Vulnerability, TED, and the Leadership Summit

I've only been following TED Talks for the past year or so.  TED is a global organization that brings together scholars, leaders, businesspeople, politicians, and others to share their thoughts and become a global forum for ideas.  It's not a specifically Christian venture, and it's fascinating almost every time I listen.

About 3 years ago, a talk was posted by a professor and researcher from the University of Houston (my mom's alma matter) about vulnerability.  The talk went viral and has now been viewed over 8 million times!  Here's the link to the talk by Dr. Brene Brown:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Here's her follow-up talk from last year:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

I'll just warn you: in both talks, she does use a few choice words.  The content of her talk in both cases is outstanding, particularly in her initial message on vulnerability.  As a social researcher, much of her work focuses on how people navigate modern life, how we interact with each other, and what motivates us.  These are topics that Jesus knows intimately and cared about in every aspect of his ministry.

As the church, we have a lot to learn about being a more vulnerable group of people, especially in our willingness to accept others (as Christ does of us) exactly where they are.  We can welcome men and women of any background without compromising our integrity as people of the Word; one of the keys to this task is the kind of vulnerability Dr. Brown describes in her talk.

I hope you'll take a few minutes and listen to what Dr. Brown has to say.  Each talk is only 20 minutes long, and well worth your time.  Also, Dr. Brown will be one of the faculty members at this year's Leadership Summit, which will be on August 8-9 at the Avalon Theater.

May God bless us as we listen to the wisdom of others and seek to be a more vulnerable and caring community for the sake of Christ.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis

Parenting "Turns"

It's 1:48am this morning.  Our little guy is awake, screaming right into my ear as I carry him while I walk through our house.  My wife is trying to rest upstairs, exhausted from another full day of motherhood.  He screams and cries, his hot tears running down his cheeks, then pressed into my face and neck as I try to calm him down.  Thankfully, there's just enough light in the house that I'm able to circumnavigate hazards like baby toys, blankets, pillows, and any other deadly objects.  He's still hollering with all the might of his little lungs.

Finally, he goes quiet as I lay him down in his crib.  He's still snuffling a little bit, and I leave a pacifier within his reach as I close the door, go back upstairs, and try to make sense of how I'm feeling.

The next day, he and I look like this:

Sorry, I can't get the picture to rotate properly.  Shows what a savvy blogger I am... :)

I'm so grateful for my son, even at 1:48am.  I'm even more amazed now at God's miracle of sending His Son to be with us.  I know it's a cliche to share that statement, but it's true.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis Fletcher

A Full Season

One of my mentors taught me to replace the word “busy” with “full” when describing the pace of ministry.  He liked to avoid “busy” because its often used in the negative sense of the word, and it implies a level of disconnect – as in, “Don’t bother me, I’m busy.”  The past 2 weeks have undoubtedly been the most “full” of my time so far at FPC, but that’s not a bad thing.

I had the privilege of getting to know the Beers family (Warren and his late wife, Mardell) through the memorial service we hosted for Mardell last week.  Like much of what we do around here, I didn’t plan on getting to know them or serve their family in such a specific way, but it was a joy to do so.  When I first came to FPC, Tom taught me how to sit down with a grieving family, interview them, and listen to their memories of their loved one.  It was an honor to do that with the Beers, who were a part of Covenant Pres. for a long time and moved over to FPC in the last few years.  Wonderful people, wonderful celebration of Mardell’s life, and a wonderful experience in ministry – leading a funeral – which I hadn’t done before now.  I co-led the service with Chuck Gerome, the pastor from Covenant, which was also a joy.

The Beers’ memorial service came at the tail-end of a very full season around here.  As someone said recently in our staff meeting, the alternative to having a lot going on at FPC is to be a dead/dying church, which I’m sure none of us would prefer.  I should also say that the other events and duties which made this season especially full – preaching, the leadership retreat, Bible studies, small group, and the community worship service at Fellowship Church – are all good and excellent examples of God’s great love and mercy in our midst.

At the end of a full season, I can say confidently that I’m glad not every season is like this.  At the same time (especially after taking time to rest and recover with my family), I’m grateful that we do have seasons like this in our ministry at FPC.  God is good to us, and Christ leads us into his mission in ways we don’t anticipate.  I’m glad for that.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis Fletcher

Reflections from Orlando

At the end of January, several folks from FPC and I went to Orlando for the annual gathering of the Fellowship of Presbyterians.  If you're not familiar with FOP, it's a group of churches in the PC(USA) who want to intentionally connect with each other to partner and grow together in sharing the gospel.  The Holy Spirit is doing amazing work through this group of folks, many of whom are close friends and colleagues.  Glenda Moore, one of our elders, sent me her reflections on the trip.

My trip to the Fellowship Conference in Orlando was a learning experience.  What the speakers had to say keep coming back to me.  John Crosby stated that a goal of [churches affiliated with FOP] is to have more baptisms than funerals by 2018...Tod Bolsinger told us the story of Lewis & Clark.  Lewis & Clark expected to go from coast to coast on waterways in canoes, but when they reached the headwaters of the Missouri River in  Montana, all that there was between them and the Pacific Ocean were mountains--no waterways.  They found they had to listen to "another voice," that of Sacajawea who helped them attain their goal by horseback over the mountains.  

Another remembered speech was by Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission who invited us to look for trouble.  He believes that the church does not thrive in safety.  Breakout Sessions were interesting:  "Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Jesus."  Tara Chase was a missionary and told of some of her stories.  "Lift Up Your Hearts," was about music in the church and a new hymnal that is due out this summer. 

My observations of the four churches of the people I met at lunches were mostly smaller churches struggling with declining membership.  Two of the four had joined Fellowship, one from suburban Orlando, the other from North Carolina; a third from Iowa was thinking about it, and the two elders from a suburban church in Florida wanted to convince their Session to join.  All had questions about how the affinity groups work.  My impression is that First Pres is headed in the right direction compared to the churches I was able to meet.  But Gary Haugen says that things start going downhill when we feel safest.

Let's continue to pray for FPC, for the churches with whom we share mission through the Fellowship, and for our ongoing mission and ministry.  In April, our pastors, session, and staff will head to the Denver area to meet with the four churches with whom we'll partner through the Fellowship.  Pray that our time together will lead to flourishing mission and ministry in the name of Christ.  If you'd like to know more about FOP, their website is: fellowship-pres.org.

Shalom,

Travis

Memorizing the Dessert Cart

One of my favorite moments from the Valentine's Dinner involved two students talking together about their area of service - the parade of sugary wonders known as the Dessert Cart.  If you didn't make it to the dinner this year, you missed out on more than a few wonderful things - including the delicious desserts hand-made by folks from our community and offered in abundance to guests at the Valentine's Dinner.  If you consider yourself a dessert person, the cart made you feel like you were in heaven.

Behind-the-scenes at the dinner, two students were working together to present the dessert tray to our guests.  The elder student, a tall, athletic young lady with a kind heart, and the younger student, an energetic middle school guy, worked together as a team on their dessert cart.  In a gentle way, the young lady asked the guy, "OK - can you name all of the desserts on the cart?"  A little reluctantly but with enthusiasm, the young man started to point at different desserts and say their names.  "Chocolate mousse.  Pecan pie.  Cherry cheesecake."  He had two levels on the cart that he had to cover, so his task wasn't an easy one!  When he stumbled over a name - "Moo-cha tort?" - he was gently corrected by his teammate - "No, that's moe-cah.  Mocha tort."  It was a delight to watch the two of them work together, help each other, and enjoy their service together at a wonderful event.

The Valentine's Dinner is quickly becoming a beloved tradition here at First Pres.  It's a truly intergenerational event - people of all ages and stages in life getting together for dinner in a great setting and for a great cause (all of the proceeds from the dinner benefit student missions, and students who plan on serving on our mission team are required to serve at the dinner).  While I certainly love the high-quality meal we enjoy and the fellowship at each table, my favorite part is watching students serve together and achieve goals they might never have considered possible - like memorizing the items on the dessert cart.  Mission and ministry like this happens because of the grace of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the mercy God gives to each of us because He first loved us.  That's how students like the team I mentioned above could love and serve each other, which then became the foundation for their service to our guests.  I hope this becomes a model for all of us to follow in our life together at FPC.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis

Pastors and Parents

"So how do you make it work?"

This was the question that pulled us together.  Standing in a hotel lobby on a beautiful January morning in Orlando, several other young pastors and I talked about living in the tension between pastoral ministry, schedules, self-care, and most of all - family.  How do we make it work?

It was a wonderful conversation that happened - funny enough - through the combined connections of Facebook and the Fellowship of Presbyterians.  Each of us came to Orlando for the annual gathering of the FOP, which was wonderful and rich.  We all wanted to find peers and colleagues with whom we could ask that tricky question: how do we make this work?  We came from very different ministry contexts - major cities, rural churches, from the Southwest to the Northeast.  So how did we get together?  I put up a post on a Fellowship discussion forum on Facebook, wondering if anyone else was interested in meeting up in Orlando to talk about the family/ministry tension.  Because of our shared commitment to gospel-focused mission and ministry - made clear by our alliance with the FOP - we all "got" each other and could share freely without having to wonder about where the others' theological convictions might be grounded.  Pastors worry about this kind of thing.  :)

The biggest thing we uncovered was that there is no "best" way to make these competing duties work perfectly in our lives.  One of the people from our group has found that working late at night is the best fit for their family.  Another suggested keeping a record of your daily activities, both for ourselves and our sessions' review, so that we stay accountable for the schedule-flexibility afforded to us in our callings.  One thing was clear: having the discretion of a pastor's schedule is a privilege, and the danger of using that discretion to spend too much time away from family is real.  My hope is that we'll continue our conversation at future FOP gatherings, keep in touch from time-to-time, and most of all, to pray for each other as we seek to follow Christ and share his Word in our ministry contexts.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis

Leadership and Family Systems Theory

Our families are the single most critical "incubator" for the way we develop into adults.  Every one of us starts out with the same basic identity: the imago Dei - the image of God.  Every person you've ever met shares this trait with you and I; God made us in His image, and therefore, every person has value.  Our value isn't reduced or increased in any way by our life circumstances, but our ability to function in society is deeply driven by the way we grow up and who takes part in our development in our family of origin.

Leaders, of course, come from families.  Duh.  :)  But what if, as a leader, you and I look a close look at the ways in which we were raised, the language and culture surrounding us when we were kids, and also looked back at our family history and could see patterns of relationships played out across generations?  What if we could grow and develop as leaders by looking at who we are in Christ through this lens?

This, in essence, is what I got to do at a 4-day conference this past month.  I'm still toiling over my notes and scribbles from the conference, but in a word, it was a rich experience.  One of the main voices in our conversation came from the late Edwin Friedman, a psychologist and social scientist.  I've found his books to be deep and complex (in other words, I got lost in just a few pages).  The following video does a good job of expressing several facets of his work on family systems theory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdcljNV-Ew

Based on this video, what does it mean to be a differentiated person?  A differentiated leader?  How might this be applied to the life and ministry of FPC?  Leave a comment below and let's see where the conversation goes.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis