The Future of Formation and Vocation Ministries

Creative Mentoring

One of the strengths of the Official Youth Presence is the highly specialized mentoring relationships we build to help the youth fully engage and process the General Convention. Here is a really brief introduction to the adults called to this ministry this year. I hope you might gain a sense of their diverse perspectives and gifts in this multi-generational ministry.

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Innovation happens when ideas are not obstructed, when there is space to create, experiment and risk. There are many obstacles which hold most of us back (courageous disruptive innovators just go for it!) but many of us are a bit more cautious. I believe that some of our generational gaps are often widen by our need to defend “our” generation as the right one, right often being re-defined as meaning good and if our generation is good, then the idea of the other generation must be bad? Hence the judgment becomes an obstacle to our opening ourselves up to the other.

This concept of good versus bad is buried in phrases such as “that’s the old way of doing things” and “let’s get rid of that old way of thinking” or “that newfangled idea is ridiculous”, “at their young age what do they know”.

I wonder, do we ever really start with something new…I mean 100% new? Why is it that when we want to change something we tend to label the old idea or behavior as bad? It just might simply not be appropriate for now. At some point every old idea was a new idea. I would contend that every “new idea” is birthed from some previous knowledge of sorts. Even if the “old way” is completely “thrown out”, the old idea is in fact necessary in order to recognize that a new way is needed, giving it some value even as the old way exits the scene.

That does not mean the old idea was bad, for at some point in time, an innovator found it good for the time, place and use for which it was originally thought of.  I am all for innovation, I just think we need to be careful not to “Throw the baby out with the bath water.”

In the 16^th century relatively few baths were taken by people in Europe. Baths were often thought to be unhealthy. They were difficult to prepare because the water had to be drawn and heated.

The difficulty of preparing bath water often meant that the same water might be used for a whole family’s bath, first the father, than the mother, than the oldest child working the way down by age with the baby bathed last. At this point, the bath water might be quite dirty and might obscure the view of the baby. A mother wouldn’t want to mistakenly discard the baby with the dirty, murky water, so the caution was sounded “make sure you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” When we discount an idea from a member of the younger generation, we might just be throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water isn’t likely to occur, but the expression of it has been a metaphor for the dichotomy existing in an idea or practice that is both good and bad. In such cases, the good can be kept while still getting rid of the bad. Some people might be inclined to get rid of everything and start over, and the expression “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” is often used by people to encourage the preservation of the good parts.

In the Book “The Innovator’s DNA” the authors identify five discovery skills that   distinguish innovators from typical executives. The first one they stress is that innovators count on the cognitive skill called “associational thinking”.   Associational thinking helps innovators discover new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. Innovative break troughs often happen at the intersection of diverse disciplines. This phenomenon has been called the “Medici effect” described by author Frans Johanson. Johanson refers to the creative explosion in Florence: “when the Medici family brought together creators from a wide range of disciplines; sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, painters and architects.  As these individuals connected, they created new ideas at the intersection of the respective fields, therefore spawning the Renaissance, one of the most innovative eras in history.”

What would happen if we explore this concept of making connections not only across disciplines but across ages? After reading Bronwyn’s blog, I asked myself how serious is my generation (I am clearly one of the earlier Baby Boomers ) taking the Baptismal promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching”. How well do we proclaim the Good News to people who have never heard it, or who learned the great story as a child but have not heard it in many years because the secular story has drowned out the poetic words of the psalms.

I would like to encourage us to take up Bronwyn’s challenge to think of creative ways to bridge a generation gap, or a knowledge gap, or an action gap to accomplish a new thing for the cause of Christianity?

People are living longer healthier lives. By 2030, people 65 and older will comprise approximately 20% of the population in the US. By 2020, we will be dealing with the largest elderly generation in history and also a generation of elders that will experience aging in radically different ways. Every 30 seconds someone turns 65. Even though many are being forced to work longer due to economic, there are also many who are not rushing into retirement and are working well into their seventies. A large percentage of this aging population is living in communities that are life giving vibrant communities. In the desire to live healthier lives, many are searching for deeper spiritual understanding.

Often when we think about evangelizing we think about families with children, youth and young adults. Why is it we don’t think about evangelizing to groups such as active retiree communities? What would happen if we crossed disciplines across generations and evangelized in a different way? What if youth and young adults went into active “older adult” communities and shared their stories of the “Good News” to those who have never heard it. Many older adults are active social media users. What if younger generations evangelized by introducing new technologies as a means by which an authentic intergenerational faith community comes into being? What if elders invited younger people into their active retirement communities?

What if as in the renaissance we brought together sculptors, poets, musician, painters, multi media experts and technology architects of all ages. What if we started a Renaissance movement, where the Great Story is told across generations and these stories are connected to the life experiences of those who share the word and hear the word anew and in unlikely communities?

Ruth-Ann Collins

Mother of Invention

Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

In attempting to research this idiom, I discovered that it isn’t a terribly attributable quote. But it’s the phrase that has been lodged in my head throughout Holy Week as I steep in the scriptures retelling the Passion of Jesus. It occurs to me that one of the things Jesus was doing was inventing something new. Given his cultural context, the oppression of his people by the Romans, and the intersection of his religious context, the rabbinical movement in contrast with the temple teachings, he was compelled to find a new way. It was clear to him that God called him to innovate by articulating a new way to be in relationship with God.

Having focused on themes of creativity during Lent, the Formation and Vocation Ministries Team is shifting to innovation as the theme for the Great Fifty Days of Easter. Creativity leads to innovation. Necessity is often the catalyst for applied creativity; innovation. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines innovation two ways:

1. the introduction of something new
2. a new idea, method, or device :novelty

As a member of a mainline, protestant Christian tradition experiencing precipitous decline, I am feeling the need to be creative, to invent. It is clear to this Episcopal youth minister that my generation (Baby Boomer by some metrics, Gen-Exer by others) has not taken seriously the Baptismal promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching” all that effectively. So I pay careful attention to what captures the imagination of young and old at the same time in order to seize that opportunity when gaps are bridged and evangelism takes place. The folks at Forward Movement have been innovating lately. Have you heard?

Mary Magdalene won the Golden Halo at Lent Madness this year. And several generations of Christians learned all kinds of things about saints and themselves as we logged in each day to read about the brackets that pitted Holy Women and Men against one another in a parody of the March Madness of basketball tournaments. Thousands of people voted. Some people cheated and saints were penalized. People used Facebook and Twitter and email to coerce their peers into voting for their favored saint. Close contests caused some to read more and even wish they could change their votes once something new was revealed. Celebrity bloggers took the opportunity to not only educate us about these fascinating Christians who have inspired us, and some have even died for our cause, but have also helped us to see the humor in our piety. They allowed us to claim passion in naming our preferences.

The innovative part of this scheme took something old and made it new through story, in style of the telling and access using the internet. Lent Madness is brilliant and I am grateful to the Supreme Executive Committee for sharing this frivolity during Lent.

Where does your playful spirit intersect with your knowledge and/or your yearning to learn? How might you creatively bridge a generation gap, or a knowledge gap, or an action gap to accomplish a new thing for the cause of Christianity?

The church is in decline and we haven’t much time. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. We need to be innovative evangelists. It’s time to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ!

 

Creativity Across Generations

As I reflect on Bronwyn and Jason’s blogs I echo their thoughts of what creativity can mean for the future of communities of faith, and most importantly how creative and adventurous communities of faith can transform the world in ways which complement how we move and have our being, and how we might choose to answer the call to be co-creators with God. So their words and a picture treasured by our colleague Valerie have caused me to reflect on this “Creativity” theme in a bit of a different way. I believe that in order for people to work together in community, to envision what the “church” might be, there must be space – a sacred space – safe for individuals to imagine and create. There needs to be a respectful exchange of ideas, with no ideas discarded, no ideas put in a box, unless of course it is for storage, put away like clothes pins in an old shoe box to be used at a later date anew.

When I as was a little girl my mother would hang our clothes outside on a line that stretched from a big old apple tree to a large hook attached to an old garage. My sister and I would run under the billowing sheets pretending that we were the cape-clad characters we read about in story books. Being the older sister she was always the princess. In the absence brothers I was always the knight. I might add I found knighting much more exciting than serving as a princess, and I acquired skills which came in very handy later in life. I remember at the end of laundry day I would enjoy what we called “clean sheet” night, when the smell of the clean crisp air would fill my senses as I laid my head upon my pillow. Clothes pins were toys that became people and planes and tools for digging in the dirt. At some point mechanical clothes driers became affordable and popular and clothes lines were no longer the purveyor of imaginary caped characters and clothes pins, and the sweet smell of cotton fresh air became available in spray bottles.

However clothes pins have been re-created, somewhere along the line (pun intended) someone thought how useful clothes pins might be as a means by which a child’s expression of art could be displayed. Now made out of colorful plastic the clothes pin is still celebrating children’s imaginations and creativity.

Last month a small gathering of faith formation specialists met at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific to imagine, create and re-create resources, initiatives and tools which congregations might use to implement the Charter for Lifelong Christian Formation; the Episcopal Church’s statement of faith formation grounded in scripture, tradition and reason. One of the groups working on “worship as formation” concluded that the liturgy of the word is one of many opportunities in our liturgical tradition where visual art might be used as means of interpretation.

 

This month at the New Community gathering in San Diego we invited Enedina Vasquez, an elder of our faith community, to be our artist in residence for the conference. Using her iPad the art work was instantly displayed on the large screen in the plenary room when the entire conference gathered. As she listened to the keynote speakers, workshop leaders, worship, and informal conversations she captured the essence of the thoughts, laughter, tears and imagination of the New Community at that unique moment in time, a moment that will never be repeated again in exactly the same way.

Creativity has no age, it does not skip a generation. As children we have an innocence of creativity and as elders we reach an age where fear of criticism is replaced by the joy and freedom to share the wisdom we have gathered along the journey, wisdom which has taught us that listening, true authentic, un-distracted listening is where the seeds of creativity can be found. I truly believe through creativity we can bridge the gaps between generations.

Let’s imagine for a moment the “Artwork Clothes Line” above adorned with the visual interpretations by artists of all ages representing the prophetic voices across generations.

What an exciting, fun way to become communities of faith which transform the world in ways which celebrate how we answer the call to be co-creators with God.

Ruth-Ann

Original art by Enedina Vasquez, Ene-Art, San Antonio, TX, used with permission

Imagining Church

Over the past two weeks much conversation  in the formation networks of the Episcopal Church has centered around a budget that in reality is not terribly different from the one that preceded it. There are cuts (there are always cuts), there are funds moved from one line to another, but it is not what I would consider a hugely creative document.

On the other hand, it has inspired some pretty creative thinking and some open and honest conversation. I don’t think I have heard so many “what ifs” and “I wonders” in such a short period of time since I began working for the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society three years ago. I wonder if we can keep it up.

At the moment there is a need in our midst to engage in creative conversations of wonder about the nature, identity and form the church is called to take in the 21^st century. There is a need for spaces of intellectual and spiritual play and creativity where impossible realities can be spoken and explored, where we can speak from both exuberance and despair, with kindness and hope, without fear or judgment.  There is a need for multiple and varied open-ended futures to be articulated and refined, engaging each other in the search for God’s call amongst us.

This Lent we are exploring creativity, and we invite you to find creative ways to engage the imagination of all generations about the future possibilities for our church, to expand the conversation from leaders and church-nerds to all of the members of our communities in ways that are more compelling than numbers and politics.  How might you engage this creative potential in your midst? Will you tell the specific and personal stories of what the church has meant in the lives of the many generations that make up your community? Will you make a collage of what the church is meant to be in the world using photos from your past, clips from the media and art from your own hands? Will you write new liturgies and hymns that call the church into creative imagination and bless that process and the voices that make it possible?

This forty-day season of Lent and this 4-month season leading up to General Convention offer an opportunity not for squabbling over dollar amounts and fighting to maintain existing programs, but for truly diving into the transition we are living, with creative and open imaginations, with trans-generational listening and sharing, and with the assurance that God is calling us into something new and it will take all the creativity of all our members to define and develop that new thing.

Creativity

On the day God created humanity, he made them to resemble God

- Genesis 5:1 Common English Bible

Human creativity leads to innovation. Innovation leads us to doing things differently. When we cease to think creatively, we no longer innovate, and our progress is arrested. Stagnate is the next word that comes to mind, or maintenance mode. Then the inevitable phrase , “But we’ve always done it that way.” And now we are truly stuck for a time in a comfortable space, until attrition and boredom set in and all of a sudden we are in survival mode. Our next tendency is to desperately try to re-create something that used to work, hoping it will work again, stifling real creativity that may lead to innovation.

I heard a very compelling comment, once upon a time, from my friend and colleague Emily Slichter Given. As she was addressing a room full of church leaders she proclaimed, “If all you’re doing is maintenance and there is no creativity, please go do it somewhere else. You’re killing the church.” It was a bold and brilliant statement. And I took it to heart when I heard it three years ago. I invite you to heed her words as well. It’s time to find the colorful pencils and sharpen them, at least metaphorically speaking.

As the Formation and Vocation Ministries Team continues to explore the notion of Episcopal Generations and bridging gaps, we’re inviting you to identify the gaps in your faith communities, and then engage creative discernment to address the challenge. How are you going to bridge the gap? During a recent workshop at the Forming Disciples conference in the Diocese of Texas we recognized that bridging gaps can be challenging and often presents a conflict when addressed. We agreed that when conflict is well-managed, remembering that we are called to respect the dignity of every human being, it can provide a rich environment in which we can be creative and even innovative. But the facilitation must be balanced so that all passions and concerns are heard, discussed, and addressed, grounded in faith and trust.

A study of Exemplary Youth Ministry noted that “churches who are deeply influencing the faith lives of young men and women (have) a culture of the whole church that is most influential in nurturing youth of vital Christian Faith. The genius of these churches seems best described as a systemic mix of theology, values, people, relationships, expectations, and activities. It appears that a culture of the Spirit emerges with its pervasive and distinct dynamics and atmosphere that is more powerful than its component parts.” (The Spirit and Culture of Youth Ministry, EYM Publishing, St. Paul, MN, 2010) From the same study it has also been noted that “Culture is transmitted from one generation to the next through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art.”

The workshop participants considered these findings and also spent some time identifying their own generational characteristics as described in our blog post, What is a Generation?. We considered our working definition of a Generation Gap, and in the following discussion agreed that identifying specific gaps and engaging creative methods for addressing them could lead to innovative ways to shift the culture of an entire congregation.

At my invitation, five individuals agreed to share with me gaps they had identified in their own congregations. I have pledged to pray for Stephanie, Suzy, Parker, David and Erin and their congregations. They have each identified gaps that they pledge to try to bridge in their home faith communities. They will share their stories with me to then share with you. They are working on everything from developing intentional community for elementary age children, to uniting different women’s groups around a single mission, to engaging ministry for the family as a whole, to taking on a technology gap, to making liturgy more accessible and meaningful for youth, young adults, and middle adults all at the same time. We have all acknowledged that failure is not an option; they will learn from the outcome of their efforts whether their goal is reached or not. Sometimes things come out differently than we desired or expected. If we acknowledge those moments with grace and utilize the opportunity to learn and to engage creative process again, then all is success.

What gaps have you bridged in your faith community? Please join me in praying for these five creative innovators and send your stories to share so that others might learn.