Wondering about ...moving the blog address...

 Friends-
In anticipation of  leaving my Diocesan position, I've moved my blog.
Find "Wondering in the Wilderness" now at:
http://margaretbabcock.blogspot.com
See you there!

Wondering What's Next

My congratulations to John Smylie who has won the Bishop’s election in Wyoming! For awhile our paths ran parallel in this race, but now they diverge. The road before me beckons to explore where “losing” will lead me.

I have actually been on this road, or one similar, many times before. I know that each “losing” is also a gain…but knowing is not the same as having to go through the experience again. Like coming to terms with death (the most radical of losses), this journey has some familiar landmarks which must be passed.  For example, even though I knew I might find myself here when I began, there is no shortcut or bypass for mourning. I held a 36 hour vigil for this dead dream (actually a surprisingly short time for me!) and leave it now by the roadside with no regrets. I will most likely have to circle around and revisit this place, but I have done that before too and know it gets easier….

For now, I seem to be at that cross roads in the desert where many possibilities shimmer in the distance but none seem immediately accessible or urgent. There are loose ends to tie up, but time enough to tackle them and some that simply will remain undone. There is a freedom in losing which I will enjoy for a little while, until the next challenge presents itself. I will not go looking for it just yet.  I will wait and watch for signs in this wilderness, comforted by the certainty that no matter what direction I am called to take, if it is Christ who calls, that road will be the Way.

Wondering how to bottle hope and joy.....

In the midst of a tense two week period (after the Walk About and waiting for the Electing Convention), what a gift this last week-end has been! There was the ordination at St. Stephen’s, Casper on Saturday of two transitional deacons, Kay Flores and Tristan English. And then on Sunday, I was at Holy Trinity, Thermopolis to celebrate and preach, and generally be entertained by this energetic, multi-generational church which is in the midst of a process to call their local priests. What joy to see two congregations, which have slogged through their share of depression and pessimism, growing in confidence and a vitality which shows no signs of lagging! What a joy to share their journeys…..
If only I could bottle such a feeling to share with the churches which are presently struggling. It’s so hard, when the faithful core of a congregation see members slip away, when they have crises in leadership or don’t know how to pay the bills. We look for a quick fix because we need a quick fix! It feels sometimes like such churches are runaway stagecoaches…and, the truth is that there is no way to quickly turn around a stagecoach that has been running downhill, careening wildly out of control.  The first step is to get it stopped and insure the safety of the passengers. The second step is to assess the damage and get rid of extraneous baggage to lighten the load. Then finally, the laborious task of pushing the coach up the hill and getting it going on a healthy road can be accomplished.
We know this can happen with help from friends and neighbors. We may even suspect that God’s hand is in this precarious ride and that it will lead to new and better roads which help us on our Christian journey. But the gap between the bottom of the steep hill and the level road at the top is so great that often those at the bottom need a tonic, a stiff shot of hope, to help them get motivated. I wonder-how can we bottle such hope? How can the joy of congregations who have indeed found a healthy and vital way forward be shared with brothers and sisters in need?
Maybe one way to do this is to create a venue where congregations share where they are on their Christian journey-both the smooth roads and the difficult times. We have Mutual Ministry Reviews for individual churches, where what is going well and what is not are both looked at carefully, and from which much is learned. Could we do something like that on a regional level, maybe in the Apostolic Teams? It seems to me that somehow, on a yearly basis at least, the sharing of peaks and valleys that all congregations face might be just what we need to inspire hope and compassion between us. It may also be a good place to critique diocesan leadership whose ministry is to help all our churches on their journeys. When seen in the context of the whole region, such diocesan ministry may make more sense or, if not, adjustments may become evident. Something to think about….
But in any event, thanks to St. Stephen’s and Holy Trinity for the tonic of hope and joy they provided for me this week-end. I know that many others are inspired by their success as well.

Wondering on the Walk About-Last Day!!!!

One last day on the bus, looking forward to visits with 4 congregations in the eastern part of the diocese. We are now done with all the longer stops and won’t have a chance to share many more stories. I find, however, that I have not found the venue to share one of my favorites, except with Sally Boyd, the local priest in Wright where this happened. So I think this is worth sharing with a wider group on this blog.
This last Christmas, I was invited to celebrate and preach the Christmas Eve service at St. Francis, in Wright. Sally was taking advantage of a well deserved opportunity to be with her gathered family on vacation. The small group of dedicated Episcopalians got organized, planned the service and then advertized it throughout their community, but no one knew if we would have more than a handful of participants. People in Wright, it seems, often are gone on the holiday visiting family and taking advantage of school being out.
When Chuck, Warren Frelund (the Region II Ministry Developer) and I arrived there were only three people at the church, but the coffee hour table was laden with goodies and we recruited a youngster who had great enthusiasm to acolyte. As we began our preparations, the church began to fill up. As I got instruction on blessing the Christmas candle in the Advent wreath, I counted upward of 20 people and thought, “This is really important. I’m so glad we could be here!” And the service went beautifully, with all the people singing out the old Christmas carols, a beautiful solo at the offering, and our faithful acolyte keeping an eye on me from several pews where he was enjoying different company. I noticed at one point he joined a gentleman sitting alone in a pew and wondered briefly about a single man in a church filled with family groupings.
At the end of the service, that single man came over to shake my hand and confided in me how deeply he had needed to be in church and hear the message of God’s love this Christmas Eve. His son had been killed just 6 weeks earlier as he was serving a third deployment in Iraq. His wife could not yet bring herself to leave the house, but he promised to take the words of hope he had heard that night home to her.
I cannot tell you how deeply this man’s story touched my soul. As a mother who has endured the long terrible wait for a child to return from war, my heart broke for this couple who would not know the joy of their son’s homecoming. I gave thanks again and again for the faithfulness of the little church in Wright who had incarnated in their community the gift of Jesus, reaching out to their neighbors with welcome and the message of God’s new life in our midst. And I thought then, as I know now, that this is why it is so important to support all our congregations, no matter how big or small. I am not wondering at all about the importance of the ministry of congregations like St. Francis. I only wonder how we can continue to empower them to follow what is so obviously God’s call.
       

Wondering on the Walk About-Day 5

We’ve made it over the hump and are now on the downward side of tour with four days to go. The wifi is working great, but it is hard to find time and energy for any extracurricular activities-like writing this blog. In Thermopolis last night, I opted for a lovely soak in the hot springs before bed instead of getting out the computer!
    One of the questions being asked in almost every forum is how we will deal with the lack of young people in the church. This is one of the stories that I found floating to the surface of my consciousness yesterday, and I wish I had thought of sharing sooner:
    When I was rector of St. Matthew’s in Tucson, AZ we had many families with children in elementary and high school, but as soon as they graduated they were gone. I knew about 5 of them were actually going to school or working in Tucson. Having just learned about Relational Meetings in a doctoral program on congregational development, I decided to try out this new tool on these young adults. I called them one at a time and asked them out to coffee. I was delighted that they agreed so readily to make time in their schedules and seemed genuinely pleased to see me. One of the basic tenets of Relational Meetings is that they are done without an agenda in mind, i.e. you can’t  ask them to DO anything but instead are present to simply listen to the deepest values and motivations of that individual and establish a relationship. So I made it clear at the outset that I wasn’t there to guilt them back into church. I just really wanted to know about them and what their world was like now that they were out of the nest. And these young people were ready to share! They told about their lives and spoke eloquently about what mattered to them. And they revealed what had been important to them about involvement at St. Matthew’s growing up.
I stayed true to the relational meeting process and didn’t ask these young people even to come back to church…but some of them did.  And when they did, they volunteered to design and run a youth group for the church. These young adults became important leaders and we had a lively and rich youth group which did much more than entertain our teens. Because they knew much more intimately the issues and challenges of young people in our culture, our new leaders were able to invite conversation about our relationship with God which was true to the context of our teens.
I wonder if this is really a story about getting young people back into church or just another story about baptismal ministry.  True shared ministry happens when we listen deeply to each other, even our young members and even those who seem to be so different from us. We listen so we can all discern and articulate of our values and passions, and the gifts God has given us to share with the whole body of Christ. I am so thankful those young adults felt welcomed back, not only to reclaim the Church as their home, but to be full members, leaders and ministers among us.

Wondering on the Walk About

Second day of the Walk About. Third stop of the trip at St. Thomas in Rawlins. People have interesting, deep questions about the nominees and the life of the church, but I am wanting to spend more time and get in deeper dialogue with everyone than the time we have is allowing! I found the small groups at St. Mark’s, Cheyenne , which met with one nominee at a time, to be intimate and allowed for some amount of follow-up to initial answers I gave. The larger groups at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Laramie met with 3 candidates at a time, which generated a different level of energy. I found that listening to the answers of two of my traveling partners was fascinating and also helped to focus my responses. The more informal and brief stop at St. Thomas in Rawlins was refreshing in that I got to connect with  several individuals who generously entered into conversation about their congregational contexts…but I left realizing there were more people present who I hadn’t had a chance to touch base with.
 I wonder, would it be helpful to use this blog as a way to reach more people in a deeper way? And what exactly is the kind of knowledge about a person which informs discernment? I know in smaller churches where we spend up to a year doing congregational formation before we are even ready to do discernment around ministries (both lay and ordained), it is often listening to the stories a person shares about his or her life which give insight into not only the nature of the individual but the gifts they bring to the table. Maybe sharing in this forum the stories I am telling on the Walk  About will help to give greater insight into the gifts I bring and whether they are indeed a fit for our diocese. I think I’ll try to do that in the days ahead…if energy levels and wifi connections allow….

Tying Up Loose Ends

    I’m getting ready for the Walk About in Wyoming. As one of 6 nominees for bishop (election to be held 3/20), the Walk About is an 8 day trip around the diocese to let people in congregations get to know the nominees, ask questions, and help them discern who God is calling to be the next bishop of Wyoming. For me, planning for the Walk About has been like planning for any other lengthy trip away from home…with twice the anxiety! And the hardest thing about being on the road (besides deciding what clothes to pack) is tying up loose ends of home and office life so that chaos doesn’t reign and important initiatives don’t get lost.
    In this case, the home front is covered, thanks to son Chris who will feed the cats and bring in the mail. And I really think the diocesan office can survive ten days without seeing my face (although I plan to peek in my inbox when the tour passes through next week!). What I’m worried about is this little seed we planted the weekend before last at the Latino Ministry Workshop.
    Anthony Guillan, who is the Latino Missioner of the Episcopal Church Center led us in an exploration of the Latino/Hispanic culture, the spirituality of this diverse population and the challenges we have in the Episcopal Church as we try to welcome and partner with them in ministry.  About 25 people were present from 7 congregations. Three people in Cody even beamed in over the new video conferencing network for a few hours. These were not, as someone else observed, the usual suspects…the same old faces you see at every diocesan get together. I saw people I had not met before, intense with energy and passion for this ministry. We had several members of Latino/Hispanic descent with us, besides Anthony, to encourage and direct us. The three congregations in the diocese already intentionally reaching out to their Latino neighbors (in Powell, Jackson and Gillette) helped us see what is possible and went away with new insights themselves.
    I knew the workshop was a success when the next day I went with Anthony to worship at St. Stephen’s, Casper.  A Latina who had been at the workshop showed up and took communion for the first time in many years. The congregation was ready and willing to welcome her into their community. They had quickly added a Spanish hymn, provided translations of the readings for the day and they had “rescued” all the left over “culturally appropriate” goodies from Saturday’s meeting to share with their guests! Man, I thought, we can’t let this good start die away! But I wonder, how do we nurture it?
    One way to water that seed it this: Andy Kerr has been working with Anthony to create an on-line educational site for those of us interested in going deeper. Anthony has even offered to meet with us on web-site meetings to keep the conversation and energy around Latino ministry going. But this is steep learning curve for all of us. Have we, in just one intense workshop, created enough sense of community to inspire us to make the effort to come back together in the unfamiliar realm of the internet and web meetings? How much encouragement does it take to reconnect people once the face to face interaction is over? I am sure it will take less and less effort and time once we learn to do it…..but that first time is a huge speed bump for most of us. I’ll be watching…and praying that the seed we planted doesn’t wither before it bears fruit. I wonder what else we can do? I guess it's a loose end I'll have to leave dangling while I go finish my packing.....

(PS-If you would like to get on the Latino Ministry list and be part of the on-going conversations, however those may work out, please contact the diocesan office.)

Wondering about the Creation of Teams

Lori Modisett, Rick Viet, Warren Frelund and I formed the team which went to the annual Living Stones conference in Des Moines this year. This sounds a little like the beginning of a bad joke: Did you hear the one about a local priest, a rector, a deacon ministry developer and a canon who all went to a conference together? But while we did a lot of laughing at ourselves, it turned out not to be a joke at all. Instead it was the creation of a real team which came up with important questions (notice: not solutions) for the Church. Which led me to wondering how we go about creating an environment which allows such unlikely but surprisingly creative teams to be born.

Elements that I identified as being important to this environment were as follows: First and perhaps foremost was the diversity of the members. This may not be evident to outsiders, but each of us on this team came with very different self-interests and perspectives. From my own balcony view of the whole diocese, to Rick and Lori’s more focused lenses in their particular kinds of congregational life, to Warren’s insistence on considering the impact on the diaconate….all of us were standing in different corners.

The second important element which shaped us was a shared interest, in our case an interest in creating a Church which is as healthy and vital a community of God as possible. We were not, and still are not, in complete agreement about what actions to take to get to this goal. What mattered to the creation of the team, though, was the absolute trust we shared in the veracity of this goal for each of the four of us. Because we trusted each other’s sincerity, we listened deeply to differing opinions. Because we trusted that God was speaking to each of us, we bit our tongues when we wanted to debate, patiently waiting for the Word to appear in discussion.

Some elements that begin to emerge in the previous paragraph need to be lifted up: trust and patience with the process. It also took time. The case study we presented at the conference required us to work together for three months before we even went to Des Moines.  In those months (all our meetings were done on the web!), we explored our presenting question with some discipline and intensity, as we had to produce a paper to share with others. So we needed both time and a time limit to be as productive as we were. And then we spent five days together at the conference, presenting our case study and acting as consultants to others as they presented their papers. Of all the things that we brought to the process, time may have been the scarcest commodity, the most valuable thing we all had to give. This common sacrifice was certainly one factor which bound us together and helped us all squeeze the most possible out of the experience.

So, ingredients for an environment in which a truly creative team can be born: diversity, shared interest, trust, patience with process and time. Come to think of it, these are not just the elements which produce good teams, but are also key nutrients for deep and vital community. I wonder how we might pour more and more of these ingredients into our common life……

(BTW-The Living Stones case study this year was on the feasibility of using local priests in rector-led congregations. Copies are available from the diocesan office.)

That delicate, dangerous point where gravity overcomes momentum

  I woke up thinking about the first promise of the
Baptismal Covenant: “Will you continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” The vestry of All Saints’, Torrington had invited me to do a workshop with them on Saturday and it had been a good day. I felt they had received the two tools I had to share with them-Relational Meetings and Asset Mapping- enthusiastically. They also developed a definite plan of action which will help them go forward into the year and actively address the self-identified depression of their congregation by laying a deliberate foundation of fellowship. But by Sunday morning I was worrying about them losing momentum.
    My experience with congregational development, I realize, is a lot like cross-country skiing in hilly terrain. Sometimes (rarely, I’m afraid) you go down a steep hill and find a flat surface where your momentum will keep you going for a long, lovely stretch. More likely, at the top of the downhill slope you look forward and see that there is another hill, bigger and steeper, rising like a wave in front of you. While skiing on Sunday, I faced one such series of hills. I knew that I had to be ready with my ski poles, to dig in behind my heels and shift my weight, the second that the momentum from my descent was countered by gravity. That delicate, dangerous point came just short of the half-way mark on the second hill’s upward slope. I caught it- barely-anchoring myself with the poles and beginning the herring-bone step that would take me to the top. But for a painful second I saw clearly how easy it would be to let gravity win, and tumble to the valley below.
    The tools I gave the vestry on Saturday are like my ski poles-they will help this committed group of leaders to give a push to their congregation and get some momentum going. The rush of knowing and interacting with each other on a deeper level will energize their community. But, building an “apostle’s fellowship” will take more than this initial push. My experience with congregations has been that once initial depression is overcome, the tools used to overcome it (the ski poles as it were) are dropped. In fact, one of the vestry members this week-end shared with me that years ago they had done a similar intervention, had really good results, but in the long term it didn’t “take”. She could no longer even recall what they had learned.
     I think this is a portion of the issue of operational VS adaptive leadership which I wrote about last week. The problem is that in our post-modern world, there are so few stretches where we can coast. All the hills on our Christian journey are coming in waves and we dare not put down our poles! So I WONDER: How can we convince each other to hold on to new tools and keep practicing them, even when not in pain? And, what are the subtle and immediate cues which tell us that congregational momentum is being overcome by gravity and it’s time to dig in harder, shift our weight and really work…even though we are pointed up hill and higher than we have been before? I’m convinced we have tools adequate for the task but, until we use them competently and consistently, continuing in the Apostle’s fellowship will be a series of finding ourselves at the bottom of the same valley over and over.

Why is it hard to hang on to a committment to adapt?

The differences between “operational” and “adaptive” leadership styles are helpfully set out in Surfing the Edge of Chaos, a book by Richard Pascale on business theories which work in our post-modern culture. As I think about the Episcopal Church, it makes complete sense that what we need are leaders who are adaptive, i.e. who can communicate the urgency of the challenge in a changing culture, establish a broad understanding of the circumstances creating the problem (and so clarify why traditional solutions aren’t working) and finally enlist others to work together to creatively come up with new solutions. But much like Sears (an example which the author holds up), our Church has been successful for so long that it is hard to imagine, even with the statistics of decline staring us in the face, that our future is not assured. Certainly we need to commit to a new course of action, we all say, but then go right back to acting as we have always acted. So I wonder: Why is it so hard to hang on to a commitment to adapt?

I remember an incident when I was rector of St. Matthew’s in Tucson, AZ. We were building a new sanctuary which, after extensive and inclusive discussion, had been approved by 99% of the members. It was to be a building welcoming the whole community, usable by theater and music groups, book studies and town meetings, as well as being a holy space in which to worship. The walls were up, the windows were being installed and it was time to order the chairs, when a significant number of members cried, “What chairs!?! We want pews. Who decided on chairs?” A careful look at the plans showed that, indeed, tiny chairs were drawn in. A discussion about the flexibility of the building being an invitation for people to join us at many levels and the importance of our ministry to the community took place. And still this group felt unheard, expressing fear that we would not have a real sanctuary without the traditional pews in place. I’m proud to say that the congregation did not resort to dividing into pew VS chair camps at this point. Instead, a task force made up of both chair and pew proponents was formed. They visited churches in the area which were using different kinds of seating  and eventually recommended a kind of chair which could be linked together to form a very comfortable pew-like arrangement, and then be separated for more unconventional seating configurations.

This should have been, and indeed was in some respects, a win-win solution except…..in the rest of my tenure there, the number of times we actually unhooked the chairs and used them in any format other than that of pews could be counted on my fingers! We had planned for, and then re-committed to adaptation in a changing cultural environment by buying chairs to make a more hospitable space. Hanging on to that commitment and following through creatively were much more difficult.

Perhaps Pascale would point to the contention in his book that only the threat of death and the invitation of sex (an opportunity for the recombination of basic building blocks!) are motivational enough to get people to really choose adaptation over conventional actions. Perhaps he is right, although the Gospel does give me hope that God’s love for us and ours for God can motivate us to change without death or sex in sight. And, after all, St. Matthew’s still has those chairs. I wonder what they are doing with them now…..

My first posting!

Last week the Ministry Developers got together with me for one of our quarterly face to face meetings. One of our topics of discussion was blogging. Andy taught us the technical “how to” …but we wondered together about the “whys” of such journaling, deciding it was important to let the diocese know who we are and what we are doing in Ministry Development. Perhaps more importantly, though, we wondered how to maintain any degree of interest for outside readers. We grappled with developing a voice for each of our blogs….speculating about using everything from a church mouse to the Bishop’s horse, to keep our reflections focused and interesting. (Personally, I’d like to hear from Dusty the horse real soon!)

I took this discussion quite seriously and have been thinking about a “blog voice” for several days. This morning I came to the conclusion that the best persona for me to share with others who might be reading is my “wondering” voice. I wonder a lot. Sometimes my wonder is bogus…like when I wonder if someone is going to clean out the cat box before I am forced to (which is really just manipulative wishing!). But when wonder is genuine, it is so exciting and energizing…a true mix of curiosity and awe which can lead to new insights, unforeseen opportunities, even a path through the wilderness.

Most of the wondering I do is alone, in my head…but my favorite and most productive wondering is done with other people who get caught up in the moment of suspended judgment, looking from different angles and through different lenses, at a new issue or an old problem suddenly presented in a fresh context. Last Saturday’s Ethics workshop, with the participants of our latest EDS on-line offering, was one such experience. We revisited the baptismal covenant as the foundation of ethical decisions and asked, in five areas of congregational life, what those baptismal promises had to say to us. The resulting conversation was rich indeed and I continue to wonder about some of the insights. The one which has stuck with me today was the observation that “administration” has ministry built into its very title. This slice of congregational life was avoided, thought to be so plebian by most of us that no one cheerfully volunteered to be the small group which tackled it, but it was probably the most important because it is the aspect of our communal life which is servant to all other slices of life. I wonder now what our diocesan administration could/would do if both those in administration and those whose ministry it supports would take this insight to heart……

I’m also wondering whether anyone will indeed read this blog (well I guess that’s just wishing). I’m REALLY wondering what you will say, what wonderings you all have, and what we will create together in this strange medium of the blogosphere…..