A new year, and an annual reminder that our God is a god of renewal and new beginnings; auld lang syne, by-gones being by-gones and all that. Of course we are a people of herky-jerky false starts. We dream of things being different. We begin well, with every intention, and more often than not, slide back into the old habits we were meaning to change. Habits are very difficult to overcome for sure. The
more deeply ingrained the habit, the more difficult in the conquering.
I don’t know about you, but it is often the habits I am most in need of changing that I am least public about in my commitments. I want something to be different perhaps, but have too little faith in my ability to make consistent change. I generally make my New Year’s resolutions in private so as to avoid the incumbent humiliation when I fail. Do you ever do that? The prospect of failure can often terrorize the attempt to make change. We also live in a world of such instantaneous communication that the digital video of our failure is often available on Youtube before we have started dusting ourselves off. It hardly seems fair, and certainly does nothing to encourage
our convictions.
Still, one potential asset for maintaining our resolve is both obvious and much overlooked. Our biggest advantage is often the community with which we surround ourselves. Asking for some community support in seeking to make a change in our lives can mean the difference between success and failure. I don’t mean publishing your whim as your Facebook status, I mean engaging genuine community in a genuine attempt. Whether your family, your church community, or a few select friends, laying out the parameters of what you hope to accomplish, and inviting their support, can offer hope, inspiration, and encouragement. Sometimes we may even find a co-conspirator, someone who wants to make a similar change and is willing to share the privilege of support.
Large or small, communities are wonderful in this way. Yet, in this day and culture, real community often feels counter-cultural. We are so regularly encouraged to see ourselves as the products of individual effort. We feel we must bear our burdens in silence, share no credit for our successes, and see ourselves as disciplined individuals responsible only to ourselves. From every kind of mass media I witness
the expression of this destructive belief system. Everybody seems to want things to be different, but few are willing to engage in the necessary sacrifice and collective effort. Everyone seems to deserve more, yet they expectantly rely on someone else to deliver it. This never works on any scale for very long. We humans are wired for community. We work best through community. We begin to go a little haywire
without it. When we treat our communities as mere service providers, we miss nearly everything of value that they have to offer. Surely we live in a culture that encourages us to see ourselves as simply consumers in a network of providers, but such a vision demands that we remain children grasping at the next shiny thing.
This is one of the great gifts of a place like Immanuel UCC. All the hallmarks of genuine, supportive, community are here. We make every effort to construct a Large or small, communities are wonderful in this way. Yet, in this day and culture, real community often feels counter-cultural. We are so regularly encouraged to see ourselves as the products of individual effort. We feel we must bear our burdens
in silence, share no credit for our successes, and see ourselves as disciplined individuals responsible only to ourselves. From every kind of mass media I witness the expression of this destructive belief system. Everybody seems to want things to be different, but few are willing to engage in the necessary sacrifice and collective effort. Everyone seems to deserve more, yet they expectantly rely on someone else to deliver it. This never works on any scale for very long. We humans are wired for community. We work best through community. We begin to go a little haywire without it. When we treat our communities as mere service providers, we miss nearly everything of
value that they have to offer. Surely we live in a culture that encourages us to see ourselves as simply consumers in a network of providers, but such a vision demands that we remain children grasping at the next shiny thing.
This is one of the great gifts of a place like Immanuel UCC. All the hallmarks of genuine, supportive, community are here. We make every effort to construct a common vision, to set common and meaningful goals. We try, to the very best of our ability, to be forthright and supportive in our efforts. Imperfect we are, I grant you. We can’t meet every wish or desire with the wave of a magic wand, but we can work together toward something significant and meaningful, something life changing. And, as we work together toward our common goals, we support
each other, deepen our own connections, grow together, and become the people God intended for us to be. IUCC is a safe and, most often, forgiving place in which to try the benefits of real community. The caveat is however, that being a part of a genuine community means participation, presence, and practice. It means grace, forgiveness, flexibility, negotiation, and mostly love made real.
So, this year, this New Year, perhaps we can do more than make secret resolutions to change this or that little thing in our lives. Perhaps this will be the year where even more of us become an active part in the community at IUCC. To gain some support for the things we really need to change, but more significantly, to find ourselves transformed by our commitments, into the very people God calls us to be.
Happy New Year!
Tom
The Text Message
December 2011
As the end of the year comes racing toward us at a break-neck speed, we suddenly, and perhaps reluctantly, find ourselves in the liturgical season of Advent. As you begin to read this issue of the Lantern, it will already be December and the so-called holidays will be upon us. Some of us absolutely love this time of year and others of us find it troubling. For some, it is a time replete with the very
best in family traditions; an annual touchstone where everyone gathers in gratitude and joy. It is a warm and lively celebration of our relationships. For some it is a painful reminder of cherished relationships we can no longer have; a lonely and isolating island of memories in a vast swamp of hyperbolic reminders. Some of us see only the gifts we have been given, others count only our losses, and
the Christmas season throws this all into stark relief as our culture intravenously feeds us massive doses of saccharine happiness.
The Church has, for the most part, tried to navigate a very challenging path between the two poles. As a pastoral and compassionate community, we want to honor the pain and sensibilities of those for whom this is the most inescapably difficult time of
year. As a community of grace, joy, and love, we are drawn toward the environment of gaiety and celebration. The Church tries to pick its way through the season, making use of culturally potent symbols, while encouraging people to look for a deeper, broader context for it all. It isn’t easy when the Christmas Berserker spirit descends and the culture goes glassy-eyed. The Church, to whom this season rightly belongs, often ends up feeling like the kill-joy parent, advocating a balanced and healthy diet every time Uncle Jamie shows up with
pizza, pop, and all the left-over Halloween candy. It’s hard to be the voice of reason when Willie Wonka is in town.
This year at IUCC we will try responding to all this by offering, at least in our worship setting, some moments of spiritual safe harbor for those of us adrift on the Christmas seas; an oasis of music and liturgy that attempts to capture the seasonal things of value, and hold them sacred. We want to provide a place where people can feel free to lay down the burdens of cultural expectation and find a bit of spiritual
promise to see them through. Whether you absolutely love this time of year or you find it thoroughly abhorrent, the season brings with it a fair amount of stress. We are hoping to provide you with a place to plug in to those deeper sources of divine energy.
We hope you will plan to join us each week during Advent, a little retreat from the hectic world. Bring your family and your friends, offering them this gift of sustenance. In one way or another, I pray that this season will be one of promise, hope, and renewal for you and those you love. May it simply be a time of genuine blessing.
Peace,
Tom
The Text Message
November 2011
Dear Friends,
“Where there is no vision, the people perish; but
those who keep the law are happy” Proverbs 29:18
We have all heard at least the first half of this proverbial expression in one context or another. Often the context is political, but it is not at all uncommon to hear it quoted by media personalities who want to sell us on the notion that we have to have inspiring goals in our lives. Goals that usually involve whatever product they are hawking. Since it is a bit of wisdom found in the Bible, we might guess that it has something to do with God, and we would be correct. These words refer not to just any kind of vision, nor even to any personal vision, but to one that comes to the community of the faithful -
from God. In the lengthy biblical epic such vision was, more often than not, delivered in the person of a prophet. The prophet’s job was to help the people of God, in a specific time and place, realize the extent to which they were traveling away from the path. The prophet reminded them about whose people they were, whose vision they were living, and just what that vision entailed.
This is nowhere more true than with the Church, and there are plenty of prophets these days to tell us what we ought to do. It is hard to know who to believe, what voices we allow to guide us. Yet, without a common vision any church will settle into a
quagmire of competing assumptions and expectations, hamstrung by its inability to be all things to all people. Vision can be crafted from all kinds of raw material, from a variety of ecclesiastical or locally significant narratives, from some driving need from within the community, from a set of theological propositions, or any combination of these elements. However, and from whatever, vision is
crafted, it is a critical element for any church that wants to move out of the doldrums and into a meaningful, thriving, life of faith.
A well-articulated vision, drawn from the discussion and consensus of the community, can be motivating and inspiring. It guides the community and offers it purpose. A good vision, while never perfectly attained, is more than a simple marketing tool, but it is certainly useful in that way. When someone asks us about the church to which we belong, it is always helpful to have something inspiring to tell them. Vision is also about inspiring our church community to seek the service of God in concrete and meaningful ways. We cannot meet all needs, either within the church community or beyond the walls, so a well-crafted vision allows us to focus our energy and resources in more narrow but effective ways.
One further implication of the scripture however, is that in the absence of vision, people will wander off in their own directions, eventually, and effectively, dissolving the community entirely. It is the vision that keeps people together in community, and there by sustains the community itself. The Hebrew people had a clear vision of who God was, who they were before God, and how God desired them to behave in the world. As long as they continued to remember the vision, and operate from it, they remained a vital, thriving, people.
Over the course of the next several months our IUCC family will be asked to gather, listen, discuss, and craft a vision that can sustain us, move us forward, and help us enact our calling in the world. Watch for opportunities to hold conversations about the meaning of being Church in this time and place. Pray for vision, inspiration, and clarity, as we try to draw all the threads together into the most beautiful tapestry we can weave. Be a part of the on-going conversation however and whenever you are able, add your two cents and support others as they add theirs. Together we can discern our calling in the world, and return IUCC to the faithful, thriving, indispensable, community it has been.
Grace & Peace,
Tom
Steve Jobs quote: "Being the richest
man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me."
The Text Message
October 2011
Dear Friends,
As we head into October, and our up-coming congregational “check-in,” one of the benchmarks we have set for ourselves is the holding of a critical conversation about meaning. Specifically, we have said that we will enter into a broad conversation
about what it means to be Immanuel United Church of Christ in Streamwood at the beginning of the 21st century. In one way or another we engage in this conversation all the time. When you show up at an event; when you choose to align your resources and your time with something the church is doing or offering, you are making a statement about what this church means to you. When you attempt, as
part of our congregational process, to allot portions of our budget to this area or that ministry, you are engaging in this conversation about meaning.
Still, there are times in the life of any organization when it is highly beneficial to be direct and open in our discussion, so that everyone can come to develop and understand what the operating principles will be going forward. We are in one of those times. Most everyone is prone to the assumption that we know what it means to be the Church. It is, quite simply, whatever I want it to be at the moment. As long as we don’t talk about it, it can remain the version of Church that I carry in my heart. At times of profound cultural change however, our silent assumptions about meaning can put a church at an equally profound disadvantage. We have to acquire a clear sense of who we are in this changing environment, or watch helplessly from the sidelines as the world overtakes us and pushes on. The key to
meaning, for the Church, is as it always has been, relevance. How are we relevant both to the call of God, and to the world at our doorstep?
At varying points in history the Church has found its sense of purpose in diverse ways. In the very earliest iterations of the Church, meaning was found in the efforts to keep body and soul together for often-persecuted believers while continuing to tell a story that gave the faithful hope. When the Church unexpectedly found itself in a position of immense power, it struggled with the temptations to
abuse that power for earthly gain, while also trying to figure out how to use the power creatively in behalf of God’s people. (Sadly, we lost the struggle as often as we succeeded)
Over time the Church has desired to be many things, a motivating influence, a saving influence, a challenging, a stabilizing, a moralizing, a foundational influence on the world around it. Sometimes we have had success, often we have not, or not for very long. The Church is at its best when it adapts its methods and approach so as to use the Gospel, in the midst of the world, in healing, loving, life-giving
ways. The Church is at its worst when it stands apart from the world, shaking the finger of judgment and dismay while withholding God’s love. We have done both.
We have also gathered in little self-protective huddles on the sidelines. Like an ecclesiastical tailgate party, we have bundled up with our friends in the parking lot, keeping safe and warm around our own hearth, and watching others play the game. We cheer, we boo, we make note of what others are serving at their own tailgate parties, but mostly we spectate and enjoy each other’s company. Unfortunately, we have been doing this for long enough in the United States, that the Church has begun to go unnoticed by the rest of the world, we are on the very edge of becoming entirely irrelevant to the culture in which we find ourselves. It does us no service that the public face of
the Christian Church in America is the angry, strident, crazed face of irrational judgment and divisive bigotry, but the deeper the rest of us retreat into being a place of comfort and oblivion, the less likely it is that we will even be around for another generation.
Fortunately for us, this is a world that desperately needs to be loved, and we are just the people to do it. We ostensibly serve the God of Love and compassion, a God whose moment is now as much as it has ever been. The World has need of people who have learned how to use Love for the purposes of healing. The World in which we live is a place that regularly and carelessly breaks, discards, divides, and pits people
against each other. It is a world much in need of mending.
I invite you to keep this in mind as we engage in our time of discernment. As we attend to Brandyn’s classes in Missional Theology, or hold our conversations during coffee hour. The Church, this church, can decide to be many things, not all of them significant to the world outside. You are under no obligation to treat my thoughts more seriously than your own, but here they are: If we, as one little corner of
the 21st Century Church, are looking for meaning and motivation, we can do no better than to imagine all the ways in which we can be the hands and feet, the very beating heart, of a loving God.
With God's Blessings,
Tom
The Text Message
September 2011
As we move forward, one of the conversations, about which we ought to be very intentional, concerns the question of what it means to be The Church. There was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when we could make some very basic assumptions about the answers to this question, but those days appear sadly to be well behind us. It was once easy to identify and assess a church by all things relevant to worship. We could imagine that the primary purpose of gathering as a congregation had to do almost exclusively with being in worship. The life of the church was limited to the essentials of Sunday morning, and anything else that the congregation did or sponsored was ancillary to the worship experience. Our lives, as Christians, were identified not so much by how we served God, but in how (and where) we gathered to praise God. This was, especially among Protestant Christians, a natural application of the notion that we are given all things through God’s grace and we respond with generosity, praise, and thanksgiving. Since we can do nothing to earn (or un-earn) God’s grace, most practical applications of faith (such as living a life of service) were left to religious professionals.
Most of our Mainline Protestant communities have developed, over several generations, into economical worshipping organizations that are professionally staffed and managed. Our congregations have continued to offer other forms of ministry, but rarely with the same support, focus, or enthusiasm with which we approach the worship life. As long as the broader, cultural assumption was that Church membership was a vital aspect of civic life in our communities, it was easy to sustain healthy membership rolls. Fifty or sixty years ago belonging to a
church was like having a Facebook page, it was ubiquitous, expected, generally easy to institute and maintain, but often tenuous in its significance for members. When, in the 1960’s, our culture began to take a harsh and suspicious look at cultural institutions, The Church often topped the list of institutions in need of critique.
The glow of the altar candles began to fade rapidly as people cottoned on to the idea that worship wasn’t such a necessary part of life. Since then The Church, and especially the Mainline Protestant Church, has struggled unendingly to recapture some level of relevance in our culture. Some churches have redoubled their worship efforts and offerings, trying to make worship spiffy, electrifying, and spectacular. This approach has allowed some churches to remain worship focused, but it has also meant acceding to the insatiable public hunger for entertainment, allowing culture to shape Church more than the other way around. Entertainment driven churches have been
sporadically successful. They have created some well-known mega-churches; they have renewed the membership figures for some established churches. Yet almost across the board the entertainment driven Church has begun to fade as well.
Relevance is once again the issue. Our culture is spoiled for choice when it comes to our entertainment options, and as the gleam wears away, churches so driven are beginning to feel shallow and meaningfree. Churches that were once in the vanguard of worship centered organizations have begun either to die off or shift their point of focus to active, engaged, and locally relevant mission. To move from being a worship-centered church that does mission work to a mission-centered church that worships together, may feel like a simple semantic
shift, but it is more of a seismic shift in our selfunderstanding. It goes to the core of how we understand our faith, God’s call, and just what is expected of us as Christians. It means to move us from a passive perspective to an active one; from contemplation to service; from the church as a place of retreat and comfort to the church as a base of operations for community transformation.
What this means for IUCC, or even whether you want to attempt to move in this direction, is a matter for conversation, consideration, and common purpose. It will not be an easy shift to make. It will not be made error free. It cannot be accomplished cheaply or half-heartedly. Your church leadership isn’t interested in forcing this congregation to make the leap, and as your Interim minister I agree that this
can only be accomplished if the vast majority of the IUCC family sees the relevance, the potential, and understands what is involved. Only if we can design a missional approach to church life that offers everyone an opportunity to help give it shape and value.
There will be a number of up-coming opportunities to join in the conversation about this, and nothing will happen until it has been well designed. From my modest experience as a pastor and a student of change in The Church, I have to say that a renewed emphasis on service and mission is the only sensible path back to relevance for our congregations. To become that Mission-Centered church that worships together is to renew the perspective of the early church and to make the current church meaningful for a new century. I have every confidence that
this congregation can make just such a transition if you decide to risk it in faith. So don’t just hang back and let someone else make this decision for you, participate in the conversation, the learning, the designing, and the renewal of vital congregational life.
With God's Blessings,
Tom
The Text Message
August 2011
He told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him,
‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with
those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
[Luke 12: 16-21]
Dear Friends,
On the surface of it, it would appear that this is a parable about greed. In fact Luke tells us this is so. Still, I don’t think this parable would have made it into the text of the Bible, if something more significant were not present. If this were only a story
about greed, we could easily dismiss it. We could tell ourselves that since we don’t suffer from the kind of abundance that requires us to put a warehouse in the back yard, so the story must apply to someone else. I think however, that this is really a parable about fear. It is the fear of future possibility that drives the man to build walls around his good fortune. His good luck seems to him to be a fluke,
rather than the providence of a God that loves him. He neither loves nor trusts, and so he builds and stores, out of fear.
Difficult and uncertain economic times clearly drive an increase in this behavior, it is a natural response to the idea of scarcity, its not even a response especially limited to human beings. Circumstances make us afraid, we cannot predict tomorrow with any certainty, we had better hang on to what we have, just in case. How many of us have had the opportunity to clean out the contents of a home someone has lived in for decades? Fear and uncertainty trumps greed every time.
There are times though, when this tendency goes
even deeper than our existential anxiety. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, in the opening lines of his poem The Leaden Echo:
“How to keep--is there any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key
to keep back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?”
Hopkins reflects on the deep yearning to keep something back, to hold on to it as tightly as possible in order to keep it from diminishing, vanishing, turning to dust. And I wonder, as Hopkins wondered, as Luke may have wondered, what are the things in our lives that we are so afraid of losing that we dare not take them out of hiding? What treasures, what Godgiven gifts, what precious things in our lives have
never seen the light of day for fear that once they are exposed to the world they will change, be changed, fade away? What talents might we have, what dreams and hopes? What kind of a world might we be able to build were we to use the gifts we have been given, trust the Giver to see us through, and desire to leave a legacy other than the “warehouse” someone else must clean out? What world do we want to leave behind
us?
The point of Jesus’ telling this story in Luke appears to be just this. As in so many other places in the gospels, Jesus is reminding us that while life may seem awfully transitory, God’s abundant giving is not. The fact that God cares for us and about us
should encourage us to make the very best use of all the gifts we have. In The Golden Echo – the poem that Hopkins paired with the first – he writes this:
“Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.”
By spending who and what we are (not simply our material possessions), by using the gifts God has given us each, we not only create powerful communities of love, faith, and promise, we leave a legacy, a gospel legacy, that will far outlive us and enrich the
lives of generations to come. By risking and giving, when our fears tell us to keep, protect, and play it safe, we proclaim our faith in the One Who Gives all, and there is no safer place to keep the things we treasure.
Hope God is good to you this summer,
Tom
The Text Message
July 2011
As the Springtime weather has blown itself out in favor of the oncoming humidity of Summer, I look out the east windows in our apartment and feel the great joy of anticipation brought on by our view of the lake across the street. It will be a few weeks before Lake Michigan has her burst of swimmable water temperature, but I once again have this to look forward to. I love the water, always have. Growing up in Maine I got used to a wide variety of lakes and ponds as well as the unpredictable behavior of the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, I only ever grow outrageously “home sick” when I find myself living without access to some significant body of water. There are places for us all where we feel at home, where everything seems to come to us as a gift. For some it is the mountains and for others the farm, for some the urban center, and for others the woods. While I appreciate each of those, for me this sense comes most profoundly near the water.
A healthy body of water is an environment of constant changes, some seasonal, some weather related, some day-by-day. It cleans itself, renews itself, finds balance and, over time, it finds ways of ridding itself of those things it doesn’t need. Fish, plants, rock, sand, rain, sky, water – all stages and phases of change, a cycle of life-giving gifts in a network of relationship. They ebb and flow. They
give and they take. This is how God designed them. Bodies of water are both powerful and beautiful reminders of God’s love, intention, and providence.
One of the more interesting, if touristy, moments of visiting Israel has to be a bit of time spent bobbing around in the Dead Sea. Israelis call this Yam Ha-Melah, the Sea of Salt. This is a body of water so completely saturated with salt that nothing can live in it, beyond a few bacteria and fungi. It is the opposite of healthy, which I suspect is why we call it the Dead Sea. The salt is present in such concentration (35%) that bathers nearly float on top of the water and swimming is fairly difficult. I remember the sensation of “bathing” there as being like floating in a thick, warm, oil. It was interesting, but not entirely pleasant. The reason the Dead Sea is thus is that it sits at the lowest elevation of any dry land body of water on earth. It is so salty and dead precisely because all waters of the Jordan Valley flow into it, but none flow out. It cannot renew itself because it has no natural outlet. The Dead Sea is dead
because it only receives.
It is not much different with ourselves, with our spirits. We are not meant to be the final collection points for all the gifts of God. It just isn’t spiritually healthy for us to receive, without becoming both grateful and generous. Perhaps the primary reason for
being generous with the Church is not simply that the Church provides an outlet for our need to give, but the kind of outlet it provides. The Church is an embodied community of grace, where the gifts God offers us in abundance meet the gifts we long to give. Like a healthy body of water, the Church is a place where our best gifts and God’s great Love combine to create healing spirits and new life. At Immanuel you have an exciting opportunity to be a real and supportive part of a healing, energizing, loving, healthy community of the Spirit. May the outflow of your generosity match the in-pouring of God’s gifts to you, that you may ever increase in happiness, love,
and joy.
Tom
The Text Message
June 2011
How does God wish me to spend my love?
When I was a child, my wonderful grandmother regularly honored my birthday, or Christmas, or Easter, or St. Swithin’s day, by tucking some crisp denomination into one of those little gift envelopes the bank gave her (you know the ones) and putting it into the appropriate card for the event. After I opened it, and spent a delightful few seconds marveling at the fact that I now had five or
ten dollars of my very own, she would invariably put me on the spot by asking me how I intended to use it. I had to have a good and sensible answer ready, or I would get, The Face. The correct answer always had two parts. The first part had to involve doing something for someone else with part of the money (my grandma was a preacher’s kid so there was no avoiding this one)
and the second part always had to do with the passbook savings account that my father had opened for me when I was two or something. It was obvious that neither of them harbored any romantic notions about childhood consumer tendencies.
While he was doing research for writing the Sound of Music, Roger Hammerstein developed a correspondence with Sister Gregory, a teacher at Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois. In a letter to Hammerstein where she was talking about the religious vocation, Sister Gregory posed two questions vital to determining the shape of a person’s faith, "What does God want me to do with
my life?” and “How does God wish me to spend my love?"
The first of these two questions is almost too common in many faith communities, but the second question is both profound and inspiring. “How does God wish me to spend my love?” It kind of zeroes right in on the core of our faith, on what it means to be a Christian. The question itself implies the premise that we have all been given a measure of Love by God, that we are vessels of God’s great love, recipients of the largesse of the Creator and giver of all things. The question also suggests that God expects us to
spend and share the love we've been given with others; and like my grandmother, God harbors few romantic notions. So the natural human response might be to wonder how we set about doing that?
The tricky part can be our temptation to imagine that this love is somehow limited to its emotional qualities. As a pastor, I have been in more than a couple of congregations where this call to Love has settled into a kind of grand politeness, where members of the community simply endeavor not to hurt each others feelings. But you know, and I know, that this is not at all what God has in mind. Just as God’s love has practical consequences in our lives, so should our love be a practical expression of the call to share it.
Scripture, of course, is filled with opportunities and examples of the ways in which we can share what we have been given by God. It should not require an exhaustive study of the texts to realize most of the examples have something to do with the building up of a new and inclusive community. Over and over again God calls faithful people to share gifts of love and to use our resources as expressions
of that love. We are continually called to create communities that can reinforce this idea, and to support those communities so that they can share this vital perspective with future generations. God, our creator, redeemer, and sustainer, calls us to share the blessings we have been generously given, and to understand them in just that way, as gifts of love. So, how will you spend yours?
In God's Love,
Tom
The Text Message
May 2011
The world in which we live is one filled with opportunities to choose the kind of people we want to become and the kind of communities to which we want to belong. In fact, while we once lived in a world that made some level of spiritual understanding and commitment a near requirement for community participation, such understanding and commitment is now a mere social option for an increasing number of folk. We can no longer assume any type of social pressure as an aid in the development of our faith communities, quite the opposite in fact. We have moved from a time when religious community was entirely supported by the culture to one that finds such community suspicious and problematic. Ours is an uphill climb, and will be so for the foreseeable future.
So it is increasingly important for us to understand the faith community into which we have been called and to which we have committed so much of our love and support. It is important because these days the continued development and nurture of spiritual community depends not only on God’s good gifts, but also on our willingness to invite others into the community exercise of those gifts. If we are to invite others to be with us on this journey, we will want to have clarified our vision for the community. What are we about? What is our purpose? What hopes? What dreams? These are the questions that only you can answer. I trust you will take every available opportunity to listen to each other and to share your own thoughts as we try and build vision from discernment, commitment, compassion, and prayer.
I cannot tell you what your vision ought to be; that needs to be the result of this conversation we are having at IUCC. As a starting place during the Lenten season, we began to look at a wide variety of Christian practices and how we live these practices at IUCC. We have begun to move toward a permission-giving model of community life, inviting people to use their gifts and skills in creative ways with the support of leadership and community alike. It is very
early days, yet we can already see new people taking ownership and leadership of a variety of new offerings around the
church. (That’s the spirit) There are a fair number of indicators that, even so early on, we are moving in a most positive direction. From Safe Church to an emerging Children’s ministry, from increasing mission involvement to some very interesting ideas for our involvement in the wider community, there is a lively organic feel to almost all of this. It feels like Spring. It feels like Life.
I cannot tell you what your vision ought to be, but I can tell you what my experience of walking with you through this transition has felt like. For what it’s worth, I have experienced IUCC as a place of grace. You seem much less like a collection of competing egos and much more like a community that wants the best for a place you love dearly. I experience your willingness to accommodate each other, to work together, to pursue a discerning consensus, a positive enthusiasm. I experience IUCC as a place that not only welcomes, but absorbs, new people and new ideas—not without discretion—in an atmosphere of trust that God’s gifting nature is at play in our midst. Not everyone is quite ready to throw their gifts and skills into the community pot, ant that’s okay too, things will evolve and unfold as we move forward and more of you will sense the leading of the Spirit in the opportunities with which God presents us. I suppose I just want you to know, in this season of resurrection, new life, and not so unreasonable hope, that I
think IUCC is really at the beginning of a very special time of renewal and abundance, headed in a good direction, and quite ready to hold that conversation about who and what we are, a very special community set in a culture that needs us more than it knows.
Peace,
Tom
The Text Message
April 2011
It is hard to believe that as this issue of the Lantern finds it’s way into your hands, our Easter celebrations will be nearly upon
us. As we begin to engage in new ministries and new perspectives for our community life, this all seems like a good opportunity to
talk about what it means to be an Easter people, a people living in a post-resurrection world.
To begin with, we know about that stone. The stone that was rolled across the front of Jesus’ tomb must have seemed as if it was
slamming shut on all the possibilities Jesus had raised with the disciples, everything for which they had hoped. All those hopes and
dreams were shattered as the stone rolled across the tomb. It was the end of a vision, and Jesus’ light was extinguished.
The stone becomes a symbol of something bigger, an obstacle of immense and certain proportion. It represents the deadweight of our fears, blocking out the light of a renewing future. It is a symbol of the weight of past challenges or failures, and that can make us cynical or leave us feeling hopeless. We have all heard those voices that tell us there is no point in even trying, and when the stone is in place, those voices hold immense power. We may even settle into a kind of despair and stop hoping for anything. This is the tomb into which we human beings too easily find ourselves sealed. There it sits, that terrible weight of stone. When I was a kid there was a sizeable tree
that fell across a rock wall in our back yard. Too much tree for my dad to move by himself, and I wasn’t much help either. Dad showed me then how a lever works; very basic physics of course, but a valuable lesson nonetheless. The weight that seemingly cannot be moved becomes easy to move. The lever overcomes the resistance, and the impossible weight is shifted.
The lesson of the resurrection is in the demonstration that when the lever of God’s love is brought to bear on the stone of our fears, the fears cannot help but be shifted. The stone cannot resist this power of love. It is rolled away. The seemingly impossible once more becomes the possible. The seemingly dead is renewed in energy and vigor. To be a people of the Resurrection, an Easter people, means to live always with the stone rolled back, always in the light of the possible. To be an Easter people means to be able to hold onto hope because we understand that no stone can withstand the lever of God’s love.
As we move forward in the hope of renewed life and interest here at Immanuel, as we face the daunting prospect of making our life of faith relevant to new people in a new day and time, we may well be tempted to see ourselves trapped in the tombs of past experience, or of fears and insecurities. Perhaps we don’t even want to try anymore, but God’s love can roll away that stone as well, can accomplish that which we could not bring about on our own. God can make a way, can roll back a stone, can create an opportunity, can offer a second chance. And knowing that, trusting that, is what makes Resurrection people. May God roll away all the stones that hold you, trapped in the darkness of the impossible, and may the light of God’s love renew you in this season of hope and joy.
In God's grace,
Tom
The Text Message
March 2011
Dear Friends,
In the last 25 years of ministry, in all kinds of church settings, it has been my experience that congregational Annual Meetings generally fall into one of two categories. Either a well-prepared (or completely disinterested) congregation passes an essential and uncontested budget so quickly that people don’t even bother taking off their coats, or the issue at hand compels a long and exhaustive exchange
that leaves everyone feeling drained regardless of the actual outcome. On February 13th, the IUCC Annual Meeting fell clearly into the latter category.
I am not going to say that I enjoyed the meeting, but it was very interesting and very educational for me as your Interim Pastor. The conversation was about something of no less significance than the future of IUCC, so I was very glad to see so much passion and energy injected into the discussion. Even if we are not used to it here; even if it was difficult for us to process. As we looked at the beginnings of a vision for the future of the church, and the financial obligations necessary to support that vision, I suppose I could have wished to hear more probing questions about the vision rather than the financial aspects of the plan, but, if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that money is the area that frightens us the most, and about which we trust God the least. And that is a stewardship sermon for another day.
In the end however, you looked at your options and you chose the one with both the most promise and the most risk. It is the option that insures the greatest levels of change, but the one toward which God seems to be calling us as a community of faith. It was, and will continue to be, daring and hopeful, engaging and fruitful. For this congregation to become intentional in pursuing younger members of
the wider community, is huge. We can imagine some of the things that this might involve; we cannot imagine everything it will involve. It will require of us all as much energy, generosity, creativity, and hospitality as we can muster. It will require that many of us who have felt more or less content allowing congregational life to flow past us with being terrifically engaged, will need to become a part of this
new venture. It will require that as things begin to change around us that we be quick to support and help out, but not so quick to complain or dig in our heals. This is, most of all, an exercise in trust. Not simply trust in your congregational leadership, or
even in your fellow church members, but above all a growing trust in God and the possibilities God holds out for our lives. God has entirely blessed us with a hint of a vision, a wider community that needs what we have to offer, and the resources to build a bridge
between the two.
When I was a kid the neighborhood in which I lived was growing at its edges. Houses would burst out of the ground sporadically and we would hear weeks of hammering and sawing, then silence. Often there would be a hole in the ground surrounded by piles of lumber and hardware for weeks on end. I remember telling my dad one afternoon that a new house had “gone in” just down the street from where we lived and he said, “Tom, it’s not a house until it’s a house.” Not exactly Mr. Miyagi, but what he meant was that a hole in the ground and a pile of lumber,
while it may be house oriented, isn’t a house yet. Just so, the decision to follow God into the neighborhoods around us isn’t the same thing as a thriving church community. That vision for this church, possible and compelling as it may be, will not happen without all
of us pulling together in the same direction, giving of our own time, energy, and resources to see it fulfilled. With God, we can accomplish anything. Without us, God is unlikely to see the need. We are in the midst of a big, scary blessing. So let us give thanks,
and get on with the work.
Peace,
Tom
The Text Message
February 2011
Dear Friends,
I am going to assume that you would prefer to see IUCC thrive. I expect that, by now, you have some idea there are a variety of discussions taking place at IUCC. From council meetings to coffee hours, folk are talking about what the future may
hold for this congregation. As is often the case with mainline churches like ours, the impetus for these discussions has largely been financial, but there is a primary and overwhelming spiritual component to all this. We would do well not to lose sight of the
likelihood that God too is involved in shaping our community. To address our needs in purely financial terms can leave us all feeling bitter, desperate, and hopeless. This is true not only in church settings, but in our daily lives. Yet, if we choose to look at our present circumstances from the standpoint of what God might be offering us, this present sense of crisis can be transformed.
It may just be an “occupational hazard,” but I have regularly found that by looking for the opportunity contained within the crisis, we can identify the way through difficult circumstances. Sometimes the opportunity is difficult to identify, it is well hidden and we will only see it in retrospect. More often, perhaps most of time in fact, a careful examination of those circumstances can show us what God
has to offer. For the IUCC community the indicators all seem to be pointing in one direction, toward the neighborhoods that surround our congregation and, more specifically, toward all the young families currently residing therein. I cannot help but think that, unlike so many older congregations that find themselves suddenly thrust into an otherwise alien landscape, IUCC is being offered a gigantic gift here.
Now for the bad news; some things will have to change. There, I’ve said it. We don’t know exactly what, or how much yet, although the church council is conducting research that will help them make some educated predictions. We expect the worship experience will continue to evolve over time; we expect there to be a need for quality spiritual experience for children; we expect there to be a greater use of current digital technologies in a variety of areas; we expect that we will have to begin thinking, planning, and programming like a community organization and not simply a spiritual one. Any, or all, of these things may pinch us a bit as we transition. They may make
us a little uncomfortable for a time, largely because we don’t always value things that are different, but nothing here requires a wholesale change in the essential nature of our community. If we do this right, our community – the network of relationships we
have come to value so much – will simply have an opportunity to expand and deepen.
Change comes in only two flavors, the kind you plan for and the kind you don’t. The kind you plan for can be understood, discussed, and managed. The kind you don’t plan for always leaves us defensive and reactionary. As we approach our annual meeting this month, the IUCC council has done what they can to help us envision the kinds of changes we may be looking at if we all choose to make use of the opportunity God is offering, and the consequences in any event. Each of you, members and friends, having listened carefully; having thought about this considerably; having taken the opportunity to share concerns, ask questions, and contribute ideas, in one or more of
our forums, will be asked at the annual meeting to decide, not just whether the plan has your permission, but whether it has your genuine, earnest, realistic, support. Will you help (in whatever way you are able) or will you observe? That is the real question before us. Will we help create and construct a new and potentially exciting future for the church we love, or will we simply watch a few people try and
tackle it on their own?
If you choose to be part of this (and I think you should) you will likely discover many untapped resources in yourself and others. You may well find renewed meaning in being a part of a thriving church community.
The future will be full of the unexpected, the challenging, and the delightful; a great grace-filled, hopeful, project in God’s name. It will not all be smooth sailing of course, but it will be an adventure of ultimate worth.
Yours in hope,
Tom
The Text Message
January 2011
Most of us are familiar with the old aphorism about the frog in a pot of cold water. How, if the temperature of the water is raised very gradually, the frog will adjust and remain in the water until it is simply too late for anything other than frog soup.
I suspect this story is not so much the result of careful scientific research as it is a fanciful but illustrative example of a tendency we often share, the tendency to not noticing changes when the changes are subtle. It may or may not be true of frogs, but it has certainly been true of the Church, especially over the course of the last forty years or so.
As with the rising temperature of the water, the changes in Church life have been noticeable for some time, but have barely registered in the consciousness of local congregations. We have noticed a decline in membership or worship attendance, but we tend to think that this is a momentary issue best corrected by a change in staff or program. A new kind of bible study will fix this, the right pastor will
fix this, advertising in the right newspaper, on the right page, will fix this. We don’t so much see it as chronic; we see it as acute. We don’t notice a trend; we just imagine a crisis. Meanwhile the water gets decidedly warmer.
In our own case, at IUCC, the symptoms are not difficult to spot. We are not bringing in new people as quickly as we are losing our membership. We are relying on fewer and fewer contributors, as things continue to grow more expensive to maintain. Young families with children are a bit underrepresented in our mix, though they are, quite literally, the future of the church. This is a familiar story in
many, many congregations across the country, as is the common response that if we could just fix, replace, or tweak this or that little thing, everything would return to normal. It just isn’t so.
The core issue is a monumental cultural shift that has taken place outside the Church in the last few decades, one that our comfortable, well-established Churches have all but ignored entirely. The mainline Church, as it was established, fortified, and celebrated up through the 1950’s has become almost entirely irrelevant to the culture at large. Where we could once assume that good American citizens wanted to be part of good American Churches, there is no longer any cultural support for belonging to Church communities, none whatsoever. Membership
based organizations, especially those of a more institutional nature, have no particular draw for people under the age of about 45 anymore. When asked to be a part of a church community the most common response now is, “Why should I?”
Sadly, the very things that we most appreciate about being a member of a church have lost the magic of attraction for most people. Where we have come to appreciate an emphasis on building and maintaining close and sustaining friendships at church, few outsiders now see this as a value worthy of their time. Where we celebrate our more or less effective care and support for one another, most outsiders see this as a meaningless preoccupation. It does not matter so much why this is, or even that we can all think of notable exceptions to this trend, the
fact remains that this is now the world in which we live and with which we have to deal. So this is the essential question before us as we look to the future. Can we bring ourselves to change the way we view the Church, in order to change the way we are the Church? How far can we go toward making our church, IUCC, relevant to a new world, a new day, a new community?
Where Church used to mean bringing people into the fold so that they could draw away from the world and into a different kind of community, it must now mean going out into the world to help people transform the way they live in the world. This is much more than a matter of adding a program or two, it is a fundamental shift in how we relate to the world beyond our walls. We do not know all of what this
might mean to us just yet. We do know that the demographics in our area suggest that, should we want to make the appropriate changes, the population around us happens to be just the right age range upon which to build the future.
The real question, the more important question, is whether you, as a member or friend of this congregation, will be willing to participate in the change. It has been my observation that quite often in our congregational life, you have been willing to vote in favor of something you yourself have no intention of supporting. You don’t intend it to be problematic. You mean simply that you don’t want to stop someone else from getting what they want, though you don’t want to be part of it. This is actually an admirable, polite, and neighborly quality, but it makes it nearly impossible to plan for things. Imagine, for example, that you are planning a party. You send out
300 invitations and all 300 people say “yes,” because they wouldn’t want to be the one to keep you from having the party you want to have. When only 20 people appear at your door, you may find that your allocation of resources was a little off, that had you known, you would have planned quite differently.
When we come to vote on the future of IUCC in February, the congregation has to know what you will and will not support. Your church cannot afford to make decisions about the future based on false premises. So you need to think this through very carefully. As you hear the plans and proposals unfold, think about what you really want for your church, what you can greet with enthusiasm, what you are willing to try, what you absolutely cannot support. Think about your hopes and dreams, needs and expectations, and most of all whether the possi-
bility of a future for IUCC seems worth the price of change for you. This will be an easy decision for no one, but it has to be one honestly derived. It may be tempting to hope that we can keep the church just as it is and some day it will simply work, but that isn’t
going to happen. So you will have to decide. Prayerfully, intentionally, realistically, you will have to decide.
With you into the unknown,
Tom
The Text Message
December 2010
Dear Friends,
As the temperament of winter begins to settle around us and we enter another Advent season (Lord, it doesn’t seem possible that it’s here again already), we do so in lives and communities where there is too often suffering. If we listen too long and too hard to the Nightly News, we may come away with the notion that there is little else in the world. Even the community here at IUCC seems to have caught a little dose of anxiety and a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder. There is a strong similarity to the attitudes and fears of God’s People as they waited and watched and hoped for their Messiah, before the birth of the Christ, in the relative darkness
of oppression and uncertainty. It is often easy to get discouraged by the bumps in the road, made
especially difficult for the fact that we are entering a time that is supposed to be so joyous. Still, there is with God, always another side. There is always a place beyond our sadness and fear. Too often we do forget that as we treat ourselves to a great wallowing in despair and self-pity.
I often find that at those times in my spiritual journey where I am most inclined to be maudlin and pessimistic, when I am prone to staring down at the trash around my ankles rather than up at the beauty of God’s creation, I miss the very gifts that God is dangling in front of me. Have you ever found yourself doing the same thing? Have you ever found yourself so caught up in your hurts that you missed the “something wonderful” that was right in front of you?
Can I just say to you that when I am in my better spiritual mind I am grateful for the chaos. I am. Chaos, the stuff that makes our lives wild and unpredictable, unnerving, uncomfortable, mysterious, which our God has power and through which our God creates the best stuff. Time and time again the people of Israel were recreated and renewed because God drew them onward through pain and chaos and into the fulfillment of promise and hope. Time and time again the church has struggled its way through dark times only to be completely dazzled by what lay on the other side. God can do with us and for us what we cannot possibly accomplish by ourselves. This probably works because when we are feeling flush and significant and self-sufficient we are more disposed toward ignoring God’s urging and care. When we find ourselves immersed in chaos perhaps we are
just more willing to listen as an alternative to being swept away.
With God, there is always something else, something new, something possible. In our individual lives, where it is easiest to be overwhelmed by difficult moments, it pays to remember this about God. In our community life we need also trust God’s vision and call. You see, God wants something from us and for us. We are necessary to God’s purposes in Streamwood. We are not just some old and tired congregation whose day has come and gone. We are the people God wants in this place so that a new and powerful thing can be brought fruition. With God the chaos can be shaped into something inspired and inspiring. We are being given what we need to make this come true. We will not be given everything that would make our task effortless or allow us to move ahead without having to struggle. But we are given hope and light and the very promises of God that have sustained God’s people over thousands of years. God has something in mind for us and we can only know that it will be great.
In faith,
Tom
The Text Message
November 2010
Dear Friends,
One of the things with which I was most impressed, when I was traveling in Israel a few years ago, was the amazing variety and availability of ruins. Wherever we went, there were bits and pieces of ancient civilizations scattered around.
Sometimes we would see an entire building that was still recognizably in tact, or a village that had been partially reconstructed. Sometimes we would simply be driving down a road in our tour bus and zip past chunks of statues or tombs that look just like you would imagine ancient tombs should look. I
especially recall standing atop Tel Megiddo (the very site we are talking about when we talk about Armageddon) and being told that we had twentyfive
different layers of civilization under foot, one on top of the next. Some of those civilizations were decimated by invading armies or wars with their
neighbors, but some simply faded into the sunset. I wonder about those people sometimes. I wonder if they saw the end of their age coming toward them. I
wonder if they chose to do anything about it. I wonder if they had prophets who warned them that their way of life was fizzling out. I wonder if they listened.
We tend not to listen to the words of our prophets. They prod us and discomfit us and we would rather not hear what they have to say. We are, in general,
optimists by nature. We humans have a strong tendency to assume that things will be okay and that nothing is as bad as it seems. It is only later, only in
retrospect, that we look at our prophets and wish we had listened more carefully.
Grey hair aside, I am not a prophet, prophets generally wind up reviled or dead. Still, I am a sufficient observer of Church Life to suggest that things are pretty tough in mainline churches these days. Many of our churches are well established in neighborhoods that no longer reflect the culture and
values of the people who founded them. Many of our churches are locked into a pattern of preserving perspectives and traditions that have relevance largely
for the people who have been there the longest. Many of our churches are isolationist in nature, preferring that like-minded people wash up on their
shores though not at all convinced that they want to extend any invitation to faith beyond the church walls. Many of our churches are simply not interested
in changing and adapting to the evolving circumstances of life. Little by little we are being sidelined. Our churches close their doors. Some church
buildings are being sold to missional churches that have made a determined effort at relevance, some become museums or eyesores. Some become just
another layer under the feet of the next generation.
The unfortunate reality is that everything in life is either growing or dying. Much as we might yearn for it, there is no static middle ground. This applies to organizations maybe even more than it does to individuals. In our congregationally based tradition, where every local church can celebrate its autonomy from any over-riding structure, the ability to adapt our approach and perspective, our practices and our traditions is many times more crucial than it is with those churches whose larger parent body may be willing to foot the bill. For all intents and purposes, we are on our own.
We love this church, or at least I hear individuals make that claim with some regularity, but I wonder, to what extent do we genuinely support IUCC and
her future ministry? I know we all wish her well and hope that she will be around for as long as we need her, but what if wishful thinking isn’t enough? What if the only thing keeping her from becoming just another historical ruin was your commitment of time, treasure, energy, and faith?
This congregation has made marvelous progress through coming together in the Appreciative Inquiry process to design and implement ministries with real
spiritual potential. These ministries were launched with great enthusiasm, participation, and hope. As we have refined them and worked the kinks out of
some of them, we seem to have settled back into the habit of allowing the smallest handful of people to keep things running. This is a comfortable pattern perhaps, but it cannot be sustained. Change makes people anxious certainly, it seems to be the way we are built, but intentional and committed change is the only road to the future. Now is the time for every member and friend of IUCC to pitch in, come together, and help move the church forward.
In faith,
Tom
The Text Message
October 2010
Dear Friends,
Every one of us sees the world through certain set of perspectives. These lenses shape our understanding of the world. What we see, what we accept, and how we experience the events of our lives are not just colored by these lenses, they are, in many ways, creations of them. These perspectives, these lenses, are such an intimate part of us that we generally assume reality to be exactly as we see it. Our images of reality develop over time and from a variety of sources: family of origin, basic personality, unconscious memories, essential life experiences. They can be strongly influenced by our level of education, our social and political groups, and even faith traditions.
One of the difficulties that this very natural pattern presents is that it makes trying to build a community very challenging. While there are many
ways to proceed, there are really two basic kinds of community building. In one form, community is built by the leadership, whether that is an individual
with a vision, or a small group of individuals who share a common perspective, and the members of the community can say yes or no to the vision, but
they have little power to influence it. Both our political system and our consumer-oriented economy are the result of this kind of process, as are many
kinds of church settings. A relatively small group of individuals create things and put them out there for your vote. You accept or reject these things as you wish and according to your own set of perspectives.
While that is a reasonably effective way to build something that looks a little like a community, I would suggest that this is not true community. It
often seems to me more like a collection of individuals exercising their rights, than what I think of as genuine community. It can lead us to a place with that same consumer insistence on our right to be fully satisfied in our every encounter. We have managed to develop a very high-expectation/low responsibility society using this model.
The other basic model is a much more collaborative approach where people acknowledge the power of their own perspectives, but are willing to set those
perspectives aside to build something that reflects the best they have to offer-collectively. This is the approach we are attempting to implement here at IUCC as we seek to build a gifted and spiritually empowered community of faith. For a church that is small and friendly, unhampered by denominational hierarchy, and wants to grow and deepen its commitment to the Gospel of Jesus, this collaborative model is the best way forward. It suits our peculiar Christian heritage, as well as our denominational core.
It offers the opportunity for people to learn from one another, to share perspectives in meaningful ways, to grow as a result of our encounters with each
other, to genuinely support the best each of us has to offer, and so, to be made whole through our connection with the community. It means that whatever we
plan is open both to the movement of God’s spirit and to containing a little bit of each of us. But we are most used to the other way of doing
business, so the collaborative model comes with its own challenges. Foremost, it absolutely requires broad participation, that kind of “no spectators.” It
cannot be collaborative if no one collaborates. Our new ministry teams are intentionally open to the participation of anyone and everyone in the planning of our worship, our fellowship, our common life in every aspect. The more voices we have in the planning the more inspired every event will be.
It is always a challenge to move from one model to the other, and we may more naturally tend to gravitate back toward the style with which we are
more familiar. However, I assure you that, in the long term, this collaborative model, if widely adopted and put into practice, will give everyone both a voice and a purpose in this sacred venture we call the Church. You just have to be present and take part.
With God's blessings,
Tom
Pastor Tom’s e-mail address:
jtomgough@gmail.com
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