"...a willingness to serve something greater than ourselves."


well, so far as inaugural addresses go and are worth, i guess that that one was pretty good. in his first just under twenty minutes after the elect was taken away from president-elect obama, our new commander-in-chief delivered more of what is now starting to be seen as his same. which is to say, he continued to play his "change" and "hope" cards while narrowing his focus somewhat to the new and more accountable, across the board, america that it will take for the country to right itself out of the economic "crisis" we have found ourselves in. in just over eighteen minutes, there was, thankfully, less rhetoric than i was bracing for. sure, the topic and scope was as broad as you'd expect from a new president's first address to his country he now leads, but i didn't get the feeling he was spewing things for the sake of "this is what presidents should say". of course, i am also wearing obama and hope tinted glasses, so maybe i saw what i wanted to. i am pretty accomplished in that maneuver. anyway, there will be much ruminating and analysis of this, his first day and speech, by others much more versed and educated in such things than i. i will say that i am happy that there is a new president in town. i will say that i wish him the best in his efforts to realize such a grand vision.

and i will now narrow my own focus.

if there was one talking point or line that jumped out at me, it was his point/question, and i am paraphrasing,..."the question is not whether government is too big or too small, but does it work?" he went on to say that if certain programs had outlived their tangible usefulness to the health of the country (my words, not his), that those programs would end. no doubt it jumped out at me because it so closely parallels many issues facing the church and our church at huffman. the question shouldn't be is our budget for 2009 too big or too small, but does it work? does the way that we have mapped out using our still significant financial resources jive with what our church hopes to accomplish? and, of course, it speaks to the question that i've been railing on here for ages. does our church know what it wants to accomplish? the easy answer seems to be "no.", although the means to answering that question run through very complicated tunnels. but it's a fair question to this end. if we had a goal in mind, would losing a percentage of the previous year's pledges be nearly as important as what we are going to do with the money and energy afforded through our members and visitors that we currently assume we'll have at our disposal? why moan and groan about having less than we had less year? well, again, the easy answer is because we don't have a bigger picture that we are comfortable enough to focus on and, therefore, do not have something on the tip of our tongues that is more worthwhile to talk about. in turn, we'll focus on the negative and describe our current situation as "dark" or "troubling" instead of finding a way to spin forward, regardless, toward our ultimate goal.

i always am somewhat invigorated after having an instant message chat with my bud, chris perry. reason being, we always tend toward a conversation concerning what any church, his, mine or ours would be in an ideal environment. ideally, the laity of every church would be laying the groundwork for the church's future, thus allowing the senior pastor and other staff to merely play roles, if you will, in that congregation's future. they could still steer the ship based on their own experience and opinion, but they would have to face far less time setting the direction. that would be on us. we, the laity, choose where we go. here's how you, the staff, can help us get there. right?

unfortunately, that's not how humc or most churches are set up. most churches are, predominantly, pastor-driven rather than lay driven. and if a church has fallen victim to that idea, what this means is that every time there is a change in power, the transition is only peaceful in name. we wave good-bye to the outgoing guy or girl, welcome in the new one with open arms, but we never really acknowledge that we just went through a figurative heart-transplant. out with the old went his ideas and his direction and his way of doing things. as chris said this morning, it will take the church a full two years to recover from the surgery departure and be healed enough to grasp the new pastor's ideas and direction and way of doing things. nevermind that each of the individual lay members also have their own personal opinion of the best way to do things. internally, we begin to rip away at the sum of our parts and, eventually, the ideal system that chris and andy and kiker and i wax romantic about all the time falls apart.

who knows how much time, how many years, it would take to alter the dna of a classic-case pastor driven church. but make no mistake, for the system to have a chance to work, it must change.

we have to be willing to set the direction ourselves. we have to be able to ask the question, "does this work?" and, if it doesn't? end the program. find common ground. move forward. find our own willingness to serve something greater than ourselves and hope that others might come along for the ride. hope that others see the method behind our madness and be interested in being a part of it.

and if they are not? we must stay focused on the goal at hand.

what was that again?