Author Archives: Landon Whitsitt

You Need To Know About This, 01/20/13

The Story of Stuff

Bob Wollenberg is an anxious empty-nester, looking for something to do. So he’s decided to spend the year taking pictures of all his possessions. He’s only 6 days into his project deconstructing “stuff” and I’m hooked, I tell you. Hooked.

I noticed today that Merriam-Webster’s first definition of “possession” is: “the act of having or taking into control.” Is that why it’s so hard to let go of our stuff…it’s a matter of losing control? What kind of control do we gain through our possessions? What’s hardest to let go of? Maybe for me, some of these possessions tell me who I am – they tell something of my life story and so they give meaning to my life. I’d hate to let go of that.

Counting My Stuff

Say that to my face

Rocky Supinger contends that social media may not be the best place to have in-depth conversations about hard topics. He recently felt compelled to unfriend a family member on Facebook. That’s ballsy.

When we share something on Facebook, whether we compose it ourselves or post it from another source, we’re offering a hot steamy pizza to our social network. Some of our friends will gobble it up, liking it and commenting, “Amen!” and “Thanks for sharing.” Others, though, won’t like it. And their comments effectively throw tofu on the pizza. And nobody likes tofu. Especially on pizza.

Tofu on the Facebook Pizza

A bored or anxious pastor is not a good pastor

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly said that:

  • When someone has skills or talents that are overkill for what is being asked of them, they get bored.
  • When what is being asked of them is not achievable through the use of their skills and talents, they get anxious.

Pastors suffer from both conditions.

Those who have been called to serve in the particular role of pastor are a unique breed of cat (Aren’t we all? But go with me here…). We say that these are the people who have been identified as being especially gifted at nurturing and educating us into the larger narrative that God is writing in history. This is a powerful and awesome reality, and, out of the full Body of Christ, we have asked particular ones of us to devote their lives to helping us see it.

This is what most pastors have signed up for. Willingly. Excitedly. Pastors are artists of the highest order, and artists will give up almost anything to make art.

And yet…

When a congregation has no interest in exploration or wonder or doubt or innovation or… The pastor is going to get bored, and will struggle with whether she wants to be in ministry in that place. Or at all.

When a congregational board insists that the pastor focus all his time and energy in marketing and recruitment for the sake of the bottom line…. Sorry, “evangelism”… The pastor will get anxious, and will struggle with whether he has actually been called to ministry in the first place. He might burn out, quit, and work at a menial uninspiring job. What a sad place for an artist to be.

What we ought to do with our pastors is help them find the sweet spot of their skills/talents where they are making the art they’ve been called to make and are stretched to make it better. I’ll bang this drum over and over again: Pastors are not called to be managers and administrators. That is an entirely different skill-set.

Pastors are artists. Do you want a good pastor? Then let her make her art, and she will blow your world wide open. If you don’t, then you’re squandering a precious gift that God has given you.

Three things Progressives should think about progress

imageThese boots are made for walking towards justice

“The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”

“I have a dream…”

~Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Daniel Pink says there are three truths about mastery. I think they apply to progress as well.

1) Progress is a mindset.

You either believe progress is possible or you don’t. Those who believe that things can and do get better are really the only ones “making progress.”

They believe it about themselves. They believe it about society. They believe it about everything. They ignore those who would like to remind them that, as the Human Race, we are awful, awful people. They ignore those who say, “No, we just have new and better ways of killing/oppressing/marginalizing each other.” They do not believe that goodness is a fixed reality, and that all we can do is figure out how to manage the destruction. They believe that people have the capacity to grow and change and mature.

Progressives have Hope.

2) Progress is hard.

“Stony the road,” indeed.

Progress is not an easy task. There are more setbacks than anyone cares to admit. There is more opposition than anyone thinks there will be.

But Progressives don’t get fooled and give up because someone says “No.” They press on because they have Faith that one day they will say “Yes.”

3) Progress is never fully realized.

Progressives take steps with the full knowledge that each step forward is not the final step. Each step is just one more step, and there is always another one after that.

With every victory comes an assessment of “Where do we go from here?” With every person set free comes a survey of “Who needs freedom now?”

Progress is never done, but more progress will have been made when we pass the baton than when it was passed to us.