Book Notes from Pasadena
Beloved friends and community of LaSalle -
This week I am camped out in a second-floor classroom in Pasadena, CA, where it's been 72 degrees and breezy - odd weather to leave Chicago and arrive to this, but I am not complaining! I am here for the on-campus teaching week with our D.Min. Cohort on Urban Ministry Leadership at Fuller that I have the fun and privilege of getting to co-teach alongside Dr. Soong-Chan Rah. We've been reading and discussing and laughing and lamenting, and I am reminded of the truth that ministry, leadership, justice work, and community development is complex, beautiful, human work. And that our context matters.
Various students here are pastors, leaders, organizers, and executives from around the country; and the issues for a church network in Phoenix are different than the realities of urban planting in Indianapolis, and the issues facing LA organizers different than those for a peace organization based in TN. The brilliant voices and questions of the room explore different topics, and hold together lament and grief for our country, with glimpses of hope, solidarity, and conviction. I find myself thinking about how Chicago holds its own justice and access realities in certain ways, how our Near North location shapes so much of LaSalle's history and current call, and how our congregation's response to this moment in the country and in the church's shift is a generous, creative one! We're all still learning, myself included, and here are a few take-aways so far from our class discussions that I think relate to our work in front of us at LaSalle in this season:
Ministry takes place in a living system, an organism of breathing and complex people - not in a technological, controllable, mechanistic reality. To try to find solutions that are about controlling outcomes, only analytical, or aimed at a simple cause and effect, without realizing that we're all linked together in a Body that takes time, growth, relationship, can harm the system. (From the book, "The Cat and the Toaster" - spoiler, the church is more like a cat!)
Humility, honesty, and non-anxious presence are key ingredients to healthy leadership (pastoral leaders, volunteer leaders, executive leaders, etc.), especially in ministry settings where there's been mistrust, mismanagement, and sometimes family systems are at work even in professional/ministry contexts (we're not a biological family, but our traumas and assumptions and patterns from family all come with us to church! This was named in Peter Steinke's work, Rich Villodas's The Deeply Formed Life, and others... )
The commitment to liberation, empowering our own/marginalized voices, helping advocate for others, addressing systems and identities and injustices, organizing and fundraising and resourcing and all the things... is long-term, life-time work. We have to avoid the temptation of secretly believing we've become experts, we have this down, or we have "arrived," or we replicate oppressor mentalities. And there is no one-size-fits all approach, or quick fix solution. So the work we're doing in Cornerstone, our Serve Sundays posture to listen to our neighbors and work "alongside/with" not "for/on behalf of" - makes a big difference in the quality, authenticity, and longevity of our justice and outreach lives and ministry. (Reminders from Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Brenda Salter McNeil's "Empowered to Repair," and more.)
Beloved, we always have more to learn, and we're also on the right track in so many ways as we live out our faith together! May these reminders, encouragements, and challenges help refresh your own commitment as we live out and lead urban ministry at LaSalle. There is hope, there are others passionate about this work to learn from and with, and the life and joy and healing that comes as a result is powerful! Sending my deep thanks for each of you, along with these book notes this week - RevLiz