MISSIONAL TABLES
So I’m reading through the materials for our assembly when I note that a new staff member will be responsible for “missional table conversations.” Now I am rather fond of mission-style furniture, so I imagined a group of well-fed folk sitting around a substantial mission-style table chatting and drinking the port provided by the new staff member. (Port is bound to stimulate conversation.) As inviting as that sounded, I knew it couldn’t be right. So what exactly is a missional table?
I poked around online and came across this gem: “Members of these missional tables will stir up, guide and stimulate imagination, vision, and activity in and through all kinds of congregations, ministries and settings.” Huh? That still sounds like a bunch of people sitting around a table yammering on about something, although since the term “missional table” seems to exclusively ELCA Lutheran, they’d be drinking beer instead of port.
I poked about a little more, but I knew I was in over my head when I found that one goal of a Stewardship and Mission Support Table is “Creating quadrant-based stewardship and mission support tables.” Well of course. That explains everything. “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’” Yes, quite. Well, reading church-speak often makes me feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
I put out an appeal for help and one of my wiser colleagues gave me her interpretation. “My imagination tells me it's the way the synods are now trying to listen to congregations and work with a bottom up approach. We tell them what we want to do and hopefully work together (with cong. and synod) to get it done, pooling monies/resources to do ministries, out of these committees.”
Now that is helpful. I am a great believer in listening and pooling resources and bottom up planning. After almost 33 years in the business, though, I am skeptical of how much “bottom up” will be allowed. My impression is that bottom up is permitted as long as those on the bottom come up with the same answers that those on the top want them to have. More than a dozen years ago I was involved in a Mission Strategy Team (which now seems to be subsumed under one of the missional tables. It’s probably under the table because of all the beer that they were drinking. No, that’s not right. Cross that remark off.) Anyway, we spent months developing a local strategy only to be told we had broken the rules. We were not allowed to determine locally who among us should develop this strategy. We were supposed to wait until Higher Authority determined who should do the planning. Those 400 miles away knew much better than those of us on the scene what was needed. So we were summarily dismissed.
Even putting that aside, my real complaint is the endless gobledy-gook from the Higher Ups that passes for communication. I found this not-so-bad explanation of a “new and renewed congregations table.” It’s a group that identifies mission opportunities and assists in the development and redevelopment of congregations.” It’s what a century ago was called “Home Missions.” We could never use that term because it is only two words long whereas “new and renewed congregations table” is five words long and must therefor be 250% better. Sheesh! I going to send these people a copy of Elements of Style so they can learn to write plain English.
Another intelligent friend of mine asked: “Why is it the ELCA website and communications, including mission table, sound so corporate instead well, corporal?” Ah, there’s the problem. In the 1950s clergy became professionals. They in turn professionalized the denomination so that by the 1970s everything was modeled on the corporate world. You can’t tell ELCA from IBM, GM or any other of those other acronymed corporations. I read through descriptions of missional tables which never mention God or Jesus.
Sigh! I just don’t get it. As my friend satirically put it: “you did not push your flywheel hard enough, get off the bus to find where they moved your cheese to and maximize your earnings quotient while driving shareholder value.” It doesn’t make any sense in the corporate world. It doesn’t make any sense in the church, either. Run that up your flagpole and see who prays to it.
I poked around online and came across this gem: “Members of these missional tables will stir up, guide and stimulate imagination, vision, and activity in and through all kinds of congregations, ministries and settings.” Huh? That still sounds like a bunch of people sitting around a table yammering on about something, although since the term “missional table” seems to exclusively ELCA Lutheran, they’d be drinking beer instead of port.
I poked about a little more, but I knew I was in over my head when I found that one goal of a Stewardship and Mission Support Table is “Creating quadrant-based stewardship and mission support tables.” Well of course. That explains everything. “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’” Yes, quite. Well, reading church-speak often makes me feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
I put out an appeal for help and one of my wiser colleagues gave me her interpretation. “My imagination tells me it's the way the synods are now trying to listen to congregations and work with a bottom up approach. We tell them what we want to do and hopefully work together (with cong. and synod) to get it done, pooling monies/resources to do ministries, out of these committees.”
Now that is helpful. I am a great believer in listening and pooling resources and bottom up planning. After almost 33 years in the business, though, I am skeptical of how much “bottom up” will be allowed. My impression is that bottom up is permitted as long as those on the bottom come up with the same answers that those on the top want them to have. More than a dozen years ago I was involved in a Mission Strategy Team (which now seems to be subsumed under one of the missional tables. It’s probably under the table because of all the beer that they were drinking. No, that’s not right. Cross that remark off.) Anyway, we spent months developing a local strategy only to be told we had broken the rules. We were not allowed to determine locally who among us should develop this strategy. We were supposed to wait until Higher Authority determined who should do the planning. Those 400 miles away knew much better than those of us on the scene what was needed. So we were summarily dismissed.
Even putting that aside, my real complaint is the endless gobledy-gook from the Higher Ups that passes for communication. I found this not-so-bad explanation of a “new and renewed congregations table.” It’s a group that identifies mission opportunities and assists in the development and redevelopment of congregations.” It’s what a century ago was called “Home Missions.” We could never use that term because it is only two words long whereas “new and renewed congregations table” is five words long and must therefor be 250% better. Sheesh! I going to send these people a copy of Elements of Style so they can learn to write plain English.
Another intelligent friend of mine asked: “Why is it the ELCA website and communications, including mission table, sound so corporate instead well, corporal?” Ah, there’s the problem. In the 1950s clergy became professionals. They in turn professionalized the denomination so that by the 1970s everything was modeled on the corporate world. You can’t tell ELCA from IBM, GM or any other of those other acronymed corporations. I read through descriptions of missional tables which never mention God or Jesus.
Sigh! I just don’t get it. As my friend satirically put it: “you did not push your flywheel hard enough, get off the bus to find where they moved your cheese to and maximize your earnings quotient while driving shareholder value.” It doesn’t make any sense in the corporate world. It doesn’t make any sense in the church, either. Run that up your flagpole and see who prays to it.
Wayne
16720
Labels: missional
posted by Wayne @ 9:00 AM
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