The CME Church; LeBron

Over the next few days, I hope to list some of my thoughts about my church. The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (formerly Colored Methodist Episcopal Church) is the last traditionally African American denomination to leave the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The AMEs and AMEZs left on their own; we waited until the racists asked us to leave.

They say we are the church of the house slaves, and that's why we are so conformist and non-confrontational. Speaking of non-confrontational: this morning on the bus a woman was being really mean to her daughter. The daughter was crying. While I thought the lady was mean and I didn't like her cursing at her daughter, I didn't feel that it was my place to step in. Not sure why -- the lady was bad and I felt for the kid, but I didn't feel the lady was over the line. A social worker felt differently and confronted the lady. I sorta wondered why I didn't, but the lady raised a good point: what DO you do with kids when they're out of control? I wasn't there, I didn't have the history, I don't know how the kid misbehaved -- I just saw the lady's reaction. She did seem to have poor parenting skills, and she did act out by calling a friend and telling them about the social worker, while repeating to the kid that the kid couldn't misbehave and the lady was the one who carried the kid for 9 months, who fed and clothed her, etc. What the lady showed me was that she had poor coping skills and I felt bad for the kid, but I'm not sure the kid was abused.

But why didn't I speak up? Shouldn't we err on the side of caution and overprotection? I prolly didn't speak up cuz I'm a CME. We NEVER stir the waters...

It's 6 and I have a 7 pm swim class, so I'ma jet. I have to preach on Sunday. I think I'm going to use Colossians 1:1-14 and interplay that with my rafting experience. I think. ya never know where the Spirit will lead....

9:22pm. I love it that I can call my brother and my father (who live in different states) and just say "where do YOU think he's going?" and have both of them answer. While I've decided I like LeBron more and more since watching him (I think he's a very level headed young man), I have to say I'm disappointed that he's going to the Heat and leaving Cleveland. I mean, what does Cleveland have left now? My dad and I both thought and hoped he would stay there, but my brother said he was going to Miami. NY fans, I'm sure, are devastated. Oh, well.

1 am - it's a little unnerving how the windows 7 background keeps changing when you're doing one thing. But doing one thing I am: Cramming popcorn down my throat before bed, so thought I'd post a little more.

Back to the CME Church. so we're very much a non-confrontational church -- I don't remember, but I think that during the civil rights marches in Chapel Hill, I was with the Baptists, not my Methodist friends. As a traditionally African American branch of Methodism, we share the same prophetic principles, the same strangely warming fire of the Holy Spirit, we have the same methodical structure to assure checks and balances and accountability up and down the line.

But something's gone terribly wrong. It's as if we're Dr. Frankenstein's monster. We've got all the pieces, even if they work jerkily or disjointedly or generally not as smoothly as they could. And though we are stitched together from hither and yon, we do have something of a body, albeit one that appears to lack the innate physiological and cognitive faculties necessary for forward movement; still, it learns to move and does so -- jerkily at first, but with more, if labored, self-determination every day.

But still, somehow, what we have is a human-cobbled-together-creation that's playing at church. We we need is a divinely-inspired creation BEING church -- the Body of Christ. We don't need to dress ourselves up to do Christ right -- we need to do Christ right to dress ourselves up! We don't need to go to dinners and dress up in white suits to be holy, and we don't need to be holy so we can dress up in white suits and go to dinner. We need to be holy to see which of God's people needs a suit or which of God's people needs a dinner so that they, too, can enjoy some of the abundance.

In my mind, that's where my church falls down. Sure, they give from time to time, but only among the young people do I see a genuine desire to give without some expectation of receiving anything in return (although part of that has to do with how we teach Christianity. If all we teach is that we should be good so God will reward us in heaven, then we're living for the wrong reasons. I heard someone say it the other day. She said that her pastor said "Most people are just buying fire insurance." And it's true. Most of the people around the church are just b buying Fire insurance. They're just there, not even necessarily believing, but thinking, well, if there IS a hell, I don't want to burn in it, so I'ma go to church and that'll be my fire insurance.

I'm sleepy, but I have to circle back to the CME Church that I know and love, the same fairly dysfunctional church that lost all its theological credibility when it condemned homosexual unions in one general conference and then, with no change of policy, passed the character of a church leader who admitted to engaging in homosexual unions and who not only gave no indication that it had ended, but did not even see fit to address the issue with his congregants. I'm doing Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and I'd say the team that is the College of Bishops is displaying symptoms of the first dysfunction right now: Absence of Trust. The Absence of trust stems from team members (the college of bishops) being unwilling to be vulnerable with each other. Failing to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction, which is fear of conflict. We just had a general conflict where major issues were simply not discussed because the College of Bishops shut the people down. Teams that fear conflict cannot passionately exchange ideas; they go behind each other's backs and engage in veiled discussions and guarded comments.

Which sets the church up for the third dysfunction, which is a lack of commitment. If people believe their ideas are not considered, there is no buy in and the project rs and initiatives proposed by the College of Bishops are doomed to fail.

Without commitment and buy-in, there is an avoidance of accountability. Without commitment to a clear plan of action, people are not clear and are hesitant to hold one another accountable.

That leads to the fifth dysfunction, an inattention to results. That happens when people put their individual needs or egos (I want to be pastor bishop, elder, Gen. Secy, etc) ahead of what's good for the CME Church (if I were honest with myself I would see that I don't have the necessary skills. If I were honest with myself, I'd see that I don't have a plan. If I were honest with myself, I'd realize that "I don't have a clue). But we don't make those calls. We go along to get along, until we find ourselves right where we started, except that everyone hates everyone...

2 am. I gotta go to bed.