Accountability in Journalistic Media seems to have been diminished. Affirmation of this statement is reflected in a recent broadcast of "On the Media" from WNYC - https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/619380 . If you don't have 49 minutes to listen to the entire program, you might want to focus on the segments in the latter half of the broadcast (21:50) that focus on Public Media of the New York times, (45:20) the coverage of Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump, (30:30) and the failed candidacy of former Congressman & losing NYC mayoral Candidate Anthony Weiner. The overall message is a call for Journalistic integrity.

Remembering that I almost always used the phrase "Elbow Evangelism" here is a twist on  'Whose We Are'.

Reblogging a Post from Rev. Dr. Robert G. Moss has served as senior pastor at Lutheran Church of the Master (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in Lakewood, Colorado - regarding Evangelism. This is particularly directed to the class lecture I gave at LTSP on April 7, 2016.
https://daelcarev.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/we-will-no-longer-be-a-welcoming-church/

Neighborhood Church

A missional site, sharing insights as to what God is doing and how the church can participate.

We Will No Longer be a Welcoming Church

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Rob Moss

We’ve decided to quit being a welcoming church. No kidding. We’re giving it up. It won’t be easy, but we’re committed to it. We’ll have to do it in stages, easing our folks into it step by step. We’ll have to deal with the fear of something new, the challenge of venturing into the unknown. But we’ll do it. It will take motivation, leadership, and constant reminders. But most importantly, it will take total commitment in embracing a new focus.

Like so many churches, we’ve sunk an amazing amount of time and energy into becoming a welcoming church. We changed worship styles, we trained greeters and ushers, we wore name tags, we percolated coffee, we went to workshops on hospitality, we put our friendliest people in the most prominent places on Sunday mornings. But we’ve realized we’ve been misplacing our emphasis. So we’re no longer going to do it.

Here’s what we’re doing instead. We are becoming an Inviting Church. That’s different. You see, “welcoming” from a missional perspective is passive. It denotes waiting for visitors and guests to drop by. When they do, we attempt treat them very well and do everything possible to make them comfortable. We’ll be willing to change who we are. We’ll follow particular formats that have proven to be more welcoming to new people. We’ll do whatever it takes to have them come back the next Sunday, even if they shouldn’t. Welcoming is about us, not about them.

“Inviting,” however, is different. That means we leave the comfort of our congregational home-court advantage. The main activity doesn’t happen in our worship space when people drop in, but in the neighborhood when we go out. It isn’t so much welcoming them into our place, but going out into their place and meeting them there.

Even that warrants a significant caveat. This is not just another gimmick to get people into the church. The foundation of this isn’t an attempt to bolster declining membership rolls and make a better parochial report to the bishop. No, it goes much deeper than that. It starts with who God has called us to be as church. It involves discovering our gifts and purpose. And it mandates joining God at work in the world. This isn’t about getting the world into God’s church; it’s about getting the church into God’s world.

If you’ve read any postings on this blog before, you know that God’s mission is what we are to be about. Everything comes from that—including the identity of the church. We exist as church only because God has a mission. Our purpose, our very identity, is called forth out of God’s loving care and redemptive activity in creation. We are steeped in God’s mission. We are drenched through baptism into this essential character of God. God is at work in the world, and creates, calls, and equips the church specifically for that work.

Each congregation has a purpose within God’s mission. Each congregation has particular gifts. Each congregation reveals the life-giving reign of God in unique ways. No congregation is everything to everyone. But every congregation is something to someone. Who can know God through your worship style? Who can experience forgiveness and grace through your congregational community? Who needs the gifts you have to offer? Who can offer gifts you need? Knowing those things, when in conversation over the backyard fence about their pain in losing a loved one, it would be natural then to invite that neighbor to your congregation’s grief support group that has made such a difference for many others. When in the employee lunch room chatting about the pressures of our jobs, it would fit to invite that co-worker to your congregation’s spiritual direction group for professionals. When sharing the struggles of parenthood with a friend while waiting for your kids to come out of school, it would make sense to invite their whole family to your cross-generational faith development where you have gained so much guidance from other parents. While paying for a car repair, your long-time mechanic lets slip that she has lost her faith, it would easily flow for you to invite her to join you (and all the other doubters who will gather this Sunday) in worship.

Welcoming involves hoping whoever happens to find you will join. Inviting involves sharing God’s specific gifts—made real in your congregation—in the world.

Based on a council study of the book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath (Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., N.Y. Copyright © 2010 by Chip Heath and Dan Heath) http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard, my congregation is going about this transition from being welcoming to becoming inviting in three specific ways. One leadership team is taking the lead for each portion. Each of these three approaches will be the topic of an upcoming post on this blog. As a preview, however, they are: motivating people to invite, taking on invitation in bite-size pieces, and changing the inviting environment. We aren’t sure what the final results will be, but we’re excited to find out. Join us on this journey as we jump off the cliff and (hopefully) learn to fly. Please offer feedback, ideas, and help along the way.

Related

We Will No Longer Be A Welcoming Church, Pt. 2: The Motivation!In "Church in Context"

Inviting (Not Welcoming) in Bite-Sized Chunks. Pt. 3In "Church in Context"

The Church: A Hidden AgendaIn "church growth"

Once again Sheila Kennedy has a way with words.  Though I'm not from Indiana, the last line may have an impact for us all.

Rich



If There Was Sauce for the Goose…: By now, anyone not living in a cave knows that Republicans in the Senate are refusing to participate in the constitutionally-required exercise of...

If There Was Sauce for the Goose…

February 23, 2016Public Policy and GovernanceObama, Pence, Supreme Court

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By now, anyone not living in a cave knows that Republicans in the Senate are refusing to participate in the constitutionally-required exercise of advising and consenting on a proposed Supreme Court nominee. Not that they have objections to the (as yet unnamed) choice–no, they object to even allowing the President to fulfill his constitutionally-required duty.

Indiana Republicans seem to like the GOP’s new “Obama Rule;” to the extent that I can understand the basis upon which Mitch McConnell invented it, it goes something like this: We don’t like Obama, and we think the next President will be more to our taste. (Ignore the fact that Obama won election pretty overwhelmingly, and a lot of Americans–arguably still a pretty robust majority–still do like him.)

Here in Indiana, we also have a state supreme court vacancy. Indeed, interviews for the position are already underway. Governor Pence is in the last year of his term, and all signs suggest that he is far less popular than the President. (In my circles, he’s less popular than dandruff.)  So shouldn’t the voters get to decide who they want picking Indiana’s next state supreme court justice?

If America is now operating on the basis of what Bill Maher might call a “new rule”—if we’ve decided that it is improper for political executives to select judges during the last year of their term–shouldn’t we apply that rule to Governor Pence?

Actually, we might take the new rule even further; since one-third of the US Senate is up for election this year, maybe those senators shouldn’t vote or do much of anything until we see whether the electorate has returned them to office. (Okay–scratch that last suggestion: this Senate isn’t doing anything anyway.)

Besides, let’s be honest; it’s only a black President who’s limited to 3/5 of a term….

Primary Racism? A shared Post from Shelia Kennedy

Primary Racism?Shared Blog "Primary Racism" it is an election season...

Primary Racism?

February 21, 2016Random BloggingIowa, New Hampshire, primaries, racism

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With political attention focused on the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primaries, Iowa and New Hampshire are rapidly disappearing in the media’s rear-view mirror. But before we bury ourselves in more current analyses and prognostications, it might be well to consider the peculiar order of America’s primary lineup.

I thought about this because I recently came across a post raising an issue I had not previously considered; that the choice of Iowa and New Hampshire as the sites of our earliest political primaries operates to support racism—or at least white privilege—in American life.

This is my epiphany of 2016. Our primary system – like the rest of our political system – is one more example of the racism we so deeply entrench and protect. I don’t pretend that moving the first primaries to more representative states would end racism, but, like pulling down Confederate flags, it couldn’t hurt.

In defense of this conclusion, he points to media coverage of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries—coverage strongly suggesting that the results from these two states tells us something important about the desires of the “American people”— and he places the outsized importance attributed to those contests alongside voting requirements, slating, and gerrymandering, as examples of structures “designed to exclude minorities and protect white privilege.”

Frankly, it would difficult to find two states less representative of America than Iowa and New Hampshire. Only 3% of Iowans and 1% of New Hampshire residents are black in contrast to 13% of the nation. Only 5% of Iowans and 3% of New Hampshire residents are Latino in contrast to 17% of the rest of America. Indeed, having our first primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire is a little like reserving the front of the political bus for “whites only.” When the political parties suggest America has spoken in Iowa and New Hampshire, they imply that white America- the America that really matters to them – has spoken.

Indeed, Iowa and New Hampshire represent an America that hasn’t existed for two hundred years. Thirty-six percent of Iowans and forty percent of New Hampshire residents live in rural communities while only 19% of Americans are rural dwellers. Claiming white farmers and woodsmen are the most politically important people in our nation may have made some demographic sense in the 1800s, but it is patently ridiculous and racist in 2016. Allowing the opinions of whites in Iowa and New Hampshire to have such an inordinate influence on our national election is wrong.

I am less inclined to attribute the structures the author identifies to conscious racism; they are equally likely to be a result of partisanship and happenstance. That said, his larger point is worth considering: although this country has eliminated most of the legal disadvantages and inequities that operated to tilt the playing field in favor of white Americans, even people of good will have yet to recognize–let alone disassemble–the myriad social structures that facilitate racist practices and foster racist assumptions and stereotypes.

There are actually all sorts of good reasons to revisit the importance of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries—reasons having little or nothing to do with race. Even if one finds the post unpersuasive, even if moving the primaries to more representative states wouldn’t really represent a blow against racism, the author is clearly right about one thing: it sure couldn’t hurt.

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Reactions to Confronting Racism in 2016

Soo, reaction to Last night's web cast "Confronting Racism." [It's a bit long.]

Prelude: January 14, 2016:
This was an interesting Day, when these two visual events happened simultaneously…

Republican Party Debate – North Charleston, SC

ELCA - Confronting Racism: A Holy Yearning
Post Webcast: Angie Shannon asks:
Okay Lutheran family: Who saw the Live Webcast "Confronting Racism"? What are your thoughts? Honest. Thoughts.

Reaction:

I was number 17 in 1971 @ age 26. Seventeenth Black Pastor in the LCA. During seminary, I was a part of the trial and editing of a program of the LCA called “Justice and Social Change”. Sherman Hicks and I worked with Dr. Charles King, as he both taught at the seminary and led race relations programs in White Lutheran Churches throughout the state, based upon the publication “Justice and Social Change”. “Over time he felt unable to penetrate the wall of White ignorance among the student, until one day he simply exploded in Black anger in class and discovered that this was the thing that pierced the veneer of racism and led to real understanding. Both his classes and his racial awareness programs became vehicles for cleansing confrontational encounters with racism.” [as reported in The Encyclopedia of African American Religions, by Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, Gary L. Ward, 2013.]

I clearly remember saying to Charles, during a break in a workshop, “I don’t know if I can love these folks that much?” It is a fine line to walk between education and anger as it relates to race. This past year as one of my former students lamented her encounter within the church, I confessed that while our conversations had been educational and friendly, I had not shared the depth of the pain of being viewed as Other, even in the midst of being welcomed within. The reality of living in two worlds became an operational style without writing the necessary operational manual for those who followed me down the same path.

I lament an elder clergy of color was not present in the webcast, but many, like me, might resurrect more historical moments of the pain experienced, than can be accommodated in hour of looking for ways forward. It is not that reflecting on sins recognized or unintended from the past is unimportant, but unless you are Henry Louis Gates, it makes for bad television. Actually, I’m pleased to interact with Lenny and others from my position of retirement, but at the same time I’m working to capture the history of those older seventeen and others who preceded me before their stories are totally lost. We can learn from the historical moment, but it seems “to me” to serve best as a reflection upon what we have done and what has worked and what has not achieved the goals desired.

While we each, in our own generations, sometimes feel as if we are trail blazers, the reality is that there have been those who have broken paths that continually need to be cleared and expanded and perhaps paved for the next generation, and even then we may feel as if we have not done, perhaps never done, enough - Enough for the next generation not to encounter a pervasive side of humanity that clouds our ability to see all of humanity as a part of the family of God.

I don’t know how to teach peripheral vision, but there are few parts of the nation that are absent the presence of People of Color. The two video sessions may offer the opportunity for those who were not distracted by the other televised offerings move our heads from side to side to see what else might be within our field of vision and perhaps ministry. POC are legion.

Rich Stewart

It's Been a while since we sent cards, but there is the added burden of having addresses; for many of our friends we see more of you on Face Book than we do face-to-face.  So please forgive us in sending our Greetings for the Christmas Season to you via this method.  From Dawn and Rich, and vicariously from Joel and Karl.  We wish you all a Blessed Christmas and a Providential Hopeful New Year.

 

Thanksgiving I think about my elders.  My Mom would be cooking like crazy for all the family and friends to come, and my Dad would be doing everything except what my mother had asked to be done.
But this Day, I focus on the Mentors who have guided me in the Church.

Jim Gunther was a son of Annunciation Philadelphia. He was  the long time pastor at Transfiguration Lutheran Church in Harlem, NYC.  This was his final year of life and sharing his personal history as an early leader of African American Pastors from the 1950's into the 21st Century.  He served as the First African American Pastor on the Church Council, LCA.  He encouraged those who followed to "Think Globally and Work Locally."

ALLEN YOUNGBLOOD - was my first Lutheran Pastor, Mission Developer at Annunciation, Philadelphia (now Grace) and Ascension, Toledo, my home church.  He drove me to Camp Mowana, hosted me as I worked one summer as he developed Advent, Cleveland.  He was my sponsor at Ordination.

Albert (Pete) Pero was the first African American Lutheran teaching Theologian. This too was his final year among us. Active as a parish pastor in Detroit and Chicago in the 60's, he worked locally in his community for justice and social change.  His research, teaching and writing had a Global Focus as he was instrumental in the establishment of the Conference of International Black Lutherans.  He partnered with others from Africa and the Diaspora to engage in ecumenical partnership to study the theology of the Black Experience.

These are some of the Church elders who were instrumental in my formation and my work, and always encouraging me to find my way to be a part of continuing team of church leaders that "Act Locally and See Globally" the extension of all of our work in the church to the Glory of God.  I miss them all, but especially that latter two as we had unfinished work to complete.