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by geoffparker

Balance

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The thing that keeps sticking with me as I think about my work is the bizarre tension of my job around activity and reflection, motion and rest.

At one level, I’m a leader of an institution. The church is (both/and) an organization of its own / a collection of individuals that claim an identity partly around specific tasks, goals, actions. As a leader within the church… part of my job is to help try, do, accomplish various strategies and tasks of our life together. Doing isn’t bad, in and of itself.

At another level altogether, I am a leader called to invite individuals and groups into reflection, rest, and renewal. This seems like the harder part of the work now for most of the world and the church. We’re like all those other community organizations: strapped for cash, struggling to justify our existence to the largely apathetic culture around us. And so we do. Lots. 

I find most people in my life, both church and not, ordained and not… are exhausted. I’m getting troubled by watching the vast majority of clergy model behavior for the people they work with that mirrors this. We look run ragged. We are (no joke) one of–if not the–sickest professions running. We connect our self-worth with the success of programs, we run insane schedules. We do, often frantically, while so often failing to be still… just as we throw up our hands at our people’s rejection yet again of our invitation to stillness, reflection, prayer, quietness of mind and spirit. We insist at constant growth and inspiration in our own programs, while wondering why our communities have become terrified of experimentation and failure. Are we really surprised?

I try a lot more these days to think about how I will model a life that invites people into more balance. Because we’re all tired. And I want to work for the one who promises to give us rest.

So, sometimes I might just talk about good things in life that help me do that. Sometimes I might talk about tech that helps me do that. Mainly, I’ll just take time and write some. Because I need some balance, too.

by geoffparker

The Letting Go – Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Moth)

The Letting Go – Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Moth)

Great conversation starter about how we have changed our practices around death, and what that might mean for us. My theology is very directly opposed to death (as opposed to the sentiment that is often expressed that “death is just another beautiful part of life”), but that doesn’t mean I advocate hiding it from our sight. Rather, acknowledging, seeing, and naming death is important… so that we know why we seek an end to the suffering and pain of loss in that way.

by geoffparker

On the phone map-pocalypse.

So. I drive around a lot. I use GPS to get there. I’m an active pastor involved at all the levels of church in a state that is way bigger than it looks on Ye Olde Mercator Projection. I drive to random new locations often. I’ve been listening to my phone tell me where to go for years now. (My friends know her soothing voice as “Natasha.”)

And then new maps appeared on my phone of choice, and everyone lost their minds. I don’t need to link you; you’ve seen the New York Times before. You can get there. 

Let’s just say this: I’m unmoved by the furious uproar of people who have access to technology that let’s them talk into a tiny box and magically get directions read to them as they drive who have suddenly discovered that said technology occasionally places their favorite pizza place across the street. (Yes, I know, there are more glaring errors than that in Apple’s map data. There are more glaring errors than that in Google’s data as well. As people who have been getting electronic help getting to places all over the country for years can tell you, its a process to develop a trusted system. There’s no silver bullet, you double check to make sure you’re headed in the right directions… and then occasionally… gasp! You get lost. Remember getting lost? Remember how weird, and yet reassuring, it was when a stranger helped you get where you needed to go?)

But today I just appreciate the simple beauty of some of these things: Normally, when I get directions from my phone, it displays a route and gives me information about it, and it’s up to me to press a button to begin turn by turn navigation. Today I noticed that when I used my handy, safe, hands-free device to ask for directions, my phone sensed that it was in motion and just immediately started rolling along with me. It’s a tiny touch. Tiny. But it’s one second multiplied by thousands of users that drivers won’t be distracted. Won’t be hunting for a small button in a moving vehicle. And that’s a lot of seconds that drivers will be focused on doing what they should.

We’ll figure out where to drop the pin for your pizza place soon. But technology is getting better, and smarter, and safer. And that’s what I enjoyed today. 

by geoffparker

“Everyone worships something”

Usually I try to avoid posting the same thing to every type of media I have at my disposal. Nonetheless, rules are made to be broken, and so here you go. SLC and YDS alum and general source of awesomeness, Emily, published an excerpt from David Foster Wallace… here.

Sometimes I need to remember – even in the planning of worship – what the stakes are if we confuse what the true center of worship is really meant to be.

If you’re in NYC, seriously, why are you not already going to St. Lydia’s to hear Emily lead and preach, and to have fabulous community and food and song? Get on that, will you?

by geoffparker

Thought from the trenches. Generations.

Not a whole bunch to say, really. What I can think of today: I spend a lot of time talking to people about generational trends in churches, in faith, etc. The fact that my generation is so rarely in church communities, tends to make folk (sometimes very falsely) think that I have answers or insights to the problems between the young and young adult generations and the mainline church. Many times, I have no clue. (For one, my experience of adolescence is pretty far outside how anyone else experiences it.)

Monday I had lunch with almost all of my congregation who are over 90. What I can say from that is I was amazed by how loosely and lovingly they held the past… their own, and the church’s. That’s just what I want to linger with… how can we hold our generational identities – loosely? How can we be more fully accepting of the wonder of living out a church life amongst people so diverse? Someone wanted to talk to me about taking his horse to school the other day. ME. “Teh blog-o-faceyspace guy”. That’s an amazing amount of difference in one room working for understanding and presence… Anyway. I’m just not so certain my job is best served by all of the demographic slicing and dicing all the time. Sometimes, especially when we’re telling stories over lunch… we’re just folks.

by geoffparker

Carol Howard Merritt on the “New Adulthood”

http://tribalchurch.org/?p=1755

Yup. Coming up for new names for 20-somethings does very little change the pressures in their lives. And as someone who destroyed a large portion of my 20’s waiting for all of the bits of my life to indicate that I was now “an adult,” I really wish someone could have told me that what I was going through was not “failure to reach adulthood” but maybe, in fact, “the new adulthood.”

by geoffparker

Vitality or Threat?

An interesting interview between Reinhold Niebuhr and Mike Wallace from back in the day… I’m struck by the sense of existential threat that permeates their discussion. At one point, they discuss America’s current fear of either communist conquest or nuclear destruction.

Given the recent memories of the violence and evil of WWII, and the presence of this sense of continuing conflict, is it any wonder that churches were full at this time, and that participation in church was at its height? Such a great threat on the minds of so many would seem to be a pretty compelling reason to be in church. When we locate the “golden days” of American church in the 1950’s, are we white-washing the outside cultural influences that led to that period? It would be as if someone tried to attribute the increase of church-going in the months after September 11th to an inexplicable improvement in Sunday-schools during that period of time. Existential threat always leads to existential engagement, church programs rarely have anything to say to that.

My point isn’t to “debunk” these periods as important for the church, but rather to suggest that membership has always been a suspect way to measure vitality and success for church communities, and that to achieve vitality we should avoid dreaming up “golden days” that didn’t exist, and yet we long to “return” to, either in our culture or our churches. Churches (and other houses of faith) are indeed a great place to ask questions as a community and a people when we face existential threats… but I think true vitality comes when we help each other face the myriad tiny threats and rewards of life, as well, and its here that I think we have to engage our future, our imagination, and our energy.