Renewed and challenged through reading
COMPILED BY CARRIE MADREN
UMCONNECTION CORRESPONDENT
To purchase the books referenced, click on the book covers or links where provided.
The Rev. Rodney Thomas Smothers, lead pastor at St. Paul-Corkran Cooperative Parish:
"Cracking Your Church's Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision & Inspiration" by Samuel R. Chand
The "ah-ha" moment in this book came for me when the author stated that the vision, strategy and services that we try to instill to change the way the church functions are good things, but what really causes a church to be transformed is understanding its culture.
To quote from the book, "Culture - not vision or strategy is the most powerful factor in any organization. It determines the receptivity of staff and volunteers to new ideas, unleashes or dampens creativity, builds or erodes enthusiasm, and creates a sense of pride or deep discouragement about working or being involved there. Ultimately, the culture of an organization - particularly in churches and nonprofit organizations, but also in any organization - shapes individual morale, teamwork, effectiveness, and outcomes."
Some of the areas where it's difficult to make a change are the style of music, or trying to do different types of ministry for younger people, or trying to stop doing some things that were wonderful at some point in the life of the congregation, but are not necessarily relevant today.
I've been a pastor for 30 years, and pastored several congregations, including white, black and multicultural settings. The book put into words something I hadn't been able to put into words before: it doesn't matter if a congregation is urban, rural or suburban - it's the culture that determines how people operate day to day. For instance, you can have a culture through fundraising rather than a culture of tithes and offerings. Over the years, when some churches have needed to pay apportionments or pay for church improvements, the thinking has been "let's do fundraising" and it takes forever. If you have a culture of tithing and giving faithfully, you won't have to resort to fundraising.
In our case (at St. Paul UMC) we're predominantly African American, and Corkran is predominantly Anglo-Saxon. When you're building a cooperative parish and you have two culturally different groups, you have to learn how to get along and respect the culture of each campus. Then, you end up with a healthy cooperative parish, because you learn how to respect people's culture for what it is before you tear it apart.
The bottom line is - so that a congregation can be healthy - you have to create a new culture to destroy the old one. The way the leader navigates change may do more to define the culture than any purpose statement.
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Lesley A. Carter, webmaster, Baltimore-Washington Conference
19th-century chancery court records from Virginia
With summer comes a few precious hours to indulge my dual passions of history and genealogy, to dust off my research and to pick up where I left off last summer.
Recently I've spent a great deal of time perusing early 19th-century chancery court records involving my ancestors in Virginia; the Library of Virginia has made many such files available online. With luck, one can find probate information detailing family groups, descriptions of land and property owned by the family, and even occasional personal tidbits about the individuals themselves.
However, most of us who research pre-Civil War Southern ancestors also encounter the myriad legacies of slavery; their impact is impossible to miss. In several of the cases I've recently reviewed, many disagreements arose over the distribution of income from the sale of slaves in probate. What particularly catches the eye - and sorrows the soul - is the dispassionate tone adopted by the whites debating the issue, the same tone that we today might use to discuss how to distribute jewelry or cars. My 21st-century heart cries out, "But these are human beings! They were more than mere lists of names with prices attached on an inventory sheet." My ancestors, however, didn't see it that way.
As I read their debates, I wonder whether they ever questioned their way of life. Did they see the human impact? Did they want to change? Or were they carried along by the tide of history and culture, and so entrenched in "the way things are" that they failed to notice? As an aspiring genealogist, it's important for me to understand the context and customs of the world in which my ancestors lived, but as a Christian and a theologian, it's equally critical that I ask deep questions of myself and the world in which I live.
History best comes to life when it becomes story, and when we see that these are our stories. Part of that process, though, is understanding where we could make similar mistakes in our time. Our ancestors were seemingly unable to avoid the prolonged, bloody conflict that ultimately ended slavery; hopefully we can learn from history and find more constructive ways to solve injustice in our own time.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to consult a few court records in person; there's nothing quite like putting your hands on a document that an ancestor, born in 1734, actually touched and signed. Yesterday I was looking at a case file that included a chatty letter from a daughter in Virginia to her parents who had migrated west, not only asking them to come home to see her ailing grandfather but to pass on all the family news (e.g., Cousin So-and-So got married and they have a baby). Finding stuff like that makes the names seem more like people and less like items in my database.
Additional Reading
Bruce Levine, "Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War"(New York: Hill and Wang, 2005)
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Denise Karau, store manager, Cokesbury at Baltimore-Washington Conference.
"A Hopeful Earth" by Sally Dyck and Sarah Ehrman
The big question is asked within the first page of the introduction - "What are you doing about the environmental crisis?" This question can be answered by many, in many different settings from global to personal. Bishop Dyck and her niece Sarah wrote about this question, what people across many generations did or didn't do, the different attitudes of people of faith and how "to connect our living out the Christian faith with being good stewards."
I thought I was doing pretty well on the big question. When I was living in Minnesota, I was using only homemade natural cleaning products, made my own laundry soap from soap nuts, composted, gardened without chemicals and tried to limit our water usage by installing low flow showerheads, faucet devices that let you turn off the water while doing dishes, brushing teeth, etc. I even saved gray water for the garden and other outside plants. Since being relocated to Maryland and living in someone else's home, as a renter, I have fallen away from these practices. After reading this book, I know that I will return to these practices as soon as I can.
The chapter on "The Love of Stuff" really spoke to me in my current situation of packing up a home in Minnesota and moving to Maryland. When I packed up what I thought I would need for a few months on my own in Maryland - my four tubs included clothes, personal items, my laptop and one tub of bedding and towels. Ten months later, I do not have a whole lot more than that and I have lived very nicely without all the other "stuff." My husband and I have lived in two different states (Minnesota and Maryland) for the entire 10 months and have just sold our four-bedroom home in Minnesota and purchased a two-bedroom condo in Maryland. After 20 years of marriage, we decided this is a wonderful way to clear out all the "STUFF" we thought we could not live without. My husband and daughter are cleaning out the house and holding garage sales in Minnesota before the final move to Maryland in August. We are moving into less than half the space and with only about one-fourth of the stuff - while the moving company is shocked by how little we are moving, my husband and I feel relief.
I think this is a book for anyone that wants to get started looking at how humanity has impacted the environment and how we can move forward. This would be a great small group study, because many of the insights need to be discussed and studied further. A leader's guide has been developed to aid in this type of study.
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Carrie Madren, freelance journalist and regular correspondent for UMConnection
"Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God" by Francis Chan
Though a mere 175 pages long, "Crazy Love" took me an unusually long time to read. That's because author Francis Chan packed his thoughtful, savory book full of awe-inducing, true-story anecdotes, questions to ponder and blunt truths that cut to the soul. Each page delivers a powerful punch of wisdom and our reality, so I often found myself gazing off of the page as I let some morsel of truth or Biblical interpretation sink in.
From the first pages, Chan challenged me to remember that we were created by God and for God. "Don't we live instead as though God is created for us, to do our bidding, to bless us, and to take care of our loved ones?" Chan asked in the first chapter. What a difference that mindset makes in our prayers and attitudes.
Later on, Chan talks about giving and how connected our generosity is with our love for God and others. "As we begin to practice regular giving, we see how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abundance God has given us and merely repeat the words thank you," Chan wrote. After reading, I let this chapter digest in my thoughts through the next week, and asked questions of myself and how I give. I do thank God - all the time - for blessings, but how am I turning around and sharing those blessings with others? How can I be more deliberate about my generosity in my time, my attention and my resources?
If I took my time pondering and processing in the first few chapters, I couldn't put down the book during his chapter "Profile of the Obsessed." In this chapter, Chan illustrates what it would look like to be truly obsessed with God. He offers hard-hitting truths that illuminate the gap between how Jesus taught us to live and how we really live. For instance, Chan writes, "People who are obsessed with Jesus aren't consumed with their personal safety and comfort above all else. Obsessed people care more about God's kingdom coming to this earth than their own lives being shielded from pain or distress." He reminded me of how often I pray primarily for things to go smoothly, for safe travels, for my own comfort or good outcomes, rather than for God's will to be done or for God to be glorified above all else.
Chan's book hit home for me in many ways, from challenging the way I approach daily prayer time to questioning whether I live a life that looks "crazy" to the non-Christian world. This is one book I will re-read, reflect back on and recommend for years to come.
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