ANNUAL REVIEW
Most of the “terms of call” for Presbyterian ministers, I do not know how it goes in
other denominations, contains wording that suggest that there should be an annual review of the performance of the minister.

It is an idea that has great potential. It is an aspect of employment that many others in lots of other fields of work experience. Teachers are “observed” by other teachers and principals. Sales people have annual reviews. Other corporations have procedures that bring people in for an annual review of how their work has been. There are precise standards for these evaluations in some places. In other places it is much more subjective and difficult to evaluate the quality of the work being done.

I think that the profession of ministry is a very difficult profession to evaluate. By what standard do you judge the work of the minister? Is your model of how the minister ought to perform taken from the television preachers you have seen? Is the model by which one judges the minister one of the tall steeple preachers in the area? Maybe the committee is made up of people who want the minister to focus of the works like Mother Teresa or the Rev. Jesse Jackson, be a social activist? Maybe there are some who ask, “What would Jesus do?”

What are the bullet points that the committee needs to consider? George Buttrick, an outstanding minister in New York City in the 40’s and 50”s said that there are two things a minister ought to focus on: Calling on members and visitors, and Preaching. But even those must be dissected. Calling - how often? One a month on all members? One a quarter? Maybe all members once a year and when crisis comes? And there are deeper questions. What should happen in those calls? Should there be an agenda? I once heard of a minister who went with questions: Do you all prayer together every night? How is your habit of scripture reading? Do you find your place of work being a place where you feel comfortable sharing grace with others? How can the church help your spiritual life to grow? Other ministers just make it a social call unless the member has a question. Hospital and nursing home visits? How often? Every day?

Preaching - now there is a real sticky wicket. How do you evaluate the quality of the preaching? Is the work of preaching to comfort or challenge? Is the job to give answers or raise questions. Dogmatic or “Faith in search of understanding?” Does the preacher speak the politics of the kingdom of God or the politics of the USA? Is the preacher enable the members to leave satisfied or to leave a bit agitated? Is preaching a Bible study experience where most of the time is spent in telling the Bible story or is it to relate the Bible to contemporary society? How long should that sermon be? Does the preacher keep to the time limits? Does he read from a text or “preach from the heart?”

From my forty years of ministry, I have had a number of “annual reviews”. Some with just one member of the session. Some with a committee. Some with a job description given in January and used in December to see how it was accomplished. From those forty years, I do not think I had very many reviews that I thought were very helpful. Most of the time I thought they were too kind or indifferent. There was a “proforma” feeling about them. Let’s get this over.
How do you think a minister ought to be evaluated?

FATHER'S DAY OBSERVATION

     For forty years I had the pleasure of being a pastor in a congregation. Every May we had a recognition of Mother's Day.  Over the course of those forty years there grew up a real divide.  There was the focus at the beginning on giving thanks for the mother you had.  Everybody had a mother and everybody could participate. (This ignored the whole question of those whose mothers were cruel, abandoned or somehow unworthy of gratitude)  But everybody had a mother, and so Mother's Day was a day in which all people could participate.

     Slowly there came the equal focus in many services to recognize all those who were mothers. If you had had children you were singled out, lifted up and recognized.  This became a moment of pain and sorrow for all the women who had not had a child. For many of the single women who had not had a child were excluded.  All the barren wives were excluded. All the men were excluded. It'd was a moment when all those who were mothers were recognized and a moment that gave pain and sorrow to many of the women who had never had a child.

     In my own comments, I attempted to focus only on the fact that we all had mothers and were were, on this day, recognizing and giving thanks for the mothers we had. But that did not stop the officers, deacons and the ushers from giving flowers only to those who were mothers. Another slight to those who had not had children.

     When it came to June and we had Fathers's Day, the focus was on recognizing and honoring the feathers that we had. We were, again, all able to participate because we all have a father (again ignoring the fact that many fathers had refused to be named on the birth certificate, had walked out on the family, had refused child support, or been surrogate sperm donor) The liturgy and the talk was about honoring your father.

     In my forty years of ministry, the day never developed the movement to recognize all those who were dads and to have the men who were fathers stand and be recognized.  I have not heard of any young man complaining about being left out or ignored on Father's day because they have not become a father.

     I have been retired now for over eight years so there may have been changing in the way Father's day is now celebrated and recognized, but I always thought it was interesting how the two celebrations were described.

Old Time Religion

It makes me very sad to see what has happened to so much of what is being called The Christian Faith.  No wonder there are so many who are deciding that they would rather have "none" than be associated with Christianity.  The theology of Glory, the triumphal theology, the theology of domination, the theology of the promise of victory and blessing, has seemed to capture the moment in many congregations.

But for me, just give me the "Old Time Religion" of the New Testament Early Christian church, the church that was underground, meeting in people's homes,  putting all their resources into a pot and sharing what they had with each other. The early Christian church that did not have any power with political figures, the early church that was able to live and to wrestle with the questions about what to do with the other religions in the neighborhood.  Can we eat the meat that was sacrificed to Zeus? The "old time religion" that attracted people by the way they loved each other.  They were not in a position to try to force the way they lived on other people. That did not happen until the 4th century AD. The old time religion that did not have vast physical empires with gyms, day cares, classes on yoga, financial seminars, that did not have to try to raise millions to pay off buildings that are named for wealth donors.

The old time religion that was speaking about a new kingdom of God that had come into the world and was an alternative to the life and culture that surrounded them. Now the preaching seems to be how can we help our members live more successful and fulfill the American dream of prosperity and leisure.  I understand we will not be able to go back to that old time religion of the New Testament early church but as a goal, as a vision, as a marker towards which we might look, it is better than what so many are preaching.

It is the little things

Jesus said that those who were invited into the Kingdom had done the little things: glass of water, a visit to the nursing home, a shirt for a naked person, a cane for the cripple, the small acts of dignity that recognize the common humanity of each person.

I think I am tempted to forget that, but I have to confess that there are posts on social media that remind me of the power of the little things. The story of a woman who paid for the groceries of another woman who had Food Stamps and was abused by another woman in line. The story of the stewardess who was grabbed and demanded by a white woman that she would not sit next to an African American. The stewardess went found another seat and came back and invited the African American to come with her, that he did not have to stay seated next to that bigot. The post of the three year old boy walking the dog who walked past a nice large puddle. The boy got about three steps beyond the puddle and then reconsidered. He carefully put down the lease, turned walked back to the puddle, jumped into the puddle two or three times and then came back slowly, picked up the lease and walked on with the dog calmly waiting while the boy did the jumping.  A little moment of joy grabbed by the little boy. The story of some teenage boys all getting their head shaved so that their friend with cancer getting chemo would not look strange.  The young girl wearing the traditional head dress of the Muslims in order to show support for the young Muslim girl in her class.

You can add your own stories, but grace does not come very often in large measures. It slips in on the little things that we do to recognize and rejoice in our common humanity and our common dignity.  It is the little things that are not required, that we do because we care not because we have to, but because it feels good to do and it gives respect to others. But be very careful, it is not always easy even to do the little things. There can be some very negative responses and attack from others for even the little things. Ah, but nothing can take away the great joy and fellowship that is birthed in doing those little things.

Still blind to the others

I have just come home from the Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta. I always find them very enjoyable. It is a chance to hear nationally known preachers and to be inspired by the magnificent power of five or six hundred males and a couple of hundred females who are all eager to sign the hymns. What a moving power.


But one of the nagging questions that remains is what do we say to the world about all those who claim the same Bible, but who use it differently?  One of the presenters made a marvelous case for the current crisis in our mainline churches and culture is the competition of different narrative stories that explain life and the Biblical ignorance of the church so that it cannot present its story in a powerful and effective way.


I have no problem with that analysis of the situation. What I find disappointing is that he did not recognize and talk about that one of the competing stories is another version of the Christian faith that claims to be the answer.   The Christian narrative that he was promoting, and which I find myself in agreement with, is that God's love in Jesus calls us to seek to redeem and to minister to those who are ignored, abused and exploited by the world.  This narrative invites in all people, includes all people, and desires to free people from all of the things that keep them in bondage. That includes the wealthy and those who desperately want to be wealthy called to be free from the power of that wealth.


That there is another narrative that claims to be Christian that is much more elitist. In that it desires to separate the good and the just, themselves, from those they believe to be sinners: those on welfare (lazy), those who take certain drugs (but not the drugs they take), those who love different people than they love (gays and lesbians), those who make decisions that are contrary to their decisions (like abortion) those who believe that power and might are evil (gun control, less military spending).  There is a narrative of the Christian story that claims that God's will for all people is that they become wealthy and blessed with great material blessings forgetting that there are many more definitions of blessings that the American way of life.


What troubled me was that no one at the conference ever acknowledge that what was being preached here had to contend with the other stories that also claim the name of Christian. Nor did they talk about how to respond to that challenge or to separate the narrative of the Christian faith from the other narratives.

Dr. King's Memory

January 18th will be another Martin Luther King Day celebration.  The work and dreams of Dr. King are an important part of our American struggle towards justice and equality for all citizens. Dr. King lead an incredible battle for the right to vote. Dr. King under girded that battle with the strategy of non-violence. He opposed the war in Vietnam because he could not justify telling young black men to go fight, shoot, bomb, kill in Asia and then tell them to be non-violent in New York, Chicago or Atlanta. The struggle for justice, equality and dignity took Dr. King into a number of different areas at the time. The major fight was for the voter right bill, but He soon was involved in anti-war movement and in labor negotiations. The Memphis sanitation strikes were about wages and working conditions.

Dr. King was a passionate leader and battled until his death. If we are going to gather and remember and pay tribute to his memory, that memory must energize us as it has not in several years to resume the battles that he fought.  There has been a major assault on the voting rights of minorities, students, seniors and the poor. The redistricting of states has resulted in districts that are heavily in favor of one  party over the other. Voter ID requirements, shorting the early voting time, eliminating Sunday voting, and a host of other restrictions have been adopted to prevent voting by people who do not vote Republican.

Dr. King lead marching for wages in Memphis and the struggle for better wages has got to be resumed as the minimum wage has not been increased at the Federal level in decades. Equal pay for equal work has got to be an agenda item if we are to be for equality of all people.  The tax reforms implemented by the Republicans do not stand the test of being fair or just to all segments of the economy.

It is of little benefit if all we do is go and remember what a courageous, bold, and dynamic man Dr. King was.  This year the celebrations of his life need to be the inspiration for us all to renew his battles and to get out into the politic arena and fight for the same things he fought for.

December note from Brother Biddle

It is always a pleasure to hear from Brother Biddle. Since we are both retired now, it is more like Christmas letters in Christmas cards and Easter greetings, but it is still good to hear from him.  He said he had had a knee replacement and cataract surgery was scheduled for February, but other than that and a few extra pounds he is in fine shape.

His first complaint was that East Burlap did not have a Starbuck shop. He said it must be the only town in America without one, but he had wanted to get one of those red cups they were selling. He wanted to show his support for red cups; said he liked red cups; said he did not know what was wrong with the color red.  In his view all that noise about red cups being "anti-Christmas" was silly. If you want to see a real war on Christmas you just need to go to any mall and look at all the materialism and commercialization of Christmas. That is the really war. Santa is the real enemy.

Retirement has its good side because it meant that he did not have to get involved in the great theological conflict at the East Burlap Protestant Parish.  It seems that the Bruce Jenner sex change had raised some interesting questions at the Parish.  Somebody wanted to know if Mary was bi-sexual as she had had relations with the Holy Spirit and with Joseph. Naturally that was refuted immediately and decisively. But that lead to the question of what kind of sex Jesus was?  Did he just have one Chromosome since he just had one human parent?  If you did a DNA test on Jesus would you find an X and Y chromosome?  The next step was to have some one wonder if Jesus was a gay man, but someone else said he was heterosexual as he spent a lot of time with prostitutes. That was an agreement that may have answered one problem, but created another.  Of course, the debates created a lot of heat at East Burlap, but little light, and Brother Biddle was glad he was not the one who had to shepherd the people through that.

A pastor's heart always bleeds when there is a great tragedy in a community where he serves. This year in East Burlap the whole community was saddened when a young father shot his three year old daughter on the day after Christmas.  The young father had gotten a gun, a pistol, as a Christmas present from his wife. He had always wanted one, but he had never had a gun before. He thought he would be able to protect his family better. The day after Christmas he was "playing" with it, fast drawing from the hip, and he drew and pulled the trigger and it killed his little girl. Turns out he did not even know how to load it, know how to check to see if it was loaded, and where the safety was. Brother Biddle said this gun culture in this country was one of its great sicknesses.

Having just celebrated the birth of Jesus and heard again the story of the Christ Child come to bring the Kingdom of God Brother Biddle is amazed how dogmatic and violent people who believe they are right can be. Why is there such a human compulsion to try to make everybody believe the same way? The Sunni and the Shiites, the Buddhists against the Moslems, the Moslems against the Christians, the Jews against the Moslems. anti-abortionists against the pro-choice, the zeal of the righteous is deadly, and Brother Biddle fell back on theology. We are not saved by being right but by the gift of grace.  It is always good to hear from Brother Biddle.