New Year’s Resolutions

“Seven Habits of Highly Organized Ministers”

Habit one: Find a calendar that fits your lifestyle.
Find a date book that fits with your ministry life. For instance, if you have a lot of appointments, get an hour-by-hour date book. If you’re at the computer a lot, get a PalmPilot. If you lead worship daily, find a lectionary calendar.

Habit two: Block off time.
Write down in that lifestyle-appropriate calendar when you plan to accomplish big tasks. Block off time for sermon writing, visitation, and errands, even when you know you will often have to move things around.

Habit three: Remove obstacles to self-care.
Put a strategy in place for taking care of yourself. Keep your gym bag packed and ready so you can work out without a fuss. When leaving a massage or spiritual direction session, make your next appointment before walking out the door. (Personally, I set up the coffee machine the night before… does that count?) Considering how easy it is to put off self-care, good organizational habits make it easier to follow through.

Habit four: Create good systems.
I once worked with a minister who always carried large-print calling cards with his name and phone number. Whenever he went to pay a hospital or nursing home visit, but found his parishioner asleep, he would leave a note behind and let the parishioner know when he would be back, and that he was praying for him or her. When you detect any recurring dilemma in your ministry, create a simple system to address it.

Habit five: Pull out the “little daggers.”
The expression “little daggers” is used in Bridge for low trump cards that can foil a player’s strategy if left in her opponents’ hands. In the minister’s efforts to stay organized, “daggers” include quick emails, two-minute phone calls, and annoying insurance or flex-spending claim forms. Before tackling big projects, like talking with someone who is upset or designing a major worship service, remove the distracting “little daggers” so you can stay focused.

Habit six: Consolidate errands.
It is amazing to me how much time pastors spend running errands! To the printers, the religious supply shop, the grocery store for a meeting’s refreshments! Keep a list of errands to run and take care of them all at once every week or two.

Habit seven: Protect your privacy.
In some clergy circles, it is de rigueur for pastors to publicize openly when they will be working on their sermons, when they will be out visiting, and other ways in which they organize their time. This is fine. But ministers also deserve their privacy. Pastors who reply to unrealistic invitations with a warm-sounding, “I cannot make it, as I have a prior commitment,” are in most cases met with understanding (I’m thinking of invitations like, “Pastor, please come to my niece’s ballet recital.”). The fact that the prior commitment is that carefully-planned massage? That’s your business!

Sarah Drummond, Director of Field Education and Assistant Professor of Ministerial Leadership

Christ-mass and Christ-missionis

In western countries Christmas resembles a folk festival. It is centered on external activities: people frequently visit shopping malls, share presents, and amuse over gift-dispensing Santa Claus. Many people decorate a fir tree in their living room; others send out greeting cards wishing a Happy Holiday. Some visit the neglected, the elderly and the sick in hospitals or old age homes. These activities are good and needed to cement human relationships in stress-ridden societies. But many people in western countries do not give importance to the spiritual aspects of Christmas because they are carried away by secularism, consumerism, relativistic ethos of pluralism, and postmodern ideologies.

In the modern world people need not reject or hide their religious identities. Instead they can learn to cope with differences in such a way that their religious identities are not portrayed as soulless entities. Westerners can learn much from pluralistic countries such as India where people with different kinds of worldviews, ideologies, religious expressions, cultural practices, and languages have been living for millennia. They constantly learn to overcome tensions, conflicts, and wounded memories. Now the Indian Constitution, for example, grants freedom to all Indians to believe in, to practice, and to propagate their faith traditions in a respectful manner. This is one of the major reasons why India has recognized two major Christian festivals — Christmas and Good Friday —worthy of national holidays. It is noteworthy that this privilege is accorded to a small group of people who make up only 2.4% of the population! Christians in India celebrate Christmas joyfully and publicly, no matter on which day of the week it falls.

For Christians in India, Christmas is not a mere folk festival filled with secular and commercial aspects. Their biblical literacy and their status as minority people living in the midst of dominant religions such as Hinduism and Islam make them take seriously their identity as Christians. They know that Christmas has to do with the “mass” of Jesus Christ. Hence they gratefully recall and remember within the context of worship not only the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, but above all his death on the cross of Calvary. In this regard, worship on every Sunday is considered to be Christmas. Generally, every worship on Sundays concludes with the missionis (“mission” = to send), and encourages the worshippers to go into the world and to live a life worthy of their identity as Christians. They are reminded to be true to themselves in real life situations so they can be true to others in their real life situations. Just as we learn to be true to the real meaning of Christmas centered on Jesus Christ we will be able to understand the meaning and significance any other non-Christian festival. Christmas is more than a mere happy holiday season; it is indeed Christmas.

Daniel Jeyaraj, Judson DeFreitas Professor of World Christianity

Poetic Reflections on Advent and the Wilson Chapel Project

We find ourselves once again in Advent,
a season that sits “between the times.”
But which times?

Advent. Even while the clergy remind us
that the church marks this
as the beginning of a new year,
a season of waiting, and watching,
and, above all, wondering.
But mostly we feel it
as a time of hurry
and rush between other times:
the press of trying to finish
things left undone – end of year
financial reckonings; appointments
and deadlines in the calendar’s last days;
shopping for gifts against the madness
of stores and malls and the dangerous impatience
of holiday shoppers; pausing to thank
those whose life and work sustains our own;
and, yes, on Sundays, worshiping the God
who still waits for us despite our hurry
and impatience and self-importance.

I catch glimpses of this routine drama
watching the new chapel
take shape and form
from my office window
day by day, the grinding of machines
and the flurry of men working
with tools and determination
who take the abstract lines and
measurements of an architect’s design
and give them solid definition
in steel and stone and glass, creating
an empty space where we
will come to worship
and wait for this Word to be born
again and again. Each morning,
long before most of us academics
make our daily appearances, the trucks
growl and groan as they crawl up the hill
under the burden of heavy cargo,
and hard-hatted men with steaming coffee cups
in hand begin to maneuver lifts – assembling
windows, finishing the slate roof, racing
against time to close this large empty cavern
against the coming cold of winter.

Advent, this season of wild hope
when we pray for God’s adventurous word
to come into being as life among us.
Advent, a season when faith comes
to us not as assertion but as question,
asking that we look in unlikely places –
in the shadows of our world, and
even in the darkness of our own lives –
and pray for the coming of this Word
in the places of our lives marred
by disappointment and death.
What will we, who know too well
the strength of darkness, believe
about the coming of this light
in the ordinary press and hurry of our lives?
What word of life will be born among us
this season and, yes, here in this place?

Dr. Mark S. Burrows, Professor of the History of Christianity, from the opening meditation for the December 2006 ANTS Board of Trustees’ meeting.

The Lure of Distances

This morning, a line
of geese drifted slowly
across the silky sky,

all blue and vast and
beckoning, their flight
a sign of the coming cold.

In their wide arc
they seemed to hesitate
and then turned slowly north
as if remembering something
left behind,

the lure of distances.

"A little detour,"
you insisted as we silently watched,
"nothing more."

Surely you were right.
But my eyes wandered with them
to other places left behind

In this Advent turning –

a stillness
beyond the burden of the day's work;

a song
that carries through the darkness;

the heart
that still keeps its secrets.

Mark S. Burrows
Professor of the History of Christianity

Three Provocations for Advent

1) Sing the Carols!

Among more "liturgically correct" Christians, it is commonly said (often with a note of exasperation) that "Christmas carols should not be sung during Advent," since Advent is properly a season of preparing for Christ's arrival, not celebrating it. But as it turns out, this is not quite right after all. Advent is surely a time for anticipating and preparing for the celebration of Jesus' birth, but it is also a time for foretasting it. Just as pregnancy is a period of "not yet," it is also an period of "already," since well before birth, parents can feel the quiver of life, both in mother's belly and in their own brimming hearts, as they celebrate with joyful anticipation.

2) Don’t Wait!

In other words, theologically speaking, Advent is the classic eschatological season on the church calendar - and eschatology does not concern itself only with what is "not yet," but also with what is "already" here and now. The lectionary's readings from the Prophets during these weeks shimmer with this kind of anticipatory celebration. "A light shining in the darkness" - that is the paradigmatic Advent image, and that means we foresee and foretaste our hope, even as we prepare and long for it. So, during the Advent season, we all should sing, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," but we should also sing "The First Noel," and we should do it with liturgical consciences clear. As long as Advent worship services include the "not yet," they can and should include the "already," too.

"Advent is the season of waiting" - but in English, the word "waiting" often connotes inactivity, even passivity. This Advent, think less in terms of "waiting," and more in terms of "longing," "anticipating," and calling on God to come and fulfill God's promises. Take up the language of the psalmist, who laments for all the shadowed places in the world, where the divine light, apparently, has yet to shine: "How long, O Lord? How long?"

3) The Advent Triptych

"Advent" means "coming," and this "coming" is typically associated with the shepherds, the manger, and so on. But in fact, there are three "Advents" in the Christian tradition, and all three are celebrated during this season: a "first coming," the Christmas story in Bethlehem so long ago; a "second," God's arrival in our life today, in our church, neighborhood, and personal experience (here the great Advent theme of watchfulness and alertness is crucial); and a "third" or "Last Advent," the final great transformation of all things for which we wait and call, and about which the prophetic trumpet so often sounds. Excellent Advent and Christmas preaching and programming help us to connect all three of these levels, keep this whole "triptych" in view, and point to the resonance and harmonies between these three songs.

Matthew Myer Boulton
Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching