Hiding from Death

Recently I was on a Ravelry chat board that was talking not about over-protective parents, but over-protective schools that want to take words such disease, divorce and birthday banned from standardized test because the words might offend or bring up painful memories.  This lead to various people discussing how either disease and death has been hidden from children by parents and the various repercussions.

And it is easy to knock parents who want to hid death from their kids - the ones who tell them that their dog ran away or that grandpa has gone away for awhile. But really these parents hid death out of love.  They fear that their children won't completely understand or that they will ask questions that they are not able to answer.  And because they love their children, they don't want them to hurt, and so they tell lies and half-truths.

But we can't knock these parents and not see it also in ourselves. This is Holy Week, the week when we walk with Jesus towards the cross.  Yesterday in worship we heard not just of the day when Jesus was celebrated as he came into Jerusalem but also we heard the entire passion narrative as Jesus was anointed before his death, had his last meal with his friends, was betrayed, arrested, put on trial, denied, sentenced to death, died and was buried.  We read the entire passion because many people do not come to the other worship services this week and therefore go straight from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection and they miss hearing about his death, which is where the gospel really lies.

I love Maundy Thursday and Good Friday worship services.  I have often thought that you really can't celebrate Easter unless you have first shared in Jesus' last meal and witness his death.  Yes they are full of sorrow, yes sometimes there are tears.  These are emotions that we may not want to bear witness to, but they are part of the human story, they are part of the emotion spectrum that we as human have been given. And yet I don't know of a single congregation that has double, triple or quadruple the attendance on Palm Sunday or Easter than they will have on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday combined.  Because we want to hid from death, just like those parents who do not tell their children about death.

We can't live Sunday to Sunday - the parade to the empty tomb.  We would be missing an important part to the story.


The story is not that Jesus was loved by the people of Jerusalem and a week later something miraculous happen as a tomb was empty.


The story is that Jesus was loved by the people of Jerusalem, who quickly changed their ways as even one of Jesus' closest friends betrayed him and handed him over to authorities.  Once arrested Jesus was put on trial and the crowds who just a few days before hailed him as king were now shouting for his death.  Jesus then was put to death on a cross and his body was buried as those friends and family were left to celebrate one of the holiest days of the year without the one they loved.

But that is not were the story ends.  Jesus overcame death. Jesus rose from the death.  His body was not there where they had laid him.  He was alive again.

We try to hid death, but we can't.  Eventually children will learn the truth about their dog or grandpa and they might feel betrayed.  Or ideas of zombies or the un-dead develop, but we know those are just stories.  We can however celebrate death, and more importantly celebrate that death has no power over Jesus.  We can realize that death does happen, that regardless of who we are, someday we will die, along with our loved ones and our pets.  Even Jesus died!

But that is not the end of the story, it is just the beginning.

Preaching Changes

You may have noticed that my blog has been quiet of late.  For some reason (don't know why) I just have not posted the Monday Morning Church emails.  And Sermons have been absent.  Well I can explain the sermons more - I haven't been writing anything for them.

Of late I have been not using manuscripts at all for my preaching.  This has lead to a more natural conversation in our sermons that Bethlehem creates together as we reflect on the readings.  Therefore I don't quite feel right taking not just my thoughts but the congregations and posting their reflections on my blog on Sunday afternoon or Monday.

I did want to tell you about this past Sunday.  To me worship felt joyless - I just wasn't feeling it and I know I was grumbling throughout the later half of worship.  The sermon was on John 3:14-21 and I asked "Are you saved?" and "What does it mean to be saved?" And while the sermon overall went okay, I thought I wasn't truly able to express what I wanted to express (maybe if I had written a manuscript that could have been done better).  And for some reason I left worship in a bad mood.

But after worship one teenager posted John 3:16 (the full verse not just the "address") on his facebook wall.  And then on Sunday one member emailed me with some further thoughts and questions about the sermon including wondering if baptism, an act of salvation, therefore counts as salvation through works since it is a work that we do in order to receive salvation.  Then I emailed another member to answer a question he asked towards the end of the sermon that I did not have time to answer adequately so I left it hanging: "Do you have to believe in order to go to heaven?"  That lead to a great email exchange as well.

So here I was Sunday afternoon feeling horrible about how worship and my sermon went and by Monday afternoon I had done a 180 on that experience after having some follow through conversations.

I know conversational sermons are not for everyone.  Some people have expressed to me that they want to hear from me and not have a discussion.  And I'm trying to find that balance of allowing people to express their thoughts and opinions on the texts and topic without the conversation veering way off or my voice, as someone who has spent part of the week reading about and reflecting on these texts, getting lost.  However I do strongly believe that when given the chance to participate, people are more likely to internalize the sermon and related it to their everyday life so I want to honor that people have the need and longing to participate in their faith.

Searching For Feedback

For me the biggest downside of being primarily solo staff (for the most part I only see our music director on Sundays), is that I really enjoy and appreciate brainstorming and feedback and I feel like I don't get them as much as I should or I'm used to.  

At my internship and the year following when I worked as a youth minister, the music director and the Children's Ed director and I worked together really well and were able to come up with some wonderful ministry ideas through brainstorming and give each other honest feedback that was both critical and helpful.  And I really miss having a built in network for brainstorming ministry and receiving feedback.

I have found some ways to brainstorm in my current call: I have a few people in the congregation I can get together with for a cup of coffee on occasion and think out loud on different ideas; I often come to the worship committee with ideas and from there we are able to expand upon those ideas; in person and through Facebook and the internet I have connected to other clergy to learn and share ideas with (which the good ideas I promptly steal and adapt for Bethlehem). 

However I'm still missing good feedback.  

Now I often received feedback, but it is not good feedback and by that I don't mean that I don't like what the person has to say.  Instead the feedback is vague, and non-specific: "That was such a lovely worship service." - well that is great, but what can I do to make you experience this feeling again?  "Loved the sermon." - did you like the topic, the delivery or were you just listening more today than most days.  (To be fair, I do love those comments and they do make my heart sing, but they are not helpful a few days later when I preparing for the next week's worship or sermon.)  To me good feedback is prompt, critical and detailed. 

Prompt does not mean immediate.  I don't need to know the person's thoughts or opinions on a worship service, sermon or event before they leave the building - in fact in many ways, waiting a few days is better because it allows you to formulate your thoughts and reflect on things better.  But waiting a few weeks to bring up something that I said doing worship is not helpful because well often by then I have forgotten what I have said or done (not that I remember every word I've said during worship by the time worship is over).  

It is also critical.  I really want to hear "I didn't like it when..." because if I only hear positive thought it makes me keep doing what I'm doing.  That doesn't mean tear my heart out by telling me that I can't do anything right, but be honest about what you don't like.  2 Christmases ago when we ordered white poinsettias to go with all the white Christmas decorations we (the worship committee) heard for multiple people that while they liked the white decorations more, they prefer the red poinsettias, we got red ones this past Christmas. Had we just heard about how much people loved the white decorations, we would have ordered white poinsettias again. People can be critical but nice about and I promise I will try to respond to those criticisms nicely as well - often for the betterment of everyone.

Thirdly feedback is also detailed.  As I stated earlier, while the comment "it was a wonderful worship service" is great to hear as you people are leaving worship, it is not helpful when it comes to planning the next worship service.  Saying things like "I really enjoyed how we did the prayers today." or "I'm not sure how I feel about moving the sharing of the peace." are specific that I know which elements to keep, change, switch back to the way they were, or at least what others are struggling with so I can be sensitive to those changes in the future.  

So why am I writing all this?  Well there have been a lot of changes are Bethlehem lately and I often feel like I don't get feedback even when I specifically ask for it.  

For the past few months we have been having more conversational sermons and for the most part I love them and the feedback I have received has been positive.  But it has also been vague and has mainly come from the more extroverted (and therefore  more likely to talk during the sermons) parishioners.  Then there are sermon conversations like this pass week where I felt like I was pulling teeth and I when I asked in my Monday Morning Church email what would make this better, I have received no response - so now I'm fearful that this week we will have yet another pulling teeth sermon conversation but I will not be able to tell you what I did differently to make this happen. 

We have also changed the prayers.  A few weeks ago the sermon was about prayer and I asked people to write their prayers on note cards that were in the bulletins and those were our prayers that day.  It went wonderfully and I heard great feedback about that.  Well now we have adapted our prayers so we still ask for those prayer cards and have the written petitions, but I have not gotten any response if people like that or now.  So I'm just continuing doing what we are are doing, unaware if people love it, hate it, or are indifferent. 

And more changes are coming.  In the fall we will be moving to the Narrative Lectionary.  This means there will only be one slightly longer reading each week, instead of 4.  We will also no longer have the scripture readings printed in a bulletin insert each week but encourage people to bring their bibles with them. I know there are some concerns and worries about this transition but for the most part those concerns are not coming to me so I really don't know if it is about having 1 reading instead of 4, of not having things easily printed in front of them, or are there deeper concerns about looking like a fool because the person doesn't know how to look things up in the bible. 

So I'm searching for feedback, I'm longing for feedback.  What are your thoughts? What are your concerns?  What do you like? What do you dislike? What made your heart sing? What fills you with dread? If you were in charge what would you change?