The Gospel of Pragmatism

I’ve long thought it was easy to fight, especially in church. Little is easier than starting a fight. A strategically placed word, a substitute motion, a perfectly timed sigh, in a very real sense the easiest thing we can do is start a fight. That’s why we probably do it so often, not because we’re good at it, but because it’s easy to do. We’re trained in it from the playground to the boardroom, and when we stop fighting, we not only lose, we can become uncertain of who we are. One of the most chilling docudramas I ever saw was about the men of the IRA who were terrified of the Irish peace process because not only would it put them out of work, but, since they were defined by their work, which was blowing things up and killing people, they would lose their identity.

I think the Apostle Paul understood this human propensity toward conflict, which is why so much of his writing is practical. No abstract theologian, the Apostle Paul, but extremely circumstantial and practical. To the Galatians he wrote, “For freedom Christ has set you free, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence. Instead, serve one another.” To the Romans, conflicted over the intersection of traditions, he wrote, “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them….Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” The gospel of pragmatism.

Over the last four years our staff has made a serious effort to learn to work together, to appreciate the gifts in each other and to let our common convictions draw us together instead of our disagreements pulling us apart. A team set out to describe our commitments in terms of a community covenant. I share it with joy.

CPC Staff Declarations and Covenant

(Adopted February 1, 2010)

The history of God’s relationship to God’s people is one of covenant-making.  These covenants convey the gracious nature of God toward humanity and impact our life together.  This staff covenant seeks to remind us of God’s grace and our continuing need for it, and to help us live into faithful service together for the glory of God.

Declaration:  We are participating in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
“I am the vine and you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”  John 15:5

• we have a shared vision and unity of purpose;
• we anticipate and seek out the gifts of each other;
• we work beyond the limited sphere of ourselves, our job descriptions, and our church community;
• we take wise risks and learn from excellent failures;
• we seek to discern God’s continuing and unfolding call as we participate in Christ’s ministry

Declaration:  Our culture as a staff is Christ-centered and God-honoring.
“For we are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”  Ephesians 2:10

• we honor the unique giftedness of each person;
• we respect differences with a commitment to cooperative resolutions;
• we utilize repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation as tools of God’s grace;
• we trust one another, anticipating and encouraging the best in each other;
• we communicate authentically and directly, giving and welcoming honest feedback (“speaking the truth in love” Eph 4:15);
• we collaborate in interdependent ways, and remain accountable to each other.

Declaration:  We are being transformed and led by new movements of the Spirit, following Jesus Christ into death and into new life.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Romans 12:2

• we rely on God’s grace and live in the present moment;
• we define success as faithfulness to our discernment of God’s calling;
• we anticipate challenges and approach these as opportunities;
• we celebrate all God’s people and recognize God’s grace within their lives;
• we cultivate an expectation of abundance in what is needed to do God’s work.

We recognize the need for God’s grace and the support of God’s people to make these declarations a reality within the staff of Covenant Presbyterian Church.

Twenty Children

l Iove Jane Stephens. She's smart, focused, and knows how to get things done. She founded the "Amani Children's Foundation" which does great work with abandoned children in Kenya. Stories of these children abound, but when I think of Jane I hear her singular refrain ringing in my ears, "It's about the babies."

"It's about the babies." How simple is that? In her work, she uses it to heighten the level of dialogue about what to do for Kenya's abandoned children. Historically these conversations have been mired in tribal conflicts, ethnic fears, and competing ideologies all while abandoned babies lay dying. One rescued baby I met was even abandoned in a tree, hanging in a plastic grocery bag as her cradle. Instead of obfuscating the issue by asking secondary questions "Was she Lua? Why doesn't the government do something? What kind of person abandons her baby?" Along comes Jane Stephens to remind us, "It's about the babies."

She's been remarkably successful. Her creative work with New Life Homes has now rescued hundreds of babies and facilitated their adoption across tribal lines, subjugating tribal differences to the common concern for children's welfare. Sometimes I wonder if Jane is less missionary and more prophet, a voice that cuts through the cultural noise and calls the question: Isn't this problem really about the children?

I wonder if her question isn't our nation's most urgent question. While ideologues and lobbyist, congresspersons and Presidents, dally around the edges, talking about the second amendment and crime rates, assault weapons and self-protection, I find myself saying, "Isn't it really about the children?" Isn't this really about creating a culture where the fundamental human right of children to attend school in safety is not superseded by the politically established 'right' of adults to bear arms? Isn't this about children being able to live and play freely without fear of massacre instead of living in a world that clings to the right to form militias? Isn't this about the children, none of whom should ever see a loved one shot at point blank range, attend mass funerals for schoolmates, and have their childhood traumatized by indiscriminate violence? Isn't this really about the children?

If an airliner filled with children fell out of the sky at the hands of a mentally ill pilot, we would take immediate steps to ensure future safety. We decided long ago that it was not in the interests of the community for someone to board an airplane unchecked, drive 200 miles an hour on a public highway, distribute medicine or even perform a wedding. We won't let a convicted sex-offender move into a neighborhood without public notice or come within two hundred feet of a playground, yet loopholes abound when it comes to criminals and the mentally ill possessing guns.

Christians have long understood the principle of subjugating the freedoms of some for the good of all. One of the Apostle Paul's earliest writings gives these new Christ-followers explicit instruction "For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servants of one another.”

In this case, the freedom of some to own semi-automatic assault weapons prevailed over the rights of twenty children to grow up, celebrate birthdays, enjoy God's good gift of life and to raise children of their own. Isn't it time to focus on the children?

In the book Profiles in Courage are stories about a handful of Americans who, at critical moments in history, made decisions that departed from their parties’ ideologies and ultimately cost them dearly. Of particular surprise to me was the story of Robert Taft, the staunchly conservative Republican senator from Ohio who publicly opposed the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. “The trial of the vanquished by the victor cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice,” Taft warned. Almost nobody agreed with him, and many think it cost him his party's nomination in the next election.

It's called courage, the courage of one's convictions, the willingness to do and say the right thing regardless of the consequences.
Isn't it time to do that for the children?

Past Year/New Year

One of the richest practices of my year is to prayerfully consider the year past and year to come. Sometime around the New Year I find intentional times of silence to give thanks for people and events and to pray about my life's horizon. This year it has been a challenge to get my head and heart around the richness of the journey, and I found this piece from Elizabeth O'Connor helpful. I spent considerable time with it to consider 2012 and will use it again over the next few days to lay the spiritual groundwork for 2013.

Year-ending, Year-beginning

Elizabeth O'Connor

What took place in your home relations? Your work relations? Your church relations? What events in the larger community of city, country and world most captured your attention?

Who were the significant people in your life? What books and art instructed your mind and heart?

Did you create anything this year? Did you make any new discoveries about yourself? How were you gift last year to a person, a community or an institution?

What was your greatest joy in this year gone? What was your greatest sorrow? What caused you the most disappointment? What caused you the most sadness?

In what areas of your life did you grow? Were these areas related to your joy or your pain?

What are your regrets? How would you do things differently, if you could live the year again? What did you learn?

Did you have a recurring dream? What theme or themes ran through your year?

Did you grow in your capacity to be a person in community--to bear your own burdens, to let others bear theirs? Did you have sufficient time apart with yourself?

Did you root your life more firmly in Scripture? Did you grow in your understanding of yourself? What was your most important insight? Did God seem near or far off?

How do you want to create the new year? What kind of commitment do you want to make to yourself? Your community? To the oppressed people of the world? How do the questions about commitment make you feel? Angry? Challenged? Hopeful?

Who are the people with whom you would like to deepen your relationships in the year to come? Do you have relationships that need to be healed? What can you do to heal your own heart? What can others do to assist in your healing?

Is there a special piece of inward work that you would like to accomplish? Is there a special outward work? What are the goals that seem important to you? What are your hopes? What are your fears? What are the immediate first steps that you can take toward the goals that seem important to you?

We might have a time of prayer in which to give thanks for all the events of the year gone, and to ask that the God through whose fingers they were filtered will continue to bless them to our use. They are now the bread of our life--part of all that we have to share with another when we share what is ours to give away.

God's clear mandate: Protect and provide for the vulnerable

This commentary first appeared in the Charlotte Observer on May 1, 2011.

Across the sweep of the Bible's narrative is a mandate for God's people to protect and provide for the vulnerable. In the earliest biblical accounts this mandate allowed travelers to harvest from roadside fields just enough to feed their families. Widows, endowed with few other rights under the law, were allowed to glean fields after the harvest and keep the spoils of their labor. David, arguably Israel's greatest king, fulfilled his promise to care for Mephibosheth, Jonathan's disabled son, allowing him to eat at the king's table for as long as he lived.

The early Christian church was well-known for its care of the vulnerable. Among the first stories of this fledgling community is the election of Stephen, who was charged to care for widows equitably. Many historians credit the extraordinary rise of Christianity to the sacrificial care given during times of plague when Christian physicians and caregivers stayed with the ill as others fled to safety. The biblical mandate to care for those in need is clear.

Even with our entrepreneurial spirit and extraordinary philanthropy, Charlotte is not immune to the challenges of providing for the vulnerable. This is especially true for our children, who are often defenseless and in greatest need of our care. The statistics are alarming:

Nearly 6,000 children in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County do not have a permanent home. About 68,000 students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools applied for reduced-price or free meals in the 2009-2010 school year. These children may not have access to nutritious meals when school is out.

One in four children under age 6 in North Carolina (26 percent) lives in poverty.

Some might argue that these children's circumstances are the natural consequence of parental choice: crime, addiction, illegal status, teenage pregnancy and any number of other social vices. And yet, the biblical mandate remains. As people of faith, we are to protect and provide for the vulnerable.

This weekend, people of faith will join hands across denomination, race and creed and pray for the soul, family, community and world of our children. We'll also hear from adults in our community on the vanguard of providing for children - nonprofit leaders, civic leaders, school board members and county commissioners, as well as hospital and community health workers. As people of faith, we'll pray for their work and ask God to multiply their efforts. We will also consider new vistas of service and explore ways to collaborate. We will think and speak seriously about our role in addressing the many needs children in our city face each day. In other words, we'll do what people of faith have always done: Heed God's mandate to protect and provide for the vulnerable. We hope you'll join us.

Myers Park Clergy: Spread Affordable Housing, Start Here

This commentary was published in the Charlotte Observer on Sept. 9, 2010, with fellow clergy leaders south Charlotte: Peter Brown, St. Mark's Lutheran Church; Ken Carter, Providence United Methodist Church; Steve Eason, Myers Park Presbyterian Church; Chip Edens, Christ Episcopal Church; James Howell, Myers Park United Methodist Church; Steve Shoemaker, Myers Park Baptist Church; and Steve Wilson, Little Church on the Lane:

We've known it for 10 years. We have an affordable housing crisis in Charlotte that affects thousands of families: the working poor, the nurse, the teacher, the construction worker and those who are homeless and one step away from having a home. We estimate we need 12,000 units. City and county government cannot build us out of this crisis.

We also have a "concentration of poverty" crisis. Look at a city map which depicts concentration of poverty, and there is a dramatic "Crescent of Poverty" which begins in west Charlotte, sweeps up over the north edge of uptown and ends in east Charlotte. This Poverty Crescent affects everything in Charlotte: schools, economic development and a vital "social capital" built from relationships across racial and economic lines.

Myers Park clergy are concerned about this looming and worsening crisis. We support a "locational policy" that will disperse mixed-income housing fairly and healthily across our city. We are also doing something. We are working on a mixed-income housing initiative in the middle of Myers Park which will provide housing for a few families and wrap support services around them so they will thrive in their new homes.

Our faith commitments compel us to a hospitality that welcomes others, that sees in the stranger a neighbor. This is a modest step, but only our first step. We believe others will join us. If this crisis is to be adequately addressed it will need everyone's help: public, private, faith communities and the active goodwill of all our citizens toward making this city a hospitable place for all people across economic, social, racial and religious lines.


The prophet Isaiah spoke about "the repairer of the breach ... the restorer of streets to live in." This can be our aspiration and holy work together: to repair breaches and restore streets and create safe homes and neighborhoods for all who long for this essential need of human well-being, and to discover new neighbors, and to make our city truly a community. Let us make southern hospitality more than a southern charm, also the mark of a city passionate about repairing the breach and restoring every street as a good place to live.

Final Glimpses

Dear Friends:

Life continues to amaze and confound here. Yesterday I had an extended conversation with the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) - Fahed Abu-Akel - who happened to come to a lecture Suzanne was giving. He was in attendance along with folks from the U.N., World Council of Churches, an Armenian priest, a Paulist priest, several Biblical scholars, a Jewish scholar, and various other entities from around Jerusalem. You know, your basic Greensboro audience.

As we are leaving for London tomorrow, let me offer just a few last glimpses of our experiences here. Last night some lingering stomach problems caused me to walk down to the pharmacy in Bethlehem next to the grocery store I've been using. Mr Awad, the grocery store proprietor, greeted me on the porch and I asked about the adjoining pharmacy, which appeared closed. He said, "Yes, it's closed. But if you are sick, I have a key." So inside he goes to get the key and within minutes we walk into the next door pharmacy which suddenly has extended hours and a very loose prescription policy. As we search around for some immodium, I can find only the "needs chilling?" liquid variety.

Mr. Awad says, "You want tablets?""

I'm just concerned about the "needs chilling part," I said, as it was about 90 degrees in the pharmacy at that point

"Tell me exactly what's wrong with you," says my grocer.

I offer the gory details and immediately he whips out his cell phone and begins a rapid-fire conversation in Arabic. Upon hanging up, he says, "He's coming. You sit here five minutes." So there I sat in the pharmacy, waiting for who knows what. About five minutes later, into the parking lot screeches a car and out pops the pharmacist. He inquires about my illness, suggests a few options, goes over the ingredients of each medication, explains it all in extreme detail, suggests various options for a wellness plan, and sells me what I need for five dollars.

I thank him profusely, compliment him on his English, and he says, "I'm not so good in English. Arabic, yes. Italian, yes. French, yes. But English, not so good."

It turns out that he was born in Bethlehem, educated in Italy, attended pharmacy school in France, and is now the proprietor of this formerly thriving store whose business is being destroyed by the wall. And still he's a man kind enough to leave his family at 8:00 p.m. in order to help some stranger who can offer nothing back but a five dollar sale.

Today brought more experiences of hospitality, though as you probably expect by now, it was accompanied by some surprises. Samer, the taxi driver who takes our children to camp each day, invited us over to his home for dinner, an amazingly gracious gesture especially considering that their third child was born just last week. All five Hendersons ambled down past the checkpoint where Samer picked us up. As we drove to his house, he said something very out of character for his cheery disposition, "It's a bad day in Bethlehem. Many arrests. Soldiers come in and take many people."

We rounded the curve to see that the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) had closed the street and surrounded the adjacent housing complex (probably 50 homes) with soldiers at their posts and weapons drawn. Looking for a way around, we stopped briefly, only to be greeted by an extremely loud explosion from this housing complex less. When we could breathe again, Samer said, "Don't worry. That's not shooting. No worries. Just bombs."

What great comfort!

It turns out that these explosions (several more ensued) were from explosive devices designed for crowd control; they make such loud noise that people seek shelter and are thus more easily contained, monitored and searched. Samer was obviously used to it.

We found our way to Samer's house where his wife, Tagrid, had prepared a gourmet meal with the help of Samer's parents who contributed freshly baked bread, a spiced salad, and homemade yogurt to complement the large chicken, rice, potato and breaded vegetable platter before us. We feasted, laughed, and shared stories of our children. We were even able to wade into issues of the wall, Arafat, Bush, and Sharon. It was refreshing to be able to be able to discuss our differences with respect and a commitment to understanding.

The whole evening turned into a time we'll never forget. In fact, it was nearly sacramental: gathering at the table of this Muslim family from Bethlehem, talking about their situation, witnessing their deep love for their children, and listening to them speak about long lasting good relationships with their Christian neighbors. As we prepared to leave, one of the cousins who had joined us said, "We are all children of God and need to understand each other. For many years we have had good relations with our Christian neighbors. We live next to each other and work with each other every day. We are all children of God."

That's kind of a typical day for us here in Israel/Palestine: whether it is talking to the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), the Middle East representative for the World Council of Churches (also at the lecture), an Italian educated and French trained pharmacist, our faithful grocer, or eating dinner with our Muslim taxi driver and his family, we never have any idea what will happen next, just that it will help us live with eyes wide open.

For those of you who have read these entries and commented on them, we thank you. It's been our privilege to share our thoughts and experiences. We know members of the larger Greensboro community have occasionally dropped in on this site, and we invite you to come to Westminster any time you would like. I promise you'll be warmly welcomed. I'll be sharing more of my thoughts in worship on the weekend of August 14.

We leave early tomorrow (4:00 a.m.) for a few weeks of vacation before our return to Westminster. The Lilly Endowment (who funded this endeavor) requires several weeks of reflection and rest to conclude the sabbatical, and we will gladly oblige. Please keep us in your prayers as we travel.

God's peace to you all.

Bob, Suzanne, Abbie, Will and Hannah

Living Stones

There is no shortage of stones around this sacred land. We've seen stones that were part of the rubble left by the Romans' destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, stones that formed part of an ancient Canaanite worship site at Megiddo, a stone marking the (supposed) precise spot of Jesus' birth, and the stone out of which a garden tomb was carved.

But by far the most valuable "excavation" we've experienced during our stay at Tantur has been the chance to learn from the "living stones" of the land -- those people for whom this broken place is home, who live with its harsh and beautiful realities washing over them on a daily basis. Let me introduce you to some of those living stones.

Vivi is Tantur's House Matron, which basically means that she runs the place. It's a huge job, given the groups traipsing in and out for lodging, meals, library use, and seminars. But Vivi always has time for us, time to fill a water bottle with olive oil (the best) because she'd seen our children dipping bread in it at Sunday dinner, time to offer the kids an extra sweet, time to share a meal with us and tell us her story. And what a story it is. This lovely Danish woman first came to Jerusalem as an 18-year-old nanny on a tour of the Holy Land. She stayed because she fell in love with her tour bus driver, a Palestinian Christian who lived in East Jerusalem. (Imagine her parents' response when she initially returned to Denmark and said she wanted to scrap her nursing school plans to marry an Arab!) Together, they raised four children (all of whom live Stateside now); since his death a few years ago, Vivi seems to have adopted the guests at Tantur as her family.

Sami works the front desk, which mostly means he monitors the 20-odd security cameras (told you it was safe!) scattered around this vast hilltop property. He's called us by name since the day we arrived, he's helped us book taxis and arrange outings -- always with a gracious hospitality that makes us feel as if Tantur is spinning just for us. Sami's family is the recipient of one of the soccer balls the church sent with us; I wish you could have seen his eyes light up with gratitude as he spoke of how much his young son will enjoy playing with it.

Jeff and Maria are newlyweds -- both scholars-in-residence here working on graduate degrees from Dayton University -- who have shown special kindness to our children. Every night in the Bethlehem Room (so named for its panoramic view of the little town), where we gather for coffee after dinner, Jeff and Maria engage our kids in conversation and games. Married in the chapel at Notre Dame just a month ago, Jeff is a convert from Judaism to Catholicism (by way of Campus Crusade), while Maria comes from a Catholic family in the heartlands of Iowa. It's been a joy to share this time with them.

Samer is the taxi driver inside the Bethlehem wall who takes the kids to and from camp each day. It's a choice "contract" for him, since tourism and commerce are so depressed in his town, and it's been a choice "contact" for Bob (who escorts the children while I work). Samer has patiently answered Bob's jillion questions about the siege of Bethlehem, the life afterwards, the contours of the terrorist groups we ignorantly lump together (Islamic Jihad and Hamas couldn't be more different to Samer). He has three children, including a one-week-old, and looks forward to a quiver full of five to eight kids. (As a sidenote, Elias Chacour pointed out that, with the Muslim birthrates hovering between five and six children per family, there's no getting rid of the Palestinians!)

Imad was our bus driver on the Galilee portion of our tour. He was born in the Old City but now lives with his family on the Mount of Olives. Imad's highly educated; he's fluent in English and Hebrew as well as Arabic, and he's trained in Interior Design. While he'd love to start his own design business, to do so here would require his service in the Israeli military -- an unthinkable option for this Arab Israeli. So he's driving tour busses, saving his money, and planning to move his family to Amman, Jordan to set up shop. We all fell in love with his 3-year-old son Wa'ad, who joined us for our day trip to Hebron.

Caitlin is another American here with us at Tantur. She's working on a history Ph.D. from Emory on the topic of Jewish-Christian relations in the 20th century, with a special interest in the Holocaust and its impact on those relations. She's a good Presbyterian who describes her bias as ardently supportive of Israel's statehood and who's done some fascinating research in the Zionist archives and the Library of Congress. Yet she too has been somewhat blown away by the Wall and its impact ("I thought it was like a backyard fence!") -- especially the long-term negative impact she feels it will bring for Israel, due to festering unrest and economic despair.

Hopefully, you're catching a glimpse of the richness of our visit and the relationships forged here.

With deep thanks for your partnership in this journey,

Suzanne