Dave's Musings

A Christmas Thought

2011-12-21T08:23:00.000-08:00

A Christmas Thought

"We have to slow down. Nothing will change for the better until we do. We need time to think, to learn, to get to know each other. We are losing these great human capacities in the speed-up of modern life, and it is killing us." So writes Margaret Wheatley in her book "Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future."

Later in the same book, she states: "Conversation is the natural way humans think together."

The first act in good conversation is not the talking, but the listening. Listening to the heart. Listening to the other. Pausing, taking time - not to react, but to thoughtfully engage - for therein lies a path to hope.

Think about the conversations in the Christmas story. Mary's words. Joseph's words. The Shepherds, the magi. And remember that before Mary ever spoke her "magnificat" words, she first listened to old Gabriel. Before Joseph ever pronounced his commitment to marry Mary, he listened to God's messenger. And before the shepherds ever rushed down from their starry fields to a Bethlehem manger, they listened to the Hallelujah voices of God's angels.

Friends, Christmas is God's way of starting a conversation with us. One more time in the rhythm of our faith where we celebrate the birth of Jesus, God with us, we are being invited into a holy conversation with our God. Not a superficial one, nor a complicated one. Rather it is a conversation of the heart about what's truly important. Simple. Deep. Born in the quiet and in the stillness of the presence of God. And our first act is to do some listening.

As I think about our dear church in the coming year, I pray that God would place in each of us the desire to slow down more, to take more time to think, to use our conversations with God and one another as a way to think together, and to discover hope as we speak truth, claim passion, serve the poor, and offer God's love to each other and this old world. Again and again.

May God give you a few extra moments to think this Christmas - to slow down - to ponder the truly important things.

Merry Christmas.

Dave

Our Theological Lists

2011-06-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Friends
At last Saturday's Presbytery meeting, Craig Barnes offered an excellent historical review of what it has meant to be "reformed and always being reformed". I appreciated his review of the various lists in our theological story. At one point he commented that our lists always seem to be five in number and wondered about that number. I thought: well if we had been born with six fingers, our lists would probably be six in number!

Craig then reviewed a new list to me: the Reformed Habits of the Mind, developed by a Brian Gerrish. (To admit my ignorance, I had not heard of this theologian, so I "googled" the name.) The first Brian Gerrish that appeared is some conspiracy theorist who is fearful about the takeover of Britain. Then I found the Union Seminary professor, a Calvinist who is well reputed in the world of reformed theology.

His list: the Reformed Habits of the Mind.... (1) Deference to the Tradition (meaning that tradition tells the story of my life, rather than my life shaping a tradition); (2) Critical of the Tradition; (3) Intellectually Open; (4) Practical (that is, a piety intent on shaping daily living); and (5) Evangelical (meaning bearing a Gospel message that transforms living). That's not a bad list, I suppose. But it's still a list.

And as Mr. Barnes said, there are problems with lists. They create boundaries (and maybe some clarity comes with that), yet they are imperfect (you can't reduce God to some list, in effect). So do we bank our identity on some imperfect list?

To be honest, as a child of a Jewish father and a Baptist mother, raised in the Methodist church and who, at the time of his seminary studies was part of a rebellious generation that insisted we knew better what we needed to study which meant that I didn't study history in seminary (thank you Henry Ford who once said "history is bunk"), I was not introduced to the lists some of us have been fussing about until years - years - after my ordination. I thought TULIP was a flower. Did I have an impoverished education? By some standards, absolutely. Has my education and helped me walk this life's journey in some pretty good fashion? Absolutely.

At this stage in life, I hesitate to cling to any list as a way to define me. I'm glad for the history lesson and I'm of course going to remain open to the possibility that my version of what it means to be reformed-always-being-reformed will lead me down a path to claim some list in the future. If so, I hope it starts with something simple, like: love God, and love your neighbor, and be kind to yourself and those you meet.

Thank God, I did find one of the best questions that keeps me grounded in the reformation. Most days I remember to ask myself - "so what did I just learn?"

Well, what do you think of Mr. Barnes and his lists?

~~_/) ~~

Dave Wasserman
SVAzureWind
& Interim Executive Presbyter, Grand Canyon Presbytery

It's More Than a Name Change

2011-05-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

A recent feature article in the PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK, contains these sentences: “The GAMC is considering changing its name from “General Assembly Mission Council” to “Presbyterian Mission”. “…Karen Schmidt, the council’s deputy executive director for communications and funds development, said she favors changing the name regardless of whether the proposed constitutional amendment passes, as part of the denomination’s efforts to create a distinct “brand identity.” And: “Schmidt…told the executive committee that “Presbyterian Mission” is “a name that has cachet. It is a name that is memorable. It is a name that equates with being the mission agency of choice.”

The ‘proposed constitutional amendment’ is nFOG, and should it pass, the General Assembly Mission Council would have to change its name because the word “council” is used for governing bodies, and the GAMC is our national mission strategy team.

This, however, is not really about names; it’s about the money. It’s about the anxiety that money, or the lack of it, creates. Once upon a time, we Presbyterians had an orderly system of funds development in our church. General Assembly counted on Presbyteries and Synods to share the wealth, and Presbyteries and Synods counted on Sessions and congregations to share the wealth. And we all counted on each part to do our part to tell the stories of what all the parts were doing for Christ’s mission. Twenty five years ago as a new executive in Eastern Oklahoma, I remember putting together several annual mission/stewardship brochures that had pages for Presbytery, Synod and General Assembly – designed by each respective staff and paid for by all three governing bodies. That brochure was sent to every active elder on all the Sessions. Such is a relic from the past.

And into the gap has rushed self-focused funding initiatives. General Assembly sends direct mailings now to individuals, looking for more money. Pastors are not notified; neither are Sessions. It’s a free world, we remind ourselves. And besides, don’t we want to give “our” people the chance to support Presbyterian causes alongside all those mailers they get from Habitat for Humanity, and the Salvation Army?

Well, yes. And, no. What has not happened is any conversation among all of us – Sessions through the General Assembly leadership – that has born the fruit of learning how to work better together and live through this new time. In my years, for example, as a Presbytery executive, I’ve never been asked by the General Assembly to contact the leaders of the congregations where I was serving to ask them if it would be acceptable for the General Assembly to begin direct mail appeals to their members. Not once. It just started happening.

Which brings us back to names. Karen Schmidt, our national expert in marketing says “Presbyterian Mission” would be a great name to use (to make General Assembly’s funding appeals.) Maybe so. But if so, how come only the General Assembly Mission Council gets to use that name? Or maybe, the General Assembly Mission Council is “telling” all of us in Synods and Presbyteries we’d best find our own marketing consultants to come up with a new name for our Presbytery and Synod Councils that we can use to make our case.

Well, some want to revise our funding structures. Others want to re-invigorate our story-telling. Still others want to change names. It might be wise for our General Assembly leaders to pause. Personally, I kind of like ….

Dave Wasserman
Interim Executive Presbyter
Grand Canyon Presbytery

LETTER TO EDITOR OF PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK:

2011-05-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

May 22, 2011

Letter to the Editor:

With all due respect to my friend Jack Haberer, his editorial “Substance over Symbol” (Presbyterian Outlook, May 1, 2011) misses a critical point. “You don’t go to places where some of us are not safe,” he writes in conclusion, quoting the author of the commissioner’s resolution that led to the national church’s boycott (i.e., not hold national meetings) of the state of Arizona over its immigration law.

If some of us are not safe, that is precisely where the church needs to go.

The General Assembly’s decision to not hold national meetings in Arizona may keep outsiders safe from coming here. But what about the people at most risk? What about the Hispanic community inside Arizona? Who stands with them, in the midst of a national crisis? The Arizona Presbyterian community has tried to do so – alone.

And the insult to the Arizona Presbyterian community is not insignificant. Some feel the national church “dissed” our state, as though our racism is worse than everyone else’s. Others feel the national church refuses to engage the issues of immigration in any holistic way because it is so complicated. Even our Washington Office national staff admit that some Presbyterians of color in some parts of the country would welcome more strict immigration laws. Still others recall the example of the civil rights movement when white Presbyterians went into the south to stand with Black civil rights leaders, facing arrest and risk.

The national church has yet to put its money where its mouth is. IF the Arizona law is ever found to be legal by the Supreme Court (for the last year, we’ve been boycotting a state over a law that has yet to take effect), then who besides Arizona Presbyterians will stand with the Arizona Hispanic community? Will the church stay away or will it stand with those in need? And, WHEN will the church start engaging immigration reform and the religious community’s responsibility to the sojourner in all of its complexity? Until that happens, we’re playing around with symbols, not getting to the substance.

Rev. Dr. Dave Wasserman
Interim Executive Presbyter
Grand Canyon Presbytery

Passage of 10-A

2011-05-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

As many of you are aware, the 87th Presbytery has now cast its vote in favor of an amendment to change our national ordination standards. This is a significant change for us and it raises many questions about what our Presbyterian Church (USA) will become in the future. While I remain confident in God’s mercy, love and grace as we forge into the days ahead, you are in my thoughts and prayers right now.

We live in a time when we allow our votes to make us more divided than we are. We divide into winners and losers and break open the community, whether it be our nation or our church. And we have developed very bad habits in the face of such moments. We retreat into safe enclaves, talk only to our friends, and let the irrational voices be heard. We hesitate to speak to those who disagree with how we look at life and faith and the church, and go silent. We become fearful and we avoid sharing the deeper thoughts in our hearts with one another.

Our conservative friends are grieving in this news. Our progressive friends are quietly rejoicing. Both the sorrow and the joy are heartfelt. Some will be experiencing denial, anger, and will try to bargain, all part of coming to terms with this significant moment. And others will move from disbelief in a decision, to satisfaction, and will confront the unintended consequences that come with any kind of deep change.

I suspect we all wonder if our God is able to carry us, together, through this time. I pray you believe – or at least want to believe - this to be true. God is able to walk with all of us together. What you believe about this makes a huge difference in what you will do next, and what will happen in our church and in this Presbytery.

Silence is the enemy right now. Retreating into our enclaves is the wrong direction. Humility is the order of the day. Love is the gift we must offer. Hope in Christ – and no where else – is what we must breathe in and out.

The best thing we can do right now is to go towards one another – quietly and across the full breadth of our people. Visit with those who see life and this issue the way you do. And visit with those who don’t. Pastors, this means more than speaking with your parishioners; you must take the lead and speak to your colleagues. It would be good if our progressive friends could find a way to say to a conservative friend, “I know you are hurting and while I disagreed with you on this matter, I know you are a brother/sister in Christ. Could we talk?” And it would be good if our conservative friends could find a way to say to a progressive friend, “I know you are glad for this change and while I disagreed with you on this matter, I know you are a brother/sister in Christ. Could we talk?”

The apostle Paul offered the best advice about unity and perspective-taking when he wrote to the church in Corinth: “We are the body of Christ…when one rejoices, all rejoice…. When one suffers, all suffer.” It may feel like a very confusing time, but his words ring true. We are all still part of the one body of Jesus Christ.

Go to each other, friends. And call me, write me. Let’s be Christ’s presence with each other.

Grace and Hope in Jesus Christ.

Dave Wasserman
Interim Executive Presbyter

BOYCOTTING ARIZONA- Does it make sense?

2011-04-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Sometimes, believing that we’re turning toward our God, we actually turn away – we sin.
Today’s news brings a reminder of the General Assembly’s actions to “not hold meetings in Arizona” because of a state immigration bill that has yet to be enforced. For many Arizona Presbyterians, last summer’s (July, 2010) action by the General Assembly has been a bitter pill to swallow.

To my knowledge, never before has the General Assembly refused to hold meetings in an entire state. In the past, the General Assembly’s “boycotts” have been aimed at particular businesses. In the past, when some of God’s people (and the Presbyterian family) have felt danger and risk, the church has traveled toward those folks and stood with friends, not avoided traveling out of self-concern (to wit: the voting rights acts in the south in the 1960’s where state laws were being challenged with protest marches and voter registration drives.)

Please be clear. The offensive portions of this law are offensive to many: “requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped; forbidding police from releasing anyone they have arrested until that person’s immigration status is determined; making it a violation of Arizona law for a non-citizen to fail to carry federally issued documentation; allowing police to make warrant-less arrests if there is a belief people have committed offenses that allow them to be removed from the United States; creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident.” (Arizona Daily Star, 4/12/2011)

But the General Assembly’s was an act of cowardice, not compassion for those at risk. Upheld because the racist attitudes of the Arizona legislature are supposedly worse than those of the Texas, Indiana, or Pennsylvania legislatures? When the opportunity presented itself to stand with those workers who have yet to secure their documents, many of whom are Hispanic and some of whom are Presbyterian and worshipping in our congregations, the church stayed away. In the emotions of the moment, the church was reactive rather than responsive in its leading.

And for the last ten months, the Presbyterians in Arizona have experienced abandonment by their national church. When a national stewardship event for Presbyterians was held in Phoenix in early March, the leadership of the General Assembly tried to bribe the conference planners to move the venue. While some General Assembly staff have traveled into our state, others have decided to not resource the presbyteries, “not wanting to get involved”.

For the last ten months, a boycott has been put in place over a law that has yet to be found legal, let alone enforced. Last November (2010 a district court judge in Phoenix placed a stay on implementing the offensive portions of the law. Now in April (2011), a federal appeals court has voted 2-1 to continue the stay. The next stop: the Supreme Court, not likely to be docketed until sometime late this year or early in 2012.

And in the meantime, a decision by the General Assembly to not hold meetings, not just in Arizona but in any state where a similar law is on the books, meaning approved by the legislature even if it has yet to be found legal or enforceable, remains. And only the General Assembly can overturn itself, which means calling the last General Assembly into session again (at great expense). Or, only a future General Assembly can overturn a previous General Assembly’s action, which means waiting until July, 2012, another fourteen months. So, the location of the Big Tent meeting this July is under serious question. And the location of the 2012 General Assembly is under serious question. … not because the Indiana and Pennsylvania legislatures are as unthinking as Arizona’s, but because the General Assembly didn’t think; it was just as reactive, emotional, and unconcerned for the complex world of immigration as those legislatures.

Rev. Dr. Dave Wasserman
Interim Executive Presbyter
Grand Canyon Presbytery

In response to several recent letters to the Presbyterian Church

2011-02-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

On February 1, a letter was sent to the Presbyterian Church from 45 pastors of our evangelical “tall steeple” churches. The letter invites people to join a new grouping of Presbyterians temporarily being called the Fellowship who are committed to congregational revitalization, shrinking bureaucracy, and being open to the possibility of forming new kinds of presbyteries, synods, even a new reformed church body. While apologetic about appearing to be schismatic, the letter is just that: divisive. On February 4, letter in response was sent from our three national leaders (Moderator, Stated Clerk and Executive Director of the Mission Council) and is understandably defensive in listing the many ways our church is already engaged in this time of transformation, and invites all of us to stay involved in the conversations and decision-making we are doing as the Presbyterian Church (USA). Then, on February 7, a second letter from the tall steeple pastors offered several apologies for some mischaracterization and an explanation of how the first letter came to be.

As a Presbytery Executive, I was most disappointed by the lack of recognition that the institutional “bureaucracy” HAS been engaged in the reformation of our denomination – I’ve given 25 years of my life to this very hope. And maybe that’s all that needs to be said. However, this letter as caused me to look back over the last twenty-five years, and I’d offer a couple of other thoughts.

1. First, the letter does not reflect the commitment of all of the participants at the “tall steeple” event where it was presented. I am aware of several evangelical pastors who were there but who are not signatories. This letter does not reflect unanimity in the evangelical portion of our family.

2. After visiting over 400 congregations in the four presbyteries I have served (Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona), I have discovered lots of diversity evident in nearly every congregation – progressive and evangelical. The Presbyterian family in this country reflects a rich texture of thinking and acting – about God, about politics, about public witness, about … life! Even in the most evangelical of congregations, God has planted a couple of progressives – and vice-versa.

3. Pastors are the primary enablers, if not the drivers behind schism. Rarely does a congregation follow a divisive elder. Elders stand in the trenches and bring the long perspective to their service: they watch pastors come and go as surely as they will watch these pastors move on, too.

4. In response to the letter more directly, I wished the opening words of humility had been stronger: “We humbly share responsibility for the failure of our common life, and are no better as pastors nor more righteous than anyone on other sides of tough issues.” The most strident of pastors on ANY side of our tough issues DO feel more righteous – that’s the nature of division. And we have experienced each other in the thick of Presbyterian discourse at its ugliness. The confession needs to go farther – and frankly, all of us have much to confess because all of us have contributed much (actively or passively) to the incivility in our church. (Thank God incivility is not a hallmark of our everyday life.)

5. Some are simply tired of our God-given diversity. We tire of disagreeing about what we believe and how we are to live and serve. We have claimed a false hope that unanimity is the only acceptable form of unity in Christ. We want to return to a time we perceive when the lines were clear, the choices were simple (I’m Protestant not Catholic, for example). Lest we forget, God is the author of diversity and complexity, not just simplicity and commonality. God is the One who created this world, set it in motion and overcomes human sin again and again. And we must choose – EITHER to engage with our faith this ever-shrinking planet where we have discovered an increasingly diverse human race, OR to retreat into smaller and smaller enclaves of like-mindedness.

6. …Which does not mean that the desire to gather with like-minded folk is wrong. In fact, several years ago, there was a push from these same tall steeple evangelical pastors to create a like-minded approach to global mission. And our church made room to include the Global Fellowship and those who did not want to participate in mission through the bureaucracy, but more directly. That kind of like-mindedness has value. If we want to start a new church, or build a building, or feed the hungry or serve the immigrant, we don’t need to argue and argue with one another to the point of inaction. God is teaching us that everyone of us has a passion to serve someone and in particular ways. Today’s challenge is to help us find one another . It’s through more and more networking rather than institutional programming, that we will do even more to serve the common good in God’s world.

7. However, passion in mission must be balanced with humility before God. The desire to gather ourselves into a fellowship with a “clear, concise, theological core” sends us down a slippery slope toward THE greatest sin there is: belief that we are God; we, in our little groupings, have all the answers, and because we do, we have the capacity to interpret the intention of God for everyone else. We are not the Creator, but the creatures. The real value of our diversity is not to pride ourselves on our inclusiveness, but to keep us humble – we don’t know it all, see it all, understand it all, and that sisters and brothers, by sharing what they know, believe and see, help us remember that we’re … not…God Almighty (thank you, Jesus).

8. If we need passion and common bonds to keep us moving; we need diversity to keep us humble. Every Presbyterian would do well to live the faith with the help of two groups: those with whom we agree about the way God wants us to work/serve/live our lives; and those with whom we disagree as we reflect, ponder, wonder, and come to understand as best we can what God intends for our lives and life together. God calls us into a Church where the community encourages its people and expects its leaders to participate in both groupings – and where Scripture reading and discussion and prayer are as regular as breathing when either group gathers.

9. So, I find myself praying for more honest, respectful conversation and more earnestness in discovering the new church that God is calling forth in our Presbyterian community. I pray that Presbyteries will look seriously at the need to encourage, nay expect, all of us to engage both kinds of groups with some discipline – gathered together in common cause for active mission and ministry and mixed together in our diversity for prayerful reflection.

Wasserman 2/10/11

The Tragic Shooting in Tucson- Is it Close Enough This Time?

2011-01-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning, as I drove from Tucson to Phoenix to visit one of our churches – Pinnacle in north Scottsdale – I had lots of quiet time to listen to the news and think and pray about the horrific events of yesterday: a congresswoman, shot by a young man with the intention to kill her, then shooting eighteen others and six of them dying. The nation’s attention is once again directed to a moment of sorrow and pain, and an opportunity to ask, “What are we doing to ourselves?” (For a really fine first-response editorial check out Matt Bai’s comments in the New York Times, “A Turning Point in the Discourse, but in Which Direction?”

Nearing the Valley of the Sun, I found myself wanting to ask, “Is it close enough this time?” You know, tragedies like this happen often – daily – in our world. Most of them are so distant that it’s hard to “feel” them in a personal way. (I once heard a church leader espouse the discipline of watching the evening news and picking one tragedy each day to “feel”, by imagining details of the event in personal ways – a discipline to work against the numbness of information overload.) So, even though none of us (I suspect) is a relative of one of the nineteen victims, is a Congresswoman close enough? Or a Federal Judge? Or a nine-year old? Or two Presbyterian victims- Phyllis Schneck of Northminster Presbyterian and Congressional Aide Gabe Zimmerman, a life-long Presbyterian social worker?

Is Tucson close enough this time? Does this incident “feel” like a defining moment for you and for the church?

Three thoughts: Wes Avram’s sermon was a gift from God. I believe that all of our sermons and prayers this morning were gifts from God. God’s gift through Wes was in part an invitation to model peacemaking by pointing to the promised realm of God’s peace, by re-membering ourselves to the vision, by making a witness through our prayer services to the reign of God in Jesus Christ. There is a time coming when such things as yesterday will not happen anymore. Even today, such things don’t have the last word in the Christian community. So, first, let’s make our witness to God’s reign by gathering together for services of prayer – ecumenically, locally, wherever you are. Let Presbyterians take the initiative and invite others in your near community to gather and re-member the vision.

Second, will we use this moment to make a public witness and not a political one? I’m planning to address this at the upcoming Presbytery meeting, but for now, consider that we live in a time in our country when all of the church’s public witness has been politicized. So, already voices are claiming that Arizona’s gun laws are too lenient, the political banter across the divide is too acidic and so life must change. Change the gun laws, etc. And the church will be invited to join in the debate, and let politics guide our public presence. How about a different kind of public witness, such as: the Presbyterians who don’t own guns signing a pledge to never purchase one; or the Presbyterians who do own guns, turning them into the police – in some public way on the steps of the courthouse. How about Presbyterians expressing hope in our leaders (legislators and police) that they can create a safer society than we know today? Or, perhaps more challenging, how about Presbyterians signing a covenant to resist the political “vitriol” (see Pima County Sheriff Dupnik’s comments at yesterday’s news conference) and to be civil in their disagreements both in our society and in the church.

Third, will we use this moment to pay more attention to young people? We’re an aging church, and may not have as much contact as we once did with the youth of our day. Back then, we had more opportunity to notice the loners, the teenagers being treated like outcasts, struggling to find their place and to find their voice (remember the two young men who terrorized the Columbine High School in Colorado not that many years ago). We may have had an easier time of it to discover, to encourage, to connect, to love some of them. It may be harder today, but it is not impossible for Presbyterians to engage our neighborhoods and schools with an eye to love the “lost”. I can remember there was a “second mother” for me growing up – my best friend’s mom – who listened to me and encouraged me when I was really upset with my own folks. We had community in our neighborhoods. Please understand that technology facilitates certain kinds of communication and community, but there’s some kinds of communication and community that must be addressed in face to face ways. Will we pay more attention – after this time?

Is Tucson close enough this time? What say you?