Beware the unbelievers! They are among us!

Even ministers sin.

It’s Cheesus!

(Hat tip to my fundy plant.)

So someone last night recommended I change my user name—at work, no less—to “papaya.”

What am I supposed to think of that?

I preached this sermon at Canon Universalist Church in Canon, GA this morning. It’s a rewrite and expansion of my “Giving Up on Cynicism” post from a while back. I’d put it in my calendar as last Sunday instead of this Sunday, so it was a good thing I called for directions two days beforehand instead of just Mapquesting it. Yikes! I felt it went really well, and we had a lot of laughs as we went through it.

A couple of years back I used to tutor high school kids trying to up their SAT scores. My smartest student came to us breezing through his honors and AP classes, and his first half-hearted attempt at the SAT got him more than 2200 out of 2400 possible points. He was the top of his class, had a great future ahead of him.

And he was incredibly cynical about it.

Maybe you experienced the same sort of adolescent cynicism as my student:

“No one really means what they say. Society is a shell game. Alas, only I know this hard truth, but I am strong enough to bear it. If you get it too, well, you still don’t get it as much as me. And now it’s time to listen to some moody music.”

Seeing this level of cynicism from such a promising young guy, well, frankly, it ticked me off. So I assigned him a paper. I told him he had to tell me about the history of cynicism.

The first thing he found out was this: Click to continue reading “Cynicism in Canon, Georgia”

I’ve been reading books like Organic Community and Finding Our Way for work. At the same time, the congregation is moving into a looser knit, team-based ministry model (as opposed to a council and committee structure). I’m learning a lot.

It’s a bit chaotic at times. We’re trying to focus on our assets, personal and congregational, instead of needs and deficits. We’re trying to avoid unnecessary structures that only serve to say “no, you can’t do that,” or “we tried that and it didn’t work.” And get rid of the meetings. We’re experimenting a lot, and some things work out and some don’t, which is all good.

There are four rules I’m giving all my teams. (Actually, three, but the fourth occurred to me yesterday during staff meeting.) I think this is all we need to move forward and make the vision we have for the congregation happen.

1. Whatever works. We don’t need consensus. If it’ll get the job done, and someone wants to do it, they get to do whatever seems best at the time. If it’s easy and doesn’t require meetings, all the better. Unless it causes harm, all is permissible.

2. Whatever’s welcoming. Can new people come into this process? Will they feel they’re contributing to it and not just towing the line? Do they need years of congregational history (the “why” behind “we’ve always done it that way”) or will they feel good about jumping right in?

3. Whatever’s sustainable. Not just environmental sustainability, which is an ideal we’re working our way into, but process sustainability. Does the work depend on one person with unique abilities and hours and hours of free time? Can someone come right in and pick up where they left off? And, as far as financial sustainability, will it break the bank?

4. Whatever puts the congregation’s best foot forward. Will newcomers look at it and think, “That’s a pretty cool place to be”? Will it embody the congregation’s highest values and not put its integrity at risk?