The 6th day of Easter: Good to be back

4/25

Back from Louisville.  Meeting of the national Presbyterian Mission Agency Board. Sad. So much good is still going on. My friend Shannon off to Bangkok  and the Philippines to work on child sex trafficking. My friend Mark’s work at the UN. Bill and his important…and controversial… work moving divestment forward. Creative new worshipping communities emerging all over the country.

But…once again we go through the biennial blood letting as staff are riffed, cut, due to falling membership and decreased revenue. It’s become so much an expected, predictable, normal part of our life that it’s become ritualized. Almost liturgical. It should be on our planning calendar.

The board deals with general numbers in generic categories. No sense of the people in those numbers. The anxious waiting. Friends sitting vigil with vulnerable staff at their desks. The sigh of relief or feeling of despair when announcements are made. The two o’clock staff prayer service.  And again, good faithful people, many who have given their life to the church, are let go. More often women, too near to retirement to have good job prospects but too far off  to cash in. I waiting for a voice to say, maybe this model isn’t working.

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Barbara Mood Indigo

Back just in time for Open Mic.  Even with a small turnout, the performances are still worth it. The ageless Barbara Como gives us some Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald tonight. The banjo phenom Nick Lantigua has a couple of originals and a banjo version  of a Led Zeppelin number as he continues to explore the limits of his instrument. But the night’s feature had to be Mandola Joe’s rendition of Dylan’s Desolation Row. Bringing Pat O up to join him, recalling their days as the Original Buskers.  With at least a thought that Nick could be an Original Busker, too. It’s great to have Joe back. And I’m happy to be back home..

Desolation Row as only Joe can sing it

From other steps: Louisville

4/9-12

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate Louisville on its own terms, though it’s still an unlikely location for the national offices of a church with missions throughout the world. I enjoy my time there.

But this time...the meeting is at a hotel on an island of land in the middle of an industrial park in urban sprawl wasteland. Ten miles from downtown. A thirty dollar cab ride from the airport. I go for a walk and keep running into highways, cul de sacs, strip malls and car dealerships. And under the I64 overpass, I find a homeless encampment of a half dozen or more people in a jumble of sleeping bags, cardboard, aluminum foil and empty 40 bottles. Late morning, people stirring in their bags....

Finally make it back through the maze of highway cloverleafs to the hotel. And hear muzak in all its numbing audible blandness. I am confounded....

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Meeting take aways, after a panel of young adults...

• In the past, the pathway to connecting with a church was believe, belong, behave. Today it’s behave, belong, believe. Doctrine, theology, belief, the least important....doing matters. 
• Young adults will come if something is going on. Something that makes a difference. That has something to do with changing the world, in big or small ways. It’s not music or gimmicks.
• They’re looking for real community. Intergenerational relationships. Mentors. 
• Authenticity is the bottom line.
• People are looking for radical discipleship. What does that mean in any of our settings? They know it when they see it.

One young man says, I’m sick to death of, have no interest in, a sanitized Jesus.....