When she writes and preaches

You love watching our daughters grow up. I can hear it in your voice when you greet them, chuckle under your breath at their antics (especially the younger one), and I notice the way your eyes twinkle watching them run, skip or dance down the aisles. Sometimes they interact with you adorably, and sometimes they’re not in the mood. They are real kids. I know how much my own mother, who lives at a distance from us, misses our kids and delights in seeing kids their ages at her own church. Our extended family in other states delight in the private family blog I keep up, watching the kids grow week by week via photos and videos, phone calls and visits. But you are the people we see in person every week. You remember when the little one was “Baby Jesus” in the Christmas pageant, and her big sister was a sheep. You’ve heard their “milestones” when one got glasses, they both got bunk beds, and celebrated their birthdays.

Still, I was nervous about Girl Scout cookie sales. My goals for this thing were our oldest daughter making eye contact and speaking to adults. This is a challenge for her. For several years she had a speech delay and I probably stepped in too often to speak for her, trying to alleviate embarrassment. Then when her little sister came along, she started using the distracting little one as a way to look away, and avoid engaging adults. Now she has to engage. When our girl stood up in our pew during announcements/milestones and announced that she’s selling Girl Scout cookies, our pastor noted how brave of her that was. Then after service, you all walked right towards her. She’d made 2 sales before we even had the change envelope ready. I took little sister upstairs where I was helping in her Sunday School class, and my husband helped our Brownie take the time and space she needed to do what she was determined to do, even though it was hard. He reported two things: Her whole face including her ears were flushed red with nervousness. And everyone was so patient and sweet with her. You love, watching our children grow up.

It seems silly for this to make my eyes well up with tears. But it is not just one day of selling Girl Scout cookies. You are a safe place for us to try things that are scary, to be cheered on in our joys and embraced when things fall apart. You delight in our children as they grow, and that has a cumulative effect on my tear ducts and all of our lives. This is love. We love you too.

Our days are filled with the details that hold the family together: checking in on people, planning ahead, teaching, patching up a disagreement with the neighbors, waiting, being there just in case, and endless repetitive tasks which we do because somebody has to do them. We know implicitly that we are building trust, building their capacity to face adversity when it comes, but the waiting can be excruciating.

Words are our greatest tools for this undefinable process of building spiritual (or frankly any kind of) maturity. We know how to use our words to manipulate in the best sense, quote other authorities and call forth the better natures from those we love and care for. We find ourselves thinking of new and creative ways of saying the same things like, “Let’s make good decisions,” over and over again, reminding everyone of whose they are, and the vision we agreed on pursuing. Alas, the crucially formative moments rarely happen on a schedule. We have to be able to drop everything when someone needs us. Most of our time is spent on things nobody notices, unless they complain because it didn’t get done. It might be cleaning out the fridge, making sure something is washed, rescheduling appointments, overseeing repair work or making sure someone nearly-forgotten gets invited. It might be making sure our home is presentable enough for people to visit, that it feels like our home but also reflects what we say we are all about instead of having everybody’s individual projects scattered about.

You tell me whom I described above, a mother or a pastor? It turns out there is a lot of overlap.

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Mother/Minister Job Description:

Set and Enforce Boundaries

Everyone in our care needs limits and boundaries to mature in a healthy way. All the books, workshops, and research back this up. We could each give a half dozen specific examples right now of cases where failing to set clear boundaries led to somebody acting out in ways that hurt everyone involved, and to correct it afterward took twice the effort. But those in our care resent when we set or enforce boundaries. They repeatedly explain why the boundaries do not apply to them, or why this time should be the exception. They need us to do what they refuse to let us do.

Cultivate Trust

We understand the great privilege it is to be trusted, not just with the happy news, but also with the vulnerable, heart-breaking details of our people’s lives. Then, because we hold all their secrets and have seen them at their worst – they don’t consciously process this, but – we become lightning rods for sideways emotions with no other safe place to go. The mothering memes assuring us that our kids act their worst around us because we are their safest place can only elicit a cynical chuckle.

Navigate Family Systems

We have so much practice navigating family systems – not only our own, but the big “extended family” – because it is a matter of survival. We have to recognize our own baggage from our families of origin and how we react because of our roots, so we can separate the symptoms from actual illness or “objectively” talk about what might be underneath any given reaction. It can be a justice issue, to stand up to the way our system has always handled a particular issue, because not all the ways any family system behaves are healthy. And when we look at the whole system, it is clear who is being excluded. Nobody likes when we name this, so sometimes we just know it for ourselves, and it helps us to not feel unhinged.

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Mothers make excellent pastors because the skills and details we learn to pay attention to in our family life are so often drawn upon in our professional roles. Which is also exactly why it is so draining to do both simultaneously. To need to drop everything at a moment’s notice for both children and parishioners means someone is always feeling short-changed (often it is us). Clear boundaries around our time and actual responsibilities are necessary for balance, but no one likes when boundaries keep them from getting what they want. It is a lot of emotional weight to carry everyone’s stories, the details of every personal history, trauma, allergy, triggers, etc. How do mother-pastors do it?

Moms make incredibly capable pastors. But what we need at home and church are more capable co-parents. A lot of them. Not just the kind who do things when they are asked, or assigned a particular task with a pointed amount of guilt or in a serious tone. But the kind of co-parents that see our household/congregation as their own equal responsibility, as much as it is ours to take care of, and do the work of holding everything together on their own initiative. And these blessed co-parents will do so not only because someday Mom won’t be around to clean up all the messes (that apparently only she can see) but because we are all part of this family too. It is our role to see it and deal with it and care for each other too. That is how Mama can do all she does without screaming into the night too often.

Do tourists ever get the full story? At best, we dip a toe in. My family stumbled upon several do-gooders (it takes one to know one?) while in Hawaii this winter, who raised issues I had not previously thought much about in “paradise”. Now that I know this is where it gets real for those living in the Hawaiian islands, I’d like to learn more, and how best to respond. I’ll add resources in the comments as I find them, and would be glad if you, Dear Reader, would do the same.

Sustainable Food Sourcing:

We had dinner at Kahumana Farm Cafe while we were near Wai’anae on the west coast of O’ahu. We talked about the same concerns on the Big Island too, staying at Kulaniapia Farm. We were told that only 10% of the food consumed in the islands is grown there. Almost all the restaurants get their produce from Costco, according to one local. It is not the climate that hinders farming, so what is it? Their theory was economic: the power of the dock worker unions and the sheer value of the import business means a lot of powerful, wealthy people are invested in importing food, rather than raising it on island. Kahumana Farm is not only raising local food, but supplying meals for those who are food insecure and creating a resource hub for smaller farmers, for example, whose mango trees might become a renewable source of income. The goal of Kulaniapia Farm to live off the grid, and maybe raise enough food to sustain their own small operation is not only a present challenge, but has layers from the past since the soil’s nutrients were stripped by generations of mono-cropping (sugar cane).

Gentrification:

What is the effect of all of us who visit and vacation in Hawaii, on the cost of living? Multiple people “joked” about Las Vegas as the “9^th island” because apparently so many people born in Hawai’i have moved there to be able to afford to live. Hmmm… so for vacationers that do not want to make this problem worse, is it better to embed in a community through an airbnb situation (giving residents an additional source of income), or keep the vacation prices on the resorts and away from residential areas? There’s regulation on rental properties that is partially enforced or enforced when reported, and pressures to introduce more, but whose interest is it in? Tourism is a huge source of income and jobs, but are there choices tourists can be making to help rather than hurt those who are simply trying to live in Hawai’i?

Homelessness:

There are people experiencing homelessness in the urban areas on all the islands, but camping along the road and beaches as well. In fact, along with New York, Hawaii has the highest per capita incidence of homelessness in the United States. While camping in the sunshine might seem swell, those rains and wind are no joke. The police sweeps of known encampments around Christmas doesn’t end homelessness, just its visibility.

I left beautiful Hawaii with more questions about the challenges of living there than when I arrived. But that means we’re getting to the meaningful conversations, right?

The first step is chatter.

Dr. Jennifer Harvey begins her book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by explaining how parents who want to raise anti-racist kids need to abandon promoting “color blindness” and actively teach racial consciousness. Color blindness makes it fearful and painful for white people to talk about race, while a racial consciousness approach makes thinking and talking about race and the effects of racism part of our everyday lives. The very first step from one to the other involves our chatter, that on-going conversation with young children about everything around us: noticing things, wondering about things, defining things, trying out our own interpretations of the world as we experience it. The chatter adds up to confidence for our kids, that adults notice what they have observed too, the differences between people, and that it is safe to process their wondering about those differences with their trusted adults.

It all starts with chatter. Good, because my daughters are 8 and 4, and chatter is my life. But wow, has our chatter changed over time! Our older daughter’s speech developed much later, so at age 3 she would ride in her car seat or swing at a playground, smiling or laughing, but without uttering a word for the longest time. I filled the airtime with songs or lots of exclamations: “Look at the red truck!” “Oooo… birds!” because I desperately wanted her to learn to speak. When our younger daughter was an infant she despised the infant car seat with ferocity. I kept up a running commentary on everything I could manage anytime we drove somewhere not only so my 4-year-old would engage, but to distract the baby from the fact of the Evil Car Seat. Now I am pelted by a regular stream of questions from the back seats, playground equipment or around the dinner table. Their favorites are: “How do people make __________?” and “What does ________ mean?”I tell them “I don’t know” when I truly don’t know, instead of making something up, or give several possibilities and promise we’ll find out more. And no subjects are off limits; I get lots of practice keeping my composure. Often it just feels like we are filling air time, but all the little tidbits are building an affect over time.

This is Dr. Harvey’s premise. When you are chattering about Doc McStuffins, parents might mention how she is a doctor who takes care of her stuffed animals, someone her friends go to for help, a girl, and African-American. Do we know doctors who are women? Our dentist is an African-American woman, isn’t she? Doc McStuffins is very good at observing and solving problems, but also asks for help. When do you ask for help? Racially conscious chatter is just the beginning of raising racially conscious kids. Obviously we cannot stop there (It’s only chapter 2 of Harvey’s book!) but we can certainly start there.

Many mainline Protestant churches need to up our chatter “game” on so many fronts (definitely race, accessibility, loving our neighbors as ourselves), but specifically talking about our faith. This is supposedly the point of a church, but many of us seem so uncomfortable doing it that we’d prefer to be “faith blind.” Evangelism can be one of those ministries that we leave to the extreme extroverts or we cling to the quote attributed to St. Francis: “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words.”

But if we cannot articulate that our faith is the reason we live where we do, spend our time how we do, vote the way we do, then there is a disconnect for all those who observe us. When someone calls us – or Christians in general – out on not acting as Jesus did, if we’re so unaccustomed to talking about it, we can only stumble around claiming that we are not part of that group, exactly. We need to learn to casually mention our faith while making decisions,discussing political and social realities, making observations about our neighbors, empathizing with what some people are going through, so frequently that it becomes a normal thing we talk about. We are not doing it to convert people, but to define for ourselves and others what it means to live as a person of Christian faith. Perhaps we could practice embedding a catch phrase into half of our conversations at church or use it at least once per committee meeting: “because of our faith.” It would take awhile to not feel forced (as my observations about Doc McStuffins still do occasionally), and to move from awkward to genuine. But that just means we need practice. That phrase would likely evoke more questions we will need to engage: “What do you mean by that?” Perhaps we could substitute “because of our faith” any time we are tempted to think instead: “but it’s too political.”

We need to talk about income inequality (but it’s too political) because of our faith.

Let’s get into it about immigration (but it’s too political) because of our faith.

If we want our children, or any “child of God” declared so by Christ’s resurrection, to become people of genuinely active faith, then we have to start the chatter, and establish that our faith is something we talk about all the time that it’s present, which is all the time.

Photo by Kenny Krosky on Unsplash

*Yes, I am aware of the pun when talking about church, but it is the best term for the subject!

“How do you cross-train, especially in the off-season?” the ballerina with the microphone prompted her colleagues.

Yoga, tap, jazz, hip-hop, and more yoga. These responses made sense; they are related enough disciplines. Then the speaker held up a pair of boxing gloves. Why has the ballet company started cross-training in boxing? The lunchtime exhibition did not answer all our questions, but started with the simplest answer: proximity. Our city’s ballet company shares a building with a boxing gym. Obviously no one wants the dancers to be bruised, but boxing training teaches these professional dancers and their neighboring athletes even more ways to be in tune with their bodies’ movements. It builds community in such an unlikely way. Such collaboration explodes the stereotypes of the audience for either group.

What if congregation members and leaders alike improved our fitness for being Christ’s body in the world through cross-training? There are the more obvious ministry-adjacent gifts to develop: storytelling, public speaking, teaching, child and elder care, social work, music, or art. But perhaps our imaginations would be better ignited by engaging the least seemingly “relevant” connections, those that would make bystanders furrow their brows: perhaps city planning, repetitive assembly of products, botany, or the histories of indigenous people groups far from where we live? We could become more agile in expressing our own faith by noticing connections alongside folks with whom we cannot assume a common vocabulary, facing the necessity of always defining our terms. We would need to re-train our own minds and emotional responses to think about how our traditions might affect those who are not accustomed to moving in ways we have practiced for so long. We can certainly all benefit from the humility required to be in the place of students, learning from experts outside of the church.

As our country becomes less religious, congregations need to become increasingly relevant to the multiple needs of marginally-churched people, not less. Maybe your neighbor is not looking to attend worship services but they do really need community. We cross-train in that! In addition to worship, we also hold space for difficult conversations, too rare in the public square. Congregations can be a place for forming inter-generational relationships and surrogate family for those whose relatives are physically or emotionally distant. We could be safe spaces to try out new ideas, try on leadership (where there’s grace if we fail) and where people know we can be “real” about our struggles. We could certainly be more obvious about our cross-training, beyond Sunday mornings, weddings and funerals.

My personal example of reading outside my area is the book Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. This memoir about the life of a botanist and her research assistant, woven together with a deep knowledge of how trees and other plants reproduce, survive, and flourish, awoke epiphanies in quick succession for this preacher. I know so little about the lives of actual scientific researchers, but they know things that are certainly meaningful to my faith.

Here are 4 starter ideas (definitely adapted from other contexts) for “cross-training” in churches:

• “Career Day” speakers who share about their favorite parts of their jobs or hobbies, followed by discussion of what insights people of faith might gather from this field

• Curated YouTube short-video festival: nominate and vote for those that surprised you or taught you something you never would have known about otherwise

• “Neighborhood Walk-And-Talk”: Get to know the meaningful work of those businesses near your church, in their own words

• “A Day in Their Shoes” visits to each other’s homes with households from an interfaith partner or congregation with a predominant ethnicity different from your own

As the dancers and boxers discovered, collaboration breeds relevance to a larger population than either parties were reaching before. When we cross-pollinate our interests and activities, folks who do not completely fit in either group get hints – or loud testimonies – that the boundaries between communities of like-minded people are more porous than we thought.

So go ahead, ballerina. Glide into the boxing gym.

Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

Wow, my friends are enthusiastic evangelists! Some for the Gospel, sure, but more noticeably for skin care, essential oils, clothing or handbag lines, health supplements and similar side hustles that have changed their lives. I believe my friends are genuine when they say: “This has changed my life – here’s my story – and I am only telling you because I believe that others should have the opportunity to be transformed by it too.” These side hustles are clearly not just about extra income. They are on a spectrum from therapeutic to meaning-making, all the way up to life-transforming, according to their claims.

So, I’ve been thinking: I’d like to market church involvement as the side hustle of faith.

Yes, I would anticipate push-back from people for whom it is everything, who think that church participation should be all-encompassing for others too. Often those people are pastors. So let me be clear: Faith is not a side hustle; relationship with God and our neighbor for Christ’s sake, is actually everything. Yet we all live out our Christian faith in many settings: in relationships, at school, at work, in our community, and in the life of the church. See, it’s in the list? Yet church involvement is not the entire list of ways to exercise our faith. This clarification, although somewhat obvious, would have given me some much-needed perspective when I was the solo pastor of a small congregation. I often found myself frustrated by being the only one for whom the mission or future of the congregation was more than a side hustle.

Now I say, embrace the side hustle of faith! We each must find the side hustles that give us life and an escape from feeling stuck. What inspires me with the enthusiasm of an entrepreneur: a community garden or food rescue program; anti-racism training; fair trade; liturgical art? Some of those side hustles could fit seamlessly into the life of a congregation; others could be exciting new initiatives. Since regular attendance now means worshiping once or twice a month for the average church-goer, it is already a side hustle in time spent, but for many it has yet to carry that weight of meaningful endeavor and entrepreneurial energy. What would leaders or congregations do differently if we embraced involvement in church activities as congregation members’ side hustles of faith?

Obviously, churches could strive to not to be the source of burnout. “That’s not even helpful” my two kids say, imitating a phrase they hear me say often enough. It is not helpful to wax nostalgic about when people made church “a priority” or when sports leagues didn’t schedule games on Sundays. Begging people to fill in the slots of somebody-has-to-do-it tasks isn’t energizing at all. Guilt does not fuel the passion for a side hustle.

Surprisingly, neither does money, really. A side hustle must offer something else we desire: to make a difference with our talents, connections and passions. To have our ideas, energy and experiences valued. To lead, not just to consume. So maybe our congregations could consider dropping the umpteenth annual whatever event, and ask instead what new things our people are personally invested in. We could invite entrepreneurship and support the heck out of anyone who tries something new. Maybe this is just a personal bias, because I get bored, but I’d go so far as to say: No more annual events, without a twist to make it new and challenging. It’s very hard to get enthused about a habit.

Practically, the side hustle fits meaningful activity into empty slots in our day planners, including how and when we form community around said side hustle. We might use social media groups to connect with people on the fly, meal meet-ups (people have to eat anyway) or decentralize meeting locations. In order to build relationships we can invite people into the “outside” events of our lives, as if they were all surrogate relatives. Go to Adam’s high school theater production. Cheer Desiree on at her 5K. We might even speak of our faith in those places. And some of those events might just reveal our next great pop-up church event, a side hustle for someone because of their faith, not just as an addendum. Then we’d all share endlessly about that on social media!

Photo by Caleb Minear on Unsplash

“We all have tough days.” I say this to my kids, as they watch another kid melting down in the waiting room. They nod, but stare anyway. I say it so that the child’s parent or grandparent can hear it too, whose frustration is likely part exasperation at the behavior, part embarrassment in front of all the other adults whose kids are not acting this way. I know, because I’ve been there. I also say it for myself, as a reminder that all of the thoughts and impulses I’m going to experience during this hour in the therapy waiting room need compassionate reactions from my judgmental self. This is a different place than a playground, church, school, or other public spaces. Here we can escape comparing ourselves and our children against the elusive ideal of “typical” as much as we might everywhere else. Or not. It largely depends on the company.

Most of us have been here regularly enough, and have been frequent guests in other similar ones too. This is a waiting room for occupational (OT) and physical therapy (PT), so the kids who come through here may be working on anything from rehabbing from a physical injury, to working longer-term on coordination, muscle control, sensory-processing issues, social or behavioral skills. We are complicated human beings, and some of the causes of our difficulties may never be fully uncovered, but therapies seem like well-informed experiments with an array of methods that have helped others, to see what could be helpful to us.

It’s not the playground, but my brain cannot help assessing those around me for comparisons. Some days I admit to feeling relief, that my kid doesn’t have the challenge I observe in another. Some days the twinge is probably envy, because I see a child smaller than my own working on something and I wish we were at that point. Other days it’s hope and inspiration as I witness a high-five because it’s somebody else’s last day.

Then one day, my child is the one having the meltdown. Not the child who is here for therapy, mind you, the other one. Her tantrum is not related to anything other than being a kid; her precocious little voice I sometimes hear other parents chuckling over in that waiting room has given way to incoherent screaming. And of course we’re late for our appointment. It is equalizing. The same calm way the therapists and receptionists talk to the other kids’ parents, they then speak to me, getting all the information we need to exchange, over my child’s wails. We all have tough days.

Sometimes parents melt down in the waiting room too, or come close. I am simultaneously impressed and irritated by the young adult nanny who brings one child, because she seems so well-regulated – this kid can’t push her buttons like a parent. The nanny regularly uses the techniques we’ve all learned but just have trouble implementing in the heat of the moment, talking calmly but firmly about the steps they need to take or explaining why we don’t do something that could get us hurt (instead of giving orders). The 5 minutes after a session, when kids are getting out and others are coming for the next hour, is like the Olympics of self-control for parents. The kids know they have us in a bind. They are hyped up by the transition, seeing their siblings again, showing us a sticker – all during that critical time we need to hear the report of the therapist and get instructions for activities to practice at home. They get in our faces, or chase each other around the room. They do not get their shoes on to leave. Ignoring them does not make the disruptive behaviors dissipate, but neither does interrupting this critical conversation to bark orders, threaten consequences, or be like that exemplary nanny. Usually the session after this exiting behavior has been particularly raucous, I remember to talk about expectations ahead of time, before we get to the appointment. Sometimes that works. Finally, we leave the therapy waiting room.

Part of being a healthy parent is admitting when we need help. That’s why we spend so much time here. But maybe what we (I) need most is someone to talk me through it. We all have a complex tangle of emotions, just like our kids, and some issues with self-regulation of our behavior. The solidarity of others who get it is always welcome, especially in the waiting room.