Rectors (Pastors): The Odds are Against You!

by Gary Gilbertson

The Church expects her parish clergy to be successful in leading congregations that grow spiritually, numerically and financially: congregations whose servant ministry reaches near and far.  Clergy that are successful are rewarded with additional opportunities as rector or pastor:  unsuccessful clergy are fired, forced to resign or encouraged to seek a vocational change.  Its the American way, its the Episcopal Church way to track growth or decline in:  (1) active membership, (2) average Sunday attendance, and (3) income.

So each year we turn out tons of new clergy - of all ages - some with seminary degrees or increasingly the home-schooled who are seeking a "call" so they can be successful (employed.)  But!  Mainline Christian congregations are in decline; that's a fact.  There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy positions each year.  In the American Episcopal Church over 40% of our 6,736 congregations are not able to have full-time clergy.  Less than 2,500 of our congregations provide for a single full-time rector; but wait - more than half those congregations are in decline.

The chances of a declining congregations being turned around is dismal.  Most church researchers, like the Barna Group, state that trying to revitalize a declining church is probably a wasted effort; the death of that church is usually unavoidable.  Clergy who don't value being recognized as successful leaders and who are unconcerned about their next position are well suited to these 3500+ congregations in the Episcopal Church or in a similar pastorate in their own communion.

Parish clergy, do you want to improve the odds?  Then discern carefully where God is calling you.  Try to avoid congregations on prolonged plateaus.  It may be helpful to understand some of the many factors that destroy a congregation's momentum:  (1) inadequate prior leadership and management, (2) demographic changes, (3) capital campaigns and building costs, and (4) judicatory interference and incompetence.  These problems are often compounded by a membership that is too self-absorbed and resistant to change.

Again the question, "Parish clergy, do you want to improve the odds?"  First, you must be a strong leader.  Barna's studies found that churches that "call" caretakers, healers, managers, administrators, teachers or consensus builders fail to gain ground.  Good intentions coupled with the title of Pastor or Rector is not enough.  Barna states, "toughness is requisite for leadership in making decisions that disturb the status quo but benefit the body."  The point is that leadership is not about being loved by everybody.  It is doing what is best for the parish even though it may stir up some complaints or disturb tranquil settings.

Another way to improve your leadership odds is to be filled with energy and enthusiasm plus a commitment to work hard.  Being a person of prayer who can share a quality sermon also raises the odds. Enlist a core group that will assist, support, and be honest with you.  Expect to be a workaholic rather than getting comfortable on cruise-control.

Unfortunately, many of us have friends that failed to beat the odds.



The NRA and Episcopal Church

As a boy in Stafford, KS, learning how to shoot a rifle was a part of growing up. I got proficient with a 22 caliber single shot rifle and could down a rabbit at a good distance. In Scout Camp, we got excellent instruction using NRA materials and learned the golden rule of shooting: Never raise your gun unless you intend to shoot. So with more practice, I could raise my rifle and put five bullets into a nickel size bull’s eye at fifty feet. It was the only sport I was ever much good at. However having become a sharpshooter, I got immediately bored with the activity and never pursued shooting again nor did I want to kill rabbits anymore after also wounding a few, hearing them scream and clubbing them to death. Yes, I figured out that putting bullets into live objects was in fact about killing.

About the same time at twelve years old, I fell in love with the Episcopal Church on one visit to a little chapel in Larned, KS where the Shahan’s took me to worship while my brother was in the hospital there to have his tonsils out. The priest actually asked me to help serve, an exotic activity for a Methodist kid but one who had already kind of liked taking Wesley’s communion twice a year.  The priest was a very nice man serving in a pretty chapel with a small congregation of eccentric Episcopalians on the prairie. I fell in love with it. When we moved to Oklahoma City three years later, first my Dad and I attended St. James in Capitol Hill; then Mom and Bruce followed. By that time guns were hardly even a memory as I had found a great new life and the meaning of life. I felt like I was really growing up.

Well fifty years have passed. The NRA has more members by about a third than there are Episcopalians. It has grown like crazy and has lots of money to do public relations and publicity. The NRA can aim and shoot so well as to slay the popular will for background checks and get our whole federal legislative process bent their way. That is impressive, this organization so full of mission energy that they can aim at and kill any opposition. Don’t point at anything you do not intend to shoot: a evangelical mission statement that they make work.

Well five decades have come and gone. In 1963, the Episcopal Church was about the size the NRA is now in membership. We were full of mission zeal and record breaking confirmation classes, fifty one year at St. James in Oklahoma City with our zany Detroit Irish priest, Fr. Wellwood, who had run with Jesse Owens for the Olympics.  At that time there were a lot of wild priests who had chosen the Church over all sorts of other fascinating potential first careers. . . . That was the time of global mission called Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence, liberating colonial Anglicans into new national churches from which Anglicanism has exploded in the southern hemisphere. That lead to the last spurt of growth with Venture in Mission, directly an outgrowth of MRI, the largest single mission funding in North American Church history.

About thirty years ago, the tide went out in the Episcopal Church. The spiritual climate change brought in a new wind on the land, one where guns get more mission power than our take on New Life. . .  Wonder what happened. . . .

Rector (Pastor): You're Fired!!

I get really angry when I hear once again about a priest that has been forced out of his parish involuntarily. I heard recently that 30% of Episcopal congregations have done this.  True, a few clergy are justifiably terminated because of immorality, but the vast majority of them are the result of a small or large group of lay antagonists who strike out at the priest in a very mean and terribly nasty manner.  Conflict Resolution experts call this a level five or six conflict where the only goal is to "kill" the priest.  Often these mean folks are found on the vestry and key leadership positions.  When they go after the priest, they go for the jugular and there is nothing the priest can do about it.

When this kind of conflict is brewing, it is tempting for some clergy to strive for appeasement.  I know one priest who met with his enemies, listened to them and then implemented some of their demands.  Of course this did not work.  When the mean people go for the jugular vein, there is nothing you can do to satisfy them.  This priest resigned into retirement, but he held on to his destructive feelings and they affected his next ministry as a priest-in-charge.  So if you are ever in this position, it is best to deal with your left over emotions either before or during the early months of a new assignment.

Most capable priests carry into their ministry a solid set of leadership skills.  Sometimes a particular set of leadership skills is exactly what a parish needs.  However, some unjustly terminated clergy report that they were fired because they demonstrated exactly the right leadership skills.  It is bitterly ironic when congregations ask for or need a particular set of skills, but when they are used within the context of ordained ministry, the antagonists not only reject them, but wail loudly that Father or Mother so and so was "never a good fit."

The upshot is that the priest and his family are devastated.  They become depressed and angry. They have left over feelings of resentment and they feel like failures.  They may develop serious physical and mental health issues.  Families suffer.  Sometimes serious marital problems surface.  Most suffer severe financial losses and many do not get a decent severance package.  Where do they go?  What do they do?  In my view every priest should identify their transferable skills early on and be ready to bail out into a non-church job if necessary.

You'd think that bishops would help.  But this is usually not the case.  Many will sit on the fence while the priest is under attack.  I've known some that sided with the lay antagonists.  In this case the Bishop thinks that if he or she sides with the nasty folks, he or she is taking the winner's side.  The bishop is thus afraid of conflict and afraid of losing money. Another thing is that bishops cannot be true pastors to their clergy.  They have an administrative and canonical itch to manage the diocese, and that means getting all the money they can through the apportionment.  If this means putting a priest on the chopping block, so be it.

Toxic congregations don't change much over the years.  They have systemic issues that affect generations of clergy and thus rightly deserve the name "priest killers."  If you google "toxic congregations," you will find various denominational and academic studies about them, but not much about how they should be handled.  I believe that most congregational intervention programs, including parish consultants and interim ministries don't often work and thereby fail to dent the inherent toxic systems.  Therefore the best work of the church is to foster an intervention program that assists the clergy person and their families who have been terminated.

In Congregational Seasons, William Doubleday suggests that the Church Pension Fund and CREDO "should be encouraged to begin a serious initiative to assist the growing number of clergy in this category."  I would add to this partnership the Executive Council, The Episcopal Church Foundation and all dioceses.  Together they could produce a ministry to unjustly terminated clergy and their families that will assist them spiritually, mentally, physically and financially.  We need a well planned and executed aftercare program that provides a safety net for our brothers and sisters who are devastated by a forced termination.

Last, please take the poll we set up on clergy firings and let us know what you think.

The Bishop Speaks of The Church Reborn

Decade after decade we go on trying to perfect the church or perhaps trying to protect the church. Decade after decade, we find various people caught up in all kinds of movements which will ensure the church you find in the Yellow Pages is the Real Church, the True Church.

If right thinking were all it took to get the Gospel proclaimed to the world, that would have been discovered years ago. It is about right action, not right thinking.

The task of the church and its clergy in not to tell you what to think. It is rather to teach you how to think theologically – how to think with the heart of Christ.

The responsibility of the church is to help you develop an informed conscience so you may go about the task of right action in your life. This informed conscience is not a single thing. It is a product of the Anglican sources of authority – Scripture, Tradition and Reason. It is frighteningly personal and individual, and it has great consequences.

The church is not about being mad, all of the empirical evidence to the contrary not withstanding. It is not about getting your needs met or making you happy – or mad for that matter. It is about one thing. It is about what we call The Great Commission.

Matthew 28:19-20. (From The Message for clear understanding) "God authorized and commanded me to commission you:  Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you.  I will be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age."

Jesus said: Teach them to do as I have commanded you. This carries with it the implication that you are already obedient and that you can teach what you already do.

This is not that hard to understand. His command to the disciples, to you and to me is direct, clear and immediate. His command is that we love one another.

The Scripture contains many ways of applying the principle of love to life. The Gospels are filled with them. We need to be filled with that command so that it is indisputable in the way we live our lives.

Hear This! It is God's church. It is not your church or my church. It is God's church and it is in disrepair. It is always in disrepair. It has always been in disrepair. You and I are are the church. We are in disrepair. We have always been in disrepair.

This is about asking us to be reborn. It will be untidy. We will not all agree on the process or the outcomes, but we are all called to a life of progressive conversion. It is not something to accomplish and put away. It is a call to your whole life for all of your life.

There is Hope. You know what to do. Let us begin – again. Amen.

A Journey of Hope and Christian Spiritual Agnosticism

Donald J. Moore SJ in his work Martin Buber, Prophet of Religious Secularism draws attention to a topic most applicable to these postmodern days, i.e. the history of Christian agnosticism.

Christian agnosticism is rooted ultimately in the incomprehensibility of God. The fourth century heretic Eunomius, similar to present day New Thought pantheism, did not accept this state of incomprehensibility, rather he held, “God does not know his own being any better than we do.” He held that the divine essence is no more manifest to God “than it is to us.” It is a denial of transcendent holiness and the total otherness of God.

Theologians of the Church responded quickly. Basil wrote that an understanding of God is beyond the comprehension of human beings. Faith leads us to an understanding that God is, not what God is. Gregory of Nyssa wrote in his Contra Eunomium that God is beyond name and is ineffable and unspeakable. John Chrysostom most clearly defines Christian agnosticism, “We know God is, but we are ignorant about what God is.” God remains always, “ineffable, unintelligible, invisible, and incomprehensible, beyond the power of human language.”

Later Thomas Aquinas restates the theological tradition of incomprehensibility, “One thing about God remains completely unknown in this life, namely what God is.” The patristic period confronted the paradox of speaking about God established a foundation for Aquinas’ teaching of the analogy of being. It is the underpinning for the well known triplex via, the movement from affirmation through negation to eminence.

The triplex means that I affirm God is good. I deny that God is good like creatures. Then with a sense of divine transcendence, I am conscious, as I affirm and deny that God is good in a mode of being that is infinite and ultimately incomprehensible.

As I read Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, it was evident that I was encountering the spirituality of an agnostic saint. We feel her painful spiritual agnosticism as she writes to her spiritual director, “Now Father-since 49 or 50- this terrible sense of loss-this untold darkness-this loneliness-this continual longing for God-which gives me that pain deep down in my heart-Darkness is such that I really do not see-neither with my mind nor with my reason-The place of God in my soul is blank-There is no God in me.”

In her spiritual journey her spiritual directors counsel her on the spirituality of the dark night of the soul and the via negative. In a sense, this advice is based on spiritual perspectives that are really expressions of a Christian agnostic spirituality where we enter into the darkness of an incomprehensible mystery.

It is in the mystery of the darkness, the nothingness and the hidden God where Mother Teresa finds Jesus, “I have nothing to say, but that I wonder at His great humility and my smallness-nothingness-I believe this is where Jesus and I meet-he is everything to me-and I-His own little one-so helpless so empty so small.”

When I am in spiritual conversations with fellow priest and leading small group conversations on spirituality, everyone seems to identify quickly with the topic of being in and out of periods of spiritual agnosticism. It just seems to make sense that these days more than ever we have this triplex where we pursue God, we touch God, and we lose God. Then we start again, but each time we touch we discover a reality that is deeper and more transcendent. As days pass and the pursuit continues, we realize the mystery has been the existential pursuit of the God who appears and then hides.

A William McVey

Terrorists are Bullies and Bullies are Terrorists.

As if you didn’t know, the definition of terrorism is, “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an on organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or government, often for ideological or political reasons.”  The definition of bullying is, “the physical or verbal abuse, repeated over time, and involving a power imbalance.”  Not much difference!  Terrorists are bullies and bullies are terrorists.  The bomb-makers in Boston, a basketball coach at Rutgers, or a rogue nation rattling a nuclear sword, all fit the definitions.  Countless news stories, editorials, speeches, and sermons have been and will be devoted to these tragic and devastating behaviors.

In light of all of the above it might seem trivial to highlight similar behaviors in the Church.  Nevertheless, this blog holds up hope for the future of the Episcopal Church by facilitating consideration and discussion of issues that must be addressed if we are to go forward.  It is sad, but we need to be honest – the Church is also afflicted by bullies.

Congregants (parishioners) go beyond the realm of reasonableness when they threaten the rector (pastor) with stopping their pledge, which is common, to lying about the professional and personal life of the clergy.  It is reported in several denominations, including our own, that more than one-third of all clergy moves are the result of being fired or forced out by “lay-popes;” which is just another name for a bully.  More then a few senior wardens have placed a severance check and a resignation letter in front of a rector.  “Sign this or we’ll fire you and see to it you will never be employed in a parish again.”  One clergyperson report a huge symbol burned into his front lawn as a way to break his spirit.  Clergy have been sued as a way to force a resignation.  And even when clergy move it has been documented that “clergy-killers” have traveled across the country to poison-the-well in the new place.

On the other hand, clergy can also be abusive, especially toward staff, paid and unpaid.  Many an Altar Guild has experienced ugly behavior by an ordained person in the Sacristy.  Assistant clergy have been publicly ridiculed in order to “keep them in their place.”  Some bishops are unscrupulous in their taking advantage of the ‘imbalance of power’ that permits ending continued employment for rectors that think independently. 

In strategic terms “Anti-Terrorism” is the holistic, defensive, approach to terrorism which seeks to understand the causes and drivers of terrorism. Every major university has such a class by one name or another.

“Counter-Terrorism” is the offensive pursuit, prosecution and negation of terrorist activity.  Not so many schools teach this. 

Perhaps it is time as individuals, congregations, schools, communities, and nations to actively counter those who unlawfully use or threatened use of force or violence in our homes, our schools, our churches, and in the world at-large.  How?  Let the discussion begin.

Rector@garygilbertson.org

Episcopal Burlesque

Recently I was sent a smartphone camera image from a Maundy Thursday Liturgy. In a provocative scarlet hue, created, I suppose, by a felicitous complex of light, vestment fabrics and tented space, . . . there in this near tangible haze was a casual grouping of our clergy. Given the gauzy hue of the iPhone image, the ambiance appeared to be that of a final glowing moment of release from ceremonial intensity, the Episcopal witness to a satisfactory finish or in liturgy language, Dismissal. In fact, our prelates had just finished washing the feet of some clients from a local medical clinic for indigent folk. The obvious stand out clergy was a bishop arrayed in a deluxe exquisitely fitted cassock with purple cord trim and topped off with a fine draping cape. He had finished himself off with a fine  tiptop, the biretta cap, a playful gesture of traditional  masculine cleric form. From my alien perspective, this most elegant bishop compared superlatively and in fact in superior array to Pope Francis, himself earlier in proximity to and washing some young Italian ladies’ feet at a Rome prison. (Perhaps someday as a gesture of humility, he will invite them to his papal apartment for good wine to view his art collection.)

I could not help but wonder what it must have been like and tried to put myself in the shoeless feet of a clinic client on Maundy Thursday as our  senior prelates explained and conducted this most eccentric ancient Christian rite of feet washing. As I became immersed in my fantasy, I wondered, “Well, okay, do I get a little something for this. . . whatever it is?” Or, “Well, I guess, okay, if it makes ‘em happy and I still get to get my teeth cleaned. .”   And then, “I know what they told me, but what the hell is this and guess I oughta be nice!” “Washing my feet, . .  really!? Have at it.” “What the hell is he doing in that outfit?”

In another foot play narrative, a friend of mine went to a Eucharist where the priest preached about the girl who lathed Jesus’ feet with some nard, the biblical stuff, the ointment, the expensive oil. (Check out references in Wikipedia; my cats go crazy for it. . . ) Anyway, this girl gets all devotional, so the story goes, and lathers up Jesus’s feet in front of God and everybody at the dinner party. (Personally I just have no reference for this whole thing but have seen stuff on television in dance bar scenes that give me some idea. . . ) The preacher stated that the big deal was the young woman had to finance her nard purchase by dipping into her dowry. Well, could I see some kid trying to get money out of a trust fund for nard?  Then, I thought, well, the dowry is supposed to go to the guy she is to marry not herl! Now how was she going to go to the trustee, daddy, I would think, get permission to nard up Jesus and still have a little something to finance the wedding contract?

Now I gotta tell you, the preacher has a PhD, really. . . . The old fashioned name for this sort of biblical analysis of putting interpretation into the biblical text for what you want to get out is eisegesis. So here we get a MDiv/PhD, telling a story which is really his weird thing and calling it,  “Preaching The Gospel.”  Well, it is sort of sexy and fun but, well, it ain’t Bible exposition. . .

Back to feet washing. . . You know, it is just plain weird in today’s world. When the Church does it,  whether with Pope, pomp or party time in ritual and homily, washing folks’ feet, well, unless you are too sick to bathe yourself, it’s just weird. . . unless you get it done, drunk in a sailor’s bar. . .  

Doubting Thomas

This Sunday I have a rare opportunity to preach.  Since I don't do any supply at this point in my retirement, it is a privilege when my Rector asks me to do the homily. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and submit a shortened version as a blog.

If you have an employee who is always an underachiever, and then one day in a flare of grandiosity the person declares, "from now on out I am going to perform perfectly with 100% productivity," you probably would say, "I'll believe it when I see it." 

"I'll believe it when I see it."  Where did this phrase come from?  Perhaps this notion had is origin in the 17th century when Kepler looked around and discovered that the planets moved around the sun.  Maybe it was Galileo who discovered the telescope in the 16th century.  Or maybe it was Sir Issac Newton who in the 18th century looked at an apple falling from a tree and discovered the law of gravity.  Maybe it came from Charles Darwin who looked at the species in the Galapagos Islands and developed the theory of evolution.  Compositely it was probably all of these and many more who combined to develop the scientific method.

Seeing is believing.  To some extent we are all skeptics.  We like to know what we are getting into.  We are children of the scientific revolution and we often see our world apart from God.  We tend to separate God from life when we engage the everyday activities of commerce, politics, economics, society, marriage and family.  We look around and we make up our minds, even when we are hunting for a church.

It was really no different when the disciples gathered after Jesus resurrection.  When he walked into the room he showed them his hands and his side.  Thomas wasn't there, so when the other disciples told him that they had "seen the Lord," he simply stated in other words that he would "believe it when he saw it."  Thomas the skeptic had to see with his own eyes that it was the risen Lord.  A week later when Thomas put his finger in Jesus' hands and side, he answered, "My Lord and my God!"

For the religious seeker, the skepticism we universally possess can only take us so far.  Ultimately it is a dead end.  So even though none of us as had the privilege of seeing the historic Jesus, some of us believe anyway.  This is what is known as faith.  We believe that Jesus died for us and was raised from the dead as means by which we are reconciled, or made right with God.  We believe this and confirm it whenever we worship and witness to the power of the risen Lord in our lives.

We believe because we have made the spiritual connection between Christ and the world.  By this I mean that we have faith that Christ is embedded in us in our birth, in our life experiences, in our worship; in the very warp and woof of our flesh.  We believe that the risen Lord dwells not only in the cosmic order, but in the plants and the fishes and the animals and deep within the human soul.  This does not come to us in the scientific method.  It comes to us when the Christ who is mythically "up there" becomes the Christ who dwells in us and lives with us intimately every day in every way.  The Christ whom we see as "up there" becomes the Christ who dwells in us every minute of our waking and sleeping life.  This is why we proclaim "alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia"

The Bishop Speaks: Easter - Who is Welcome?

It has been an issue for many clergy (at least the honest ones) to look out on Easter morning and see the faces of people they have rarely or never seen. Who are these people? Why will they not be here next Sunday? It is nice to have a full church, but why just on this Sunday? Is it their new clothes? Is it because they have a church standard which requires them to attend twice per year? Is it because God or the resurrection story has somehow touched them and they just felt they had to be there?

What ever the reason, these folks are there. Now arises the real questions. What do we do with them? How do we treat them? Will they return? Does it matter? Are they welcome?

Here is how many Episcopal churches respond. At a point before the beginning of the consecration of the elements at the altar a priest will say something like this: “The Episcopal Church is an open communion church. All baptized persons are welcome to receive communion at this altar.” (Then follows a commentary on how to hold your hands to receive the host/bread, how to receive the chalice, and how to conduct yourself if you want to come forward for a blessing).

I just want to scream at this point. I look at the program for Good Friday and there it is in print, right after the Lord's Prayer, BCP, Page 364. “All baptized Christians are now invited to receive Holy Communion.”

What are we doing? What kind of place is our church? We welcome people who are visiting. We tell them we are glad to have them with us. We don't care if they came with a friend, because they know a member, because they say an ad in the paper, because they felt a message from the Holy Spirit, or if they just wondered in from the street. We welcome them and ask them to fill out a card in the pew and give us their name and a way we might be in touch with them and really welcome them.

HOWEVER, when it comes time for communion – only the baptized are invited to the altar.

What are we telling people who find their way in, feel a warm welcome, and then, at the big moment, we say, “Not so fast there, newcomer.”

Is that what we want? Let us stop this. Everyone is welcome at the table. This is not our table. It is God's table.

In the past few months, I have heard two priests say this in the liturgy. Once at a funeral and once at the blessing of a couple. These were special times.

I thought perhaps we were getting better. Alas, it has not been heard since by me.

It is my belief that every celebration is a special time, but I have been disappointed before. I, a baptized person, have been in churches where I was not welcome at the altar and it felt very bad. There was a sense that whatever God I knew, it was not enough to take communion in that place. It is a terrible feeling to be in a church and to be thought of as unwelcome at the altar. I do not wish that on anyone from any church or from no church. Our God is larger than that.

The issue is really about us and how we wish to be a welcoming community. This is not yesteryear. It is now and it is us.

Please, let us be more Christ like. Happy Easter to all.

A Christian Spirituality of Person

By A William McVey

            For the last five years, I have been sharing somewhat structured conversations with spiritual seekers. They have come to these sessions because of my interest in a dialogue between Christian spirituality and Zen. Note, it is a dialogue with Zen mainly as a method of meditation compatible with a Christian theology of Via Negativa.

            Some of these seekers describe themselves in terms such as, “used to be religious, I am spiritual, but not interested in religion; I would like to be part of a spiritual group.” I explain that I will present my practice of Zen, especially Zen meditation known as Zazen. During these conversations, I will share how this practice has impacted my approach to prayer, meditation, spiritual mindfulness and a living a life of loving compassion in Christ.

            I do notice that backs seem to stiffen at the idea that we might talk about Jesus. I realize that we hit the often present “seeker inoculation point.” In the post-modern Western culture, people have not only rejected Christianity, they have immunized themselves against the idea. Furthermore, I am sad to say in many cases even at the name of Jesus.

            Yet, I pray and stay cool, but it is painful. When we finish the Zen part, I ask if they would like to start another conversation to explore various approaches to spirituality. I explain to them that I am an Episcopalian, and we follow a method of the “Via Media”. Simply, it means we love to explore and even go to extremes in loving and sometimes difficult probing conversations. We are a people who hold together by means of a loving consensus. They like that approach and the conversations begin, but there comes a moment when it gets tense. It is the moment when I present what I hold as the foundation of a Christian Spirituality of Person.

            I show an image of Michelangelo’s painting behind the altar in the Sistine chapel. I describe how commanding it is to stand in the chapel and experience the painting. It is the huge figure of God, the creator coming from the heavens and touching Adam, the man. The creator touches man. The creator touches his creatures and his creation and life is given. It is the image of the Absolute, Transcendent, and Sovereign Creator whose out stretched finger brings life in the touch and person comes into being.

            It is now that the seeker conversation becomes serious and some backs begin to stiffen even more. It becomes apparent that postmodern seekers are more comfortable with pantheistic and panentheistic spirituality. In this type of spirituality, yes even the panentheism types, God is All and His being is defined by the All. Everything natural is pervaded by the divinity. God is in the natural. God is natural. He is also beyond the natural, but He has somehow limited Himself to the natural.

            In the Sistine image, we learn that God touched us, and we became persons. We are not material beings. We are not a combination of the material and the spiritual. We are persons. God touched and bestowed upon on us the faculties knowing and feeling so that we might do the will of the creator. In a pantheistic style of spirituality, there is really no issue of will because the blending of the spiritual and the material into the universal All Minding must happen. Indeed, we just have to become conscious of our god-like nature. There is no issue of free will; it is all spiritual determinism.

             It is different with Christian spirituality where humans are the highest expression of God’s creation. Is it our ability to blend into the harmony of the universe? No, we, having been touched by the creator, and we have a much higher destiny because we are called on earth to hear and do God’s will.

The contemporary Christian philosopher Erazim Kohak writes, “A person is a being who meets you as a Thou, not just a “you,” opening himself to you, both offering and claiming respect. In the encounter of persons, categories of respect-moral categories-are in order. Not simply categories of purpose; purpose can also be mechanical and pointless. Nor categories of causality. Rather, it is the categories of respect, of good and evil, of right and wrong that govern the encounter of persons.” (The Embers and the Stars, A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Moral Sense Of Nature P.122)

            During Holy Week, we encounter a God who comes as a person and dies on the cross. The night before his death, in agony Jesus goes to the garden to pray with weak persons who fall asleep. I have thought this Lent perhaps the real agony for Jesus is the awareness that his disciples cannot handle the image of a weak God.

            It seems to me that a pantheistic and/or panentheistic God of force and moving energy appears much more powerful to a scientific-technical age.  A God we see in the here and now blending the spiritual and the material into a  force of the universe is more pleasing than the image of a weak person dying on the cross doing the will of the Father.

             I end here on Holy Week because we have come to the essence of a person based Christian spirituality. We are only weak persons who have become strong by way of the cross and resurrection and the Christ of faith.

Lift High the Cross!    He is Risen!