Lighthouse Keepers

Harsh, chaotic waves pound against the jagged rocks.

A small ship rocks and tosses in the sea.

A beacon of light shines through the wet, thick fog.

The lighthouse keepers maintain the beacon of hope.

How many journeys have been set right?

How many lives have been saved?

The faithful, steady presence of the keepers carries on.

—---------

December 23, 2023. 

To my friends at the Osceola County Office of Community Mental Health for Central Michigan.

Who is Us and Them?

 I'm struck by the divisions in our country. We are perhaps more divided now than any time since the Civil War. Is another armed conflict going to happen? I hope not, but we need to work to build bridges and pull people together.

The Sin and Forgiveness Resume . . .

I have found myself circulating my resume again to a variety of places, including places connected to the church. Resumes are funny things, they are but a two-dimensional, snap shots of who we are. And not just any version of who we are, but who we are at our best. 

One of the standard interview questions is, "Why are you best for this job?"  I really want to answer that, "Well, I really don't have the information to answer that. I don't know anything about the other candidates and unless I believe I am the best person in the whole world for this job, which is called megalomania, I really can't say." 

I have never said that in an interview, but I'd love to.

Every week at church, we say the Lord's Prayer.  A key phrase in the prayer is "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us."  What if we had a sin resume, where we did indeed make a list of our sins and those we have forgiven (some may say this is a critical part of the Twelve Step programs)? Some versions of the Lord's Prayer use the word debts and debtors. But you could argue that a Debt Resume already exists, it is called a credit report, but I digress.

One of the great challenges for those in Christian leadership and probably any visible role where faith or morals is expected is to live an authentic life. It is too easy to simply try to live the veneer life, that is try to live a life just for show and for other people. Authentic leadership and living is not easy, and I think that having a sin and forgiveness resume might just help.

Seekers on the Journey

Over the last couple of days, I have been reflecting on a comment made by John Hamer on a thread over on Saints Herald. John said that, "I believe that the Community of Christ is being called to provide a spiritual home of disaffected Mormons who have left their church but remain spiritual seekers." It reminded me of a series of discussions I had on the eve of my appointee career. The process of entering appointment was very different than it was now and there were more internal discussions/debates within the Council of Twelve about the allocation of appointee resources (this was before Transformation 2000, of course and there were largely no field ministers funded by the World Church, only appointees).

I was finishing seminary in Denver and Jac Kirkpatrick was my apostle and his field also included Salt Lake City. Jac wanted me to be placed in Salt Lake with part of the thrust of my assignment being outreach to these disaffected seekers that John speaks of. I was far more involved with groups like John Whitmer and the like than I am now, so he thought it was a good fit.

Grant McMurray was a counselor in the First Presidency and he reflected negatively on the proposal. Grant had a historical perspective to draw from knowing that since the early days of the Reorganization there has always been an attempt by the Community of Christ/RLDS to peel off members from the LDS. It was his observation that often the cultural ties to Mormonism were too great for any large scale (or medium scale) effort to be successful.

While there is solid connections between intellectuals between the LDS Church and Community of Christ, how would the average Community of Christ congregation do with welcoming a LDS seeker? In order for this to happen would some more specialized resources or more importantly resource persons be available to serve as a guide for those Mormons that might be open to the church?

I write this as my own spiritual journey has led me currently to be involved with both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Community of Christ. Yet both the book of Revelation and the Book of Mormon says that in the end their are only two churches. I think it is arrogance on our part to believe that either of those churches exist in their present form today. Could it be that the Community of Christ could serve institutionally to serve as a bridge between the Mormon Church and the larger ecumenical community? It seems that the prevailing opinion of Community of Christ leadership is willing to side with those who reject the LDS claim to be Christian in order to advance the Community of Christ place in the ecumenical world (another approach which has a long history).

I don't have an answer to these questions, but instead think that it is one of those "we make the way by walking" efforts. If we are open about spiritual path and outreaching to others, it might be hard to say how the Spirit leads us.

(I did not check with either Jac Kirkpatrict or Grant McMurray before I wrote this. I don't think there are any confidentially issues here. It was 15 years ago, so I think I'm safe.)

John Hamer on his First World Conference

Over at By Common Consent, John Hamer has a great first installment on blogging about his first World Conference.

Frizzell on Veazey

Matt Frizzell presents a more appreciative entry than I did. Plus Matt's entry seems to be more poetic.

A Pragmatic and Prophetic People?

Sunday night at world conference is a little bit like the state of the union. It is the chance for the church's president to make his appeal to the delegates. In general, there was nothing new in Steve Veasey's address, except perhaps for the announcing of a $4 million gift to help fund to continue to fund bi-vocational ministries (quite a major thing in these tough times).

Steve formally submitted his counsel to the church and went on to talk about some of the key passages. Seeking inspiration from Galatians, section 5 of the counsel says:

It is imperative to understand that when you are truly baptized into Christ you become part of a new creation. By taking on the life and mind of Christ, you increasingly view yourselves and others from a changed perspective. Former ways of defining people by economic status, social class, sex, gender, or ethnicity no longer are primary. Through the gospel of Christ a new community of tolerance, reconciliation, unity in diversity, and love is being born as a visible sign of the coming reign of God.

It is truly a lovely notion and worthy of us to live up to. And while there are some significant exceptions, the Community of Christ is still largely governed by middle to upper-class whites from the United States. And while the conference shows many multicultural elements, it is the church in US and Canada that is financially supporting the remaining international presence of the church. Significant power dynamics still exist between the haves and have-nots and it seems like little effort is being made to change those dynamics.

I also still struggle on how to understand how "former ways of defining people . . . no longer are primary." Does the reality of living in post-earthquake Haiti suddenly not become primary to church members living there? Or perhaps just as important, do nominally US Christians, who are hyper-active consumers move from being passing members of the Community of Christ to fully engaged in the prophetic call?

Then there is the part of the document that deals with "ethical behavior and relationships" with homosexuality being the issue not mentioned, but clearly at the forefront. The document presents a pragmatic approach that allows different areas/nations of the world to deal with issues at a different pace. There does seem to be some wisdom in this, but how one deals with major differences within a single geographic area then is unclear (in the KC metro area, some congregations are already open & affirming to GLBT, many are not).

Steve noted that we have been ordaining women for 25 years in the Community of Christ. Could the approach advocated in the current document had prevented the schisms from happening? And are there some issues where we can't afford to go slow? We never had much of a presence in slave-holding parts of the US, but could slavery had been tolerated by parts of the church in the Nineteenth Century? And when we consider the civil rights movements of the 1950's and 1960's, the RLDS Church's record is horrible. So the challenge is when to be pragmatic and when to be prophetic and can they co-exist?

Places to Watch in CyberSpace

The collaborative blog, Saints Herald will no doubt contain a number of items related to conference this week, including Matthew Bolton's thoughts on the importance of passing the Anti-Nuclear Weapon resolution.

Beware of the Chicken has some of the best writing I have seen lately on the reality of increasing power of the church leadership.

Velton Peabody, has a very helpful Facebook group called Community of Christ in the News.

Are there other must read places you are finding?