Archive - April, 2009

Four Areas Church Employees Need to Rethink: Part 1–Meetings

April 29, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 9 Comments

MEETINGS
Oh yes, the bane of a lot of our existence. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Most of my full-time church experience has been in the PCUSA, and we have meetings to plan meetings, that will hopefully lead to a meeting where the agenda item will be discussed.

A couple of thoughts.

When we are employed church staff members, part of our job is to be at church, and to be available to be at our meetings, as well as everyone else’s meetings. Sometimes the meetings are mandatory, and sometimes they are not…but regardless, being at meetings is often required and necessary and it’s just a part of our day. BUT, it is not the constant job of those who are volunteers. They have to plan to leave work, drive to church, have babysitters, etc.

While we…well, we are at church, free to move schedules for meetings.

I just don’t think that those of us employed in the church think enough about, or realize the busy lives of others, who are a part of our ministry, and the schedules they keep. We plan meetings at odd hours sometimes, we drag them out, we come to them without clear agenda items and a definite end time in mind. We often “over meet”, and often ask volunteers who are already involved in other ministries (therefore, doubling their meetings) to serve in our ministry.

Here is what I wish I would have done more regularly, and I hope this will cause food for thought:

  1. Always come to the meeting with a written agenda.
  2. Stay on the agenda task and don’t let topics get off course that should be discussed another time and place.
  3. Keep the meetings short; this isn’t always the case for some…but don’t waste time. Continue Reading…

Differentiation as Boundaries

April 29, 2009 in Marriage-Family with 1 Comment

71a5bc5nhcl_sl500_aa240_Well known psychologist David Schnarch has a wonderful book called the Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships.

When Schnarch speaks about boundaries he speaks about differentiation.

What is differentiation? In short, according to Schnarch:

Differentiation is a natural process in committed relationships that involves developing more of a self while growing closer to your partner. Men often sacrifice their relationship to hold onto their sense of self. Women often sacrifice their sense of self to stabilize their relationship. Differentiation is about having it both ways: having a stronger sense of self and a stronger relationship. (An Interview with Dr. David Schnarch)

.

Schnarch will often say that differentiation is knowing where one begins, and one ends. Or the balance between one’s desire for belonging/relationship, and the desire for freedom/independence.

I like how he says it in the Passionate Marriage,

People screaming, ‘I got to be me!’ ‘Don’t fence me in!’ and ‘I need space!’ are not highly differentiated. Just the opposite. They are fearful of ‘disappearing’ in a relationship and do thing to avoid their partner’s emotional engulfment. Some create distance; others keep their relationship in constant upheaval. Declaring your boundaries is an important early step in the differentiation process, but it’s done in the context of staying in relationship (that is, close proximity and restricted space). This is quite different from poorly differentiated people who attempt to always ‘keep the door open’ and who bolt as increasing importance of the relationship makes them feel like they’re being locked up. The process of holding onto your sense of self in an intense emotional relationship is what develops differentiation (Passionate Marriage, pp. 67).

Is the concept of differentation new to you?

Do you find yourself struggling between belonging and independence in your relationships?

Why Bivocational? 6 Reasons Why

April 24, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 21 Comments

This is a guest post by John Sampson.

headshotJohn is a Residence Director who supports discipleship and missional work for  Oasis Church in Pasadena, CA.  He blogs on church mission, leadership, and life at Jon Sampson. Jon also Twitters at @jonsampson.

Rhett’s recent post on bivocational ministry caught my attention. I guess it makes sense. The bivocational thing is the life I’m living as a Resident Director on a college campus and a Life Group’s pastor at a local church.

For me (and I’m sure, a lot of others), bivocational ministry is not a short-term thing for someone who can’t get a full-time ministry job. It’s a choice of ministry style based on what it produces. I believe bivocational ministry can be healthier for both the pastor and the church. Not only that, but it instills some powerful values in the organizations where actions speak louder than words.

But before we dive in to some of the why, let me share a little of the context. The models we have today aren’t disappearing. I don’t think the bivocational thing is the only way. But if we want Christianity to thrive as a culture changes and resist marginalization, we have to be willing to try all sorts of models to connect with all sorts of people.

I believe the bivocational thing is one way this is going to happen. It allows ministries to grow slowly and keeps Christians outside of the church where they can connect with others. I’m still learning how to do this thing, but I believe that despite the challenges, it’s important.

I recently shared six reasons why I believe bivocational ministry makes a difference on my blog. Here they are with quick summaries and an additional thought.

  1. Why Bivocational?  Shared Responsibility: All Christians have a job to do.  We can’t leave the ‘ministry” side of life to the paid “sage on the stage.”

    2. Continue Reading…

Speaking of Boundaries…

April 24, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Technology-Social Media with 0 Comments

2970528440_59959bf982_m[image by Simon Doggett]

I thought this was an interesting piece out of USA Today, especially when I’m beginning a series of blog posts on the issue of boundaries in a variety of contexts. Read The Popularity of Twitter has Some Relationships in a Twist, and tell me what you think.

Here is a choice quote from the article to get you started:

For some highly connected people, especially young adults who have grown up with cellphones, their superficial online connections increasingly are their only connections.

“We reply to someone we don’t know on Facebook, and we won’t even look at the cashier at the grocery because we’re too busy typing text messages on our phones,” Gordhamer says. “Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen poet, says the most valuable gift you can give someone is your attention. The danger with this new technology is you can become less available to your children, friends and partners in your real-life world.”

What Are Boundaries?

April 23, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Technology-Social Media with 0 Comments

823004299_42b6abf953
[image by The Wandering Angel]

Boundaries. It’s a topic that comes up quite a bit, and it comes up in a variety of contexts. The context I most often hear it in regards to relationships. Boundaries is a subject that I talk with many people about, and it’s a subject that we are all continually striving to understand better.

More recently I have heard the topic in the context of marital relationships, and what are healthy and unhealthy boundaries? And what is a boundary? It’s become an increasingly more popular topic as the idea of boundaries doesn’t just concern the relationships we are involved in, in the physical space, but the ones that we are involved in online as well.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting some entries on the topic of boundaries from a variety of different authors, talking about a variety of different contexts.

41ze1dmlyvl_bo2204203200_pisitb-sticker-arrow-clicktopright35-76_aa240_sh20_ou01_But today, I want to begin with an excerpt from perhaps one of the most well known, cited and popular books out there on this topic. Boundaries: When to Say YES, When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life was first published in 1992 by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. Continue Reading…

Relational Tweeting

April 22, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Technology-Social Media with 1 Comment

twitter_logo_headerFor those of you that read my other writings online, you know that I love Twitter. I think it’s an absolutely amazing tool that I think has the ability to help us connect with others in some meaningful ways.



And Twitter is not just about connecting online, but it’s about connecting offline.



Twitter can be a great catalyst for enhancing present relationships, and that’s why I highly recommend that you read Simple Marriage’s blog post How Twitter May Tweak Your Relationships. They do a great job of really capturing some unique ways that Twitter can “tweak” your relationships in a great way.

  1. Focus on what’s important.
  2. Stay connected throughout the day.
  3. Team parenting as a way to grow closer.
  4. Collaborate with other parent’s/couples.

Great post, so go over and check it out, and hopefully you will check out the Simple Marriage blog more often as they post great stuff.

Bivocational Pastors Continued: Two Statements

April 22, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 18 Comments

I don’t even know where to start. There were such great comments on my post from Monday. When I wrote the post I knew that I wasn’t the only one thinking about this topic, but it was amazing to read some great insights that I had not thought about.

A couple of things jumped out at me:

  1. Dan’s thoughts about “dual citizenship” and blurring the lines between staff and everyone else.
  2. Sara’s thoughts were super insightful. I worked/do work for a PCUSA church that hires women, but still at disproportionate numbers to men.  But she is right, lots of women hope for just a part-time role, making them bivocational traditionally, especially in Evangelical circles.
  3. Dave’s comments about not getting respect in a bivocational role I thought were interesting.  And later I read online about how many bivocational pastors are considered second class compared to full-time pastors.
  4. Kenny, you are right, the arrows should point together.
  5. Danny, it is a beautiful thing: movement towards group leadership.
  6. Jon, I love your heart (I work with Jon) for church ministry and ministry at the skate shop, etc.

So you all left me with a lot to think about.  And I will process them more in some upcoming posts.

But let me summarize for you what I’m feeling and thinking in a few statements.  But before I do that, let me say this.  I have grown up in the Church.  My dad went to Dallas Seminary and planted a church in Phoenix, AZ when I was 2 years old.  So I have grown up in the Church.  It is second nature.  I’m the kid folding bulletins, staying late to greet all the members, waiting around for Deacon meetings to end, etc, etc.  I have been volunteering in more official roles since I was 13, and I have been on staff of churches since I was 22.  I just wrapped up eight years as a full-time college pastor.  So I love the Church.  I love ministry.  I have been both part-time and full-time and now I’m currently part-time.

I say all this to say, that I have experience in the Church, and the views I’m wrestling with right now are not a value statement on one position being better than the other.  I’m neither for or against full-time, part-time, bivocational, non-vocational…whatever.  I’m just in the process of asking questions and re-thinking some things.

So the following are some thoughts that I sent out to a friend who is working on a church ministry/leadership project that has been surveying leaders all around the country for the last year.  I talked about this issue with them, and spoke about the same thing, but in two different ways.

This is what I told them.

First Statement:

I have been thinking a lot lately about the idea of “tentmaking” and the need for more bivocational pastors and ministry leaders.

This is something that I have been processing for several reasons.

First, when a pastor receives all of his/her salary from the church, I think there is an unconcious desire to not rock the boat or take risks out of fear that one may lose their job (How many times have you heard of pastors not making certain decisions out of fear of alienating the big money givers?) Continue Reading…

Taking the Stigma Out of Mental Health with the Help of Social Media

April 21, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Technology-Social Media with 0 Comments

3336971302_613f580637The other day I received an @reply from Mikey Ames on Twitter with the message,

@rhetter SM mental health, Vancouver- http://tinyurl.com/dhd2y4

When I opened up the link I read this,

Mental Health Camp – a Conference about Mental Health and Social Media

with the following synopsis,

MentalHealthCamp is a conference about the intersection of social media and mental health. What is social media? Social media is the online practice of sharing personal opinions, insight and content (of text, images, and music). Examples of social media are blogs, Facebook, YouTube, flickr, and Twitter. And mental health? For the purposes of this conference, mental health is the wide spectrum between mental wellbeing (e.g. experiencing a minimum of stress, anxiety and interpersonal problems) and serious mental illness (e.g. heroin addiction, schizophrenia or anorexia). We are also including issues such as ADD. After very positive feedback to a panel discussion about social media and the stigma of mental illness at the 2009 Northern Voice blogging conference, a spontaneous decision was made by some of the attending bloggers that this topic is something that cries out for more attention. We are asking questions such as * How can blogging help decrease the stigma of mental health? * How does someone with a mental illness navigate the waters of anonymity in the transparent world of social media? * How is the journaling that happens in blogging similar to or different from journaling for healing? * How can social media participants with mental health issues help each other?I absolutely love this concept, and my only regret is that I can’t get there on such short notice. But I have been using social media for a long time and have been trying ways to connect it in the mental health, therapy and counseling settings. If you look at my blog I am attempting to use some social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed to bridge the often isolated world of therapy, with the community of social media.

Though the field of psychology and the practice of therapy is rooted in a long and rich historical tradition, I have always tried to push against the stigma that is often associated with mental health…or with someone going to see a therapist. Maybe I see less of a stigma because I have gone and do go to therapy myself, or maybe it was living in California all those years where having a therapist is right up there with having a physical fitness trainer.

I think there are a lot of things that can be done to slowly erode away the stigma of therapy and mental health, and I think this generation is ripe to break down many of those stigmas that have kept so many people for so long from getting help. I will be interested to see what comes of this gathering, and I hope that we can put one together here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex in the coming year as well. But for now I will have to follow the work of Raul from Hummingbird 604 and Isabella from Change Therapy. And hopefully I will get a chance to connect with them via social media.

[image from publik15]

Bivocational Pastors: Are You One?

April 20, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 41 Comments

470px-japanese_road_sign_two-way_trafficsvgRecently I have been thinking a lot about the topic of bivocational pastors.

When I say bivocational, I mean you are a pastor, but you are not a full-time employed pastor.  Being a pastor is not your full-time vocation.

There are lots of reasons I have been thinking on this subject, but I will be writing more at length about that later.

It seems like the last few years I have been engaged in more and more conversations on this issue, and I know more and more pastors who are entering the ministry as a bivocational pastor.   I see it most with my church planter friends, yet even many of them hope to maintain the bivocational role, rather than doing it “full-time.”

There are lots of reasons why I went back to graduate school to study marriage and family therapy: 1) I needed more therapy training I felt so I could be a better pastor; 2) I knew that within a few years I was hoping to move out of “full-time” vocational ministry work.

I will pick up on this subject in this blog over the next few days, but I hope you could answer this question for me.

[poll id="3"]

Launching My Private Practice

April 19, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Technology-Social Media with 5 Comments

open_sign_1For many of you that know me, and those of you that don’t, launching my own therapy private practice has been something that I have been wanting to do for quite a while. After a lot of years of work in university life, church ministry, pastoral care and non-profit community mental health agencies I felt that the time was ripe for this transition. I’m very excited about this new phase of my life and I know that all of my experience and training comes to its highest fruition in this type of setting. I’m not only excited about the therapy aspect of my work, but I’m excited about introducing more social media and newer technologies into the communication of my practice and the things that I’m working towards in the field of Marriage and Family Therapy.

You will notice several things on this site:

First, you can connect with me on Twitter and FriendFeed, unless you already have. I will be using Twitter and FriendFeed to not only give you some insight into my personal life, but to provide you with content in the area of marriage, family, relational issues, and generally anything having to do with the area of therapy. And of course you will continue to see my occasional tweets and links about social media and leadership.

Second, you will notice that I have launched a Facebook group dedicated to the field of marriage and family therapy. This will be a site that I hope many will find helpful, both clients and non-clients as I provide resources, as well as avenues for others to connect with me and ask ask therapy, or mental health related questions. Check it out.

Third, I have provided a bookstore with some recommended reading in certain areas of life, as well as a resources page. Both are incomplete so this is where you come in handy.

Fourth, you or anyone else can ask me a therapy/mental health related question, whether you are a client or not. I hope this will be a helpful resource for those in need, or those who are just curious. Participate and help me crowdsource this site, letting me know what you would to see as a potential client in a therapy practice, or what you would want to see as an outside observer looking for resources and information. I appreciate all of your help and encouragement in this endeavor.
Page 1 of 3123»