Prophylactic paradox

(Sounds a little more spiritual than "condom conundrum" I suppose.)

I have boundary issues. Admitting that helps me deal with it
constructively. The church I pastor is a fairly tight-knit community
of about 150 people. My family has attended this church for more than
20 years and it is the only congregation my kids have ever known.
These people are our friends, our extended ohana, and our support
system. Coming up through the ranks from layman, to Associate Pastor,
to Senior Pastor and District Overseer I have felt it necessary to
reinvent myself more than once. As the titles and roles change, the
relationships inevitably shift and change, too.

For the past five years we have lived in the church parsonage...
small but adequate housing provided by the church, located on the
church property. "On the church property" is not really accurate.
Because of the way this facility has grown and evolved, often without
a master plan, the church, office and parsonage are interconnected.
The front door of our residence is accessed by going THROUGH the
outer office! That leads to a lack of family privacy and a sense of
living in the fishbowl, on display at all times. If there's any kind
of meeting or activity going on in the office and we come home with
bags from WalMart we feel that people are checking out our purchases
as we walk past. As you might imagine, there are few secrets here and
it can be stressful being on display as the model family at all times.

Hence the title -- Prophylactic paradox (or condom conundrum).

Prophylactics are designed to encourage and facilitate intimacy,
while they prevent the kind of real physical contact that is the
intimate ideal. They are a barrier that consumers of the product
accept as an acceptable trade-off -- in exchange for the 'benefits'
of the barrier, they are able to achieve a measure of intimacy,
albeit incomplete. (I am getting there... stay with me.)

What we have tried to nurture is a kind of prophylactic intimacy
among our church family. We want to be close, but need a barrier to
preserve our own family life and privacy. It is a tightrope. Let that
barrier become too thick, too obvious, and the warmth and intimacy we
need to be effective is lost. Remove the barrier, and intimacy can be
dangerous. In practical terms, how do we keep our home as open as it
would be if we lived elsewhere, while keeping a workable boundary to
preserve our family life? How do we invite in those who have been
long-time friends and make them part of our life, while not allowing
our home to be simply an extension of the church facility?

A word to church boards everywhere. Do yourselves and your Pastor a
favor. When planning to provide a home for your Pastor, do NOT make
it on the church property. Give that Pastor's family the distance and
privacy you enjoy in your home, and you will be rewarded with better
leadership.

A meaningful mantra.

Guy Kawasaki had a tough job in the early days of Apple Computer. I use Macs and love them, but back in the late 80's, when the first Macs were developed, they were pretty primitive; tiny monochromatic screens, no hard drive and hardly any software. Guy's title was Macintosh Evangelist. He went out spreading the good news of this crazy new kind of computer. He went to software developers with a mission -- he was to convince them that the Mac was the future of computing, and they should get on board and write software for this new machine. One result was Aldus PageMaker, which was the primitive beginning of the desktop publishing revolution. The rest, as they say, is history.

In his book, The Art of the Start, Kawasaki gives real world practical advice to start-up entrepreneurs. I recently went to hear him speak on that subject and one of his points really registered with me.

He explained the futility of writing a complex mission statement that few read and even fewer understand. Instead, he suggests that companies and organizations develop a mantra. In this context a mantra refers to "a statement or slogan repeated often." Kawasaki used the example of Wendy's. Like most companies, Wendy's has a formal mission statement: To deliver superior-quality products and services to customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and partnership.

According to Kawasaki, Wendy's would do better with a mantra: Healthy fast food.

I have been giving that some thought. My church has a mission statement, because everyone else had one. I dare say if a first-timer asked anyone at the church for our mission statement few, if any, would have a clue what to tell them -- including our staff members! What we should have is a mantra. We need a simple, brief, memorable way to identify what we are all about to those who ask. It is still a work in progress, but at this point I have arrived at a 3 word mantra:

Real. Relevant. Relational.

What do you think?

Quiet Christmas in a ghost town

It has started already. The island exodus that we experience each December. The upside to ministering to a lot of University students and young military people (and military families) is that the church is lively, vital, and exciting. The downside is that many of them leave the island mid-December to go "home for the holidays," and we are left with a lot of empty seats and extra parking slots.

This year we are being hit harder than I can ever remember.

We will have our Christmas Service on December 25th with a skeleton crew of volunteers and an anticipation of minimal attendance. A pastor friend at a local mega-church has two services scheduled that morning, at 8 and 10. The building seats more than 1,000 -- last year they had about 25 in the first service and 100 in the second. Such is the nature of life in a place with a large transient population.

So, for me, the period between Thanksgiving and New Years is less busy than usual, and has become a contemplative time of introspection and seeking direction for the coming year. In my next post, I hope to deal with what has developed so far. Think "mantra."