Affirmation at the Summit
I attended a conference today, the Leadership Summit. I feel as though I am standing atop a mountain during a seismic shift. Such an experience is exhilarating and scary. There is a call to action. Who does not feel called to move during a seismic shift?
My sense is that the poor are calling out to the rich. God is calling out to those who have abundance. This Leadership Summit for the past decade or so has represented the most stellar advice and motivational speaking geared toward church leaders who want to grow their congregations. And by all counts the past decade has represented the most wealthy of periods for churches. Expansive campuses with beautiful landscaping and huge buildings – even in an age of “decline” for the church at large, many pastors write books, jet-set around like well-paid conference speakers that they are, rivaling in many cases the CEOs of secular America … and then – a seismic shift – the financial meltdown of the past year.
And so this year’s Summit takes on a different flavor. Bill Hybels, I would say the closest thing to Billy Graham of his generation (but equal parts Graham and Jack Welch, the CEO extraordinaire) began the day with an uplifting speech. From there the Summit spun into the future. The 1990s and ’00s gave way to the unknown to come, which seems less prosperous than before.
Harvey Carey
Hybels rightly said with certainty that “Normal has left the building”. (And that is true, particularly if you are in the demographic that makes up the wealthiest billion or so people on the earth. For others I suspect it is just more of the same.) And to his credit he selected a few speakers that seriously challenged the status quo. One speaker (Harvey Carey) particularly rebuked the status quo and was an affront to the ’90s/’00s mindset of prosperity. And as the day progressed, while uncertainty prevails there is a counteracting awareness that we (Adams Avenue Crossing) are onto something. I felt an anointing, an affirmation, even amidst uncertainty – indeed, precisely because these times are tough.
But the anointing snuck up on me throughout the day. With Hybels, the opening speaker, I felt myself being critical, my spirit rebelling. As often the case, I felt exiled from the church, if Hybels indeed represents it. The tenor of his message was that these are “rogue” times. Hybels’ wealthy community (Barrington, Illinois) has met much adversity as people have lost millions in wealth. Hundreds of his parishioners have lost their jobs. He mentioned how one member of his church, who usually gives $300,000 at the end of the year, was wiped out in the financial mess and could give nothing. And I was thinking, those rich people are realizing what the majority of the world has known for a long time. Affluence is not to be taken for granted, and it is not a sign of God’s blessing per se. I do not have time here in this post to deal with the broad issue of wealth in the American gospel, I only mean to point out that in the opening speech we had the context of the ultra rich. Our setting, home base, was prosperity, albeit prosperity going through a catastrophe. And from there, by the end of the day, we made a journey all the way to the poorest neighborhood in the country.
Along the way, the voyage from rich to poor, from Barrington to Detroit, there was a radical trajectory that snuck up on us. It was subtle enough to go unnoticed. But the talk this year was of “meritocracy”, “non-hierarchical leadership”, “microfinancing to entrepreneurs in impoverished nations”, “renegades”, “compassion”, “mutual respect”.
And then, the earthquake. But as I write about this seismic phenomena I am certain that many (most?) people missed it. I have been reading the blogs and people are responding to this last speaker almost as if he said nothing at all. I am seeing a lot of people talking about looking forward to Bono or Tony Blair. Part of me feels as if maybe I am dilusional. Did this even happen? I check the news for reports of the quake. Silence.
The Summit itself billed the closing speaker as the pastor of “one of the poorest zip codes in America.” Harvey Carey, the pastor of Citadel of Faith Covenant Church, took the stage a man afire. He has all the vigor and spirit you would expect of an African-American, Baptist preacher. He is a self-proclaimed “po’ boy” from South Chicago. “So po’ that I looked up to the poor people who could afford the ‘o’ and the ‘r’!” Now he is pastor of that poorest of churches, and engages in extreme service, such as:
- Camping out overnight (literally – tents, campfires, singalong songs and everything) with his congregation in front of crack houses!
- Leading groups of people at 1 a.m. to minister to prostitutes.
- Locking the church doors on Sunday mornings to walk the streets.
The landmark event of the day, this seismic activity I keep reporting, was when Carey rebuked most of the 60,000 people viewing from around the United States – by most global and historic standards a rich audience, but by the audience’s self-assessment, “middle class.” In full-throttle preaching mode, Carey said that “some of ya’ll, you are about to lose your mind!” He echoed and punctuated my earlier private thoughts – that the economic crisis is more the realities of life catching up to rich people, and the rich experiencing the woes long known to the majority.
And then he rebuked the conference-going audience: We go to conference after conference and need ever-expansive offices just to hold all the binders. “You are all bindered out!” We are like a football team that huddles, huddles some more, huddles for a whole hour on end without ever breaking the huddle to play the game. Our churches huddle on Sunday, huddle at midweek, never play the game. “God has called us to be a people who break from the huddle.”
‘We’ve got to do it!’ What a concept at a Leadership Summit. For some of you, this is your umpteenth Summit, and you ain’t done anything yet, except register for next year’s Summit.” Harvey Carey
So we migrated from rich to poor during the course of a Summit day. I am certain that in Summit history there has never been such a migration. I am certain there has never been such a rebuke. And it seems this was a symbolic and real changing of the guard, a biblical reality coming to life: “The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all” (Proverbs 22:2).
Now this past year’s economic “crisis” might be a bump on the road and we go back to the 90s and churches can continue their building projects. Or things could get a lot worse from here, and maybe God will just keep taking and taking from the rich and one by one we will realize the seriousness of Carey’s rebuke. Who knows. Maybe nothing dramatic happens. Maybe we carry on like Job, unaware of the invisible dealings of God, wondering the reason behind the plight of prosperity and hunger.
The coming financial trajectory is out of my hands, and I have some decisions to make regardless.
And I thought he said, "Blessed are the poor."
Adams Avenue Crossing is a movement born out of God’s love for the poor. And this is not an easy movement to be a part of. It is difficult because of the difficulties of poverty. But even more challenging is the difficulties of being rich. Jesus says it is very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:24, Mark 10:25). I am afraid that Harvey Carey was not heard today. I am not confident that much will change. A voice form the poor cries out, but the rich have other concerns. As one speaker pointed out today, when confronted, people tend to dismiss and rationalize the situation. The rich are dismissive, saying, “We are not rich,” or “They are not poor.” The rich are rationalizing, saying, “Jesus was speaking about spiritual poverty, not really being poor. … But we do help the poor. … We serve the neediest people in our (rich) community. … The poor have made their own bed. Poverty is laziness.”
But that decision to make: My decision is to accept my lot, as one called into fellowship with all people (especially the poor); as advocate of the poor. And I pray that I am ever more graceful and merciful, that my speech will be salted appropriately given whatever situation I am confronted with. I pray that we as a group we will be ready to handle what lies ahead. That we will repent and live radically like Jesus.
The mere fact of Carey’s presence at this year’s summit, this is evidence of progress. Carey would not have spoken any other year. Period. The voices of the poor are calling out. They are at the table. Let us eat and drink together.
” Nothing is more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than achieving a new order of things.” Niccolo Machiavelli
We may never be a group of people invited to speak at a Leadership summit; we may never be the majority, and perhaps we will never become a movement of more than a handful of people. But, we have and will continue to change the trajectory of the lives of those who live in Normal Heights. We will hear and head the cry of the poor.
“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” St. Augustine.
Keep fighting the good fight brother.
p.s. I love that Carey totally called us out on our B.S. The huddle metaphor… prophetic. Wish I could have been there to hear it for myself.
And this: “We’ve got to do it!’ What a concept at a Leadership Summit. For some of you, this is your umpteenth Summit, and you ain’t done anything yet, except register for next year’s Summit.” It’s like poking a sleeping bear….I love it.
I also want to point you to the blog of my pastor and mentor and friend Ed Noble, who processed this too, and point you to the comments that follow http://edsjourney.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/leadership-summit-day-1-–-unprocessed-reflections/#comment-829
And, seems the conversation is even inspiring those who were not in attendance, namely one Amy Hoyt. You should bookmark her blog.
http://amyjayhoyt.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/a-jerry-maguire-moment/
I FOUND JESUS IN THE STREET
I attended this event three years ago. Even though we need to hear what others have to say, which might wake us up from our slumber, the church I always knew when I was a part of the institutional church spent most of our time attending conferences, listening to speakers, attending seminars and studies and basically sitting on our rear ends in cushy chairs in an expensive building with employees/staff hired to take care of us. We didn’t even know the people who lived next door to the church building, let alone the people in the community. No one even ventured out to the poor parts of town. Missional meant sending money to Africa, and perhaps a small group of mostly teens to somewhere in Mexico for a few days in the summer.
It would be so easy to go on about that mindset, but that really does not solve the problem. The organization in the USA known as the “church”, which is modeled more after an American business model of the last century than it is after the church Jesus established, is not just faltering – it is failing. Have you read the study that Willow Creek, Hybel’s church, did on itself a year or two ago? Willow Creek, held up for many years as one of the “model” churches in America, has been losing lots of people. They’re going out the back door as fast or faster than they’re going in the front door. This was happening before the economic meltdown of late.
Perhaps this is a disaster for those folks who are employed by churches, especially those only a few years from retirement. If there are 300,000 to 400,000 churches in the USA (that’s no typo), how many people depend on the church system for their paychecks?
How about:
-Instead of locking the doors of the church on Sunday morning (How can you lock the doors of the church? – The church is the people of God, not a place or a building!), the church of the USA turn those buildings into community centers and bring in the community, or sell the buildings, and take the money and and the people to the streets?
-We get to know our neighbors first of all – those who literally live in the neighborhood where we live, and those in the neighborhood where those buildings called “churches” sit?
-We build relationships with not only those people, but also intentionally build relationships with people who may not be in our comfort zone – poor, racially diverse, homeless, prostitutes, strippers, gay, women who have had abortions and even (heaven-forbid) the people we come in contact with all the time – store clerks, co-workers, tele-marketers, door-to-door salesmen and weird relatives?
Who cares if we have the exactly right theology? – Not our neighbors. They already know we have screwy theology because they know we don’t care – about them or much of anything else except ourselves. Actions are more important than words. Presence changes people, not words.
I cannot say for sure where it is that Jesus hangs out on a Sunday morning. Since He is God, I understand that He can be many places. Perhaps He is sitting next to the person in the cushy seat in the cushy building. I’m not there, so I don’t know. But I know He walks beside me as I’m out on the street picking up garbage and talking to the people who are there, who would never even imagine themselves sitting in that cushy seat and don’t want to.
If Jesus were confined in a human body again and could only be in one place on Sunday morning (or any other time), I wonder – would He be in that cushy seat behind a door of a building with a sign out front that says “church”, or would He be out on the street with the people – the rich & poor, the clerks, the prostitutes, the people in the cafe, the homeless, the strippers and the whoevers?
Where would we want to be? – With Jesus or sitting in a cushy seat about to doze off while listening to yet another “message” about what the Bible says how to live our lives?
Over the past weeks stories and blog posts have been pouring in. It’s amazing to see what God can do through leadership development in the lives of leaders and communities. Harvey’s message was a powerful reminder that, “we need to learn how to just go and do what Jesus said to go and do”. The week after the Summit Harvey did a follow up audiocast where guests asked Harvey their leadership questions. If you haven’t already, you can download the 1 hour audiocast for free here: http://www.willowcreek.com/nextsteps/ . (Also, FYI- Harvey started tweeting, @HarveyCarey)