Chapter two, part b. Sometimes we get to know folk, but we don't develop mutuality in the relationships.

Lupton insists that our ministries must build trust. “For some reason healthy people with hearts full of compassion forget fundamentals when it comes to building relationships with those they attempt to serve. Forging ahead to meet a need, we often ignore the basics: mutuality, reciprocity, accountability. In doing so, relationships turn toxic” (Lupton 57). Mutuality is dependent on our built up trust, reciprocity requires that we recognize each as having something to give and some need, accountability requires the person who doesn’t have enough food to take a role in getting that food.
 
Lupton’s critique is not as strong in asking for accountability for those serving the food, although he asks if their programs are getting results. Given his concern for reciprocity and mutuality he might have considered results to be measured by relationships built or in boundaries crossed but instead he measures only whether people who need food stop needing it. He does note that it is a sign of the failure of our direct service charities that we are ministering to strangers, or, in loving cases, guests. Rarely are the poor and the people who need food part of our churches. We are not helping fellow members, but outsiders, people who are other  (Lupton 62). They are invited only to be visitors for a short time, and then sent away, not meeting our own need for relationship, nor that of the person who also needs food.
 
Kevin Blue, also critiquing our present forms of direct service charity in Practical Justice: Living Off-Center in a Self-Centered World suggests that “[d]irect relief of another’s suffering is a high form of love. Sometimes it requires our money; frequently it requires our time. But most of all it requires that we see the value and dignity of each person we interact with” (Blue loc 571). When charity programs don’t focus on seeing the value and dignity of the participants we lose the ability to see each person as bringing gifts in addition to bringing needs. The result is ministries that reinforce the givers as one-up and the people with little as one-down. Blue describes ethical direct service as partnerships, where everyone is bringing something to the partnership, if only themselves (Blue loc 670). He sells people with little short when he adds the “if only themselves”. While there are surely some who are so wounded that it is only themselves they can bring, the majority of people who need food have many gifts they bring to the table. It is our failed sense of charity that blinds us to those gifts.
 
Stephen Bouman, a Lutheran priest who uses community organizing as his principal tool for creating congregational vitality, argues for creating partnerships around a shared table. The Mission Table: Renewing Congregation and Community takes the interesting approach that a church’s mission to serve people in need, and our mission to reach out to share the good news, are the same tasks. Using the language of solidarity from Alinsky (and Gutierrez as we will see in the next Chapter) Bouman notes that our goal should not be connections only to people like us, or members of the same church, or even people who like us, but rather to be made whole by gathering at a the table in solidarity with people who are very different from us (Bouman 10). The healing the church needs is exactly this fellowship across difference if we would take that risk. And yet Bouman notes that many congregations allow their anxiety around survival to pull them away from these ministries (Bouman 10). Many congregations are not willing to take the risks needed to actually meet our neighbors, hear their stories, and most importantly, recognize their gifts. 

​Blue, Kevin. Practical Justice: Living Off-Center in a Self-Centered World. Downers Grove IL: IVP, 2013. Kindle.
 
Bouman, Stephen P. The Mission Table: Renewing Congregation and Community. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2013.
 
Lupton, Robert D. Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It). New York: HarperOne, 2011. Kindle.

The last in the four part series "Leading from the Side" at themissioninstitute.org

Maybe this blog should have been the first, but as we close this series, I must remind you that there is no such thing as solo leadership. You can't lead without followers, you can’t lead well without other leaders, and you are often called to follow different leaders. The decision to lead from the side is a decision to engage with other leaders in your congregation.
At the Howell family reunion my sister Marion started a back massage line with her nephew Brendan. Each person rubbed the back of the person in front of them, and had their own back rubbed by the person behind. While we recognized Marion and Brendan as leaders, we sometimes forget that success came because others followed their lead. Those who joined the line were followers of the first back scratchers, but were leaders of all those who had not yet joined.

Click here to read the entire blog post at the Mission Institute Web Site.

 You may wish that change would happen like a thunderstorm, arriving quickly, without warning; that it would clang like thunder and awaken everyone to action. You  may wish that vibrant lightning would alert the congregation to the spirit's leadings, that massive drops of excitement for change would soak everyone equally and fully in the new way. You may wish the coming changes were obvious and that like a heavy rain, they would, cleanse us of everything blocking the way. And surely we all wish that change would be gone as fast as it came, leaving a cool, clean feeling of newness, of freshness, of life giving beginnings.
​This is a rare occurrence.

Link to the rest of the article at TheMissionInstitute.org  This is article 3 of 4 in the series.

​Part two of the four blog posts I wrote for TheMissionInstitute.org

When you begin to lead from the side in your church, I have found that people will question your authority, question your power, and question your ability to be a leader. To stand firm in my commitment to lead from the side it has helped me to be able to explain why I am allowed to do this, why I am encouraged to do this, why I am called to do this. You can do this, and while you are at it, you can explain to your fellow congregants that they are called, too.

Calling is a big word, and the authority to lead is a big idea. How can I so broadly claim that you have this authority? Quite simply, baptism is a call to ministry, Church is a gathering of ministers, ministers lead both in the church and in the world. Ordained leadership is a good and powerful thing, but it is not the only thing, nor even the primary thing, that keeps a church gathered together discerning God’s ministry. The primary thing is the people of the church listening for God’s guidance for being in the world.

Link to the entire article here.

 This article is part of my work at The Mission Institute and this blog plus 3 more are on their website TheMissionInstitute.org

Often lay people tell me that they love so many things about their church, and that they hate so many things about their church. They describe how the congregation dreams of change and how change doesn’t happen. These members of churches ask me for advice, they look at their community life critically, they engage in creative thinking, they get excited about ideas that might work, and then they turn to me and say “you should talk to my pastor”. One minute they are full of energy for change, the next minute they are deferring all change to the work of the pastor.

​Let me say this clearly: you can change your church; you can make a difference. I know, you are not ordained, you are not the paid staff, you didn’t study church change, you aren’t an organizational guru, you can’t work on this full time, you have a family and a job, you have a hundred reasons you cannot work on this problem. Yet still I say to you clearly: you can change your church; you can make a difference; you are called to be part of the change.

Link to the rest of this article here. 
​

(From 2003)
Is this the church of the Mystic Pizza? Sometimes we wonder! It is more than a year ago now that we sold the old church building and moved into the restaurant next door to “Andrea’s Pizza”. New folding chairs are starting to look like they came with the old oak altar and the brass cross from the Fellowship hall. The bar is well stocked with coffee supplies and plastic plates and forks. The screen for our power point worship order hides the waitress station/sacristy with the help of an old handmade altar cloth refitted as a curtain.

The dwindling congregation  knew it was time to take risks if we were going to survive in our Worcester community. We can’t yet see what we will look like, but we have found new ways to live as the body of Christ. While maintaining basic giving to each of our three denominations (Disciples, American Baptist and United Church of Christ), our mission efforts have become very local.

Bethany adopted the Rape Crisis Center of Central Massachusetts as our primary local mission. In addition to funding, we have members trained as hotline counselors, a member on the board of directors, small group leaders, and assisting with planning the spirituality focus for Center’s upcoming 25th anniversary events. We have begun a weekly healing service and are studying biblical stories of rape.

Our new location has many surprise blessings. Our morning worship, with attendance around 20, feels comfortable in the small restaurant. Evening worship is followed by a delicious Italian meal provided by the take-out restaurant next door. Bible study around the bar is friendly and welcoming to new comers. Game night includes pizza; we are considering “dinner and a movie” as a possible after school program.

Can we build a church by selling a building? We still don’t know the answer to that question. But we have learned that the journey from place of the steeple to place of the pizza is a faithful journey.