Category Archives: competition

April 24, 2013 · 9:17 pm

Called and Gifted? How about Called to Circuits?

A Circuit Rider

A Circuit Rider

The blogging world of United Methodist Clergy has exploded recently with the revelation that the Texas Annual Conference is floating a document that appears “ageist” in its suggestions as to who might or might not be encouraged to seek ordination there. I want to thank Jeremy at Hacking Christianity for this post which exposes the possible plans in the Texas Annual Conference for discouraging older people from entering the ordination process.

Now, there are lots of comments flying around. One, from someone who was part of creating the proposal, reminded us that we live in the real world and that, among other things, older clergy add to the health insurance burdens of all us the rest of us. This, of course, assumes that no younger clergy will find themselves in the midst of a horrific disease and will run up giant medical bills in response to it, a rather naive assumption.

But others are saying, and in my opinion more rightly, that just because someone senses a call to the ministry of the ordained doesn’t necessarily make them one of the chosen for this very complex and draining profession. Age, gender, able-bodiedness, race, etc. are not the issue.

Giftedness Must Match the Call

The issue is giftedness for the profession.

I wish that every person sitting on the various gatekeeper boards (SPRC’s, District Board of Ministries, Conference Board of Ordained Ministries), would take the time to read this compelling little novel called Cosmas or the Love of God.

Here’s a review:

Devout, sensitive, young Cosmas believes that he has a vocation to become a Trappist monk, but the reality of monastic life disappoints him deeply. Fellow monks are hard to live with. The life of the monastery seems worldly. He is disheartened by his own shortcomings and appalled by the weaknesses of others. If he can’t live the life, does that mean God isn’t calling him to it? What should he do? Many people—single, married, vowed, ordained—ask these same questions. Pierre de Calan explores them all in this exquisite tale of a man who learns that sanctity does not mean perfection.

Now, that statement in the review, “the reality of monastic life disappoints him deeply,” struck a nerve with me. The reality of the life of one in the ministry of the ordained surely has disappointed everyone to some degree.

Frankly, fellow clergy are hard to live with. The nature of the “career ladder” for pastoral moves, and a highly limited number of prime appointments makes us all competitors with one another more than colleagues in loving covenant.

“Worldly” is very much a word that describes The United Methodist Church. We are selling our souls down the river of numerical success. The “making of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” be damned. The process of discipleship simply gets in the way. It is too slow, too cumbersome, without glamour, and not at all remunerative. Seriously, no really effective discipler is going to make Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Christian Leaders” list.

We’ve Already Tried This

But none of that is the point. Here is the point:

The young, hotshot (male) clergy that the movin’ and shakin’ Conferences want and are actively promoting to prestigious pulpits look like clones of the very people who helped bring The UMC to the point where we are now: laboring under giant, smothering, expensive infrastructure that says, “More is better!” They are the ones who have proudly brought us to a situation where we are crushed under bureaucracy, burdened with an unworkable, impenetrable Book of Discipline, and dismayed by the fact that apparently only 15% of our churches can be labeled “vital.”

Now, time for a serious disclaimer: Every Christian generation does what seems right at the time in their call to serve the church and to love God and neighbor. Those men, and a few women, who came into clergy ranks 35-50 years ago were doing exactly what the conventional wisdom of the day said to do, and they did it with the best of intentions. Many have persevered through years of heartache, disappointment, and difficult appointments.

The Search for a Messiah

Nonetheless, we as a denomination are in a bad place. So we, in our very human state, start looking for a Messiah. But we don’t want a Messiah like Jesus, who died alone at the cross, pretty well disappointing everyone who wanted to restore “success” to the Jewish nation. No, we want a messiah like Moses who will lead us to the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, or in our case, full offering plates and stuffed worship centers.

Our current hopes as those who will be our Messiahs? Young, gifted, good-looking male pastors. There are solid reasons for this. Frankly, the ones I know that fit the description have simply an astounding level of talent and also come to their calls to the ministry of the ordained under powerful leading from the Spirit of God.

But here lies my great, huge concern: Too many of these young, gifted ones have not spent adequate time in the desert in order to competently deal with the huge pressure to succeed, i.e., save The United Methodist Church. How many of these will bring incalculable harm because their talents have not yet been joined by characters both tested and purified by fire? How many will end up like Walker Railey and Bailey Smith, just to name two of those whose talent levels were not matched with formed characters?

Moses was clearly called to leadership, to his own brand of messiahship, from birth. He was not gifted for the task until he lost everything and had to come face-to-face with his own soul in the wilderness.

Called to Circuit Ministry?

I want to make a suggestion here that I think might help: Let us consider returning to real circuit ministry. Our so-called “itinerancy” is simply a joke, a code for “some well-connected ones are going to make it big and will be powerful and famous but most of you are going to labor in near-poverty and great obscurity for your entire ministerial lives.”

It’s time to change this system.

I envision circuits this way: Churches are grouped geographically into a circuit with no more than one large membership church in any given circuit. Clergy teams are appointed to circuits, not individual charges. The teams consist of a mixture of young and energetic, middle-aged and experienced (especially those coming in as second-career pastors), racially mixed, older and full of wisdom, male and female, elders in full connection, provisional elders, local pastors and interns, some full-time, others part-time, gifted in multiple ways and with varying talents and theological viewpoints.

Clergy teams are charged with the spiritual health and well-being of their entire circuit, not individual charges. Together, they pray their way through the God-visions for the circuit. They rotate preaching, teaching, pastoral and administrative skills from charge to charge. They hold each other accountable in every area of their lives. They model for their charges the nature of kingdom of heaven living as they work out their conflicts and misunderstandings with each other. They know they are in this together and for one charge to benefit at the expense of another becomes anathema to them. Together, they seek the lost, the least, the last and the littlest, and never, ever poach one another’s “founds.”

A Common Pool for Compensation

Furthermore, all members of any given circuit share a common pool for their compensation, although it will vary among the team, factoring in experience, background and full or part-time status. The way clergy salaries are currently set should be a cause of public shame. To have it necessary for some clergy to have to enroll their children in Medicaid to get health insurance while other clergy are able to purchase lavish homes and enjoy country club memberships denies the very basis of Wesley’s understanding of itinerant ministry. At this point, the highest paid clergy may enjoy pay and benefit packages that could be as high as eight to ten times what the lowest paid clergy receive.

We are either in this together or we are not. Currently, I believe we are more “not” than “together.”

The challenge of the distribution of the compensation pool may be one of the toughest faced by each team, and certainly input from the superintendents will be mandatory.  If, however, we could do that and do it maintaining deep love and respect for each other in the circuit, then, and only then, do we evidence the spiritual maturity necessary to move into pastoral leadership.

Compensation is a very touchy and deeply personal issue.  The world tell us, “your compensation packages speaks volumes about your worth as a human being.”  But the church must say, “The love of God has already determined your worth as a human being.”  That’s what we call “grace.”

Could We Start a Conversation?

I know this is radical. I know the idea needs huge tweaks. It’s easy to start listing the issues with it.

But what if? What if we serve in life-giving connection with one another? What if we seek to honor the distinctiveness of the itinerancy by marrying it to the need for greater accountability because of our cultural context? What if we make the Discipline-mandated committee structure start working for us instead of against us, which is too often the case?  It would have to undergo giant change to make circuits work.

Could we at least start a discussion on it? Could we engage in a connected discussion where we explore whether the idea could be matured and shaped into something far healthier than we currently have?

Any and all comments are both hoped for and welcome.  I will also be happy to take emails privately.  I just want to know:  could we even talk about this?

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January 22, 2013 · 6:26 pm

Controlling the Narrative: Lance Armstrong and the Rest of Us

The Dope on Biking“I wanted to control the narrative.”  That phrase has sprung out of the otherwise unsurprising Lance Armstrong doping confession. The need to “control the narrative” captures much human motivation and underlies multiple decisions. If we can indeed control the narrative, we can keep ourselves protected, lie with impunity and still look intact, together and successful.

Armstrong’s real problems lie far beyond the lying and the doping. Those transgressions can be seen as primarily self-destructive. But Armstrong was other-destructive because he insisted that all who rode with him had to submit themselves to the full doping regimen AND routinely lie about it.

Frankly, when the ultimate motivation is winning at all costs, that was a smart and necessary move by Armstrong. To even suggest that he could have won all those competitions without the doping help is simply preposterous. They were all doping and everyone knew it.

The real issue for Armstrong is that had to control all words that were written or said about him in order to feed and support his nearly super-human athletic and health mystique. He did so by bullying, intimidation, lawsuits and lying.

An extraordinarily gifted and well-known preacher, Walker Railey, held the pulpit at First Methodist in downtown Dallas for years. Railey was engaging in an extra-marital affair and needed to deflect attention from his character deficits AND promote an aura of victimization in need of sympathy. So he created threatening notes, sent them to himself and then publicly announced that he wore a bullet-proof vest under his preaching vestments. Now, who is going to question something like that?

When his wife was found strangled and nearly dead in their garage, the immediate assumption was that Railey’s presumed assailant had instead gone after the more vulnerable wife.

It was an incredible piece of deflection that almost worked. Railey, that masterful preacher and storyteller, also masterfully controlled the narrative very much as Armstrong did. Until he, too, was exposed, although never actually convicted in criminal court (a civil court held him liable for the damages, however). He, too, lost all public credibility.

Let’s bring this home a bit and consider the human condition. The famous or infamous may make the news, but most of us seek to control the narrative in some way. If we can do this superbly well, we can render our own deficiencies nearly invisible.

It all starts with twisting the truth. The fear of exposure has always been a central motivation for lying.  Fear that if others could peer into our own souls and see the real truths there, they would immediately reject us.

So, we restructure our stories, our own narratives, with partial-truths, and sometimes outright lies and deceptions. We also do all possible to deflect light from shining on our inner lives by pointing to the darkness in others. I call this the, “But Mom, he started it” syndrome. Then, and this part is absolutely necessary as well, we paint ourselves as wonderfully sympathetic so no one will carefully examine the story.

If keeping our own story intact depends on others also supporting it, then we must do what Armstrong did: find a way to make sure others will not in some way expose the truth. That’s what leads to emotional blackmail or worse and unending pleas for sympathy that become more and more urgent as the narrative, the story that has been holding this together, begins to unravel.

I invite us to think this week about the ways each of us seeks to control our narratives.

Where have we so compromised our basic truths that we need to deflect attention elsewhere?

Where do we need to control or intimidate or even threaten, however subtly, others in order to keep our own stories intact and free from examination?

Let’s spend a little less time condemning Armstrong and see what we can learn about ourselves from his public humiliation.

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December 4, 2012 · 3:42 pm

The Consumer-Driven Church Model, Part Three

Note: this is part three of a three part series. Part One is here; Part Two is here.

Three Things to Keep in Mind

First: not all growth is good growth.  When effectiveness is measured only by numerical growth, we make the fatal mistake of assuming that just because something grows rapidly, it is doing so under the blessing of God.  All gardeners and physicians know this:  rapid growth doesn’t necessarily mean good, healthy or desired growth.

Second:  the process of making disciples is a long, slow, and often painful one.  A disciple is one who is actually willing to walk the path of the Teacher, in this case, Jesus.  That path leads to the cross, a place of utter aloneness and excruciating pain.

It is at the cross that the question must be asked and answered:  Will I be a person of forgiveness and reconciliation, no matter what the cost, so I can go all the way to the resurrection?

Most will say no.  It’s not fun anymore at that point.  It’s no longer bells and whistles and loud music and video screens and constant movement and distraction.

Discipleship takes place in those moments when we are called to be still, to know that God is God, and to be able to say with the great man of old, that poor, beat up Job, “Even though He slay me, yet I will praise Him.”

Third, unless we address the deep and expensive structure of The United Methodist Church, we are doomed to follow the consumerist model.  But the cost to maintain our current structure leads us to think we have no choice.  And a place of no choice opens the door to the sin-compromised state where the ends are worth the means.

If we are going to go forth and do what we are called to do, then it is time to completely re-examine what holds us together.

When I entered into this church, I was drawn to two primary areas:  the expansive, inclusive, wide grace-infused theology and the power of being a connectional church.  Our theology turns us toward God and showers us with grace. Our connection turns us toward one another in covenant relationship.  In covenant, we may pass that grace around, support one another as necessary and together live out the daily challenges of being disciples of Jesus.

A consumer-driven model is rarely grace-filled and is fundamentally competitive, not covenant or connectional, in nature. Others must fall for us to stand.

Consumerism means that those who know little of grace, little of deep sacrifice, little of the challenges of picking up our crosses daily, call the shots.

I look at the money that was spent to pull off the show we call “General Conference” this past year and weep.  Every need had to be catered to.  It appeared on occasion that the least gracious hijacked the floor and engineered the direction of the Conference.  The displeased consumers, i.e., delegates, kept threatening in one way or another to take their business elsewhere.

The administrative arm of the church, which should be there to enhance the work of the local discipling community, instead pulls giant amounts of money out of the offering plates each week and month.  It loads upon local clergy and congregations, that place where the work of discipleship takes place, impossible-to-decipher forms and strangling requirements for minutely detailed reports that are never looked at except to determine how much money to squeeze from them the next year.

The world laughs and says, “You have nothing useful to say.”

But we do.  Yes, we do.  We have the Gospel.

And yes, we must address the crisis.  But it is much deeper than numbers and noses.

Let us answer the primary question first:  “What IS a disciple of Jesus Christ?”

Then we can ask: “How can our forms of worship, gathering, instruction, connection and structure actually aid in the process of shaping those disciples?”

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· 3:42 pm

The Consumer-Driven Church Model, Part Two

Note: this is the second of a three-part series.  Part one is here; part three is here.
 

The Church is In Crisis

I suspect everyone agrees that The United Methodist Church, as a world-wide organization, is in crisis.  Our membership grows older and the death tsunami looms. Few churches see a vital future. People in the US church, who have been the principle financial support of the worldwide church, are moving away from denominational religious structures.

The crisis leads to pressure to have numbers that look good. We’re no different in that sense from any business that must please its stockholders and keep itself solvent for the sake of the economy and for the employment of the people involved.

One of our solutions has been greater accountability as we seek to push those numbers into the plus column and reverse the trend of losing members.

In response, denominational leadership, i.e., our Bishops (like worried Boards of Directors of corporations) cry loudly for public dashboards where pastors  (their underlings) will be required each week to post attendance, offerings, the number of those joining, being baptized, and making professions of faith the Sunday before.

“Metrics” have become the rallying cry to ensure survivability.

Those metrics will define pastoral effectiveness.  The pastor with the best numbers gets the most accolades, “attaboys,” glory and promotions.  Nickels and noses are all that count.

Sounds pretty consumerist/corporate so far.

A recent article in the United Methodist Reporter exemplified this trend.  A megachurch with an organ that alone probably cost more than the entire church building where I serve, is investing $2.1 million dollars to seek to attract new, young worshippers.

They’ve completely revamped a meeting space so that it has every bell and whistle anyone could want in order to present a high-tech, visually stimulating, professionally planned and choreographed worship time.  The musicians and technicians are all highly trained, and all paid.

According to the article, the young pastor, a gifted man for whom I have much respect, will be fully funded for nearly three years.

This is the best of all business—or church—start up strategies.   Everyone knows that it is easier to start large than to start small.  Any business walking into a new area wants immediately to gain a huge footprint and lots and lots of name recognition.

Get the people in the door, make sure they have a great experience, and send them back out hoping they’ll tell others about it.

I hope this works.  I hope the metrics do look good.  I hope this becomes a vital congregation, full of life and growth.  I hope that so many people come and so much giving takes place that people will stop bemoaning the fate of The United Methodist Church.

But I do wonder if it will make—or shape—disciples of Jesus Christ.

Note: this is the second of a three-part series.  Part one is here; part three is here.

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· 3:41 pm

The Consumer-Driven Church Model, Part One

Bizarro Comic Strip, November 14, 2012

Bizarro Comic Strip, November 14, 2012

I recently walked out of a local electronics store in some frustration.  I have an older inkjet printer that needed new ink cartridges.  Now, ink cartridges are some of the biggest consumer rip-offs ever devised, so I wasn’t in a great mood when I walked in.  My irritation grew when I realized that my aged printer does not have its exact model number indicated on any of the multitudes of printer cartridges available.

Two different sales staff tried to help; each came up with a different solutions.  Both admitted that if I bought a cartridge, put it in the printer and it didn’t work, that I could not bring it back—possibly wasting a lot of money.  Only solution: go back to the office, open the printer case, hope the exact model number of the cartridges I need were there, and then come back and buy the exact match.

Result? First, I have resolved to purchase a different printer, and never, ever again touch one made by that particular manufacturer. Enough is enough.  Second, I probably will give it two or three thoughts before I go back into that particular consumer electronics store again.  It really isn’t their fault—but I am disenchanted.

I find it easy to decide to change both printer brands AND store preferences.  Printers and stores abound, all competing mightily for my business.  I can and will freely hop from place to place, brand to brand, price to price.  All it takes is one bad experience and I’m out of there.

That’s a lot of pressure to please.  Retailers know it.  Manufacturers know it.  Designers know it.  And everyone hops frantically like so many adrenaline-fed bunnies trying to please us increasingly fickle consumers so we’ll stay loyal to their brand.

As the Bizarro cartoon above says, “they are huge now, but I’ve been a fan since Monday.”  And next Monday, someone else will be huge, someone else will be pleasing the fickle crowds.

This is why a consumer-led church builds on a problematic foundation.  The church is not called to please.  We are called to make, or I prefer, “shape” disciples of Jesus Christ.

The moment we buy into the consumer-led model of church growth, using business success as our model, we have inevitably left that mission of shaping disciples behind.

Why? Because the moment we displease someone by . . .

  • offering a worship service that is not quite perfect or as good as the one down the street
  • presenting a nursery that doesn’t have the latest in child check-in/check-out procedures
  • stepping on someone’s toes theologically
  • insisting that people work through their conflicts with each other in the name of a higher calling
  • asking people to follow Jesus to the cross and forgive their enemies and do good to them so they might really experience the resurrection

. . . we run a huge chance of  losing our “customers.”

At its essence, Christianity is anything but a consumer-pleasing religion.

Jesus did not please very many people.  The larger crowds hung around hoping for a feeding or healing miracle.  When Jesus disappointed, they quickly dispersed.  They were the first century equivalents of our consumer religious folks.   Even the closest of Jesus’s disciples were in it for themselves—they did want those most powerful right and left hand seats in the kingdom, after all.

 
Note:  This is part of a three part series.  Part two is here; part three is here.

 

 

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July 13, 2012 · 1:53 pm

Silence, Sandusky and Subordination

The Freeh Report

Because of the release of the Freeh Report, multiple news organizations have offered more information recently on the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.  Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, hired by Penn State to investigate, published a scathing report about the extent of the cover-up by university officials.  Freeh concluded that those officials showed a callous disregard for the vulnerable youth because of their need to protect the football program at all costs.

According to the report (page 21) in November of 2000, this happened: “Janitor observes assault by Sandusky, but does not report the assault for fear that ‘they’ll get rid of all of us.’  Another janitor concluded that the university will close ranks to protect the football program.”  Page 65 of the report gives the sad details of the Janitors’ observations.

In the recommendations section, Freeh writes, “One of the most challenging tasks confronting the University community—and possibly the most important step in ensuring that other recommended reforms are effectively sustained, and that public confidence in the University and its leadership is restored—is an open, honest, and thorough examination of the culture that underlies the failure of Penn State’s most powerful leaders to respond appropriately to Sandusky’s crime (p. 128).”

Yes, Freeh is right about that:  there can be no sustained change without first a careful examination of the culture in which we exist.  Our culture determines our values, and our values, those things which are most important to us, drive our decisions.

Highest Values Exposed

At Penn State, the apparent highest value appears to have been football—anything that supported the football program would be labeled  “good,” and anything that distracted from it, would therefore be labeled, “bad.”  Now, I doubt this directive was actually written down anyplace.  The written directives were bound to be things like quality education for young people, protecting them, etc.  But the real center was football.  The unwritten culture generally takes precedence over the written code where decisions are concerned.

A number of years ago, working off some of Peter Senge’s fine work on mental models in The Fifth Discipline, I did some consulting work helping groups and organization discern their actual operating metaphor or model.  This is not the one written in policy manuals, or the ideals coming from carefully crafted mission or vision statements, but the real, gritty, daily, down and dirty model that drove their decisions, but was rarely talked about.

These discussions were almost always revealing, and were also often fairly painful.  Often I would see organizations that claimed to put a high value on cross department teamwork actually rewarding only intra-department achievements.  They ended up pushing a deadly kind of competitiveness and information hoarding rather than cooperation and information dissemination.

The Fears of Subordinates

Going back to the Penn State situation, those in highly subordinate roles, and those who were most likely to see Sandusky’s despicable acts, were also those whose personal cultures valued silence—because to do anything else threatened their livelihood and the survival of their families.  It’s easy to point the finger at those silent, subordinate ones and say, “Why didn’t you speak out?”  But they knew, yes, they knew that football was God, King, and Sovereign, and speaking out against such power could only lead to their destruction.

Universities, which are supposed to be places of free inquiry, are as hard on their heretics and uncomfortable truth-tellers as the church, which is famously known as the only army on earth that shoots its own wounded.

What would it take to create a more open, truth-telling atmosphere?  What would it take to relieve the kind of fear that leads to silence in the face of huge injustice?  Have things really changed since Jesus spoke out against the prevailing religious authorities, offering a new way of servanthood rather than oppressive power, and ended up on the cross?

Culture and the Episcopacy

I am thinking about this a great deal with Jurisdictional Conferences of The United Methodist Church taking place next week to elect new Bishops from the ranks of Elders who have offered their names for holy consideration.   Will these new as well as those returning Bishops be able to create an atmosphere of open questions, challenges and differing opinions without being threatened personally?

Really what I am asking is this:  how many in the subordinate ranks of church life stay silent, just as the Penn State Janitors did, for the sake of their families?  How many do not say the hard things in order to keep positions?  Those are often two highly competing forces—and families are important and don’t appreciate being placed on sacrificial altars for the sake of principles.

What really is the prevailing culture of The United Methodist Church?  Are we really about our mission, that of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?  Frankly, that is slow, painstaking, and not terribly rewarding work, although it can be immensely satisfying.  Or . . . are we about security, pleasing the higher-ups, building monuments to human talent and creativity?  Or is it something totally different?  But just like Penn State, until we know, we can’t make the necessary moves toward a more healthy, vital direction.

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October 19, 2007 · 11:55 am

>On Needing Sleep

Every generation and every culture has its own triumphs and makes it own mistakes. We can often see both the triumphs and the mistakes in our child-rearing practices. In the early parts of the 20th century, prevailing wisdom insisted that a child be picked up as rarely as possible and little physical affection given. From that, a generation of structured, emotionally detached parents emerged. Then we had Dr. Spock and the invasion of what was called “permissive child rearing.” Here, parents imposed fewer and fewer limits on children. Such methodology helped produce the group called “baby boomers,” most of whom have some very interesting memories of the late 60’s and early 70’s when the drug culture went wild and enticed these undisciplined ones into a life of “free love” and excess. I would also suggest most boomers have not really recovered from that—excess (as in excessive consumption, excessive wealth, excessive food, excessive need for therapy) continues to govern the lives of many of that generation. This is the generation of people who thought they could have it all. They were, of course, seriously disappointed.

The current crop of parents, many of whom are children of those excess-driven boomers, now put their stamp on child-rearing. Their children enjoy and/or suffer from an excess of scheduling and ambition. We are seeing a generation of highly accomplished young people, often combining high levels of expertise in academics, athletics, the fine arts, and community or even world service. Yes, they are doing it all.

And just as the baby boomers paid a price for their generational excess, so are those in this young generation paying the price for having it all in their way. They are living with a huge sleep deficit. No one is getting enough rest, and there now seems to be a very strong correlation between inadequate rest and growing obesity, growing numbers diagnosed with ADHD, growing depression, and growing debilitating stress.

Just sleep. People need to sleep more if they really do want to accomplish more. It seems so counter-intuitive. Sleep less, study more, do better, use more calories, stay more slender. That’s what we think. But perhaps, just perhaps we are wrong.

The urge to compete, to win, to dominate, underlies much of the culture of excess, whether we see excess consumerism or excess accomplishment. Human beings spend a lot of time comparing themselves to others, wondering whether we make the mark and how we can move higher in the rankings. This is not necessarily unnatural—the same thing happens in much of the animal world. However, there is a difference between healthy competition and unhealthy competition. There is a difference between a soul that looks forward toward the call of God with the goal of perfection in love and one who looks over his or her shoulder, afraid that someone else might catch up or pass by. One is motivated by love; one is motivated by fear.

Perhaps we need much more rest and down time than we think. Perhaps we need fewer things to do and more time to be. Perhaps we need time to pray and contemplate the glory of God and our part in this created order. Perhaps we really, really need good sleep in order to accomplish anything worthwhile. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Scriptures are right when they call for a holy day of rest, a time with family, a time to worship and regenerate. Perhaps, just perhaps, we’ve got a few priorities out of line these days. Just something to think about . . . when there is time to think.

“A Pastor’s Thoughts” from First UMC, Krum, http://www.thekrumchurch.com

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