Emerging Women

I just added this post to my blog and thought that I would add it here also. Please remember that I am an artist… not a writer!- I apologize because I see that there was a book discussion on Sex God back in May, which was before I joined the ranks of Emerging Women. I am hoping that no one will mind hearing a little more about it.

I inherited an old trunk that sat in my grandma’s basement. It had belonged to the generation before, who had used it to bring their possessions across the sea from Sweden. It sits in my dining room. It smells a little musty, but I treasure it as a link to my heritage.

I was thrilled to receive the trunk, but even happier when I opened it and saw my bonus surprise. The bottom was lined with pages of a newspaper from May 14, 1912. I framed these pages and hung them on a wall in my house. Whenever I look at these pages, I find something amusing. They’re full of advertisements for remedies to cure everything from kidney trouble to headaches, dandruff, and excessive perspiration. They contain news stories that remind me of the fleeting nature of some of the things that seem newsworthy today. They also remind me that some things never change. But Page 7, the Society page, makes me a little sad.

The Society page contains updates about the travels of Mrs. Northrup, Mr. Graham, the Brooks family, others. It tells who has out-of-town guests. It provides announcements for bridge parties and an upcoming Cooking Club get-together. It gives tips for hosting a perfect dinner party or afternoon tea.

Big deal, I know. So Colonel and Mrs. William Allaire had a bridge party. What’s so sad about that? Well, it’s not the bridge parties that make me sad. It’s my feeling that we have lost something these turn-of-the-century folks had. They actually cared to read about these things in their city newspaper.

I know, we can read plenty of gossip in the newspaper any day. But this seems different. These aren’t stories about movie stars, sports stars, criminals, famous addicts, or people who are famous for no particular reason. These were people they actually knew. People they wanted to keep track of. They belonged to a community.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately. I’ll confess I believe I’m missing a skill set. I don’t really know how to form community. Is this a lost art, or is it just me?

Sure, I know how to make friends. I have terrific coworkers, whom I consider friends. I have friends at church, I’m friendly with my neighbors, and we get together regularly with other families we consider our friends. Many of our friends are scattered throughout the country, and some of them overseas, but we keep in touch.

But I don’t think a network of friends necessarily equals a living, breathing community of people. Come to think of it, most of my friends don’t even know each other. I can bounce from one friend to another—or one group to another—without a second thought. Even my church feels like a nice weekly gathering of people I barely know. I am not surrounded by a tightly woven web of people who experience life together.

This is what the Society page on my wall reminds me of. Perhaps community life has become a lost element of our society, its formation a lost art. Where are the bridge parties, ice cream socials, dinner parties, barn dances, and block parties hosted by people who actually live on the block, rather than sponsored by Pepsi?

I used to think it was weird to see silver serving sets, complete sets of beautiful china, ice buckets, crystal glasses, and other entertainment accessories in the homes of people who had been around for a while. Seemed like a waste—all those beautiful maybe it was a waste, I don’t know. I’m not planning to go out a buy a silver set anytime soon. But something about it actually makes sense to me. It suggests that people valued hospitality and community and saw those special occasions as worthy of something extra.

As Americans in the 21st century, we tend to undervalue the sacred nature of community. We’re all about the family and the rugged individual, the lone hero. And we are a lonely people. I wonder if we realize how desperately this loneliness eats at our souls.

Was it just out of convenience that God chose an entire nation of people and taught them how to live well in community? What it a coincidence that Christ created the church and gave us sacraments to practice in community? Should we be surprised that as we watch communities and their institutions disintegrate, the world feels like a more dangerous place?

In community we ground each other, encourage each other, hold each other accountable. When the Holy Spirit is present in a community of people, that community is sacred. We form the body of Christ. By ourselves we’re just isolated body parts. And like body parts without a body, we struggle to survive.

Could it be that the most important job of Christian leaders is to foster strong healthy, Christ-like community?

So how do we seek community in this individualistic society? How do we foster it among people who are so starved for time and rest, they don’t feel their needs? God has called us to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:3-5). How do we do this?

by Amy Simpson

Amy Simpson is Executive Director of the Leadership Media Group at Christianity Today International. She also serves as Executive Editor of Gifted for Leadership (www.giftedforleadership.com), a resource for Christian women called to leadership. This article first appeared on Gifted for Leadership.

Having lurked for some time now, it’s beginning to feel rather rude not to introduce myself. I was ordained 3 years ago in the Church of England, and am working as a curate in a suburban church in Gloucestershire (which you may have heard about in the context of recent floods). My context for ministry is about as traditional as it is possible to be, – and there is lots that is good in that. The world is not made up, solely, of cool urban sophisticates, any more than of the begloved old ladies of Barbara Pym novels…and the church needs to serve both constituencies, and many another in between. I guess I’m very much the sort of hybrid minister called to serve in what ++Rowan Williams calls a “mixed economy church”….and seeing the value of so many different expressions of the church as God’s mission in the world.

I realise that Charlton Kings has probably given me an unreal perspective on the opportunities that the parish system still provides, but here certainly I’m regularly in contact with non-church families, who still approach us for rites of passage. This is such a privilege, and I’ve made some really important connections along the way. My children tease me about the way I seem to enjoy funerals…but truly, the combination of being allowed to share people’s stories and to speak words that might, by the grace of God, make a difference is nothing short of mind blowing.
So in my experience here, the benefits of the parish system still outweigh its drawbacks, and
I’m always surprised and delighted by the amount of free floating good will that seems to exist for the church, and her ministers.

BUT I know too that the connection between what happens within the walls of St M’s, and the lives of hundreds in this community is not just tenuous – it’s non existent.
And I long for all those other people to know directly how much they are loved by God– to feel the difference that Love makes to each and every second of their lives and their eternities….The first time I cycled up to Morning Prayer in church , the Monday after my diaconal ordination, I did so against the tide of children heading to the primary school round the corner. I arrived at the church in tears. We live in a community with many young families but I work in a church whose average age is definitely a few years older than my own. And it hurts so much that we’re not connecting with those many others.
So – OpenHouse (a monthly congregation of families who have no other connection with St M’s) was born…and is, I think, making connections with those families whom jargon would describe as “Open un(or de?) churched”…those who’ve some idea of what might happen behind the doors of St M’s…who are prepared to come and see.

But there’s the rub. Come and see.

I love welcoming school-children to St M’s, and many come there to meet the assorted demands of the national curriculum. Certainly there are arguments in favour of taking them to a special place and using the power of an ancient building to enhance our telling of the Best Story Ever…but not if that prevents them from believing it could actually relate to the reality of their lives.
The risk is that clergy and congregations may carry on behaving as if we believe that God is to be uniquely encountered within our churches…and trying as hard as we can to lure people to meet God there…whereas we know that he has “already gone before us into Galilee” ..He’s waiting in the bus queue, taking pleasure in the bounding (and boundless) energy of the dogs being walked on the recreation ground, and the skate boarders in the shopping precinct…
So…I want to be involved in a church that does not just look outwards, but steps out to join in, to bless, celebrate and join in with God’s transforming activity in the world.

I thought a bit about this during Holy Week, and in a response to a comment on my own blog, wrote
“ I do realise that liturgy and buildings are often the problem, I’m not saying they are the whole answer, but I do think that we need a combination of church through relational networks (yuk phrase, but can’t think of a better way to put it) and church that is just identifiably there as church.
Of course, you can have buildings without liturgy…or liturgy without buildings….or community without either. I’m a real believer in that famous “mixed economy church” which ++Rowan wants to see…even though the process of being both/and could potentially exhaust everyone.”

Holy Week brought me right up against that, since on the Monday night I was refreshed and inspired by time spent with some prayer installations provided by an emerging faith community in the Lady Chapel of our Cathedral…while on Thursday morning, I was back in that same Lady Chapel with rank on rank of robed clergy preparing to renew our ordination vows at the Chrism Mass. God spoke to me in both services, both situations….I’m excited that I’m part of a church that recognises this will happen.

So…if I were asked to choose between ministry in an inherited and an “emerging” congregation, my answer would have to be “Yes please.”
I want both. My dream church would have as its mission statement something like this
” We exist to demonstrate to ourselves and to our community that everybody is loved and precious to God, and to enable response to that love”
It would not only keep the rumours of God alive, but both live the Gospel and enable others to do so. Enabling others is surely very close to the heart of emerging church….I’m excited to be part of the journey.

I am so excited to be able to talk to other women out there trying to figure out where they fit in the scheme of the church and their community. I loved every bit of the time I spent learning about God in my undergraduate studies and after coming out of it with a degree in theology have grown disillusioned. It seems that my degree is considered worthless by so many because I am a woman. I knew it would be hard, but it seems that until I recieve my masters my education and gifts are useless, at least that is the basic feeling I get from the church. I desire with deep intensity to go into women’s ministry and do family and marriage counseling. I am really excited out going to school to do that, but I wonder if the church wants me to wait until I am 30 with a lot more degrees and experience to be able to use my giftings. I actually have the same degree as my husband and funny enough we have a lot of the same giftings, we both love to preach and teach, and are looking forward to doing marriage counseling as a team. Coming from a broken home, full of pain, and left with deep scars, I feel that there is nothing more important than healthy, whole, women who know who they are outside of others opinions. I am so blessed to have grown and healed from the experiences I had growing up, and cannot wait to help women in all the possible ways that I was helped and healed. Far too often we as women, allow the world and men to tell us our identity, and this gives a terrible distortion. I count myself blessed though, because my husband does nothing but encourage my talents, gifts and dreams, and when I feel like giving up or that I really havn’t got what it takes he is my constant reminder. There are so many different views about where women fit in the church, and I wonder and may always wonder, where do I fit into it all?

I’ve read two books this month. Well … I’ve completed two books this month. One was HP and the Deathly Hallows and I’m re-reading parts of that and talking about it and absorbing it. What a fabulous book. As Julie Clawson says, it belongs on the shelf next to Middle Earth and Narnia. And all the conservative Christians out there tarring and feathering Rowling for magic and the occult, owe her a very large apology. If you want more than that, you’ll have to read the book.

The other other book I completed this month is titled, Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect by Joseph R. Myers. I read it while on vacation in Vermont. I approached it sideways at first because I’m tempted to be very critical of the notion that one can artificially “create” a place where people can “naturally” connect. The notion seems disingenuous at worst and contrived at best. So, the kindest thing I can say about myself is that my mind was not terribly open as I opened the book. I did not approach this book expecting great things.

I was surprised.

It is a treasure of a little book. Myers writes in a very unassuming style and is very understated. In so doing he allows the reader plenty of time and space to imagine for themselves how they might use this information in their own lives. He gives them gift of place. Instead of giving the reader a paint-by-number kit at the end, throughout the book he points you to the brushes, paint pots and easel in the room and encourages you to pick them up yourself. It’s as if he said, “Here, all of us have been given this gift. Now you paint too. Create a painting that will bless your place.”

If I had a quibble with the author it would be that I think his thinking is perhaps too binary. He sets out his argument in terms of either/or. There is “master plan” thinking OR “organic order” thinking. One must be one OR the other and behavior falls into one category or the other. My feeling is that most behavior in human groups probably falls in a spectrum with master plan thinking on one end and organic order on the other. And behavior can be classified on that spectrum as being more or less in one direction or another. My guess is that if I were to meet him and have a cup of coffee with him, I would discover that he feels this way too, but expressed his views in this binary manner in order to make his point.

A secondary quibble, pointed out by Alan Hirsch in his review here, is that Myers does not specifically address missional issues. I’d agree with Alan, but for the fact that my guess is that Myers might say that missional issues are larger than this book. I think that people who engage in community within the organic order and a Christian viewpoint will also, organically, follow a missional lifestyle. It will be a part of who they are, rather than a part of their plan for living.

Myers defines “master plan” thinking as that which we see all around us everyday in the military, in business, in government. It is that zero-sum game which demands that we all compete for resources, power, time, etc., that we “learn the ropes,” that we paint-by-someone-else’s-numbers that will guarantee a successful outcome, that we measure success in numbers. He begins defining “organic order” thinking by defining an artist as “… someone who enables art to emerge from a canvas …” and then goes on to say this:

“Shaping an environment where people naturally connect is more like creating art than manufacturing a product. It marks a major shift: from programming a community (i.e., following a master plan) to using principals of organic order to develop an environment where community can emerge.” pp. 26-27 italics in the original

Perhaps my favorite principal in this book is the idea that organic may be equated to order. In this post-industrial, fully mechanical age we have a strong tendency to view those things that are organic and natural as being chaotic and out of control. Organic, natural things have a definite order and system to them. While that order is not always under our control, we may be able to embrace it and dance with it to live a healthy life. So I was very grateful to read a book that encouraged us to consider that organic and order are not mutually exclusive terms.

Scot McKnight did a review on Jesus Creed last month and summarized the two models nicely as follows:

If you are seeking to avoid the Master Plan programming model and, instead, want to create an organic environment, this is a good book for lots of ideas. Here’s a summary of the Master Plan programming model and the Organic Order model:

Patterns: prescriptive vs. descriptive.
Participation: representative vs. individual.
Coordination: cooperation vs. collaboration.
Growth: bankruptcy vs. sustainability
Measurement: bottom line vs. story.
Power: positional vs. revolving.
Partners: accountability vs. edit-ability.
Language: noun-centric vs. verb-centric.
Resources: scarcity vs. abundancy.

Myers devoted a chapter to each subject above and does a fairly thorough job of comparing and contrasting with examples the differences in each. He draws on from many different disciplines and across many fields of study for his examples. He also draws on his direct personal experience with the company that he and his wife started some years ago. It is fairly successful even by so-called master plan standards and is thriving. But they operate using organic order principals and it sounds like a wonderful place to work.

It struck me, as I read through the book, that I recently had the privilege of working in a group that operated with organic order principals for a short time. It was a joy to work in that group and we did some marvelous things. We had a difficult time explaining how we operated and I found myself wishing I’d had this book “back then” so I could have explained us better to those who were wondering how we managed to “get things done.”

For instance, I loved this definition of decision making (it’s from the chapter on participation):

People want their contribution to be part of the contribution of the entire group. They want to know that their individual participation will accumulated with all the other members’ contributions to provide something more robust than they could give by themselves. Is there some organic mechanism–a person or a descriptive system–that turns individuals’ thoughts and judgments into a collective thought, decision or action?

Finding the aggregate is the taking of everyone’s stories and using them to build a whole new story–one that makes sense to the whole group. This takes considerable wisdom. It allows groups to move forward. Finding the aggregate is not the same as reaching consensus. Consensus, when achieved, is little more than taking raw data and totaling it. Consensus, when not reached, translates to frustration and inaction.

Finding the aggregate … I loved reading that. It takes into account everyone in a group and mixes it up and creates a new story that is somehow larger than the sum of all the parts. Like when you’re cooking and you have to use 50 year old curry powder … or something. Or just cooking in general. The final product of any recipe is the aggregate of all the bits the cook has put in.

Then there was this from the chapter on power:

We concluded that power was not something that the three of us would possess just because we held the position of “owner.” We recognized that each of us would carry different roles and responsibilities, but these roles and responsibilities were not assigned because of position. Rather, they were matched to our strengths. No position anywhere in the company would hold power merely because of the post itself.
As our company has grown, “the project holds the power” has become one of our guiding phrases. When new employees are added, they are amazed at being given power by the project and that we, the owners, don’t stand in the way.

…

Does this mean that we are a “flat” organization, where everyone has the same degree of power at the same time? I’m not sure that a flat organization can truly exist and move foward. A project is always inviting a person to step forward and steward the power. And just as no one person holds positional power, neither do projects hold positional power. … Among people and among projects, the spirit is “revolving,” not “flat.”

As we discovered in the group of which I was a member, this requires both humility and trust on the part of the participants. It also requires buy in from everyone. But … if everyone will concede, leave their ego at the door and throw in with this, your group is then able to do remarkable things that no one would be able to do on their own … or even as a group with traditional positional power structures in place.

I think the finest chapter in the book is the chapter on Partners. Myers hits on the desire in the secular and faith cultures for holding each other accountable and shows how we so often miss the mark by driving people away instead of creating intimate atmospheres where vulnerability and encouragement are developed. He does this by developing the picture of accountants (accountability) vs. editors (edit-ability) and sums it up by saying this: “Accountants keep records. Editors wipe away errors while keeping the voice of the author.” (p. 140) Which would you want helping you follow Christ more closely? An accountant or an editor? Which kind of friend would you like helping you mirror Jesus more clearly … an accountant or an editor? Based on the scripture which tells us how he views our sin after Christ’s death and resurrection, which do we think God is?

In all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is engage with other people in thinking of new ways of “doing” church. It is extremely helpful for for verbalizing some of the ideas that don’t have form yet. Or giving the right words to the things that are working, but perhaps you’re using the wrong words over and over again. Or maybe you just want to see a new way of doing things because the old ways just aren’t working anymore.

Once again its weekly round-up time (sorry for skipping last week). These are just a few of the great things emerging women are writing about these days. I encourage you to visit the sites and leave comments. And as always you are welcome to send in posts you think should be included in any weekly round up (including your own) to emergingwomen@gmail.com. Enjoy!

Jan recounts an interesting exchange she had with a mom at Vacation Bible School.

Nadia posted her sermon on Ruth and Mary Magdalene.

Makeesha has some great thoughts on the church as organism.

Thanks to Heather for posting this.

And you are encouraged to go support emerging women whose articles were recently published on other sites.

Sally Coleman’s retelling of Luke 7:36-8:3 was republished on The Ooze – read it here.

Becky Garrison has an interview with Kester Brewin up at The Ooze.

and I (Julie) have the first part of a story chronicling my attempts to buy an ethically made bra (yes, bra) up at the God’s Politics Blog. (if anything the comments are worth the read just to see how many grown men can’t see women as more than sexual objects…)

I just wanted to let everyone know about a few changes to our Emerging Women Book Club discussion. I’ve enjoyed being part of the discussions so far, but have felt that at times the format is a bit overwhelming. In the past we have put up one post for the entire discussion. Sometimes that turns into a very involved discussion, sometimes it doesn’t. So to help make the discussion more accessible and less overwhelming, we have decided to break it up during the month. We will still discuss one book per month, but now we will post part of the discussion each Tuesday. So starting in August get ready for “Tuesday Book Clubs” – a book discussion post every Tuesday. We hope that this will give everyone more opportunity to join in.

The purpose of the book discussions is to discuss new ideas, explore theology and culture, grow in faith and understanding, and learn more about ourselves and others as we delve into a book a month. We encourage everyone who can to participate. Try to read the book, but feel free to join in the discussion no matter how much you managed to read. We also encourage you to post reviews/comment on other books you are reading. If there is a book (or chapter even) that you think other emerging women could learn from, tell us about it! Engage us with your thoughts and share with us what you are learning. And if you have suggestions for future books to read in the book club please send them to emergingwomen@gmail.com.

Here are the selections for discussion in our Tuesday Book Club. All are available to purchase at the Emerging Women Amazon Resource Store.

August – Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman

September – The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew– Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, Priscilla Warner

October – Justice in the Burbs by Will and Lisa Samson

November – The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World by Miroslav Volf

December – The Real Mary by Scot McKnight

Join us as we try this new format and explore ideas together.