The Holy No! can clarify what is ours to do at this time – and what is not – Transcript
Jim Latimer
And welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministry, best practices and quick help – wisdom from the field. This is our collaborative Wisdom from the Field project featuring short interviews with transitional interim ministers, and others, with practical help and wisdom to offer those engaged in transitional ministry. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Wisdom from the Field.
Jim Latimer
And today, we have the good fortune of having with us Reverend Lindsey Peterson. Lindsey is a designated term pastor serving in an urban church in Massachusetts. She and I have known each other for a while. I am impressed with her rich life experience, and how she brings all of it to her ministry. She’s a gifted visionary, singer songwriter, and lots of other things that she’s bringing to her five-year designated term that she’s doing right now – helping this congregation move forward. The topic for this episode is what Lindsey calls, The holy No! So, Lindsey, we would love to hear what you might have to expand on that.
Lindsey Peterson
Yes, and it’s good to be here. I’m at South Congregational for a five-year designated term pastorate, which is a rather long for a designated term. I’m halfway through now. And one piece – it’s taken a while – but one piece along the way, especially coming in, is that people know I’m not coming in as a settled minister. We’re in transitional ministry. They know some change is afoot, and that it’s needed to some extent. My experience is that often I get a lot of folks saying, We could do this! Or, We could do that! They love the church. They want it to thrive. And they come up with ideas. And they think, Oh, we could do this if we did some kind of food thing, right? If we did this, people would come! Or if we did a kid’s thing, people would come!
Lindsey Peterson
And mostly they’re cool ideas. Some ideas are okay, yeah, maybe. But mostly, they’re cool ideas. Yet in my context, and I know I’m not alone in this, I have constantly had to return myself and the congregants to the question of, Yes, but who is “we”? And can “we” do this? Can “we” actually do this? It’s a challenging question to ask because you want to say with enough conviction and vision and drive, Yes, we can make this happen! But a lot of those initial ideas of how to get through, how to survive, how to do it, are still very much centered in we the congregation, which when we look at it now is 30 elder people. We the congregation, can we really do some of these things? And the Holy No is to get to the place where we say, Oh, no, we can’t do that. But what makes it holy is that it opens the door to say, Well, is that a focus? If we’re looking at youth, for example, is this idea that would serve youth something that we really do value? Or could we provide support to some other organization doing that. Could we offer space for another organization to do something? A Holy No can clarify what is ours to do at this time, and what is not.
Jim Latimer
Oh, let me just stop you there. What you just said was great! The Holy No can clarify what is ours to do at this time. It reminds me how with non-directive coaching, which I do a lot of, we don’t tell the coachee what to do. The coach’s job is to create a container which helps the person we’re coaching discern what’s in the conversation and what’s out. Because if there’s too much in then it gets confused. The container provides focus.
Lindsey Peterson
That’s right. And part of the context of ministry today is that what is ours to do now is different than what was ours to do previously – certainly, when this church was founded in 1840, and certainly when it was in its perceived heyday in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Lindsey Peterson
And I had a reflection as you were speaking, that part of the holiness about this kind of No, which of course, I’m drawing blanks on other specific examples, but part of the holiness of it is that what it asks of us to do is to humble ourselves to Spirit, for example. That’s part of what makes it holy. It’s being honest without being despairing – despairing that we are no longer the center of all things love and justice. Even while we’re a part, we are not center. We can’t just keep trying to be everything. So, there’s a humbling. There’s definitely a humbling process within my context. And similarly, I would imagine, with any church that has had the resources and has been, you know, the white elites of society.
Jim Latimer
Sure. And so, that humbling that you’re speaking of where the congregation gradually comes to realize that they’re not at the center of whatever it is anymore, but more on the periphery, right? They’re still in it, but they’re not at the center. They’re on the periphery. And that creates a space for something else to come in – that actually is empowering in some way. Is that true? I’m not trying to put ideas in your head, but that clicked for me: How is it empowering to realize that we’re not the center anymore?
Lindsey Peterson
Yeah, it absolutely is empowering! It doesn’t necessarily come in a giant wave of, Oh, I feel empowered now! Because I do think that people hold the feeling of being less important for a while, and that feels like loss, not immediately like empowerment. But absolutely! It makes way for discernment, and I’d say it leads to partnership pretty directly, and also to discernment about how to use the financial, the material – like building assets – and then the people capacity of the institution, of the organization, to make room, to make partnership, to make way, to build connections and relationships with organizations in the community that are either already active in some areas, or that have seed ideas. And they’re just connected differently. If we look at a water metaphor – some of the other organizations in the community may be on the up side of their wave crest rather than on the crash side. Yes. It’s definitely empowering.
Jim Latimer
You are really dropping some diamonds here around how it opens a doorway to discernment, to a discernment that can lead to partnership. When we recognize that we’re not the center anymore, we can still be involved in some pretty great and holy things.
Lindsey Peterson
Yes. Again, in my context, there’s a power of representational power still in the church. We are a physically large building with a rainbow flag outside in downtown Springfield. We’ve been there awhile, and we have community meals out of it. And even while the church is no longer center in the way that it understood itself to be in the past, there’s still symbolic power in the physical plant, let’s say, and the people are connected to that. On your observation about empowerment, it’s like a connected humbling. It’s saying, Okay, we’re not going to be the organization that does all of this. But we are going to take seriously the power that we have, which is a culture of power. We’re associated with God! God has ideas. God has power. So, if we are people who reach out to partner with for example an arts community and in the town, we’re doing something. We’re saying that this is holy work, even if that organization doesn’t perceive itself in a particularly religious frame.
Jim Latimer
Yes! And so, it’s freeing up the church. And as we move into concluding this episode here, what I’m hearing you say is that this humbling leads to a holy empowering as your congregation gets in touch with other aspects of its power which are still very much there – and which don’t depend on the number of people that are there. There’s great symbolic power. They still are the church with a capital C, and there’s a lot of divine potential and power that’s there that doesn’t depend on how many people are in worship every Sunday or this or that. And what you said there – and maybe this will be in our next segment – so they can link, they can partner with other organizations in the community to be about their holy work, even though those organizations may not necessarily see it as holy or religious. That’s a great one! Any anything else you want to say here as we wrap up and move into another one maybe around partnering or something?
Lindsey Peterson
The Holy No is a good discernment tool also for clergy and shifting ministry – What is ours to do? What isn’t ours? Where’s partnership? It’s a good discernment tool.
Jim Latimer
What is ours to do, and what is ours not to do? The Holy No. That’s it. Great. Lindsey, thank you very much. This was rich.
Lindsey Peterson
Thank you, Jim.
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