A Dear John Letter for the Holidays

Here we are a few days before Thanksgiving, and the Christmas vortex has sucked me in. There's so much to do that I've been wondering if maybe we should just cancel Christmas this time around! I'd make a list of all the things that are going on, but there really isn't time for that.

Years ago I was in a college choir that had a week-long choir camp at the beginning of each year. It was a fun mountaintop experience, really one of the highpoints of the year. One year at the end of the week they asked us to write a letter to ourselves. ("They" because I can't remember exactly who asked us...) They said sometimes when the schedule gets crazy, you might start to wonder why you're in choir...so tell yourself. And then later that year they gave us our letters to read--to remind ourselves with our own words why it was worth keeping on.

I've never actually done it, but I wonder if I were to write myself a message after Christmas to help get me from here to there, what would I say?

Dear John,

Ha! "Dear John." It's like I'm breaking up with you, but since I am you, I guess that isn't really possible.

Look, I've been where you are. I know just how long your list is and how much pressure you feel to get the Christmas season just right for everyone. You've got kids and a spouse you want to feel really special, and this is basically your super bowl at church. And you need to catch up with your extended family. It's a lot, and right about now you're wondering about canceling Christmas entirely.

You don't want to do that.

Sometime in the next month or so, at a moment you won't be able to predict, hope will settle on you like a warm blanket. It's different every year. One year it came to you when you sat down with your family in the den after all the churchy things were over, watching them open their gifts and thinking maybe you found what real peace is. One year it came to you while you were dangling from pipes setting up lights in the sanctuary and you realized that while this was challenging and borderline unsafe, this one hour concert you were preparing for would start Christmas for someone--and maybe be Christmas for someone else. One year it came to you in the middle of a concert at that moment right after the sopranos and tenors soared when the kids sang that He will love the little children (I know you know that moment because you keep doing that same song every few years trying to recreate it. Maybe it will work this year, huh?).

I'm not talking about some vague warm and fuzzy feeling like looking at a Norman Rockwell painting. Not the nostalgia they're trying to bottle and sell at the Hallmark store for $6.99 per card. Mere sentimentality can't connect with your soul, no matter how good the Publix commercials are at tugging on your heartstrings.

And I'm not talking about vague faith that light and hope and peace and joy are coming to the earth for everyone (whatever that means). Yes, I know Jesus is the reason for the season and all that. Miracle birth. Laid in a manger. Angels and shepherds and kings (oops...the kings don't come until after Christmas, but I know they're part of the story you like to tell, so you do you, man). At some point don't you feel like all the Jesus talk is just sentimentality wearing angel wings? Silly question. I know you do.

No, what I'm talking about begins deep inside where you can't see it coming. It's like hope and peace are born inside of you and well up. You can't contain it. You can't control it. You can only revel in it like a child in the leaves only on the inside.

That's why you do the work you do--because every year you experience this profound peace, and you want to believe that you can help others experience it too. Maybe decorating the tree with the family will trigger that for them this year. Or maybe it will in ten years when they think back on these traditions y'all have built together. Maybe one of the gifts you give. Maybe one of the concerts you sing. Maybe one of the fruitcakes you send...wait...nobody like's fruitcake. And you've never made a fruitcake. Dude, don't send a fruitcake to anyone. Ever.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I know you're super stressed about everything right now, but I also know that every year you can remember you've made it to the other side of Christmas glad that Christmas happened and hopeful that the next year would bring us closer to living into that hope and peace.

Now. Stop wasting your time reading this letter and get your work done. That program isn't going to write itself! Oh, and if you think about it, maybe go easy on the Christmas sweets this year, ok big guy?

Love in Christ,

Future John

I Was Never Normal Anyway

A long time ago, when the pandemic was brand new, we used to talk about getting back to normal. There were some "crazy people" who were saying this thing could go on for years--or that we may never be rid of it--but I didn't really think it would. I didn't imagine it would go away in a few weeks, but I'll confess I really thought it would die out in the summer, and that would be that.

I remember when we cancelled our first event. I remember when we cancelled everything else. I remember when we cancelled summer plans. That was actually when I realized this was going to go on for a long time...when I realized it was going to be more than a blip. Its persistence into the summer meant it wasn't behaving like illness I had seen before, and that's when I started trying to figure out what music ministry was going to look like when we couldn't be together. It started with my youth choir tour--my last week at Decatur First UMC.

When I started at Oak Grove UMC, I walked the halls wondering what "normal" looked like. I still wonder, actually. There's still so much that is different from the way it used to be. Apparently. I've never seen a single meal inside this church, Wednesday night or otherwise. Even our staff lunches have been outside. [Editor's note: shoutout to Carl and Atticus for getting these staff lunches going. We had a potluck thanksgiving meal today that was fantastic.]

There's been a lot of ink spilled about the "new normal." Some time back, people started to realize that things will never again be the way they were before March of 2020. It's true in virtually every aspect of life, and we're not talking about subtle changes.

But my life was already going to change. Before the pandemic, I had already accepted my new job at Oak Grove. Wednesday night dinners were never going to be the same. Choir was never going to be the same. My entire professional existence was about to be upended. And let's be honest: I was never normal anyway.

The pandemic profoundly affected my work, and it still does. But it didn't affect why I do it, and it didn't affect the most essential aspects of how I do it. Care about people. Lead them in creating profound expressions of faith, hope, and love in a world that needed them before the pandemic just as much as it needs them now. Build a community of people who love each other and their neighbors (because that's how Jesus said people would know we are His disciples). All the rest--the details of what that looks like--are really nothing more than window dressing.

Last Christmas we offered a concert that was recorded individually in homes and assembled on a computer in my house. It was the best we could offer in that season, and I remain proud of each person who contributed to it (you can find it here if you're interested: https://youtu.be/IstlPHxoTaI).

This Christmas we're offering something else. I won't say it's back to normal, because it isn't for a lot of reasons that aren't worth going into right now. But we'll be singing together again in the sanctuary, and that's not nothing. And I want to believe that our concert, Season of Hope, will be a profoundly joyful experience, both for those who perform and for those who listen.

Meanwhile, I've been wondering (along with everyone else) if getting "back to normal" is really something we should try to do, and I'm not sure it is.  See, the things that happen to us change us, and that's when we have a choice to make: how will this change me? Will it change me for the better? I'll give you an example. Before the pandemic, I had never streamed at Christmas Concert. Guess what. We're going to stream this one (on Sunday, December 12, at 6pm). The ability to attend a meeting via Zoom has made it possible for people to attend meetings who couldn't before, and that's been genuinely useful.  [Editor's note: not only that, but it reminds me of the Jedi council.]

So that's what I'm thinking about lately. Not so much getting back to normal. More identifying the essentials that didn't change because they can't change and figuring out how to put those essentials to work for the betterment of the world around me as it exists right this very minute.

And I'm also thinking about how cool it would be if Zoom supported hologram projection. I told you I was never normal anyway.

Is It Time for You to Have Your Car's Emissions Checked?

One of the joys of living in Georgia and owning a car is the beloved annual emissions test. Just in case you aren't familiar with it, you take your car to a certified emissions inspector who connects your car to a machine, tests the gas gap, and then confirms to the state that your car isn't emitting more than it should. I used to drive by one such location every day on the way to work. It was cleverly called "Dad's Emissions." I see what they did there, but I have to wonder if most people would find it desirable to come closer to dad's emissions. I would have thought it would keep people away.

I'll confess there were a couple of times that I went to Dad's Emissions because it was convenient. I know I'm the only one that waits until the very last day to have his emissions checked (ew) so he can renew his car tag. But then I changed jobs, and I found a new place.

The new place is interesting because it's in the basement of a dentist's office. What's even more interesting than that is this place was originally a bank, and the basement in question was actually the drive-thru for the bank. If I hadn't already been using my dentist for a long time, I would definitely start using the one there, and I'd set up my appointments such that I needed my teeth cleaned at the same time I needed my emissions checked. Not by the same person, please.

It's kindof like this other place I saw where there was a gun shop right next door to a pool supply store. Most people need both of those items at the same time, right?

Anyway, it turns out most emissions places are one of three things: a car shop that offers a variety of services, including emissions; a small metal building built on a parking lot somewhere for the sole purpose of checking emissions; or my personal favorite, a building cleverly repurposed for checking emissions.

Do you remember the little tiny photo processing buildings that used to dot parking lots?

Cute, right? Well, they were cute for a while. And amazing. Because--and I know this is going to sound strange to the younger readers--you couldn't always see the picture right after you took it. Cameras didn't have clever little screens so you could check out your selfie and snap it again if it wasn't any good. But you didn't want to snap too many selfies either because you only had 24 pictures on that roll of film, and you needed to save some for the Statue of Liberty. If you're 5th grade me, you used ALL the pictures on the Statue of Liberty from the ferry. And you still didn't get any good ones.

Did you know a few of those little photo processing buildings still exist?

Well, not many of them, and if they do still exist, they tend to look like this one here.

Just up Briarcliff from here, someone is a genius. They took one of these little photo spots and turned it into an emissions place. Just like the bank building turned into a dentist's office with an emissions place in the basement. And the other day it got me thinking.

Buildings are built for a purpose. Many times, the changing world renders that purpose obsolete. When that happens, there are really only 3 choices: the building gradually falls apart from lack of use, the building is knocked down to make space for something different, or the building is changed to play a different role...to serve a different purpose.

A building, at its most basic, exists to provide shelter from the elements (and, in the case of commercial property, a fixed location). In order to thrive over time, though, even a rigid building must ultimately be...flexible. It must be usable for other purposes. Or else it will be destroyed.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called "What Would You Say It Is You Do Here?" I was thinking about how much my role as a church music director had shifted over time. I landed on building community as the constant for me in ministry. That is, whatever I've set out to do, it has been in the interest of knitting people together and building their relationships with each other, the community, and God. Ultimately, though, it is critically important for me to allow the day-to-day functions to shift with the needs of the community and the church. Because the best way to build community today may not be the best way to do it tomorrow.

Isn't There Anyone Who Can Tell Me What Thanksgiving Is All About?

It was the day before Halloween. Our kids had just decided what they wanted to do for Halloween costumes, so we set out to make their Halloween dreams come true. Our first stop was Target, where we discovered only the vestiges of Halloween's former glory. Most of the seasonal section was already transforming from orange and black to red and green. And...was that a reindeer I saw back in the corner? That's the way of things in the stores. They move right from one holiday to the next.

Except they didn't move to the next. They skipped Thanksgiving. As far as I know, the only store to make a todo about Thanksgiving is Publix, which is understandable given they would like to provide you with everything you need to make your Thanksgiving meal extraordinary. Shoot. Even Kroger's seasonal aisle went straight from skeletons to candy canes.

This is just something I tossed together, but if you want a fun little adventure, google "Halloween Christmas" and enjoy all the truly remarkable Halloween Tree expressions.

Slow your roll, Christmas. Slow. Your. Roll. I know there's not a lot of money to be made from Thanksgiving, but I want to give it a minute.

I love Thanksgiving, and I like it more every year. It's not because of the turkey or the dressing or the [clouds part and angels sing] pumpkin pie, though I do enjoy all of those. For me it's not even about extended family, though it's always nice to see family when we are able to travel (adding Mark's donuts to the list of food to enjoy!). Those things aren't really the essence of Thanksgiving to me. Honestly sometimes they can be distractions. 

Do you remember in the Peanuts Christmas special the moment where exasperated Charlie Brown finally loses the handle and shouts, "Isn't there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about!?" Linus drops his blanket and delivers the Christmas story calmly and firmly, representing a turning point for the Peanuts gang in which they seem to realize they'd lost sight of the meaning of Christmas leading to the wholesome ending where the Charlie Brown tree is transformed.

Isn't there anyone who can tell me what Thanksgiving is all about? Is there someone who can transform my cornucopia from a tattered basket to a thing of Thanksgiving glory?

I'm not Linus, but I do still have the blanket I've had ever since before I can remember. So let me put that down and give it a whirl.

My mom will vouch that this is my blanket.

Lights please.

I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for the ways they make my life better every day. Thankful for the ways they make me better every day. Thankful for the way they make me laugh. Thankful for their patience when I'm grouchy because I'm tired and recently gave up caffeine again. Thankful for their support when I have a stage to build or bell tables to move. Thankful for their companionship on the bizarre journey of life, a journey that took a hard left turn right after college, which leads me to...

I'm thankful for my calling and the ability to answer it. I'm thankful that I stumbled into music ministry after college. Little me wanted to be an EMT or a fireman. And he also loved music. He had no idea there was a job that helping people and making music together until later. I'm thankful to have the skills needed to serve in music. Thankful that I see, from time to time, the difference it can make in people's lives. Thankful that this calling also provides a living, which leads me to...

I'm thankful that I have enough. I'm thankful for water to drink, food to eat, and a comfortable home. Thankful that on my best days I understand enough is enough--that family and calling are more important than more and bigger.

I'm thankful for the people around me. I'm thankful that on my less good days God speaks to me through the voices of my friends and colleagues. Thankful to have people in my life who can lend a hand when I'm out of hands. Thankful for people who laugh at my jokes even when they aren't funny. I'm thankful for my friends who call me out when I need it. Sometimes for how bad my jokes are.

That's certainly a non-exhaustive list, but it's a start. The longer I live, the more I feel like the key to being happy is thinking about all the reasons we have to be thankful. After all, having everything isn't the same thing as wanting nothing. Human nature is to pursue having everything, but thanksgiving...Thanksgiving...reminds our heart of the value of wanting nothing.

Crazy Calls and the Machines of Measurement

I'm old enough to remember when answering machines were new. I'm old enough to remember that at first they used tapes to record the messages, ingoing and outgoing. I'm old enough to remember commercials for funny outgoing message tapes. One of them was called "Crazy Calls," and I can still sing about 4 of the different outgoing message options on it. There was the Beethoven's 5th one ("Nobody's home...nobody's home"). There was the hip hop one ("You've gotta leave your name, you've gotta leave your number. Wait for the beep."). There was the Andrews sisters one ("Hey I'm very sorry, but I'm not at home, but when I get the message on the telephone you'll be the first one my our list").

I just got curious, so I googled it.  Sure enough...

And SUPER DUPER BONUS! If you want to record one of these on your voicemail, you can now find the entire Crazy Calls tape on youtube. It includes completely irrelevant instructions for how to get this on your answering machine, just in case you need them.

There's also a second volume, if you're interested. [Editor's note: The fact that this is available on Youtube feels like almost as big a waste of electrons as its existence in my head feels like a waste of neurons.  My first question to God: why don't we have a "purge" button for our brain?]

In his Mission Statement, Jerry Maguire (yeah, I'm still on that) talks about his dad, who started a phone answering business only to be put out of business by the answering machine. He points out that within three years answering machines were in everyone's home, but not until they figured out how to personalize them. No doubt he was thinking of Crazy Calls when he wrote that.

The Things We Think and Do Not Say: 

The machine was a part of life, but only when everyone learned to personalize it.

He goes on to talk about the way that sports had become a machine...that Sports would never be "the Pute and simple thing that older men pine for." He says everyone knows it.  Players, owners, fans. "The machine has moved into our homes." And he asks the question: "How do we personalize that machine?"

His argument is that his company has lost its passion in the interest of generating more money, entering into a cycle of attempting to maintain success. The entrance into that cycle itself leads to eventual failure as the life-giving passion wanes. He says that at their moment of greatest success, the great ones all do one thing: they raise the bar, working harder and smarter to raise the bar. It's that commitment to their passion that powers them to even greater heights.

I've been a part of churches in all different parts of their growth cycles. As I mentioned last week, I've seen the very end.  But I've also been there for what I still believe was a promising beginning. Not a new start as much as a rebirth. I was so proud to be a part of a congregation that use the memory of what was to empower the new rather than constrain it, understanding that future success rarely looks like past success.

Jerry's question is really about measuring success. Do we measure it by the number of clients and the number of dollars, or is there some other way to measure it...one that takes into account the passion that drove them to agency in the first place. He doesn't answer that question just yet.

I'm convinced "measuring success" is the root of all evil. It's not that we don't need to evaluate. We do. It's just that so often the measures of success become more important than what we are measuring. Do we care more about education or test scores? You desperately want to say "education," but that's simply not true. The overwhelming truth is that our society cares far more about test scores than it does education. That's why "teaching to the test" is a thing, and it's tragic.

I get it. Evaluating real success is HARD. Maybe impossible. Because subjective evaluation is messy, and objective evaluation is at best imprecise but more often worthless. You can tell me I'm crazy, and you may be right. I may be crazy. [Editor's note: but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for.] After all, if a company needs widgets packed, evaluating the widget packers by the number of widgets they can pack seems reasonable. But it ignores what makes someone a good widget packer in the first place: a passion for packing widgets.

So now I have a question. How do we measure the success of a church? Nearly every church leadership meeting I've attended where this comes up has wound up in the same place. They want metrics. Dollars in the plates and butts in the seats. More dollars? More better. Fewer butts in the seats? The director's in the hot seat. The result is that we, as a church, start chasing after numbers. I was guilty of this in my first full time music director job. I made it all about the numbers until my choir president very politely told me how off-putting it was and that I really needed to knock it off.

[Side note. That can lead to some really funny things. I once saw a worship counting form that had a space for the numbers as well as a space to note the weather and any other factors that may have depressed attendance. "Well, our attendance was down last week, but to be fair the temperature was 10 degrees below optimal, and there were scattered clouds which may have led people to believe rain was coming prior to the end of church." WHAT?! People will sleep overnight in front of a store to get a good price on a TV. Don't tell me what we're offering isn't important enough to put on a jacket.]

The thing is, numbers can be a symptom of success in church. If people find value in church, they might support it with their money and will share it with their friends like they share apple pie recipes (leading to better attendance). But they might not do those things. And Jesus didn't tell us to serve only people who will pay or will serve as our megaphone to the world.

I don't know the right answer to this question, or even if there is a right answer. Honestly I do pay attention to the numbers. But I'm very cautious not to strive for them. Every day, I try to build relationships with people and between people, connecting them with a family that offers both comfort and care when they need it as well as an opportunity to offer comfort and care to others.

Maybe the way to measure evaluate success in ministry is in terms of the journey we are on together. How many "miles" have we walked together? What have we done together that's worth anything? What has caused us to stumble along the way? How did we grow from it? How well did we put aside our differences--or better yet use them--to have a positive impact on the world?

How would you evaluate success in ministry?  Leave your answer in the comments.

The Shoes That Came With the Little Pump

Bad news.  I've still been reading Jerry Maguire's Mission Statement.  After the part that made me think about how we've maybe lost track of why we are the Church, he talks a lot about a guy named Dickey Fox. Dickey's story is inspiring in that he didn't allow his success in the world of sports agency to cloud his vision of what was really important: personal relationships.  If our "why" is to reveal God's unconditional love to the world, the "what" is personal relationships.

The Things We Think and Do Not Say: 

Or do we just want to be the guy who sold the guy who sold shoes that came with the little pump?

In the Bible, Jesus doesn't get angry all that often, but when he did, it was because people had taken to profiting in the Temple.  They made...it.....a.......business.  I sometimes wonder if we have done the same. Naturally, we aren't peddling changing money to help people purchase animals for sacrifice, but I'm not sure that absolves us of wrongdoing. I'll admit this conversation is deeply uncomfortable for me because I make a living working in the church. I sometimes wonder and worry about what words Jesus would have for me if he were to show up at my office door. Would he turn my desk over? Toss my computer out the window? 

During the golden age of churchgoing, when congregations exploded and buildings busted at the seams, what was driving all that growth?  The party line is that it was bringing people to faith, to Christ. And that is definitely true for some. I know a lot of people who came to faith during that time and for all the right reasons. They are the rocks on which the church is built and the reason I can sit at this desk and type these words.

But if we're saying things we think and do not say, I'd offer that for much of the 20th century (at least), church had become a place where people connected to their privilege rather than to Christ. Church attendance was expected, and because of that, it offered a convenient place to rub elbows with important people--a place to network.

Church had become a business opportunity. Church had become the guy who sold the guy who sold the shoes that came with the little pump rather than the guy who truly sought better for everyone in the world except for himself.

Somewhere along the way, someone realized there are other places to do that. Places that are a lot more fun that don't ask for 10% of your income on a regular basis. Attendance patterns changed. Giving changed. Steeples started to topple. Literally. 

I served that church almost 20 years ago. I once climbed into that steeple. Now it's a mixed use development with a mattress store across the street and a clever name. When I served there, the library included a few albums of church history. Not long before the church had been vibrant and full of life. The biggest problem was how to protect people as they walked across North Decatur Road because there wasn't adequate parking on the church's side of the street. By the time I arrived, though, those glory days were over. Somewhere in our heart, while we hoped the church would regain itself, I think we all knew this would happen. It was only a question of how long it would take.

Do you know why that church ultimately collapsed (apart from the cable attached to a bulldozer)? It's because personal relationships collapsed. Over a period of a decade or so, multiple splits occurred, and people left the church. If halved, and it halved again. People abandoned each other, not the building.  And at some point enough of the relationships died that the building went with them.  In fact, the relationships that lived moved down the street to meet at another church and rededicated the resources generated to serving the aging!

Sure, there are some "old school" churches that are still wildly successful. But the churches that are reborn from the ashes of the churches that have died seem to start with building relationships. They focus on being present for each other and working together to reveal God's love to the world.

Working in music ministry, it's easy to think the "what" of ministry is the music: the number of ensembles and the number of people in them, the kind of music we sing, and the quality of the music we sing. But all that is just shoes that came with a little pump. The "what" of music ministry is exactly what Dickey Fox told us was the secret to his job: personal relationships. Caring for each other and caring for each person we meet along the way. Sing with me...and you are family.

Jerry Maguire. Why? What? How?

Yesterday I was having lunch outside with some of the staff.  We were on a lunch break from a day-long staff retreat.  I brought up Jerry Maguire (a movie from the 90's because all I know is hopelessly dated movies like Jerry Maguire and Roadhouse).  When I said the words "Jerry Maguire," the staff responded just as you would expect: "Show me the money!"  "You complete me."  This is preferable to the reaction I would have received if I had mentioned the movie in youth choir.  The youth would have either stared blankly or perhaps asked, "Who's that?"  I have proof.  Last week I said something about the matrix, and none of them knew what I was talking about...or that they are living in it.

But that's not important right now.  This isn't a post about the matrix, so let's take the blue pill and get back to Jerry Maguire.

The movie opens with sports agent Jerry having an epiphany about his work.  He helped build a massive sports agency company but found himself lacking purpose in a world where he spent all his time wooing more and more clients to earn more and more dollars with no personal relationship to show for it.  His solution and proposed new direction for the company (written down in a mission statement that he distributed to the whole company) was to have fewer clients and invest more in their well-being.  He was, of course, fired immediately by one of the agents he trained who then also secures all the clients Jerry used to represent...except one, setting up the ultimate fulfillment of his mission statement.  [oops...retroactive spoiler alert!]

I was thinking about the opening sequence of the movie and about the importance of investing in personal relationships, which is why I looked up the opening of the movie.  I discovered something that blew my mind.  In the movie, all you get is a voiceover and some references to this "25 page mission statement" called "The Things We Think and Do Not Say."  But the writer of the movie, Cameron Crowe, actually wrote the entire mission statement even though it never appears in the movie.  So while I intended to spend about 5 minutes reading the introduction of the movie, I wound up spending more like 30 reading the mission statement (which, by the way, is actually only 14 pages).

There are two NSFW passages in the mission statement.  With that warning, if you'd like to read it, you can find the whole thing here if you're interested:

https://www.theuncool.com/2016/04/25/jerry-maguire-mission-statement/

Why did I read the whole thing?  It's because it resonated so deeply.  By the end of the first paragraph I began to feel uneasy.  "There's a cruel wind blowing through our business. We all feel it, and if we don't, perhaps we've forgotten how to feel. But here is the truth. We are less ourselves than we were when we started this organization."

I felt uneasy because when he said, "our business," I read, "our Church."  That's the big C Church.  All of it.  The whole thing.  Christianity in toto.

That was just the first of--I'm not sure how many--passages that sent my head spinning. I was just going to write one article referencing this, but it's rich and deep. There may be more than one article coming on this. I can't speak for anyone else, only myself.  It's certainly not an official position or statement. Like Jerry's original, it's just my own thoughts...using Jerry's thoughts as a catalyst.

The Things We Think and Do Not Say: 

We are less ourselves than we were when we started this organization.

I started in ministry with a kind of idealism of what it is.  At its core, ministry is service. I felt a call to that service, and I answered it.  But anyone who has served in any official capacity in any church can tell you that pragmatics can and do supersede ideals more often than we'd like to admit.  I was quickly dis-illusioned (which I don't mean in a negative way).  In my first years of ministry I saw that pragmatism is necessary in order for the church to live.  We have bills, and they have to be paid no matter how pretty the music is or how kind the people are.

The thing is, the "how" so frequently gets in the way of the "what" and, more importantly, the "why."  When I started out, I knew what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it.  Any energy spent on the how takes me away from what and why.  I've been in meetings that were about nothing but how.  I've served with people who have spent so much time thinking about how that it seems like they've forgotten why entirely.  That's the sense in which we are less ourselves than when we started.

To be clear, how is a critical question.  It just needs to be held in check, balanced delicately with what and why (and not in equal parts!).

It's easy to get lost in the weeds of ministry.  Under the pressure of budgets and pandemic limitations and changing attitudes about church, it's easy to wonder how we can continue and to focus our energy there.  But we shift our focus to how at our own peril.  I have, from time to time, lost sight of why I do this: I feel strongly called by my faith to lift others up.  Each time I did, I was less myself than when I started.

The Church started as a movement to reveal God's universal love to the world--to love the unloved and the unlovable.  That is our why, and it matters more than the what and the how put together.

What Would You Say It Is You Do Here?

  Several weeks back in staff meeting, Dale asked us to write a summary of what it is we do here.  The idea is that if we get run over by a bus, someone reading the list should be able to more or less step in and fill our shoes until a permanent solution can be found.

What would you say it is...you do here?

        This can be somewhat challenging for a job like mine because the task list is fairly fluid from day to day and week to week.  I mean, there’s the obvious things like picking out music and directing choirs (actual music directing kinds of things), but that actually represents a pretty small slice of my task list pie.

The Music Ministry Pie

Over the last 17 or so years, I’ve discovered that “Church Music Director” actually includes a strikingly diverse set of non-musical responsibilities including but not limited to: logistics, writing, counseling, care and feeding, building maintenance, light design, set design, cooking, construction, painting, instrument repair, typesetting, publishing, technical support, taxi service, database design, web design, stage hand, event planning, packing and moving, dispute resolution, praying, preaching, and more.  And in the last year I added remote audio engineering and video production to the list as well as meteorology and sociology as we created online worship and tried to guess both the weather and the willingness of people to participate in outside activities on a given day.

Actual picture of me doing "music ministry."

It’s actually interesting to me how my role as a director of music has changed across the years based on the technology available.  Things are changing so fast.  When I started doing ministry, a full color print of anything required an act of congress, and it cost enough to fully fund the budgets of some small countries.  Unless you ordered 10,000 of them, in which case the cost per print was quite reasonable.  It’s just that you then had to use the 9,950 you had left over as scratch paper for the next 30 years.  I’m not kidding…I actually still have some paper left over from one such print job around here somewhere.  It was Café del Sol at Embry Hills.  I haven’t been there for almost 15 years.

On my first Youth Choir Tour, I took a road atlas to help navigate.  A few years later I was SUPER high tech because I used Mapquest (do you remember mapquest?) to print an overview and details of our route.  Today I just say, “Hey Google, navigate to Hampton Inn in Sedona, Arizona,” and I get turn-by-turn directions as well as a clever ETA that tells me I’m definitely going to be late.

If you had told me in 2005 that in 15 or so years we’d use our phones to record videos so we could all make music together from home because it wouldn’t be safe to be together, I’d have asked you what episode of Star Trek featured a choir (and how did I miss it).  Sure, some of the basic principles of how we do things are the same, but man alive the day to day tasks have evolved to the point you wouldn’t even recognize the job.

But I’ve also found the most important parts of the job really haven’t changed much at all.  One of my tasks is to care about people—in music ministry and out, inside the church and out.  It means I need to listen to them and try to help them in any way I can.  Honestly a lot of the time there’s not a lot I can do for them, but sometimes just sitting and listening is enough (and if it isn’t, I can set out to find someone who can help!).

Maybe the most important part of my job is building community.  In fact, that’s what my job really is.  You might have thought it was music, but music is really a tool of my community building trade.  I bring people together around a common goal. I encourage them to take on challenges and overcome them together.  I connect them with each other so that when life gets dicey they have each other.  And I do that for people of all ages, because you’re never too young or too old to need a group of people who care about you.

It’s hard to put that on a daily task list.  Maybe that’s why weeks after he asked us for these lists I still haven’t given him one.  Dale, if you’re reading this, I’m really trying to do what you asked!  I’m just not sure what to put on it because things I can put on the list are just physical manifestations of a much deeper purpose that by themselves seem kindof ridiculous.

Well, I’d better wrap this up.  The scale drawing of the new folder slots isn’t going to draw itself, and somehow I need to figure out how we’re going to hang lights in the sanctuary for the Christmas Concert, which is on December 11 and 12.  I’ll wait while you mark your calendar.

A Celebration of Life and a Funeral Are Not the Same Thing

Yesterday we celebrated the life of Ann Deryck.  Sometimes when people say "celebration of life," it's little more than a euphemism for "funeral."  So often these services serve more to mark the end of a life rather than truly to celebrate it, but I felt this one somehow differently.

I know part of it was the way they selected the music.  Leanne played two anthem accompaniments (and masterfully wove in enough of the parts in strategic spots to make it compelling even without a choir).  The Rutter "For the Beauty of the Earth" is one of my favorites anyway, but it was especially powerful in this service.  As I sung along in my mind, I was struck by this line: "For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above..."

I've always liked that line, but I've always thought of it as identifying people who are dear to us: our brother, our sister, our parent, our child..." Yesterday I thought how one person can fill multiple roles.  Ann may not have been anyone's brother, but she was a sister, parent, and child.  She was a friend on earth, and now she is a friend above.  Somehow identifying the roles she filled throughout her life shined a light on the people around her, which I gather is how she lived her life.

There was also a slideshow during the service, and it was particularly well done.  Like "For the Beauty of the Earth," it highlighted and celebrated her relationships with others by showing delightfully casual moments from the story of her life.  She was in every picture, of course, but few if any pictures were actually about her.  They were most often about the people she had her arms around, or rather about the love shared between her and the people (or dogs, as the case may be) she had her arms around.

In the end, I came away from the service regretful that I didn't start my work here sooner so that I could have met Ann and enjoyed getting to know her.  But in a strange way I feel like even if I didn't have the chance to visit with her or make music with her, nevertheless I experience something of who she was by the wake she left behind--by the marks she left on everyone she met.  Her family, yes, and the choir she loved so much: a love clearly reciprocated as so many from the choir attended we probably could have handed out the anthems and sung them.

Yesterday, Ann reminded me that carefully posed and staged moments aren't really the stuff of life.  It's more the zany, unscripted moments and the spontaneous outpouring of love.  As life has started to ramp back up, it was an important reminder to keep the focus on the important things people.  Now as I'm writing this I'm thinking I have a good bit of work to do in that regard.

I never met Ann, but you can add me to the long list of people she affected positively.  I'm grateful for her life so well lived and celebrated yesterday.

All Clear

A million years ago, when I was in preschool, we had a significant tornado outbreak in Little Rock.  They came in waves.  One minute we were in our classroom, and the next we were in the hall. Then after what seemed like forever we were back in our classroom only to go back to the hall again.  In fact, it was the back-and-forth that made the experience so difficult.  They gave us an “all clear” signal, only to call us back into the hall again.  We believed we were safe only to be told we were in danger all over again.  For an impressionable little tyke like me, this meant I questioned my safety from the weather for years after that.  I don’t remember that day, but I do remember an abiding fear of severe weather. Every Wednesday at noon when they would test the sirens I’d freak out, and mom would have to remind me they were just testing. While I still have a healthy respect for severe weather, these days I’m not scared of it.  In fact, in true southerner fashion my impulse is to head outside when the weather gets rough just to see what I can see.

I don't think the hard stuff will be coming for a while...

It seems ages ago now that life stopped in its tracks.  All of a sudden we weren’t doing any of the things we had been doing...and we were doing many things we had never done before!  I remember thinking it would be weeks or maybe months before things were “back to normal.”  I remember wondering when the “all clear” would sound and we would all take our heads out from under our hands and come out of our houses into the light of day to greet our weather-beaten neighbors with a fist bump or a high five.

It didn’t take too long for me to realize that wasn’t going to happen, even if it took me a good while to admit it.  Now a year and a half on, I don’t think there will never be an “all clear” moment.  There is not a second Thanos snap coming where everything we lost will blink back into existence.  We are where we are.  Life is what it is.

This became clear to me about a month ago when I was trying to figure out how to make Chancel Choir retreat happen.  I had found a place where we could stay, but I realized we weren’t going to be able to make meals covid-safe.  So we adjusted course, and I came up with a plan to have our retreat at the church.  I was skeptical that it would measure up, but in the end I was pleasantly surprised at how productive the time was.  I was even more surprised by the ways I discovered our “replacement retreat” actually worked better than my original plan would have, and it may have changed the way I conceive of these events from here on out.

That weekend changed the way I think about ministry in a time of pandemic.

Prior to retreat, I was thinking about what we had done before and how we could duplicate it safely.  This had the effect of making me sad on a routine basis because it forced me to focus on the things we had lost.  But covid isn’t in control, or it shouldn’t be. It’s just a constraint that has to be accounted for.

As I think about it, I realize I’ve always operated within a set of constraints.  We have limited budget, limited time, and limited space.  We have limited personnel resources, and the personnel we do have often have diverse and sometimes opposed views on how and what we can do.  I’ve always asked myself, “What is it I want to accomplish, and given these constraints, what is the best way to accomplish it?”  In planning events, safety has always been a significant consideration.  Now we just have to add covid safety to the list.

Don’t get me wrong.  I miss a lot of things, and I’m looking forward to a time when some of these covid constraints are gone.  It’s just that I am confident we can still create meaningful connection and build durable relationships by making music together if that’s what we want to do. We just have to do it safely is all.

For whatever reason, that has made me feel a lot better about the great unknown ahead of us. Who is coming back? When? What other challenges lie ahead? How can we possibly be Methodists in a time when we can’t eat tuna casserole in the same room?  None of that is clear to me. But have we ever really known any of that? No. This much is all clear to me: whatever exists out there, whatever lies ahead of us, we will face it together.  And that, to me, is what ministry has always been about.

—John

Choir Is On Sale! Act Now!

When I get one of those “special offers” in the mail or email, I always ask myself one question: how is this guy making money? What’s the business model? Ultimately there’s someone, somehow, who’s going to make money from this. How? The answer to that question plays a big part in how much thought I give the special offer (well, that and also whether I really need to have a new job working from home making $2000 or more a week, brand new windows for the whole house, a monthly membership to the local gym, or a screamin’ deal on some red hot leggings).

The thing is, these guys need me to take them up on the offer.  They don’t really care of those leggings make my eyes pop.  They’re just saying that to get me to buy them.  Because if I buy them, they make money.

Like this one time a guy came to our house to sell us a high-end vacuum cleaner.  Mind you, it was obvious from the state of our house that we could use a vacuum at that point in our lives, but this guy didn’t care about that.  He just wanted us to spend $1200 on a vacuum cleaner and was willing to say anything he could to get us to do it.

via GIPHY

We didn’t buy the vacuum. Or the leggings.

Do you know where else this dynamic plays out?  Every. Sunday. Morning.  I go out into the congregation while the Chancel Choir is gathering themselves to head into the loft, and I talk to folks.  I invite them to choir, because that’s what I do.  They run my invitation through the “special offer” filter, and they think I’m asking them to come to choir for my own gain. There’s a real sense in which they’re right, too.  More people in the choirs does make me look like a more successful music director.

That’s not why I’m inviting, though.  I’m inviting because I genuinely believe they will benefit from participating, and I believe (sometimes out loud in these conversations) that if they were to try it and find they weren't benefitting from it they definitely shouldn’t do it.  Life’s too short to spend an hour and a half in rehearsal for choir if it doesn’t do anything for you!  I’m confident, of course, that it will.  Anyway, I usually wind up spending a lot of these conversations trying to convince people I’m not inviting for my benefit; I’m inviting for theirs.

This is why I say an invitation from you means more than an invitation from me. Since it isn’t your job, you have a lot less clear self-benefit in inviting people to be a part of choir.  But make no mistake.  You do have an angle here, and your invitation is run through the same “special offer” filter that mine is.  If your friend (or the person you just met at church, or the person behind you in the line at Kroger) thinks you want them to do this for your own benefit rather than theirs, your invitation is going to get left on the shelf right next to the exclusive pictures of celebrities without makeup. Fortunately there are ways to get through that filter, and it’s way easier for you to do it than it is for me.

1. Be honest with yourself.  Why do you want this person to come to choir?  Is it because we need altos, or is it because they need it?  (It can be both, but don’t lead with the first one!).

2. Be able to articulate the reasons choir is important to you.  Why do you show up?  What do you gain?  Maybe it’s about the music.  Maybe it’s about the fellowship.  Maybe it’s about how comfortable the chairs are or that the twang of the parlor piano reminds you of your grandmother’s piano that you always wanted to learn how to play. Maybe you hope that...one day...I’ll wear leggings.

3. Find the reasons choir may be important to the person you’re inviting.  If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “I love music, but I’m not a good singer,” I’d be retired and living in Tahiti (it’s a magical place).  You don’t have to be a good singer to enjoy participating in the choir or to enjoy being in a group of people who know you and care about you and miss you when you don’t show up. It may be some reason you haven’t though of yet.  Just have a conversation about it.

4. Take “no” for an answer, but don’t leave it at that.  Maybe your invitation does get left on the shelf next to the scary celebrity pics.  No problem. Insisting probably won’t change their mind.  But reminding them from time to time of what choir can be for them can’t hurt. Just plant some seeds and water them now and then. Maybe they’ll grow.

In the end, what we are trying to do here is create the kind of community Jesus called us to create—one where people care about each other; one where we walk through life together.  We succeed together or fail together.  We endure together and laugh together. Everyone needs a place like that, especially if they don’t already have it.  And that’s what we’re offering.  For the low, low price of $39.95 plus $4.00 shipping and handling.

via GIPHY

—John