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Church > Church Services

pastoral reflections on a Sunday morning in January

by troy cady

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The other day I was talking with a neighbor about the word “church.” As we sat at my desk together, I opened up my web browser and Googled the word “church.” I said, “Now, let’s look at the visual images that are associated with this word.”
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And as we looked, I pointed out that almost all of them were a picture of a building and most of those did not even have any people in the picture whatsoever…just a building. A small percentage of the pictures portrayed people in a building…at a church service. And we noted that every single picture that came up in the first round of search results fit into one of these two types of images.
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For the past 40 years, I estimate that I have spent 75 percent of my Sundays either going to church services or playing a role in the leadership of such.
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In light of this, what I want to say on this Sunday morning may come as a surprise to you: I have come to the conclusion that church services often (but not always) get in the way of God’s people being the church. I know that will likely ruffle the feathers of many churchgoers who are reading this but bear with me as I try to explain my rationale.
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In 2002, my family and I moved to Madrid to start a church. To do this, we developed a “launch plan” (that’s what we called it). It was an 18-month business plan that articulated how we would grow the church from 8 people in March 2002 to 150 people in September 2003. (And, yes: the document we developed to share the vision of this was a business plan, I’m embarrassed to say.)
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In any case, September 2003 was identified as the “launch date.” This was the time we would say, “Hooray, we did it! We started a church!” It was the day we would hold our first church service, open to the public.
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After just 9 months into this launch plan, we held some private “test services” before going public. Believe it or not, we were three months ahead of schedule when we began these test services…that’s how much the church had grown in that short time. Because of this, we had considered moving up the public “launch date” from September to Easter that year (which happened to be on April 20).
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At any rate, the test services were an opportunity to gain momentum and build the core of the congregation so that, when the launch day hit, a sense of common vision and shared values would have been nurtured already by a large enough group of people.
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To build up to these test services, however, we simply met in small groups (which we called “community groups”) to build relationships, worship together, grow spiritually, and reach out to others. In other words, all of our energy the first 9 months of “launching” this church went into helping our community group ministry flourish.
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After 9 months of seeing our community groups flourish, we noticed a distinct shift as soon as we started testing out weekly services. From planning to execution, the services themselves took most of our mental and emotional energy, leaving little energy to invest in our community groups. So, it didn’t take long for the community groups to languish…but the real problem came when the weekly services did not flourish as we had expected, either.
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So we began to ask ourselves, “What’s going on here? Why does it seem like the church has just picked up a heavy weight right as we are trying to gear up for takeoff?”
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That’s when we realized that everything that really mattered about what we had in mind when it came to “being the church” had already been happening in our community groups. And thinking we needed to add something more to be a “legitimate” church ultimately seemed to devalue the rich and authentic experiences we had been having already through the community group network we had nurtured. It was as if we were saying, “We can’t really be a church if we don’t meet each weekend for a church service…can we?”
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So, we asked ourselves, “What if we remove the ‘church service’ ingredient from the ‘church’ recipe and see what happens? If we didn’t have ‘church services’ to worry about, how would we go about embodying what it means to be God’s family?”
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And that is what we did. We experimented. You could call it a little ecclesiastical improvisation. We decided that we would gather in a large group format just once a month while still emphasizing the weekly gathering of folks in the community group format. And what we discovered about what it means to be Jesus’ followers has changed my life and the lives of so many others since.
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We found ways to worship that were diverse and fun, personalized and holistic. We learned what it means to truly be a family with one another, to take care of each other and really connect. Because our encounters with Scripture were rooted in interactive ways of engaging, our understanding of God and faith deepened significantly. We learned from one another and each person had regular opportunities to exercise their gifts from week to week. What’s more, our way of reaching out and sharing Jesus’ love with others was humanizing and playful.
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Thus, we discovered first-hand that we were better able to embody the essence of what it means to be the church…without hosting weekly “church services.”
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I wish I could say I stayed the course with this little improvisation since then. However, I didn’t. When my family and I moved back to the States in 2010, we ended up participating again in “church” as we typically think of it: an event-based place. This was not without good reason, to be sure…and, in many ways, the church we were part of was a blessing and a joy. My work with children was enriching and several people in the congregation served with heart-felt devotion and open-minded creativity. I thank God for those people.
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But as time wore on, I began to see once again how “church services” often hindered us from experiencing what God desires for us to experience as a church family.
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During this time, I recall looking across the congregation on many, many Sundays wondering what the point of it all was. As we sang together, it seemed like we were just going through the motions, mouthing the words, pleased mildly by the melodies. Our hearts were not in it. I remember feeling sad for the worship leaders who diligently prepared music for us to lift our hearts to the Lord and who often implored the congregation to really put their all into it…but the response was just, “Meh.”
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And the same was true of the congregation’s response to the pastor’s preaching, despite the thoughtful and creative ways she went about proclaiming the gospel from week to week. To this day, I can easily say that Pastor Mandy is one of the best leaders I have ever had the honor of serving with. So, it makes my blood boil knowing the kind of criticism she faced week-in and week-out from so many people. Time and time again, her calls for deep, good change in the church just met with resistance.
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The grace that could have redeemed all this was the tight-knit community that characterized the church. But, for too many people, that sense of community did not extend to them. I recall on several occasions talking with various long-time members when another person who had been attending for at least a couple of years would come up in the conversation—and the long-time member had no idea who I was talking about. And it wasn’t as though either of these people were only sporadic attenders; both of them were very regular. I wondered to myself, “How is it that two people who have been attending a small church like ours regularly for three years have never even said hi to each other? How is it that two people could literally sit 5 seats away from each other (in their "usual" spot on Sunday morning) week after week for years and not know each other's names?” It's sad: sometimes church services are the loneliest places to be in this world. Why is this, I have to wonder?
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I am convinced it is because the “church-as-churchservice” paradigm makes it very easy for this to happen. The mindset is: “I saw the few people who are important to me, I’ve sung my songs, I’ve heard my nice sermon, I’ve had my cracker and grape juice, it was nice, I feel good now and…I’ll see you next week.” After more than 30 years of ministry in church settings, I am convinced that this is more normal for most churchgoers than many churchgoers care to admit.
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And so, I have to ask myself, “What’s the point? If that is all that ‘church’ really is…why bother?” Is there no sense of reaching out, serving the common good, enfolding the marginalized in love? Where is the passion and creativity? Simply put, it is a failure of imagination.
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On this front, I would like to say, however, that this church did get one thing right: each Saturday they hosted a food pantry to feed the hungry. And it is significant that one of the key leaders of the food pantry testifies to this day that Saturdays at the food pantry felt more like “church” to him than any other thing we did as a church. It is also very telling to me that most of the people who volunteered at the pantry over the years were NOT from the church, but rather from the neighborhood. Why would this be?
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I suggest it is because the folks who served at the food pantry were really being the church. There was a sense of joy and life and family. Though no songs were sung on Saturday mornings, the atmosphere could be truly described as worshipful. And deep conversations often occurred that enriched our understanding of God and faith and life. And it was not uncommon to see one person praying with their arm around another person who was weeping, going through a hard time, in need of a friend. In short, we were being formed in Christlikeness. It is sobering to note on this front that most people who volunteered at the food pantry over the years…never stepped foot in the church building on a Sunday morning.
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And I would say for good reason: they were already experiencing the essence of what it means to be the church without ever attending a church service.
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So, what I first realized 20 years ago has come full circle to me. I am convinced that church services often (but not always, mind you) hinder many Christ-followers from really experiencing what it means to be the church.
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And, so…the last four weeks, I have been practicing and inviting others to practice with me various ways of coming together as God’s family. We’ve feasted together and built relationships with lots of time to have informal conversation over a meal where each person brings something to contribute. We have told stories and listened to stories. We’ve enjoyed children in our midst. We’ve wondered about the presence of God in the stories we’ve heard and in the midst of our everyday life experiences. And we’ve served others together: yesterday, some of us spent a good portion of the day helping at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness.
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One person who participated said afterwards, “That was so much fun, I almost feel guilty!” There was life in it, a sense of God’s goodness, a sense of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
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Later, I was driving home with my “adopted aunt” Judy (as I like to call her). We carpooled together and when we got back to my place, we sat in the car for another hour…just talking and connecting. I shared with her some family challenges I’ve been facing lately and she listened like a good friend, offering words of encouragement and reassurance. It is with deep gratitude that I note our societal roles were reversed yesterday. I—an ordained minister—had the joy of being pastored by “aunt” Judy, a retired nurse.
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And just the day before, I had the honor of spending three hours with a neighbor friend, reading from the Gospel of John, praying, and talking about…
…family trauma,
…how Jesus deconstructs our cherished paradigms of God, life, and others;
…the problem of violence in Scripture,
…the prejudice that seems to plague our society today, and
…the ministry of reconciliation.
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And that was only SOME of what we talked about. My friend has grown accustomed to referring to these times we have together as “church.” And I think he is right: it is church—in our living rooms.
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This is how more of the church should be, I feel. We should be serving together. We should really be in each other’s lives. We should dialogue and share perspectives and learn from one another. We should share food together and just enjoy playing together. We should tell stories and practice listening. We should rest together and be there for each other when we fall on hard times.
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These days, then, my imagination is coming alive again and I am experiencing it as a deep, deep grace. I have hope. In my mind's eye, I can see a whole network of small faith communities like these popping up all over...communities where people from all kinds of different backgrounds can come together to live into the simple rhythms of…
…feasting
…wondering
…listening
…sharing, and
…renewing.
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And I am happy to say that others are joining in this vision already, not just here where I live in Chicago but in other parts of the States, too…from Connecticut to North Carolina, Minnesota to California. We’re calling this network PlayWell Communities. We want it to feel playful, improvisational, personalized, and fluid.
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We’re not calling it a church, by the way, because that word just has so much unhelpful baggage that comes with it. We’re describing it as a network of small “faith communities.” Regardless, we’re passionate about what it looks like to follow Jesus in our time and in the places we live. And we want to strip away anything that would weigh us down from living according to God’s “unforced rhythms of grace.” We want to live freely…free to imagine different ways of being formed as God's dearly beloved people.
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If you’d like to know more about all this, let me know because I’d love to talk with you about it.
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Pentecost: God Dances Like a Flame

 Today is Pentecost! It's the day Christians celebrate God's gracious gift of the Holy Spirit. Here's how I tell the story when I'm working with folks in an intergenerational setting. It's part of a series I'm making called PlayFull Faith that describes how "God dances and invites us to join the dance." 

I hope you enjoy the video and I pray you let the light of God shine brightly in your heart. 

Good Friday: Jesus is arrested, crucified, and buried

It seems strange that so many Christians would refer to this day of Holy Week as “Good Friday” when this was a day of injustice, torture, and death for our Lord. How could such ugliness be called good?

Perhaps Christians refer to it as good because this is the day we remember that there is no evil which can overcome the greatness of God’s self-giving love, shown to us in the life—and death—of Jesus. This is the day we remember God’s humility; though Jesus could have “powered up,” he instead chose to “let go.” This is the day we remember that God truly did become one of us, identifying with us even to the point of suffering and dying. This is the day we remember that God grants forgiveness, a grace which we all need, a grace that gives us all the opportunity to start again. This is the day we remember that God’s love binds us together in new ways, as Jesus entrusts his disciple John and his mother Mary to care for one another as family. And this is the day we remember the promise of future deliverance even in the face of certain death, as Jesus assures the criminal being crucified beside him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Maybe Christians call this day good because it is a day when God shows that nothing is beyond the reach of God’s redemption. Ultimately, it is a mystery how the horrific events that took place on this day so long ago can be called good. And that’s what faith is for. Faith is the response that is perfectly suited for such mysteries and is itself a mystery…like love.

The video below tells the story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trials, crucifixion, and burial. If you are watching this with children and they become upset, you may want to read to them the rest of the story in John 20:1-18. After watching the video, I invite you to take some time to wonder and reflect:

• I wonder who you would be in the story if you had been there?
• I wonder what you would have thought or felt at various points?
• I wonder what Jesus was thinking and feeling at different times?
• I wonder what the most important part of the story is?
• I wonder how you might respond to this story today?

Pentecost: God Dances Like a Flame Within

Today, I remember the significance of the promise Jesus made to his disciples shortly after his resurrection. It was a promise that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. By the Spirit, the Church is sent to serve as Jesus served, to be a sign of hope, to reflect here and now the joy and love of the kingdom of God that shall never fade. In Acts 2, we read a record of how this new work in and through the Church was inaugurated during the Feast of Pentecost--and that good work is still continuing today. In this short video, I share the story of Acts 1 and 2 by using materials I've created to help both young and old receive the kingdom of God like little children. I hope you enjoy it.

You can also click this link to view the video onYouTube.

If you are interested in obtaining these materials for use in your church or home setting, email me at troy@playfull.org for more details.

Play is so much more than just a form of superficial escapism. It expresses something fundamental about what it means to be human and it shapes us, both individually and as a society. To learn more about the enduring value of playfulness, visit playfull.org—the site of a ministry I lead called PlayFull. I also invite you to like PlayFull on Facebook and follow us there. Thank you!

Evening Prayer: The Faces of Christ, part 1

Tonight I begin a 5-part series of prayerful reflections on key turning points in the life of Jesus. Each part of the story speaks to our lives today as we wonder together.





Click here to view other installments of my reflective evening prayer sessions.

love, play and childhood

A life of significance is not found in what you accomplish, but in who you love. This is what children teach me. Never have I met a child who wants to have an account of my importance according to my resumé. Sadly, however, I have met some children who have been trained by accomplishment-driven adults to become accomplishment-driven themselves. I can see it in their eyes: the desire to please, to be regarded as special.

Nothing is more welcome to a child than to enjoy the presence of someone who wants to be with them not because of what they can do but just because of who they are. And the same is true for any person of any age. How liberating it is to be loved by someone who asks not “What have you done?” but rather asks in a pure, non-critical way, “How are you doing? Tell me honestly. I’m listening.”

This is really why I am passionate about play. Nothing communicates value quite like it for, in play, one is really saying: “I just want to be with you. I’m not here to get something out of you or to make you prove yourself to me. Let’s just enjoy being together.” Play makes space for love.

And this is how I think of God. Play makes space for God, because God makes space for love. And this is why I see God most clearly in children, and in people of any age who are well-practiced at living as a child-at-heart.

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*Photo by Blake Barlow via Unsplash. Creative Commons license.

  

what children would say

Dear Grace: What God Says Through Children to Today’s Church

by Troy Cady

A good portion of the New Testament consists of letters sent by Christian leaders to congregations in a variety of cities throughout the Roman empire. Paul sent letters to the Christians in Ephesus, Galatia, and Colossae, to name a few. Peter sent letters to Christians in a variety of provinces.

Generally speaking, these letters were filled with admonitions to believers living in a specific context and the admonitions were aimed at helping Christians know how to live in a way that was both a) different from the culture and b) identified with the culture.  The church as the Body of Christ is intended to resemble Christ in that Jesus was both fully human (identified with us) and fully divine (different from us).

By the indwelling Spirit of Christ, followers of Jesus are enabled to imitate their Lord. That is, they are able to live in such a way that identifies with society but also stands apart from certain self-destructive tendencies in society. This is how the church is able to be a hopeful, loving presence in places and situations laden with despair and hatred.

It’s hard being a Christian. We tend to lean more towards one aspect of what it means to be a Christian than the other: either we identify too much with the world-system or we hardly ever identify with it. Those who identify too much do well to remember that without difference…we don’t make a difference. Those who identify with the world too little do well to remember that we can only love the world to the extent that we relate to people and engage the real world. If we are too separate, we fail to love; if we are too enmeshed, we hold forth little hope that things can change.

This summer at our church we are carrying on this great tradition of letter writing for the purpose of discerning how we can be both in the world but not of the world. Each week, a different leader at our church reads a letter to the congregation that grapples with how we can live faithfully in the way of Jesus that engages with the world as we experience it in 2017 (since a lot has changed since the first century A.D.!).  

Since I have the privilege of working with children, I have engaged them in this exercise, too. Each week I tell a story from the Bible and in our wondering time I ask them: “What does God want the church to know through this story?”

It should come as no surprise to us that the children have some amazing and wonderful things to say. I look forward to sharing with you on occasion what God says to the church in 2017 through them. Here are a couple of examples.

On the first week, we looked at the story of creation and this was the short letter the group created:

“Dear Grace,

God made everything to make a song. God made us because he loves us and God is still creating something new for tomorrow. Remember: even though you can’t see God, he’s still there. Love, Grace Kids.”

Last week we looked at the story of Noah and one boy in preschool offered this bit of wisdom when asked what God was saying to the church through the story. He said:

“Dear Grace,

New life comes after death. Love, R—“

This Sunday we’ll be looking at the story of Abraham and Sarah—and the Great Family they started. I can’t wait to hear what the kids have to say!

I’m sure you’ll agree their words are a much-needed reminder to the church in 2017. My prayer is that the adults will take it to heart, that the adults will learn to receive the kingdom of God like children.

That is why I said to them two weeks ago: “It’s important for the church to hear what you have to say. God has given you a voice and God wants you to use it. I wonder what makes your voice unique. I wonder what others need to hear from you. You have a voice and God wants you to use it. Speak up for what’s true and good, beautiful, right and loving.”

There was a moment of silence as they took in that message. And then the silence was broken as one child asked: “I wonder what your voice is, Mr. Troy.”

I said, “I want to use my voice so that others will hear your voice. It’s important for others to hear your voice.”

I pray it will be so.

go 4th and play

In his book Homo Ludens, Dutch historian Johan Huizinga asserts that culture arises in and as play. This is quite a bold assertion. It is not a statement about our love for sports and board games. He is not talking about play as a microcosm of culture, a characteristic of culture. He is saying we have culture because we play. Play creates culture, macro-culture.

Huizinga believes that play is the mother of government and religion. Even law and language have play as their source. I happen to agree with him. That’s why I started an organization called PlayFull.

Since today is July 4^th and I happen to be an American, I wanted to reflect a bit on this theme that culture, macro-culture, is a child of play.

America has been and always will be an experiment. There is no way America’s founders could have seen or predicted what America would be like today. That’s because our history is a story of testing limits, seeing how far the boundaries of our Constitution will stretch.

Drafting the constitution was a creative, imaginative endeavor. The framers wanted to find just the right words to ensure long-lasting liberty, freedom from tyranny and oppression. 

The authors of the Constitution put in place a system of checks and balances, a feature shared by play in its fullest form. That is what creates interest. These checks and balances attenuate the effects of conflict, but they also establish an arena that creates conflict and within which conflict is played out. Putting in place a three-part system takes into account that conflict is bound to happen—and when it happens these same checks and balances ensure everyone plays the game fairly.

Notice that play happens in specific locations. The Supreme Court is just as much a playground as the area rug in my son’s bedroom. When my son was much younger, we would role play together on that rug with his sister and a menagerie of stuffed toys. When we were in that place, one role served to mitigate the power of another. Playing fairly meant honoring the role another played, no matter how different they were from you. We had a special language when we role-played and there were special rules to govern the playtime.

Huizinga: “All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course…The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds…within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.” (10)

The accusation “I hold you in contempt of court” is telling. It is a charge that someone in the playground is flaunting, twisting, disregarding and disrespecting the rules that apply in that place. The game cannot function properly in such an environment—which is why we have grown sick to our stomach at the games people play.

“That is not how it is intended to work!” We know when something is awry by instinct—our creative, joyful, generous play-instinct. When the rules are twisted, it is a game that is anti-play and we do what we can to restore the situation to free play that honors the rules of the playground.

Why does this matter? As an American, all this begs humility. America was and is an experiment—and so are other forms of government. We do not have a monopoly on truth. We are still learning and growing (hopefully). Our system is not perfect and conflict will always be a factor for which we must account. We can choose to embrace conflict as an opportunity to grow, an arena to work towards reconciliation, or we can manipulate conflict to enact innumerable power-plays.

My hope is that the latter will diminish as we choose to nurture the former. America, I wish you a future of gracious, imaginative play.  

it takes time

In the story, the people of Israel are taken from Jerusalem to Babylon. As they leave the city, they look back and see the smoke rising. The soldiers marched the people of God a long, long way from their home to the place of exile. The journey took a very long time and some of the people died on the way. The exile lasted 70 years, the passing of a full generation.

In the children’s ministry curriculum Godly Play, the telling of the story involves moving the people from "Jerusalem" to "Babylon.” There is a river in the way and the people are led around it. Of course, this adds some extra seconds to the telling of the story.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of telling this story to a group of children in upper elementary school. As the people moved, we tried to practice silence. But, this was hard. A bit of dialogue:

The children: "Can't we just put the people over there?"

Me: "No, we can't."

"But, why?"

"Because they couldn't just go over there like that and their story is our story."

"But, we know that. Let's just put them over there so we can keep telling the story."

"Well, I would like to do that--and that would be nice--but that's not how the story goes. They had to go this way. They couldn't just hop over there in a second. Think about this for a second. Let's wonder a bit."

I gestured to one of the children and asked: "How old are you now?"

"Nine."

"Let's say you were one of the children taken into captivity. How old would you be when you returned to Jerusalem?"

We discussed that for a bit and then noted: "You would have spent your whole life away from home."

After we finished wondering about the story, a couple of the children wanted to work with the story more during a free response time we host every week. When it came to moving the people to Babylon, the waiting was too much so in their telling of the story the children just picked up the people and began moving them to Babylon like Superman.

A helper was on-hand, gently reminding them: "Remember? That's not how the story goes. It took them a long time to go. They couldn't just hop over the river. They went around it."

With that, I was happy to see that the children slowed down a bit and took time to be faithful to the waiting-story.

Our goal in this little exercise was to help the kids feel the "dissonance" of waiting. Waiting is one of those things that cannot be taught by just talking about it. In our day and age we are not accustomed to waiting for anything. We are told that people have a short attention span nowadays so it's our job to make sure they don't get bored. "Keep it moving." But waiting is good for our soul and there is no sound-bite shortcut to this. We can't learn waiting by some clever technique of not-waiting. We can only learn the value of waiting by waiting. It takes time. We don't like it, but that does not change the fact that waiting takes time. Making friends with this kind of waiting is one of the best things we could ever do for ourselves or encourage others to do. May we learn to wait.

PlayBook: I and Thou by Martin Buber

Some ideas are difficult to express with only one word. For example, some clocks merely tick while others tick-tock. Even as you read this, you can hear the different sounds in your head. Take a second:

Tick, tick, tick, tick

(Pause. Clear your head. Ready?)

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock

There’s a difference and I am compelled to make the distinction by using a single word for the first sound while using a hyphenated word for the other. I suppose I could use a string of words to describe the latter idea, but it conveys a denser meaning to use the shorter hyphenated form. I say tick-tock and you instantly know what I mean.

Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher, has written a short but brilliant treatise that asserts the world in which we live is an entirely hyphenated world. Existence is intrinsically relational—whether that relation is with nature, other people or God.

The title of the book is I and Thou but it could have also been titled I-Thou or I-It.

To say the word “I” presupposes an “other” to whom (or which) we relate. We cannot say “I” without having some other thing or person form the context that gives meaning to that “I”.  Here, I’ll try it.

To read the rest of the review, hop on over to PlayFull for the latest installment of a series called PlayBooks. 

generation to generation

Non-anxious presence. I have heard people use this phrase many times over the past four years but I cannot recall hearing it even once before then. The first time I encountered this rock-bed idea (articulated with those particular words) was in a book by Edwin Friedman entitled Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue. I am not sure if Dr. Friedman coined the phrase, but I am inclined to think that its prominent usage today is due largely to his teaching and writing. The book was first published in 1985 so, of course, Friedman’s use of the expression has been working its way through hearts and minds for at least three decades now—slowly transforming the way we think about agencies of change in various relationship systems.

Among his many hats, the late Edwin Friedman was both a rabbi and a psychologist. Regarding the latter, he ascribed to a particular field known as family systems therapy. Perhaps chief among the features that distinguish family systems therapy from other approaches is the conviction that whole systems should be taken into account when providing therapy for individuals.

For example, if a child is suddenly having trouble at school, acting up, becoming depressed, rebellious, or careless—or if they adopt any other number of behaviors that provide occasion for concern—the traditional therapeutic approach places the focus of therapy on the child.

But family systems therapy takes a step back from this and considers those features of the system in which the child lives that may have encouraged and produced this “trouble” in the first place. The system—the characteristics of that web of relationship itself—may be what needs to be changed if the child is ever going to lead a healthy life.

So, family systems therapy prioritizes process over content. A content-approach asks, “What is the issue and how can we resolve it?” A process-approach asks, “Are there features of the system itself that gave rise to this issue? How can we change the way the relationship-process is set up so this issue becomes, in effect, a non-issue?” Family systems therapists see the traditional approach as akin to beating a dead horse. No matter what short-term “progress” one makes with a “patient” the same issues (albeit in different disguises) will keep popping up in the long-term—because the system itself which gave rise to the issue has remained the same!

For example, among ministerial leaders it is common to encounter the problem of burnout and chronic anxiety or depression. The traditional approach treats the leader: “How can we help the leader rest, worry less, and/or take a vacation?”

So, the leader finally takes a vacation or, even better, goes on a sabbatical. They are given four months to rest. And they return. One year later: they are back in the same situation they were in prior to the rest period. This is why family systems therapy asks: “What is it about the system that nurtures burnout, anxiety and depression in our leaders?”  If we can change “the dance we do” in this environment, we will change the fruit borne of it. 

One key, then, to nurturing healthy relationship systems is healthy leadership. And the core of healthy leadership, Friedman asserts, consists of non-anxious presence. Healthy leaders embody non-anxious presence which, in turn, fosters non-anxious environments—which, in turn, provides a context in which people can thrive.

Sounds simple, right? “If we can practice this so-called non-anxious presence, we’ll all be okay.” It isn’t easy to do this, however. Here’s why:

To read the rest of the review, hop over to PlayFull...

hope and children

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to present to a group of kids at our church the first story in a series I'm writing called PlayFull Faith. To be sure, I hope the PlayFull Faith series will help people of all ages—adults and children—but one of the tests I have for it is the “child-friendly” test. I want the story to engage kids and help them interact meaningfully with the content.

Here’s why this matters to me: I believe in a God of hope. In fact, I believe that, though love is the greatest of the three cardinal virtues, it is impossible to love when one has no hope. Hope is a spring from which faith and love become possible.

To hope is to live now in what-is-to-come. It is a posture that relinquishes regret concerning the past and embraces courage in the present because “greater things have yet to come” in the future.

Hope is so foundational a whole theological system has arisen out of it. This “theology of hope” is one that truly embodies the “now-and-not-yet” aspect of the kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke. Faith in this Jesus-of-hope orients one in the present according to “what-will-be”—redemption, joy, beauty, shalom. A true theology of hope enables one to act in love today through a joy-filled vision of the future.

I agree with that much.

But here’s my problem with many of our so-called theologies. They fail to take children into account—not merely as objects of theology but as subjects—or rather, as authors. Yet, what better resource is there to develop a theology of hope than children?  Children have the best chance of living out hope since their future is greater than their past. “The future” is what they have. “The past” is what they will have, in time.

Because of this, PlayFull Faith is intended for all—both young and old—to discover what it means to live in hope. The stories in the series are derived from The Story, as told in the Bible. That Big Story reminds us we are destined for things that spring from Someone “who was and is and is to come.”  If these stories are not for children, they cannot be for any of us—because, before our Father, we are all children.

Be on the lookout—especially for this first story in the series. I expect it will be used in all kinds of settings to help folks dream about the future. Yes, the creation story is not just about something that happened in the past. It is a story about the future.

And thank you for all the encouragement so many of you have given thus far! You truly give the folks at PlayFull “hope to carry on.”

Smiles,

Troy

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This article was originally posted over at playfull.org. I invite you to visit PlayFull on Facebook and give us a like! 

tragedy and comedy

In college, I was active in theater. And I was fascinated with tragedy. If I had a choice between tragedy and comedy, I would choose tragedy every day of the week and twice on Fridays.  The first play I chose to direct was Oedipus Rex. I did not choose it because it was a fine display of the three unities of time, place and action.  I chose it because I was intrigued by the descent of a man of nobility. What madness would drive a king to gouge out his own eyes?

My beloved drama director, Patsy Miller, was of a different persuasion. Once we were discussing potential plays that could be produced the following season. Of course, I suggested all kinds of tragedy, both modern and classic. But she repeatedly rejected my suggestions. “Ugh,” she said, “that is such a dark, dark play. I think the world needs more beauty and light. There are so many ugly, dark things being produced these days. Let’s do something beautiful.”

Her words stuck with me but did not persuade me right off. For some reason, I continued to prefer tragedy.

To read the rest, hop on over to PlayFull...

the truth is more interesting than a lie

“The truth is always more interesting than a lie.”

This is something my college drama director told us over and over again. She attributes the statement to Konstantin Stanislavski, former artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater and founder of a technique best known as The Method.

Stanislavski revolutionized the craft of acting based on his conviction that the truth is always more interesting than a lie. Acting had become stylized in Stanislavski’s day. As such, the “tricks of the trade” had grown old and tired. There were only so many variations on gesture, voice and movement one could conjure.

But real life does not come at us in predictable tics and fashionable vocal tones. Real people surprise us—if we take the time to really notice them.

So, Stanislavski asked “why”. Why is this so? How is it that so many people can be so different? What makes each person truly unique? How is it that we encounter personalities and mannerisms in countless variety? 

To read the rest of this post, head on over to PlayFull...

the artist's way

Julia Cameron has helped countless people tap into hidden reservoirs of creativity and imagination. She labels her approach "a course in discovering and recovering your creative self.” The results are astounding: the accountant uncovers a hidden talent—a knack for fiction writing; the stay-at-home mom launches a career in award-winning painting; the retired widow becomes a proficient photographer.

Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way provides us with the “cheat sheets” to her course. Especially helpful are the concrete exercises she includes to get those creative juices flowing.

Most of these exercises are easy and, in my opinion, all of them are fun! For example, to coax courage out of your hidden artist, she proposes an exercise called “Detective Work”. Without over-thinking your response, she lists 20 phrases for you to complete by way of developing awareness as to "why, when and where" your creative-self went into hiding.  Here are a few of those phrases:

My favorite childhood toy was…

I don’t do it much but I enjoy…

If I could lighten up a little, I’d let myself…

If it weren’t too late, I’d…

My parents think artists are…

My God thinks artists are…

To read the rest of this review, head on over to PlayFull... 

a game about dying

I made friends with someone recently who cares deeply about the process of dying. Her background is hospice care (among other interests) and she keeps a blog that is about “the spiritual practice of contemplating death as a way of living life more fully.”

Most people would not put “death” in the same category as “play” but in talking with my new acquaintance one day I discovered the two go hand-in-hand. As I described PlayFull to her, her eyes lit up because she instantly saw how the process of dying (and the practice of being a companion to someone in their dying) was an intrinsically playful process.

Play, at its fullest, is a vulnerable practice. It involves a posture of openness in which we let another see our real self, with no pretension, no hypocrisy, no concern for image. We play when we come to the place where we say, “I don’t have anything to lose! I may as well be myself and embrace the joy, freedom and grace of doing so. I have space to play and imagine.”

In that light, it could be said that those who are at their most helpless are those who can truly play. This, I believe, is why my friend saw play as something that coincides with her calling to come alongside those who are near death. She experiences her vocation in hospice care as playful.

On Saturday, she forwarded a link to me on Twitter. It is, in fact, a game someone has developed that helps people open up to talk freely about end-of-life questions. The game is called “My Gift of Grace”.

To read the rest of the article, visit us over at PlayFull... 

grief and parable

A few months ago I paid a visit to Indianapolis and facilitated a meeting with a small group of Christians. During the meeting, one of the men was clearly in pain. So, we prayed for him.

Just weeks after that, doctors discovered that the pain in his leg was caused by a tumor. He did not have long to live. About a month later, he died.

About six weeks ago, some other friends had a baby. Nine days ago the mother died of cancer.

Yesterday, a friend went to the funeral of a co-worker who was murdered eight days ago and on Friday another friend’s sister just passed away in old age.

So, today I'd like to tell a story that helps me process this grief.

Head over to PlayFull to read on, if you like.

thinking, fast and slow

Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002--an astonishing accomplishment considering his background is in the field of psychology. In Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman explores the relationship between the many intuitive, automatic choices we make and the judgments that require a slower process of thinking. He dubs these two modes of cognition “System 1” and “System 2”, respectively.

For instance, if I ask my teenage son to add 2 and 2, he would quickly respond: 4. His response would be automatic; he would answer without having to think about it. He would use System 1.

When he was first learning to add, however, this simple computation would have required the use of System 2, a slower process that involves counting—which, at very young ages, requires a great deal of mental effort.

To simulate the use of System 2 for most adults, I ask you to try the following exercise that’s taken from Kahneman’s book:

To read the rest of the article, I invite you to visit us over at PlayFull. 

some cybersteps today

When we moved to the States in 2010, I began a long process that I call "taking spiritual inventory". Only recently have I been able to give a different, warmer name to this process--thanks to something I read by Richard Rohr. In his book Falling Upward he refers to "a spirituality for the second half of life."

Yes, I'm that old. Ahem.

At any rate, this search for the second-half-of-life spirituality consisted in part in asking myself, "Over these past 15 or 20 years...when things went well...when I was fruitful...helpful...when I felt most alive...what was it about the experience that made it so life-giving for me and for others?"

Conversely, I asked myself: "When things went awry...when I felt as if the life was drained right out of me...when I made a bad situation take a turn for the worse...what was it about that experience that I do not want to repeat?"

As I thought about that, and put together some pieces from my past, I discovered that whenever I played and helped others play, good fruit was borne. Conversely, whenever I took myself or a situation too "seriously", I made things worse.

The idea first came to me in December 2011, "What if the rest of my life could be spent playing and helping others play?"

"Of course," I said to myself, "that would depend on what you mean by play."

"Yes, yes, of course," I said back to myself. (Yes, I do talk to myself like this!) "But, perhaps that's the question you can give yourself permission to explore. 'What is play?'"

So, the short of it is: I found this such a compelling question that I started a non-profit called PlayFull. Today, we went live online: website, twitter and facebook. In the grand scheme of things, we're just small potatoes right now, but isn't that how play starts, anyway? Fitting, methinks...

Either way, small or not, I'm so pumped I could jump up and shout all night! :) And I invite you to do the same.

Visit our blog here,  Like us on facebook here, and Follow us on twitter here.

We're convinced playfulness is one of the world's greatest untapped resources for personal growth, relational health and, yes, even organizational vitality. Come along for the ride. It'll be anything but boring and you just might find yourself surprised by how powerful joy can be.

a dream

I registered a new non-profit on March 11 called PlayFull. PlayFull is dedicated to helping people and organizations practice holistic playfulness in their…

thinking,

attitudes,

behaviors

and

contexts.

I’m happy to say I’m not in this alone. I’m joined by board members Doreen Olson and Roland Kuhl. 

Doreen leads the Christian formation department of the Evangelical Covenant Church. I met her at our new home church in 2011. She invited Heather and me to work with her on the Christian formation team there and it has been a delight knowing her.  Doreen and her husband Mark have been a continual source of encouragement and support for Heather, me and the kids. They bless our socks off.

Roland is pastor of a Mennonite church here in the Chicagoland area and he serves as an adjunct professor at Northern Seminary. He has a keen intellect and a warm, approachable personality. Like me, he likes to think of God as a dancer. I met him through my work with Forge Chicago (some other great peeps!).

Next week, I’m looking forward to meeting with both Doreen and Roland to pick their brains about an idea I’m working on called PlayFull Faith. More on that later…

For now, I suppose I’m writing this because I have to put something down on paper or I’ll burst! I have so many ideas swirling around my head and heart that I find I cannot focus any one of them into something dense and potent. For now, let me try to catch at least one thought for some minutes and then set it free, hoping it will return some time later.

I dream that PlayFull will, over time, articulate a theology of play—that we will paint a portrait of God as singing and dancing, writing poems and composing new songs. That the story of God will come alive for people in fresh ways—that many will be surprised by hope and joy.

Some months ago I described PlayFull to a friend. When I got to the part about God being playful, she said, “Sign me up! I’ve never heard of a God like that—but I think that he really must be, you know.”

Too often Christians describe God in severe, moralistic terms. This is a problem because we instinctively know that, if there is a God—and if this God created all things—this picture of the killjoy God must be a distorted image we’ve made. What kind of killjoy creates countless birds, gurgling springs, sunshine and galaxies we will never reach? That’s right: killjoys don’t create things like that. So, if there is a God—and it’s true he created such a wonderfully brilliant world—our lives are intended to be enjoyed not merely endured. When we suffer, we feel something is wrong. When fear dominates, we know, “This is not the way life should be!”

And our inkling is right. That’s because each of us is marked with something dignified and noble—I refer to this mark as “imaging God.” Christians often refer to it as “the image of God” but I prefer to think of this God-mark as a gerund—continuously active. For, if God is who he says he is, then the image of God in us cannot be merely static. God’s very name is a verb, so our imaging him must also be fluid, always in process.

This act of “imaging” is something we participate in; it’s a playful, improvisational process—like dancing with a partner.  This is why I hope PlayFull will be much more than words on a page or cyphers in cyberspace—static in the spheres. That’s why I dream that through our work in PlayFull, people will experience what it means “to image God.” They will join him in the dance he’s already performing. They will put harmony to the melody he sings. They will add a breathtaking line to the poem he started.

I dream that many, many people will experience God and life and relationships not as Its but as Thous, not as objects to be mastered and controlled but as beings to be revered and enjoyed.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey, because there’s much more to come. In fact, I plan on proclaiming this message until I lay dead in the grave—and beyond as we play in the presence of our Maker.

Stay tuned and let me know if you'd like to join me on this journey somehow. I promise it'll be anything but boring.