Soylent Church, Part Two: Why, in a World Awash in “Successful Ministry Careers,” I Choose to Be a “Failure”

In yesterday’s post, I admitted being complicit (i.e., “an accomplice”) in a religious practice that has damaged my family, parishioners, congregations, and denomination. The same has happened to and through countless other church leaders. But I need to be clear, with myself, about that from which I have repented.

You’re welcome to read along.

In the 1980s and 90s, church leaders were sometimes trained to see our “target audience” as “consumers of religious goods and services.” At other times, we were to evaluate our congregations by applying “the Pareto Principle,” investing 80% of our time in the 20% who showed promise as “producers of additional disciples.” We were taught to motivate donors to open their various “pockets” in support of ministry expenses, while professional clergy did “the real job.” Those who were unable to finance our ministries were still valuable as “cogs in the wheels of our programs.” (Never underestimate how many “volunteers” the average church event requires!) And even before my first Sunday as a pastor (September 11, 1983), I understood that whatever I thought about persons, their needs, and their growth as Christian disciples, it was their status as “statistics to be reported to headquarters” that would largely determine my “success” or “failure” as a pastor.

These work. So does a "Free Beer" sign.

I was sorely tempted, and I yielded. At least monthly, filling out those reports, I reduced persons to something less than divinely-beloved human beings. Why? Our lofty goals demanded it. There were more important measures of ministry. We were going to “Bring Back the King!”

I was part of a movement that sought to radically and rapidly multiply our churches and adherents. We planted one hundred churches across North America—all on the same day—coinciding with the 100^th anniversary of our denomination’s founding. Without a hint of irony, A Movement for God, from our office of National Church Ministries, refers to “the ‘Easter 100’ church planting offensive.” Though many of those attempts (over half, in the district I was then serving) quickly withered without establishing viable congregations, we pressed on. Simultaneously awed by our “success” and bizarrely attracted to rhyming our marketing slogans, we sought to plant “A Thousand More by ’94.”

I’m not kidding about the rhyming. I was serving as a pastor, and as regional extension assistant for our district. While attending our denomination’s annual meetings, I mentioned the results of having “planted” one hundred churches in one year, and asked the National Director of Church Growth how we established the time-line for planting 143% of that number, per year, for seven years straight. Again, I heard no irony in his answer to my question, “Why do we think we can do this by 1994?” He said, “Because it rhymes.”

One size fits some. Offends others.

Years ago, Lyle Schaller addressed church-growth, seeker-sensitive, statistics-driven acolytes like me. He claimed, “We count people because people count.” But what I was told and trained to really count on was the need for numbers. Otherwise, my “ministry” would not be considered a success, and my “career” would stall. And so I counted and reported what some call “nickels and noses” or “butts in the pew and bucks in the plate.” But even as I filed my monthly, quarterly, and annual reports to the parent corporation, I found that I couldn’t resist the time-consuming, face-to-face, limited-return-on-investment pastoral practices of preaching, teaching, visitation, and counseling. Thus, I “neglected to transition,” in Schaller’s terms, from being a “shepherd” to a “farmer” to a “rancher” and beyond.

I couldn’t complain about a stalled career. I knew that some were watching theirs end, and abruptly at that.

My friend, the church-growth director, shared that we were destroying the ministry careers of more than half of our church-planting pastors. He said, “When these churches don’t survive, I send the pastors’ resumes out to all our district superintendents. The superintendents don’t even return my phone calls. There’s nobody who’ll even talk to these pastors. They’re dead meat.” Since I was serving a struggling church-plant at the time, I had to ask: “So, what about folks who have a successful track record, but the church they’re planting doesn’t survive?” He didn’t turn toward me when he said it: “Well, you’re probably not dead meat. But you’d certainly be horse meat.” And soon I was. But I got over it. I got back in the saddle, after being horse meat. I’m glad I did. Not everyone got that opportunity.

Much cuter than any pictures of actual horse meat.

But still, to be accurate, I need to clearly state: I “was” part of what I still call “our” denomination. I am repentant from my attitudes and actions as part of the church-planting/church-growth/seeker-sensitive focus of our movement. And yet I still own that this is “our” problem. How does that work? Am I or aren’t I in or out?

Today, some of my former colleagues sigh sadly and wonder how it is that a young man with such promising skills ended up tucked away in the boondocks. Why have I been relegated to serving a small, rural mountain community? What did I do to be ostracized by the denomination that upholds my ordination, but refuses to license me to “that place?”

I honestly believe that the answer to those questions is simple: I began to listen carefully, and to hear my calling—not only my calling as a pastor, but to be the pastor of The Glenburn Community Church! I have sought to obey Jesus Christ in fulfilling my ministry as a servant to others for His sake (II Cor. 4:5). I don’t always do it as well as I’d like. But I also tend not to forget that those I serve, and serve with, are persons.  

And persons are not the stuff that careers are made of. But when the “career” I’m living is over, I trust that many of the persons I choose to serve will receive me into “the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).

If ever there was a place where horse meat tasted "just like chicken," this has to be it.

The Euphemisms of Sexual Assault

Assaulted, but apparently hesitant to say so.

I only know who Sarah Hyland is because of one of those sidebar links next to an unrelated, very cute and charming video shared by a Facebook friend. The linked article says she’s an actress in a popular television series in which, according to the Internet Movie Data Base, she plays a naïve and gullible minor. Wikipedia calls her character “the stereotypical ditzy teenage girl.”

More important to me than all this, for multiple reasons, is that she was, according to the report, “inappropriately grabbed” by an “overzealous fan.”

The article is by “an Associate Editor (who is) still in awe that she gets to write about and interview pop stars for a living.” If you were to Google the incident, you would find a fuller portrayal of the event than is expressed even in the further details within the article itself. You’d also likely find that Sarah Hyland has a boyfriend, Matt Prokop, who chose to be clearer about the “inappropriate touch” by “a fan” than Hyland apparently felt she could be in her missive to the Twitterverse. I might have refrained from some of his language—but I think I would have expressed an all-too-similar sentiment in the heat of the moment. (Though I would have suggested it occur while the attacker was under Hospice care, of course.)

Knows what assault is, and says so.

Appropriately, the 29-year-old adult male who assaulted an actress portraying an especially vulnerable minor was not killed, but merely arrested. The actress was shaken sufficiently to cancel the remainder of her appearance. The boyfriend was clear regarding his impressions of the assault as well as his intentions toward the attacker.

So, what’s not clear here? To illustrate that, let me digress for just a moment.

Without including any identifying details, let me say that I have, on several occasions, with multiple clients/counselees/parishioners, been asked to offer my opinion on whether the sexual assault they had experienced was, in fact, something other than “inappropriate” at the hands of someone who had become “overzealous.” My perception has been, in each case, that there really was no question in the mind of the person who had been assaulted about what they had experienced. What was unclear, however, was whether anyone, anywhere, at any time would give them permission to say aloud: I was raped.

(Re-reading that last sentence aloud, shouting at the top of your lungs whenever you see italics, may approximate my tone. While typing it, I feared momentarily for the structural integrity of my laptop.)

So, perhaps having cleared that up, there is one thing that remains unclear to me.

Uncertain what assault is, or at least whether to say so.

How does a young and admittedly awestruck “Associate Editor” remember more carefully that she is not only writing about human beings, but that she is writing to human beings? I hope that others who have influence in her life may help her toward this. Because, in fact, not only is she writing to just any human beings, she is writing to primarily young, impressionable human beings, some of whom, quite clearly, already struggle to hope that someone, somewhere, and soon will give them permission to say:

I was not “inappropriately touched” by someone who became “overzealous.” I was assaulted by an attacker, and it was wrong.

“Too Big to Fail” – Too Dangerous to Live

“…if people thought about real issues and needs instead of manufactured desires, the economy would collapse and we’d have total anarchy.”

Years ago, my sister-in-law noted that her parents had paid $25,000 for the home in which they raised her family. She and her husband had recently purchased a home in which to raise their family for roughly $250,000. She asked if I thought that, by the time they purchased homes in which to raise their families, our children would be paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 million. I replied that I felt there was little chance that our children would be purchasing homes at any price, since by that point the entire system would have collapsed into chaos and anarchy. She tried to laugh, until she saw the entirely sincere look on my face. “You really believe that could happen?” she asked. I only said, “Yes.” But inwardly I knew what I wanted to say: “I believe that should happen.”

My optimism has since been rewarded, and thwarted almost simultaneously.

A manipulative marketing system manufactures our needs, and then sells us goods and services to meet those “needs.” This system, however, is not merely unsustainable; it has, in fact, collapsed. And when it did collapse, we missed a great opportunity for liberation. We could have allowed the dust of Lehman Brothers, et al., to simply settle into the substrate and let emancipation grow up in its place. We could have refocused our society’s values and priorities on previously unattainable luxuries like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately, those who entice us to ever-more-excessive spending for ever-more-transient gratifications also effectively sell us our “public servants.” And we, in turn, elevate those “servants” to political office where we imagine they will control and guide the beasts which are allowed, yet again, to drag our economy forward and upward and, most likely, over some similar cliff in the near future.

In such a system, it isn’t surprising that some manipulate the math to their advantage. Nor does anyone reasonably deny that they have returned to doing so today. What does surprise me, however, is that most of us assume the truth of their claim—that they were “too big to fail”—as though their failure would result in some unmet need in our society. In fact, the “needs” they would fail to meet are the ones they have manufactured through their manipulative marketing.

But who can we blame? We are the ones who allow them to “create demand” for their goods and services. We are the ones who bandage our insecurities with trinkets and toys. We are the ones willingly oblivious of one another, absorbed instead into technology’s counterfeit relationships. We are the ones who feed the beast. We give them billions for things we do not need. Then, when they overindulged and consumed all we gave them and too much more, they told us we need them. That they are “too big to fail.” And so we gave them billions more—for no goods or services whatsoever—because we don’t know any other life than being enslaved to them, feeding their quarterly shareholders’ reports, and masking our pain with more purchases.

But we can face the painful truth, together: They are not serving us. We do not need them. There are alternatives. Stop buying their lies. Stop buying their stuff.

Stop feeding the beasts that are eating our children.

Another Tragedy of Trayvon and George

By way of invitation to a Portland area forum on the Trayvon Martin case (details available here)), Dr. Paul Louis Metzger asks “Why did this case receive so much attention, especially while other similar cases never got so much as a mention?” From my vantage point, isolated at the time in the mountains of Northern California, dependent upon mass media for details of what I first noticed in social media postings, I can only offer observations and conclusions bounded by those limitations. But here they are.

I first saw mention of the shooting in someone’s vehement reaction to Geraldo Rivera’s infamous claim that part of Martin’s attire, a hoodie, was responsible for his death. Mass media’s habit of covering media’s coverage almost immediately raised an impenetrable fog around any hope of finding facts about the case online. Too few quaintly preserve the ancient journalistic endeavor in our country: piecing together a story with some congruence to the events being reported. This archaic ideal, however, has little place in the competition to be the first to report any new sliver of conjecture by anyone, even when that conjecture is not being made by witnesses, law enforcement, or expert observers, but simply by another media-staff commentator weighing in on “facts” not yet in evidence.

So, one reason for the attention to this case appeared to be nothing more than our macabre glee at having fresh bodies to feed to the selachian (“of or pertaining to sharks”) demands of the news-cycle. But there were at least two other details that prompted the furtherance of the feeding frenzies.

Trayvon Martin, and to a lesser extent (as a Prussian-surnamed, self-identifying Hispanic) George Zimmerman, provided a concrete metaphor for the fears of blacks, Hispanics, and whites alike. This fear of “the other” (xenophobia, as discussed previously in this blog) comprises the potential for such deadly misunderstandings on the basis of preconceived stereotypes. The logic seems self-evident that “the stranger” should fear me at least as much as I fear them. And should some chance exchange inadvertently provoke a confrontation, then I should be prepared to do to them as they, I imagine, would do to me, should I appear ready to do it to them. Add to this the minority status of both parties, and for many white Americans the potential for discussion was opened more broadly. (This is likely the primary factor that kept this story at the top of the editorial priorities, above other, similar cases in the interim.)

According to Herschell Gordon Lewis, there are four great marketing motivators (some of us prefer the term “manipulators”). In his estimation, as I recall, greed, guilt, and exclusivity follow well behind fear as a means to influence others. And self-promoters who feed on our society’s fears in order to raise ratings, sell books, fund studies, and otherwise scavenge the carrion of tragedy were in abundance for weeks and months after the death of Trayvon Martin. Their number includes activists as well as commentators, news-readers as well as politicians, and, too frequently, religious leaders as well as regular citizens. But before we decry the growing school of sharks, we should remember that the profits they divide among them do come from somewhere. And it is those sources of their resources who bear responsibility for the actions we support. Real consequences in real lives result from our decision to watch incessantly, trying to be among the first to share, or like, or tweet, or otherwise prattle on about whatever suppositions are painted across the backdrop of the next new tragedy.

There is much more to be said, no doubt, about the reasons for such attention being raised over the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman story. I pray that the forum in Portland will be fruitful in recognizing a variety of other issues as well that may diminish the potential for similar tragedies in the future. Among the issues addressed, however, should be my personal culpability (and yours, too) for the consequences of continuing to consume “news-like products.”

Human beings are regularly distilled into fuel for fact-less fires signaling only the same, dangerously stereotypical perspectives. And when there are too few suppositions to report, we watch reports of what others have either chosen or failed to report regarding the too-few suppositions already available. Know this, though: some will base their actions tomorrow on the fears we have helped to instill in them today. Lest we sacrifice even more of our brothers and sisters to the gods of technological gossip, we are overdue to disconnect ourselves from this media machine.