Ramblings of Daniel Ross-Jones
Archive for June, 2009
GS27: Leadership development
Jun 27th
Eboo Patel addressed the UCC General Synod today, calling on our church to be a community of bridge-builders, developing and growing a structure of leadership for today’s pluralist America.
He encouraged the church to “build young people who are interfaith leaders.” With all due respect to Eboo (whom I have met on a number of occasions and am deeply infatuated with his work), I’m wondering if he’s met many of the congregations in our church.
With around 2% of our clergy being under age 35, we certainly don’t have a lot of young people in pastoral ministry. With one of the highest average ages among American church groups, the United Church of Christ has occupied itself with many of the issues that face its demographic position: ’60s and ’70s style community organizing, ’60s and ’70s style justice issues, ’60s and ’70s style leadership development.
We’re open-minded, non-scripturally-literal folk — we don’t focus much on ecumenism and inter-faith efforts not because we’re closed-off, but because we simply don’t know how. After it was apparent that we would not be a United Church as in other places like Canada, Australia and India, where a majority of the national Protestant bodies came together to create one unified church structure, we moved on to other things. We quit talking about our own faith. Rather than attempting to explain what we are, we took up our identity as what we are not: we became an anti- church.
And so we developed the status quo. We continue doing what we do because we simply don’t know what else to do. People died off, and we wring our hands in lament over a society that doesn’t refill the pews like it used to. Hot damn, we actually have to do something to get people to come in the doors! (Even scarier, we might even have to go outside them ourselves!)
I was reading a study not too long ago (I’ll Google it sometime and link from here) about how the majority of clergy surveyed identified as introverts. In the same study, lay church members placed the primary responsibility for outreach, membership development and recruitment (I hate the word “evangelism”) on the pastor’s shoulders. Hello? Does anyone else see a disconnect there?
Growing up, I learned the two things one doesn’t speak about in polite conversation are politics and religion. As I went through college, the two most popular topics among my peers were politics and religion. In the case of the latter, we all were finding our own ways in the world, accompanied by our own canons of experiences, books, and resources, because so many people didn’t know where to go! I have a number of under-30 friends who sought out advice and counsel from Christian pastors, only to end up claiming Buddhist and Muslim labels for themselves and initiating themselves in those faiths because their laypeople and clerics would speak directly to their beliefs! What a telling statement about so many of our churches today.
To the UCC, I hope that we keep Eboo’s challenge to us as we reimagine our church. The early Christian church of Paul’s day was deeply influenced by its encompassing Hellenistic culture of the time. Our own UCC has been deeply influenced by the American culture of the 1960s and 1970s. What does the church of the 2010s look like, and how do we build our leadership and structure our organization for the rapidly-changing, quickly-evolving future?
(Side note: this article and its follow-up from the Massachusetts Conference are over eight years old, but I believe a good, quick read to illustrate the demographic and financial structural flaws of our current system in the UCC and why it is absolutely imperative to change tracks.)
Reasons U.S. infrastructure terrifies me
Jun 23rd
We’re still receiving information about yesterday’s deadly crash on Washington, D.C.’s Metro system. Having spent some time there (and almost relocating there a little less than a year ago), I’ve become familiar with the service, and a couple of things are coming up in my memory:
- Every time I’ve ridden a Metro train, I’ve found it to be quiet and clean — a feature that is not shared by its Chicago brethren.
- Almost every time I’ve ridden a Metro train, I couldn’t understand the train operator’s announcement of upcoming stations and I’ve had to be extra vigilant paying attention.
That’s what I remember the most; well, that and the cool blinking lights along the sides of the platforms that indicate a train is approaching. (Last time I was there, though, it seemed like these have fallen into disrepair or are being phased out of use. Its a pity. I love unique things like that which add a certain intangible benefit to otherwise utilitarian aspects of civil engineering.) My heart goes out to the families of those who died, and I hope for a speedy recovery for those injured — both of physical and mental injuries. Its a shame that it always comes to something like this to hopefully get people to listen to this loud, echoing announcement:
AMERICA! YOUR COUNTRY IS CRUMBLING!
As I ride around on the Chicago L — a system which, for those who wonder about these things, doesn’t even have the “outdated” safety systems or “failing” relays that are being scrutinized on Metro but instead relies solely on operator driving skills with minimal automatic-kill devices to stop the train when approaching a dangerous system — I can’t help but notice it in my own city. Train stations showing their age over the past century or more. Steel elevated tracks that appear ready to collapse at any moment from decades upon decades of rust and deferred maintenance. Rail cars being used far beyond their warranted and designed lifespan. New technologies literally sailing over our aging, antiquated system.
Driving north on Lake Shore Drive this morning, I once again encountered a pothole of death, swerving to miss its deep trench of exposed rebar. Driving over it at a controlled 5 mph would have been hazardous; had I been unable to swerve or apply the brakes at even the posted 45 mph (let alone my flow-of-traffic 55 mph) I would have had some serious damage. My hometown ties still hold strong and I can’t get the images of the collapsed I-35W bridge in the Mississippi River out of my head. Between that and living through the massive Marquette Interchange reconstruction in Milwaukee, I now instinctively look at the underside of bridges as I pass under them, and more often than not I cringe as I see the tired, worn out concrete dropping its calling cards for someone to repair it.
We removed upgraded destroyed our rail infrastructure. We have miserably failed to maintain its replacement: the Interstate highway system. Our attempts at efficient bus transportation has been equally poor. As we moved further and further from city centers, we brought along our cars, trucks, and SUV’s. We required our investment funds to be spent on new infrastructure — new roads, new water mains, new sewage lines, new energy construction — rather than attempting to maintain existing structures. We created fictitious balanced budgets on the back of generations to come as we deferred maintenance, expecting less and less and instead requiring more and more of the future.
And this is why U.S. infrastructure terrifies me: because, try as much as our “leaders” might, they can’t indefinitely expand a definitive lifespan. We will continue to have tragic accidents like Washington experienced yesterday until We The People stand up and say that we’ve had enough! On Thursday, despite all of the previous doomsday scenarios from the CTA and RTA, here in Chicago I believe we will likely experience the end of those “comfortable” cutbacks of deferred maintenance. Our insistence on economic unsustainability has reached its endpoint. To prevent resources from being stretched too thin, to appease the suburban NIMBYs (and, yes, to support a bloated administrative structure hellbent on the politics of patronage) we will once again see a proposal that will cut transit service to those who need it the most. To maintain service without a significant investment in capital improvements would be asking for an accident. And without that significant investment, the RTA and its agencies cannot continue to operate the system at its current scale.
The answer is not privitization or continuing 1980′s style American capitalism. Its not raising user fees, fares, tolls, etc. We can’t even, for the short term, expect balanced budgets for our capital expenses. We’re so far past each of those things its impossible to see them in the cracked, broken rearview mirror. Its time to stop bailing out Corporate America and start focusing our energies on rebuilding the America that no one likes to see, no one likes to talk about: the part of America that moves us, that affects our everyday existence.
One of my mentors in college used to talk about “ugly projects,” the types of things that no one wants to donate money for or slap a dedication plaque on, but things that have to be done because if they fail everyone notices. In college, these were things like boilers, water heaters, lavatory fixtures, sidewalks, steam distribution pipes, electrical wiring, network equipment. Brand new, they are truly an investment. Well-maintained, they are assuredly (though consistently) expensive. To repair often costs more than their initial cost.
Its about 20 years past time for those ugly projects. We don’t have another 20.
The real story of seminary debt
Jun 18th
An open letter to judicatory heads, seminary financial aid administrators, and all those connected to faith-based leadership.
When I graduate from seminary in 2011, I may have a cumulative $97,300 (1) in student loan debt. Based on an extended 30-year repayment plan, an average 6.80% interest rate and zero loan fees, my monthly payment will be $634.32 and amount to $131,058.98 in interest payments over those 360 payments. In order to afford that monthly payment, according to federal financial aid guidelines, I should earn an annual salary of at least $76,118.40. (2)
As a Student In Care of the Southeast Wisconsin Association, should I graduate and secure a call in an “average” Wisconsin Conference congregation paying moderate guidelines, I can expect a salary of $33,039 (3), or $43,079.40 less than the recommended salary for my debt load, representing a 56% reduction. (4)
I grew up with a commitment to the church and have felt God’s call to ministry tugging on me throughout my life. Despite facing rejection from the church in the past, I continue forward in faith that God will provide. I find myself today receiving affirmation of my strong candidacy for ordained ministry: a pastoral identity, experience as professional communication staff in a middle judicatory office, a commitment to community-based ministry, a unique perspective from my generational location. I received my undergraduate degree from a church-related institution, and am building up my resume in seminary through two distinctive international experiences.
Yet as I look at the hard numbers, I feel I am forced up against a wall facing another round of rejection from the church in lack of financial support. Due to budget constraints at my school, McCormick Theological Seminary, my individual financial aid package was reduced from covering 88% of tuition to 55% for 2009-10. I must now take out an additional $5,000 in student loans to cover the shortfall, pushing my debt even higher.
Besides tuition, there are myriad other costs related to theological education: books, transportation, insurance, housing, food, communication, photocopies, etc. I changed my permanent residency to Illinois in order to qualify for government assistance in the form of food stamps, which has helped my bottom line each month somewhat. I work three jobs just to try and make ends meet, yet I still rely heavily on student loan money to cover housing and part of my insurance costs. (5)
I have sought out and applied for a number of grants and scholarships, including from our United Church of Christ National Offices, and either have not qualified for or been rejected from each and every one. I gratefully received a $500 stipend from the Association last year, along with $400 from my congregation (Plymouth, Milwaukee.) I appreciate the generosity of McCormick donors for providing a substantial portion of my education costs, yet as my loan balance inches closer and closer to the $100,000 mark, I become more apprehensive and concerned. Where is the church supporting me?
I ask not for a golden parachute, but as we as a church look at our future, we need to look closely at our future leadership. How we invest in our leadership, the requirements we establish for education, and the support we offer directly relates to how well we can attract and retain highly-skilled, motivated, and qualified individuals for our pulpits and ministries. Even more, it demonstrates our commitment to a Christ-like labor justice.
Notes: (1) Based on current financial trends; includes $23,000 in private loans from undergraduate education, $14,300 in subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans from undergraduate education, and up to $60,000 in subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans from seminary. (2) See financial aid calculator at http://www.finaid.org/calculators/loanpayments.phtml (3) For comparison’s sake, my first professional job following college, which required only bachelor’s-level education and was professional staff within the church structure, started at $31,250 in 2006. Based on real 2008 dollars, the UCC salary is actually less than my 2006 salary adjusted for inflation: $33,039 versus $33,345.75. (4) According to the US Census Bureau, the average salary for those with master’s degrees is $62,300. (5) Average monthly expenditures of $1,435 versus income of $650. Loan transfers to balance average $785.
Those rats!
Jun 15th
Its a regular occurrence in Chicago: rat infestations.
No, for once I’m not talking about Chicago (or Illinois) politicians, I’m talking about the fat, brown vermin that scurry across streets at night time to scare the bejeezus out of a person and usually take up residence in and around dumpsters, garbage cans, garages, basements…
…and under the hood of my vehicle.
From what we can piece together, the rat climbed up into my car and made a pretty good home for himself, gnawing on wires for food, and — I don’t know, maybe he created an elevator out of the pistons and a treadmill from the belt. I can’t pretend to know what would bring a rat into my car, but it was there.
Unfortunately for this rat, however, I prefer to use my car for, y’know, driving… and he must have been startled by the movement. His attempt to find a stable space led him to the area around my car’s van, where one of the plentiful potholes was enough to knock him off center but right into the center of the fan. End of rat, as they say.
When did this happen? Most likely Wednesday or Thursday; but eventually the fan wasn’t able to keep pushing the weight of the rat around and around and around and it got stuck or bogged down, burning out the blower motor. I noticed this Thursday evening. As many know, I don’t have air conditioning in my car, so when the weather gets nice I rarely have reason to use the fan. However the rain on Thursday as I drove up to Burlington made me roll up the windows, and I needed a little air circulation to keep my sanity. I did notice as I drove that I had to keep turning the fan up higher and higher — all the way from 1 to 4 — and it was still not blowing at a normal, full blast. I also noticed a strange smell coming from the vents, but decomposition hadn’t fully set in, so I thought it was picking up the smell from the KFC bag I had thrown in the passenger seat footwell from an Oasis stop en route.
On Friday when I got in my car and went up to Green Lake for Conference, the smell was… unpleasant. And by Sunday when I was driving back to Chicago, it was downright oppressive. I made it up to Pepboys this morning to get the whole system cleaned and checked out.
The good news is that the rat was removed, and some of the wiring has been replaced. The other good news is that, while at first we thought we’d have to replace the fan, it turns out I don’t have to do that. The bad news is that the motor that burned out is more than twice the cost of the fan — and that’s what needs to be replaced. Since I don’t have money for that right now, my car will sit with an inoperable fan for at least the next month. Again, not a really huge issue now that summer weather has finally reached Chicagoland; I don’t plan on needing it until September.
Why didn’t I think of this sooner?
Jun 14th
I’m currently reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s new book, An Altar in the World. It appears a quick read, but in typical style, reading even a single sentence requires no small amount of “chewing” on my part, and so I’m taking my time slowly with this book.
In one of the chapters I just finished, she talks about how much more she feels connected to God through the natural world by simply being observant. As I left Conference Meeting this morning, I had a lot on my mind from the past weekend. I feel reconnected with my church after almost a year now in Chicago, and definitely more connected with the UCC form of church in Wisconsin. I was thinking of the many conversations I had — with people like Don Niederfrank, my mentor and minister at St. John’s UCC in Random Lake; Eliza and Shaun, fellow In Care-ians in crime; Bridget, Andrew, Lee, Kathy, Mary Ann, and Walt from Plymouth; the sizeable number of us using Macs of varied stripes and colors — and I wanted to think and process without distraction as I drove. Our theme this weekend was “Living Grace-fully” and centered around creation care and observance, so it connected with Altar in a unique way, too.
So I turned off the radio. Thanks to a dead rodent in the fan which gets removed tomorrow, and because of the beautiful day outside, I had my windows open. Highway 23 takes one through a number of small towns on its way back to Highway 45 to Milwaukee and points south (WARNING: Do not drive even a mile over the speed limit around Rosendale! A number of Conference attendees, though surprisingly not myself, will attest to negative experiences after speeding up before the speed limit officially changed…) and I was mostly on auto pilot. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon for a drive, and the highway-town-highway-town rhythm followed my own up-and-down thought pattern.
Then it happened: I began to hear the birds as I drove. I could smell the east-central Wisconsin pine attempt to cover up the decomposing creature lodged in my fan. I noticed the way people would walk along the sidewalk as I drove along the edge of downtown Ripon: leisurely, without the pressure of an impending appointment, appearing as if they’d be just happy to strike up a conversation about the weather if I had been walking down their same route. I noticed the way the driver in the car behind me was less than pleased at having to stop at the red light, anxiously ratting on the steering wheel with their hands. I saw how the sunlight seemed to dance off the metal pole barn in the places where peeling paint left exposed shiny silver.
As I sat in the drive-thru lane at the Arby’s I heard the quiet purr of my idle engine bounce off the wall, the background noises in the kitchen through the worker’s intercom headset. I looked at how this was the absolute edge of the town, nothing but a forested wall out the other side of my car, providing protection to the unknown space beyond.
I met up with a few friends in Kenosha, first to do some quick shopping and then coffee downtown on the lake. I noticed how the boats seemed to crawl out of the harbor, past the lighthouse and into Lake Michigan, leaving a small wake along their path. The warm sun and the cool breeze — without the former it would have been too cold to sit on the patio, without the latter it would have been too warm — cooperating in a way that seemed to whisper, “Come, grow. Experience life.”
This meditative tour continued as I left for my last leg back to Illinois. When I entered the tollway, the concrete barriers made me feel trapped, and the impending line of red taillights were like a screaming in my ears, “No! This is too much artificiality, too much speed where speed is no good.” I felt a little wasteful paying the Waukegan toll and exiting right away at Gurnee, but I was compelled to do so. I passed Highway 41, and I heard that same voice tell me, “Don’t turn here, keep going.” And so I did, passing Green Bay Rd. on my journey. I came to Sheridan Rd., the easternmost roadway throughout much of northeastern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin, gently weaving its way no more than half a mile from the Lake Michigan shoreline. “This is where you turn now,” and so I did. What normally is an hour, hour-and-a-half trip from Kenosha to my apartment turned into three more hours in this meditative space.
Its funny to think of my car as meditative space. Its ordinary, plain. No one would call a 2006 Chevrolet Aveo with dead vermin lodged inside it a luxurious surrounding, and especially not considering that I “live in my car” with the back seat occupied by materials from a retreat back in the early spring and other random trinkets accumulated in a long-overdue cleaning and the front seat littered with trash from breakfast granola bars and too-frequent stops in drive-thru lanes. Its not an easy place to just zone out, either: us manual transmission drivers are engaged in four-limb driving, deftly maneuvering and manipulating pedals and gearshifts all but forgotten in the past three decades.
But today, it was. Void of just one everyday distraction — normally one I consider so indispensible that my iPod is rarely far from my side — I was able to simply be with my traveling soul, to be at least somewhat present with this earthly home of mine. When I finally arrived in my apartment parking lot, part of me didn’t want to leave that space. (The Kenosha coffeehouse stop, coupled with the tub of Diet Pepsi I had with my Arby’s order, mandated a quick departure nonetheless.) I doubt it will ever hold the same feeling again, but for this afternoon, it became a sacred space.
Annual Meeting faux pas
Jun 13th
I’m currently at the 2009 Wisconsin Conference Annual Meeting. (Click for official AM blog.) Some people would describe it as a sort-of family get-together, others would compare it more to a professional conference, and I’d agree in part with both of those descriptions. Basically, for those who are in church denominational structures, the annual judicatorial conference makes sense, because they are all the same just with a different title attached. For those who aren’t, there’s no adequate description that makes sense, because it just seems to be a bunch of old church people looking for an excuse to drink coffee and eat ice cream and fight about… something. (And, for the record, that description is partly correct, too.)
This is my first UCC Conference Meeting, and for the most part its been fun. I’ve enjoyed making new connections and getting to know more people in this adopted church of mine. People have asked me how I’m liking things, and I’ve usually responded, “A church meeting is a church meeting.” But I’ll admit to being a little bit of a junkie for things like this and letting my extroversion combine with a complete dorkiness for church polity. My confusion about UCC structures still abounds, but its nice to see that I can hold my own as I get closer and closer to that 2011 prime time.
I did, however, commit a little faux pas yesterday. As one enters the meeting space, there is a giant ceramic bowl filled with water, to call us to remember the waters of our baptism no doubt. As a sacramentalian, even with a memorialist theology, I was overjoyed to see it. There’s a comfort in ritual for me, and I always whole-heartedly support ways to keep the sacraments front-and-center in all forms of our worship life — and, as we’ve touched on slightly, all of life is worship.
I was excited. I was comforted. And then I did it: I dipped my fingers in the water.
And I crossed myself.
What normally comes with a feeling of humility, a reminder of my lowly place in the grand scheme of things, of a connectedness with millions of people throughout the ages and spaces of time was instead a grand recognition of where I was at that moment, caught with wet fingers and spots on my church in the crosshairs of death stares from some of those in one of the most low-church, non-liturgical Christian traditions.
What did you just do? was the question from their eyes. Do you think we’re Catholic?
But do you know what — I was a communion server, and noticed a couple of people cross themselves as they partook of the elements. Body of Christ, given for you takes on a different meaning when coupled with that simple forehead-belly-chest-chest-heart action. Its not a meaning of the substance of the elements, at least not for me. Its a meaning of ritual, of remembrance. Its a meaning that, no matter how many times I try to rationalize my mind away from Bloody Jesus of Substitutionary Human Atonement, the cross is still an unimaginably brutal form of capital punishment. Its a meaning that, no matter how many times I try to rationalize my mind away from the re-creation of that sacrifice for salvation and the idea of real presence in the meal, that this celebration is more than a snack of grain and fruit.
And without that cross, the meaning of the ritual would be irrelevant. It would be simply water in a bowl, perhaps some sort of consecrated water for ritual washing, but plain old tap water in a bowl nonetheless. The actions and meanings of our ritual matter.
But even beyond this, the promise of the United Church of Christ is not alignment with a heady, cold, militant, imageless Protestantism of the Reformed tradition — though certainly we owe a great deal of our heritage to that tradition. The promise is to be a place like the American concept of a melting pot, a place where a variety of theologies, doctrines, and practices can find support and people don’t need to check their minds or their Christian practice at the door.
So even though I know I committed a certain faux pas, I do not apologize, and even though I’ve been trying to “de-liturgize, de-Lutheranize, de-formalize” myself in order to fit in this new church family of mine, I’m not going to try to do so as much anymore. (Though to do this I’m going to need to instead work on “de-self-consciousizing” myself.) I’m going to cross myself, both at the font and when partaking of communion. I’m going to say “sins” instead of “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer. (I already do most of the time anyway because “debts” just feels so awkward still.)
That’s supposed to be the promise of this church of mine. And, if anything, it provides just one more avenue of opportunity for conversation and engagement, to meet more people and create more connections in my adopted church family.
