Not My Type—The Sequel

In a previous journal (which you can find here) I suggested that people are looking for a particular “type” of congregation.  It is a bit like all those ads for dating services that we see on TV.  These services specialize in particular types of mates:  Christian Single (if they are not single, why are they viewing a dating service website—ever wonder that?); Jewish; over 50; under 25; marathoner; etc.  People know with great particularity what they think they want.

People seeking a church are also looking for a particular “type” but may not consciously know that they are being selective; they do,however, know when a particular congregation feels “right.”   At least that is what Israel Galindo writes in his book The Hidden Lives of Congregations—Discerning Church Dynamics. He writes that congregations demonstrate six broad styles of spirituality.  People intuitively sense very quickly whether a particular style is their “type.” In my last article I listed the first two of these styles:  cognitive and affective spirituality.  The other four styles he lists are pilgrim, mystic, servant, and crusader spirituality.

Pilgrim Spirituality:  This a church for people who want to be “on the journey.”  They are hesitant to commit to a single worship style or denominational identity.  Gatherings, including worship, are highly interactive and experimental.  They are comfortable with drawing from multiple faith traditions and entertaining open-ended questions.  Even if the congregation is large, much of church life is grounded in small groups.  This type of spirituality can foster openness and tolerance.  On the other hand, it may weaken members’ resolve to take stands or actions out of conviction, lest they appear provincial or narrow-minded.  In being open to all things, they may lose an appreciation for their own traditions and practices.  People who need a more affirmative confession of belief may quickly move on to another congregation.

Mystic Spirituality:  Mystic tends to describe not so much a congregation-wide characteristic as it does a subgroup within a larger congregational system.  The majority tolerates this subgroup as an unusual but harmless presence within the larger body.  This subgroup is contemplative in their spirituality, taking it very seriously and practicing it through classic spiritual disciplines.  Listening and silence are key components of their seeking after God.  They seek inward spiritual formation that requires a level of dedication and discipline that few are willing to embrace.  They seek worship experiences in small group or retreat settings.  At its best, this style fosters profound growth in people.  At its worst, it generates an isolated group that is disconnected from the broader community.  This can lead to a withdrawal from the world and an overly pietistic and private expression of faith.  People must maintain a healthy balance between inward and outward expressions of faith.

Servant Spirituality:  Congregations who embrace this style rally around the cry:  “Faith in action.”  Discipleship that results in ministry to the world is at the core of this congregation’s life, and they believe that authentic faith “gets its hands dirty.” This congregation is busy mobilizing people, helping them discover their gifts, and encouraging them to share their resources.  They have strong clarity of purpose. Teaching focuses on obedience rather than on understanding.  They would rather train people than indoctrinate them.  These churches are concerned with their image in the community and are often a powerful witness to the Gospel through their immersion in the community.  At their best, these congregations push people to embody their faith in concrete ways.  At their worst, they breed a type of “works righteousness.” They sometimes lack a strong rationale for why they do what they do.  They must keep a strong theological imperative for their work in order to maintain a balanced well-rounded faith.

Crusader Spirituality:  Like servant spirituality, these congregations also have an outward focus to their lives; but they are focused on a mission task and not necessarily the needs of the world.  This mission task can be any number of things:  a doctrinal emphasis or orientation; a denominational identity; a social issue; a reactive posture to something in the broader culture; an ideology; or a perceived injustice.  Congregational life coheres around one or more of these causes.  The life of the church is narrowly focused and all aspects of church life are a variation on a single theme.  All resources are geared toward this one task.  Other orientations are not given a hearing.

At their best, these congregations engage the broader world in the public square and make their presence known in an unapologetic way.  At their worst, these congregations can seem very narrow and exclusive to those who do not share their singular passion.  They can end up alienating perceived enemies and actual friends.

Conclusion: A congregation’s spirituality style informs the church’s belief and practices.  It shapes worship and the expectations placed upon pastors and lay people.  It influences who feels welcome and at home in the congregation and who does not. 

Visitors are trying to discern: “Are these people like me?”  This is done more intuitively than analytically, meaning we don’t realize we are doing it.  People do this by listening to the language we employ, identifying the music and liturgical style we use, and observing how the members relate to one another and what they talk about.  They look at the church’s programming and role played by the pastor within the community.

You may look at all these styles and see something good in each of them and say, “I like them all;” but no congregation can be all things to all people.  Some congregations are our “type” and others simply are not.  Galindo concludes (pg. 113) that understanding the hidden spiritual style of a congregation can help leaders and members appreciate that no congregation is for everybody.  He goes on to write “the clearer a congregation is about its own hidden spiritual style, the better it can serve its members and the more effectively it can move toward providing a more balanced approach to worship, education, practices, and relationships that address all of the components necessary to foster effectual faith in its members.”

Think through how you experience your congregation and try to uncover why it is your “type.”  The wisdom born of this exercise will better equip us to appreciate and strengthen our fellowships.  It will also guide us as we seek to include others in our congregations.

Blessings,

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister

Voices that Have Not Been Heard

When you read through ancient histories, you notice that you rarely hear the stories of the common people, the peasants and shepherds.   Most history is written “from above.”  This means the winning general, the king whose coup succeeded, or the merchant who cornered the market and reaped a fortune, writes the story.    It is written by the powerful and the wealthy.  The British historian J.H. Plumb, in his book The Death of the Past, observes that history is written to give sanction to the existing social institutions, government, and morality.  The writers seek to establish that the right people won and things are just the way they should be; they want to justify the status quo.

The Bible is different.  Those with power and status do not get to write all the stories. Here we find many stories written “from below.”  Peasants, fishermen, women, exiles, and slaves are prominent in many of the stories and are the ones who pass them on from generation to generation..  We get material that challenges the status quo, rails against the rich and powerful, and praises the common folk.  Jesus and Jeremiah were particularly pointed in exposing the flimsy claim of the status quo to legitimacy.  We do hear from kings and generals and landowners, but we also hear about the lives of their subjects, the victims of their conquest, and tenant farmers crushed by debt.  In the scriptures a voice is given to people who have no voice in other ancient texts.

Modern history is often written “from above” as well.  The majority dominant class gets to choose which stories are told and which stories are buried in obscurity.  This is the rational for Black History Month.  It is an effort to make sure that all the important stories of our nation get told.  Did you know that M. B. Rhodes, a black American, patented the first water closet that paved the way for the introduction of flush toilets?  Having spent time in places where flush toilets are not available, I appreciate Mr. Rhodes’ ingenuity. Did you know that Lloyd Hall, another black American, patented the process that cut the curing time for bacon from several weeks to a few hours?  (Too bad he didn’t invent the angioplasty at the same time.)  Did you know that Granville Woods, a black American, invented the third rail, a series of conductors that allow trains to move?  He also collaborated with Alexander Graham Bell so often that Bell frequently sent him to court to testify in patent cases.  (The Italians tell us that Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci invented the telephone, but he was too poor to challenge Bell’s patents; but I do digress.)  Matthew Henson and Admiral Robert E. Perry set out in March of 1907 to reach the North Pole.  They had tried twice before and failed.  On this third try, Perry fell ill a few miles from their goal.  Henson, a black American, continued to the Pole and planted the American flag.

During Black history month, we remember that some of the important stories of our history must sought out and recovered from obscurity.  We believe that all of us are made in the image God, gifted and precious in God’s eyes.  All of us deserve to have our stories told and our achievements celebrated..

Blessings,

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister

Not My Type

All of us have heard it: He/she is not my type.  There is nothing overtly wrong with the person; it is not that they are a sociopath or eat spaghetti with their fingers.  Nonetheless, they just doesn’t feel “right.”  Finding the right type has become a huge industry in America.  Dating services have become a $2 billion a year industry, employing over 3898 people in 2013.  Some services are specializing in particular types of people--Christian, Jewish, over 50, etc.  Finding the right type has become a highly sophisticated process involving exhaustive questionnaires and computer programs.  

Finding the “right type” is big deal. 

When individuals go looking for a church, they are looking for a certain “type” of congregation.  They may not think of it that way; they may not even know that they are doing this.  But, they do know when it does and does not feel right.  There are no questionnaires to complete or computer program to run.  People reply on the feeling they get as they walk through the door and begin to hear conversations and experience the worship service.

Israel Galindo, in his book The Hidden Lives of Congregations—Discerning Church Dynamic observes that there are six broad styles of spirituality, or types, that characterize congregations: (1) cognitive spirituality; (2) affective spirituality; (3) pilgrim spirituality; (4) mystic spirituality; (5) servant spirituality; and (6) crusader spirituality. No style perfectly captures any single congregation, but these 6 styles help us to understand our congregation and why some people connect there and others do not.  These styles are shaped by theology, doctrine, local culture, and/or a deliberate marketing strategy.  A congregation selects them, consciously or unconsciously, because that particular style has affinity with the members’ social world.  In other words, this style resonates with and makes sense of those people’s experiences and the world around them.  In this journal, I will discuss two of the spiritual styles, and then next time I will discuss the other four styles. 

Cognitive Spirituality: This style reflects the preoccupation of Western culture with rationality and scientism.  This “spirituality of the head” tends to emphasize, even perhaps overly emphasize, the cognitive component of effectual faith {Galindo, p. 106].  Attention is given to right concepts and doctrine.  Right belief rightly interpreted is a priority.  This style of spirituality is prevalent in mainline churches.  Worship tends to be liturgical with a lot of attention given to the biblical text itself.  The preaching has an overt teaching to it, and it is important for the preacher to appear to be well educated.  These churches have a strong Christian education program.  There is room in this congregation for seekers, skeptics, and doubters, because members have strong confidence in their beliefs and are not threatened by other beliefs or unbelief.  This is a church of people who know what they believe and can articulate that belief in a compelling way.  This spiritual style can, however, neglect the more emotional needs of the congregation.  It can fail to recognize that not all of the life of faith resides in the cognitive domain. This style of faith can confuse “cognitive” with “rational.”  Effectual faith requires attention to the affective, behavioral, and volitional components of faith as much as the cognitive component (Galindo, p. 107).

Affective Spirituality:  Movements within Western culture that have reclaimed for spirituality a heartfelt component have been renewing for our churches. Affective spirituality raises up the felt, pietistic, and devotional dimensions of faith.  Experiencing the faith is very important in congregations of this type.  Warm and intimate fellowship is central to the life of these congregations.  Feelings of intimacy and belonging and affirmation take precedent over other aspects of faith and church life.  These churches require pastoral skills that will engender and multiply these feelings.  Worship takes on the tone of celebration; it is enthusiastic, joyful, and unapologetically emotional.  Praise is a word often on the lips of people in these congregations. Unlike in “cognitive spirituality congregations” where hymns are chosen for their elegant texts in support of well-articulated orthodoxy and tradition, in “affective spirituality churches” the music is chosen for emotional impact.  They may repeatedly sing choruses that do not have profound meaning, but the music “moves” the worshipper to a deep experience of transcendence.  The prayers are impromptu, highly personal expressions that communicate sincerity and authenticity.  The first person singular “I” may replace the corporate “we” in public praying.  Priority is given to speaking of evangelism, the need for conversion, affirmation, or hope.  At its best, affective spirituality “shapes a hopeful and optimistic membership with an ability to embrace life’s challenges… [Galindo, p. 108].” It can, however, be dismissive of the content of Christian faith.  People lose the ability to discern between one experience and another, healthy belief and unhealthy belief.  You can end up with a situation where one experience is as good as the next.  “Without the corrective that critical discernment provides, members are at risk of not appreciating that some experiences ennoble us, while others diminish us—even though they ‘feel’ good {Galindo, p. 109].”

Next time we will look at the other four spirituality styles.  None is perfect, but looking at them helps to understand our congregations--what we are and what we are not.  Begin thinking about the spirituality type of your congregation.

Blessings,

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister

The Passing of Seasons

I didn’t park the car and go in with him; I left him curbside at the terminal.  I was taking my older son to the airport after Christmas to fly to California to visit with his girlfriend’s family.  From the time our children learned to crawl and then to walk, we have been letting them go, setting them free to become who God created them to be.  As I dropped my son off, I realized that the day would come when his mother and I will not be the primary relationships in his life. I became aware of the passing seasons in our life together.  The writer of Ecclesiastes noted this long ago:  “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven [3:1].”

²We are always transitioning through a particular season--saying goodbye to what is familiar and comfortable and embracing that new and unknown thing that God is bringing.  We live in this matrix of grief and hope.

Marie, the narrator in Alice McDermott’s book Someone, is lying in a hospital bed in Brooklyn with both her eyes bandaged after surgery; and she writes:

Somewhere in the room during those long days of bandaged blindness, my children sat, talking mostly to one another, mostly about where they had managed to park their cars and what time they had left home, what time they should head out again to avoid the traffic: tunnel or bridge, the Southern State or the L.I.E.  I heard the bustle of their winter clothes, zip and unzip, buckle and snap.  There was the jingle of car keys and the odor of exhaust.  I listened to their familiar voices with a vague indifference.  Rattle and clink.  It was my first sense of their lives going on without me.

There is something reassuring about the realization that the world will go on without us.  Our lives are a sequence of seasons that someday will exhaust themselves, but the families we have built, the people in whom we have invested, and the churches for which we have sacrificed will all go on without us someday.  The investments we make will enrich a future we will never see.   

As you pass into the season of a New Year and all that it will bring for you, may the faithfulness of God surround you and the hope embodied in the Christ child sustain you!

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister, American Baptist Churches of New York State

This Story Makes a Difference

Like many of you, I enjoyed a Christmas pageant in church on Sunday.  We had shepherds and sheep, angels and wisemen, Mary and Joseph, and a baby Jesus played by a plastic doll.  I witnessed the well-known story full of familiar characters, a story I could recite from memory by the time I started kindergarten.  Yet I loved hearing it anew, even if the sheep forgot to “baaah” on cue most of the time.  Why is something so familiar still so powerful?

It dawned on me why this story matters so much as a woman sang the haunting Christmas piece:

Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water?

Did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters? 

Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?

This child that you’ve delivered will soon deliver you?

(Lyrics by Mark Lowry & Buddy Greene)

If this were not a true story—in other words, if it were just another ancient fable that warms the heart and gives some wisdom for living—everything in my life would be deflated, and washed out.  The brilliance of the sun would become for me a dirty fluorescent bulb.  Without the coming of this child, what would be left for us who believe?  Not much I’m afraid.

Long ago a child was born to a Hebrew peasant girl.  He grew to be a man totally dedicated to God.  He showed us what God is like in an unprecedented way.  He was “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. [Heb.1:3].”  As what he said and did sank into those around him, they realized there was something unprecedented going on here.  In amazement they concluded:  “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth [John 1:14].”  But I get ahead of the story here.  At the moment of birth, the child is all potential, a future just beginning to unfold.  This child is a package generously received yet unopened.

Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?

Did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?

Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?

And when you kiss your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God

For now, let us simply hear again about the shepherds and the angels and the parents and the baby.  Let us realize anew the difference this story makes for us who believe.  Without it, our lives would be lost in triviality and tedium and emptiness.  With it, our lives are found in purpose and wonder and hope.  This story matters.

May you experience the incredible power of the story as we make our way toward Christmas,

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister

Where is the Peace?

This time of year we talk a lot about peace.  Zechariah told us that the coming Christ would “guide our feet into the path of peace [Luke 1:79].”  The angels sang at Christ’s birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favors [Luke 2:14].”  Yet each morning the news tells us of new conflicts, of refugees displaced by war desperately seeking a safe haven, and of senseless random violence.  In our own country people suffer under the violence of crime, poverty, and injustice.  Violence seems to be the pervasive currency of power in our world.  So where is the peace?

In a beautiful poetry of history, this past weekend when congregations were celebrating “Peace Sunday” as part of their Advent observance we were also mourning the death of Nelson Mandela.  Mandela fought for a just peace and against a social system that was the very epitome of systematized violence trying to pass itself off as civil society.  During his trial, with the certainty of imprisonment before him, he said:

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.  I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.  It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.  But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. 

Mandela realized that the peace that Zechariah and the angels spoke of must be waged; it must be sacrificed for; it must be grasped fragment by fragment.  Mandela seized upon his moment and won some peace for his nation.

The war for peace is already won through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but there are still some battles to be fought.  Oscar Cullman put it in this way.  When the allied troops made it off the beaches of Normandy and into the hedgerows and villages of France, the outcome of the Second World War was essentially decided.  As their boots moved from sand to dirt, the thing was settled.  The Allied armies would ultimately prevail.  There were still battles to be fought, blood to be shed, people to be displaced, and loss to be endured.  There was still a lot of “mopping up” to do, and that would be messy.  The Allies, however, would win the war.  Peace would come.

Our situation is a bit like that.  This coming Christ through his faithfulness to God has won the peace.  God’s campaign for peace is “off the beaches” and into the “hedgerows and villages.”  We are now in the “mopping up” stage.  It is still dangerous and costly.  Nelson Mandela faithfully fought his battle and moved the peace forward.  He made a place for some new light in the darkness that lingers yet.

The author Robert Louis Stevenson had a difficult childhood, due to poor health. One night his nurse found him out of bed, his nose pressed against the window. “Come back to bed” she said to him. “You’ll catch your death of cold.” But he didn’t move. Instead, he sat, motionless, watching a lamplighter slowly working his way through the black night, lighting the gas street lamps along his route. Pointing to him, Robert said, “See, look there; there’s a man poking holes in the darkness!”

 This is our task for now, to poke holes in the darkness wherever and whenever we can.  The light has won; the fullness of the promised peace is coming.  There are still battles to be fought and losses to be endured.  Mandela fought the battle that was his.  We are to fight the battles that are ours, to poke some holes in the darkness.  This gives to our lives purpose, and this purpose brings with it its own sense of peace.

May you experience the peace of Christ in your heart and your family and your communities this Christmas season and commit anew to poking holes in the darkness.

Blessings,

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister

On a Lost Wedding Ring, an Inherited Painting, and Church Buildings

A Lost Wedding Ring

I got to the top of the stairs at the New York Region office and realized my wedding band was gone.  For nearly 23 years it had been around my left ring finger.  I had just finished washing my hands, so I returned to the sink and took the pipe underneath apart; but the ring was not there.  The two women with whom I work seemed to be more concerned about this loss than I was.  The ring had deep meaning for me, but it was not irreplaceable.  I had not lost my wife; the marriage was still in tact.  Debbie and I could go together to buy another ring and create for ourselves a new memory.  I found the ring that evening in a glove where it had become snagged.  It now, once again, rings my finger in gold.  It has sentimental value, but it is not irreplaceable.

An Inherited Painting

Both my parents have died within the last year.  I have a painting in my house that hung in their breakfast room for the last several decades of their lives.  Many times when I was home to visit, I would sit at the table and talk with my parents as I ate my breakfast below that painting.  They had grown hard of hearing and were accustomed to shouting their conversations; they did not realize they were shouting at each other.  I would turn the volume on the TV down each time; for me it was too early in the morning for both the shouting and the TV.  That painting is now a daily reminder of them and those loud conversations over Cheerios and coffee.  I cannot have any more of those conversations; I cannot make any new memories with them.  That painting keeps fresh for me something that is irrecoverable, thus the painting is for me irreplaceable.

Church Buildings

Church buildings are a bit like that painting.  They are the repositories of memories.  Weddings, funerals, Christmas pageants, and baptisms—they carry emotional echoes of these important milestones in our lives.  The pews and the windows and the walls make palpable the presence of bygone joys and sorrows, of deceased friends and family.  The nursery is the place where, perhaps, we first entrusted our newborn child to someone else’s care.  The Sunday School rooms are, perhaps, the places where we made our first friends.  These buildings ring of a time when our lives were expanding and life was more potential than past. The people and experiences that these buildings mediate to us in feeling and thought are irrecoverable, thus these buildings are irreplaceable.

Sometimes congregations come to a point where they must leave these structures behind.  It becomes impossible to continue to bear them any longer.  You cannot take all things on all journeys; sometimes we must leave some things behind.  However true this might be, we must not dismiss these powerful places as simply structures of brick and wood that can be easily swapped for another.  They are irreplaceable because they mediate to us the remembrance of things that are irrecoverable.

Gil Rendle wrote that we don’t resist change; rather we resist loss.  So how do we process the sometimes-necessary loss of these special spaces?  Gratitude is a good aroma to mingle with our grief.  We can give thanks for what happened in these places, how we were formed and supported and loved and renewed within the embrace of their walls.  We can remember how they animated our lives and gave song to our joys and comfort in our losses.  And those of us who were not there can listen to, appreciate, and learn from the stories these buildings evoke from those were there.  These buildings are irreplaceable places because of what happened to us within them.  In letting them go, grief and gratitude are appropriate.

Then Joshua summoned the twelve men from the Israelites, whom he had appointed, one from each tribe. Joshua said to them, "Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the Israelites, so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, "What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever."  (Joshua 4:4-7)

Our buildings tell stories.  We would do well to listen to those who remember them.

Blessings on you,

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State