Pastoral Update
for Sunday, September 8, 2024
Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Theme: What to Do When We Don’t Know What to Do
WORSHIP IS IN-PERSON AND LIVESTREAMED ON VIMEO
10:00 a.m. HST
Aloha, Keawalaʻi ‘ohana,
This Sunday after our worship service, at 11:30 am, we will gather for a congregational meeting. I hope you will make every effort to be in church.
Five trusted leaders of this congregation are term-limited according to our bylaws. Come January, at our Annual Meeting, we will have a new Moderator, a new Vice Moderator, a new Treasurer, a new Church Secretary, and a new Chair of the Board of Deacons. Five tested, trusted leaders will no longer be in positions of leadership.
We are grateful for those who have answered the call of God to serve in the church during this difficult post-COVID time of transition, and will have ample opportunity to say mahalo to those who have served faithfully, even as we look with anticipation to the new leaders God may be raising up in our midst. Could it be you?
The first task of leadership is to paint an honest picture of the current reality. So here goes: It’s not easy to be a leader of the church in the 21st century. There was a time when church membership grew faster than population growth in America. Enrollment in seminaries and Sunday Schools increased steadily, and there was a great surge in church construction. Americans spent $26 million on sacred architecture in 1945, $409 million in 1956, and $ 1 billion in 1960. Church leaders had to run to catch up with the wave of people ready to join congregations in those days. Soldiers returning home from war were grateful to be alive. They were eager to marry, start a family, own a home, start a business. Things were booming.
That historical memory shifted by 1965 when mainline denominations began their continuous trend of posting losses of members. Clergy and lay leaders continue to look out the doors and windows wondering why more people aren’t coming. It’s not uncommon for frustrated boomer aged church leaders to suggest that newsletters carry a description of each of the church’s committees. The assumption is that the natural way to fix things is to have people attend worship, and if they just had a little more information, even about committees, they would surely turn up.
But they don’t. The wish to recapture the old days remains strong. For many, not being able to recapture old memories produces confusion and guilt.
Ron Heifetz directed Harvard’s JFK School of Government. In 1994 he published his groundbreaking book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. Heifetz wrote: “Instead of looking for saviors we should be calling for leadership that will challenge us to face problems for which there are no simple painless solutions—problems that require us to learn new ways.”
Heifetz makes a critical distinction between technical work and adaptive work. Technical work is the adaptation of known solutions to known problems. Technical work is something we are equipped to do, because technical work leads directly to action. If there is a known solution to a known problem, then the responsible act of leadership is to get with it—act! In the extremely unusual time of unprecedented growth in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, created by a culture that pushed people to churches, leaders acted to train more volunteers, develop large effective committees, add additional programs, build more buildings and add staff. Congregations grew in both size and complexity. Technical work is the application of known solutions to known problems, and because the problems are known the solutions can make a difference.
But what if the problems are not known? What if that crazy growth period was abnormal and it is just over and not coming back? What if leaders who cut their teeth in the age of growth are not equipped with a technical solution because the problem is not technical but adaptive? Taking his cue from biology, Heifetz introduced the idea of adaptive leadership, noting how biological systems are continuously adapting to the changing circumstances of their environment. If technical work is the application of solutions to problems, then adaptive work is needed when we are faced with a situation that is not a problem but is instead a changed environment.
By definition something cannot be a problem if it does not have a solution. In other words, if you can’t fix your situation, then it is not broken—it’s simply different. What needs to change—the adaptive work you need to do -- is to learn how to live with it.
Is there a word from the Lord about leadership in the church today?
I believe that there is.
This Sunday we will hear the story of Nashon’s quiet courage.
Who was Nashon?
Come to church this Sunday or tune in on our livestream to find out. Then stay for the Congregational Meeting.
In preparation for this Sunday, I have been praying a prayer written by William Sloane Coffin. I want to share this prayer with you now. We will have an opportunity to pray this prayer as we gather in worship this Sunday.
See you in church!
Kahu Gary
Prayer for the Church in These Times
by Rev. Dr. William Sloane CoffinGod, whose mercy is ever faithful and ever sure, who art our refuge and our strength in time of trouble, visit us, we beseech thee – for we are in trouble. We need a hope that is made wise by experience and is undaunted by disappointment. We need an anxiety about the future that shows us new ways to look at new things but does not unnerve us. As a people, we need to remember that our influence was greatest when our power was weakest. Most of all, we need to turn to thee, God, and our crucified Lord, for only his humility and his strength can heal and free us. God, be thou our sole strength in time of trouble. In the midst of anxiety, grant us the grace to count our blessings – the simple ones: health, food, sleep, one another, a spring that is bursting out all over, a nation which, despite all, has so much to offer so many.
And, grant us to count our more complicated blessings: our failures, which teach us so much more than success; our lack of money, which points to the only truly renewable resources, the resources of our spirit; our lack of health, yea, even the knowledge of death, for until we learn that life is limitation, we are surely as formless and as shallow as a stream without its banks. Send us forth into a new week with a gladsome mind, free and joyful in the spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Click to view: Sunday, September 8, 2024