LEVEL UP

(eLearningMind.com)

A familiar saying is, "You cannot see the forest for the trees." That is one way of saying one is too close to a problem to be able to see a possible solution, or a different means of operating. Organizational theorists encourage top level leaders to maintain a 30,000-foot perspective rather than being lost in the weeds. Maintaining a 30,000-foot perspective is difficult for pastors and other church leaders. In fact, it is difficult for leaders of any organization. I believe one of the reasons Jesus periodically withdrew from others was to regain a higher perspective on his ministry.

The immediate past president of the board of the International Coach Federation (Leda Turai Petrauskiene, MCC) points out the difference between being a local leader and a leader of an international organization. 

For many years, I served on a chapter board. Based on my personal experience and my conversations with chapter boards and ICF Members, I observed that from the local point of view, the perspective is always more homogeneous. From the boardroom, the picture tends to look more complex, because we have to take into account many factors, such as the different size and the various length of existence of chapters; different legal, economic and political factors; language issues; etc. Juggling with these numerous factors, things can never be perfect, and it is not easy to find solutions, which feel equally fair for everyone, which satisfy equally everyone’s needs and which are at the same time objective, defendable and of rigorous professional standards. Therefore, the importance of listening to each other and taking multiple perspectives in order to see the picture in its fullest cannot be overemphasized. 

(http://coachfederation.org/blog/index.php/9425/?inf_contact_key=94017387f45ca83a244b1095911ff28088fb17d01e49d6ea8d3bedeb36e5fa2e)

If we spend our whole life in one community or congregation our perspective on "normal" becomes limited to that particular order of things. Regardless of where I have lived, I have known people who had never gone to the closest big city, nor worshipped in another congregation. Life looks so very simple from inside the cocoon of the local community or congregation. If required to step away from that which is most familiar the world can feel chaotic, complex and disorienting. It is difficult to function in the new environment.

I had such an experience in my younger years. From first grade through high school I went to the same school, and for a while, the whole school was housed in one multilevel building. My graduation class had 82 members. My first experience of higher education was a freshman year at Ohio State University with 15,000 members of that freshman class. I had been a fairly large fish in the small pond of my high school but was as small as a newly born guppy in the Ohio State University environment. I was totally overwhelmed and at the end of the year was invited not to return for my sophomore year.

Such is the experience of many people from smaller membership congregations who are chosen to serve in the more inclusive councils of the church. There are more people, more complex issues, even issues which were never dealt with or mentioned in their home congregation. Frequently they become disoriented and overwhelmed. A colleague wonders if we are asking folks to function at a higher level of Maslow's hierarchy than they are equipped to function. Another colleague speaks in game theory language of assisting people to "level up."

There is a way to help people make the transition, to level up, to gain a larger perspective. It is not forcing them to climb and dive off the 10-meter diving  board. The view can be overwhelming from that height if one has never been there before. Neither is it to insist they stand at the poolside and attempt to describe what can only be seen from the 10-meter board. The ideal would be to increase the height and asking them to describe how they feel and what they see at each successive level.

According to the Urban Dictionary "leveling up" is defined as, When a player of a video game has earned enough experience points to acquire a new level in a skill or skills. Often is accompanied by the ability to wield new weaponry, access new places, or begin new assignments.

Early in my ministry, I served on the Council committee which dealt with pastor/ congregation conflicts and strategic planning. The staff member for that committee frequently took me with him. At first, I merely observed. On the way home, we would debrief the meeting. He was helping me articulate my observations and what lessons I was gaining from the observation. After a while, he began giving me part of the meeting to lead. Again, on the way home, we would debrief the meeting. After some time of leveling up, the staff member put me in lead for the whole meeting with him as the observer. The debriefing of the meeting happened on the way home. Finally, he would send me out with another member of the committee. The methodology was that he worked with me to "level up," and I then worked with others to "level up" them. 

Pastors and other church leaders, who are new to their position or when facing new issues, can "level up" with effective coaching. Those newly chosen to participate in the more inclusive councils would find their service less overwhelming with coaching in their first months or year of service. 

LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE

    

   

Illustration used by permission www.greenberg-art.com

    Did you know that a fiscal conservative and an economic liberal are the same things? I did not either until I started doing some research. An elder in one of the congregations I served in the 80s once challenged me after worship. He said, "In light of that sermon it is obvious you have never read an economics book." I responded, holding up my Bible, "Oh, I have, but it is a different one than you are referring to." 

    I do not remember what the sermon was about. It probably had something to do with Jesus' social ethic which included the rich being responsible to alleviate the suffering of the poor. I would not be surprised if it dealt with the Lazarus and Dives story. (Luke 16:19-31) Regardless, it was obvious to him that I was a social liberal and not an economic liberal. 

    Writing on the site www.quora.com, Michael Danielson states, "Fiscal conservatism generally means 'being as responsible as possible with your money,' including passing balanced budgets, paying off your debt, and not engaging in deficit spending. ... Economic liberalism, similarly, generally means 'allowing economic decisions to be made at the individual level, rather than at the group level.'" Fiscal Conservatism and Economic Liberalism More than the locus of economic decisions, economic liberalism says, "You can have whatever you can afford. If you cannot afford it, society is not responsible for providing it for you (with certain exceptions like national defense)." 

    Since the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled that corporations are individuals, by extension they are solely responsible to and for themselves. It is in their interest to keep costs, including wages, down so profit will be even higher. The concept of social responsibility plays a very, very small role in corporate ethics. "Laborers, if you want retirement income you save for it; if you want medical coverage, you pay for it; if you want a living wage, forget it." The rich get richer. The middle class vanishes. The poor barely subsist. 

    I do not know about you, but to me, that sounds like the old feudal system. Roy Orbison, in 1962, recorded the song Working for the Man. In common parlance "working for the man" means working for the government or other entity in authority in menial, oppressive conditions. It could be a slave working on a plantation, as a miner, as one laying rails, working in a sweatshop, working on a penal chain gang, or any other job providing little if any, of an opportunity for advancement. 

    Encumbered with debt, stuck in dead-end jobs, static or declining wages, increasing taxes, those in the lower and middle economic groupings have a depth of rage. Any promise of things being made better is grasped, even when not based in reality. In the mid-Appalachian region where steel mills and coal mines have all but disappeared, a promise to bring back coal rings in ears dying to hear such empty promises as something to "take to the bank." 

    The Church must call the gluttonous greed of "the man" sin of the first degree. The Church must emphasize communal, social responsibility, of caring for the "least of these." The Church must call upon the lords of government, finance and supersized corporations to improve the lives of those in the lowest rungs of the social ladder. The Church must be a conscience in a secular society. If we take Scripture seriously we must remember that in Hebrew and Greek the word righteous means justice. The demand for justice must be our clarion call

WHAT WAS HE THINKIN'?

In the aftermath of the horrific event in Las Vegas, one of the recurring questions by law enforcement and the general public is "What was he thinking?" Ironically, a country song by Dierks Bentley refrains the question "What was I thinkin'? He tells the story about getting carried away by his lustful desires which led to problems. At one point he says, I know what I was feelin' But what was I thinkin'? (Dierks Bentley, 2003, Capitol Records) When our children were young and would do something not so smart I often asked them, "What were you thinking?" 

It appears the gunman left no overt clues as to why he decided to kill and wound so many people. On the news today, it was revealed this was not the first time he had rented rooms in a hotel overlooking an outside musical venue. It is obvious from his planning and preparation that he was not stupid. He had reconnoitered the venue; booked a two-bedroom suite giving him two angles of fire; laid in a cache of weapons and ammunition; and set up cameras which would give him a view of the hallway outside his closed door. Still, we question, "what was he thinkin'?" Another way of asking the question is "what was his state of mind?" We may never know for sure. 

With any mass slaughter and wounding of innocents, we look for explanations. We knee-jerk to blaming the instrument of the slaughter, in this case, guns. In Rwanda it was machetes. In Germany, it was gas chambers. In other places, it was chemical weapons. We want rational answers for the irrational. The history of our country contains many instances when otherwise "good people" have been involved in mass shootings which have taken many lives. People of the First Nation and African-Americans have been killed in great numbers just because they were not white descendants of Europeans. In the last few decades, the mass killings have continued, even of those of European descent. 

I think there is only one explanation. In the perpetrators of mass killing and wounding we see evil enfleshed. In our rational, scientific world we seldom use the reasoning for hideous actions as the personification of evil. The Apostle writes, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12, NIV, http://biblehub.com/ephesians/6-12.htm)  

IT IS TIME, MAKE THE CALL

Many years (forty-one and a few months) ago, I was serving a yoked pastorate in Ohio. Most of the mainline pastors in the county served as volunteer chaplains at the county seat hospital. We usually served for a week, two or three times a year. It gave me a great opportunity to not only serve the patients, but also the staff and doctors.

One week when serving my turn in the hospital, my wife was admitted to give birth to our daughter. In fact, that night a record for the number of births in that hospital was set. After our daughter was delivered and my wife was to be wheeled to her room, I was trailing along to go with her. One of the nurses grabbed my arm and said, "Grab the other end of that bed (pointing to one other than the one my wife was on) and help me move this one 'cause she's ready to deliver now and I need help." I did. It was a hectic night.

The next day I was in the hospital to visit my wife and our daughter, and to fulfill my responsibilities as chaplain. During the course of the day, two simultaneous "code reds" (cardio arrest) were called. One was in the ICU and one in a lower level of the hospital in the x-ray department. There were family members present only for the ICU incident. It was a small hospital which meant whichever doctors were in the house responded to a "code red." The doctor who responded to the call in the x-ray department happened to be our pediatrician. The doctor in ICU was a cardiologist. The event in the ICU settled down quickly and the family was relieved that things had gone well this time.

It had been quite some time since I had checked to see how the situation in the x-ray department was going/had gone. I walked up to the open door and looked in. Our pediatrician was performing CPR compressions. It was obvious that he had been at it a long time. As I stood there watching, one of the nurses laid her hand on the doctor's shoulder and said, "Doctor, it is time, make the call." With a very deep sigh, he looked at the clock and pronounced the time of death. He then looked over and saw me standing in the doorway. Pointing to me he said to the others in the room, "Do you know what he named his daughter who was born last night? He named her life. (Chaya from the Hebrew for life.) Thank you all, I'm going upstairs where there is life." The doctor and I walked to the maternity ward together in silence.

Sometimes pastoring a fragile congregation can be like the situation for both of the doctors. In one life was snatched from the jaws of death. In the other, no matter how long the compressions had been done or how much longer they might be done, the call has to be made. Time of death, 19 September 2017 1430 hours. Yet, in another place life goes on.

The first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism are:
Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. ... Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

In this assurance, when it is time, we can make the call.