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The Micro-Play: First of all, what’s a JAM? JAM stands for “Just Another Meeting.” You know – like the one you had last month, and the month before that. The meeting where the same people showed up with the same expectations, sat in the same places, and addressed the same issues. JAMs stifle creativity, they lull us to sleep, and worst of all, they reinforce the role of “leader” as “provider of institutional maintenance” when leaders could be so much more: visionaries, sparks, instigators, creators, connectors, sages…  At the Not-JAM, you serve hot wings. Just because you can. The hotter the better. Then you take pictures of your church leadership team eating hot wings and you post them on Facebook. (By the way, the reason no one looks at your church’s Facebook page is because you don’t have pictures of your leaders eating hot wings.) Also at the Not-JAM, you can sit in a different configuration without tables (should we ever have tables?), make paper hats, begin with a rocks-paper-scissors tournament, make and drink smoothies, watch a short film, pair it with a Bible study, and discuss, or meet somewhere else entirely (See #11 The Away Meeting). Remember that stale meetings often lead to stale outcomes.
The Micro-Difference:
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The Art Swap is #5 in the Micro-Risk Playbook, a resource for churches striving to be less reasonable, less predictable, and more adept when it comes to faithful risk-taking. Your church has art. Probably lots of it. Lots of pictures of dead people. Am I right? Dead former pastors, dead church founders, dead theologians... On one hand, they're a tribute to the past. On the other hand, they're kind of creepy. Oh, and let me guess - they're mostly male. Here's the micro-risk. Swap the art in the main hallway of the church building with the art hanging in Sunday School classrooms or in the children’s education area. This will look different for each community, of course. It may be especially useful for churches where foyers and main hallways primarily display relics of years gone by, or just pictures that hang there because that's just where they've always been. What happens when we replace them for a time with our children’s artwork? What conversations do we start when we replace our wall of retired pastors with the faces of our young people? (Are they also not ministers?) What do we affirm when the first piece of art one encounters in the building is a 2nd grader’s drawing of the Holy Spirit?
Lots of our congregations have rich, faithful histories. But asking ourselves what we want people to encounter during their first ten steps in the building is a rich, faithful question. This micro-play explores what happens when we exchange symbols of our past with symbols of our present and future. It’s a playful way of asking, “Who are we and how do we tell our story?” The Micro-Difference:
 (This post was originally featured on Macedonian Ministry's "Leadership Conversations" blog, a great resource for leaders and congregations.)
Time and talent sheets are surveys that ostensibly present opportunities for service in the congregation and invite people to get more involved in church life. By and large they are a waste of time. Congregations are rarely poised to activate all responses in a timely and meaningful way, and even if they were, the message these surveys communicate is so often: “Institutional Maintenance is Hard and We Need Your Help! I Mean, Look At All The Busy Ways We Need Your Help!” Disrupt the impulse to send out another of these surveys with this Micro-Risk, the “Anti-Time-and-Talent Sheet.” It asks a different set of questions – questions that are immediately relevant to participants and questions that can be wonderfully useful in helping a congregation take its own pulse and listen to its own story as it’s unfolding. “How have you experienced the presence of God in this community?” is a very different question than “What committee are you willing to join?” “What question is challenging you in your faith?” nurtures a church culture that is often squelched by questions like, “How can we use a couple extra hours of your time?” For what are you most hopeful? What lament do you carry? Who or what are you praying for today? These are great questions for an Anti-Sheet. And here’s the best part. The Anti-Sheet isn’t a “sheet” at all. Or it can be. But it can also be a giant canvas in the narthex with paint and brushes standing by. Or it can be a text you ask people to send during a quiet moment in worship. Or it can be a conversation starter on each table at your next potluck. Or it can be an actual sheet – twin, queen, or king – draped over a table with sharpie markers scattered around on it. Or it can be… In the spirit of disruption, regardless of what shape it takes, go ahead and call this thing an “Anti-Time-and-Talent Sheet.” Why? Because you want to send a disruptive message right into the heart of an overscheduled, overprogrammed, and over-busy culture that says, We’re not here to give you one more thing to do. Really. We just value a deeper kind of sharing that doesn’t often happen in other places. Trust that with one or two meaningful questions, thoughtfully asked and respectfully received, you can learn more about congregants than you can by seeing what jobs they’re willing to do.  At Farm Church we have a prayer wall. It’s really just a 4x8 piece of chicken wire with a bamboo pole at each end. But every Sunday we unroll it and hang it up in our worship space. A basket of cloth ribbons and some markers sit on a table in front of it, and during worship there’s always an open invitation for folks to write down a prayer and tie it on. Names, places, hopes, concerns… Sometimes we take it to the Farmer’s Market too, where we invite people to add a prayer to the wall. Over time it’s become quite colorful. Occasionally a prayer falls off. While we’re moving it from one place to another or bumping it in and out of my van, sometimes one or two ribbons fall to the floor. I always make a point of tying them back on, nice and tight. Perhaps there’s some theological sense to it – something about our prayers being bound together in God’s hearing and knowing. Or maybe they echo Martin Luther King Jr.’s sense that we’re “tied in a single garment of destiny.”
On Sunday we were getting ready for Farm Church when I found a blue ribbon lying on the floor. I picked it up and read it. It said, “I am called to second chances.” Of course, I don’t know who wrote it, and I probably never will. Could be someone who gathers with Farm Church all the time, or it could have been somebody at the market who, without saying a word, dropped by the wall to articulate a prayer, a hope, a grief… Or in this case, a statement of faith? A short creed? A mantra? I am called to second chances. I found myself thinking “Amen” for this person as I tied his or her ribbon back onto the chicken wire. “Amen” and “Aren’t we all?” Second chances at life, second chances at love, second chances at speaking out, second chances at parenting well, second (and third, fourth, fifth…) chances at living fully, alive and awake to God’s prompting. Thousands of chances to pay attention, to be mindful of goodness and grace, to gather ourselves together and step out again into a wild world… And I love the language, “I am called.” Not “I get second chances” or “I deserve second chances,” but “I am called to second chances.” There’s an intentionality about it that feels powerful. I find myself wondering about this person’s second chances, and then my own – wondering how I might be called to swing again, even though I missed the first time. To what second chance do you feel called today? What will that look like? And while you’re at it? What would you write on your ribbon? Maybe you’ve been following Farm Church from afar and aren’t able to gather with us here in Durham. Message us or, if you’re comfortable, comment below and I promise to tie your prayer to our wall. Pickle Church Last Sunday was a big dill at Farm Church. For one day, we change our name to Pickle Church. “What’s that?” you ask? Well, try to imagine a congregation making about 80 jars of pickles in the middle of worship. Pickling + Church = Pickle Church. Why? That may be the more pertinent question. The “why” behind Pickle Church begins with a simple cucumber and an acute awareness of the ways in which even that simple cucumber embodies the handiwork of a creative, loving God. Its shape, its color, its ripening on the vine, its nutrition, its smell… God has been at work fashioning that cucumber, blessing it with life and a vitality all its own. Sitting there on the cutting board, that cucumber is a psalm of praise to a God who knows how to make good things! And so when we give thanks for God’s gift of just one simple cucumber – when we recognize the DNA of God’s creative action in that one simple fruit – how can we not begin to see it in other places? In all our good food, in our neighbor’s eyes, in the movements and needs of strangers, in the whole spinning, expansive universe! That’s essentially why we did Pickle Church.
We pickled cucumbers, okra, jalepeño peppers, onions, carrots… And in the “sermons” that took place around our tables, we asked each other questions:
All along the way with Farm Church, we’ve been striving to blur the lines between worship, work, and play – to suggest that, in fact, our worship of God is lived out in our day-to-day lives in ways that deepen our sense of the Spirit and compel us to care for the needs of others. Our aim with Pickle Church (and coming soon… Sauerkraut Church, Salad Church...?) was to pronounce God’s presence in the gifts of the earth and even to suggest that our kitchens and dinner tables might become sanctuaries of adoration and thanksgiving for the good gifts of heaven and earth. At the close of our worship we gathered around this prayer/poem, written by the late John O’Donohue called “Grace After Meals.” It’s become a favorite of mine. We often think of saying “grace” before meals. Once in a while, it’s good to pray when the meal is over. If it ever strikes you to try it, here’s a great prayer to share… GRACE AFTER MEALS by John O’Donohue We end this meal with grace For the joy and nourishment of food, The slowed time away from the world To come into presence with each other And sense the subtle lives behind our faces, The different colours of our voices, The edges of hungers we keep private, The circle of love that unites us. We pray the wise spirit who keeps us To change the structures that make others hunger And that after such grace we might now go forth And impart dignity wherever we partake. Amen. |
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Micro-RisksA micro-risk is an easy to try, fun to play with, ok-if-you-fail small risk that, when combined with other micro-risks over time, nurtures a culture of faithful, strategic risk-taking - the kind of culture we need in our churches. You'll find a few here, (here, here, and here), but if you're hungry for more, you can check out my Micro-Risk Playbook here. |
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