About Tentmaking

TENTMAKING: An Old Model For a New Age

Tentmaking is the activity of Christians who, while dedicating themselves to ministry (with little or no pay) necessarily maintains a second job to support him or herself.  The term comes from the way in which the apostle Paul supported himself while living and preaching the Gospel in Corinth (Acts 18:3). But today the term is often mentioned in an apologetic way. 

Let me begin with one startling fact: within most of the so-called “mainline church” only a few churches can support a full-time member of the clergy. Yet most parishes still see that as a worthy objective for which to strive in spite of diminishing members and resources. Annual denominational meetings are often an exercise in triage -- how can we stop the bleeding and save the church? And each parish meeting is frequently an agonizing realization of this situation.

In my 20 years of ministry I have seen a number of variations on triage: yoked and three-point parishes, married clergy who have a spouse with a full-time job and health insurance, living off the parish endowment, sustaining grants from the diocese, and permanent supply clergy.

It is the latter response that I wish to consider.

I serve a small parish with an average Sunday attendance of about 25 worshipers. It is  a small church with a capacity of not more than 60 souls. We take no money from our denomination, pay our bills, and adequately maintain our building and its grounds. In short, we are solvent and sustainable. 

And the reason we are is that I chose to serve the parish at the going rate of  “supply clergy” (currently at the rate of $125/Sunday plus mileage). Additionally, I am available for pastoral emergencies, weekly teaching sessions during Advent and Lent, vestry meetings and other activities of the parish. ). If you do the math you will see that this is a sustainable expense for most all small parishes and removes them from the “failing” category and makes them active and sustainable entities.

In the five parishes I have served since my ordination, all have been small and all have thought of themselves as somehow less because they could not afford full-time clergy. This negative thinking often caused them to be focused not on the future but on a past that will never happen again (and, perhaps, never did).

What I hear from my generation of grey-heads is frequently a rosy depiction of the 1950s when “everyone” went to church. However, a closer examination of those days will quickly remind us that faith or discipleship should never be assessed by church attendance.

So, I have a proposal for today’s small churches, let’s forget about the past and get on with today and all its challenges following Jesus in our highly attention-competitive age, diminishing church attendance, and many among us using the word “none” to best describe their religion or denomination.

What do Christians offer to the world today? It is important that we be able to clearly answer this provocative question. As a start, we can begin to live lives consistent with who we say we honor and believe in. Some observers of Christian behavior say those of us who do attend church worship it as an idol -- a social club and fraternal organization of friendly, like-minded members.

Try that out with a twenty or thirty year old, “Would you like to join a nice social club of like-minded people?” and see what happens. Let’s face it. Those of us who follow Jesus are radical troublemakers. We want to see God’s reign being to happen now not some time in the future. The foundational text of this radical trouble-making lies within the 25th chapter of Matthew's gospel:

 ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

You know what I am getting at don’t you? The church of today is simply a meeting, teaching and strengthening place. Not a place to be worshiped. Whereas, the primary acts of  “doing” Jesus goes on outside the building in the community and into the world. And we do that best not by what we say but by what we do – doing Jesus. And doing Jesus has to do with elevating the underclass and ministering to the disfranchised in our economy. If we don’t take care of them, we don’t take care of Jesus. It’s that simple and that difficult regardless of one's politics!

It’s time for Christians to re-think, re-structure, and, yes, re-act.

Your Story, My Story, God's Story...

You may be interested in hearing my spiritual "call" story. And feel free to comment and tell me yours.

MY STORY

Thresholds

“The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, 

ideals and emotional patterns no longer fit; 

the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.”

(Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.)

What are those thresholds in life? Certainly coming of age, high school or college graduation, marriage, the birth of a child, a fulfilling job, purchasing a home, and so on… But what about later in life? 

As I was reminded during my pastoral training, we are only temporarily abled; that is, life is a process of dis-ability from getting our first pair of eye glasses to being in assisted living.

Today, I was reminded of another passage. In my mind’s eye, I see myself as just as abled as I was in my 30s and 40s. Of course, that is not true. I am not.

I was on Highway F just south of Mazomanie putting some miles on my bike this morning when I heard a familiar noise – the whirring tires of a large peloton of over 20 riders approaching me and quickly leaving me behind. It was an exhilarating feeling instantly taking me back to my racing days. And as they all passed me, a young rider gently patted me on the shoulder, “Have a good ride, sir!”

I can think of two other earlier elder passage times. In my very early 50s, I gently reminded a young cashier at a restaurant who had just given me a discount that police officers in Madison are able to pay for their own meals when she said, “No, sir, not because you are a police officer it’s because today is senior discount day.”

As I entered my 60s, I noticed that young and attractive women were opening doors for me instead of the other way around. Another passage.

When we are young, strong, and abled, we don’t think of ever aging. But the reality of life, the journey on which we find ourselves, is filled with great teaching moments if we are open to them. No, I couldn’t hang with that peloton of youngsters, but I was here. I was able to continue participating in an activity in which I began over 40 years ago. The blessing isn’t about what we cannot do anymore. No, the blessings is that which we still can do be it cycling, hiking, or just sitting on our back porch enjoying the blessedness of this day.

On Saturday, a group of friends will join me in another passage. A celebration of my 75th year. They will join me in a 75 mile ride. I used to race that distance. Now I am simply happy to be able to ride it. Life is good.

Or as John O’Driscoll noted in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom:

“It’s good to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone.”

It is a good life.

And, truly, the mystery never does leave us alone.

Dying? Or Finding Oneself?

Kathleen Taylor has been a hospice counselor for many years. People ask her how she can sit everyday at the bedside of dying patients without getting burned out or depressed. In the following video, she tells us why she loves her job and what she has learned from those who are dying. She says the number one regret she hears is "I wish I had the courage to live my life and not the life others expected me to live."

Listen also for another learning: when people are close to death they shed their falseness -- that is, they no longer tolerate or speak "bullshit."

So, the question I have for you is this: Do we simply die or do we, through dying, find ourselves?

TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

What is a "Good Death?"

By day, Judy MacDonald Johnston develops children's reading programs. By night, she helps others maintain their quality of life as they near death.

Last month, she gave an excellent 6-minute TED talk (CLICK HERE) on achieving a "good death."

Over 300,000 people have watched this video. That's a good start.

She suggests taking action in five important areas of our lives:

1. The Plan
2. Advocates
3. Hospital Readiness
4. Caregiving Guidelines
5. Last Words

When thinking about the end of your life or the life of your loved ones please remember that a good death will not happen without planning. Most everyone says they want to die at home but, statistically, 80 percent of us will not.

For more information on these five areas and downloadable worksheets visit her website.

Interested in more? Listen to physician Peter Saul in his take on dying in the 21st century, something he calls a "train wreck." (CLICK HERE.)

What is Love?

What is love?

I mean, really?

The video below contains a beautiful story that links one's faith to love and caretaking.

"Brace For Impact!"

Dads, on this Father's Day, take 5 minutes out of your busy life and hear what Rick Elias has to say.

Elias was in seat 1D on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the engines went dead and he heard the pilot say: "Brace for impact?"

His only goal in life today is to be a great dad.

What kind of impact will it take for us to have the same goal?

Now What Do We Do?

We have imprisoned a significant percentage of our population during the last 20 years -- "The War on Drugs," "Three Strikes and You're Out!," and a combination of poor thinking and nastiness have enabled us to get where we are today.

The following is a story about a program at a maximum security prison in California to do something about the glaring and unacceptable problem that faces us -- our prisons do not reform nor improve the behavior of those whom we sentence there.

For me, prisons are a good example of our failure to think through our problems and, instead, simply delay solving them to another day. Locking people up and literally throwing away the key is not the way to be a more peaceful and fulfilling nation.

The following video demonstrates a way out of the darkness which now surrounds us. It is a way in which people of faith should approach evil in the world -- through transformation rather than punishment. What do you think?

Talking (Again) About Suicide

The above 4-minute video was John D. Schramm's first attempt to talk about the taboo subject of suicide. It is a beautiful testimony to choosing life and, at the same time, a call to break the silence -- the taboo of talking about suicide.

Over half a million people have seen John's video and it's been translated into 39 languages. He wanted to "start a conversation worth having about an idea worth spreading."

The following is what John learned:

• Breaking the silence is not an event, but a process. Through hundreds of emails and thousands of comments on various websites, it is clear that attempt survivors don't just break the silence one time, but over and over and over again. Or they don't, and live in the silence after once having a bad experience with sharing their secret with another.
• Tough questions don't have easy answers. John was a layperson with no training in the healing arts. He attempted to start a conversation, but then just listened as others were inspired to share their journey. Then John pointed them to resources that he knew.
• Conversations are a crucial, but slow path to change. In John's life, he's witnessed the self-inflicted deaths of several people he's loved and known. While he wanted their closest friends and family members to share their stories too, he found he was powerless to cause that. Instead, he simply remained open to the conversation, replied to each email or invitation to chat, and urged strugglers to find or build the network of committed listeners and further their own conversations.

This conversation, thankfully, has begun. The challenge now is to continue it and expose the taboo to conversation and openness. When that happens, suicide is no longer a taboo.

In the fall of 2010, my son took his life. Suicide is not new to either my professional or family experience, but the effect on me was devastating and involved a good two years of grief-sharing and processing.

Almost immediately after his death I posted a number of blogs on this site (October-November, 2010). It was my attempt to heal heal my own grief and help others through my experience. You may find them helpful.

"Perhaps no other life-threatening condition on the planet can be so positively impacted by honest, forthright and intimate conversations with friends, loved-ones, clients and colleagues. As we do this, we demystify suicide. We render it approachable by creating a net of understanding so strong and a willingness to intervene imbued with such resolve, that people can no longer fall through the cracks."

[Richard Heckler, Waking Up Alive ,1996].

When we break the silence, we take action to prevent the next loss. By sharing our thoughts and feelings we make ourselves vulnerable, but it is that vulnerability, that openness, that enables our own healing.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255

Military Veterans CLICK HERE Most every city or county offers suicide survivor groups,  they are a big help, too!

A Blessing for Memorial Day

The Celtic cross emphasizes our inter-connectedness --
with all of creation, with each other,
and with God. We are One.

A blessing asks for favor and protection. It connects us with each other and with all of creation.

The language of blessing is an invocation – a "calling forth."

In the Memorial Day blessing below you will see the word “may" appear many times; it is a very powerful word -- an invocating hope and possibility… "May there be…" "may this happen…" "may we..."

A blessing both imagines and wills a desired future or state of being – there is a transforming force behind it. And this transforming force is God’s subtle presence and divine energy given for us -- there for our asking.  

A BLESSING FOR MEMORIAL DAY

·

       On this day, may the Holy One help us to turn our swords into plowshares; to know war no more.

·       May we come to understand the true, multi-generational cost of war and its killing.

·       Yet may we always remember and honor our brothers and sisters who selflessly served and those whose lives have been sacrificed in what they believed to be honorable and true.

·       May the founding beliefs that have made our nation strong, just and honorable be evident in our collective life together.

·       May we as a nation and as a people be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and merciful in our actions.

·       May we who come together today be strengthened in our peacemaking and be a blessing and inspiration to those of us who seek to become makers of peace.

[The above blessing was the invocation I made for the assembly of the Madison (Wisc.) area chapter and friends of Veterans for Peace (VFP), Memorial Day, May 27, 2013 in the Gates of Heaven Chapel in James Madison Park]

Tune Up Your Relationship

Sabine and I have taught a marriage course for a number of years and often use it as a pre-marriage preparation. It was designed to help couples build strong relationships that will last. And we strongly recommend it. During the course, the following important relationship areas are addressed:

• Recongnizing each other's needs,
• Learning to communicate effectively,
• Resolving conflict,
• Healing past hurt,
• Knowing how to make each other feel loved,
• Relating to parents and in-laws,
• Good sex,
• Making time for each other, and
• Having fun together.

At the conclusion of the course, we provided each participant a check-up. And I have enclosed it below.

I suggest you use it for a discussion outline with the person with whom you have a primary relationship -- a "check up" on your relationship!

 

The Monthly Checkup

1. Are you booking dedicated “relationship time” with your partner each week?

2. Have you met his or her “top three desires” this month? (Do you know what they are?)

3. Have you talked about your feelings with your partner more than twice this month?

4. When you listened to your partner’s feelings this month were you able to do it without interrupting, criticizing, or giving advice?

5. How many times this month have you expressed appreciation for your partner?

6. During times of conflict, are you able to discuss the ISSUE rather than attacking your partner?

7. How many times this month have you taken time to generously listen to your partner’s point of view?

8. Have you spent time this month to express support for your partner?

9. How many times have you talked about your own personal hurts with your partner?

10. When was the last time you apologized to your partner and sought his/her forgiveness?

11. How many times this month have you made love to your partner in a way that communicated your love and commitment to him/her?

12. How many times have you been able to show love to your partner in your partner’s primary or secondary “love language?” (Do you know your love language? Your partners?).

Some Longer Term Issues to Work On

13. Have you been able to truly forgive your partner for hurting you? The criterion being that the offense no longer conditions your relationship with him/her. Forgiveness is a choice.

14. Have you been able to maintain independence from your parents and your partner’s parents?

15. Have you been able to forgive your parents for the ways they have hurt or failed you?

Working on improving and strengthening our relationships are the two most important things we can do this side of heaven. We know that. We’ve all witnessed break-ups among our friends, and, perhaps, it has even happened to us.

Remember -- by the time you finally take action to save your relationship, it’s often too late and neither of you have the energy to fix it! So, let's begin now.

We shouldn't be surprised that we all tend to let our relationships drift. Most of us spend more time and concern about maintaining our automobiles (and, of course, our careers) than our primary relationships. When our car breaks down, it’s inconvenient. When our marriage breaks down it’s a long-term disaster! But often it was a disaster we saw coming but chose not to do anything about it; instead, thinking we will have time tomorrow to fix things.

This checklist should help you to prevent that disaster – to begin to do something today. Putting together a good action plan first begins with the decision to spend quality time (just the two of you) together. 

Talk with your partner -- today!

Humility -- The Elusive Quality

This week, I was reading in the New York Times about an exclusive school in New York City called "Avenues: The World School." I didn't get too excited about the prospect of sending my granddaughter who lives nearby to the school -- grade school tuition is $43,000.

As for the curriculum: Mandarin or Spanish language immersion begins in nursery school. Every kindergarten child gets an iPad. And soon students will be able to do a semester in San Paulo, Bejing, or any of the other 20 campuses the school plans to start around the world.

Last September, the school opened with over 700 students from pre-K to 9th grade. High school will soon be offered. At $43K a year, there is a 9-1 student to teacher ratio and a 10 person staff "success" team oversees each student's development.

The news article contained a story that was very revealing. One of the school's parents was a man who had started a his own technology company while still in college. He hired the smartest and most motivated engineers to start his company. They soon found they had to fire two-thirds of them. He went back and tried to figure out what had happened. What was the problem? The weakness was that arrogance reigned in the company when humility was what was needed. [You can read the entire article HERE.]

There is more to this, however. Recently, a number of admissions officers from prestigious east coast colleges were queried as to what high school applicants were missing in their applications. It was, in a word, humility!

Perhaps, in a pathologically competitive, information-saturated city like New York, this is the answer for wealthy anxiety-prone parents. But is it the answer? And what is "success?" Is it economic, relational, or  spiritual success we seek for our children?

One couple gushed over their son's school curriculum, "He'll be so marketable coming out of college with [Mandarin] fluency. There's enough competition domestically!" 
Given this affluence and these expectations, how does an elite school like the Americas teach humility and have it stick? Of course, this is not a new struggle for those of us who see our own spiritual life and the spiritual life of our children in conflict with the gods of profit and social standing -- of being more than just "marketable."

Nevertheless, we should think about this matter of humility and why it is important (something all the leaders of our world's enduring religions taught).

I leave you with a quote from C.S. Lewis whom many of you may know from his popular books Mere Christianity and Chronicles of Narnia:

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud [person] is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”

Humility  

Being modest, not pretentious, not believing you are superior to others; an attitude of "egolessness," and respect for others.

How do we practice humility and inspire it in those with whom we are in relationship? That is one of the most powerful of spiritual questions!

What's Going On with Dying?

Sometimes the results of research are strange. 

Take this is one example: clergy at the bedside of dying patients resulted in less use of hospice care and greater use of aggressive and costly end-of-life medical procedures which resulted in a lowering their quality of life during their last days.

In a paper recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr Tracy Balboni and others reported that patients reporting high spiritual support from religious communities were less likely to receive hospice care, more likely to receive aggressive end of life measures, and more likely to die in an ICU in several hundred surveys in seven oncology centers in Boston, Dallas and New Haven compared to patients who were not highly supported from their religious communities! 

However, those patients who were not highly supported by their religious communities and, instead, tended to use chaplains and medical team personnel, had a higher quality of life in their final days.

What could possibly be going on here? 

After all, this would appear to me to be contrary to how we as clergy aid the dying (but then, I did a year's residency as a hospital chaplain as part of my preparation for ordination).

This research team surmised that the more dying patients received support from religious congregations, the more likely they were to fight death through experimental, highly toxic regimens of chemotherapy or surgeries with little chance of success. Apparently, these patients believed that God, acting through doctors, hospitals, and drugs, would miraculously save them.

Here’s the scary part – The data suggest “a lack of understanding on the part of religious communities about the medical realities that these patients are facing and that they focus instead on praying for miracles and perseverance through aggressive therapies.”

However, when patients received their spiritual support from hospital chaplains, they received forthright and realistic information bridging the facts of their medical situation with their end-of-life considerations and religious beliefs. But isn't that what all clergy should be doing? As I recall in my training, a chaplain is to elicit a patient’s values and goals, and, at the same time, weigh the potential benefits and risks of medical therapies. Trained hospital chaplains are to have one foot in each area – spiritual and medical. The goal, of course, is to help the patient have what we used to call a "good death."

So why aren’t clergy outside the hospital setting doing this? 

Balboni offered an explanation: “[a] fixation on the possibility of a miracle by both patients and their religious communities makes it difficult to change the focus of care;" that is, being able to shift away and deal with symptoms like pain, and to make end of life as comfortable as possible, and this means getting away from focusing solely on getting cured. She has actually heard from patients that stopping various therapies would be going against God's will. "One patient was concerned that stopping chemotherapy,” she related, “would be equivalent to committing suicide, which was against that person's religious beliefs."

Of course, it is not wrong for a terminally ill patient with advanced stage cancer to try experimental drugs, particularly if they are very young. But if it's at the expense the spiritual preparation people need at the end of life it may well be wrong; like keeping the focus away from the reality of the patient's true medical condition.

In their paper, Balboni and co-authors rhetorically ask why a belief in the potential for a miracle might result in more aggressive use of medical care? One possibility is that many religious people consider medicine to be a means of God's divine intervention. According to a survey in the Southeast, 80% of respondents endorsed such a belief -- that God acts through physicians to cure illness. 

But here's where this can go askew. Religious people may then view the withholding of heroic efforts as taking these technologies out of God's hand. Another view may be the tendency of some religious communities to elevate the role of suffering as "spiritual" or redeeming in itself.

So how is the problem fixed? As a starter, it is a strong endorsement for the continuing training of hospital chaplains through a method such as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). This specialized training helps clergy keep a foot in both worlds -- medical and spiritual. Along with this there is the need for medical practitioners to reach out more to religious communities and create a better understanding of end-of-life care, hospice, and what medicine can realistically offer. 

The point is this: spiritually-minded patients need to be convinced that choosing to withhold aggressive end-of-life measures does not constitute taking matters out of God’s hand.

And may we all strive in our own spiritual lives to have "a good death. " A death today which hospice-trained nurses and chaplains care can provide; that is, care designed to improve the quality of a patient's last days by providing comfort and ensuring the patient's dignity. It is delivered by a team of specially trained professionals (including chaplains), volunteers and family members. 

Hospice addresses all the symptoms of a disease, with a special emphasis on controlling a patient's pain and discomfort. It also addresses the emotional, social and spiritual impact of the disease on the patient and the patient's family and friends. During the patient's illness, and at the end, hospice offers a variety of bereavement and counseling services to families before and after a patient's death.