Attached is the Clergy Effectiveness Task Force report to the 2006 session of the North Carolina Annual Conference. This is a first attempt to get to a consensus about what our shared consensus about what constitutes clergy effectiveness. Note that the title of the report is Identifying and Sustaining Effective Clergy Leadership – a caution that the goal still seems elusive.
Category: Meanderings
Playing Through
Waiting on the Everlasting One — Isaiah 40:28-31 & Mark 1:29-39
Isaiah speaks a word to those in exile where defeat hangs heavy in the air, uncertainty pervades the ethos of Israel, and optimism yields to cynicism among the people. Then, Isaiah speaks the following word:
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:28-31).
Pay attention to Isaiah’s claims on behalf of the LORD:
- God is not limited by time
(the LORD is an everlasting God). - God is not limited by space
(the LORD is the Creator of the ends of the earth). - God is not limited in strength
(the LORD does not faint or grow weary). - God is not limited in thinking
(The LORD’s understanding is unsearchable).
How about us … are we limited in what we can do? If so, we know through Isaiah’s word that God is able to help. As we pause this week and remember the Coretta Scottt King we celebrate that a people were willing to lean into a generational struggle on the Lord’s behalf. When we move beyond the concerns of today and our limited perceptions we are able to trust God “to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).
Continue reading “Waiting on the Everlasting One — Isaiah 40:28-31 & Mark 1:29-39”
A Useful Word — Mark 1:21-28
Our devotional guide to reading
through the scriptures this year, A Guide to Prayer for All
God’s People, invited us to pay attention to God’s word
this week. As I pondered how the Bible transforms our lives I was
drawn to these familiar words.
All scripture
is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness
(2 Timothy 3:16).
What snuck up on me this week was
the word “useful.” I often use words like authoritative,
inspired, God-breathed, and holy to talk about scripture. But last
week, while wandering in my thoughts through another book, I came
back to the word “useful.” My experience in Bay Saint Louis
leads me to see the word “useful” in a new context. That
community does not need any more authoritative pronouncements – it
needs useful actions of love.
Coming Home for Christmas
James W. Moore wrote about
remembering the reason for the season:
There was a particular program that
is something of a parable for the way we sometimes celebrate
Christmas. A group of people in Ohio decided to give a man a
surprise birthday party. They got together and organized the party
in great detail. They set up several committees to take care of the
arrangements for food and entertainment and decorations and all the
rest.
There was a great hustle and bustle
of excitement and busyness as they made ready for the big event.
Finally, the evening of the party arrived and all was in readiness,
the hall was rented, the decorations were in place and they were
terrific, the food was prepared, and it looked sumptuous. The
entertainment was rehearsed and ready. The friends were all gathered
and excited. The lights and sound were set to perfection.
Then suddenly, they realized
something. Everything had been taken care of in splendid fashion
except one thing. They had quite simply forgotten the single most
important thing. They had forgotten to invite the guest of honor, so
they had the party without him.
The man’s secret was that he had not been invited to his own birthday
party. Moore observed, “There’s a sermon there somewhere!”
…
In a very real sense, none of us are
home for Christmas tonight. Because being home for Christmas, in the
truest sense, would mean that we were with the One who loves us more
than our imagination will allow us to understand. Fred Craddock has
compared our earthly life to the nomadic experience of living in a
tent. It’s just temporary. We’re all just passing through on the
way to our true home.
But even more than all that,
Christmas is not just about Mary and Joseph coming home to Bethlehem
and finding no room. It’s not even about our own desire for
homecoming. It’s about God coming home. We couldn’t go to God,
so God came to us. When we hear, "I’ll be home for
Christmas," we hear Bing Crosby or whatever contemporary artist
has done the song so well that it stands out in our memory. When
Luke hears the song, it is God who is singing (“God Will Be Home
for Christmas” – Johnny Dean (1999).
A Solitary Life
Frederick Buechner talks about how
Mary’s perilous journey toward Bethlehem begins in Luke’s Gospel:
She struck the
angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone
this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her, and
he gave it.
He told her
what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something
about the mystery that was to come upon her. "You mustn’t be
afraid, Mary," he said.
And as he said
it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great,
golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the
whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl (Frederick
Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who,
HarperSanFranciso: 1979)
The Wonder of it All — God Loves Me (and God Love You)
In his book All I Really Need to
Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum recounts the
following Christmas memory:
One year I didn’t receive many
Christmas cards. One fetid February afternoon this trouble-making
realization actually came to me out of the back room in my head that
is the source of useless information. Guess I needed some reason to
really feel crummy, so there it was. But I didn’t say anything about
it. I can take it. I am tough. I won’t complain when my cheap
friends don’t even care enough to send me a stupid Christmas card. I
can do without love. Right …
[In August he discovered in his
attic a box of Christmas cards he had stacked up to read that past
Christmas. In his Christmas clean-up panic he had closed the box and
hidden it in the attic. He took the cards, invited a neighbor over,
and celebrated Christmas.)
… Just to help, I had put a tape
of Christmas carols on the portable stereo and cranked up the volume.
Here it all was. Angels, snow, Wise Men, candles and pine boughs,
horses and sleighs, the Holy Family, elves and Santa. Heavy messages
about love and joy and peace and goodwill. If that wasn’t enough,
there were all those handwritten messages of affection from my cheap
friends who had, in fact, come through for the holidays.
Continue reading “The Wonder of it All — God Loves Me (and God Love You)”
Maybe Christmas … Perhaps … Means a Little Bit More
Perhaps this Internet rumor has made
it to your home this year. A woman was talking to her nephew just
after Christmas. In a very apologetic way she said, "I’m
sorry you don’t like my Christmas gift, but I asked you if you
preferred a small check or a large one." With his head hung in
disappointment, the nephew replied, "Yeah, I know, but I didn’t
think you were talking about ties."
Dashing to the Stuff-Mart to pick up
that one present for that family friend who invited themselves over
for dinner, proving to your spouse that the best bargains are only
available late afternoon on Christmas Eve, wrapping presents at
midnight hoping to be in bed by the time Saint Nick shows up … are
these a few of your favorite things?
Or are you a checked my list twice
by the week after Thanksgiving to make sure every gift had been
chosen, do you pick up Christmas presents throughout the year, are
you sitting there smugly saying to yourself “I get to enjoy today
because I am finished,” … are these a few of your favorite
things?
Continue reading “Maybe Christmas … Perhaps … Means a Little Bit More”
Walking with the Lord – (Year B – Advent 4: 2 Samuel 7:1-11 & Luke 1:26-38)
I have been pondering and praying
over our world this week:
-
The whole “War on Christmas”
makes no sense if Christians desire to offer the Good News. There
are only 50 million seats in the churches of this country that
claims to have 250 million Christians (according to polls that
measure what people say, not what they do). Where would we all sit if all the "Christians" showed up to worship one Sunday? -
While our political leanings
about the war in Iraq may differ, can we at least celebrate an
election? As Christians can we join Rabbi Marc Gelman in
celebrating an act of freedom? (See “Why I Support the War in
Iraq” – December 16, 2005.
And by the way, if the elections do not go “our way” will we be
able to celebrate another nation’s decision?) -
I give thanks for those who
made it possible for 250 persons on Saturday and 280 persons on
Sunday to hear the Christmas message at the Family Christmas
Celebrations presented by our music ministry team. -
I think about the 350+ presents
that filled the lobby of our church before they were delivered
yesterday to 41 families yesterday. I think volunteers spending a
day painting a Habitat house in order to have it ready for
Christmas, sorting eggs and tossing 1 gallon cans of sweet potatoes
at the Food Bank, and a stalwart group preparing for a Mississippi
adventure in disaster relief.
Continue reading “Walking with the Lord – (Year B – Advent 4: 2 Samuel 7:1-11 & Luke 1:26-38)”
Anointed for Good News (Year B – Advent 3: Isaiah 61:1-4 & John 1:19-23)
In this season of preparation there is also trepidation. I was sitting at Panera Bread’s this week with a person whose life seemed to be falling apart even as they found moments of wisdom and insight. (By the way, I have met a church member every time I have gone there for a cup of coffee. So I may just adopt a corner table, get me a Wi-Fi internet tablet PC, and just camp out there). As we proclaim a “Merry Christmas,” or a “Happy Christmas” in the ancient words of Clement Moore’s poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” let us remember that Jesus came into the world to change a world gone mad. He came as LIGHT to those in darkness, as WAY to those straying from the path, as TRUTH to those trapped by a lie, as LIFE to the dying. Jesus came as Messiah for dispossessed people and his cousin John arrived to prepare the people for God’s decision to move into their neighborhood.
Continue reading “Anointed for Good News (Year B – Advent 3: Isaiah 61:1-4 & John 1:19-23)”
Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord (Year B – Advent 2: Isaiah 40:1-11 & Mark 1:1-8)
In 1971 John Michael Tebelak and Stephen Swartz introduced us to Godspell, a musical that they suggest is based on Matthew’s gospel, but falls more inline with Mark’s gospel. The musical begins, like Mark’s gospel, with a player gathering a crowd as he sings:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
A messenger goes before Christ (Mark 1:1-3):
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
"See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ "
Let’s turn to the text that launched Mark’s gospel and set the stage for one of Broadway’s longest running musicals.
Continue reading “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord (Year B – Advent 2: Isaiah 40:1-11 & Mark 1:1-8)”
Front Porch Reflections 
You must be logged in to post a comment.