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Why You Should Be On Twitter

Because an NAACP office was bombed today and the mainstream media didn’t cover it, but it’s trending on Twitter.

Because the mainstream media isn’t really “news” — Twitter breaks all the stories first.

Because you can easily connect with people and hear voices coming from WAY outside your parish or ministry context.

Because it allows you to follow hundreds of very diverse people whose work and leadership or humor or vision inspire you, and whose tweets will provide you with links to fascinating and relevant articles through which you can easily sift for sermon fodder, scholarship or entertainment.

Because you can read 100’s of Tweets in a few minutes.

Because it’s a very different platform from Facebook, Tumblr, blogging or any other form of social media — don’t assume you’re “covered” if you use other platforms.

Some Twitter tips:

Stay active. Don’t lurk and merely consume – respond, retweet, pass along the good stuff. Have fun. Make friends.

Twitter is raw. Staid little bromides or quotes are a snooze. Don’t clutter up the feed with unoriginal or irrelevant material. Tweeting is about RIGHT NOW, not about a pastor somewhere desperately trying to improve their Piety Rating by tweeting Scripture quotes.

Use Twitter interactively, not just as a bulletin board to announce blog posts or published sermons.

Your Twitter tone may be edgier than your church newsletter: they’re for different audiences and different generations.

That said, don’t post anything on Twitter that you wouldn’t be able to justify to your parish members, some of whom are absolutely keeping an eye on your Tweets.

Never, ever grouse about your church on Twitter!!

Never assume that you will be able to maintain anonymity. If you get caught cussing or being highly irreverent under a Twitter pseudonym, be prepared to explain yourself when you’re outed. This won’t necessarily be a bad thing. Clergy image is evolving and we need to lead that effort, not fall victim to it.

Recognize the limitations of the medium and go with the flow.

What did I forget to say? Twitteurs?

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Destroying the Power Of Ritual

You want to know what makes PeaceBang really upset and cranky and sometimes just plain furious? Well, she’s going to tell you, of course, so pull up a tuffet and get a cup of tea.

Look. We are heirs and stewards of ancient rituals, and there is a power and majesty in those rituals that can only be maintained when the people leading them are mature and responsible in their work. Too often, this maturity is jettisoned in favor of sloppy bonhomie, as if it’s uncool to take church too seriously, you know, because someone might get the impression that religion matters to us.

It just fries my grummies when I attend a rite of passage where the clergy or lay leaders are stumbling around not knowing where to stand or how to use a mic, or kidding around and making snarky or insecure asides in front of the congregation. LEAVE IT FOR THE REHEARSAL (if there is one — and it’s not a bad idea for complicated services). Keep it in the shower at home. It’s not funny, it’s not sexy, and it doesn’t make you seem cool, it makes you seem sloppy and foolish. God kills a kitten every time a minister gets up during, say, an ordination and interrupts the flow of the service with a sarcastic aside. How dare you inject the contents of your neurotic, chattering mind into the consciousness of those who are there to faithfully worship?

There is no excuse for this!
Boy, PeaceBang is really working up a froth, can you tell?

If you are the clergyperson responsible for these worship services, please put on your Authority Pants as you plan. Communicate to each and every participant the expectation that decorum will be observed on this occasion. Who cares if they think you’re an uptight control freak? You’re not there to win Miss Liturgical Popularity, your job is to ensure that the worship service is beautiful, coherent, well-paced, and dignified.

This doesn’t mean that no one can smile or laugh or be relaxed. It means that they be absolutely prepared to know where to stand, where and when to speak, to come with remarks or prayers or ordinances prepared and internalized so there is no fumbling around which leads to embarrassment, which leads to diarrhea of the mouth, which leads to disrupting the service and undermining the spiritual intensity of the event.

If the stole goes on crooked while you’re putting it over the ordinand’s head, straighten it out in silence. If the water for the baptism splashes on the floor a bit, don’t joke about going swimming later. If the groom sneezes three times in succession, that is not your cue to turn to the congregation and make a big haw-haw about Ebola, or some other “look at me” joke. You may smile broadly, you may chuckle a moment as you hand him a handkerchief, but you do not break character and you do not destroy the moment out of discomfort.

If you study liturgy well (and newbies, this is especially for you), you will find that there are natural and comfortable places of transition during which you may handle things a bit more lightly (inviting the ordinand to the pulpit to receive the Charge To the Minister, for instance), but there is never an appropriate time for uttering distracted little asides about the darned lapel mic that won’t stay clipped to your stole (hold it with your hand and keep mum about the technical difficulties) or quippy little murmurings about how out of breath you are from walking up to the chancel. One of the major problems with these asides, apart from the fact that they are distracting and inappropriate and damaging to the integrity of ritual, is that they are never well-enough enunciated for everyone to hear you. So in addition to puncturing the balloon being held aloft by the Holy Spirit, you have just caused at least one third of those present to mutter to the person sitting next to them, “WHAT DID HE JUST SAY?”

Manage the moment, moment to moment.
Manage and govern yourself.
If it’s your service to plan and lead, make it your strict business to communicate explicit instructions and expectations to every participant so as to minimize or totally avoid sloppy, distracting asides.

And make sure your Authority Pants are ironed and hemmed to the appropriate length.

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Subverting and Interrupting Unconscious Scripts

I am so grateful to have been invited to stir the hornet’s nest on clergy image by K. who submitted the letter to which I responded in the post previous to this one.

BZZZZZZZ!!! BZZZZzzz! There we go! And it’s good to get it all out there again so I can state the mission of this blog, which is to encourage, help and goad religious leaders to understand the historical context in which we serve and to respond to it appropriately.

You just thought this blog was about lip gloss and facial hair maintenance for the pulpit.

It’s like this, True Believers.

We love the church. We believe in the relevance of religious community and in the power of God, or Love or Community, to change the world for the better. We believe in peace, and in spiritual practice, and in the deep work of being community in a world of individualism and alienation.

We know that mainstream Protestant clergy are smart, sophisticated, sexy, savvy, highly-trained professionals with scary-impressive portfolios of accomplishments and experience. It would be wonderful be able to dress comfortably and casually and walk into any space in society and have people know that about us.

But they don’t. They really, really don’t. Because since the 1970’s (and even before, but let’s start there), the mainline Protestant church has nose-dived in influence and attendance, and along with that trend, the religious right rose and gained political power and influence. And those religious leaders, who looked so grand and confident and shiny on television, disgusted the non-religious or casually religious portion of society with their politics of hate and division, war-mongering and woman-controlling, gay-bashing and education-mangling. They took the Scriptures and Christianity and used them as political cudgels. They beat ploughshares into swords.

Now, denominations fight bitterly amongst ourselves and within our own ranks about issues of doctrine and policy, and see the vast differences between us. However, the majority population of the U.S., which is unchurched and not interested in religious community, sees very little of that.

Continue reading “Subverting and Interrupting Unconscious Scripts”

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“Oh My God, Is THAT A DRESS?” On Clergy Women Dissing Professionally Dressed Clergy Women

K. wrote this cri de couer, and it’s a goodie.

ok here’s my question and maybe you have addressed this–if so just direct me to the post. What is it with some (many?) clergy women and nice clothes? Specifically, I am a pastor in a northern state. So I get it’s cold up here. I get there are trees and woods and we all love to be woodsy and folksy and look like we just came off a nice camping trip. I get that. I love it. I really do. However, I think as a professional it’s important to also look put together. So when I go to assemblies, do presentations, lead worship, go to meetings, etc etc I dress professionally. I am after all a professional.

But then here’s what happens every time–and it’s always from the other WOMEN who choose to attend/do these things in jeans, sweatshirts, chacos and/or those Keane sandals. They say to me with almost dramatic flair: “WOW you are SO dressed UP!” “Why are you wearing a DRESS?” “ARE those HEELS?” and on and on. Seriously. It happens every time I’m at a church event with other colleagues who are female. Men never say a word–but these ladies, some of whom I consider friends, seem to think they need to school me. The thing is, I do not make an issue about their outfits.

I never comment on what anyone else is wearing or question their style choices. So why must an issue be made about mine? And even better, how does one respond to things like this that feel like attacks? I’ve tried laughing it off, heck I’ve even been direct but it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t stop. I am not a young clergy person (I’m in my mid 40’s) so I don’t feel like it’s some kind of power play. More like contempt but for what? For me? For clothes? For looking nice? (of course our male clergy run around in suits and none of these women give them any flack). This just happened again yesterday. I was leading a presentation. Chose a nice dress, heels, did my hair etc. Walked in and my co presenter looked at me in shock and said “oh…you are so dressed up!” It’s not like I don’t know how to be causal and truly I don’t feel like I’m over dressed-and I can dress comfortably when appropriate. This simply confuses me and I’m sick of it. So thanks for listening to my rant. Please advise if you have a moment. Many thanks.

DEAREST K,
As the late Joan Rivers would say, “Can we TAWK?”

I love this letter. I love the way it perfectly encapsulates the problem I have been toiling to address for almost a decade here at BTFM, and how far we still have to go in solving that problem.

You identify your ministry context as the northern states, where your colleagues like to look “woodsy and folksy and like we all came off of a nice camping trip.” Oh, how well I know what you’re saying. Where I live, in the Boston Metro area, the liberal clergy like to look woodsy and folksy and like we all came off a nice weekend in Nantucket where we had no more important work than to strum guitars and sing about peace to tiny groups of people who think just like we do.

Protestant ministers are in a time warp, and in a reality warp. What they know of the new reality they have decided doesn’t apply to them because they don’t approve of it. Maybe the world has become more visual. Clergy don’t care, because they’re certain that words will solve social issues and save the world. Why should they wear heels and professional attire when a well-meaning slogan on a T-shirt or a big cross around the neck should communicate what they’re about to the public?

Clergy today are defensive and arrogant about public image because they know nothing at all about it and therefore conclude that it must not be important. Even clergy who have jettisoned outworn theologies that oppress and exclude many of God’s children from full participation in the life of the church refuse to revise their own dated, unevolved attitudes about what it means to represent the institution in 2014. They (and I’m talking specifically about the Boomers whom I suspect comprise the largest segment of your eye-rolling sneerers) came of age in an era when grooming and attire were suspect as part of the Establishment, and many of them are still marching under the Frumpiness is Next To Godliness banner. Then there are the Starry-Eyed Evangelical Idealists with egg in their beards and nose hairs protruding from their nostrils who honestly believe that clergy appearance is not central to attracting people to the church, because they cling to a hopelessly dualistic Body/Spirit mentality.

Look at the drubbing poor Paul Walters received just the other day for writing that pastors should stop dressing like slobs. All the usual suspects are there in the comments section: the passive-aggressive pearls-clutcher who says he’ll be praying for Paul’s soul, the defensive sloppy dresser who caved to pressure when he was accused of “putting on airs” by dressing professionally for work (God forbid he do outreach pastoral ministry about the issue), the inevitable chorus of shame from the prim critics who honestly believe that inner beauty or spiritual purity excuse slovenliness for anyone outside their immediate circle of gospel purists… and so on and so on.

Continue reading ““Oh My God, Is THAT A DRESS?” On Clergy Women Dissing Professionally Dressed Clergy Women”

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This Sunday, August 17

Preach the front pages.
Preach the news. Preach the fire. Preach the rage, the sadness, the lamentation. Preach it fierce. Bring your rage, your solidarity, your authority to confront: to confront ourselves, to confront our God, to confront yourself, to confront our sick, sick society. Confront what is really happening. Do not “spiritualize.” Do not offer bromides, cliches, or a load of Christian crap that everyone has heard before and that you yourself have heard too many times coming out of your own mouth because it feels easier to say that crap than to cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes and wail that you have no idea what God is doing, but that you only hope God is working in this, is in the suffering, is loving us still, will not abandon and forsake us.

Who am I to tell you what to preach? I am only your friend, only a lady who advises you not to wear silly round-toed girl shoes when you should be standing strong in grown-up shoes on grown-up feet, for God’s sake.

Anyone who dares to preach this Sunday wearing silly little sandals or with baby bird sticking-up bedhead, don’t you DARE. PEACEBANG WILL FIND YOU.

You pray this time, you pray this horror, you acquaint yourself with the news, you put on your protective headgear and you get out there and you put aside the sermon you were going to give on puppies and love and butterflies and you get in there with humanity and witness to it. Any minister who doesn’t address the pain and suffering in America right now from their pulpit this Sunday deserves all the disappointment — spoken or unspoken — that will come at them in passive-aggressive or straight up aggressive ways in months to come. It is our job to be alive, awake, attentive, thoughtful, connected and in relationship to the real world right now this moment as it is. And I’m sorry, but no matter what’s going on in your individual community or congregation this week, it can’t possibly be as spiritually enormous as the conflagration that’s burning outside all our windows. COME TO THE WINDOW. See. Witness. Pray for the Holy Spirit to assist us in saying what we are able about that fire.

Do not preach a clinical sermon about what depression is. Please don’t do that. I can get a pamphlet myself or find that online. Preach the soul! Preach the agony! Remember that people do not “commit” suicide. It is not a crime. They DIE of suicide. You’re not a doctor, you don’t have to understand depression as a clinician. Nor is this the time to give a sermon entirely about yourself and your depression, God no: don’t you bleed all over your community. Save that for your therapist.

Have you reached out to the police officers in your community? I haven’t, but I plan to. Ya think they need pastoral care right now? As it becomes unavoidably obvious to Americans (even those who have been in denial or ignorance about the fact) that African-American communities live in a constant police state, the pain is going to spread from Ferguson to your community. As it should. Those who aren’t in pain right now are numb. Bring them along. Help them connect.

Darlings, if you’re offended by my ranting, I understand. Who am I to say all this? I am just a woman who is also a minister who is also a disappointed church-goer of many years – a woman who wandered from state to state in her young adulthood, moving around, trying to find a spiritual community that wasn’t either only political or way too pastoral. I attended church Sunday after Sunday after Sunday wondering why those people in the pulpit were so boring, so frumpy, so nice, and so absolutely dead to the real world I lived in and struggled with.

By all means, be a nice person (blech, I hate that word. See Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” for my favorite lyric of his: “You’re so nice. You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice. I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just RIGHT. I’m the Witch! You’re the world.”). But this Sunday, don’t you dare be nice. Don’t you be tepid. Don’t you put out a puff pasty Jesus-loves-us conclusion — not unless you’re saying it with your head up and your voice loud and your fist on the pulpit.

You make sure you are impeccable. You make sure you look like strong and capable and impressive enough to fly a helicopter of terrified people off a mountain where they have been in fear for their lives and their children’s lives and starving and thirsting for a week. Do you see that it is you who has to fly that mission on Sunday morning?

And please forgive my ranting. I just didn’t know where else to put this if not to give it to you.