Sept 2019 Update: Pastors in the 21st Century, Prosperity and Pursuit of the Good Life

I heard an argument on a podcast today between a woman who claimed that September 1 signals the end of summer, while someone else insisted on the Autumnal Equinox.  All I know is that #PSL is already available at Starbucks, so there you have it!

I had a GREAT August full of bike rides, travels, fresh produce and interesting work. As always, I came across many outstanding resources I want to share with you.

What is the Good Life? I went to a tremendous conference at Pepperdine University hosted by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture titled "Pedagogy of the Good Life." (Here's an article about the Center from the Huffington Post.) 

Turns out there are several amazing courses being taught around the country that explore the question, "What is the Good Life?" I believe this is our most pressing task for the church (creating dialogue and discipleship around this question). So many young adults I know are asking some form of this question. Will the Church be brave enough to truly engage this sort of dialogue? That's what I wanted to explore at this conference, and I was not disappointed. I found the discussions and presentations throughout the week utterly riveting. Here are just a smidgen of the resources I found:

• Life Worth Living curriculum. The faculty generously make their syllabus available publicly. Truly, I find their approach really intriguing. And it is the MOST popular class at Yale; so many students want to take this class that they have to actually require applications for taking the course! Here is the 7-week course they've created for adults as well. 
• God and the Good Life. An equally amazing course (and just as popular) is being taught at Notre Dame. First of all, the tech design of this syllabus is breathtaking! Think about adapting this and using it with a small group or perhaps even (gasp!) as a sermon series. I love the home page of this course as well.
• Let Me Ask You a Question. This book was written by Matthew Croasmun, one of the creators of the Life Worth Living course at Yale. Bottom line: I BELIEVE in this book as a truly outstanding discipleship tool. Just buy it and try it out.

The Challenge of Being a Pastor in a Secular Age. The third sentence of this article caught my attention: "'I’ve been a pastor for 15 years, and most days I have no idea what I’m doing. It makes me nauseous,' he continued." I have had that conversation with so. many. pastors. The article continues: "He’s not alone. I find myself talking with more and more pastors stricken with uneasy nausea and fatigue that they can’t name. It’s as though their calling has been stripped of meaning... We now live in a time where the very idea that God is real and present in our lives is no longer accepted. Indeed, it’s widely contested. Belief has been made fragile -- for the pastor as much as for those in the pews." This article won't solve our existential questions, but I find great encouragement in seeing them put into words.

A New Kind of Prosperity Gospel. I am fascinated by how our world is seeking to scratch our need for meaning and purpose. Recently I came across two articles that examine this in very interesting ways. Check this quote from Relevant Magazine: "The Prosperity Gospel is no longer houses, cars, money and health. The New Prosperity Gospel is a hip city and a follower count that ends with a K." The other article was in the New York Times: The New Spiritual Consumerism. We MUST stay attuned to our culture. These articles are helpful roadmaps.

Books I'm Reading. Other than seeing some BEAUTIFUL places (this was the view from the AirB&B I stayed at in Maine with my best friend!) and eating some great food (hello lobster and Whoopie Pies!), my favorite vacation activity is the freedom to read to my heart's content. Here are some of the things I've been reading:

• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi. Very thought-provoking and provocative at the same time. The New Yorker also did a fascinating article about it.
• Enneagram Transformations: Releases and Affirmations for Healing Your Personality Type by Don Richard Riso. Yep, I'm on the Enneagram bandwagon. I've been riding it for a couple of years and finding it tremendously helpful for my own spiritual formation. I bought the $1.99 Kindle version of this but can't currently find it.
• Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott. She never fails to make me laugh out loud AND journal at the same time.
• An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor. Fondly called "BBT" by many, I found this a great devotional read.

Final thoughts. These words are remaining with me still despite reading them several days ago. Let them sink in:

What is in ruins? The invisible church, composed of all Spirit-baptized persons, is indefectible, it cannot be ruined; against it "the gates of Hades shall not prevail." The local assembly may indeed be sadly ruined; but it can be restored, as, by the grace of God, has been seen times without number--at Corinth, for example. The only other institution in question is that agglomeration of sects that is called "Christendom." But that is unrecognized by the New Testament--it is not of God at all: and that it is "in ruins" is no matter for our regret.

    ... G. H. Lang (1874-1958)

Feel free to pass this along to friends, and reach out to me with questions or feedback at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Happy end of Summer 2019 ~ may your fall be a lovely one!

What Am I Reading?

One of my favorite questions to ask someone, if there is a longer time to talk, is this: What are you reading right now?

The first time I was asked this question I felt like I was being tested. And maybe I was! But when I headed out on my latest vacation, my beloved bible study of five young women about ready to graduate and launch into the big world asked me what books I was taking with me. And that question prompted me to blog during my vacation out of what I ended up reading during the trip. Thus the six posts preceding this one... Thanks for asking, ladies!

But now I'm home. And while it is PURE DELIGHT for me to have nothing but time to read my little heart out on vacation, I find it so much more difficult to discipline myself to stick with substantive reading in the midst of "real life." My days tend to fill up with a bunch of things that are demanding my attention: appointments, errands, a never-ending email inbox... plus fundamental needs like sleep, exercise and prayer.

Nevertheless, I vowed on this vacation that I would not let my deeper reading slip up when I returned home. So here I am. What am I reading?

Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today by Joan Chittister. By and large, I have really enjoyed this book. I can't deny that at times it gets a little too touchy/feely/mushy for me, but overall, it has been a lovely read. For example, these sentences kicked me in the teeth this week:

“Our time gets totally out of balance. We spend it all on friends, or we spend none of it there. We spend it all on work, or we spend it all on our compulsions… we go from one personal prison to the next.

Balance, the Rule says. Balance. And harmony. And awareness… Benedict says that we must bring a sense of order and awe and proportion and perspective." (pp 75-76)

"Benedictine spirituality requires that we live life to the full." (p. 79)

How MUCH do I want to live out those challenges on a deep and sustainable level?! Reading them here were powerful reminders of where I desire to put my priorities.

Travels in Alaska by John Muir. If you have a Kindle, search for all the free books you can download. Pile about 10 of them onto your Kindle, in case you actually have some extra time to dive into something just for fun. That's what happened on my vacation, and is continuing as I finish up this book. Ponder the photo I've included in this post: it says it all. This book is a GEM. Unexpectedly, I have found it to be spiritually moving too. Though I would not want to split hairs over Muir's theology, in this particular book he references God frequently. In fact, one of the people who was with him in much of his travels was a Presbyterian missionary named Mr. Young, whom he referred to as "an adventurous evangelist." I love that! Frequently, Muir describes how he experienced God in his enjoyment of creation:

[Describing past visits to the Sierra Nevada mountains in California] ...they seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive.

The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches are Transforming Mission, Discipleship and Community by Sparks, Soerens and Friesen. I found this book through the Twitter recommendation of my friend Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, someone who is not prone to shameless promotion. If he recommends a book, he means it. So I grabbed it on my Kindle and started reading. I'm halfway through it, and am finding that it really captures much of what we are experiencing in our own first year trying to live "on mission" in Santa Barbara's Westside community. Here's something from the introduction that sums up my heart as well:

Our collective story doesn’t begin with a grand vision or contagious momentum. It begins with deep hope for the church in the twenty-first century and an honest need for one another.

Whether or not you leave a comment here, I challenge you to ask this question in a conversation this week: What are you reading these days? 

Portable Magic

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” C. S. Lewis

Despite all of the advances in technology, I still find that reading a book is my favorite way to pass the time. I chose to be an English major in college because I could not imagine how fun it would be to have my actual job be to read! I will admit that being an English major on the quarter system at UCSB (as opposed to semesters) is not something I would care to repeat -- I still have occasional flashbacks about the quarter when I took two lit classes and had to read 17 books in ten weeks. Even still, I reveled in my major, and am thankful for the strong foundation of reading in Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Blake, Homer, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Austen, Chaucer (among so many others) that was instilled in me. Further classes introduced me to Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Camus, Weil, Kafka, Neruda, Marquez, Sartre... ah, those were the days.

Though the working life does not allow for that amount of reading anymore, I developed the habit back then of always working on a 2-3 books at a time. I spent much of the Thanksgiving holiday buried in reading, and look forward to even more of the same during Christmas break. Here are the ones I'm currently working on:

• A Thomas Merton Reader. I stumbled on this at a used bookstore (how few of those there are any longer... boooooooo.....) During a trip in Italy a few years ago I brought The Seven Storey Mountain and developed a taste for Merton. While some of his writing is a little raggedy and I don't always agree with him spiritually, I find him to be an exciting and raw writer who challenges me in many ways. I especially love his stuff on the contemplative life, and let's be honest, his own story is a crazy and fascinating tale. Favorite quote so far: Sincerity in the fullest sense is a divine gift, a clarity of spirit that comes only with grace. Unless we are made “new men,” created according to God “in justice and the holiness of truth,” we cannot avoid some of the lying and double dealing which have become instinctive in our natures, corrupted, as St. Paul says, “according to the desire of error.” (Eph. 4:22)
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. I bought this years ago at one of those Borders liquidation sales and have been saving it as a special treasure since then (OK, little digression: does anyone like owning books as much as reading them?!) Once "Madiba" took gravely ill, I vowed to pick it up and had been planning on burrowing in with it over Christmas break in preparation for the film coming out. Upon the news of his passing I knew I couldn't wait any longer, and picked it up last night. Before I knew it I'd read 60 pages. Get this book. Favorite quote so far: “A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” 
• Radical Reconciliation by Curtiss DeYoung and Alan Boesak. I heard DeYoung speak at the Mosaix 2013 conference in November and wanted to learn more from him. In my own journey of learning and practice in the realm of reconciliation in and through the church, this book is proving to be a tremendous and thought-provoking resource. Given that Boesak participated in the anti-apartheid fight, I'm finding some fascinating themes coming together in reading Mandela at the same time. I just finished a section on the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19 that blew me away. Stretch your heart and mind and pick this up. (P.S. I'm reading this one on my Kindle -- yes, I've caved in to having an e-reader... I cannot deny how convenient it is, and as a person who lives in a condo, I have officially run out of room for more books.) Favorite quote so far: When genuine reconciliation takes place, it brings more than just individual salvation.

Admittedly, this is a rather serious-sounding list. I'm not one who tends to pick up the latest beach read (nothing wrong with that, just not what keeps my attention...) Never fear, I also love my Sunset, Vegetarian Times and New Yorker magazines, and I'm hoping to get the latest Malcolm Gladwell book for Christmas (hint hint). 

As I write this I am looking at the pile of unread books that await me when I finish up these three. How thankful I am that I never tire of having that pile in front of me. As Stephen King said, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” I have been transformed, transported, and enchanted by reading. Feel free to share what books you are enjoying these days. Onward and upward!

Bibliophilia

I love to read. I prefer reading to watching a movie. When I prepare to go on vacation, I start an ambitious pile of things I will read on the trip, because I look as forward to getting unlimited time to read as I do the vacation itself.

If I enjoy what I'm reading, I can't put it down. I will read as I walk through the house, as I cook, as I brush my teeth, as I lay in bed, even when I am so tired that my eyes are watering from fatigue and lack of ability to keep focusing. Still I will read.

I decided to be an English major in college because I knew it would give me an excuse to read so much. There was one quarter when I took not one but two fiction classes, and had seventeen novels to read in ten weeks. Sure, I moaned a lot about how "hard" it was to get it all done, but secretly I loved it.

A rapidly fading delight in the world is the ability to wander through a used bookstore. With the advent of e-readers and the demise of brick-and-mortar bookstores we are losing that endlessly lovely pastime of simply wandering through the aisles and happening upon something we would have otherwise not thought of. This seems like a definitive, culture-changing loss to me.

Somewhere along such aimless wanderings I picked up The Writer's Chapbook: A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the 20th Century's Preeminent Writers, edited by George Plimpton. It is a collection of insights taken from interviews with famous writers on their craft. I have hoarded it like a fine bottle of wine, occasionally looking at it and feeling especially creative by merely owning it.

Today I cracked it open. Already, I am wondering why I have waited so long! Only a few pages in, I am completely hooked. I will have to exercise great self-discipline to take it slow, because I can already tell it's a big sloppy feast for a reader like me.

Separated into the various aspects of writing, the first chapter is on reading. Enjoy these little nuggets:

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. Richard Steele

I average about five books a week... the normal length novel takes me about two hours. Truman Capote 

The books that you really love give the sense, when you first open them, of having been there. John Cheever 

(Referring to Hemingway's writing) I mean, they're perfect sentences. Very direct sentences, smooth rivers, clear water over granite, no sinkholes. Joan Didion 

Hemingway and I used to read the Bible to each other. He began it. We read separate little scenes. From Kings, Chronicles. We didn't make anything out of it -- the reading -- but Ernest at that time talked a lot about style. John Dos Passos

And my favorite one so far:

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. Elizabeth Hardwick

May this little post serve as a reminder that books are indeed a "great gift." Do not let yourself get too busy to not read. And now, back to my reading...

Reading Is Fundamental

I grew up with this motto ringing in my ears at school and on TV (when I wasn't watching Gilligan's Island or Schoolhouse Rock.) As the daughter of a junior high English teacher mom and a dad who majored in political science and philosophy, my home was filled with books and a lot of public television. One summer we moved, and rather than try to make friends in my neighborhood, I hunkered down in my room and read an entire set of children's encyclopedia. (Feel free to roll your eyes.)

Nevertheless, I have never shaken the reading bug. And I have confessed to more than one friend that I believe I enjoy owning books as much as reading them... But my good friends Jason and Nancy convinced me this spring to give in and buy a Kindle. While I am certainly not weaned of books entirely, I have found it to be pretty darn great to know that by tucking one slim little device in my bag that I have a wealth of options at my fingertips..

This week only hardened my resolve to persevere in my reading addiction as I read this article from Harvard Business Review (HBR), whose title had me at hello: For Those Who Want to Lead, Read. There is so much great material in its two brief pages, take a few minutes and read it yourself. But these words break my heart:

The National Endowment for the Arts (PDF) has found that "[r]eading has declined among every group of adult Americans," and for the first time in American history, "less than half of the U.S. adult American population is reading literature."

Combine that with this next section:

This is terrible for leadership, where my experience suggests those trends are even more pronounced. Business people seem to be reading less — particularly material unrelated to business. But deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.

In this "third half" of my career I am focusing my energies more and more on leadership development. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity through the Free Methodist Church in Southern CA to focus on the investment and growth of young leaders through our summer interns program; even more I am stoked about the advent of the Center for Transformational Leadership, which I am helping to direct. These, along with some teaching and speaking opportunities starting this fall, make me want to pinch myself -- I must be dreaming!

The HBR article states some obvious but significant benefits from regular reading and how it broadens the capacity for leadership: improved intelligence, innovation, insight, increased vocabulary. And I heartily agree that it is also a fantastic stress-reducer, and love hearing that it is an apparent way to fend off Alzheimer's! Who knew?

So I am frequently asking others what they are reading. I don't know about you, but I always have a few books going at once. Here's my latest list:

• The Norton Anthology of Poetry. I mentioned this one earlier in the summer. Slow and steady wins the race here, I pray. It started with Caedmon's Hymn from the 7th century, and I've progressed to the 16th century. That's something, right? More importantly, I am really enjoying it. Poetry is not something to be rushed.
• A Future for the Latino Church: Models for Multilingual, Multigenerational Congregations by Daniel Rodriguez. I just finished this this week. I cannot recommend this book enough. It expresses the reality of church ministry in Southern California. Our denomination has eight languages being used in our churches, so I'm looking for any insights I can gain in what it means to minister and develop leaders interculturally.
• Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service by Stephen Seamands. This was recommended to me by Telford Work, chair of the Religious Studies department at Westmont College. I'm going to use it in a class I'm teaching on internships for the department this fall. It is outstanding, practical, readable and theologically solid.
• The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay. This one has been recommended to me by two different people. I'm just getting ready to start it. I do not know if it's a function of my age or calling, but as my vision for leadership development sharpens I find I am moving from adolescents to college students and young adults. I have had the "now what?" conversation with recent college graduates a few hundred times, so I am really looking forward to hearing from someone else on this subject.
• The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky. To relax, I opt for narrative non-fiction over fiction, but I found this book neglected in my room the other day and decided I need to give it a whirl. How can I go wrong with Dostoevsky??

As I said, I love to hear what others are reading and why... Comments?

Grand Teton reading #2

I am hopelessly in love with our national parks. As Wallace Stegner has written,

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

In 2000 I decided, with my best friend, to vacation at a national park every year. Since then we have been to Sequoia, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Olympic, Mt. Rainier, Denali, Acadia, and Banff in Canada. (I should add that we decided we would do this until at least one of us got married. Well... we're glad there are a lot of national parks!)

Though there are countless other parks, we are addicted to mountain peaks, so we're on lap two of the ones we've already visited. Back at Grand Teton, I am somehow enjoying it even more this time. The Teton Range, from any angle in the park, takes my breath away. Today we head out to the hike in Cascade Canyon, which starts with a boat ride across Jenny Lake, followed by short jaunts to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. Just writing those words makes me smile.

Given that Theodore Roosevelt was integral to the founding of the national parks, it seems appropriate to start reading the third and last biography of Roosevelt by Edmund Morris here at Grand Teton. As I started it in bed last night, I stayed up later than I wanted to because I couldn't put it down. Roosevelt was larger than life and an absolutely extraordinary character.

In my mind a good biography admires its subject deeply but is also willing to explore the shortcomings and weaknesses. Others I have enjoyed have been about Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Lewis and Clark, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Martin Luther, St. Francis, John Wesley, Mother Teresa, several about C.S. Lewis, and the two previous editions on Roosevelt, to name a few. (My friends who prefer reading fiction are probably rolling their eyes at me at this point...)

I won't bore you with trivia from this one on Roosevelt, but will end this post with the epigraph that starts it off, only because I think it serves marvelously in describing the reason I like all biographies:

It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank or the extent of their capacity have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station: whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more frequent, or more severe. (Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the Poets)

Grand Teton reading #1

THE FAITH OF A WRITER
by Joyce Carol Oates


What advice can an older writer presume to offer to a younger? Only what he or she might wish to have been told years ago. Don't be discouraged! Don't cast sidelong glances, and compare yourself to others among your peers! (Writing is not a race. No one really "wins." The satisfaction is in the effort, and rarely in the consequent rewards, if there are any.) And again, write your heart out. (p. 24)


Life is lived head-on, like a roller coaster ride: "art" is coolly selective, and can be created only in retrospect. But don't live life in order to write about it since the "life" so lived will be artificial and pointless. Better to invent wholly an alternative life. Far better! (p. 25)

I've never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the attempted embodiment of a vision; a complex of emotions; raw experience. (p. 35)

But what are the origins of the impulse Wallace Stevens calls the "motive for metaphor"? -- the motive to record, transcribe, invent, speculate? The late William Stafford says in a poem,


So, the world happens twice --- 
once we see it as is;
second, it legends itself deep,
the way it is. (pp. 38-39)

When I'm asked, as sometimes I am, when did I know I "wanted to be a writer," my reply is that I never "knew" I wanted to be a writer, or anything else; I'm not sure, in fact, that I "want" to be a writer, in such simplistic, abstract terms. A person who writes is not, in a sense, a "writer" but a person who writes; he (or she) can't be defined except in specific terms of texts. (p. 41)

Summer Reads

1. Finished Westmont Mayterm course -- check.
2. Attended high school graduation for many former youth groupies -- check.
3. Participated in Providence Hall graduation one last time (and enjoyed myself greatly) -- check.
4. Met individually yesterday and today with each of my nine Free Methodist summer interns (via Skype) -- check.
5. Replied to a bazillion overdue emails -- check.

Ahhhh. All those checked-off items means... it's time for vacation!! Yesssssss. (Fist pump).

It's 9:45pm, the bags are packed, and I can already feel myself starting to relax. And thanks to a lovely college student home for the summer, I can rest easily knowing the kitties are in good hands.

Heading to Grand Teton National Park (chock full of gluten-free granola bars, naturally), I look forward to blissful days of ZERO email, eating when I'm hungry, sleeping till I wake up, lots of hiking, and reading reading reading.

What's on my reading list, you might ask? I will be the first to admit that I get very ambitious when I pack my bags, so this list may extend into summer. Which is fine by me!

• Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk. I had some beloved youth groupies go on a semester-long trip to Turkey (and parts of the Middle East) with my friends Heather and Jim (professors at Westmont), and their photos made me jealous. I had an amazing trip through Turkey in May 2005, and it's on my bucket list to return. This book will probably make me want to go even more. I like Pamuk's writing a lot. He does a good job describing his inner life.
• Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. I first listed this book on this post, but got delayed by... life. So I'm ready to feast on the third part of this biography, having read the first two during past visits to other national parks.
• Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler. I've heard a bit about this book on NPR, but it was mostly an impulse purchase as I ran through Borders when it was closing. How do you pass up 70% discounts?! And let's be honest -- this title had me at hello!
• The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates. I have a bunch of beautiful "how-to-write" books hoarded on my bedside table, making myself think I'll become a great writer someday simply by owning them. I have read one or two of them, but it's time to wade in and just ENJOY.
• The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry by Henri Nouwen. Yep, this is a re-read. This is an oldie but a goodie (my edition is from 1981!), and as I was packing in my room it caught my eye. I just sensed it was time to read it again. How can that not be good?

My last month has been full, teaching for Mayterm, launching summer interns, conferences and consulting out of town. I have high hopes of returning to more regular posting again here upon my return because I have missed it. Thanks for reading -- please post what YOU are reading these days.