Recently one of my young adult sons and I were talking about this. He is convinced that there will be a full schedule of games for the 2012 season. The pre-season may be effected, but the regular season will go on. The reason for his confidence is that he thinks Fans want to see the players play. They are not interested in watching the owners own or the coaches coach.

I have to wonder if this this is something that the NFL shares with a lot of churches in our nation. Folks who come to church want to see something. This is true regardless of denominational brand or identity label. As one who preaches, I’d like to think that they come to hear preaching. But I’ve been around long enough to know that while preaching has a role to attract, it is not the only reason people come. It may not even be the most important reason. Folks come to church to see the “game” – just like fans go to the Meadowlands or Lambeau or my own Georgia Dome. (And in my part of the world it also applies to places like Sanford Stadium or Death Valley – both of them – or Jordan Hare – but these are Saturday gatherings, not Sunday).

The “game” for a church means that folks come to see things: babies or believers baptized, classes taught, the choir sing, the youth group leave  (or come back) from a mission trip or conference, communion shared,  and fellowship experienced. These things are not “games” in the sense of manipulation. At their best these things are life giving experiences that nourish and challenge the soul. They are things that make people feel alive. Yet all too often those of us who handle these holy things fall into a routine. We move over to the “coaching” side. That is we are more concerned with the design of how we do things.

Design is important. Indeed it is critical. But the fans who gather to watch an NFL game on Sunday are concerned not with the design. They are concerned with how that design is implemented and executed. In short, they want to watch the plays. And it is in the “plays” that the power of the game comes alive.

At the church level, folks don’t come to watch the council govern or committees meet. (Well sometimes they do – but that’s pretty unusual). Yet the work of the council and committees is akin to matters that team ownership and coaches have to deal with. If they don’t design the team to be able to produce good “plays” (and to “win games”), then the fans will fall away. (Of course, there is the debate of being faithful or being successful – and that is a matter of importance, but for another time. Suffice it to say that regardless of outcome, I trust that God provides).

I’m convinced that people want to come – to churches as well as to football games. So what can the church do about this situation.

Well, the church shouldn’t lock people out. But that means something different in church than for the NFL. Pro football players are highly trained and focused on their game. Many people who would go to church have not been in a while. Church leadership needs to find ways to improve the “plays” that are offered and share the excitement of the “game.”

That may mean going to some places that are not natural for church leaders. The tag line from the Composers Datebook is a good bit of advice here: all music was once new. We need to listen to that and let it find ways of being expressed – not just with music but in so many areas, including the use of technology. All that has gone before need not be rejected. The challenge is to find ways that connect what has gone before with what is going on now.

In some ways, the questions never end. Rob Bell’s recent status as a “rock-star” comes from raising old questions. Sometimes the old questions are still the ones folks are seeking answers for. And sometimes there are questions which go beyond easy answers.

As we ask questions, form answers and ask different questions, those of us in church leadership roles need to find ways to renew ourselves so that we are still thrilled by the “plays” that bring folks to the field. We need to remember that time when we were filled with excitement to watch the “plays.” And we must connect that excitement to the place and privilege of leadership so that more people will also be drawn onto the field.

We do all of this trusting not just in our actions, but that through them God’s spirit will be known.

Succession of leadership, sometimes called pastoral transition or interim ministry, is a major issue for Christian churches. As Russ Crabtree and Carolyn Weese have shown in Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken About Pastoral Transitions, the cost in terms of time, energy and money for a leadership transition is very expensive. Russell and Bucher provide a great case study in what makes a transition go well.

Two hallmarks emerge from Transitional Plan that are measures for this change: planning and attitude. Bob Russell describes how he came to be concerned with the matter of transition. There were a couple of key events – after reading Joel Gregory’s account of how the transition at First Baptist Church of Dallas failed he had questions. Then as part of a building program, the church had to take out a life insurance policy to secure the loan. These things made him ask the question – what happens to this church after me?

In the case of Southeast Christian Church, a megachurch, they found the answers in identifying and grooming one of the pastoral leaders already on the staff.  The key issue is that they made this decision early in the process. Then Russell and the lay leaders and staff of the church moved to make the decision a reality.

The second part of the process is that they executed the plan. Not everything worked as it was intended. Russell recounts occasions where this was as much from his own actions as anything else. And that is the real key. Even the best plan is only that if it is not implemented.

The transition time was a time for the congregation to reset some of their expectations. One way this was done was through redoing the membership roll. In their case, Southeast Christian Church informed members that in 2006 they would have to “opt in” for membership. One result was that the membership went from 25,000 to 17,000. The benefit for this was it insured that those who were members had thought about their commitment and it set the stage for future growth.

An important note that Russell points out is what happened within his own family. Judy and Bob Russell had been married for 42 years when he retired. She had taken on a job within the ministry operations. His retirement meant she would also be relinquishing her role. How did that play out? In the end it was worked out – but this was not something that could be done lightly.

Transition Plan­ emphasizes the need for a plan to be developed and the courage, commitment and maturity to work out the plan. It is not a plan that benefits just the pastor or even the organization. It is a plan that is to honor God and God’s people.

Russell also touches on the personal impact of departure. It is clear he had a sense this was part of his calling. He also sensed that he was being called into something else. was more than simply not showing up for a period of time. It was the thoughts, feelings and plans that are the foundation for the actions.

In summary, Transition Plan outlines the process of leadership transition this way:

• Make a plan – transitions will happen no matter what;
• Prepare the church – educate with information and work through emotional challenges;
• Prepare yourself and your family – intellectually, spiritually and emotionally;
• Make the plan happen; and
• Prepare for the calling beyond what is now present.

Not every pastor or church will  have the same dynamics or result of transition. But Transition Plan is a great resource for pastors, lay leaders and church staff as they plan to face leadership changes. The keys to the best result are in planning and attitude.

This is the story of one George Bailey whose family’s business, the Building and Loan of  Bedford Falls is subject to failure due to the ineptitude of Uncle Harry and the manipulation of the local banker, Mr. Potter. In despair George wishes he had never been born. And he is granted that wish in the person of Clarence the Angel – who comes and shows George what the world would be like if that was so. George is disoriented as he sees family members and friends who he knows but who do not recognize him – as he had never been born.

In one of those scenes George and Clarence are in the contemporary Bedford Falls but the name has been changed. It is “Potterville” – named for the Scrooge-like  banker because as the police officer says – “he owns the town.” Instead of a town where many people own their homes and have their affairs in order due to the good work of George and his Building and Loan, Potterville is a town of glittering lights, gambling, lots of drinking, more than a few fights, and politicians, police officers and business people with little or no moral compass.

I wonder if we now live in a place like Potterville? In the movie George Bailey finds out that he had been born and that he had made a difference. May the George Bailey in each one come out in these days so that the spirit of retrenchment and regression does not carry us away.

The world was changing when Martin Luther and John Calvin challenged church authority.

• There had been wide scale health scare in the Black Death of the middle 1300s which had a lingering impact on the spiritual and emotional needs and demands of the European peoples.
• There was new technology in the printing press that made it possible to create and publish material in ways that allowed for more rapid communication than had ever been known before.
• There was a cutting edge of science and information. New worlds were being discovered along with new peoples never imagined. What had been unknown and unimagined quickly came to be known.
• The spiritual practices of the church sometimes get in the way of what people need and want.

I have to wonder if the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same.

• We continue to be scarred and scared by health crises – AIDS remains a global challenge. But every year or so now it seems that some new strain of flu or virus receives huge media coverage that raises fears about sickness and reminds us of our mortality.
• Print media is almost passe as electronic communication in the form of the internet and electronic media have overwhelmed the world. Just what did we do before email? And for many under 25 or so the question is “What’s email?”
• The deluge of information continues to compound choices and often overwhelms us. Certainly this is true when one goes seeks medical treatment – and often after having a whole scope of options presented and you ask ” and which one would you recommend?” the response is something like “I can’t tell you what to do. I just want you to be informed.” Sometimes knowing more just produces a more confused choice, not a better choice.
• The practices of the church continue to get in the way. That’s not to say that there were not folks at the time of Luther and Calvin that wanted to make things different and better. Even Luther didn’t want to start a movement. And there are not folks today that want to have the church “revived” or “reformed” or “see church again for the first time.” But all too often the church lags behind the way that the spirit moves in the culture.

So what does this mean? A friend likes to quote George Santayana: Those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it. No doubt it is catchy. But it seems to trust that information will change opinions and action. I’m not convinced it will.

I think that what this means is that we continue to have challenges and opportunities come our way – as individuals, in groups, in businesses and churches, as a nation in a world of nations, as a species and a planet. Such a challenge and opportunity must be engaged with the spiritual gifts that the Apostle Paul outlines: faith, hope and love. And as we do we will continue to experience re-formation.

Of course gladness comes not just from inside oneself. It also comes as a way of breaking into the world. Followers of Jesus talk about Jesus coming down from heaven – not only in the creeds of the church, but also in the scripture.  And I’d be willing to bet a few preachers have used that idea in a  sermon.

The axis of the world’s deep hunger speaks to need. And God knows there is so much need – all over the place. It is in far away places where the stories hit the headlines for a news-cycle or two and then vanish from our memory. There is need in places we never hear about. And there are needs all around us in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. Again, we are so aware of some and for others we do not have a clue.

The axis of deep gladness is about finding those places where we respond. Sometimes we can speak of that decision as a “calling.” And in the language of faith it is.

But in addition to the axises of hunger and gladness there is the axis of time. Opportunity comes to us in different moments and in different ways. Timing has a critical place in life. And it is true for living into the vocation of knowing the hunger of the world and the place where we find gladness in filling it.

A couple of years ago I heard Brian McLaren speak. He talked about how many intellectual changes in the world were postulated by younger people. And because he was talking to a group of Presbyterians he highlighted that John Calvin was 27 when he published the Institutes of the Christian Religion! Of course he revised the work several times – but the impact was huge from the beginning.

But different times may require different skills – and what one may say or do in on time takes on a different sound in another. Sam Ervin was one of the US Senators from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974. Toward the end of his political life when he took on the leadership of the Senate Watergate Committee. He was known as a staunch Constitutional supporter and opposed the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Yet his strict interpretive principles also made him an opponent of the consolidation of political power and a proponent of civil liberties.

If Calvin hadn’t written the Institutes when he was 27 would he have ten or twenty years later? If Ervin had been called upon when he was younger to lead a committee like the Watergate Committee would it have had the same leadership? Of course there is no way to know – but we do know that in their own times Calvin and Ervin responded to their circumstances.

Our vocation is not a fixed point in time. It moves through time. The needs around us change and so does our ability to respond. No matter where we are in time, we always have the opportunity to find that place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meets.

This experience rocked my world! I mean, as a child I believed that such things weren’t supposed to happen if you went to church. Somehow church folk were “different” – weren’t we? Church folks didn’t do things that caused you to get arrested – did we?

I don’t remember what happened to the man or his family. But I don’t remember seeing him at church afterwards. It could be that folks reached out and prayed with him and offered support to his family. Or they could have fallen off the grid. I’ve seen it happen both ways. But frankly it is more likely that they just disappeared. It is too hard to answer the questions. Or sometimes church folks are just as glad to have some folks disappear. That’s not to say it is what Jesus would do. But then Jesus was Jesus – and most folks I know – are not.

The story Jesus tells of the dishonest manager reminded me of this story from my past. How would you feel if this dishonest manager person came in and sat down next to you – at church, the parent meeting at school, or anywhere else?

In the end, Jesus gives some strong praise for this one labeled dishonest. There seem to be three things that enabled him to get by – or was it ahead?

Relationship, Focus, and Forgiveness

The manager was in a relationship to the master. And to the debtors as well. The manager abuses his relationship with the master – yet he is still connected to the debtors. And while he is still connected, he acts to improve their situations. He reduces what they owe the master.

From the master’s view point this is irresponsible. But what did it look like from the debtors’ place?

Secondly, this is a story about focus. Jesus’ parables allow for a great deal of interplay – for the characters are not completely developed. One can assume that at some point the manager was good at what he did. How else would one become the manager for a wealthy master? But something happened. Things deteriorated. The manager was held accountable and found wanting.

Catholic priest and novelist Andrew Greely suggests this is like a young boy who is a great football player. “Everyone” knows that by the time he is in high school he will be a varsity starter in the tenth grade and then go on to star at Notre Dame. There is just one thing – he doesn’t like to practice. His talent does not develop to its full potential. He looses focus on what he is able to do and eventually is dismissed from the team. Such things happen.

And this is a story about forgiveness. Maybe at its core it is about forgiveness.

Several years ago I was in a car accident. It was fairly minor but I rear ended another car. Insurance covered the damage but I was to be assigned points on insurance and my driving record. A friend suggested that I go to court and ask for a prayer for judgment from the judge. It was a way to make the points disappear. So I went, armed with a letter from my insurance agent saying all claims had been paid. I expected that I would have to pay something –  a fine, court costs – something.

I had never been in traffic court before. It was quite an education – cases dealing with drugs, guns and use of a vehicle to assault another person – these were all there! And with each case the judge sent the defendants to a waiting area. I thought this was where the fine would be paid.

When I was called as the defendant I presented my insurance agent’s letter to the court representative. She read it and then gave it to the judge. The judge read it and without looking up said: You may go.

Go where? I know others have told me where to go before – but the judge did not give any directions. Was it to be through the door with the rest of the defendants? I stood there.

The judge repeated slowly and deliberately: You may go! I didn’t need to be told again – I spun on my heels and made a beeline for the courtroom doors. I had been forgiven! There was no fine, no points, no penalty of any sort. The slate had been wiped clean. My prayer for judgment had been answered!

It wouldn’t have happened if I had not been in relationship with another who suggested it. It wouldn’t have happened if I let all the other cases in court overwhelm my focus. It wouldn’t have happened if there was not a judge who could grant the forgiveness.

This doesn’t exhaust all the possible explanations for the story of the dishonest manager. But it does help me understand better the one who taught his follower to pray: forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

The way we think that the world works is our culture. Sometimes we know that the world needs a change here or there – and so we come up with a plan, a strategy, to change it. Yet it is so amazing that the culture refuses to be conformed to a new order!  I can “know” all the reasons the culture needs to change – even if it is for its very survival. But it is as if something primeval creeps up and sabotages the most well developed, creative and exciting plan there is.

The challenge is to engage the culture and find ways to let its own needs and wisdom come to embrace a strategy for itself.

What’s more, the need for developing different “strategies” may be something that I need to work on myself! Jesus said something about not to try and take a speck out of another person’s eye, when there was a log stuck in mine! Thus there is opportunity as well as challenge.

I have to credit the phrase to Russ Crabtree of Holy Cow! Consulting,  but the ramblings are my own.

No doubt this is true – but it is not always a calling that makes people feel better. Often pastors leave after a significant period of dis-ease. For some it is occasioned by conflict; for others despondence; for others a sense their gifts are not being used; and for some it is because they have become ineffective. And then there are those times when there is call that pulls the pastor to it.

Often when a pastor leaves there is a disconnect. Even when all goes well and the current congregation celebrates the hope for the future, the pastor and the people may have an internal sense of discomfort. Some church folk talk about this as being part of the ecclesiastical mobility escalator. As the wag says – why does God always call our pastors to larger churches with bigger salaries?

This is not always so – but many want it to be. Relocation can be hard on a pastor – and on her family. And so can retirement or moving to institutional or administrative work. Each shift is an opportunity to think about what is happening.

When a pastor leaves, it is an opportunity for her to do her own work about motivations and desires. Family of origin work as Ed Freidman describes in his works and is also found in the work of Roberta Gilbert and Murray Bowen can help one get some perspective about how one functions. And in the end that is so important – how does the pastor function as a leader and a person in a community of faith? And is this way of functioning the way of building up the community and sharing the fruits of the Spirit?

Anxiety about:

• what will happen next;
• who will baptize and bury;
• who will come and if that one will fit in.

In this time of transition, there is a lot of anxiety. Yet the life and ministry of the church does not exist solely around the person (and personality) of the pastor. No doubt that the time of pastoral transition is a challenge.

It is also an opportunity.

It is an opportunity:

• to do some things differently;
• to find out what parts of congregational life were the previous pastor’s and what is the congregations;
• to grow in faith, leadership and self-reliance and not depend on the “professional” to do it.

We call this a time of “interim ministry.” That is it is a time in between the permanent pastor. Often the pastor in between comes with the avowed intention of not staying. And in so doing this one has a different kind of authority – the kind that comes from holding the levers of operation with a light touch. There will be times to grab hold tightly in the interim period – as there is in any time. But a remarkable thing can happen if people know that they are responsible for how things turn out.

Transitions are times of anxiety.

Anxiety is an opportunity.

The opportunity can be a challenge,

Or it can be a crisis.

You can’t always manage what how the challenge or crisis develops around you.

You can always determine your attitude in the midst of it.