What Makes a House a Home?

Joshua 24:15b ...but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What makes a house a home?

For those of us that are parents, it’s an important question – but actually, don’t we all want a home? I suspect that all human beings on the planet desire a safe place to go from and come back to.

In the last year, I have been on a personal quest to make my new house a place for my newly extended family and friends to call home. For some reason it feels so important – even though our five young adult children and their significant friends do not live with us day in and day out. It’s like a mental thing that brings comfort and confidence in the craziness of life.

The center of our shared life.

If I practice what I preach, then I also know that my kitchen table is our family altar and the conversations that take place in our home are our liturgies for working out a life of faith. Sometimes it doesn’t sound all that “God-like” when we are telling jokes, talking about political issues or having tense conversations, but maybe that's because I have the “God thing” wound a little too tight.

Why is it that we usually think that all “God talk” is moral, feel-good and nice? Aren’t we reading the Bible through rose colored glasses? Even this text (above) from Joshua is essentially a grandpa (and war hero) telling the family not to forget God with a capital “G” because he knows the truth about the way they are living their daily lives.

Our home is THE place of truth. People there know the good and the bad of our life.

My best thinking is that what makes a house a home has more to do with the air we breathe inside than the furniture, food, or paint color. I think a home is the place where we know the truth and embrace that honestly. So...
• When things are good, we pray, give thanks, and celebrate together.
• When our niece dies of leukemia we pray, get angry, and cry together - a lot.
• When someone does something stupid, we pray, hold them accountable – and forgive each other.
• When someone is sick, even emotionally or mentally sick, we pray and we risk getting help because we can’t do it alone.

When we disagree, we pray and respectfully argue our point—and move on.

You get the point.

You might be wondering what makes this uniquely Christian. I think that has more to do with who you call family and invite into your home. It has something to do with practicing accountability and forgiveness. Mostly it means loving each other, knowing the truth, and setting people free to go and come as they need to over the years.

Peggy Contos Hahn, AiM
Assistant to the Bishop, Youth & Family Ministry

Hidebound Traditions are Missing the Mission

The following article first appeared on the March 24th issue of the Religion News Service. I found it on the blog for the South Carolina Synod. It is posted here with permission of the author, Tom Ehrich.

I found the article to be challenging - and for me, challenging articles/comments/etc. often have a strong foundation of truth.

So, what do you think?

+ Peace +

Rob

Pastor Rob Moore
Assistant to the Bishop/Mission Director
TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod, ELCA

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Hidebound traditions are missing the mission
Tom Ehrich, Winston Salem Journal

Why, asks a reader, have new community churches had "such tremendous growth," while older denominational congregations show "declining church attendance?"

Some want the answer to be better doctrine, conservative ethics and politics, and a fundamentalist biblical theology. Nonsense. This isn't a partisan victory dance. Our democracy depends on religious vitality to encourage self-sacrifice, religious diversity to undergird tolerance, and sound ethics to guide our economy. Otherwise, we will self-destruct in bullying and greed. When large segments of the Christian movement sag and sputter, the entire society suffers. God will go on. No, we are the losers when decay strikes religion.

Systems, not people, are focus

So, if growth and decline aren't a consequence of right-opinion vs. wrong-opinion, then what is going on? Here's my take on it:

First, it's about systems, not people. The decline in mainline Protestant churches that began in the mid-1960s wasn't caused by bad people, lazy clergy, women in ministry or gay bishops. Denominations simply weren't an asset. Denominational labels provided brand identification during the yeasty period after World War II, when millions of Americans migrated to cities and suburbs and looked for familiar institutions. Soon, denominations became overhead. Their inherited traditions spawned turf wars, stifled creativity and responded slowly - if at all - to cultural conditions.

Second, the quest for permanence is counterproductive. The longer a congregation exists, the more it implodes into bickering over preference, resistance to change and generational conflict.

In a fast-moving world, a slow-moving church has little to offer. It cannot see people's emerging needs, because it filters reality through old lenses. Leaders don't feel free to act, so tentative new constituencies drift away. Bureaucracy denies congregations nimbleness.

Third, longtime congregations are paralyzed by their own infrastructure. Buildings mattered in the stability-seeking years after world wars. Now, Gothic piles have become the point, and maintenance costs stifle mission and ministry. Worse, buildings distort our identity. Our Web sites show bricks and mortar, not people; they offer guided tours of rooms and grandeur, not calls to mission and knowing God. People seek wholeness and faith; they don't want to pay for deferred maintenance. Fourth, like any hierarchical institution, we became obsessed with who gets to run things. Instead of dealing creatively with systemic issues of gender, race and sexuality, we squandered good will in fighting over who got ordained. Diversifying seminary enrollment has proven to be a meaningless response to injustice and deprivation in the world. The promise of expanding roles for laity got sidetracked into bickering over Sunday duties.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. Churches are human institutions, and we can change our ways. Denominations don't have to be overhead. Permanence doesn't have to be our god. Buildings don't have to control us. Ordination doesn't have to be our battle.

The bad news is that changing our ways means changing our ways. Institutions with long histories of resisting change aren't likely to choose life now. They might have to die first. Just as the Gospel says.

About the author: Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and Episcopal priest who lives in Durham, NC. His e-mail meditations and essays are available at http://www.onajourney.org/. You are also invited to receive the Church Wellness Project’s free weekly newsletter by writing Tom at tom@churchwellness.com. For more information, got to www.churchwellness.com.

Not Churches But Disciples

Sometimes I think I need to stop reading books. I keep changing my mind about stuff – or at least expanding my world view. And that’s not always easy! I have a passion for growing the church – for multiplying our churches. It seems like such a natural thing that I sometimes can’t understand why we don’t have an explosion of new starts. But maybe I’ve been looking to multiply the wrong thing (or at least at the wrong level).

In Neal Cole’s book Organic Church, he writes about multiplying – but NOT multiply churches (at least not exactly). This is what he writes:

The growth of the Kingdom of God must start at the smallest of levels. Jesus is instructing us that the Kingdom of God must start small and grow via multiplication to have great and expansive influence.

There is much discussion these days about church multiplication. This is my passion and life. But no matter how committed we are, we will never see church multiplication if it is all we speak of. Trying to multiple churches is starting at the wrong place. A church is a complex entity with multiple cells. We must go further down microscopically, to the smallest unit of Kingdom life if we want to start the multiplication process.

If we cannot multiple churches, we will never see a movement. If we cannot multiply leaders we will never multiply churches. The way to see a true church multiplication movement is to multiple healthy disciples, then leaders, then churches, and finally movements – in that order.

As passionate as I am about church planting, I found it perplexing that the Bible never instructs us to start churches. There is not a single command in all of the Bible to initiate churches. The reason is quite clear: we are not to start churches, but instead to make disciples who make disciples. That is actually the way churches are started, at least in the New Testament. Jesus gave us instruction that is on the molecular level of Kingdom life, for a very good reason: it works. Trying to multiple large, highly complex organisms without multiplying on the micro level is impossible.

So maybe, just maybe, we’ve been pushing on the wrong level. I think our Youth & Family Ministry is getting the picture right – look at the Disciple Project – just one example of how we are shifting from youth ministry to faith formation and faith development in a leadership community. And isn’t that growing disciples?

Let’s multiple the church – one disciple at a time.

So what do you think?

+ Peace +
Rob
Pastor Rob Moore
Assistant to the Bishop/Mission Director
TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod, ELCA

Jesus Has Left the Building

I returned from Chicago last night after having the privilege of serving, for the first time, on the churchwide transformational team. This team works with small groups (usually a parish pastor and three or four key lay leaders) as they seek ways to do things differently in their ministry settings (and trying to break the cycle for the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!).

Like many leaders in the church, I have been working under the premise that it is our responsibility (and call) to bring more and more people into the church so they can know of the saving gift of Jesus Christ. That is, after all, our role - building up the Kingdom of God.

I now think I was wrong - and not only wrong - but awfully #*$&%$ presumptuous.

As part of the event, we sent participants throughout downtown Chicago with the instructions to gather information (statistical, etc.), spend time in the community, talk with people, listen to their stories, and then put together a basic ministry plan for that community. There were only two requirements/restrictions - the did not need permission from the institutional church (i.e., churchwide or synod) to do what they wanted to do and they had no money.

After giving the groups instructions, maps, and day passes to the transit system, we asked how many people where nervous about doing this. Six people raised their hands. We figured that that rest of the other thirty or so people where too terrified to even lift their hands.

But you know what - they had a blast! They enjoyed their time in the neighborhoods, they met friendly people who appreciated what they were doing, and they came up with some innovative ideas for ministry - all in one afternoon!

But even more important - they heard peoples' faith stories - of how God was in their lives. From homeless people to company CEOs, they experienced how Jesus was not in a building, but in the lives of all His people.

It's time. It's time to stop worrying about gathering people, to stop worrying about worship wars, to stop worrying about who can preach and who cannot.

It's time to be a sent people. People that only gather are not a church - they are a club. The church is the church when it is sent out among God's people - the people of the world.

Jesus has left the building - and is living among the people of the world. And we are invited to follow.

So - what do you think?

+ Peace +

Rob

Pastor Rob Moore

Assistant to the Bishop/Mission Director

TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod, ELCA

P.S. Transformational Ministry will be a tract at this year's Disciple Project - June 25-29 - at Texas Lutheran University. Are you ready to bring a leadership team from your congregation to be transformed and to be a transforming power in your congregation? Email me at robmoore@gulfcoastsynod.org or go to the web site www.soggyshoes.org for more information.

Welcome to the TELLing Blog

Welcome to the TELLing Blog.

If this is your first visit to a Blog, welcome to this wonderful new (okay, relatively new) world. A blog is a "weB LOG," or an opportunity to share ideas, stories, and opinions about all sorts of things. It is my hope that this TELLing Blog will be a continuation of the discussions that have been occurring throughout the synod as we have journeyed through this "Year of Transition," the year leading to the election of a new synod bishop in June 2007.

Blogs offer the chance to be in discussion - to chat around the table (and Lutherans know how to chat around a table - whether it is around a good meal or a few brews!). My prayer is that this time together will be a time to talk, discuss, challenge, grow, agree, and disagree about all matters that affect the church (and all the ways that the church can and should affect the world).

The word "synod" means "journey together." So please join us as we journey in this new way of sitting around the table, sharing in the word, and then being sent out into the world.

So - what do you think?

+ Peace +

Rob

Pastor Rob Moore
Assistant to the Bishop/Mission Director
TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod, ELCA