The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

16 Old FINKs

I put out the word to a bunch of Old FINKs - people who've been with us for years - and a few new FINKs - people who hosted me this year or enjoyed the conspiratorial ideas I'd planted in their heads on my tour.

Things like:

• "We've got to kill the drop off Sunday School before it kills the church" and

• "If I were back in the parish I'd NEVER, EVER, NEVER do confirmation again without the parents sitting right there" and
• "Angie Patel of the Neuroscience Institute says the MIND is the BRAIN meets the BODY meets the ENVIRONMENT. That means if you are just sitting in a chair and aren't getting their BODIES involved actively in the learning (sign language, skits, roll plays, teaching what they've just learned to someone else, jumping up in worship and doing "show and tell") you are losing a third of your mind before you start. It also means if you aren't considering the ENVIRONMENT of your learning space and of your teaching face and of your collective grace, you're losing the other third.

I wanted to gather a set of advisers from the FINK world to walk the mountains, dream new dreams for family ministry, look at the future of the church, and help me process the first 69 cities of my anniversary tour. 

Fall and Aspen seemed like the right time and place. I knew I'd know just enough to think I knew something... but would need to bounce that something off some trusted friends before I blabbed it to the world.

Jeff Linman from Orlando showed up last night. He's in the kitchen at this moment making me an omlet. (Yeah... I flew a chef in from Florida). He's the guy who just built a church in a bowling alley and is dragging people to Burundi - the other Rawanda where 300K Hutus and Tutsies killed each other without any international press. Jeff  ran into a young John Denver look-alike singing in the mountains shortly after he landed. His word for the moment: "There's nothing like a Rocky Mountain high... when you're from Florida.

Guy and Renea Redfield from Chetek, WI (my mom's home church) arrived after almost being snowed out. They're sleeping at the moment.

Amy Kippen's on the way from West Fargo. Amy's got 71% of her dads in Sunday School every week doing Bible Song, and as many adults as children in Sunday School.

Then there's Chris and Chris Matthey. Chris is one of the half dozen pastors I know who got fired for doing FINK. I like people who get fired for being radical enough to tell the parents that they're not going to be their spiritual mercencary any longer.

There's Mark Juliot from Alleluia in Naperville IL, who's church is busting at the seams with some of our principles. There's Paul Mattson from a little church in the rural world of Crosby MN who's partnering with another church down the road and doing the same. Dana Peterson from Fort Collins who helps us try to merge DNA with Youth Encounter a few years ago. (It bombed, but hey, it's all a learning experience and as Wayne Gretsky used to say "I missed 100% of the shots I didn't take.")

There's Chritine Otte from Norfolk NE, Phil Geleske from Coppell TX, Mary and Charles Miller from Kings Mt NC, Scott Ness from Grove City OH, Erik Feig from Prince of Peace in Burnsville MN, and Rick Lund, who just left Bethel in Madison to re-FINK a small church 20 miles from the city.

Wonderful folks. Wonderful space. Wonderful time.

I wonder what will happen this week.

(The photo above was yesterday in Ann Arbor, as we donned shades and sang "Look Toward the Heavens" in worship with the kids as worship leaders before my sermon.)

Tear Your Head Off

I sat up after closing devotions last night and watched the ESPN highlights of the Packers/Vikings game with Rev. Neil Nieman from Wisconsin... a Packer Season Ticket holder from birth. This morning Neil was wearing his Packers' shirt in mourning. At the breakfast table just now Rev. Fred Wideman from Baton Rouge rattled off the names of the entire Packers team from the Vince Lombardi days, impressing Neil to no end.

"Almost makes me teary-eyed," said Neil.

I thought out loud to the table of UMC youth people, munching their Frostes Flakes. "Imagine a job where every day there's 11 people in your face who's only goal is to tear your head off."

Then I turned to Fred.

"Oh yeah. You're youth pastors."

Aspen UMC Table Talk - 9.29.09

Listen in as members from the Faith Inkbuators Aspen UMC Think Tank sit around the table share their most embarrassing moments in ministry with Rich Melheim, Monty Lysne and Len Sweet.

MP3 File

Here's a fun little discussion from last night on "The Most Embarrassing Moments in Ministry" by our UMC guests.

We Wondered and Wandered and Plundered and Pondered (the future of the UMC)

   

"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create." - Len Sweet

LAST WEEK

Version 1.0 of The Future of Children, Youth and Family Ministry in the UMC

We gathered in the glorious Colorado sunshine as the Aspen leaves were glowing across the valley. We asked a dozen front-line movers-and-shakers-and-systems breakers from across the UMC a handful of questions.

We wondered and wandered and plundered and pondered the future of children/youth/family ministry and the future of the UMC the church in a world where rebooting denominations is not going to be an option.

We worked for a day on these leaders' views about the needs of the UMC if it is to thrive - not just survive - in the post-Christendom world. Key words that jumped out: Reawakening, renewal, reclaiming the Wesleyan heritage for a new day, passion, a paradigm shift from print and paper to people and process, pruning, parents at the core of faith incubation, and an understanding - in the pulpits and the pews and the kitchens - that Christianity is not a religion of prescribed methods but a grace-filled and joyous series of relationships.

"There are basically three kinds of people: Those who make things happen. Those who let things happen. And those who don't know anything has happened." - Winston Churchill

Day 2

We enjoyed a white-knuckle drive across Independence Pass for a discussion on "Best Practices"  in a newly built yurt on a wilderness mountain. We walked to the foot of a hole in the mountain we're calling "Grandma's Eye." We followed a stream on a trail that wasn't a trail... yet. We returned to dream out loud about how we, as a church, might embrace the Christ who is already in the future, beckoning us to join him rather than worshipping the past. We asked what the UMC needed in Children, Confirmation, Youth, Family and Cross-Generational ministry.

Word that jumped out: A plan, parents at the core, nightly faith practices, discipleship - not membership, in-depth curriculum, a stress on whole life faith formation/incubation instead of just information, community learning with parents at the core - not in separate rooms, faith themes at church that go home seven nights a week, and nightly home huddles NOT an option but THE CORE of faith formation.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - X-Files, The Blessing Way

Day 3

We enjoyed the challenges of a mystery guest (Len Sweet) who dropped in for 24 hours to challenge us to move from the Gutenberg to the Google World. (Hey, the world has moved. Maybe the church should, too?) Len listened to all the work we'd done as a group, asked some clarifying questions, then walked us toward a vision of the church in a Google World where images, stories, and relationships hold more power and move more hearts than words alone could ever hope to move.

We digested some challenging thoughts about "followership" vs. "leadership", "left-brain (objective) vs. right-brain (subjective)" and the difference between dissecting things down into tiny pieces vs. seeing everything as a whole. (Pericopes vs  and the importance of seeing the Biblical narrative as a whole. Len walked us into a fresh, wholistic Bibilcal perspective by taking us from God the Genesis Gardner to the resurrected Jesus who is also mistaken for a Gardner on Easter Morning. From the God who "splits the Adam" to create us in community, to the second Adam, whose side is also split to birth the new relationship, the new covenant, the new church.

We ate some wonderful food and drank some marvelous wine along with drinking in some spectacular  colors at the peak of Aspen's colors. (Yeah, a Lutheran is hosting this. Lutheran's follow Paul's "a little wine is good for the digestion" whenever they meet.)

"Seems to me there's no reason to be a student of the future. Unless, of course, you plan to spend the bulk of the rest of your time there." - Rich Melheim

Day 4

In the end, we created a 1.0 version of a vision-to-action plan.Want to see it? Email rich@faithink.com.

   

TODAY: UMC Future, Version 1.1

The second dozen UMC leaders - all recommended by their Bishops and/or regional leadership folks - show up to do this all over again. They're landing in Aspen as we speak. We'll walk these folks through the same process before we show them last week's work. Then we'll combine the two-week's work to create a version 1.1 of the action plan for those pioneer UMC churches who wish to birth an "incubation" model for faith education with the parents at the core - not the sidelines - of Christian education.

  

NEXT WEEK: Version 1.2

When these folks leave, I'll teach at FIRST UMC in West Chicago on Saturday, and Zion Lutheran in Ann Arbor on Sunday. Then it's back to host 17 "old Lutheran FINKS" as we look at where the faith incubation movement has been in the last 15 years, look at the moment in Lutheran settings, look at the UMC plans and commit to blessings and helping our UMC friends as they work to shift the "parent-less drop off  Sunday School program into a "parent involved "process over the next three years in our UMC test churches.

A Version 1.2 plan will be suggested, based on the "Old FINKs" experience of testing faith inkubations in their parishes.  (An "Old FINK" is leader who has been with us for a decade or more with a heart for family ministry calls parents to the CORE of the "every night in every home" faith incubation process.)

With three weeks of vision-to-action work under our belts, we'll publish a white paper on "Faith Incubation and the Future of the UMC" and invite folks to fly it around the church for comments, clarification, critique, and, if need be, criticism. (Your critics aren't your enemies. They make you think. They make you tweak. They make you better.)

When the dust settles after Christmas, we'll invite folks to host discussions in 50 states before Easter, then set up two additional Aspen get-aways, and figure out what the summer and fall need to look like.

*PS: Our Faith Inkubators Foundation is footing the bill to facilitate this process. We've been 85% Lutheran all these years, but in this rebooting world of Protestantism, it's probably time to stop being so pariochial and siloed.

Days 2 & 3

  

We woke to a beautiful Colorado sunrise, with word that that rain and snow might be on the way. Not to be deterred, our daring UMC leaders hopped in the van and suburban and headed out through a snowy Independence Pass toward.....

 

....our friend Arlen's Land, the new Yurt and Grandma's eye.We braved the snows on the Continental Divide and 30 minutes later were driving down the mountain in the most beautiful, dazzling fall colors and sunshine you could imagine.

   

  
 


A chat about "best practices" in the yurt, a walk to Grandma's Eye, and Rich and Loren and Justin's ordeal walking the stream filled our afternoon before the drive back home. Supper at a local pizza joint, a mini-van that wouldn't start, and an evening discussing the psychology of sharing "highs and lows" every night in a home took us to sleep time.

This morning we rose and asked six questions:

1. What are the three most pressing needs of the UMC?

2. What are the three most pressing needs of the UMC in Children's ministry?

3. "    " in Confirmation Ministry

4. In Youth/Young Adults Ministry

5. In Family Ministry

6. In Cross-Generational Ministry

I'll prepare a detailed while paper with the today's discussion for your view later this weekend... when I'm all alone at the house.

At 1:00, our mystery guest, Len Sweet, showed up. We invested an hour dissecting the FAITH 5, and having the group teach Len what they had been working on all week. Len invested the rest of the afternoon helping us look to the post-Gutenberg world. (The Google world).

Nancy McDougal, our resident Texan, is taking prolific notes. I'll post that later, too, plus the video Monty Lysne is taking (edited, of course).