Your Spaces Matter. Your congregation’s ministry blesses the entire world and ensuring your buildings’ safety and usefulness is vital. Unfortunately, the aging-out of our buildings is posing unprecedented stress on many congregations. Our presbytery offers sessions access to resources to help assess and remediate the condition of your buildings.

Review your ministry goals and evaluate how well your buildings support your mission. Consider inviting an experienced team from the presbytery's board of trustees for a walk-thru with you. As a result, many churches have discovered new ways to reduce costs, repurpose space, leverage repairs, and put more money into mission through presbytery partnerships.

Your building is a community assess point where you to deliver Good News experiences. Optimize your spaces. Your spaces matter.

In what says have you repurposed your space to meet current and future mission objectives?

Thank you pastors!

Pastors Matter. A part of my call is supporting and coaching our pastors. I can share with you that some struggle to keep discouragement at bay. The challenges our pastors face can be daunting, and their faithfulness is deeply appreciated. Teaching elders and ruling elders strive to resolve sometimes differing expectations and outcomes from ministry. Many stressors are historically rooted and should not be the pastor’s burden to bear.

Pay attention to your pastor’s needs. Give your pastor access to tools and resources that provide a more efficient or effective service to your congregation and to the community. Invest more money for their continuing professional and spiritual development. Encourage them frequently and pray regularly for them. The Committee on Ministry stands ready to support your session and minister so that ministry honors the work and the gifts our pastoral leaders generously offer us. Thank you pastors!

A New Job Intersection

Rule or Teach? What's your job description in the PC(USA)?


Presbytery is now a council of teaching elders and ruling elders, no longer a governing body. According to Joe Smalls, formerly of the Office of Theology and Worship, the foundations of Presbyterian polity and the form of government reveal that ruling elders does not refer to power or governance, but to their ruling-out, (measuring as with a ruler). This is great news. Ruling elders are called to discern their faithfulness to the Gospel in the life of the congregation. Effective elders discern and lead in innovative, contextual mission.


Teaching elders, on the other hand, are called to a responsibility for teaching the Faith. “Teaching” does not simply refer to formal educational events, or preaching. Teachers of the faith clarify the Gospel in the real world context as a congregation celebrates the sacraments, prays, learns, and works together in outward-directed service to the world. Healthy teaching elders collaborate with one another and understand the necessity for skill improvement, and learning about their community and world, to fulfill that responsibility faithfully.

At the Intersection of Faith and Context.


Teaching elders deepen congregational understanding of the whole gospel at the intersection of faith and context. Ruling elders discern the “growth” of the congregation and mobilizes its gifts in their community context.


These teaching and ruling elders become presbyters as they gather from many congregations in what we can now call, thankfully, a council. When presbyteries were governing bodies, “council” was the term many used for a subset of the presbytery rather than the whole. But “presbytery council” was really a kinder way of saying “executive committee.” Newark Presbytery, for example, is a council, as is the whole session, and the whole general assembly. The name indicates an assembly to consult together, discussing how to change and grow to become more like Jesus Christ. We are not organized to hear reports and vote. Councils are called to give prayerful, thoughtful, sustained attention to the faith and how to live authentically in our context as disciples of Jesus. There should be positive outcomes for individuals, congregations, community and world from our council gatherings. When you hear “council,” think Nicaea, or Barmen, rather than the local school board or the Congress.


Governance is not the remedy to building the church; courageous discernment leading to missional outcomes is. God invites us to realign, regroup, retool, and rebuild our ministries on the foundation at the intersection of faith and context as ruling and teaching elders.


Where's your job intersection?

Future's Foundation

As if on a wilderness journey for forty years, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been rebuilding its crumbling foundations in an attempt to keep its ministry strong. We can rebuild and strengthen our foundation, but we are increasingly unclear about what the building emerging on the foundation should look like. What is the church to be like in years ahead? Everything has changed, even Legos.

Building Blocks For What? I remember Legos in a container of assorted colors and sizes that I could assemble into whatever I imagined. Now, Legos are primarily kits of over specialized pieces. My grandkids don’t just want Legos, they want Star Wars Legos, or Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, or Prince of Persia Legos theme sets. There’s even an Advent Calendar Lego set! Where is the imagination in that? Though still fun, it has evolved into a prescribed step by step process that yields whatever is on the box, not what’s on the mind.

Forty years ago, church in North America was prescribed. Presbyterian churches depended on people who grew up in the church to continue what was previously learned. Back then, it might have been fine if churches were primarily pastor- and program-driven. Seminaries produced pastors the churches needed and churches nurtured candidates to keep the church going as it had been. Expectations were well established and communities depended on the stability associated with the Church to help stabilize its citizens.

We depend on Robert’s Rules of Order when the presbytery functions as a governing body of debate and regulation. Jesus warned us about the dangers of building a house on the sand. We need foundations. But the foundation Jesus’ was referring to in the Sermon on the Mount was not our rules, but his rules when he said, “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on (Matt. 7:24a). Jesus’ foundational words included:

Don’t pick on people or criticize their faults; Don’t play a holier-than-thou part, just live your part; Don’t be flip with the sacred; Don’t bargain with God; Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them; Don’t look for shortcuts to God; Be wary of false preachers.

The Apostle Paul invited everyone to embrace, and be embraced by, a Christ-centered life. Jesus is the foundation and we are cautioned to build upon that foundation with care.


Building on the solid foundation using old directions, tools, and guides will not produce the church this world deserves to experience God’s love today. With no prescribed set of building blocks and no Presbyterian building kit with step by step instructions, we have new roles to live into to get us to the next place of building mission.

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish person who built their house on sand” Matt. 7.26.

“Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! ” 1Cor. 3.10-11.

Community Matters

Who benefits most from your team or session mission? How much more could be realized if new partnerships were nurtured the community at large, not just the "faith" community? Our newly emerging Newark Presbytery Community Transformation Corporation is redoubling its efforts to bless our neighbors. By engaging in new ministries sited at our existing properties, opportunities for sustainable initiatives will transform not merely the host church, but help reconnect and empower new relationships and new futures.

A congregation must not seek to experience health and vitality if the community around the congregation is not included in that same experience.

Newark Presbytery, Elizabeth Presbytery, and Palisades Presbytery have been exploring how realigning our resources could lead to new health, growth, and vitality of all our congregations. We ask God to use us to bless the 4.5 million people that live within our bounds. Imagine… 28,000 plus Presbyterians (our tribe) discovering new, innovative, authentic, and tangible ways to demonstrate God's love in the name of Jesus Christ to the millions of our neighbors (God's tribe). Now, that's a really something that's worth exploring.

Throughout the Synod and national church, God's listening people are setting aside preconceived, ineffective notions, self-interest, and former ways of being the Body of Christ so that more and more people experience joy and abundant living.

After all, our mission is to resonate and represent the love God has demonstrated for the whole world. Community matters. What matters to your church?

Got Courage?

It takes vision and courage for a leadership team or session to consider a realignment of mission objectives. To achieve a strategic redeployment of property assets for alternative or shared ministry, it requires us to contemplate a different way to respond to God's Spirit in collaborative mission. We know we must change. We just choose not to. Scared? Sure. Hard work? Yes. But to remain the same, expecting different results, well, you know what that indicates, right?

The mission critical moment comes when we, or when our team, or session and congregation choose to change with a sense of hopeful urgency and get courageous. Ready to change is not changing. Changing our actions and behaviors in authentic, humble, and intentional ways is changing.

What new could emerge if our focus as a church was not actually the church, but the community the church is located in? What does a session need to be equipped to re-tune its spiritual radar to see opportunities instead of only obstacles? What would it take for your team to take responsibility for its own future instead of blaming others? It takes courage.

How useful is your church site, buildings and property to help you achieve the unique mission God is sending your congregation out into the world to fulfill? We need congregational transformation, but also property transformation. Instead of feeling stuck with your existing building, or overwhelmed by negative outcomes of deferred maintenance, what might emerge as a blessing if you considered alternative ways of gathering, worshipping, serving, teaching, and transforming by collaborating with an adjacent congregation? 

Got courage?

Focus Leads to Collaboration

When a congregation, or team, focuses on itself, it never grows beyond itself.


The true gifts they could offer the world are shut up tight within their walls of preoccupation and selfish ignorance. Though the sign outside says, "All are welcome!" nothing could be further from the truth.
Jesus put it this way; "If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me" Matthew 10.39. Additionally, when you forget about yourself in an authentic, humble, and intentional way, you begin to grow, improve behaviors, and become the blessing to others God created in advance for you to do (Eph. 2:11).


When a leadership team has a clear, other focused, focus, a clarity in mission, a congregation soon discovers they can't think they can do it all alone. This collaborative energy is freeing and energizing and I have seen it lead to exciting, new, emerging approaches to ministry.


When churches become less the point and the communities they are located in become the point, it is no longer about "My" church, but "Our" community, and when geographically proximate to other fellowships and congregations with a similar out-ward vision, collaboration is natural and compelling. Two or more outward-focused teams can choose to focus on achieving their mission goals together and not surprisingly, new options appear.


In consultation with teams such as the Committee on Ministry, Board of Trustees, and Mission Council, new energy has emerged from new, adaptive structures and relationships.
For example, Elmwood United PC in East Orange and the former Central PC in Newark found mutual blessing when they explored what could happen when more resources would be released by uniting together. Instead of focusing on what was, or what is, the leaders began to focus on what could be. The opportunities for congregational and community transformation was discovered together. Today, God has blessed the collaborative mission with multiplied outcomes.


Driven by a similar kind of mutual vision, leaders from three West Orange congregations aligned their resources to unite as the United PC of West Orange. With the collaborative effort of a Newark Presbytery Administrative Commission, new opportunities for common ministry took shape with many cascading benefits that have rippled throughout the region. By selling deteriorating buildings and repurposing property into more liquid resources, the new united congregation now occupies a common site that is shared equally with Elmwood United's other growing worship site.


What can your session or team do to have a better future, to grow? Where they focus their mission is the key to uncovering the enormous and awesome outcomes of collaborative mission. Your community deserves nothing less.

Clarifying Mission is #1 Task for the #1 Customer

Who is the #1 customer of your presbytery?
If you responded the sessions of your congregations, you answered wisely.


18 months ago, I initiated a missional intervention in conversation with other key committees in Newark. I asked the moderators and clerks of session to invite me to a meeting of their choice and give me 33 minutes on the docket.


Within that time I wanted to achieve one primary objective: To express our belief that the session is the #1 customer, the focus, and the priority, of the presbytery. Its been a great experience. They sometimes believe me! (It's a shock to their time-tested experience.)
40% of our sessions have intentionally set aside time to join me to listen and lead in new ways. They are clarifying their congregation's unique mission and refocusing their ministry on new initiatives. Using demographic, survey, and other tools, they are realizing that every church can take responsibility to rekindle their mission passion to love their community in tangible and sustainable ways.


Reliable data leads to better decisions. Like in Moneyball, when your session gains clarity about what matters most, and the real Wow emerges. (More on this in a post to come.)


When a session and congregation discern and choose a clear, focused, mission, they begin to make better choices. They can say “Yes” to what achieves their unique mission and they can confidently say“No” to actions, programs, and ministries that are not aligned with their mission.


By constantly listening to the Spirit, the focused mission becomes part of a new DNA for the church and the blessings sure to follow will reinforce the new direction that has begun. It is at this fundamental level that the presbytery, the collective spiritual energy of our congregations, can provide resources needed for the transformative work.


Clarifying mission is the #1 task for the presbytery's #1 customer. Its working already.

Moneyball Wow and Church Radar

In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis wrote about how baseball scouts and managers were wrong about what makes a great baseball player. They argued about it and invested millions in trying to understand it. They used the wrong radar, they looked for the wrong “Wow” factor of what makes the best player. When statistics taught a few teams what the real Wow was, the balance of power shifted. I pay attention to that information.

Do you know what the real Wow is for authentic and effective congregational mission? Consider the Gospel story recorded in Mark when people appeared like walking trees to a blind man healed by Jesus.

Mark's rapid-fire, cascading, accounts of Jesus' actions included the feeding of thousands of hungry people. That's good, but Jesus wanted more than a full belly for his team of disciples. Sure, they ate with the crowd that afternoon, but after lunch, Jesus quizzed, “And the seven loaves for the four thousand—how many bags full of leftovers did you get?” “Seven.” He said, “Do you still not get it?” Just like us, we thought the Wow factor was in the miraculous feeding, but Jesus wanted his team to understand the leftovers. The outcomes. The Wow was in the leftovers.

Jesus met a blind man and continued to heal him. The outcomes of the miracle were amazing. A person who knew only darkness saw light. This healing experience was not over. He saw people, but the people appeared to be upside down. The Wow was yet to come. If the blind man was in a hurry, if a little was enough, if getting by a bit better was sufficient, he would have walked away happy to see "any" light at all. Jesus knew the Wow was yet to come. As if Jesus said, "Wait, we can do better than this." Touching the man's eyes, full sight was restored.

Where can we see the real Wow emerging?

Do you know what the Wow church looks like?

What's on your radar today that matters?

What is Home?

What is home to you?

As I travel throughout the 150 square mile bounds of our presbytery, visiting our congregational “homes,” I am constantly reminded of the incredible ministries of healing, hospitality, proclamation, and compassion that flow to neighbors nearby and around the world. I celebrate our sessions’ robust faith and resolute spirit as together we embrace the opportunities ahead. By stepping up with new, innovative programs and speaking out on behalf of those with little or no voice our elders point everyone to the Good News found in the risen savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for your ministry!

We sometimes call our church building our “home.” We speak about our hometown, opening our homes to strangers as a gesture of love, and at the end of the day, we anxiously wait to get back home. Our own references to death or the funeral of a loved one are often tenderly conveyed as a final “home-going.” Our music, books, and movies are filled with “home” titles and themes. Even in sports, we favor our home team and every baseball player focuses on the goal achieved when touching home plate. 

Ecological homelessness is on the rise. It refers to the sense of displacement and fragmentation that alienates us from family and as citizens. We can also experience this homelessness within our own spirits. God is our secure home. If “home” that represents wholeness and peace were not that important to us, I doubt we would be as comforted as we are by its embrace, or find such motivation to experience it. 

From the first book of the Bible to the last, there are hundreds of references to home. God told Abram to trade the comfortable home he knew, for a home he would claim in the distance. The incarnation of Jesus meant that God was making his home with us. In a few weeks, we celebrate the gift of the indwelling Spirit of Pentecost ensuring us, and assuring us, that God’s home is within us. God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! (Revelation 21.3).

Like all things we value, there is a cost to pay for establishing, seeking, or maintaining a healthy, safe home and neighborhood. In my conversations with elders, the increased operational costs of our buildings, frequently paired with reduced income and economic climate have created serious stressors. In some cases, the building has almost become our mission. The costs of operating the physical plant in some cases exceed the costs of ministry.

We honor our congregational homes, but we have become somewhat attached to them. Our aged buildings have suffered the effects of deferred maintenance and, in some cases, have become a disproportionate distraction to the mission of the church. In my visits with elders, I know these stressors are deeply felt and remedies are urgently sought. Sometimes our existing buildings and their upkeep have sapped energy away from having those needed conversations about innovative ministries, shared ministry with another congregation, and ministry re-alignment.

Decide today what is home to you and your ministry.

Do You Have a Memory Organization or an Imaginative Organization? Choose Carefully

What do you remember? There are three main types of memory functions in our brains: Sensory, Short-term, and Long-term. Sensory memory fills up with what’s happening now. Short-term memory processes information for a few minutes longer. If we attribute importance to it and repeatedly access it, it becomes a working short-term memory. Information that has great value to us is kept indefinitely as Long-term memory. This is the “remembering” part of the brain that is encoded with meaning, smells, colors, and other sensory attributes. These memories can deeply affect our future behaviors and attitudes. Being aware of what we remember informs our future.

Memorial Day represents one day of personal (and national) awareness and reverence, honoring those Americans who died while defending our Nation and its values. Our national “Remembering Day” emerged before the end of the Civil War when women who lost family and friends annually gathered to place flowers on the graves of those who had fallen in the service of their country. A hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead" (Source: Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920).

In what part of your brain’s memory is Memorial Day remembered? In what ways will your religious community participate in a gratitude-driven day of remembering?

Not only do individuals have memory, but so do communities and groups, and institutions and companies. Listening to each other’s “memories” and honoring the values attributed to them is a great way to build a sense of team-work, solidarity, and a spirit of humble gratitude.

But be careful. Deeply felt memories can be seductive and, though as familiar as a pair of comfy slippers, they can lock us in to debilitating sentimentality, fear, and pettiness. People gathering as congregations or teams can devolve into being more of a Memory Organization (stuck in the past) than growing into being an Imaginative Organization (co-creating a new future). There is no ministry from memory; memory is the past. But memories can inform new, creative, learning resulting in fresh ways of authentic, intentional, and effective ministry.

Many of our memories can enrich the lives of those around us as we embrace a hopeful future. Do you have a Memory Organization or an Imaginative Organization? Lead carefully as you honor the past and create a future of new possibilities.

-Kevin

Our narrative is powerful, no matter what our church "home" is like today.

Our narrative is powerful, no matter what our church home is like today.

In what ways can our church homes become more welcoming? They can be places to invite people into conversations we haven't had before, with people we do not know, so that we can experience God’s love and peace in a safe place? What does your neighborhood need more than anything else? What can your congregation do to salve the fragmentation and homelessness experienced in your neighborhood?

Paying Attention to Kids

Youth matter. The topic of kids come up in most every one of my conversations with congregation leadership teams. Typically though, its a recounting of by-gone days when kids were more present and involved. Our experience of membership decline has not only led to institutional despair and trauma, but severe generational gaps in our churches. The challenges and opportunities concerning our youth have taken center stage before, but often languish amid unfulfilled expectations of the under trained youth worker, unsupported associate for youth ministries, or the rapidly disappearing Director of Christian Education.

The increasing median age of our congregations is a big part of the result as well as the challenge we face. Though we can learn best practices and develop more effective responses to the needs kids face today, one simple thing we all can do now is to focus and pay better attention to our kids. Pay attention. Respect. Listen. Have you or your team really tried this recently?

We need to pay attention to kids. Period. Not just kids within our church, or circles of families and friends, but those who are our neighbors and residents in our communities. When we choose to focus on kids, our mission priorities and resource allocations would shift to support that commitment.

One way we are resourcing this youth intentionality is creating Multimedia Academies in some of our locations. Grants have provided the technology, we recruited proven leadership, and now are starting conversational and creational spaces in our buildings where caring and responsible adults can show love for kids while the youth learn technical and life skills in a safe environment. Our MultiMedia Academy is one way we can pay attention to our community youth.

If your team has been effective in reaching youth in your community, I would like to know more about your experience. Resources abound and together we can demonstrate God's love to young people in more sustainable and creative ways. I'm trying to pay better attention… you with me?

Thanks for all you do today to pay attention to kids.
Kevin

Community and Congregational Health: 
What’s the Connection?

Expecting a donation of money since he could not work, a man needed to make a change in his life. More importantly, he was ready for change in his life. His pattern included seeking donations in the plate, but these gifts, even generous ones, did not ensure a sustainable future. Who would have been able to offer the intervention he needed? Though this story could be relating an actual occurance I observed last week. It's the apostle Peter’s experience with a disabled man at the Beautiful Gate of the Jerusalem temple in the first century impressed historian Luke so much so that he gave this story prominence (Acts 3:1-6). It’s a favorite story of mine.

In Acts, Peter embodied, and even extended, the very ministry of Jesus as recounted in Matthew’s gospel when the tax collector reports that, “People brought anybody with an ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical. Jesus healed them, one and all.” Could that be said of your church? Peter saw the inextricable link between spiritual health and physical vitality. A wholeness of body, mind, and spirit leads to a sustainable and hopeful future.

We offer what we have. The man received what he needed. He got up and walked! A few coins would get him through the day. Two strong legs would now get him to a job for a lifetime.

As faithful and eager as the church is to focus on spiritual concerns, we have a long way to go to practice the theological convergence of spiritual, emotional, physical, and public wellness. Often regarded as an unmentionable topic in church and governing body conversations, our individual and corporate mental health, and its advocacy, is mission critical for a missional church to be a compassionate blessing in the world.

I believe Newark Presbytery’s churches are increasingly poised to intentionally, humbly, and authentically become an agent of community wholeness, not merely an example of it. How's your team doing? Congregations can choose to promote community wellness and wholeness, not just in being generous with funds placed in a plate, but helping people walk in the newness and in the fullness of life. We must address the fragmentation our communities, and churches, experience.

Healthy communities self-correct. Healthy communities make for healthy congregations. What can our churches do? More of what we are already doing! And much more.I will post a few missional ideas for your leadership team and congregation to explore. I hope you find them helpful.

What has worked for you?

A Personal Thanksgiving

Dear Friends in the Presbyterian Church, (U.S.A.),

I am deeply moved by your expressions of love and sympathy in the recent death of my mother, Martha, on January 14th. Many pastors, sessions, and presbytery and denominational leaders, have expressed their prayerful care and concern. The cards, emails, visits, and calls have been an exceedingly buoyant and needed gift to my family and to Melissa and me. Thank you.

Loving and steadfastly supportive, my mom's gentle, self-effacing demeanor made the entire family feel accepted and special. Because of my mom, our family enjoyed many blessings. She was in great health for 88 years until just after Thanksgiving when her condition rapidly deteriorated. Her, and our, confidence in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a comfort of consolation. She will be always celebrated and fondly remembered.

Feeling your support and love has made the grief of loss much lighter to bear. I m grateful for you.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Tragedy In Tucson and Mental Health

We were all shocked when we learned of the shooting tragedy in Tucson involving Congresswoman Gifford on Saturday. Phyllis Schneck, a member of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Ariz., was among those killed in the shootings on January 8, 2011, that left six people dead and 14 injured. We offer our prayers for the Gifford's (whose husband is from West Orange, New Jersey), the Schneck's, and the other families affected by this event.

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders issued a statement today in the wake of the shooting tragedy. Elder Cynthia Bolbach, Moderator of the 219th General Assembly (2010) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, and Elder Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the General Assembly Mission Council, expressed anguish over the shootings and horror over “this kind of assault on public discourse.”

The assault on public discourse is truly reprehensible. But like other recent and similarly tragic events in the United States, the attack on public discourse may have been initiated by an individual who desperately needed mental health intervention. The mind matters.

As faithful and eager as the church is to focus on spiritual concerns, the church has along way to go to demonstrate an awareness of the theological convergence of spiritual, emotional, physical, and public wellness. Often regarded as an unmentionable topic in church and governing body conversations, our mental health and its advocacy is mission critical for a missional church to be a blessing in the world.

My wife, a licensed professional counselor and mental health professional, received today's statement from Mental Health America on the tragedy in Arizona. They recognized the point of intervention is not merely the act of violence, but an intervention with the individual contemplating such violence. I excerpt below from their statement. (For more information, contact: Steve Vetzner, svetzner@mentalhealthamerica.net.)

"It will likely take many days to understand the reasons and motivations behind this national tragedy… People with mental health conditions are no more likely to be violent than the rest of the population. And we have science-based methods to successfully treat persons with even the most severe mental illnesses. A very small group of individuals with a specific type of mental health symptoms are at greater risk for violence if their symptoms are untreated.…

"The nation’s mental health system is drastically under-funded and fails to provide Americans living with mental health conditions with the effective community-based mental health services they need. Sadly, in the current environment of strained state budgets, mental health services have been cut drastically just as demand for these critical services has risen dramatically.…

"It is also important that, as a community, we assist persons with signs and symptoms of mental illnesses to seek treatment. Although rare, when a person becomes so ill that he/she is a danger to themselves or others state laws provide a way to get them help even if they don’t believe that they need it. The best strategy, however, is to have an accessible system of care that is easy to use.…

"We do not know if the mental health system failed in this situation or if there were missed opportunities or if effective treatment might have averted this tragedy. We do hope that we can find answers and create solutions that prevent this from ever happening again."

The church, (referring both to the people and as a place of gathering), has an opportunity to once again become the town's Meeting House it enjoyed centuries ago. The church seeks new ways to reconnect to the real world. In Newark Presbytery, we are experiencing many successes including food and clothing distribution, housing, training, and education and support programs, in addition to worship experiences, that seek to serve the community. We can do much better in regards to the mental health of our communities by providing a welcoming place for groups to gather to discuss concerns, learn, and create spaces for more and more voices to be heard in a safe and inviting place. This gathering can be effectively facilitated online and via social media. These groups of individuals and conversations can grow and become self-correcting, nurturing, and build the capacity of the entire community. When faith becomes the basis of this activity, even more resources are afforded the community at large.


Let's get connected so we can realize the possibilities. What would help you be better connected? Connected internally regarding your whole self… spirit, mind, body. The church needs to be connected before we get people reflecting about the future.

The tragedy in Tucson is a cry for help. In what ways will you pay better attention to your inner-self and health? What stressors in your life seem out of control right now? Where will you go for resourcing or intervention should you need it? How will your organization or church pay better attention to the mental health of your community? It's risky to get involved. Nothing is going to change unless we take our mental health seriously, and empower others to do the same for themselves.

Public discourse can be most effective when its citizens are healthy and connected.

I hope you will experience that healthfulness in 2011.

Kevin



Word got around the entire Roman province of Syria. People brought anybody with an ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical. Jesus healed them, one and all. Matthew 4.24

Where Is That Star Pointing?

Where Is That Star Pointing?

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem village, Judah territory—this was during Herod’s kingship—a band of scholars arrived in Jerusalem from the East. They asked around, “Where can we find and pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews? We observed a star in the eastern sky that signaled his birth. We’re on pilgrimage to worship him.” (Matthew 2:1-3)

Provoked by an unmistakable indicator in the sky, a discerning band of scholars were determined to worship the new King. God’s incarnation, our redemption intervention, was promoted by a star. The star, that point of light, was pointing to the Light of the world, Jesus.

God is with us, and within us. The Spirit sends us into the world to demonstrate —to incarnate— the incredible life-changing, transformational possibilities of God-with-us living through Jesus Christ. The event of incarnation is inextricably bound up with the whole salvation story of the Good News.

As it did in that first Christmas, the Star continues to point to where God meets people —incarnationally— with intentionality, humility, and authenticity. The Star points to places where a restorative community, family, or fellowship creates a future of emerging opportunities. From isolation to engagement, retribution to restoration, from fault-finding to gift-bearing, from timidity to courage, from self-interest to generosity, the Star points the way. As those scholars of old discovered, the Star points to where God’s presence transforms life.

Look around. Where do you see that Star pointing today in your home, church, community, or world? I am grateful for your acts of grace and kindness. Let's both do more of that! As the proclamation of the Word and the worship of God are experienced this Christmas week, I hope that you are bathed in the Star’s glow of forgiveness, hope, and joy.

How will you change so that your community sees the Star today?

Merry Christmas,

Kevin

If Not For Profit, What Are We For?

The community has gathered today. We are a community! I look forward to every meeting. We all do. The presbytery has gathered today, but what for?

We identify social agencies and institutions that serve the public good as “not for profits.” The “not for profit” label seems to suggest that all we need to know about “not for profits” is just knowing what it isn’t.
Can you imagine introducing yourself by a name you are not? “Hello, my name is not Alice.” “Friends, I would like you to meet my friend, not Roger.” Or referring to your church as, “Welcome to not First Church,” or even, “Thank you for gathering at, “not Peace Lutheran Church.” There is insufficient information conveyed by describing what something is not. Identifying what you do —by what you don’t do— is an essentially purposeless effort. Recently there has been some national conversation referring to “not for profits” as the “public benefit” sector. Maybe its a good idea.

Thankfully, Jesus asserted ideas and purpose with much more clarity.

In the Luke 19 story (below), a relationship of expectation is established between a ruler and servants. This led to a conversation of possibilities. What would these servants do with the investments while the owner was gone? Some of the citizens focused more on trying to change the relationship than on investing the money.
Citizens have the capacity to change the community story, to reclaim the power to name what is worth talking about, to bring a new context into being. Instead of problems (the past), citizens can invest in possibilities (the future).

Those of us who help create the current dominant context for the community conversation drive the conditions that nurture either a retributive or a restorative community context. If we do not choose to change this context and the strategies that follow from it, we will produce few new outcomes for our institutions, neighborhoods, and towns; nor for our churches or presbytery.

Not for profits are for the public good, right?

Take one example I recently read in USAToday: A Christian-founder who created a not for profit to distribute anti-Muslim information, collects hundreds of thousands of dollars. His same “not for profit” group, formed a separate “for profit” that pays the founders (him) to produce the anti-Muslim information. Who is that founder “For” ? It appears he is “not for profit” but in actuality his organization is for inciting misinformation about Muslims.
The marketing of fear is not just “for profit.” It also holds a political agenda. Fear justifies a retributive agenda, fundamentalist in the extreme have been on the rise for some time.

The retributive agenda’s focus is a civil, just society that gives priority to restraints, consequences, and control, and underlines the importance of rules.

The communities our churches are in, and the faith-community in our congregations, each require a context shift. Fear, fault finding, and retribution fragments our lives and diminishes our social capital, (what we have that we choose to intentionally and authentically offer as a gift to others in a spirit of generosity and joy).
Citizens of civil societies, and citizens of presbyteries, can give voice to an inclusive community and restore a healthy listening context for unconditional mutual positive regard, collaboration, dissent, possibilities, and hope.
What is the presbytery for? As a restorative community we can create a hopeful future together, without retribution. Take a look at the chart derived from Peter Block’s, Community: The Structure of Belonging (2009).
What can we create together as a presbytery?

Newark Presbytery is, and can be, for many things. We are for every congregation living into their unique mission. We are “for” 800,000 neighbor-citizens that live within our bounds. We are “for” the city of Newark and all people in its adjacent urban centers, and “for” the ring communities, suburbs, and towns. We are “for” the poor, disenfranchised, abused, and suffering, and for peace, justice, and wellness. We try to become a healthier context where each citizen (member) chooses to be accountable rather than entitled.

Accountability means that each of us can be “possibilities” of willingness to care for the whole. (Entitlement is a conversation about what others can or need to do to create the future for us.) We can create the kind of conversations about the new story we want to take our identity from, and build our future upon.

You have been gifts to me. I am grateful for each of you; every minister, congregation, session, committee, and team. I am honored to listen and help co-create and initiate possibilities of an alternate future with you. We are gifts to each other. I know you try to do the same as you serve your congregations.
“What, then, shall we say in response to this? Since God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8.31). This Good News of Jesus Christ will drive and sustain our transformation as we gather.

What possibilities do you offer your team or community today?

Kevin

What's a saddle for?

When Henry Ford’s car’s started appearing on the dusty roads of America, a lot of people wondered, “Where do you put the saddle?,” thinking the car was just a faster horse.

The car was way more than a faster horse. Besides not needing a saddle, this sublime transportation technology not only helped us get from here to there, it changed the way people regarded geographic boundaries and interacted with each other.

Just as the car is not a faster horse, email is not a faster fax. And, as Seth Godin adds, online project management is not a bigger whiteboard. And Facebook is not an electronic rolodex. Get it?

When we do not embrace or internalize implications of change, we close ourselves off from the world. Technology, for example, is not just a way to do things faster. If it were, then we could better understand some people’s reluctance to embrace what’s new; they simply decide fast is fast enough.

Chinese printer Pi Sheng invented movable type in 1041 A.D. It was similar to the technology that German printer Johann Gutenberg used four hundred years later to produce his famous editions of the Bible. The technology promoted the sharing of ideas and the Reformation itself could hardly have occurred without the writings of Erasmus and Luther being widely distributed. This promoted an accessible faith, the development of schools, resulting in more people reading, who in turn learned new ideas. Attitudes and behaviors changed, resulting in repeated cycles of inspiration, invention, and innovation. The printing press was not just a faster way of producing books.

Similarly, thinking the iPod is just an easier way to listen to music, or that the iPad is just a bigger iPhone misses the game-changing reality that millions and millions of people are using these new tools to profoundly interact with and change the world.

Putting a big screen in front of a congregation, instead of holding hymn books, is not just a faster or easier way to sing. It is an incredible sociological and liturgical game-changer. Exploring how social media intersects faith and church is an emerging ecclesiastical challenge. Some consider the recent phenomena of social media to be just about faster communications, merely having an impact on those who use the services. Facebook and Twitter offer a magnitude of influence on the world that could rival that of Gutenberg’s printing press. Imagine that.

In what ways are you becoming more humble, intentional, and authentic as a human being? What, or who, will you pay more attention to today?

So, we don’t need saddles to drive a car. What game-changing tools are you mastering to make a better world? I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Sincerely,

Kevin

PS -For my friends in the Presbyterian Church…one more thing:

When it comes to middle governing bodies in the church, we get stuck because we do not internalize the change we all agree we need, and think we are just doing things faster or better with each iteration of meetings and projects. In reality, everything’s changed around us and new tools are revolutionizing the way the people think about themselves and their communities. When we resist internalized change, we diminish our precious spiritual and emotional energy. When it comes to the Presbyterian Church middle governing bodies, we may not have enough time to catch up to the world we wake up to each day. We seem to be speaking to one another in rooms where no one else is gathered to listen.

For more than forty years, our mantra has bellowed about the possibility of change, the challenge of change, the need for change, even sometimes trying to promote a readiness for change. Yet, we have not changed our position in order to fully present and better connected to the physical and virtual world.

We are acutely aware of unintended and un-welcomed change all around our churches, presbyteries, and synods. Yet we keep looking for a faster way to do more of what, sadly, is not working.

We fumble at integration, rarely grasping the game-changing implications of a world that passed the church by long ago on its way to the future.

Instead of leading a helpful and timely conversation in the public square down the road or online, our best intentions seem sabotaged by those of us who are paralyzed by fear, impaired in mind or spirit, or simply unconscious.

If our mission is to avoid risk. We have achieved it. No Special Commission of the GAMC will help, even if summoned. Our consolation is that a few determined presbyteries can collaboratively realign their mission and their assets to produce healthier, more effective, outwardly directed congregations, irrespective of how the synods stumble forward, as if resurrected like Lazarus, but still holding tightly to their grave clothes.

We need more than the nineties’ deep change analysis and form of government upgrade. We need a spiritual and mental reboot. Let’s agree that we don’t need a “faster” church, but a more humble, intentional, and authentic church (and by church I don’t mean a building on the corner). We must be transformed from within to look more like the one we follow as disciples, namely Jesus. That’s the change that matters. Living inside—out, mastering game-changing tools to be fully present (incarnate) in the physical and virtual world.

What is your church doing today to make your community a better place in which to live? What is one thing you will do this week that humbly, intentionally, and authentically shows your community you care and that God loves them?

Singer/Songwriter david m. bailey died. Music Keeps Us Walking

david m bailey, a singer/songwriter who moved audiences as much with his story of personal courage in the face of terminal cancer as with his music, succumbed to Glioblastoma on Oct. 2 in hospice care near his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 44. See a thoughtful press release at: http://www.pcusa.org/news/2010/10/4/david-m-bailey-succumbs-brain-cancer/

I am very sad to learn of David's death. I personally came to know David and his music about six years ago. Our presbytery's transformation event design team invited him to be our musical keynoter. Shuttling him from the hotel to the venues, never-ending stops at Starbucks, and watching him capture the hearts of the audience were experiences I'll fondly remember for a long time.

David took real life seriously, authentically, and loved his family he joyfully lived with and loved those who enjoyed his music. He emailed me one day and said he added a link to my website on his site and this news made my day. Joking he said, not many pastors make it to his list. I laughed. One of David's signature bandanas (which he proudly offered to remind others to pray for those stricken with cancer) is still a treasured keepsake.

His music will always be in my playlist and his family in my prayers. Keep On Walking... that's what he practiced, now perfected in Christ, as we all in our own way try to do the same. Now, David's learned to fly, and he will be deeply missed.

Kevin Yoho
General Presbyter, Newark Presbytery PC(USA)

www.twitter.com/kevinyoho