I’m not sure about you, but I walked around the last few days with part of my heart outside my body in a different place with 30,000 people. That place was Detroit, MI, as I watched through social media and livestream the energy and events of the 2015 ELCA Youth Gathering. In 2009 while I was at Pacific Lutheran University loving my college life, I was asked to be one of the adult (I know, right?) chaperons to our home-church’s first journey to an ELCA Youth Gathering. The one in 2009 was in New Orleans, which was especially poignant with Hurricane Katrina coming through in 2005, and relief efforts were still occurring. I was crazy enough to say “Yes” and off we went – I think it was four chaperons and 15-20 youth. We had a connection in Houston. We arrived in New Orleans.
37,000 Lutherans packed in the Superdome at the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering.
It was nuts. Welcome to 37,000 Lutheran youth stuffed into a concentrated few city blocks, for five days. We bought out all the Subway bread in like a day. We poured thousands upon thousands of service hours onto the city – made possible by the servants who were already there, helping neighbors, helping families, and helping communities recover. We drove by cemeteries full of only headstones above ground that demonstrated their necessity – because in the South they risk rushing hurricane-force floods that can unearth corpses. We helped a community stuff the backpacks of their tiny neighbors who would go back to school in a few weeks to a school with still no roof because it had blown off in the hurricane a few years earlier.
In the large-scale evening programming in the Superdome, we heard from Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber who many of the kids’ parents didn’t want her to speak, and yet she came, all
Those I chaperoned, rocking out to the music and worship at the Superdome. We did a shampoo commercial while we were there too. (JK)
of her, with her tattoos, swearing-like-a-truck-driver mouth, a history of alcohol abuse, and a passionate heart for God’s work, and shared, “That’s what it looks like to be a Lutheran.” We heard a letter from the President of the USA, Barack Obama, read out loud to these Lutherans, that articulated his gratitude for these Lutheran young folks, and all they do to serve, help, and share with those in need, in this city, in this time.
There are things I won’t forget and feelings I can’t shake from those five days.
Your younger congregational members just got off the plane. Yes, they’re your youth, but you can’t stick them back in the youth room. The things they saw in Detroit, they talked with locals who served them more than they served the locals in Detroit, they felt the sense of “aliveness” in Detroit; that can’t be contained to one room.
I ask you, don’t ask, How was the youth gathering? (because that’s just about as productive as “How was work?” or “How was school?”)
Instead, focus on engaging stories (here’s an example) rather than asking a blanket question. Settle into the space that only comes when you accept that the one before you is just as much a Child of God as you, and wonder:
Start it off with, “It’s so good to see you! Hey I have a question…” –
a. Tell me a story of when you helped someone during the gathering.
b. Tell me a story of when you knew you had something to say about God, whether you said it at the time or didn’t.
c. Tell me a story of when you gave all you have and all you are in Detroit.
d. Tell me a story of how God came into focus for you at the gathering.
e. Tell me a story of when you knew you had something to contribute.
f. Tell me a story of someone who changed your mind.
g. Tell me a story of when you knew you mattered, and the gathering wouldn’t have been the same without you.
Now the last prompt requires you to trust them, and also that they trust you. If it’s there, great. If it’s not, make it a goal to demonstrate consistent trustworthiness, so that in time, they might answer this truthfully. But for now I ask you to wonder these things with those who came back from Detroit, from the youngest to the oldest – chaperons and coordinators included!
The truth is, these young adults were changed by seeing all the 30,000 ways to be Lutheran.
If we truly believe in an ever-present, transformational God, than God is up to God’s creative messy, molding work all the time. It’s okay to feel terrified and awe-inspired by this. I know I am. Maybe you were changed while they were gone? I guess the storytelling goes both ways. Know they’re changed, and you’re changed, and the knowledge and articulation of that change happens now, happens next week, happens next year, and/or in decades to come. Be patient. But don’t take advantage of patience – their energy and love for this new world is waiting to be poured out, to the people they love most. You.
So, see what happens; don’t ask them how it was, ask them to tell their story – because no one will tell it like they will.
This is a sermon I preached on Proverbs 8:1-11, 22-36 during a summer series about the Psalms and Wisdom Literature at Woodlake Lutheran Church in Richfield this weekend. The lead pastor was looking for some more preachers as they look for an associate pastor, and I said “Sure!” This lead pastor was also the pastor at our first church-away-from-home church in Minnesota in 2010, so that was fun. He’s never on the interwebs, but Fred: Thanks. I thank you, and blame you, for lots. P.S. I cut off like 8 inches of my hair after this. I’m not sure what that means, but I did it.
Hi, my name is Allison. You might remember me preaching here a few months ago. You probably know my husband pretty well by now, Timothy Siburg, who is the Intentional Interim Director of Music, Worship, and Stewardship.
I’m a Master of Divinity student at Luther Seminary, working toward ordination in our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. One of my last credits is being completed this summer in a different kind of classroom for 11 weeks: a hospital. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you any gross hospital stories, mostly because I haven’t come across that many (knock on wood). I’m a chaplain at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, and as crazy as it is, my class is almost done. The start feels like years ago, but in a weird way I can’t believe how fast it’s gone.
Today’s a little bittersweet for me. This is the last sermon I’ll be preaching in Minnesota and at Woodlake Lutheran as we move in a few weeks to my internship congregation in Washington state near family. Thanks for accepting me, not just as a staff member’s spouse but as a person all on my own. It’s been a blessing. So here’s what I have to say:
My chaplain orientation was at the end of May. I sat in front of my computer with all of the Allina healthcare system chaplains in the Twin Cities metro and we learned how to record our visits with patients in the hospital-wide chart system. Imagine the fanciest Excel page you’ve ever seen, color-coded, almost a mini-internet of every detail you could ever want on a single patient. Yes, I am legally-binded to not share details about any patients, so don’t get too excited, this isn’t going to get too juicy.
Now on that first day I clicked on the page that showed specifically all the patients at Abbott who had requested a chaplain visit.
My heart broke. In the weeks to come, reading about diagnoses, blood pressure measurements, social work records, and physicians notes would become a daily routine, but in this first encounter, my breath was almost taken away.
First, in this feeling of emptiness I thought, “this is what God must feel like.” Anyone see the movie, “Bruce Almighty,” where Jim Carrey’s character is trying to answer all of God’s emails, and is just goes on forever? That’s what this felt like.
Which led to my next feeling: anger. Who was on this spiritual care staff anyway? Didn’t they do any work? It’s like assuming pastors have nothing to do during the week after the Sunday service – HA. But in the moment I had no empathy for my colleagues. All I had was contempt. I didn’t want to understand their meetings, their self-care, their preparation, complex visiting schedule, and under-staffed situation, most likely due to budget constraints. Which led me to my third feeling:
Shame. I must have to become the most super pastor-chaplain to do all this stuff. Notice that sentence started with “I,” not “we,” as in, why don’t we join the movement of care already happening at this place. In the face of my anxiety I put all the weight on my shoulders. Not only feeling afraid of the unknown (walking into a sick person’s room, probably blood spurting onto my clothes, which by the way was an incorrect assumption, that hasn’t happened yet), but feeling inadequate as I mentally compared myself to all the fabulous pastors I’ve known in my life. My first tactic then, naturally, was to imitate those pastors I knew, my uncle, my friends, my home pastor, my professors: walk like them, lead like them, and talk like them. You see where this is going.
I was in need of a little wisdom.
Today, we’re going to sing: “Wisdom calls throughout the city/ knows our hunger and in pity/ gives her loving in invitation/ to the banquet of salvation.”*
What a pleasant picture. You can just taste it now, right? Maybe some spaghetti. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. But wait, the pasta’s a little crunchy like it’s boiled too short. The potatoes taste a little bland like there’s not enough butter. My grandma would have a problem with that, and honestly so do I. I guess I’m having a hard time tasting it.
Wisdom! What is this banquet of salvation? Who is wisdom? I know I’m in seminary and supposed to see this perfectly abundant feast, and yet I see an abundance of violence around me, people being shot in church in South Carolina, churches being set on fire, earthquakes striking nations that cannot sustain the damage to their buildings and infrastructure, college graduates finding work that only barely makes a dent in the heap of student loans whose interest only climbs year by year. I see best laid plans in the world, in our lives, falling apart.
As I read about the book of Proverbs I learned that it was written to men to seek out “the good life.” It is a book that was written by bureaucrats, full of their wisdom and has folk wisdom woven into its pages. This is a beautiful image for how God weaves the haves and have-nots to serve the world and make a difference; but I’m just not seeing it. Wisdom takes the form of a woman, some argue, to lift up women’s work, women’s essential work in Israelite history of teaching children, caring for the home, and supporting the family, but even this makes me feel like women are then told to dream only in one particular way. Yes, woman, you are wisdom – but Jesus, he was a man, and we most often use male words to describe God, he, himself, our Father. These ideas and questions still stick with me. What does it mean to be the same sex/gender as an embodiment of God?
So where is the banquet of salvation and will I know it when I see it? Wisdom, what are you inviting me to see?
I think that God is saying that wisdom is not something stuffed in the past, but alive in the now. God is speaking through woman wisdom when she says, “Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates.” This means we are radically together – we truly are one and are never alone. Wisdom is with us, in those around us, and in us. Wisdom was with God in the very beginning acts of creation in Genesis, and Wisdom is with us now as we try to make sense of today. Wisdom is with us when we try to answer, “How was your day today?” and we try and share with our loved ones the meaning and “take-away” of the day. Wisdom is with us in the ebs and flows of daily work. If there’s anything the book of Proverbs is trying to do, with all its voices that created it, this book is proclaiming, choose life, choose it daily, and choose the good life.
When I looked at that patient list in my chaplain orientation I tried to calm my worry by creating a solution to my problem all on my own. Wisdom in that moment was, I’m sure was laughing, saying, “Ok, you try that for a while.”
Through the weeks since, my questions to nurses and doctors of, “How are they doing?” asking about patients, have turned, as I’m asked by the nurses and doctors, “How are they doing?” Some days I’m giving spiritual care. On other days, on every day, the nurses are giving spiritual care. On other days the social worker is giving spiritual care. Sometimes the custodian is giving spiritual care. They might not call it that, but when I see my colleagues take time to listen attentively to a patient’s story, walk with them in their pain, celebrations, or boredom, they are caring for that patient’s spirit. We are not alone as we care. I am not alone as I care. You are not alone as you care.
A nurse asked me recently while I was charting on a computer, “What’s going on?” and I pointed to the room of a retired baker who I just left, shouting, “The Twins game is on in there!” He smiled and we paused in the swirl of activity and asked about each other’s day, big questions, and where we grew up. Now, this was after a month of me approaching other staff for conversation or ideas about which patients to see. It took persistence and showing up consistently, but finally nurses and staff were coming up to me to talk about big things or little things.
I felt like I was finally being seen.
Someone saw me, and I’m betting that others do too, and have seen me all along. The way we relate to each other is changing. Our tone of teamwork and passing the baton to each other is changing – like we are co-creating the vibe of our hospital unit. We are shaping how we show up to leaders, and this could only be made possible by creating a new reality together, through the power of Wisdom and the God that works with her and through her. The banquet of salvation, of the good life, is within the gestures of generosity and time set apart to see the staff there as workers yes, but first, humans, and children of God. Helping hands are everywhere if you just see each other.
Help abounds. Kindness abounds. Hard words, true words abounds. Just a taste of this banquet – just a taste; it just might be among us, in the serving, in the leading, in the caring, in the trusting.
But, like, I have just rationalized this whole thing. It’s up here in my head, I can see the banquet. Ok yes, in this line of work, caring for sick people and the fabulous staff, yes, yes I get it.
But I don’t feel it. Where is the banquet of salvation? Wisdom, what are you inviting me to see?
We read today Wisdom “takes her stand” – at the crossroads, beside the gates of town, the gates of the city. Maybe she’s inviting us to see the crossroads at which we stand, within us. What does it feel like at that crossroad?
You’re at one. I know you are. I’m at my own too. What does it feel like to stand there?
Know that you stand at the same place as Wisdom.
She cries through you, “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live… I was brought forth by God, I was there when he drew a circle on the face of the deep… when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight.”
You are daily in God’s delight daily and at all times. You were there. You were brought forth by God. You are a master worker. Through you, wisdom is at work. Wisdom lies in you. What does that feel like, to know wisdom lies in you?
Wisdom takes her stand. In God’s royal priesthood we love and care through our work, our lives, on behalf of those entrusted to our care. I know it’s hard to stand at those crossroads. It feels uncomfortable. But stay there. Stand there. Feel changed there. Know that you are seen there, even if by no one else than by God and the Wisdom God creates with. Wisdom lies within you, in whatever shape that takes.
So in closing, I got a call at 2:30am the other day for a family who wanted a chaplain to be with them as their grandpa died. So I came into a packed room, expecting to see silent, solemn faces, staring into the deep. Instead I heard laughter. I heard stories about grandpa. Yes, there were tears and big cries, but there were memories and gratitude shared in a sense of abundance that I have rarely experienced. They cared for one another as a family does as one passes into eternal life.
So I’m standing there – what do I do? What wisdom do I have to share here? I have a Bible – so what? I have an order of service for healing or something – so what? These people need hugs, not Bible verses shot at them. So I put down my Bible. We gave each other hugs. I gave them oil to draw hearts and crosses on their grandpa’s forehead & share a word of love and gratitude. This is usually a ‘healing’ service, but he was about gone. His heart machine was toast. What do we do? How do we define healing? What is quality of life?
Wisdom takes her stand. She says, “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.” I was there when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, like a master worker, I was daily his delight.
Wisdom shows up when we show up. Wisdom, all the different kinds of wisdom, shows up at our crossroads and says put down your instruction manual. Put down your guards, your solutions, your fears. I want you as only you can be. If you feel like crying, cry. If you feel like telling a story, tell a story. If you feel like coloring in a coloring book at 4:30 with squirrelly grandkids in a hospital conference room, do that too. If you feel like hugging, hug. But in all of your big and small decisions, wisdom call us to choose life. Stand at your crossroads, listening to wisdom’s weaving in and weaving out, proclaiming life in the Lord and living like you mean it. See the banquet as wisdom takes her stand, this day and forever more.
*”We Eat the Bread of Teaching,” by Omer Westendorf & Jerry Rae Brubaker, (World Library Publications, 1998).
My blog will keep going, but my reflection series from my “Adults and Lifelong Learning” class is done! This post is a little long, but stay with me! It’s been so fun to learn, laugh, and reflect with Prof. Mary Hess this Spring as I complete my Master of Divinity degree. What’s next? I’ll give an update when I have a clear update, ha! … serenity prayer, anyone?
This class has been a significant place of learning in my brain and heart, so thank you Mary! Thanks to Timothy, my spouse, for our conversations that often have been the impetus for many of my blog writings, and bigger life thinking – we’re shaping our story together, Timothy, and my gratefulness is too deep for one sentence (and I thought you were the one who uses run-on sentences). Thanks too to YOU, my friends and family in learning and leading, here in Minnesota, in Washington, in between, and in farther off places than that! Stay in the arena and keep asking questions and leading out a place of hope and passion. I can’t think of a better quote to sum up my hope, and for us, as big-hearted, broken, beautiful people:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails whiledaring greatly. – Teddy Roosevelt.
I shamelessly pulled this from Brene Brown‘s TED talk, and this quote inspires me to push myself out of my comfort zone, and I think for her too. I think I can safely say that if you read my blog with any regularity, you saw that coming. Oh Dr. Brown. I cherish your email reply to me, even though it was only 12 words long: “Hi Allison, Check out Grounded Theory by Glaser and Strauss. Thanks, Brené.” Yes, she put an accent mark above the “e”. I literally just sighed. Some day we will change the world together, Brené, some day.
Anyway, as Mary and I were batting around possible topics for this final reflection, she suggested looking at a parable through the lens of what I’ve been learning about how people make meaning an all sorts of varied and different ways.
We literally were sitting like this (not really) when we dreamed up this post. But this is Mary & me!
I said parables are cool, but what about the experience of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well? Talk about two worlds smashing together. A male, a Jewish religious leader in an authoritative position. A woman, unaccompanied, who has been married five times, from Samaria. Running into each other at a well during the hottest part of the day in the Middle East. In the spirit of the Major League Baseball season starting, this is a pickle.
Just so you know, this isn’t an attempt to put a Jesus-bandaid on lifelong learning. I could quote the Bible with glowing images of our beautiful creation, or little smiling children running to Jesus. But I don’t think Scripture was meant to be cherry-picked in order to support a point. At least, I don’t think that gives Scripture enough credit, or really, it’s own voice.
The Samaritan woman at the well is important to consider as we wrap up this class on how people learn and make meaning, because it shows our insatiable desire to be known by our people and by God (and yes, I’m using the Bible to make a point, but as a wider, frequent theme of the Bible I’m going to say it’s ok). This is not a Bible study or a one-size-fits-all reflection. I want to show that there are a lot (a bajillion?) of points of views on the Bible, and as people in the buzz of spiritual questions/reflection, our task is to be empathetic with each other’s ways of making meaning, no matter how well thought out, complex, or black and white they might be. Why? Because your neighbor wants to be loved (spoiler alert: and is worthy of love), just as much as you are.
The Northern Lights, in a diversity of color like our diversity of reflections on the Bible.
Curiously enough, this is the space and complexity that Jesus finds himself in when he runs into this woman at a well thousands of years ago. Jesus and the Samaritan woman aren’t just neighbors from different sides of town (80-90+% of US citizens live in urban spaces, think about how hard it is to wrap our heads around this?). They are from different nomad, rural traditions and cultures – Jesus, a Jew from Bethlehem, and this woman from Samaria who the writer of John shares little about. These are cultures with deeply embedded communities and practices, and histories that root them not only in centuries but in millennia.
As much as I am scared for them as a former camp counselor (for legal reasons, rule of three), I’m scared for them if their people, or their neighbors, or their family comes and finds them: a woman and a man from differing and clashing cultures speaking alone. Jesus’ crucifixion (and this woman’s almost-sure stoning to death) could have come quicker than we know them to be. I know, the Bible’s gross, but who are we kidding, isn’t our world now, today?
In case you print this out, have fun coloring this inaccurate portrayal of the Samaritan woman! Ok that’s my sass, now we can move on.
This is a text that comes up in a lectionary (a widely published rotation of Bible passages assigned for each Sunday) that somewhere around 4 million+ ELCA Lutherans and other Christians hear every three years. Many of those people hear in the sermon that the point of this story in the 4th chapter of John is that Jesus saves, even adulterous women.
I don’t want to belittle this perspective, but with some deeper digging into this Scriptural text, I realized that this woman was a survivor of a system that punished women. This kind of thinking that men are good and women are bad is the black and white thinking we find in 3rd order thinking (according to Robert Kegan, the author of In Over our Heads which has informed my learning this semester). Just to refresh our thinking, here’s what 1-5 orders of thinking/consciousness means:
To be clear I’m not saying that those in a more 3rd order of thinking are sexist. Not at all. I am saying that having a 3rd order frame of mind, and perpetuating systems that function in 3rd order frames, provides a fertile environment for victimization, “us vs. them,” and over all “othering.” I think the frequent sermon on this text screams that our church, its cultures, communities, leaders, and conversations, are often functioning in a 3rd order space. There is only room for the conclusion that Jesus is the ultimate good, and therefore this woman is the ultimate bad that Jesus was merciful enough to pardon and save.
We have to remember that the point of this model is to provoke empathy in each of us for those using the same frame as us, and for people who are at different frames. Me saying, although I am tempted to, “The conclusion that ‘The Samaritan woman has committed adultery and is therefore only just barely save-able by Jesus, and bless her heart she is’ is stupid and I’m never coming back when this preacher is preaching again,” is not empathetic nor pushing us toward being in community like God calls us to be.
So what do we do? What do we do when we go to a church, for the 1000th time or the 1st time, and hear a sermon that is close-minded and so black and white that we couldn’t even stay to the end of the service?
Do we shake the pastor’s hand at the end and say “Good sermon” or “That was a terrible sermon! How about you try living as a first-century woman who is only valued for her slave labor and ability to give birth as she gets shuffled from brother to brother”? Or, do we come back next Sunday, say nothing, and instead connect with your friend back home via Facebook Messanger, only using Pusheen emoticons?
If you were wondering, yes, this was a very intense conversation.
Honestly I don’t like any of these options. They scream anger, passivity, insecurity, and isolation. This isn’t what Jesus wanted for his followers 2,000 years later, this isn’t what Kegan would want as people use his model to examine how we make meaning, and this isn’t what I want as someone who doesn’t know what the future holds but knows that we are made our fullest selves together, working toward one mission, not apart in isolation.
Hey, do you have time for coffee? I’m often free Monday mornings, Tuesday afternoons…
We meet at Starbucks (of course), and instead of undercutting their sermon with historical critical analysis, cultural appropriation, and gender dynamics in first-century Palestine, I ask:
Where are you from? … Does your family still live there? … How did you meet him/her? (if relevant) … What brought you to where you work/study/lead/learn now? … Wait, how did you get from there to here? … This might be an odd question, but why is that important to you?
My point is that we have to listen to each other’s stories. I wonder if a significant percentage of pastors and people-oriented roles have experienced hurt in one way or another in their life. This is why they serve, which is beautiful. But it’s also why they sometimes find comfort in 3rd order thinking, in black and white paradigms, because their structured thinking gives them comfort. It gives safety.
I’m learning that the biggest way that I can change someone’s hurtful, harmful, or dark behavior, theology, mind, or way of thinking is not through teaching, nor sermon-ing. It’s by example. It’s by showing up. It’s doing little things when I think no one is watching. It’s preaching when I don’t think anyone is listening (accentuated by a little girl last year asking me after a service, “Who made God?” and I had no answer); it’s recycling when I could have just dumped it in the trash; it’s writing when I think no one is reading, it’s dancing when I think no one is watching, it’s caring for my body and eating/buying healthy when I think no one is paying attention, it’s caring for and filling with pride for my spouse, one of my most cherished vocations, when I it feels like too few people care what lies in his future.
Lecturing someone who has preached from a 3rd order frame of mind about the “adulterous” Samaritan woman will probably not make a huge impact. It might. But I think what’s more impactful, in lifelong friendship, in lifelong collegeial relationships, in lifelong communities (we’re just a small portion of the church!), in lifelong learning, is showing a different frame of mind, not lecturing about a different frame of mind.
Growing into a 4th order frame of mind looks like venturing into the unknown with questions, wonderings, and possibilities.
This looks like me offering my historical/cultural analysis in my own leading, designing learning experiences, and preaching, and going back to school to get the credential that shows my church my value and leadership. Yes, there is a tinge of hurt in that last sentence, that it’s only through ordination that I am entrusted with leading in sermon-ing, and leading a community in experiencing communion and baptism, and leading in other ways… so far. Times might change. Systems might change. Expectations might change. It’s through showing up for coffee and modeling a different kind of meaning-making that might be prompt perhaps the most significant learning of all.
For reference and varying views on the Samaritan woman:
John by Karoline Lewis, Fortress Press: 2014. The Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe, Westminster/John Knox Press: 1992. John by Gerard S. Sloyan, John Knox Press, 1988.
This week I want to consider how this class has impacted my understanding of my 6-session, small group, faith-based Storytellers curriculum. Yes, I write curriculum, for fun, for faith communities. I didn’t like what was out there so I made my own. That’s not true, or all the way, I just wanted to contribute my own particular flavor to the mix. It’s amazing how few resources are out there for adult curriculum but MONSTEROUS amounts of resources of Sunday school and children’s curriculum. Perhaps an example of the vacuum of churches understanding the value of lifelong learning? Let me rephrase that: The church does not often place a high value on adults’ capacity to learn and widen their worldviews. Granted, another programmatic need is not what churches look for. But this isn’t a program and the need for adults to feel affirmed and valued in their continued learning of themselves, their neighbors, and their world in this day and age is just too important to ignore. (/off soapbox)
So, quickly let me summarize Storytellers and how it came to be (in it’s current form):
In my commute to Trinity Lutheran in Stillwater, MN from St. Paul in 2014 I heard a TED talk that featured storytellers like Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her experience of being stereotyped by her college roommate led her to write and speak about the danger of the single story. She argued that the danger of a single story of a person is that the whole self, the complex self, is watered down to a single characteristic, a single image, or a single story. Danger! I agree with Adichie, we are all complex, have many stories, and have many dimensions, and change and grow from one day to the next.
I wanted to make a tool that helped congregations come to this same conclusion: to see their stories collected in the form of word art, displayed in a public space so they would remember, often, their identity, and that God’s story is speaking through all of their stories. So, in concert with some strategic thinking going on as a staff, I created Storytellers based on the five emerging values of the congregation. Each value is embedded in each of the five prompts. Each are explored, one per session, with the phrasing, “Tell me a story of… when you served your neighbor,” or, “Tell me a story of… when you realized you had something to say about God,” etc. We piloted it as a staff, and I asked participants at the ELCA Youth Network Extravaganza in Detriot to pilot in their congregations too, in their small groups.
Imagine this folded in half like a booklet, full of doodles and stories and phrases like “I remember when…”
I think what I’ve learned about the cultural expectation of adults has a major impact on how I hope people will interact with the Storytellers curriculum. For instance, how might someone in a 3rd order consciousness interact with Storytellers? How might someone in a 4th order consciousness interact with Storytellers? If you need reminding what these 1-5 levels of consciousness are as outlined in Robert Kegan’s book In Over Our Heads, watch this easy-to-follow illustration by illustrator, pastor and PhD candidate (Luther Sem, Congregational Mission and Leadership) Steve Thomason:
So according to Kegan, someone with a third order consciousness can differentiate between themselves and another person, but they also have the ability to abstract, or have and create ideas. They know themselves (self-conscious), but they don’t yet see their ability to self-author or design/create new realities for themselves. They can place themselves in society, but don’t see society as a place or people that is impacted by them. Kegan equates this consciousness as characteristic of the traditionalist (pre-modern) era.
Fourth order consciousness builds on third order’s person ability to abstract by seeing themselves as capable of self-authorship. They see that the society they inhabit is just one society among many societies in the world. They start to see the relationships between relationships – or what you might say they ‘acknowledge boundaries’. Kegan equates this consciousness as characteristic of the modern era.
Now between these two, it’s easy to say “4 is better!” But I have to remember that this model is not for the sake of identifying whose better, but where are we at for the sake of being empathetic with our neighbors. Not to “feel sorry for them” but truly, to walk in their shoes, and demonstrate genuine empathy for each other in a world that is often hostile to different ways of knowing or different ways or learning or “being smart.” I think for Storytellers, I have to step back and think through, “What’s being asked of participants?” They’re asked to be honest, vulnerable, reflective on their life through the lens of these prompts, and see themselves as complex individuals with lots of stories and layers. Basically, they have to ask “Who am I?”
Storytellers asks participants to reflect on their life in an identity-forming way. I think this might create some anxiety within third-order thinkers because it’s asking them to not only be conscious of themselves, but be self-authoring, a trait of a 4th order thinker. But what Storytellers could do is provide a frame or a structure within which they can explore these big reflective questions (as expressed by my Prof. Mary Hess). The structure might ease their anxiety, and the questions or prompts might offer just the right amount of challenge to help them move into a 4th order way of thinking.
Photo by Markus Spiske / Design by Alice Mongkongllite for BuzzFeed
Now I don’t believe one small group curriculum can shift a person’s thinking overnight, but it could be one step, albeit small. It might help a person see that in the midst of all their stories, and all their friends’ stories, is a story of God redeeming, sustaining, and breathing through creation – breathing through them.
I think Kegan’s model of the 1st-5th consciousnesses could really provide a richness for thinking through more deeply how a participant might interact with Storytellers. Even though it might be small, it is kind of cool to think that something I created could make a difference, at least a small difference, in how someone sees their life and other’s lives as valuable and beautiful.
Welcome to post number two of four for my independent study on adults and lifelong learning! (cue rainbow streamers, balloons, confetti) I had a lot of fun collecting my thoughts and questions in my first post on describing the current situation of adults in American life. It was heavily informed from the first half of Robert Kegan’s In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.
In this second reflection I want to build on the last by wondering why churches should care about lifelong learning, and the adults that would take advantage of it (at least, I hope would). I finished In Over Our Heads and it pains me to report that the title is truly a statement, not a question – we are in over our heads. But fear not! The opportunities to work together and walk alongside each other as adult learners are tremendous and bring me a lot of hope.
Prof. Mary Hess pointed me to a doctorate student who did a “live draw” youtube video, outlining Kegan’s framework on how individuals know/understand/interact with the world (he calls it “levels of consciousness”) Check it out.
Now as I nerd out about how awesome lifelong learning is, it’s important that I share part of my story (unless you already know it from earlier posts!). I taught adult small group learning experiences at Trinity Lutheran Church in Stillwater, MN before I jumped back into seminary life. When I arrived their lifelong learning pastor helped me stretch my wings a bit and helped me grow a curriculum that she and others created in the past few years. Working with older adults, hockey dads and moms, 40-year old civil servants, engineers, teenagers, bright young women about to leave for college – these lifelong learning opportunities mattered to these folks, and I’ll always be grateful for their willingness to try those experiments with me as I facilitated and created some small group curriculum (and preached and did some one-on-one coaching).
Another part of my story is that my mom was an elementary school teacher. Now she’s a tutor and has a huge passion to help kids learn, from classroom basics to gardening and helping them be eco-conscious, to building up leadership in kids (like she did for my sister and I for which I’m grateful). Growing up with a mom as a teacher will always inform how I see that learning is and will always be important for individuals as well as communities everywhere.
So now that the “cat’s out of the bag,” learning is important to me and how I understand my unfolding story in the world. Whether you know it or not, your openness to learn, in various contexts, greatly influences your confidence, growth, and sense of self. Whether the church knows it or not, its peoples’ openness to learn greatly influences their confidence, growth and sense of self!
Why, specifically, should churches be pivoting toward a lens of lifelong learning in their work? (As a general group, I’ll address the bigger faith community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that I know as “the church”)
1. You said you would. Not to be blunt or anything, but it’s true! Parents, sponsors, and/or other people in the congregation promise to walk alongside people as they get baptized. The pastor asks, “As you bring you child (or adult, or significant other, or loved one) to receive the gift of baptism, you are entrusted with responsibilities… [here are a few:] to live with them among God’s faithful people, to teach, to nurture, to proclaim, to care, to work for justice and peace” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 228). Where in there does it say, “model for them that learning in community ends when you receive a diploma?” Unfortunately by offering little to no lifelong learning opportunities for all ages, we’ve made it a cultural practice to not advocate for and create a strong presence of learning in our congregations. And yet we promise to be with them for their whole lives, which implies a life full of rich, hard, beautiful, and life-giving learning.
2. Because learning grows empathyand you step into another’s world. Money is a tough subject to talk about because it’s emotional. Most conversations about money aren’t about money at all. Money is tied to our relationships, our sense of purpose, our sense of home, and the way we understand ourselves and the world. So when I got the chance to coach and facilitate a financial workshop for couples, I jumped at it. One of the things that we teach couples is that financial conversations are enriched by using a couple of improv rules (there’s rules? It’s true!): one of them is “step into each other’s world.” Feel the height, walls, ground, values, dreams, and voice of the others’ space.
What is required to do that? Learning! Learn what the other is thinking by asking and listening compassionately. Ask what is so important to them about their particular view of money. Stories might come out, ideas, or more questions for more learning. This is why learning is so important and is a lifelong practice. It helps us have empathy, and step into the worlds and perspectives of others – in our homes, right next door, or all the way around the world. Like Sharon Creech writes in the award-winning novel Walk Two Moons, “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.”
3. Learning changes you. Yes, that might be your number one reason not to learn! Sometimes it feels easier to hide, but I know I would rather live as myself instead of pretending to be someone else because I refused to open myself up to learning. One of my colleagues was an executive coach at a large Saint Paul company. This company gave its employees the opportunity to learn about themselves, their motivations, their stories, where they’re being lead (big picture), and their alignment with their values and beliefs. Yes, individuals could discover that their current job is not where they should be! But this learning is for the sake of the learner (not for the maintenance of the institution), and how they might show up in the world as their most unique self.
This kind of inner-work is crucial especially for leaders. Finding out the “why” of their work and sense of vocation and identity is huge – and learning is the root of this work.
4. Because they’re learning without you. Get on the bus. Your adults, young and old, are leaning how to make a difference outside of church – don’t you want to contribute to those conversations? Bigger questions of “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” are explored all over our world in different ways – through graduate school, through Pinterest boards, through thought-provoking podcasts, or life-enrichment opportunities through work. Why not contribute to those conversations and jump in the water? Intrinsic to the gospel is a claim about who we are (children of God), and what our purpose is (varied, diverse, beautiful vocations). The church has something to say! Yes, it requires the risk of individuals rejecting or ignoring you, but why not try?
These are just a few reasons why lifelong learning and church go together for me. Communities and groups are starting to see the need to provide adults with lifelong learning opportunities (see this awesome illustration of learning). When In Over Our Heads was published in 1994, Kegan predicted that America would see an increased amount of adults who seek out formal learning opportunities (Kegan 271). Luther Seminary is experiencing the biggest distance-learners community it’s ever seen – around half of its students. How might congregations be a part of this movement? How might congregations sense God’s nudging to care for and walk alongside all of its members in their learning, young and old?
I think congregations wonder about lifelong learning, but I’m not sure if all sense a need, or have the capacity to think creatively about these things. Either way I think adults desire to learn, but are tentative to admit that they have more to learn (i.e. they don’t want to look stupid, because who does?). I wonder what might be creative ways to encourage lifelong learning in safe and welcoming environments.
I think congregations could be these places and communities, and in baptism they promise to be – but do they want to be?
Growing up I was terrible at keeping new years resolutions. Now I think I’m getting better at it. I’m not sure why this is so important to me, but the last couple years have been really important to me. I chose the resolution for 2015 (let’s be honest, one resolution is enough) by browsing through Pinterest (I think I searched “awesome quotes”). This one grabbed me:
Simple. Succinct. Direct. Stay rad: my resolution for 2015.
I took stock of my behaviors and values in 2014. Were they rad? Since graduating in 2012 from Luther Seminary with a MA in systematic theology, I served at Trinity Lutheran in Stillwater, MN in lifelong/adult learning and helping churches collaborate with each other over a theology curriculum. That role ended in August 2014. I got to be a coach, an editor, a trainer of trainers, a facilitator, a learning experience designer, a creator, a preacher, and a colleague. Since then, I joined a team of workshop facilitators/coaches at brightpeak financial (Thrivent is the umbrella company) and serve young couples in their emotional connections with money.
In the last couple of years especially I’ve discovered that I love helping adults see that God isn’t done forming and molding them. School might be done or almost done, but the opportunities to learn from life and people and experiments are just beginning. Facilitating adults in their learning was (and is) fun, but without the leadership identity as an ordained person it felt like I was a fish constantly hitting the glass of its fish tank.
In the realm of married life, things were not as rad. Timothy weekly heard my complaints in the car after church about worship that he would design at Woodlake Lutheran as an interim worship and music director. Why did you use those words of confession? That part of the service doesn’t align theologically with that part of the service? Why is communion so short?
I realized that I could complain about how the church is “doing it wrong” (what does that even mean?) for the rest of my life, or I could contribute my leadership by making a significant contribution in the role that church people currently turn to for guidance, vision, direction (whether they should or not): the ordained pastor. In order to curate a community of faith that truly embodies the priesthood of all believers and takes vocation as a core vehicle of learning, growth, worship, and leadership – I have to jump into the sandbox and step into the leadership that most congregations recognize as “the” leader: the ordained congregational pastor.
I hope in this I can have that first-hand authentic experience of being a pastor so I can best coach and walk alongside pastors in their own lifelong learning, journey to health, growth, leadership, and contribution. I’ve done coaching/facilitating with kid and adult leaders here and there, but not in so focused of a way that I hope to do. Put simply: I want to stay rad.
I have ten credits left. This consists of coursework in spring, summer, fall 2015, and internship starting January 2016. I will turn in my M.A. in systematic theology (and will still draw a lot from that experience) for an M.Div. with a concentration in systematic theology. Yes, I feel weird about it, but I honestly feel more hopeful than mad; this will position me to be the most Allison, be rad, and make the biggest impact I can hope to make with these people and these places I call church, my home, my people. The church is called to big things. I want to be a part of shaping that response, and I want to help others see (pastors or not) that they’re capable and worthy of shaping that response, too.
This is the lens that I bring to my second round of seminary. I think the catalyst for shifting to wholehearted living and healthy living in congregations comes from walking alongside adults. Kids watch them like sponges, and emulate them as they grow up. If adults don’t know their gifts, their capacity for leadership or the roots of their theology and sense of spirituality, how should we expect today’s youngsters to have lives of faith, self-awareness, curiosity, adventure, and service? This leadership vacuum, articulation of your personal theology vacuum, naming your gifts/strengths/stories vacuum – we have a lifetime-plus of effort/work/energy to do, and I just might find my life’s work in this.
That’s why I’m grateful that Prof. Mary Hess agreed to instruct an independent study with me called, “Adults and Lifelong Learning” (.5 credits). I’ll be honest, I don’t get how adults do it: be responsible, autonomous, community-serving, approachable, leading, retreating, confident, full of questions, vulnerable, courageous, all without slipping into deep depression or anxiety. I’m an adult (sort of?); should I know how to do this “adult” thing already or did I miss a class along the way? I don’t understand how our culture expects adults to be done learning after they graduate from school, and they should be done vocationally discerning because they should have careers by now. If they’re in careers should they stay there because why would they want to leave that security? These are the questions I’m wrestling with right now.
The outcomes of the learning experience this Spring with Mary are:
1. Demonstrate a new understanding of the challenges and opportunities of adult lifelong learning ministry & 2. Create and curate material for degree portfolio.
I have a feeling that what I learn will ripple out into more questions and more curiosities and more learning about what it means to be an adult, and what that means for how churches interact with them. I’ll have four posts on the topic of adult learning between now and May. I hope to share with you what I’m learning, and hear what your wonderings and such are about adult learning too. I hope you learn and ask question with me!
This post is part of aseries of reflections during Lent. This year for Lent I’m trying to create more than copy once a week, inspired by the Portuguese phrase mira voce, prominently featured in my jam “Mira,” by Melody Gardot.
This weekend at a church synod/region event, my husband and I learned about stewardship. As per usual, we were in the 5% of attendees at a church function under the age of 35 – which I’m becoming eerily numb to after being on staff at a church for a year and after being a Lutheran for 26 years. Under the age of 35, a woman, 1/4 asian, from Washington state, tweeting my questions and comments about stewardship as I was inspired throughout the morning. I’m a little different, but I choose not to dwell on it, because that’s just awkward for everyone. And it wasn’t that awkward, until the closing comments when we were all asked to bring a young adult with us to the next year’s stewardship learning event.
This is not a unique request. You might have heard it before at your church or faith-based organization:
“How do we get more young adults here?”
I found myself sinking lower and lower into my chair. Elephant in the room. The demographic they wanted everyone to chaparone to the next stewardship event was sitting in the room – 10 people full, but we were still there. We were there.
We are leaders in your churches. We took the initiative to steward our time on a Saturday morning and learn more about stewardship. We were there.
“How do we get more [insert your favorite age/race/culture/group demographic here] people here?”
You see how this gets degrading, right?
This tale-as-old-as-time request tells me that my value is placed in my ability, with my one voice, to accurately represent people I’m similar to; thus, I am not as valued for my uniqueness, my strengths, my gifts, my leadership, vocations, passions, and my identity as Allison, a saint-and-sinner child of God.
It’s like it’s assumed we all had a meeting. All young people had a meeting and we came to a consensus of what we think and value. The last item on the agenda was to select a handful of hopefuls that best represent young people’s one passion, one contribution, own voice.
My gut tells me that we’re all afraid to talk to the young people already in our lives, so instead we elect each other to go out into the world and find lost young people and bring them to our churches. My gut tells me that our fear of connection and intimacy with those closest to us does not negate our ability to authentically connect with young people already in our lives – your daughter, your son, your niece, your grandkid, the young woman who bags your groceries every Saturday, the shy young woman who comes with her new extroverted husband to church, the young woman who comes to church because she just really likes to sing in the choir, the young person who likes your post on Facebook.
We’re already here.
As a church, we’re missing the point.
“How do we get young adults here?” does not get to the heart of what you’re trying to ask. The underlying assumption in this question is a fear of not growing and a fear of the unknown. Questions about Christianity’s future can’t come from a place of scarcity and fear because Jesus did not serve out of scarcity and fear. Jesus served out of empathy, connection, authenticity and abundance. The very gospel we proclaim turns this question on it’s head to:
“Of the young person in your life, what does she/he value?” Spoiler alert: please, sweet Jesus, do not make a survey. Do not, do not, do not put this on a survey. Instead, get coffee. Show up. Email them about what you loved and what cultural references were confused about on the TV show “The Mindy Project” last Tuesday. Text them how pleasantly surprised you are on how well the Twins are doing. Ask them what they would do if money and student debt were not an issue. Take Discourse together, a class for 15- to 103-year-olds. (I would not be promoting this project unless I thought it changes people’s lives, so seriously, let’s talk.) Yes, you’ll have to tell the truth. But your sneaking suspicion is correct: if you ask a young person to be vulnerable and share what they think about life and God, you will too. That’s how connection works, thank you, Brene Brown.
It’s the people closest to us that are the hardest to exist with. I know I’m one of those “young people” who, to those closest to me, is hard-headed, stubborn, sarcastic, and anxious. But I also have dreams. They might be in-the-clouds dreams, but they’re tangible, strategically planned dreams that I will fight to make reality, just like my grandma fought for the right to vote and my mom fought to provide for her kids a brighter childhood than her’s. Dreams matter. Young people in your life want to tell you about their dreams. They’re not a group to seek out as a part of your mission committee. They are here. Your daughters, your sons, your nieces, your grandkids.
We’re already here.
This blog has no ownership or rights to music by Melody Gardot or Verve Music Group.
Allison Siburg 