Seven whole days

Here’s a shout out to ASBO Jesus.

Conservative Anglicans love to crow about numbers (unless the numbers work against their narrative). We Episcopalians are told that we must be wrong, because the vast majority of the Anglican Communion have different views. The majority must be right, surely? Folks on the right — who claim to love the “plain meaning” of scripture — must know that Jesus does not call for a numbers game (see the Mad Priest’s illustration).

According to the scriptural view, in fact, the majority is probably wrong! Only a few people choose the narrow path. Does this mean that the Episcopal Church is clearly correct, precisely because it has rejected the preference of most of the archbishops of the Anglican Communion? Well, no, of course not. This isn’t about numbers.

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This is the seventh post in a series. Click here for the previous post. Sorry for the delay since that previous post; I hope the next one will be posted soon.

We all know clergy who are effective leaders and other clergy who are less effective. What distinguishes one from the other? There are certainly lots of factors, but time management is a pretty big one. LifeWay Christian Resources studied how clergy spend their time. It turns out that the use of our time has a great impact on our leadership. It sounds obvious, but the details are fascinating. Here are but three examples:

• The effective church leaders spent ten hours each week in pastoral care (counseling, hospital visits, weddings, funerals) compared to thirty-three hours for the comparison group pastors.
• Effective church leaders average five hours per week in sharing the gospel with others. Most of the comparison church pastors entered “0″ for their weekly time in personal evangelism.
• Comparison church leaders spend eight hours a week — more than an hour each day — performing custodial duties at the church. The typical custodial duties included opening and closing the facilities, turning on and off the lights, and general cleaning of the building.

That first one is a doozy. The pressure to offer pastoral care to everyone is enormous. Hardly anyone in a congregation would resist their priest’s impulse to use lots of time in this way. But of course, there are two problems with a priest spending too much time offering pastoral care. First, when the priest uses time this way, it means that other things are not getting done by the priest. Second, when a priest does this work, it means that a lay person is not doing it. Let’s take up those two ideas, beginning with the latter point.

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A couple of days ago, I received an email from Church Publishing alerting me to a new product they’re offering. Once I fully appreciated the genius of this product, it has inspired me to create my own. Please keep reading to the end, because I am including a FREE sample of my new resource, out in time for use on Ascension Day.

But first, let us celebrate the creation of additional liturgical resources:

This liturgical enrichment, intended as a complement to the prefaces and offertory sentences in the Prayer Book, is designed to strengthen the teaching themes of the day and make each Sunday’s Eucharistic Prayer unique. “The Book of Common Prayer provides just 14 prefaces for use in the regular Sunday liturgy,” said Church Publishing Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Frank Tedeschi. “Proper Prefaces and Offertory Sentences will provide a beautifully written, useful and fresh new source of lectionary-based material for the liturgy.”

First of all, let me tell you that I’m glad to see the old guard back in charge of naming things. I’m more of the “Lesser Feasts & Fasts” school of naming than the “Holy Women, Holy Men” ilk. So it gladdens my heart to see this latest title on the proverbial shelf of Church Publishing: Proper Prefaces and Offertory Sentences for the Sundays and Holy Days of Year C Keyed to Themes in the Revised Common Lectionary. That kind of title is proof that they won’t let things like market forces dictate some silly-sounding catchy title. Good for you, sticking to principle, Church Publishing!

Some will object to this resource, claiming that it’s not needed or even appropriate. These wags will claim that we have plenty of prefaces already, and that anyone who wants to get creative with offertory sentences can already read any sentence of scripture they like, right out of their Bible, prayer book, or service leaflet. Other sticks-in-the-mud will observe that rubrics do not really permit creativity with prefaces. These people will blather on and on about canons and rubrics, muttering about how the Anglican charism is rooted in ancient liturgies and common worship, not in the “creativity” of the celebrant.

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Sure, there are lots of songs with all the books of the Bible on Youtube. Here’s a song for those of you who want to be the consummate global citizen, ready to reel off the names of every country in the world whilst being culturally hip. You can watch this one and learn the lyrics on your iPad, if you have one. (Take that, POTUS!)

Last weekend, President Obama trash-talked the iPad and other tech toys in his commencement address at Hampton University. Here’s what he said:

You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.

OK, so I get his point. We distract ourselves too easily and too often fail to be well informed citizens. It’s odd, I think, to admit that he doesn’t know how to use these devices and then to criticize them. Had his speech-writer done some digging, they might have learned that the iPad is actually a decent way to get access to substantive information. Also, the other three devices he mentions are primarily music or gaming devices, on which one is less likely to try to become informed.

There is also some irony here. This is the president who is on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. If he is so opposed to distraction, maybe he should lay off the social media? Oh, wait, that’s what helped to get him elected. So what’s his strategy with this criticism? Is he on to something?

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Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday are the traditional rogation days. At the parish I serve, we observe Rogationtide with a Procession after the principal Eucharist on the Sixth Sunday of Easter. We depart the church and walk around our property, pausing at each of the cardinal compass points to say prayers for the land and for the people in our community.

This is one of my favorite rituals in the church year. It gets us out of our building and onto the sidewalks (at least for part of our walk). It makes us aware of the land in a very tangible way. And it allows us to make good use of our warden’s staves.

I thought the liturgical texts might be of interest to some readers, so I’ve posted them below the fold. They’re cobbled together from various and sundry places; unfortunately there is not much in the way of liturgical provision for a rogation procession in authorized texts of the Episcopal Church. I hope this will be remedied, since there is an increasing awareness of our interdependence with our environment and a greater desire to experience the richness of ancient liturgical traditions these days

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The catastrophic oil spill in the gulf seems to get worse by the day. If you haven’t seen this astounding collection of photos, go take a look. This helps to explain why the oil spill is a big deal.

It would be easy to paint big oil companies as the villains in all this. But of course they are merely responding to demand. If you want someone to blame for this disaster, blame our energy-obsessed society. And if you are tempted to point the finger at Hummer drivers alone, I have some bad news. Surfing the web is not exactly environmentally friendly. So if the sight of oil-coated birds is keeping you up at night, use that outrage to advocate for less energy usage across the board. Then we won’t need to burn so much oil. Our risk of future disasters will decrease.

Tip of the hat to Boing Boing.

This is nothing to do with church or technology or the usual stuff of this blog. I’m posting it anyway, because it’s cool and a bit terrifying all at once. It’s the amazing red crab migration of Christmas Island.

Gadling writes:

From October through December, adult crabs make their way from the interior forests to the beaches to spawn. It is a slow-moving stampede. While the crabs are not aggressive, seeing a moving wave like a gigantic seafood smorgasbord is a little terrifying. Some of the animals are 50 or 60 years old, and they are very large (nearly 5 inches long). The males are larger, and the females have daintier claws. The colors of the crabs vary: some are orange and coral-red, with a rare purple animal now and then. They eat almost anything, including grass, fresh or rotting leaves, and even dung!

Watch the video. Trust me, it’s worth it.

If you can make a connection (allegorical or otherwise) between these crazy crabs and church, you will win a priceless gift: the admiration of 7WD readers. I challenge you!

I’ve written a few posts about Twitter and the church. In addition to suggesting that Jesus would be tweeting (and why), one of my posts on tweeting during General Convention stirred some controversy (proving my axiom that any proposed changes to General Convention will always provoke stiff resistance). In comments responding to that post, one commenter wondered how I’d feel about people using Twitter during a church service. Another commenter admitted this practice (me too, though not while presiding or preaching!).

Over at Church Marketing Sucks, there’s a post urging people to tweet during church. There’s a top five list of reasons. Here’s a snippet:

4. You will have a stored database of your compelling thoughts and notes from your favorite sermons. Use a hashtag to keep up with the information that you share. We could even implement a universal Twitter In Church hashtag. Any suggestions?
5. Many times people suffer from (SADD) Sermon Attention Deficit Disorder. So instead of just wandering off into space, simply wander off into the space of the World Wide Web. It’s better use of your time tweeting great thoughts instead of drawing on the back of offering envelops.

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