the making of a mission statement
(part four)
((community))

where the rubber meets the road.

in what is probably the most predictable but definitely the most vital part of our acrostic, we round out our mission statement with the driving idea of our new visioning process, getting out and into our community.

not our community of faith. the community outside of our walls. the community that mirrors our stubbornness. the community that's been left behind in many of the same ways we have.

churches have left huffman/roebuck/center point, splitting for the greener pastures of whiter newer neighborhoods. churches have closed. churches are still around us hanging on by threads. all that have suffered resemble our frustration. how does a congregation change along with a changing community?

pretend the community isn't really changing as much as it is? call your church "regional" and convince yourselves that you are drawing from all over the city, when, in all honestly, your members have just moved out and away to all over the city. try new worship styles? bring on black staff members?

yes. failed.
yes. failed.
yes. failed.
yes. failed.

what we have never really tried and what should have never seemed so novel was to look inward and ask ourselves if god still wanted us to be a part of huffman/roebuck/center point.

over the last three years, we have focused inward. and the answer we have discerned is an emphatic "yes."

we are on the corner of huffman and gene reed roads because we feel god calls us to be here.

so, we now and moving forward pledge to be a lighthouse of hope in our community. not to fix them. not to condescend and share "all the answers". just to care. to be a spark. a way. an idea.

we pledge to be in our community and to make a difference. come what may.

and it will be beautiful.

because it's going to happen.

and so, there it is. our proposed mission statement to be.

it has been an honor to serve on a committee with such a vital purpose to the life of the church that i care so much about. we hope to continue doing good work moving into the next phase of our existence.

we respectfully ask it not be taken lightly the effort that has been put into authoring these words, collecting the thoughts of our church, and putting them in a package that our congregation can own and make sense of as we grow.

we would love to hear your own thoughts, but your silence will resonate as support.

amen.

the making of a mission statement
(part three)
((moving forward))

if you missed the first two parts of my mission statement series, you can find "holy purpose" here and "unconditional love" here.

today, we are talking about what may end up being the most difficult part of our mission statement. moving forward/making disciples.

the quote contained in this portion of the acrostic is one i have appreciated for quite some time. "it is never too late to be who you might have been." there is a lot of hope in this statement.

if there was any one thing the long range planning committee hoped to achieve during the authoring of both the vision and the mission statements, i believe we wanted to inspire hope.

huffman's history is over 140 years long, and we have written many different chapters to our narrative. i often think back on and of the brand new beginnings of our church in a brand new community long ago. what might that have been like? flash forward to a church well over a hundred years old, well past the lifespan of a typical community of faith. it would be easy to look back on our church's past, see that it was good, see all the positive impacts, all of the changed lives, and call it a day. no would blame us. no one would have reason to hang their head. 140 plus years of relationship building, faith building. quite frankly, it's pretty amazing to dream about.

there is danger in too much looking back, though. we get too caught up in where we've been and how "big" we used to be and how many members we used to have and how much influence we carried in our conference. contrast that to where we are now, after having a decade's worth of drama, tumult, and decline, it's easy to feel like our best years are well behind us. and as those thoughts creep in, action becomes hard.

we have tended to find comfort over the last several years not so much in the great commission as much as we have taking care of each other. especially those of us that love the church enough to have stuck around through all the pastor changes and upheaval. there's been an element of pride to sticking around, an element of going down with the ship, an element of you can take my church away from me when you rip it from my cold, dead hands.

that type of fierce loyalty, there's something to that, man. it's something to be proud of. it's something worth celebrating, because, after all, it would be easier to go somewhere else. to move out and to a congregation where no one knows the humc colored baggage you bring with you. where you can blend in with the crowd for a bit. where you can get caught in the football stadium type traffic of a megachurch. where you can pretend you weren't part of the problems you left behind.

it's hard work transitioning from one paradigm to another. it's hard work to move forward.

but we are going to move forward. because we have to.

through much prayer, determination, many surveys, small group discussions, and focus, we have come to a tipping point. we believe that we are in huffman for a reason. and we believe that reason is not to die or not to merely cast a shadow of the church we once were, but to start over.

to reboot.

we have streamlined our staff. we have put emphasis on programming. we have hired two people that have no humc colored baggage, just fresh, experienced perspective and relationships they believe in. we have pledged to use the resources we still have and start changing lives again. we have pledged to be a church of action. a church that is dynamic and alive and full of holy piss and vinegar. we will continue to be stubborn, but stubborn towards the next life we can touch and the next goal we can achieve.

we are going to be a church that is moving forward.

and it will be beautiful.

because it is going to happen.

the making of a mission statement
(part two)
((unconditional love))

agape love - selfless love of one person for another...

this one should go without saying, right? if anything a church ever does isn't done out of and according to the example of unconditional love as shown in the gospels and the story of jesus christ, we are failing in the most basic of ways...

aren't we?

well, in theory, of course.

in practice, maybe not so much. any well-tenured church goer knows that when it comes to church, "conditional" is our middle name.

and that is too bad.

the church and huffman united methodist are businesses, man. and businesses will attempt to self-sustain with the same sort of primal ferocity as any mother would when protecting her children.

don't get me wrong. huffman didn't create this problem. we were born into it. but is that a reason for us to keep doing what we've been doing? or is it just an excuse?

think about it for a few seconds. how many times in the church of huffman past has our congregation performed an outreach event in the hopes, either consciously or subconsciously, that the outreach would bring more people into our fold? a bunch, right? there are still internal struggles to this day when planning the halloween carnival or the easter egg hunt about whether attendees should fill out an information card.

name:
address:
do you attend church?:
how can we pray for you?:

or something like that.

again, it's not that we are doing anything wrong, per se, when putting conditions on the outreach, it's just that it doesn't give a lot of credit to the idea that god is in the effort. the model is to self-sustain.

the model should be to serve.

moving forward, we plan to serve first, and we theorize the self-sustain part will end up taking care of itself.

we plan on serving each other, by helping one another find their holy purpose.

and we plan on serving our community by identifying needs and then finding ways to fill them where and when and how we can.

the days of "conditional" being our middle name are in the past.

with jesus as our example, our mission and community work will be performed not out of obligation or with strings attached, but out of agape love.

and it will be beautiful.

because it is going to happen.

the making of a mission statement 

(part one)

((holy purpose))

at our vision day on january 20th, there were many parts of the event that impressed me and the rest of our long range planning committee. 

the fact that 108 people were present was the first. we guess-timated that number accounted for close to between 60 and 70 percent of the congregation collected in the sanctuary for worship earlier that morning. when we planned the vision day, i don't know how many folks from our congregation i expected, but it wasn't over 100. i think i would have been pleased if half that number showed. if half that number showed enough interest in the future of our church that they wanted to be a part of the working process of putting together a vision and mission statement, it would have been glorious. but 100 people did show up and i couldn't help but call attention to the fact to the room. i don't know what huffman's membership was in our "prime". i don't know what our average attendance was in worship on a sunday during that era. honestly, i don't really care anymore. what matters is now. and what matters is who we are and what we are moving forward. and so i shared and suggested a paradigm shift to those collected in our fellowship hall on the afternoon of the 20th. what if we were there in huffman to plant a church? 108 of us, called to gather together and make a difference on the corners of huffman and gene reed roads. what if 108 of us found each other and we happened into an empty facility built and ready for us to use? we'd use that facility, right? to the best and most exposed of our abilities? jesus started his active ministry with 12 committed guys. we had 108. what kind of potential would we, 108, hold? a lot of potential, right? and so, why wouldn't we decide to go ahead and make the world explode (in a good way) on the 20th? contrary to some opinions already shared on the matter, we had already done the hard work. we had survived years of abuse, some self-inflicted and some from outside influence. we had survived and for almost three years, we had gone through a process of self-discovery and self-evaluation. we were ready to redefine ourselves. and now, we have. 

truly amazing. 

in addition to the attendance, though, the january 20th vision day gave us meaningful and relevant stories shared from many caring and invested members of our church. we heard passion. we heard want. we heard testimonies. and we heard specifics. from all of those, what you see above is the mission statement your long range planning committee has drafted to put action and feet to our mission. here is what we were thinking with each point of our acrostic and some insight into the "why?" we thought it was important. 

"holy purpose" 

if there was one phrase that jumped out and grabbed every single person on the lrpc, it was when friend of the blog, kathy henson, shared the import with which she considered each and every member being willing and nurtured to find their holy purpose. her thoughts came at the tail-end of our gathering and they were in complementary contrast to the mission heavy meeting. much deserved praise has and had been heaped upon our missions committee, led by our tireless kathy george. kathy george and her group have been at the forefront of stretching our church out of our collective comfort zone and into the community. why has kathy and her group had so much success? well, it's clear to see, but kathy henson put a phrase to the obvious. kathy george has found her holy purpose. and she's allowed her passion to drive her and her group's ministries with ease. once you find something you are passionate about, you don't have to work yourself up for it. you can't help but be excited. we all know that feeling, right? we know that there are a few things in our life that no one has to talk us into. for those few things, we are going to go out of our way to be joined at the hip with our passion, for being one with our passion is what leads us to true happiness. 

that being said, what kathy henson articulated was important to the life of our church. not all of us may get as fired up about missions as kathy george. but, BUT if we truly believe that we are created in the image of an unconditionally loving god, we also are likely to believe that we are gifted in spiritual ways that we may not even realize yet. 

if the church corporate and the church humc has failed at any one thing, we have failed at helping our members and visitors, alike, find the key to unlock our holy purpose. we claim the bible to be our life road map, but, out of the 108 people in the gym on january 20th, we probably have 108 different opinions on what the bible actually means to our daily lives. too often we offer the same old same old when it comes to bible studies and small groups and even in worship because that's what we've always done, or that's all we know. this, during our new present and our future to come, we can no longer allow. 

for us to truly embrace our community with the transformative love of christ, we have to know what that statement means. not just to the church, but to us. and we have to be intentional about it in a way i'm not sure we ever have. we have to continue to stretch out of our comfort zones. we already find people in our congregation that are willing to lead our standard bible and pop-christianity studies. those are absolutely still worthy to many people. but, we also need to find people in our church willing to lead groups on spiritual transformation. willing to entertain leading recovery and support groups and coupon groups that will speak to us at humc, for sure, but serve practical needs in the community around us. 

in our mission statement, we pledge as a church to each other to make these new efforts a reality, not just good ideas that waste away in time. we pledge to offer good and relevant worship. good and relevant small groups. good and relevant sunday school classes. we pledge to help each other find their holy purpose. because if we don't, we are going to find it extremely difficult to accomplish the rest of our mission and nearly impossible to fully realize the thoughtful new vision. 

but what about numbers? 

kathy henson said it best. if the 108 people (and those that were not able to be with us on jan. 20) in that room can truly find their holy purpose, the numbers will take care of themselves. it won't just be that people will be finding us. it will be that we are so energized by our relationship with our unconditionally loving god that we won't be able to do anything other than find people to share our passion with. 

and it will be beautiful. 

because it is going to happen. 

reboot

those of us that spend a lot of time with television, movies, or pop culture in general are familiar with the term "reboot".

in general, the term speaks to an endgame within a television show or franchise where the "world as we know it" is about to change. a bomb might explode and send our heroes back in time before a certain tragedy has occurred. a starship enterprise is reintroduced and re-imagined for a younger generation. a spiderman is recast as anyone other than tobey maguire. a batman is carved out of a darker and more realistic canvas, not out of one where the ridiculous notion that michael keaton could kick anyone's ass was ever permitted to happen.

in entertainment, a reboot happens so that characters we love can have a happier or more relevant ending or so that an old story can be told in a new way. and it happens all the time.

in the real world, reboots are easier said than done. a couple weeks ago, limbo talked around the idea of being "cynical about institutions". one easy reason institutions become easy to dislike is they are incredibly hard to change. once a hierarchical structure is put in place and once the top dogs in that structure feel the power and authority in their position, they will fight tooth and nail to keep that power and authority, and, more often than not, the "real" people on the lower rungs of the system are used as scapegoats and the means to an end they rarely have any significant power to change. sad but true.

let's look at my favorite local united methodist church for example.

during a training on sunday afternoon, donna used a great flow chart to show just how deep the rabbit hole of infrastructure goes as it concerns the united methodist church... the governing body of the united methodist church is called the general conference. under general conference falls jurisdictional conference, of which we are part of the southeastern jurisdiction. under that comes annual conference. we are part of the north alabama general conference. then, local churches are broken into and assigned districts. we are a part of the cheaha district. only then on the chart do we reach the local church. that's four levels of bureaucracy above us we are beholden to. that's a massive hill to roll a rock up when it comes to enacting any sort of change to the church corporate's bylaws and policies and such. and truly, that doesn't even begin to touch the levels of red tape and bureaucracy that the local church is then bulleted down into. disciples council, lay leadership, sprc, finance, trustees, worship missions, etc.

how on earth does anything ever get done?

in short. it usually doesn't. not unless we have a lot of time and a lot of patience. this struggle becomes an unintended lesson on god's time versus our time. unintended, but practical if we choose to practice in the institution of a local united methodist church.

on a smaller scale, though, huffman methodist, without malice and likely without true intent, created our own obstacle course. over the last thirty years, we became a senior pastor driven church, guided by the wind that was every senior pastor that came through and their respective educated experience and opinions on what was the best and most appropriate way to lead a united methodist congregation in huffman, al. the community's demographics around our church were changing faster than we could keep up with. so, in turn, we looked inward (for the most part) and stayed focused on how we could take care of ourselves instead of taking the time to examine why god was leaving us in the middle of this ever-changing community. a community that, by the mid-nineties, looking nothing like the membership of our church.

and so, in ways, we freaked. we became even more senior pastor driven. but unfortunately, we were matched with pastors that were either not long for huffman or not good fits or both. change was hard. we resisted. and, in the end, we went to war with ourselves (and our pastors) for several years.

as with any war, there were consequences. long time members and families left, frustrated by the lack of direction or the lack of leadership or the constant drama. fingers were pointed. blog-gates ensued. people were upset. people were blamed. people were right to be both.

as the dust settled, though, the church left behind in a community that continues to change became more focused. not on us, this time around, but something that was greater than ourselves, something that we wished we never would have lost sight of. but, having done so, we genuinely seemed interested in rallying the troops for one final stand. this time, we were no longer interested in fighting with each other, but for each other. for our community. for the greater good. for those that felt "left behind" right along with us in this community. for those that needed our help. for those that could help us every bit as much as we could help them.

and so, we would make a decision to reboot our story.

disciples in action: making and growing disciples.

embracing our community through the transformative love of christ.

one member of our long-range planning committee shared their thoughts on huffman's history of following through. they said, in so many words, that huffman umc had become consistent in "leaving the bow untied".

the thought was there. words may have even been used to describe the thought. but that's where it ended. no map. no plan to pursue those words. maybe a hope. or a prayer. or a wish. maybe lots of all. you know what they say, though....

wish in one hand, crap in the other. see which one gets filled first.

church, the act of doing church, has never been about wishing and prayer. although great amounts of both fit into the equation, nothing happens that we don't actively choose to happen.

we are a metaphor, a self-fulfilling prophecy. of whatever it is we decide to prophesy.

or we were. and we are.

do what you've always done. get what you always got.

and we did. and we will.

we prayed for guidance. we hoped for change. and then we opted out of the clause that asked us to do, do, do the work required to see it happen.

we lost friends. we lost families. we lost direction.

until we decided to push back.

it's taken years to get huffman back to this place. many have given up on us. many have proclaimed, stubbornly, that they were only sticking around to go down with the ship, as any good and faithful crew member would.

but we've decided to push back.

we made a choice.

we aren't going anywhere.

too often, we focus on our numbers. where they were. what they used to be. what they are now.

who cares?

what if we started a church in the middle of a community with 200 active participants. a community we need every bit as much as they need us. what if we decided not to get busy dying, but get busy living?

what if we hired two fresh new staff persons from outside of house and told them from the jump that we were no longer babysitting our left behind, but we were going to survive and succeed?

what if we empowered our other staff members to do the same, to find their passions and develop them in a way that would revitalize our church?

what if we called upon our creator and said we were ready be "who we might have been".

what if we looked upon our new era as our minas tirith and chose to believe our outcome could be the same.

for several years now, our church has been changing. from the inside out.

sunday, we celebrated the end of an era.

and the beginning of the next.

we'd love you to be a part of our success story.

for, we are going to succeed.

don't believe me? just watch.

the next four posts will give you some insight into the making of a mission statement to complement our new vision.

for now?

huffman united methodist church is dead. long live huffman united methodist church!

"embracing our community through the transformative love of christ."

"this isn't the day to talk about this"
(part eleven)


remember seven or so weeks ago when TWENTY kids were gunned down in their classroom?

i'm sure you remember it. it was terrible. i cried. sarah cried. it felt like, for those that thought about it long and hard enough, everybody cried. it felt terrible. but it felt like we had finally reached it, a tipping point.

in my opinion, i felt like something terrible and tragic and "close to home" would have to happen to change the national discourse on guns. guns and their lack of control were a debate topic and had been for years, but there's only so much angst one can work up for a random person dying here, or many random people in a movie theater dying there. we don't often directly know those people around the country that are senselessly gunned down, and we are so desensitized to it happening everyday anyway, we see a story on the nightly news or online and we casually scroll past it to the next cute picture of one kitten licking another kitten's head.

but then newtown happened, and then children died. many children. in the most haunting setting one could ever dream up. every one of our kids, we send them off to school and we expect them to be safe. on that day, not only were they not safe, they didn't come home.

my anger at the lack of gun control combined with bothered people with no regard for human life enraged me. i couldn't stand the thought of one more person dying. and i wanted you to feel my pain, but, more importantly, i wanted you to feel those kids' pain. i wanted every person in this country to imagine a bullet ripping through their body, exploding every bone and organ in its path, leading to twenty children breathing their last breaths through shredded lungs. i wanted the imagery to be fierce, because the action and results are fierce.

and for a few days, it felt like things were going to change.

and then they didn't.

yada, yada, yada.

fast forward to this morning and i woke to this article.

1280 people dead from guns since december 14.

ONE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY.

man, what the fuck is wrong with us?

think of your life. think of how precious you feel every part of your life, your health, and your well-being is. think about how you would do anything to keep yourself alive. better yet, think about your children or grandchildren, and think about what you wouldn't do to keep them safe. to keep them healthy. to give them a chance to grow up and be happy. nothing, right? and then think about how it would absolutely destroy your world if something were to happen to them.

considering how precious we would likely claim any one life to be, wouldn't it be logical that we would feel a massive disturbance in the force if we lost even one life unnecessarily?

if not one, surely we'd be disturbed to move if we knew that 1280 of those precious lives were taken in a span of seven weeks, right? think of the lives lost. think of the parents/families/friends whose lives are now destroyed forever.

please, think about them and be moved.

please, don't just scroll down. kittens really aren't that cute. not so cute that they should draw your attention away from such devastation. draw your attention away so you can bitch about how early you are up on a saturday.

i'm still so mad, and i just don't know what to do. every one that keeps talking about their rights and the "gubmint" and how it could never happen to them. that attitude is literally killing people every day.

and we're okay with that?!

goddammit.