Tracy Chapman on "change"

Tracy Chapman's song from 2005 "Change" became a theme or anthem for us at Fairlawn-West. The lyrics are below, but you can see the music video here.

If you knew that you would die today
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change? Would you change?
If you knew that love can't break your heart
When you're down so low you cannot fall
Would you change would you change?

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget
Makes you change Makes you change

If you knew that you couldn't be alone
Knowing right being wrong
Would you change? Would you change?
If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings a pain that can't be soothed
Would you change would you change?

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction What cause and effect
Makes you turn around Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget
Makes you change Makes you change

Are you so upright you can't be bent if it comes to blows
Are you so sure you won't be crawling
If not for the good why risk falling
Why risk falling
If everything you think you know
Makes your life unbearable
Would you change? Would you change?

If you'd broken every rule and vow
And hard times come to bring you down
Would you change? Would you change?
If you knew that you would die today
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change? Would you change?

church IS recovery

The following is from Frederick Buechner (I think Buecher is the best author and preacher of our time...he was on the Diane Rehm show on NPR this spring and here is the interview with him):

Alcoholics Anonymous or A.A. is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can't pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren't so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power.

When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, "I am John. I am an alcoholic," "I am Mary. I am an alcoholic," to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, "Hi, John," "Hi, Mary." They are apt to end with the Lord's Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their won, they meet wherever they can.

Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another--to be available at any hour of the day or night if the need arises. There's not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.

You can't help thinking that something like this is what the Church is meant to be and maybe once was before it go to be Big Business. Sinners Anonymous. "I can will what is right but I cannot do it," is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do no want is what I do" (Romans 7:19).

"I am me. I am a sinner."
"Hi, you."
Hi, every Sadie and Al. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the Church is all about.

No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, the know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to healt, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about.

Would it ever occur to Christians in a far place to turn to a church nearby in hope of finding the same? Would they find it? If not, you wonder, what is so Big about the Church's Business.

the paradox of pastoral leadership and spiritual recovery

The thing I notice a lot from the New Testament is that there is a reaction to the present entrenched religious organizational life. Jesus doesn't set out to be over against, but "for" the kingdom of God. Yet, that puts him in reaction to the established reality. The apostle Paul runs into the same thing both within Judaism and the emerging Christian church.

I often go back to an article from around 1990 by Anne Wilson Schaef that tries to answer the question "is the church an addictive organization?" That article was pivotal for me not just in my church life, but my personal life. That is where I first found the kind of personal spiritual life questions and the questions as a leader in the church of how what I was part of as the church was more focused on its own goals than on announcing the breaking in of God's kingdom in Jesus Christ. I thought I was doing that with all my social justice works and statements. The journey since I first read this article in 1990 has taken me in a way I never would have dreamed.

I think all church leaders today need to be working their own 12 Step recovery program. The folks I know, like myself, have our own host of personal addictions. Most prevalent are workaholism and codependence. I see the latter especially in the way my own denomination of the United Church of Christ seeks to fix and control the behavior of some of the other addictive behaviors like sexual and alcohol of other leaders and in the way it seeks to "fix" the world around it. The question for all leaders is not how can I/we fix the world around us, but "what is it of my experience of Jesus Christ that the world around me needs to know." That is reflective of the light of God in my life rather than my hog-tying the message to fit what my mind is obsessing over.

It is risky for me in my recovery to hang around a number of my colleagues and the official parts of our denomination (as well as other denominations) because as a recovering addict I am to "go to any lengths to maintain my sobriety", but the behavior and thinking I experience around the wider church is very addictive. Yet, I am chastised for not being "loyal" and even questioned somewhat professionally for not being the kind of "UCC minister" that the general institution deems the norm and faithful to its goals. This is a great paradox, but not unheard of as I read the N.T.

Keith Miller who was a prolific author on Christian spirituality and then who began his own journey of recovery, is one I think we could use a lot both personally as church leaders in our spiritual recovery and thus how we lead as pastors in the body of Christ.

is it about us or Jesus?

This article hits the nail on the head for where we found ourselves at Fairlawn-West & why we have changed and what has happened to the UCC and it is still trying to make work with its denominational identity stuff...to its own continuing demise. Its about the reality of Jesus Christ and sharing the Gospel with the world around us "who is Jesus Christ"...not "who is the UCC". Here is a link to the article from the Columbus Dispatch http://snipurl.com/utxk

Yesterday’s church?
Trends put traditional Protestants into decline
Friday, August 11, 2006
Dennis M . Mahoney
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

who is a leader in the body of Christ today?

1. a passionate commitment to the Great Commission
2. An evangelical approach to Christianity in that Jesus is the ONLY way period with no room to wiggle
3. Extroverted or forced extrovert due to the mission
4. Passionate about expanding the Kingdom rather than growing a church
5. Entrepreneurial in action
6. An extremely clear sense of call
7. They fit the context - often that is because they move around until they find the right fit rather than stay in a place where they dont fit, or dont like, or isnt going where they feel called to go

from Bill Easum
http://www.easumbandy.com

staph infection

Due to a staph infection in my arm I spent 4 days in the hospital this week and am the road of day to day recovery. I will post again as soon as possible.

David