We hear this mantra all the time, especially in the church. In fact, these 3 words were tweeted by Bishop Scott Jones on the opening night of General Conference 2012 as he reflected on the most important factors in United Methodist renewal.

Though acknowledged as crucial, we might profitably ask, “What kind of leadership? What does Christian leadership, church leadership, clergy-and-lay leadership look like?” …especially given the surfeit of models in existence today.

In my experience, resources for ecclesiastical leadership are in short supply, as compared to businesses and political parties and military units. No hire-and-fire power; punitive powers are severely circumscribed; offers of monetary gain or celebrity prestige are scarce. As a pastor, I simply don’t have many leadership tools. I have words. I have signs. And that’s about it.

Among the historic items from the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History are a Bible and glasses owned by Frances Asbury and a Communion chalice used by Phillip William Otterbein. A UMNS photo by Kathleen Barry. All Rights Reserved.

And they aren’t even mine. I’m completely dependent on the apostolic church and the grace of Jesus Christ for these words and signs. What I say in a sermon is inspired by the Holy Spirit, whether typed out on my iPad or read from Scripture. Bathing with water, lifting up bread and cup: this is a ministry born out of creation that stems from Almighty God, not from my own might.

And if I have any personal charisma, if I have a special gift for teaching, if I have some vision or force of will, then these come directly from God and are expressly for God’s purposes in the Kingdom.

As a result, when the church talks about leadership, it invokes that great wisdom from St Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

In the Wesleyan tradition, we have certain peculiar things to say about leadership. It is an expression of the mission of God. Even in its strongest forms, it exists within covenant community. It isn’t about subjecting others to a superior idea or expression, but mutually submitting in the Christlike love of the church.

The leadership question is being asked right now at General Conference:
+ about the need for a CEO & board members in a restructured general agency;
+ about developing a new cadre of principled Christian leaders for the church & the world;
+ about having a bishop set aside from presiding over an annual conference in order to focus & implement our ministry globally;
+ and more. You might even say that it’s the implicit concern in each piece of legislation.

Is there a fundamental difference between being a pastor or lay leader in the United Methodist Church, and being a regional sales manager in a large corporation? Being a franchise owner-operator? The answer is “Yes.” The church doesn’t manufacture widgets, sell eternal fire insurance, or provide services or entertainment at 40,000 locations worldwide. We disciple people in the way of Jesus.

So Christian leadership has a different content, which is already predetermined by the pattern of Jesus Christ. And it has everything to do with what the church does week in and week out.

So say it this way: Christianity is a meal fellowship. And ministry is table service. There are certainly other ways it could be said. Christianity is a great washing, for example, with our meetings being a constant reimmersion in that bath. Or Christianity is a movement around a Word that does what it says. But, for thinking about what a pastor is, what a pastor does, how a pastor lives, this old image may help. A pastor serves tables. (Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor: A Spirituality, p 73, emphasis added)

May we all–lay and clergy alike–be found faithful in our common service at the table which is not hosted by ourselves but by the Divine Servant. Amen.

Top image: Bishops celebrate communion during the April 24 opening worship service of the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Florida. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey. All Rights Reserved. http://www.flickr.com/photos/umcommunications/6965362738/in/set-72157629890409535

What is the content of leadership in the church…
…in the United Methodist Church?
Comment below!

The Scripture is John 13:1-17, 31b-35.

The camera pans out, and we see our hero, paralyzed, perhaps strapped to a chair. No escape. The James Bond villain, or perhaps an antagonist from CSI or some other police or mystery drama is there, setting up the hero for failure. And at the height of the suspense, he asks our hero: “Do you know what I have done to you?”

That would make some parable, right? “The kingdom of God is like a diabolical cinematic villain…”

Wouldn’t that surprise us! Wouldn’t it threaten us?

So here we have Jesus asking this strange, foreboding question: “Do you know what I have done to you?”

Of course, the simple answer is: yes! I can see Peter, or maybe Thomas, responding to Jesus: “I’ve been here the whole time. You did something I wasn’t prepared to let you do…it’s a good thing I agreed to follow you, because you have no business being our servant…our slave!”

So the easy, quick answer is yes, we know exactly what Jesus has done.

But do we really? The act is finished, but the repercussions go on and on and on.

And the disciples don’t know what Jesus has been doing to them the entire time they’ve been with him!

If we aren’t careful, then the implications of what’s just happened,
like the directorial slight-of-hand which sets up early clues to the villain’s demise,
might elude us…for a while. But sooner or later, we sit up, and say
“Wait a minute! What happened? Did you see that coming?”
“Just what are you trying to do, there, Jesus? What are you trying to pull?”
“What are you doing to me?”

I like to think that if I were there, I’d ask after following this Rabbi Jesus after a while.

Because you’d start to notice that the Jesus Way of Doing Things starts to rub off.

That this love ethic, this servanthood, this program of “the first shall be last and the last first,” this lay-down-your-life-for-your-friends kind of attitude is infectious. It creeps in before you even notice what’s happening. “Do you know what I have done to you?”

My father is a lifelong United Methodist layperson. He’s volunteered for some time now with the U.M. ARMY organization, and for the last few years he’s been the camp director for the College week that meets every year at the end of May in the Houston area. He’s got a great story he tells about some of his friends who have been on the Walk to Emmaus, go every year on service projects, and the like. And these friends of my father, they’ve known each other for decades now, and they love to do things like see who can be the last person in line at dinnertime after a long, hard day out on the work site. They act real macho, he calls it, giving up the comfortable spot, the shady place to take a break, the persistence in being last.

Then he says,

If you want to be successful in this world, I suggest you stay away from people like that.  Their example will change your life.  Hanging around them, if you don’t watch out, pretty soon you’ll be letting people ahead of you in line at dinner.  Pretty soon you’ll be paying good money to go to a strange place, sleep on the floor, work in the sun for people you don’t even know.   People who you will never see again, people who can’t do anything for you.

Then folks around you will get the idea that you are strange.  People at home won’t know how to deal with you, because you don’t live up the world’s expectations.  People might even ask you why.  You should be prepared to answer them.

How will we answer others? How can we, if we do not even know what Jesus has done to us?

Because the truth is that we don’t know what Jesus has done to our character, our sinfulness, our selfishness, our pride, our brokenness, our estrangement. Not really. Not at first. But over time, these experiences of washing one anothers’ feet, of sitting down at a meal hosted by God himself – and experiencing one another as God’s guests of honor too – these experiences of putting ourselves last and another first, over and over and over again…these begin to form their own kind of fuzzy logic that operates in the primitive parts of our minds and souls, that starts living with a life of its own in our hearts and minds.

Jesus becomes a part of us, each and every one of us, if we follow his lead. Jesus becomes a part of our community: in the preacher and table-host, in the singing and the silence, in the bread and the wine, in the servant and the served, in the outcast and the alien and the poor wayfaring stranger, in the grieving and the rejoicing, in the reading of the Word, in you, in me, in this community of faith:

A new commandment I give you: love one another as I have loved you.

A new commandment. A novum mandatum, in Latin. It’s where we get the name Maundy Thursday: New Commandment Thursday, really.

Do you know what I have done to you, Jesus asks, having served and loved us to the end? No, I don’t think we do. “What’s happening to me?!,” we cry, as if Jesus were the villain and we the heroes of this story. But that’s not the way this story goes. Live in a perpetual Maundy Thursday, a continuous New Commandment Day, and we begin to realize that we’re the villains and Christ the hero. Christ is the one tied up in the chair, awaiting the end, and yet he asks us, “Do you know what I have done to you?” Christ on the cross crucifies our selfishness and our certainty, our humorlessness and our drive to always be superior and right and self-righteous. If we wrap a towel around our waist and humble ourselves to demonstrate as a slave would this loving service in all the meanness and messiness and mundaneness of the world around us (including our neighbors) … well, then, we might begin to understand what Jesus has done to us, and in us, and for us.

Do you know what I have done to you? No. Not yet. But maybe…just maybe…someday soon…

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Woodcut by Rick Beerhorst from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.

Where is God? Show me a sign that God is here!
The only sign of God’s presence is the cross.
Scandalous! God wouldn’t use a cross. I want to know God’s wisdom!
God’s only wisdom is Jesus, crucified.
That’s not wise, that’s foolish! This God you worship is weak.
God’s foolishness is wiser than our wisdom; God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Thanks be to God!

The regular typeface is for the leader or single reader; the bold is intended to be spoken by the whole assembly. The reader may choose to not say any of the bold text until the final line to create a dialogue. If a hymn follows, I would suggest “Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know,” #163 in the United Methodist Hymnal (1989).

Image by Antonello, da Messina, 1430?-1479. Salvator Mundi, Savior of the World, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46138 [retrieved March 7, 2012].

+

What’s the hardest challenge to understanding God’s wisdom and strength?

Comment below and you could be this week’s winner of a Common English Bible (softcover edition) thanks to the CEB blog tour!

10 — Enjoying a morning cup of java at my local coffee shop. And this includes a free mug for me since I’ve captured the foursquare mayorship!

9  — Christie had an awesome apple spice cake ready for breakfast. (Can you tell breakfast is important to me?!)

8  — I know they planned it just for my birthday: Forbes published an article on James T Kirk’s leadership secrets! (H/T to my cousin Zach on this one.)

7  — Packages came in the mail! They included a “My other shirt has a clerical collar” shirt (thanks for clueing me in, Matt Franks!), Facebook timeline biz cards from Moo (tipped off by Sophia Agtarap & Justin Halbersma here), & a Lent book to review for ERBks. (Follow me on Instagram to see them!)

6  — Some of my church men who were restriping the parking lot bought me lunch. Mmmmm…tacos…

5  — It turns out that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the first day of filming on Firefly! It’s nice, sharing your birthday with a SCIENCE FICTION EPIC.

4  — Christie was heading out for a retreat, so she pre-made lunches for the kiddos while she’s gone. One of the many reasons why I love my wife!

3  — Glee singalongs with the theological offspring. I love that my kids love singing, and I love how they have taken ownership of their voices/dance moves. They’re much braver than I am these days!

2  — The prolific social media birthday wishes. I love how people who knew me growing up and those who I haven’t even yet met IRL can all use Facebook and Twitter (and one who sent a just disturbing YouTube video) to wish me Happy Birthday…it’s an indicator that real community is possible in the virtual world.

1  — But nothing beats a physical, everyone-around-the-table dinner with the whole family & some friends from the conference! I can’t wait to have the chance to do the same with all of you sometime (hopefully soon!)

Now it’s your turn–how have you experienced community online? What would make your birthday even better?

The LEAD portion of the event was brand new in 2012. But they brought together some fabulous people. It doesn’t hurt that I already knew a few–some I went to seminary with & therefore knew they were already rock stars (Kate Meacham, Cathy Boothe, & Narcie Jeter!) but also folks from online connections like Brandon Lazarus, April Casperson, and Matt Franks. Through Refresh & UNCO, I knew that what really makes a conference is the people attending, & LEAD didn’t disappoint. I was rocked not only by the presentations but also by the sidebar conversations I found happening all over the place. You couldn’t grab lunch or take a break without wandering into an excellent conversation about theology, contextual challenges, or science fiction.

Okay, nerd break over. I’m a big fan of the people, obviously, but the format was also genius. The TED model of serial short, succinct, big-idea talks has proven quite successful in the entertechsign world, and worked at LEAD. But it’s also quite reproducible in a variety of different contexts. Annual Conferences, Jurisdictions, metropolitan areas, extension ministry networks, and more could put on their own versions of LEAD. What would it look like to invite young adults in your networks together to share the ideas that are already in place in their lives, that they are already innovating and collaborating on? What would General Conference look like built around some of these ideas?

Well, I don’t entertain grand ideas of restructuring the general church…it’s the impact that these conversations might be having that are the most exciting. I’m more interested in the little faithful subversive movements that are happening in my backyard, and those that are being cultivated and fertilized by my friends. LEAD gave us the opportunity to hear from each other, to cross-pollinate and to pioneer new forms of church that don’t exist quite yet. Whether or not the church follows Dan Dick’s advice or not, we’ll be conspiring right here–doing the things that make a real difference. Making disciples. Transforming the world.

I’ve been reminded in several places by friends in the online community that Lent is not a behavior modification program. In other words, we don’t do Lenten disciplines in order to become better people. I think of how Richard Foster describes a faulty spiritual practice as one which exerts a kind of superhuman effort to do the things that God finds pleasing. “Righteousness Direct,” if you will. It usually doesn’t work–and if it does, its chief result isn’t holiness but arrogance.

But Lenten discipline does go to work on us. Just not usually in the way we think about it. If our fasting means our stomach growls or mouth dries up, then we repeat to ourselves, “God alone fulfills all my hunger” and “I drink up Christ and will never thirst again.” It’s not very good as replacement therapy, actually. But it does refocus us away from our constant consumption and back to God’s abundance. A practice of self-denial and the virtue of simplicity are really two sides of the same coin.

And I think that would result in a change in our behaviors.  But not at a surface level where we constantly revolt and our bodies “wage war” with our intentions. Instead, we begin to adopt a different posture in our core, which has a profound effect on our behavior.

I’m thinking less and less of trying to innovate on my own something new to give up each year. Instead, I’m dropping back into the patterns which have stood the test of time:

prayer at fixed hours of the day
fasting
paying attention to those in need with whom I come into contact day by day
dedicated study (I’m starting, as I usually do, with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s annual Lent book, and then go on from there)

Practicing these during Lent and letting them speak into my life means that I’m not seeking to manipulate either God or myself into changing specific things about my behavior. Instead, I’m simply trying to do things that will allow God to work with me more fully–putting me deliberately in God’s path so God can’t help but trip over me. We’ll see what comes next…

What are you doing for Lent? Giving something up, taking something on, or something else entirely?
Comment below and you could be this week’s winner of a Common English Bible (softcover edition) thanks to the CEB blog tour that begins today!

Relevance LEAD is the new kid on the block, actually. Its older sibling, the Relevance X conference, has been going on for several years now: it’s for young adults who are trying to follow Jesus and make a real difference in the world. I’m going to get to see some of that action also, before I hop on the plane home so I can preach on Sunday.

While I didn’t get chosen to be a LEAD speaker this year (but watch out for next year’s killer speaking app!), I am pumped that I get to play a small assisting role in the conference, helping to facilitate social media. Here’s where I am looking for some help. (Ha! You knew there would be a catch!)

First, if you’re coming to either part of Relevance2012, then you should have gotten an email from me with information about blogging, facebooking, tweeting, flickring, and the like. Start sharing the news now–how’s the packing going? What are you most excited about? Will there be reunions with friends? That kind of thing. Use the tags & your own social media platforms because trust me, your friends, followers, and connections are going to want to hear about this.

Second, if you’re not going to be at Relevance, then I could use some help knowing what would be the most beneficial information we could share, as well as what channels we should be using to share it. Short videos? Tweets? Instagram? Write me some ideas down in the comments!

Finally, we’d appreciate your prayers. Gathering young adults and young leaders is an incredible task, and out of these gatherings I wouldn’t be surprised if we began to see seismic changes. These aftershocks, however, start in God’s hands–not our own. We need those prayers.

Look for more information, livestreamed videos, and much more from Thursday – Sunday at http://live.relevancelead.com – I’ll keep you posted here too. See you there!

Three, two, one, liftoff
Signals Mission Control. And off they go
To the dark parts of the planets
In their pressurised spacesuits,
Cocooned in technology, the astronauts.

Mission control whispers in someone’s ear.
Yes, she says, I will. And in due time
A different traveller makes a quieter journey,
Arriving hungry, naked, but true to instructions,
Docking on Earth, taking the one small step.

“Christmas traffic” by U. A. Fanthorpe in Consequences
Calstock, Cornwall: Peterloo Poets, 2000.

Image by NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org