THE BUSINESS CHURCH

I have often joked that if the Lutheran church knew with absolute certainty that the Lord would return tomorrow, they would appoint a welcoming committee that would schedule its first meeting a week from Thursday. And the first order of business would be to write by-laws for the committee.

Like many jokes, the humor in this comes from it being uncomfortably close to reality. Since I was a lad, there have been two major mergers of the Lutheran bodies I belonged to (The United Lutheran Church of American into the Lutheran Church in America into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American) . Each merger has required the development of complex structures. And at some point after the merger, each required complicated restructuring which was supposed to improve things. In each case, nothing of substance changed except membership declined.

What do you expect? The model for all this structuring and restructuring is corporate America where the motto seems to be, "When you can't think of anything useful to do, restructure." I think the modern term is "re-engineer" as in "Let's Re-engineer our Core Processes using the synergy of Team Work until we achieve Total Quality as a World Class organization."

I'd like to investigate the modern business model, so I guess I'd have to go to New York to see how the big boys do it, but I face a problem: how to get to New York. Maybe I should grab and Eastern Airlines flight. Except, they're out of business. OK, I'll take Pan Am. They're gone too.

Maybe by train, then. Of course the Orange Blossom Special stopped running in 1953 and its operator, Seaboard Air Line Railroad, has, through a series of mergers, become CSX Transportation which doesn't operate passenger trains; that function having been passed on to AMTRAK which ended service in Ocala in 2004.

Maybe I'll just drive. What should I take, my Nash-Rambler? Edsel? De Lorean? Oh rats! I'll just stay home and watch TV shows on the DuMont Network. Or maybe watch a RKO movie at a Balaban and Katz theater, or stop off at a National or Red Owl grocery store or maybe just snoop at Woolworth's dime store.

You see my point. If business people are so smart, why did all the business I mention above go out of business? And why should we imitate them? All right, to be fair, F. W. Woolworth hasn't gone out of business. It's just morphed into Foot Locker. Maybe the Lutheran church should do the same and morph into something else, The Society for the Protection and Preservation of Nearly Extinct Religions–Lutheran Branch.

Churches at all levels are institutions, just like businesses or government. Can't help that. Unfortunately, most institutions lose sight of their purpose and make institutional survival the prime concern. Or they get involved in some peripheral issue which drains the resources preventing anything useful from getting done. My denomination spends thousand upon thousands of dollars developing social statements that are largely ignored or just get people worked up. And we pay lobbyists to advocate for things most of our members disagree with. You really think politicians pay any attention to groups that can't give them campaign contributions? Come off it! Let's just do what we're supposed to do. You know, my denomination is really good at feeding hungry people. We have a very efficient agency to do that. So let's get on with doing it and stop the nonsense.

Once in awhile someone in authority gets an inkling something is wrong, but they inevitably do the wrong thing. Our latest fad is that we are supposed to be "Missional Leaders." (I must have been asleep when this new jargon came in because the phrase gets 61,700 hits on Google. I'm not impressed.) I think all that it actually means is to do what we were supposed to do as church leaders, but we can't do because we're too busy dealing with inane mailing from "The Powers That Be" about "missional leadership" and going to conferences on "missional leadership" and reading books about "missional leadership." And as soon as we've got all that mastered, they'll tell us that "missional leadership" is out and something new is in. I know this will happen. A colleague who graduated from seminary more recently than I did said they were talking about "transformational leaders" in her day. I think we had the phrase "change agents" for awhile. In my seminary days the jargon was "enabler." I think before my time it was "prophetic ministry."

Well, they can restructure, rename and whatever all they want. It doesn't matter. I've got to get some real work done. I need to figure out how to help teenagers understand what God means in their lives. I need to find a way to help some hungry people in our community. I need to comfort some folks having a bad time. And if I get a chance, I'd like to try to figure out how to get the Sheriff's office to notice the drug trafficking that goes on in the little shopping plaza right across the street from the Sheriff's district office. (Law enforcement is also an institution.)

This is your old Missional Leader hoping that you can Re-engineer your life to achieve Total Quality. If not, may the Lord bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne


2103

MEMORIES

It is very peculiar how memory works–or doesn't work. More and more of late I have headed off to some room in my apartment or the church only to ask myself upon arrival, "What did I come in here for?" My train of thought frequently seems to lose its caboose. And yet there are other things from years ago that I remember with clarity.

A few nights ago I began re-reading the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. (No, I haven't forgotten the story. I'm reading it because I admire Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's craftsmanship.) In the first chapter, Dr. Watson is taken by his friend Stamford to the laboratory at St. Bart's Hospital in order to introduce him to Holmes. Watson describes the scene. "Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with blue flickering flames." Immediately, my mind was taken back at least fifty years to the first time I ever saw a Bunsen burner (as we Yanks call it.) The office of Benard Rabin, D.D.S.

Dr. Rabin was our family dentist. In some ways he was a quite up-to-date professional. He was one of the earlier users of fluoride treatments to protect teeth. He knew about it because he was an officer in the Naval Reserve (a full commander by the time I left his care) and had participated in the government trials. In other ways, however, he was quite old-fashioned. One wall of his office was dominated by a huge dental cabinet that held his instruments.

It looked like it could have come from the 1920s or even the 1890s. He never used novocaine when filling teeth. I remember by first session when him when he explained that when he drilled teeth to fix them, the cavity bugs would bite. If it hurt too much, I was to raise my hand and he would stop for a while until the bugs let up.

His office was in the Uptown Bank Building. That's the picture of the building at the head of the blog. The building went up in 1929 when the Uptown development was at it's peak. The depression came, and the neighborhood was never the same. By the 1960s it was an area you would avoid at night. I vaguely remember the magnificent banking area on the main floor with the high ceiling rising two stories and open to the mezzanine level above. When I was first brought to the building, it was served by cage-like elevators manned by operators. Eventually these were replaced with automatic elevators which cause no end of problems for Grandma S. who would NOT ride in an operator-less elevator. She would climb nine flights of stairs to our Physician, Dr. Mark, who was in the same building as Dr. Rabin.


It was Dr. Mark who recommend Dr. Rabin to us. There was quite a difference between the two office suites however. By the time I remember Dr. Mark (who "brought me into the world" as they say), he was in solo practice and thus had two examining rooms, his own office (with dozens of elephants on the top of the filing cabinets), and a waiting room. Dr. Rabin when I first remember him shared his suite with two other medical people, M.D.'s as I recall. There was a large waiting room with a big window at the end, furnished with chairs of no particular style or era. I seem to remember some of the chairs were covered in green leather. A secretary's desk stood near the door. Although sometimes a secretary was hard at work typing away, the ear pieces of an old stenograph stuck in her ears, it was just as common for the room to be empty, and the secretary to appear when the outer door opened causing a chime to ring.

A door set at an angle in what would have been one of the corners of the waiting room led to a dark, interior corridor off of which were several offices. Since Dr. Rabin's was the first of the offices, I never ventured further down the hall of mysteries, nor did I want to. It was always creepy, but became even more so after the other medical people moved out leaving darkened offices down the hall. Dr. Rabin remained, using only the waiting room and his own small office. There was a tiny, tiny office, just big enough for a desk against the wall and some filing cabinets. It was rarely lit by more than a flourescent desk lamp which cast spooky shadows on the wall. Then one came to the small room with the dental chair looming like a medieval torture device. At least the room had a window in it, but escape would have been nine stories straight down. Behind the dental chair was another room, about the size of a closet in which the dentist did mysterious things. The only thing I can remember in there was a small grinder. Very menacing.

I haven't yet explained about the Bunsen burner. Just as you entered the corridor of terror there was a tiny laboratory. It was nothing more than a counter, shelf with various chemicals, and a burning Bunsen burner with its eerie blue flame flickering. Sometimes there would be a very short woman working in the lab–she would also serve as receptionist–but often the lab was unoccupied. I have no idea what fiendish experiments went on in that room, but it added to the ominous atmosphere.

How strange that I can remember this scene in such vivid detail. But try to remember whether the filler for the gas tank is on the left or the right side of my car? Not a chance.

Hope all your memories are pleasant. May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

2086

GO FOR BAROQUE IN SOUTH AMERICA

Hardly a day goes by without fresh evidence that my ignorance is boundless. The most recent lacuna in my intellectual data base concerns South America. Let's see, I know that there are a bunch of countries in South America. The most common language spoken are Spanish and Portugese, although I am aware the people of Guyana speak English, and the people of Suriname speak Dutch. (I've known people from those two countries.) I also know there are a bunch of people who speak Italian and German. I once listened to a conversation in an airport where the mother spoke German to her son who replied in Spanish, while the boy's sister was reading a magazine in English.

What do I know about South American music, however? Samba, bossa nova, tango, of course. The greatest South American composer was probably Heitor Villa-Lobos, and I know a tiny bit about the tango composer Ástor Piazzolla. It came as a total surprise to me, then, as I listen to "Morning Edition" on NPR and hear about the tradition of baroque music in Bolivia. In the late seventeenth century Jesuit Priests established missions among the Chiquitano people of what is now eastern Bolivia. They used music as an evangelization tool, but the people embraced it and made it their own. Thousands of manuscripts exist and are being restored. Evidently there are several youth orchestras now that play this old baroque music as part of their past.

I should have known about South American baroque music since I have played an organ work by Domenic Zipoli, an Italian baroque composer who eventually went to South America where he continued to write music. And I knew there was a good bit of baroque music written in Mexico, not something most people pay attention to. I listen to some of the clips of these Chiquitano orchestras playing and was impressed by their skill. I hope to find some affordable recordings one of these days.

I am always moved by people who rediscover their own traditions whether it be music, art or literature. It's a shame when any culture loses part of its heritage. It especially delights me when young people find their roots. People should take pride in not only who they are but who their people were.

Americans seem regrettably blind to their own heritage. For example, I'd venture to say that most Floridians have forgotten that the first city established in what is now the United States was here in Florida–St. Augustine. Or that the first European language spoken here was Spanish, not English. I wonder what kind of music they played in Spanish St. Augustine? I'll have to investigate that some time.

Speaking of music from one's heritage, I don't have any polka recordings in my collection even though polkas were a big part of my musical experience growing up. Every wedding had a three-piece combo that played polkas. Sometimes when I'm out driving on a Sunday I can pick up "Polka Party" on the radio. Problem is, I much prefer Polish polkas to German ones. They're livelier. German polkas always tend to sound a little like a military march, sort-of "Let's Polka in and Take Over the Sudetenland."

Well, whatever music stirs your heart. As Martin Luther said, "Next to the Word of God, only music deserves to the be governor of human emotions."

May the Lord God bless you in your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

Picture from NPR

2053

UGH!

Sunday I thought it was an allergy, a little coughing and sneezing. Well, there's always something in this part of Florida to make you sneeze. By Tuesday it was a code in my noze wid more coffin and somb ouchy sinuses. I boud a subbly of cough drobs to combad da code symdoms. Wednesday it seemed to slide down into my chest, and I began to sound like Gravel Gerttie. It doesn't make me feel too bad, except when the coughing starts, but I sound awful.

I managed to get through the winter cold and flu free despite not having a flu shot (the doctor ran out just before my appointment.) So a summer cold comes upon me instead. *Hack!* *Hack!* *Hack!* *UUUGGHH!* I know it's not technically summer yet, but the temperature has been in the 90s for the last few weeks, so the germs think it's summer.

I don't believe in indulging colds. I give the cold bugs a dose of Nyquil at night and bombard them with menthol-eucalyptus during the day. If I haven't improved tomorrow, I'll have to try the miracle drug–Campbell's Chicken Soup. That's what my mother always gave us. Yes, I know it's nothing but salt water through which a chicken has been force-marched, but those wonderful noodles just slide down your throat soothing away the rough places.

I have my own home remedies for most things. Chicken Noodle Soup for colds, ice cold 7-Up for fevers (always helps), and saltine crackers for upsets of the tummy. *Ahem!* *Ahem* *Ahem!* Excuse me, time for a little more menthol-eucalyptus. Take THAT you nasty little buggers.

I have no intention of letting this slight malady interfere with my life. I'm going to a graduation on Friday no matter what. Heck, even when I had shingles I went straight from the hospital urgent care department to the theater to see a ballet. And when I sprained my ankle I finished the service first, then went to have it fixed despite my ankle swelling to the size of a grapefruit.

See, I even got my blog written . *A-CHOO!* *AUUGH!* *OUCH!*

Stay healthy.

May the Lord God bless you in your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne