating the other.

The Episcopal Church, in keeping with the Anglican tradition of moderation, the via media, tolerance, and our identity as a “bridge church” has traditionally resisted such polarization. We have been a people who worship and serve together out of personal affection and a common form of prayer – not theological or ideological agreement. How has that played out in Nevada?

I am continuing my pastoral questioning of the divisions in our Diocese that keep us from flourishing in God’s mission. I am also continuing to look for whatever bonds of affection might run counter to those divisions. The first thing I sense here is a quiet respect for each other’s right to exist, a willingness to sit at the same table. It isn’t a bold statement of conviction. It’s more of a tacit assumption which is probably better. Even this tacit acknowledgement runs counter to secular culture. The divisions in Nevada are not merely North and South. There are divisions of East and West, urban and rural, mining and ranching. The groups so divided resent each other’s presence most grievously. So it is a spiritual accomplishment to be a diocese of people, parishes, and missions that accept each other’s place at the table.

But there is a residue of resentment, a suspicion that others do not respect us, a prickly defense against those who might do harm. That confused me at first since I have so rarely experienced any group here actually hostile to any other. But the sense that someone does not want us here is not pure fantasy. There is real history to our nervousness about each other.

There have been times in the past when people in larger churches said that the smaller churches should be closed – which naturally lead to people in smaller churches saying that larger churches should be closed or rather broken up into small churches. There really were people proposing to close Camp Galilee. Others suggested that saving Galilee could be best achieved by preventing or stopping ministries in cities. Seminary trained priests thought the locally trained should not be ordained; the locally trained thought the seminary trained should not be called. Parishes have divided internally over whether to engage in spiritual renewal of the congregation or commit to mission serving those outside the church – as if either project could succeed without the other. We also participated in “the controversies” as they say – meaning national disputes over the roles of women and LGBT persons in the church. Both sides of “the controversies” eventually tried to exterminate, excommunicate, or deport each other – though those issues have not divided Nevada to the extent that they did elsewhere -- perhaps we had too many other kinds of differences to identify with.

Two things here strike me as noteworthy: First, we stopped x-ing each other years ago. Second, we still feel at risk of being x-ed by our fellow Nevada Episcopalians. For example, I have found only one seminary trained priest and one locally trained priest who actually speak ill of those who were trained differently. But it is not that unusual for me to find clergy who suspect that they are secretly disrespected by clergy of the other species. I never hear people from one area speak ill of the churches in another region, except that they suspect that the people elsewhere think ill of them. It is as if the bullets have been removed from the flesh, but the wounds have not yet healed.

Where then do we go from here? I am sure of only one thing. It is good to trust in God’s grace. It is good to know that we belong here, that God has claimed us as beloved children, that God has named us (Isaiah 49: 1), sealed us with the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked us as Christ’s own forever. We don’t have to x each other to claim a space. God has given us our space, our right to exist. We know that, we feel it, and we believe it. That is why we have stopped x-ing one another. But what about the wounds that are not yet healed? I do not know the answer to that.

At John 5: 1-17, we read about a man who had been ill for 38 years lying near a healing fountain. Jesus, with his insight, did not assume the obvious. He asked. He said, “Do you want to be healed?” (v. 6) The man’s answer was equivocal. Do we want to be healed? We may have grown accustomed to the wounds. We may have identified with them. We may not be ready to part with them just yet. We are not x-ing each other. We trust in God’s grace. That much is good. Do we want to be healed? What would happen if we were? Who would we be if we were? How might that healing take place?