David Brooks and Original Sin

Since when did David Brooks, the conservative voice on the New York Times Editorial Page and one of the smartest columnists in the country, start talking about Original Sin?

Brooks wrote a fascinating column this past week in which he talks about his concern over the stimulus plan and the massive changes that are afoot in the country as a result of the economic crisis. His major concern is not so much in the programs that will be funded by the stimulus and the details of changes to come, but the philosophy behind them.

The debate, Brooks argues, hinges on just how much we can know and just how capable we can be at rapid institutional change. The debate is whether it is even possible to know enough or be competent enough to engineer transformational social change from the West Wing of the White House and the halls of Congress.

While these are debates that so-called conservatives and so-called progressives have been debating for centuries, what is fascinating for me is that this debate goes all the way back to Augustine and to the Garden. If we believe that our minds were warped by the Fall like our bodies and our souls, then our thoughts, our ideas, our motivations are all curved, distorted, and broken as well.

This means that we can never be sure of much, other than that we are flawed and that God is in the process of transformation. This, Brooks would argue and I would agree, requires a serious amount of modesty in estimating just how much we can do and just how effective we can be in government as well as in the church.

Humility and modesty, in both the the government, the church and the world, seems to be the order of the day.

It must be Lent.

You're Fine

Two words, it turns out, can make quite a difference.

On Monday I sat for an hour and a half in front of three people, defending my theology, receiving constructive criticism and trying to remain calm during one of the most important interviews of my life. On Tuesday afternoon I got the word - you're fine. You're fine translated didn't mean that the person across the room was impressed with my attire that would have made a Republican Congressman proud - white dress shirt, red white and blue striped tie, navy blue suit. Instead, it meant that I had passed my interview with the Board of Ordained Ministry.

It hasn't even been a week, but already something feels different. Being commissioned - which is the technical term that means you passed your interviews and will be commissioned as a probationary elder at Annual Conference in June - is a weird thing. I could still do ministry as a licensed local pastor without being commissioned, including serving communion, performing baptisms, marrying folks and burying folks. But there is something a little different, I'm not quite sure what it is.

Maybe it is the church setting me apart for leadership (part of my riveting answer to what is the meaning of ordination in the context of general ministry to the church), maybe its knowing that this is what three years of seminary and a lot of Christian life prepared me for, or maybe its something about the Spirit. I've been thinking a lot about words lately. Preaching every week means you have to come up with a lot of them. I read other authors' words, I hear musicians' words, I put out a lot of words for people myself.

Commissioning is more than words, but the words have power. I have always been one who thought that words were useless without being joined to actions that match them. I still like that idea, but I'm not so sure.

Words still have the power to make a difference. Words still have the power to resonate with something inside of us, to join us to something greater, and to take us somewhere we wouldn't have gone on our own. This, in a sense, is why we perform liturgy together and why we reserve space every Sunday for one person to come out of our congregation and talk to us about God's word.

I don't know all the places I am headed, although its likely somewhere in East Tennessee. I just know that two words have made me think a lot this week. They've made me thing about where I want to go, and more importantly how I want to get there. They've helped me see that I want to learn again how to pray, to help me see that I need to be shaped more by some words than others, to know that lots of people are watching, and that lots of people are invested in me.

You're fine. We're all counting on it.

On Becoming Pastor Dan

I'm not quite sure exactly how it happens, but sometime after getting a degree and sometime before you step into the pulpit, you get a name.

In my case, I get a title in front of my name, and the name I've been going by for my whole life gets shortened. I have, somehow, someway, become Pastor Dan.

As some of my readers know, the last couple months have been a whirlwind. I, like so many other people, lost my job due to financial cutbacks. After a less than faithful response to said news, I really got to work, or more aptly, other people got to work on my behalf. A former professor offered me a job as a teaching assistant. People I barely knew pitched in. The biggest change is that I'm now officially a pastor-in-charge - for the next five months I am the pastor at Underwood United Methodist Church (1671 Howell Mill Road NW, Atlanta, GA if anyone would like to come and see the show!)

Tomorrow will be my second Sunday at Underwood, and its going to be quite the learning experience. I'm starting to learn what it means to preach every Sunday, to grapple with texts on behalf of a congregation, even a congregation of 15. This week I'm going to tackle organizing the office, which looks like a tornado hit it. I file Conference reports. I change the Church sign every week. I organize and plan worship (BDM would be proud I think).

I will return to Tennessee in June, but for the next few months I will be proclaiming the Gospel, serving communion and maybe doing a baptism, and hopefully not doing too many funerals. I'll be figuring out what worship means, I'll be trying to guide us to the valley of Lent and to the triumphant victory of Easter.

It's weird, really. This is what I have spent the last four years of my life planning for, how to lead a congregation of folks trying to hang on to faith in the midst of a community that doesn't seem to think much of it. I'm the preacher. I'm the leader. I'm the one they're going to harass when they're feeling anxious. I'm the one whose sermons they're going to listen to. And ultimately when life becomes rough, I'm going to be the one they come to unload their souls and try to figure out just what difference Jesus makes in all this.

Just call me Pastor Dan.

Live in Elgin

A Few Observations

- Elgin, Illinois might have the nicest public library in America.  (New release movie rentals, and coffee shops with magic shows!)

- Screaming children are great forms of birth control. 

- Loud talkers on the airplane make a two-hour flight seem like six. 

- Its really funny when a friend is trying to eat chocolate cake while watching a character in a movie write words using human feces. 

- Illinois is frickin' cold in late November. 

- Lucinda Williams doesn't do happy well. 

- Kitchen tables turned coffee shop tables with Sister are good for the unemployed soul. 

Bad Moon Rising

I don't usually believe in omens.  But last Friday seriously made me reconsider. 

I began the day in Philadelphia, where I was visiting Mission Year team members. As I made my way to the airport, I came to a red light.  The light turned green, and just as I was ready to go, a woman and her children started slowly crossing the street, right in front of my car. 

Not being thrilled, I honked my horn.  The woman, turned, stared intently at me, and then gave me the bird (yes, right in front of her children.)  This was no. 1. 

When I returned to Atlanta, my boss met me at the airport, and after I picked up my checked luggage, informed that my job was being cut due to budget problems.  (If you haven't heard about my response, rest assured it was characteristic and memorable.)  This was no. 2.  

If I have any doubt, I  had lunch with a former professor of mine yesterday.  As we were eating, he handed me my fortune cookie.  The message inside: Be prepared to change your plans. 

Enough said. 

On Elections and Heroes

I am frequently asked a question.  

I live in an impoverished neighborhood, which will probably vote 95 percent for Barack Obama today. 

I just graduated from one of the country's most liberal theological academies, where the split today will probably be 80-20 in favor of Barack Obama. 

I voted for John Kerry in 2004, Harold Ford in the Tennessee Senate race in 2006 and for Jim Martin in the 2008 Georgia Senate race. 

"Why, oh why, Daniel," they ask, "are you voting for John McCain?"  

Today, was a day I thought would never happen.  It was a historic day for our nation and a wonderful day for me.  Election Day 2008.  November 4, 2008.  

That's because this election day I voted for John McCain.

In an election that is historic and wonderful for many reasons, mostly connected to the candidacy of Barack Obama, I am incredibly grateful for the chance to vote for John McCain. 

Although I thoroughly expect the nation to take a historic step forward and elect Barack Obama, I am also personally sad that John McCain most likely will never be President. 

Like many people I discovered John McCain in the runup to the 2000 Presidential election and followed him throughout the last eight years as one of the few people willing to display political courage. 

He lashed out when President Bush and Karl Rove smeared him in South Carolina for the audacity to have adopted a child who wasn't white.

He worked countless times with some of the most liberal democrats in the Senate - Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden - to pass bills he thought would benefit the country, even if they hurt him politically.  

He notoriously supported the surge in Iraq, when everyone else was running for political cover. 

It is only the most recent in a trend that has defined his political career - McCain has never been afraid to say the tough truth, even if it cost him a vote.  Some say that was only the McCain in 2000 - I ask them to re-read his convention speech when he called out his party on the convention floor or the primary race in Michigan - when he told Michigan voters the truth about the auto industry. Michigan voted for Mitt Romney. 

Political courage doesn't get you big crowds.  

Unfortunately the country seems to be going in a different direction.  Like many I have been disappointed by John McCain's campaign and his pick of Sarah Palin.  He has not run his best campaign, but I do not know that it would have mattered, with the excitement over Barack Obama, the most hostile media climate for a major party candidate since Watergate, and the economic downturn all conspiring against him. 

My father frequently laments that one of the problems with America is we don't have any heroes anymore.  That's not true, at least for me. 

I discovered my hero eight years ago on the campaign trail, fighting in vain against President Bush, and I've watched him fight an uphill battle against Barack Obama too. But long odds won't stop me from wearing my McCain hat and t-shirt in South Atlanta today.  

America may reject a former war hero.  But it will take more than one lost election to make me forget what I know - John McCain is one of America's bright lights. The past year hasn't changed that. 

Church Leadership, by Honest Abe

As many of you know, I recently became so fed up with the current Presidential election, that I went on a political fast of sorts.  For almost two weeks, I consciously avoided some of my favorite websites - politico.com, washingtonpost.com, nytimes.com, huffingtonpost.com, and even dear old Red State.  What I found was that I really didn't miss presumptuous Hope, Sarah Baracuda, or the veering off track of the Straight Talk Express.  

One of the great things of swearing off politics for a while (and not having a television) is that it gives you the chance to do things you've wanted to do for a while.  Being a history dork and wanting to believe that a President (or Presidential candidate) might actually offer hope, I chose to limit the politics that came into my head to Abraham Lincoln.  I had long wanted to read Doris Kearns Goodwin's opus on Lincoln's cabinet, Team of Rivals, so I took the 753 pages as a challenge.  I finished my month-long journey last night, and emerged with the conviction that Honest Abe had some great advice for those of us trying to learn how to lead, whether that be in corporations, non-profits, or more specifically for me, the church.  

753 pages later, here's what I learned.  

1.  Surround yourself with talented people, even if you don't like them.  Lincoln won the contested nomination for President out of the Republican Party, defeating William Seward, Salmon Chase and Edward Bates.  After winning the Presidency, Lincoln worked to bring them all into his cabinet.  They fought, they schemed, and they bickered (with each other and with Lincoln), but their intelligence, experience, and differing ideological, theological and philosophical convictions strengthened the country and made Lincoln a better President.  

2.  Take the blame, share the credit. Throughout his Presidency, Lincoln made a habit of giving his cabinet members credit when things went well, and taking blame and responsibility upon himself when they didn't.  It not only reflected the reality (the buck stops with the President) but he gained immense respect from his cabinet and the country for it.  

3.  Find chances to be grateful.  Often times Lincoln found an opportunity to write an appreciative letter or thank a member of his cabinet when he had actually done the work.  It cultivated loyalty and allowed people to hear the criticism he would offer later.  

4.  Remember who is in charge.  Many who advocate this style of leadership forget one important part of Lincoln's office - everyone knew who was in charge, and it was Lincoln. Although Lincoln would listen to his cabinet, and take their advice even when he didn't like it, Goodwin consistently points out that it was Lincoln who ultimately made the decisions, and when he made up his mind, the discussion was over.  And everyone knew it. 

5.  Chemistry is overrated, competence is what matters. Salmon Chase spent much of 1863 cultivating Radical Republicans who thought Lincoln was not committed enough to their agenda.  His hope was that he would use this base to run for President against Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln was well aware of his scheming, but refused to let it persuade him to fire or marginalize Chase.  Chase tried to resign several times.  Lincoln denied his first several attempts, but eventually did accept it.   After he did so, he nominated Chase to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  

6.  Be slow to anger.  What those who opposed Lincoln from the South couldn't grasp was that Lincoln was quick to forgive, and wanted to bring the South back into the Union a quickly as possible.   He didn't favor punitive damages to the South and hoped that Jefferson Davis would escape capture so he wouldn't be punished severely.  Lincoln was convinced that not berating and humiliating Southerners would be the best way to rebuild a fractured country and coalition.