Trinity has been conduit for much caring over the last two months.  Through the generosity of many we have been able to generous donors so that others may celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But to what end?  Normally we try to provide stop gap, safety net  help, especially around this time of year.  Normally the people we help, with a few exceptions, are in a temporary fix.  But what of this year?  We served a conduit for a well to do family to help the most desparate famiy I encountered during our Thanksgiving distributions.  Gifts were purchased, rent paid, food vouchers provided.  However, this head of the household has exhausted her options for welfare, is without child support and has no idea where her rent will come from.  She’s been looking for work, but even the temp agencies have nothing for her. Nor for at least six others we have been helping.  What happens in January?  I will do what I can to channel resources from those who have to those who have not.  But finally we will be in adequate to the task.  Who will ensure that jobs are being created? That living wages are paid?  Who will rescue the children?  Our charity is needed, to be sure, but the system needs attention as well.  What holiday will inspire generosity in January?

Gracious God, you whom we know by many names and means, we gather in a spirit of unity and peace, of love for You and for one another, and in a spirit of gratitude and humility.  Our lives are built on unsteady foundations if we believe that we secure our own happiness or meaning.  For in countless ways, we depend on the courage, the honesty and industry of others.  We gather at these tables to enjoy a harvest from fields we did not sow and produce we did not gather.  Yet, by Your grace, it is set before us.

May the bounty we enjoy - a bounty of love, fellowship, memory and food - fill us with a deep desire to work toward the time when there will be scarcity for none, safety for the most vulnerable and a secure home for all.

In this spirit - Your Spirit - then we ask you to bless all who have prepared this meal for us, all with whom we share this sacred place, and to bless this our meal of thanksgiving.  May the People say: Amen.

(Offered at The Mountain, Highlands, NC, November 27, 2008)

It should not come as news that Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom of God (substitute Empire or Realm as you will.)  If I read him correctly the Realm was an immanent reality, at hand, he said.  Yet Jesus did not describe a political platform or agenda.  There is precious little about the affairs of nations or the nature of political leadership in the teachings of Jesus, although much is implied.  As we say in our Purpose Statement, however, ‘In the life of Jesus, both in his very existence and and in his conduct, we are able to discern the shape and substance of this Kingdom.  It is not a kingdom as the world defines it, but of heart and mind and spirit, transcending the kingdom and empires of this world.”  The Realm transcends so that it may speak to and of the kingdoms of this world.  Combining the words of the prophets and those of Jesus, the Realm of god serves to critique all of human life, even our national and international affairs, and even political campaigns.  For these reasons, I preach that the church and Christians must have a certain detachment from political ideologies.  No one platform or candidate can fulfill the demands of the Realm or the demands of God for human affairs.  This is not to counsel a lack of involvement but rather wariness.

This week’s Newsweek carries a seven chapter desciption of the presidential campaign.  The author uses a phrase that I found helpful.  He said that Obama’s candidacy grew as people began to project their hopes and dreams on him like a projector on a screen.  In the course of the campaign each candidate was described in both messianic terms and as “Antichrist.”  Not only hopes but fears are projected onto the persons running.  And in that dynamic, Christians allow themselves to tell untruths, to spread gossip, spread hate and suspicion.  Politicians will seek our endorsement for their own gain.  We may indded give it.  But we risk then being associated with the inevitable corruption that comes from the exercise of power, as well as being used having our own intentions and goals subsumed by someone’s drive to get elected.

I am proud that 137 million people voted on Tuesday.  I hope for a different kind of engagement with other nations; less arrogance and Empire America.  I hope for a breaking of the logjam of getting the people’s business done because of the politics of polarization.  But most of all I hope for new visions of the reality of God’s realm: justice, unity, safety, for God’s “least of these.”

I am Stephen Gifford, pastor of Trinity, Canton. We have met only a couple times around EOA matters, mainly the upcoming Annual Gathering set for Oct 25. In the nineties I filled a number of roles in the Division of Evangelism and Local Church Development, UCBHM, relative to new church development and church renewal. For nearly all of my 35 years of pastoral ministry I have been involved in either leading church renewal and evangelism or coaching others. I will admit to being somewhat cynical and weary after all these years of bucking the trends of local church and denominational membership decline. And you may simply pass off the following comments as coming out that kind of context.

You are initiating a process from the Ohio Conference that seems to be depending on the promise of someone’s renewal tools. I have learned to be very cautious about experts and church renewal “packages.” The promise much and deliver little. Unless this current package has made some new discoveries about church systems, the exercise of effective pastoral leadership, planning processes and launching small group ministries that has escaped us all, I doubt that it will ensure any better outcome than: Schaller, Callahan, Easum and Bandy, the Center for Parish Development, and the Conference’s own Flight School. Even when such coaching and training is effective in changing the ministry practice of a pastoral leader, and even if, the lay leadership and congregation buy into a change process, there are contextual factors too great for one congregation to overcome that will impede progress towards either recovering some former level of membership [or attaining some unprecedented in the congregation's history. (added for this blog)]

At the beginning of the church growth movement in the 70’s two UCC researchers, Bill McKinney being one, deduced that of all the factors contributing to the growth of Congregational congregations, the community context (population growth, ethnicity, cultural homogeneity etc) was 50% of the matter. For E&R, congregations it was 90%.

These numbers were daunting then and I believe are still applicable today. It is my opinion that many, if not most UCC congregations, who once had a high level of cultural and theological connection with their communities, are now caught between what once was (mainline, moderate) and what is (sidelined and progressive to liberal). The tensions within our own denominational family undermine our witness, unless your congregation happens to reflect General Synod values: ONA, feminism, Just Peace, Multi Racial, etc, and ecumenism. (I support these by the way.) Most renewal processes address internal matters of a congregation, but even if a congregation institutes all recommendations, it may not be able to overcome these contextual issues. In fact, of the dozens of congregations I coached myself, or have been coached by others, I know of only handful that experienced turnarounds. In the rest pastors and lay leaders (and the coaches) are left a with deep sense of inadequacy and failure. What will prevent this outcome in this next, best thing?

So what to do? I wish I knew for sure. I left the national setting because it was clear to me that nothing that could be accomplished by just a few staff from national. Things had to be worked out locally. But change strategies are not necessarily welcome in most congregations. Stability is rewarded, not the chaos and uncertainty of change. I have been working a resource and process that is the most honest and wizened I ever ran across. It states clearly that just preparing one’s congregation for a renewal process, by deepening the congregation’s spiritual and relational vitality can take years. I frankly trust the Spirit more and more to make of our efforts what It will.

I understand and sympathize with the need to do something. But I will not be participating in the process you are embarking on. We happen to have done most of what Nickerson is proposing or are trying to do it. This is consuming enough that I have little time to invest in another level of renewal activities. (My local church and the EOA is quite enough.)

God bless. I look forward to seeing you in October.

I serve on our Association’s Department of Church and Ministry which means that I have claimed a ministry or calling to, well, authozing and authorized ministry in the United Church of Christ.  For some time now, actually over 25 years I have been fascinated about leadership in general and pastoral leadership in particular.  I very much enjoy leading pastor’s retreats, workshops and training events.  That was my focus during my ministry out of the national setting of the UCC.

At one time, I naively assumed that one could foster change by the exercise of will or proper leadership practices.  Effective leadership could be taught, I thought.  Years of watching well intentioned, even well trained pastors try to plant new churches or turn around dying ones has detered me of such optimism.  So much of what an individual brings to pastoral leadership comes from their heart.  Effective leadership skills can be taught, but the exercise of pastoral leadership includes other vital matters:  faith, love, a maturing emotional life, a well exercised path to the inner conversation, humility and the willingness finally to manifest the gospel to particular people in a particular place by patiently loving them, teaching them and allowing them to teach and love you back.

Today God has given me the grace to be a pastor: to teach aging ladies who still want to learn fresh things about the Bible, to review our pastoral caring with lay leaders, to engage a good friend in serious theological conversation about luck and blessing, organizing our stewardship campaign, preparing to lead a new small group and finally…encouraging a surprisingly large new group to talk about Jesus.

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