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Cutting Evangelism

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Church Life, Pop

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pexels-photo-388898

A couple of days ago, we got word that my denomination, the United Church of Christ, was going to engage in additional cuts to jobs as they were restructuring departments.  It broke our hearts that many of our colleagues with whom we’ve worked closely would be no longer be partners in our journey together.

Word has been released that many of the positions cut focused on communications and publishing.  I had worked with some of these amazing staff members on various projects, and it saddened me to know that they would no longer sharing their talents with the denomination.

Now, I understand that there isn’t as much money flowing upward to the denomination.  With each of our churches growing smaller, individual congregation are not able to send as much money to the denomination, and the current structure is not sustainable.  I can imagine that these choices were extremely distressing to the decision-makers who are faithful people yearning to always make the best decisions possible for the denomination.

But I also know this: with less people attending church, the materials published by the denomination is a primary way for us to communicate and spread the good news of God’s love, grace, and acceptance.  I know cuts needed to come from somewhere, but I am saddened that this is the department that is receiving drastic cuts.

I started out as a PR person in my younger days.  I worked for non-profit organizations, sending out press releases, crafting newsletters, finding additional ways to spread the word about our message and mission.  This year, I was working a few hours per week for a local non-profit.  When restructuring was done for that organization earlier in the summer, my position was cut as well.  (I still work full-time as a local church pastor but last year was offered an additional part time job utilizing my PR skills.)

So with marketing and communications cuts by all types of non-profits, we are slashing efforts to send out any good news into our world.

Evangelism (or PR and communications for God) is one of our calls as people of faith.  Evangelism isn’t our efforts to convince people to believe what we believe but to simply spread the word about God’s unconditional love and grace.

Mark 16:15 notes that Jesus said to his followers “‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”  We too are given this directive – whether by our preaching, our teaching, our mission and justice work, or our writing.

I know that the people who remain in the department are remarkable, and they will use their gifts to their full potential.  But recognizing that 21st century Church is mostly being done beyond each of our local church walls, I still need to ask: are one or two or three people in our organization enough to share this radical message of love and justice?

So progressive Christian writer friends – this is a call for us to find new mediums or create new avenues to share the good news.  With marketing, communications, and church continuously evolving, let’s ensure that we are continuously sharing our gifts in these areas as a primary goal instead of burying these talents outside of our shrinking congregations.

What Color is That Dress???

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Current Events, Life, Pop, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Media

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This week, the internet burst with comments and postings to discuss this dress:

Photo Credit: Swiked/Tumblr

My first thought was “Who cares?  It’s just a dress.  There are more important issues to discuss than the color of a dress: poverty, homelessness, trafficking, hate crimes, health care…”

And that’s basically what I initially posted on social media.  In response to my post, a friend reminded me that this is more than a dress.

Riiiiiiiiiight!

I saw a white and gold dress.  Yes, the dress is undoubtedly white and gold.  Undoubtedly.  (Am I right?) As I looked longer at the photograph, I wondered if the dress could be blue and gold.  Was it lighting and shadows that gave me this doubt?  Was my brain playing tricks on me?

I still had no idea how people saw the lace as black.  I truly tried to see it from their perspective – squinting my eyes and staring harder.  But I could only see gold or brown, not black, lace.

Maybe if I stood on my head I could see a different color trim…

Articles were released on the scientific reasoning behind how we perceive color.  A combination of factors aided whether people saw blue and black or white and gold: how the eyes are picking up color, how the brain works, and the lighting of the room.  (Being that I’m not a scientist, I won’t try to explain this, but check out these articles HERE and HERE.)

If something so objective as color can divide people, how much more will subjective topics like religion and politics come between people?  The dress becomes a concrete symbol of how we can perceive things differently than the people closest to us.

After giving it further thought, I wrote this on social media:

If there’s more than one way to see the colors of a dress then maybe there’s more than one way to see God and faith.

In seminary, I learned of the Wesleyan Quadralateral, a system where one establishes their sources of authority on Scripture, reason, tradition and experience.  The way many of us study Scripture differs, and sometimes there are conflicting accounts in the Bible.  Translations also play an impact on how we read scripture.

We also come from a spectrum of traditions with each one highly influencing our theological core.  If we are Protestant, we may find that our teachings lean heavily from Martin Luther or John Calvin more often than St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, two theologians who influence the doctrine of the Roman Catholics.  Even our individual churches and families of origin impact the ways tradition influences our beliefs.

Additionally, experience is the great lens through which we see life.  When we gather the information around us through the filter of our own joys and pains, we see only small pieces of a larger picture.

And because of the lesson of the dress, we can see that our brains reason differently, a point which should always be taken into account.

My friend was right: the dress is more than a dress.  It begs us to understand that we won’t see the world as our neighbors and that everyone comes to their beliefs through a multi-layered lens.

Through the exercise of the dress and knowing how our brain works in gathering information, this is the time for us to become a more understanding people.  It’s time for us to stop the shame and name calling of people who have different political and theological perspectives than we hold.  It’s time for us to stop claiming that such-and-such people will go to hell or that they won’t be accepted by God.

It’s time for us to see that no matter what color dress, theology, politics, or anything else we have or see, we are fully accepted by God and made in God’s image.