I remember shopping for Bibles and looking for a red letter edition. Someone had taken the time to identify all the words ascribed to Jesus in red ink. After all, that is the most important isn’t it? At some point I remember hearing the term red letter christians. A course in American history taught me that perhaps Thomas Jefferson was a red letter guy.
As disciples of Jesus; another way of saying students of the teacher, we should be interested what Jesus says. In fact we are interested in what the scriptures say about Jesus also.

Red Dirt Disciple is a way of saying we are interested in what really matters. It may mean beginning with the red letter words but not stopping at knowing what Jesus had to say, or what the Gospels say about him. The real question after we have learned all that scripture has to teach us we are left with the question, “so what?” What do I now do with all these words to live a more abundant life? To improve my community? To be saved?

At the very core of relating to God or anything unseen is faith. And just because we believe something and hold fast to unwavering faith doesn’t make it right! Or Godly! Faith must be exercised. In this process of testing, truth remains and all else falls away. The key to exercising our faith in the words of scripture and those of Jesus, is to trust them. One way of understanding how to trust Jesus and the Bible is to hold to our faith that what we believe will ensure our entrance into heaven when we die. Hopefully that makes some difference in how we live our lives. The final results will be proven after our death,

Another way of exercising our trust in Jesus’ words is to put them into practice in our lives. That matters most when we don’t want to trust them. When they disagree with our instincts or threaten our reputation and sense of security. Then we often resort to parroting soundbites like “in a perfect world” or “well after all I’m not perfect.” In spite of that the truth remains and we miss the mark, again.

The truth is forgiveness is hard; peace begins with charity and not force; serving others is essential and serving self always leads to a dead spirit. Losing is more important than winning. The first are last and the last are first. Our lives are not a gift to hoard but a gift to be shared. Love for others is not passion but charity and it doesn’t depend on the person receiving it but rather the one who chooses to give freely. These things are true whether we trust them or not. It is of course risky. It is not an attempt to earn one’s way to heaven. It is a way to live our lives in response to God and to the Gospel. These things will proven here in our lives and communities not just in heaven to come.

These things are Red Dirt Disciple.


…for the summer months I plan to write more here in this space about what we mean by Red Dirt Disciple! Keep watching…

Pentecost Sunday is coming. It falls on May 31, actually the fifth Sunday in this month. I want to remind everyone that we participate in the Pentecost offering each year as an outreach. The offering is shared with our region and it is designated for new church starts. We have participated every year in our eighteen together, but this year we will need to be even more intentional. Since we are still experiencing distancing and should expect to for awhile even as orders and guidelines relax, we must to continue to be creative and good communicators.

Pentecost Sunday marks the end of the Easter season and celebrates the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit on all nations. We have certainly spent this Easter season caught in the tension between living and dying. Every community joins with nations on a shared stage, waiting for fresh wind, fresh fire. We are watching for an upward change in our collective spirit offering us hope and renewed faith. It may not happen on May 31, but we will celebrate it! And then we will get up on Monday and dig in and get ready for the long season of Pentecost ahead of us. We will learn to be faithful and we will learn to see and bear witness to God’s faithfulness. Fresh wind. Fresh fire.

I saw a photo that expressed the longing for community in our congregations very accurately. The photo was of a sign a man was holding outside a car window that read, “Open our churches. We need communion.” I teared up thinking about the Kinzelers moving a communion table into our parking lot every Sunday morning. Masked up. And others who arrive to partake or help serve and maybe see a friendly face. A fellow pilgrim. There is a powerful testimony to God’s faithfulness!

I’ve had a good time doing live casts. We all miss the congregation in the room with us. Still, there has been an excitement about being together on line each Sunday. It has kept the band busy! It has been a time of creativity. Our on line presence is growing. We are catching a new vision. Fresh wind moving us in new directions. Fresh fire exciting us into new possibilities.

We have not lost the art of gathering and breaking bread. We are still called to one table. One people. We are called forward not backward. Untethered from the way we always do things and building on the strength of our faith. Looking again as the first time on the bread and the common cup and the spirit that unites us in those elements. Thinking again about what it means to be a community of believers gathered together for worship and encouraging one another in Christian service. Fresh wind. Fresh fire. 

I started six months ago writing about my experience with change in church structure in our congregation and in the area and regional expressions of church.
I began by recalling some Sunday night conversations, and as I prepare to summarize what I have said, I want to revisit those conversations. In respect to recent events; the sudden changes to our social, private and professional lives, there is substance in those talks beyond church structure.

A short time after the death of Paul Graham, there were some legitimate concerns present. Paul was a great leader and he tithed generously. Ours was to confront the financial challenge while learning to trust in our own leadership in a post Paul Graham era. It became wise to think through some kind of contingency plan. There were a number of “what-if’s.”

Our Sunday night study groups had grown into a safe place to explore, challenge and sometimes transform. That was the most fertile space to hold these talks. We began our discussions on the “What-if’s” choosing one topic each Sunday night. The first was “What if we won the lottery?” For some time developers had expressed interest in our property. No one had made an offer we couldn’t refuse, but what if they did? What would we want if we could have anything? These were fun visioning sessions!

The next talks were around a more realistic assessment of the then current budget report. “What if we had to sell the building?” No one liked the way it sounded. Then we began to talk about how other models of church assemble and deal with space and property. We talked about the importance of location to mission. Then we began to dig into what it means to be the church. How the church is not the building. We visioned ways we would sustain cohesiveness in our church family and how we would minister to the community. Crazy ideas!

We didn’t see this coming. We are still secure in our property, yet we are unable to assemble there. This was not the way we envisioned it, but our visioning has left us prepared. The tools we earned in those exercises have served the entire congregation, not just individuals. Somehow the capacity of the whole collective was affected and prepared.

This congregation has modeled what it looks like to be church over these weeks of “shelter in place.” You have found ways to stay in touch. We have had treats and food dropped off at our house. It is kind of like Christmas! We have kept prayer lines connected and we have helped each of us with need be reassured that we are not alone! The live cast worship on Sunday has brought a new energy to the praise team and new folks have stepped forward to help make it happen. I’ve actually had fun! The drive through communion is a great idea! I have seen the love of God in volunteers waving at traffic and offering the hope of reassurance in the body and blood of Christ! Letters for inmates and socks for the community outreach are still coming in and still going out! Many of you have made second efforts to get monthly and weekly offerings to the church to ensure some kind of financial stability while we are unable to assemble.
I am so glad we took the opportunity to vision and dream together. I am humbled by the teamwork and leadership.

We will be together again soon. Perhaps we will learn some new talents and gifts we have to offer from this experience. Certainly we will have a new appreciation for both social media and for the gift of being together in person. Absence makes the heart grow fonder!           to be continued…  

My friend John Pennington introduced a program to the Central Area in the early 2000s called, “CANN:Central Area Neighborhood Networks.” John had grouped our forty-one congregations into smaller groups of three or four called neighborhoods. The neighborhoods were formed from simple geography; neighboring churches in more urban areas and neighboring towns in the rural.

Next the congregations were encouraged to interact in several ways. Church picnics were held. Sunday pulpit exchange and ministers’ cluster groups were encouraged. People were put into contact with people. Ministries developed and life long relationships were forged.

Soon networks began to cross pollinate. We at Wylie Christian Church were in a neighborhood with our local sister congregations: First Christian Abilene and Brookhollow Christian Church. Our neighborhood intersected with other neighborhoods through retreats, conferences and assemblies. Our praise band made it a priority to travel to other neighborhoods in the area often worshipping with three or four congregations at a time; and always sharing a wonderful meal together.

Those neighborhoods provided some of the veins and arteries that carried life throughout our area and nourishment to the life we have together. They weren’t the only connective tissue in our structure. Youth ministries, men’s and women’s groups, and ministerial alliances were among other points of connection. All these worked because we chose to participate.

There are many points of connection that exist currently. In our own neighborhood we continue to assemble for worship and fellowship together. Recently we formed a lectionary discussion group and meet weekly to share in sermon preparation. Outside our neighborhood feels bigger than ever before. The structure that provides security and cohesion is in flux. The veins and arteries are harder to recognize but they are still there. They still work when we participate.

The challenge is not small, or insignificant. The answers are not complicated, just involved. It can be un-nerving to not know where we are headed. We can draw strength and encouragement from our faith in God in these times. We can courageously believe that we are being led by the Holy Spirit and our contribution can make a difference. We may not know where we are headed, but we can be sure of where we are going…to be continued…  

I was very encouraged when our 2018 leadership team, the administrative body of Wylie Christian Church, voted to discontinue our land line. That’s “boomer” language for a telephone! It was a bold decision and not one that was reached in haste. I had spent months observing the change in phone activity and concluded with a three month documented study which was presented to the team. In short, the expectation was that people would call looking for the pastor or inquiring about Sunday services, and we found that no one was using our land line for any of these reasons.

We had, on the other hand observed that people who were arriving to a Sunday service for the first time, were often arriving half hour late. Many times they would say that they had consulted our website to find out what time services began. I had to confess that we had not updated that website in two years, and our start time had changed. In fact the website looked like we had closed our doors two years earlier!

So, the decision to disconnect from the “yellow page” mentality, not a casual thing for baby boomers to do, was accompanied by a commitment to increase our social media presence. Since then, we have added Sunday sermons and worship offerings to our facebook page, updated and recommitted to our website, and seen the newsletter revived and re-presented in a larger digital format. It has taken lots of cooperation and help. We have challenged our normal ways of thinking and doing.

Letting go of the office phone number was also a step toward re-thinking the church office, or the “hub.” Over time, our financial commitment to the office administrator/secretary position had changed. Out of necessity the position had offered fewer hours and less money. Along the way we learned how to accomplish the things we needed and let go of those we didn’t. We have most recently began to describe our expectations and needs from the office in ways connected to social media awareness and administration.

Ministry is still best in person, so through contacts made through cell phones and facebook, people have been connected to people. Appointments with the pastor are made, not by calling an office phone but by reaching out in ways people are already using daily. The pastor’s cell phone number is shared on social media for access. New inquiries through the website or face book are routed  to people who make responses.

In some ways we have a larger network than one person in an office now. It still challenges our way of thinking and doing, but we are hanging tough and learning and screwing up all the time. But we are growing. We are being noticed by a whole new generation of people interested in church. We are learning again what it means for all of us to be a part of supplying the connective tissue that holds our congregational life together. In the absence of a familiar hub, we are learning how to be the veins and arteries supplying life to our collective ministries.     to be continued…..

Pastor’s Notes….                                                                

My formative years in congregational ministry were under the direct care and guidance of our then area minister Reverend Tony Salisbury. In the nine years that he served as a mentor to me, Tony and I met weekly. He also invited me to shadow his work in the Central Area. I was like Tony’s mini me! In addition to carrying me along for clergy cluster meetings and inviting me to be a part of the area committee on the ministry, Tony asked me to join him in Ft. Worth for a regional wide conversation on restructure. it was a three year project called New Day, New Direction.

“ND/ND” identified two challenges faced by the Southwest Region. The first was   geography. We live in the largest region in our denomination. For that reason the region had been broken up into eight areas, staffed not by the region but by congregations in each respective area. This structure served us well for many years.

The second challenge was redundancy. Specifically, that meant congregations in the region were being asked to contribute to an area office, the regional office, and the general office in Indianapolis. As congregations grew smaller there were fewer people to donate and raise money and provide volunteer staffing and energy for so many levels or manifestations of church. Every level was suffering together.

Currently our region is in the process of living into new structure. Area offices have begun closing, our own central area office having been closed for years now. Ministers with new titles and areas of specific service are being installed to help assist congregations across the region without the assistance of formal areas. All area giving is now routed to the regional office in Fort Worth.

These measures help address redundancy in giving and makes it more financially possible for congregations to participate; but the problem of geography remains. In fact, it may loom larger. We are faced with envisioning structure across Texas and New Mexico without the benefit of geographically placed area offices.

We have determined that there is a need for healthy middle church. One purpose being to provide connections between congregations to each other and to the greater church. We may be expecting a great deal from the regional church alone to provide those connections. The time for new ways of thinking and acting is upon us. We must involve ourselves and our congregations; and there aren’t clear models available to us. Let’s explore some measures we may consider……to be continued…    

Pastor’s Notes….                                                              
So there we were on Sunday evenings inspired by a familiar author and engaged in conversation about the future of the church when we still saw ourselves as a young and non-traditional congregation. Our talks were enriched by the multigenerational voices in the room. No videos. No pre-scripted pages in a study guide. Nothing was safe. No one slept through these sessions.

The first question we entertained was a familiar one. “Do we even need denominations?” Most of us in the room gave the expected answer. We’d all heard it in conversation with other folks. NO. We echoed the common reasons others were citing. ‘The lines of division were not good for the body of Christ.’ ‘Most denominations represent the outdated church.’ ‘People are just more independent.’ ‘It is time to let go of tradition.’

Declaring that denominations are no longer relevant is to say that we stand ready to eliminate middle judicatories. After all that is how denominational structure is manifest: through synods and conferences, parish and regional offices. Then our conversation tightened around life without some structure. What would replace structure? Or the Regional or Area office? The topic became What would a healthy middle judicatory look like?

Some of the things we had depended on our area and regional offices before were re-established in importance. Middle judicatory has always assisted our congregations in conflict resolution in the local church, helping to avoid destructive conflict and to journey with congregations through healthy conflict. Area and regional offices have helped equip and care for a strong and healthy clergy through education, accountability and by fostering real relationships and accessibility to other clergy.

The two traits of healthy middle judicatory that resonated in our own context were these: that healthy denominations help the local church confront parochialism and participate in the work of the larger church and healthy denominations help keep individuals and congregations aware of the whole gospel. It is easy for local churches to polarize around social issues or political or theological baggage. What is good for the local congregation may not always be in the best interest of the larger church. Even worse at times we can become consumed with our own passions and blind to the realities of the kingdom of God. If we are called to be ‘in the world but not of the world,’ then something has to keep us focused beyond our own beliefs and needs.

It turned out that we changed our answer by the end of just one session. Maybe denominations aren’t such a bad thing after all, we just need healthy ones. Not a surprising conclusion to reach when after all we come from the original non-denominational movement on this continent!

Another way to think about healthy denominations and middle judicatories is that they are like veins and arteries and connective tissue between individual participating congregations and their people. That doesn’t seem like an outdated idea.

The truth is most denominations weren’t suffering because church folk were more independent or giving up on tradition. It was simply that church folk in number were growing fewer and fewer. There simply was not the money or the energy to staff judicatories as in the past.  

So with offices and hubs closing and geography increasing, where is the connective tissue? How can we maintain arterial health?
to be continued…

Two years ago we held Sunday night discussions around three texts. Two essays entitled “The Death…” and “The Resurrection of Middle Judicatories.” The third was a book titled “ Recreating the Church.” All three were written by our former General Minister and President of the Disciples of Christ, Richard Hamm.

I and maybe some of us entered the study with an imbedded respect for Dr. Hamm’s work. While he was president of our denomination, he authored a book titled “2020 Vision” that helped inform a movement in the Disciples of Christ that became an intimate part of our own creation as a congregation. The book issued a simple challenge. Start 1000 new churches by the year 2020; in a 1000 different ways.

The same year Dr. Hamm’s book was published, Wylie Christian Church became an official congregation in formation. Already our general ministries based in Indianapolis were resourcing and coaching planters and new congregations. New Church Ministries was staffed with passionate and committed people and they came to Abilene, more than once. We received training and partnered with the staff of NCM and travelled from Charlotte, NC to Las Vegas, NM, in Indianapolis and Bethany, WV. The Sunday that Judy Turner from NCM attended church with us was nothing short of special. Ordained.

There was a second challenge in “2020 Vision.” It was to revitalize 1000 old congregations in the same 20 year period. For all the challenges in planting new congregations, the more daunting task has clearly been in the second half of the challenge. New training and resourcing was needed and our General Ministries responded again through programs like Hope Partnership designed to help older congregations find new life in mission and new partners for the journey.

New and old congregations have since been searching for new models for success. New ways of thinking or too often old ways of thinking not so cleverly disguised as new ways of thinking. In our own region we have experienced change mostly brought on by attrition; fewer church members, fewer churches, fewer dollars. We have experienced the loss of our area office; the death of a hub. While we still have a connection to the Regional Church in Ft. Worth, it still feels more distant than the Area structure we once could support. Our nearest neighbor in ministry and especially church camp programming became further apart. Our problem with geography multiplied and brought new challenges and also new opportunities.

So, all this time later we found ourselves discussing what some call the death of hub (Pastor’s Notes continued)
and spoke models; what Dr. Hamm calls “The Death of Middle Judicatory.” There is plenty of hope in this study. Remember the second essay, “The Resurrection of Middle Judicatory,” and much is found in the second half of the title of Dr. Hamm’s book, “Recreating the Church: Leadership for the Post Modern Age.”

Over the next couple of months I want to recollect some of the thoughts that surfaced from our discussions and share some of what we learned with you here in this column……to be continued.

It’s September and it’s already time for the West Texas Fair! There is a lure to the carnival lights and atmosphere. For some people it is an annual ritual; a chance to indulge in rich food without too much guilt. Children look forward to the midway. My first high school date was a trip to the fair.
 
When I was a local business owner I dreaded fair time. We were part of the community that saw the drain on the local economy. Cash flow slows for small retailers. With limited funds it was easy to just stay home. Once I lost a more innocent appreciation, it represented a group of strangers coming to take away part of my livelihood. I lost the ability to have fun at the fair.
 
While traveling in another state a woman I met recognized the Disciple trademark and shared some of her warm memories of attending a Disciple congregation as a young girl. At times she had returned to the Disciple “brand” when she sought out a place to worship.
 
“One thing I could always count on,” she said, “if I saw that chalice on the sign I knew what I could expect when I went inside.”
 
I spent the next week in a new church conference with Disciples. Korean, Central American, Haitian, Cajun French, African American, Caucasian, Mexican, Viet Namese; all Disciple congregations! There was no one dominate language or worship style, and yet none were repressed, only celebrated.
 
We were reminded that week while many of our congregations are primarily Anglo or African American (the largest congregations in our denomination are primarily African American), we indeed began as an immigrant movement. Many were Scots-Irish who sought the freedom to express themselves spiritually without offense.
 
I thought about what my friend had said about “branding” and expectations. I couldn’t help thinking how surprised she might be if she followed the Chalice into one of these congregations. If she were anticipating her childhood experience, her expectations might not be reasonable.
 
If instead she expected to find people seeking the freedom to express themselves in worship and to extend a hospitality toward others seeking the same, then she may have found the right place. If she were looking for a safe place where all were valued she may have the right set of expectations. If she looking for a fellowship willing to shake off labels and celebrate our differences then she may have followed the Chalice again to the right “brand.”
 
I have always cherished the diversity of the Disciple movement. It is a defining strength in our congregation. Not that we speak a variety of languages, but that we are a family of folks from a mixture of educational backgrounds, earning potential, theological and political persuasions. It is a picture of Unity not necessarily uniformity. It is our respect and compassion for each other that overcomes often polarizing beliefs that threaten to divide us. Our differences are not argued or ignored and most often celebrated, in eldership, service on the church board, and certainly at the table each week. All are welcome! All are worthy! All!
 
It is true that much fear and discrimination lives beneath the surface of such diversity. Sometimes we may still see others who challenge our beliefs as trying to change what we have worked for or taking from our “spiritual livelihood.” It is not just difference in styles of worship or language and race, but what people believe about the Bible, or who they choose to live their most intimate lives with. Yet here we are! Here is God!
 
Extending radical Disciple freedom to others requires lavish spending. We should never feel that our banks of tolerance and charity are too compromised to come back to the party like little children or perhaps head over heels in love and on our first date! Who cares what it cost? We are here! Here is God!