Category: the Church

(Life Update) I Am Pastoring Now

ChurchExciting news: I’ve accepted a call to be pastor at a great church in a seaside community in the Greater Boston area. My first Sunday was June 2.

My “About” page has been updated accordingly:

In my current capacity as pastor, I seek to support, encourage, and equip the congregation, connect with people in local and global communities, preach and help lead services weekly, and minister with the congregation in a variety of other ways.

I am grateful to God for the privilege of serving the congregation, and look forward to our weeks, months, and years of ministry together.

Who is the New Pope? Bergoglio (now Francis I) of Argentina

Pope Francis
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images, via NY Times

The cardinals today selected a new pope. From the New York Times:

With a puff of white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and to the cheers of thousands of rain-soaked faithful, a gathering of Catholic cardinals picked a new pope from among their midst on Wednesday — choosing the cardinal from Argentina, the first South American to ever lead the church.

The new pope, 76, Jorge Mario Bergoglio (pronounced Ber-GOAL-io) will be called Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He is also the first non-European leader of the church in more than 1,000 years.

Read more here.

There is a New Pope

White Smoke
Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press, via NY Times

From the New York Times:

With a puff of white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and to the cheers of thousands of rain-soaked faithful, a gathering of Catholic cardinals picked a new pope from among their midst on Wednesday. The name of the new pope, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, by tradition would not be revealed until he appeared on a balcony on the front of St. Peter’s Basilica.

No name yet, but that will come soon. More here for now.

A Few Thoughts on Leading without Authority

HeifetzRon Heifetz, in his Leadership Without Easy Answers, says, “The scarcity of leadership from people in authority, however, makes it all the more critical to the adaptive successes of a polity that leadership be exercised by people without authority” (183).

In other words, even though leaders should expect good leadership from those above them, they should perhaps not wait for it such that its absence affects their own leadership adversely.

I’m fortunate to work for a boss who leads well. But any person in a position of middle management should be prepared to lead effectively regardless of what leadership they see coming from “people in authority.”

And effective leadership requires proactivity. Stephen Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People talks about being proactive as taking “the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen” (71).

I wonder whether we might at times fear taking on responsibility beyond what is in our job description, or beyond what our supervisors have explicitly asked of us. We may worry that we’ll do the wrong thing, or try to do the right thing but in the wrong way. Worse is not doing anything at all. Our work energies can always be redirected if misapplied; a mistake can always be tweaked and corrected.

But, as Heifetz points out, leadership and authority are not the same thing. Having a position of authority does not make one a good leader, nor does leading well require a position of authority. For organizations to succeed, workers at all levels–those with authority and those without–need to be proactive in their exercise of leadership. Lacking positional authority is not an excuse to do otherwise.

How shall we sing hymns?

John WesleyJohn Wesley (1703-1791) was an Anglican minister and theologian. His ministry (and that of his brother Charles Wesley) led to the creation of the Methodist Church, as well as other traditions that have their roots in Wesley: the Wesleyan holiness movement, Pentecostalism, and the Charismatic movement.

Wesley issued seven “Rules for Singing” in 1761. Here are some excerpts:

Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. …If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find a blessing.

Sing…with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength…. (AKJ: This is particular pertinent for those services that take place in the morning hours.)

Sing in time. Whatever time is sung, be sure to keep with it. Do not run before, not stay behind it; but attend closely to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can;

And take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

WesleyHymn tempo can be largely a subjective decision–some like it fast, some like it slow. But might singing “all our tunes just as quick” encourage more hearty singing? It seems Wesley thought so.

Regarding the call to “attend closely to the leading voices,” I find it particularly helpful when worshiping congregations have vocal leaders for hymns, especially if members of the congregation are not familiar with a given hymn. This may sound self-evident, but the majority of my hymn-singing experience has been in churches where the organist leads the hymn just from the organ. This works fine in a congregation that knows hymns and sings them well, but I’m not convinced it’s always the  best approach to leading congregational hymns in worship.

Here’s my favorite part of Wesley’s rules:

Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. …[S]ee that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.

I don’t think having “your heart… carried away with the sound” is mutually exclusive with offering it “to God continually,” but I love Wesley’s call to “have an eye to God in every word you sing.” We sing hymns best when we make them prayers to God, affirmations of our faith, even heartfelt confessions.

The rules in their entirety are here.

Lights withstanding the wind (Martinmas)

A guest post by my wife, Sarah K-J:

For the third time, I handed my two-year-old son his homemade lantern and hoped the wind would allow a few minutes more of light. We were on our first “lantern walk.”

Guided by another young family with experience in this ancient tradition honoring St. Martin of Tours, we stepped out into the dark. Each young child bore a homemade lantern and eagerly watched the wind catch and play with the flame. We periodically stopped to relight each one. In the darkening dusk we walked along the beach, flickering orbs bobbing in front of young, expectant faces.

I was amazed at how gentle the wind was, how perfect the setting. The stars began to gain strength, and distantly echoed the scattered constellation of lanterned children. The waves stood back and gave us firm ground to walk on.

Our lights were small and inconsistent in the north Atlantic wind, but their hope a meaningful tribute to St. Martin. A Roman solider, Martin met a starving beggar at the city gates of Amiens. Moved with compassion, he tore his cloak in two, giving half to the beggar. That night in his sleep, Christ appeared to him dressed in the half-cloak. He was soon baptized and later became a bishop in the Church.

I’m unsure how much of the beauty and meaning the children were able to absorb, but the excitement and courage with which they carried their fragile paper lanterns in the wind of the North Atlantic gives me hope.

Their small lights were extinguished several times, but they kept asking for their lanterns to be lit again. Whenever their light withstood the wind, they joyfully announced it to all around, and fixed their eyes upon its hopeful, persistent light.

10 things about the new Archbishop of Canterbury

Breaking news: the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is on Twitter. (He’s funny, too.)

He comes to the Anglican Communion’s highest position from a post as Bishop in Durham, where N.T. Wright previously served.

A piece on him in the New York Times is here.

And the BBC has published an article with “10 lesser-known things” about the new Archbishop. I found this one particularly poignant:

4. He set up a special day for bereaved parents in Coventry Cathedral. There is now an annual service commemorating the lives of children who have died. A book with the names of lost children is always on display in the cathedral – anyone who has lost a child under any circumstances can ask for their child’s name to be added to the book.

Bishop Welby’s own eldest daughter, Johanna, died when she was just seven months old in a car crash in France in 1983. He has previously said her death brought him and his wife Caroline closer to God. The couple have five other children.

The rest of the BBC article is here.

New Archbishop of Canterbury

The Telegraph reports that the new Archbishop of Canterbury has been named: Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham.

Sources have confirmed that the Eton-educated bishop will be announced as successor to Dr Rowan Williams as early as Friday, after the Crown Nominations Commission put his name forward to Downing Street.

It marks a meteoric rise for the former oil executive who has been a bishop for only a year, but insiders described Welby as “the outstanding candidate”.

The full article is here.

Katharine Bushnell (1856-1946): “God does not curse women because of Eve”

Two days after All Saints Day, I express my admiration now for a perhaps even lesser-known “saint” than Perpetua, Moses the Black, or John Huss.

Katharine Bushnell lived from 1856 to 1946. She was a doctor, a missionary, an advocate for those without other advocates, and a theologian.  Her commitment to the authority of Scripture was strong. About the Bible she said, “No other basis of procedure is available for us.” She learned Greek and Hebrew, and was particularly interested in applying her knowledge of biblical languages to understanding what the Bible had to say about gender. She spoke seven languages.

Author and theologian Mimi Haddad (where I first learned about Bushnell, via this PDF article) writes about her:

Bushnell grounds the ontological equality of men and women first in the early chapters of Genesis where, according to Bushnell, we learn that Adam and Eve were both created in the image of God, that Adam and Eve were both equally called to be frutiful and to exercise dominion in Eden, that Eve was not the source of sin, and that God does not curse women because of Eve.

Bushnell began a hospital of pediatrics in Shanghai, was part of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and helped found a homeless shelter for women in Chicago.

Psalm 68:11 says, “The Lord announces the word, and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng.”

Bushnell joins Perpetua and countless others as part of a mighty throng of women who have proclaimed God’s word in ways that continue to inspire today.