I will look to see what he will say to me,

and what answer I am to give.

Then the Lord replied:

Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets

so that a herald may run with it.

For the revelation awaits an appointed time;

it speaks to the end and will not prove false.

Though it linger, wait for it.

Habakkuk 2.1-3

Last weekend we gathered together with some of our parish leaders for what we called a “summit” to discuss our strategic planning for the future of our campus.  As I have mentioned before (and as any of you readers who are also parishioners know) we are greatly in need of space. Our current facility is overwhelmed and dysfunctional on the weekends.  We know we need to grow, to better accommodate those already coming and to continue to receive still more people in north Baltimore who don’t have a church.

And besides those obvious reasons, there’s also another one. We want to grow to a size that is, in itself, a convincing argument that our evangelization and disciple-making strategy is successful and worth replicating elsewhere.

What we would like to do is double our capacity.

So, some time ago we began looking at options and alternatives; we hired an architect to help us plan and study what could and should be done. Last weekend was another part of the process, getting smart people together to keep talking it through.

It takes time.

To sort of sum things up, at the end of the day’s meetings, I used the words of the prophet Habakkuk.  Perhaps you’ve never heard of him or read that part of the Bible.  He is called a “minor” prophet so he doesn’t even sound important. God called Habakkuk to be a prophet even though he himself knew he was no visionary.  But God called him anyway.  How can you be a prophet if you can’t see what’s ahead? Well Habakkuk decided to stand watch on the ramparts.  In other words, he got himself into the best possible place to see something, if eventually there was something for him to see. And in response God says to him, “Good, now wait.” The revelation of what God is going to do is done in God’s time. Habakkuk’s job was to wait for it…in the most attentive way possible.

In the process, between the potential and the perfection, is often just where God wants us.  Not to punish us, but to prepare us, to get us ready for the work he is going to do. That’s where we are with our strategic plan.  On the ramparts, lively and attentive, trying to see what’s ahead for us and what this project is going to look like.  I wish it was already accomplished, because we could use more space right now. But it’s not, that is not where God wants us.

How about you? What do you need to wait on the Lord for these days?  Where does he want you to pause and pray for his preparation?

Wait for it.

Anyway, here’s some more information.  We are currently preparing a complete manuscript, including all the chapters, to be delivered to our editor by June 15.  The writing is all done, so we won’t have any trouble meeting the deadline, but there is plenty of editing and fine-tuning to do in the meantime. Toward that end I will not be speaking at weekend Masses starting this weekend (aside from a brief homily after communion).  Tom will be offering the message for Mother’s Day as well as our new series, which starts the following week (the messages, as is our off season custom, come after communion). That will free up most of my time to focus on getting the manuscript in great shape.

The week after next we are going out to Notre Dame to meet with the whole team at Ave Maria Press and get to know the people we’ll be working with through the process.  We’ll also be discussing how we get this book into the hands of the people we hope will read it.   We will even begin to talk about what the book will look like, on the inside as well as the cover (any of you who know me, know that I will be all over that one).  Currently we are in the process of requesting to speak at a couple of large church conferences next spring, as a way of promoting the book.  One will be here in Baltimore and the other is in Los Angeles.

As mentioned last week, this book is the story of us, what happened to us, what we learned and how we grew as we discovered:

• Our parish was not working.
• We didn’t know how to fix it.
• There are churches who are getting this right.
• We can learn from them.

After that our book is just about acting on what we learned and what happened to us when we did.

We tell our story to first of all better understand it ourselves.  That is initially why this was an important exercise for us, even if we never got published and no one ever read it. This is also a book that will be very helpful to our parishioners and newcomers here at Nativity. It will make it so much easier for them to appreciate and value why our culture and strategy is deliberately different from so many other Catholic Churches. It will organize for them our purpose, mission, values and what we are talking about when we talk about “growing disciples growing disciples.” It will be useful to them, in explaining to sometimes skeptical friends and family what is going on here.

But our primary audience is not here, it is elsewhere.  God put it on our heart from the beginning to speak to and write for people in other parishes: pastors, associate pastors, deacons, seminarians, parish staffers, religious educators, youth ministers, and volunteer ministers. We’re also writing for those who just have a view from the pew but value their local church community and appreciate its fundamental and critical role in their life and the life of the Catholic Church. We seek to thoughtfully engage all those who share the concern that things are not going well, that things could be going better. As we write in our preface:

“We do not pretend to know anything about the church community you serve in, or what would work there.  We strive to be respectful of your challenges and your efforts.  Of course not all the specific details we discuss will work everywhere. Our strategy must be translated into your setting if it is to work at all.  And we do not presume to insist that all our principles are transferable to your parish.

“But we’re guessing most of them are.”

We wrote this book because we want to be of assistance to our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ.  We believe God will use it in this way.

But even so, it seemed like such a stretch. Where do you begin to write a book?  How do you start? We talked about it for what seemed like forever (and was really about 6 months).  And then one day Tom just started sending me stuff he was writing. And because editing someone else’s work is irresistible to me, I started editing what he was sending me (which is our usual form of collaboration). And there we were, writing a book.

Over the course of about a year we remained somewhat disciplined to the project: I found myself working in the evenings after work, at least for a little while every night, and I usually wrote on Friday afternoons too.  Last summer we stepped it up, finishing at least a first draft of all the chapters. Then in the fall we started the search for a publisher.

We quickly learned that it is more work, and more difficult work, to find a publisher than it is to write a book.  And because our book is a so-called “trade publication” (one written for a professional audience in a particular field or industry) only a small number of “houses” (that’s what publishers call themselves) would even look at it.

And what they’re looking at is not the book. Nobody wants to look at your book.  Maybe, just maybe they’ll look at your book proposal, if you’re lucky.  And we were definitely not lucky.  Besides just being ignored we received our share of rejections and I eventually got better at dealing with the disappointment (I did not get good at it, but I did get better).
One house actually agreed to see us at a certain point, which we thought was a huge break and a giant step forward. Turns out, they hated our book so much they just had to tell us in person. They called us wrong and irresponsible in what we have to say about parish life.  They trashed the book from cover to cover and we walked out of the meeting completely wasted.

At times the whole process felt frustrating and futile and it seemed foolish to go on, I stopped talking about it to anyone because that felt foolish too. At other times I was so demoralized and depressed about the project I couldn’t even pick up the manuscript, just seeing it made me sick. Maybe we can’t write, maybe we have nothing to say.  Maybe we are wrong about what we think we know. At the very least it was clear we didn’t know what we were doing.

And yet, this was not a project we sought.  We believe it was placed on our hearts by God, and again and again we had to remind ourselves, if it happens, it happens according to his plan and by his power.

One house did begin a serious conversation with us. But it came in fits and starts and it was hard to tell if they like our project or were just trying to figure us out.

About two weeks ago I got an e-mail from a house who had previously agreed to look at our proposal. Ave Maria Press (at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana ) a very distinguished and widely respected publisher. It simply said:

“Send more chapters.”

After months and months of being ignored, declined, and castigated, these three little words were like water in the desert, like food after a fast. Since then we have agreed to publish with Ave and are very excited about working with them.  And we are very pleased that they also seem excited about this project.

But it was never about us and our need to be published, or our need to be known, or even our need to be right.  It was never about making money (we’re definitely not going to make much money in this effort) or even selling books. The project God put on our hearts is to reach out to people and parishes who know they need help and a way forward and are looking for resources to do it.  It is about making disciples and giving God the glory. And as long as we kept our focus on his plan, he showed up with his power.

You can begin to get a sense of what God is up to by looking at the people he is placing around you.  Look at the people he is bringing in the door.  If he is surrounding you with amazing people, it could be because amazing things are about to happen. Take a look around at the people who are gathering in your life or your church.  Take a look at the people who are leaving too. They will tell you something about what God wants to do.

I am overwhelmed by the people God is assembling here at Nativity, the talent, influence and ability.  It is amazing and humbling and tells me God has a great vision for this parish and he’s staffing us up to lead toward that vision.

2) As Perry Noble says, “Never, I mean EVER, apologize for big vision!” You can do exactly what God has called you to do. And if it’s big, so be it. We believe that beyond making disciples in north Baltimore (among unchurched Catholics), God is calling us to help influence other parishes elsewhere in the country.  That is a big vision and big vision can seem prideful, and it is if it’s all about serving your kingdom.  If you’ve got a big vision for serving God’s kingdom, big is just about the right size because God’s kingdom is the biggest thing ever.

3) Steps of faith are always going to be tentative maybe even frightening.  If they were easy, they wouldn’t be steps of “faith.” God wants to do great things in you and through you.  If you help lead a church community he wants to do life changing, world changing things through your community. But you’re the one whose got to step out and make those scary steps. You’ll never get any closer to the vision until you do.

4) What you must go through in order to lead toward a vision God has for your life or your church will not define you as a leader. Everybody has to go through difficulties and challenges and maybe (probably) worse. What you go through won’t define you, but how you go through it will. How you accept and work through the difficult stuff will shape and define your character.

5) Do whatever you need to do to build a great team to help you lead toward a great vision. Lead together and do so with deep dependence on the Lord’s leadership over you.

1) We’re answering questions that no one is asking.

In churchworld we endlessly debate theology and law and, above all, liturgy.  Nobody cares.  The people in your pews this weekend are not coming to learn about the kenosis of Christ.  And nobody who’s not coming cares about the new Roman Missal.  They’re asking “Why is my life falling apart?” “How do I get through another week as a single Mom with three kids?” “Am I going to lose my job?” “Do I really have cancer?”

God’s word can speak to all these issues, but if we’re caught up in our questions, instead of our communities’ questions, they’ll never know it.  And church will continue to be irrelevant to their lives.

2) We call laziness “authenticity.”

The Church is the Body of Christ and it is the hope of the world.  Our message and our work are more important than anything. There is more at stake here than Disney and Apple and Facebook put together.

So why is churchworld so widely perceived as boring and bad?  Why are so many of our efforts poorly planned, our services amateurish, our facilities unkempt and dirty? Lazy efforts on behalf of God’s Church dishonor God, and his people. And just because you’re canonically correct or liturgically correct or “authentic” to our Tradition, it doesn’t excuse you.

3) We call failure “faithfulness.”

Same with the inaction and lack of courage that masquerades as “faithfulness” or orthodoxy. Sorry, just because your parish is dying doesn’t mean you’re any more faithful than the parish that’s bursting at the seems. Our growth and success at Nativity is not an indicator of our skirting the rules and getting away with murder (as we have been accused by our detractors), it is the fruit of faithfulness.

4) We use “discipleship” as an excuse to not do “evangelization.”

Many, many people in churchworld, Catholic and Protestant alike, are only concerned with the people already in the pews (an exercise they would call discipleship or pastoral ministry or whatever).

The people in the community who aren’t in their pews don’t exist for them. Only problem is, Jesus told us they’re his priority.

Disciples make disciples, so if the people in your pew aren’t involved in evangelization, they’re not really acting like disciples. In the New Testament the disciples did not form a holy huddle and hang together discussing the color of the new carpet in the sanctuary. They went out to the whole world to share the good news. That’s authentic discipleship.

5) Parishes don’t know their “core” business.

I know, I know, the Church isn’t a business. But we have a job to do, there is work to be done and if we don’t do it, no one else will. Think about it. Others will educate, others will provide health care and social renewal…I’m not saying that churches shouldn’t, I’m just saying that others do, too.  Who is going to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the world if we don’t?  No one, that’s who. And yet parishes can get so caught up in everything else but.  We need to know our core purpose and get focused on it.

Stay tuned and I’ll add to the list. Meanwhile, comment if you want to. What are the problems you see that inhibit church health and growth?

and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.

See, darkness covers the earth

and thick darkness is over the peoples,

but the Lord rises up

and his glory appears over you.

Lift up your eyes and look about you:

all assemble and come to you.

Isaiah 60.1-2,4

If there is one thing we are not good at as a parish, if there is anything our staff falls short of as a group, if there’s one place where I always utterly fail, it is acknowledging and celebrating wins. We should never be self-congratulatory in a prideful way (some church communities are). But, we shouldn’t be reluctant to know and name our wins, because our wins aren’t even ours to begin with, they’re God’s.  So, recognizing and naming them is just giving him the glory. Before moving on to the next challenge we need to stop and thank God for his faithfulness and victory.

Sunday was a great victory and an amazing demonstration of God’s faithfulness.

• To begin with, the weather was perfect, if you could have custom ordered a day, that would’ve been it.
• The Cow Palace looked great, thanks to the efforts of dozens of ops ministers under the 24-7 lead of our Weekend Director Barry Sheehan (with some significant decorating design from staffers Alison Demartin and Kellie Caddick).
• Sight and sound were truly wonderful, thanks to our Creative Director Lucas Busco and Audio Engineer Jeremy Travos (don’t tell anyone, but they’re both wizards who possess magical powers). Thanks also go to their team of tech ministers.
• The “preshow” playfully greeted guests and helped them feel comfortable (an incredibly important thing to do for the unchurched). It was thanks to the talent Kristin Costanza and Chris Wesley demonstrate around here weekly.
• The ceremonies were flawless given the professional direction of Brian Crook, Bob Barczak and all our liturgical ministers; everything else ran smoothly too, thanks to hosts and parking ministers.
• The music was moving, inspiring and profoundly worshipful led by Rob Belanger, Al Walsh, Rich Skirpin and all their musical colleagues.
• The kids program, Time Travelers, was over the top fun and excitement thanks to Lisa Scata, Maggie German and their ebullient team of kid ministers. I saw one of their rehearsals and it was delightful.
• I know my Associate Tom Corcoran joins me in also extending thanks for the extra effort and labor of our other staff members last week: Kathleen Leslie, Jack Boivard, Matt Little, Jerry Dolle and Shaun Doyle.  They filled in all the holes and kept everything running on Ridgely Road as well as at the Fair. And I hasten to add that all of us were powerfully assisted by the sustained efforts of so many volunteer ministry leaders.

Wonderful as all their work was however, it would have been of limited value if our parishioners hadn’t done their job, inviting unchurched friends and family. That they did was abundantly obvious.  We more or less filled the Cow Palace…twice.  We also did that last Christmas, but Sunday there were several hundred more chairs than Christmas too (about 3,200).  From the perspective of the stage all I could think was “Wow!”

All that said, I think probably everybody I just mentioned would agree with me that our hats are off to Maria Folsom-Kovarik, Director of Adult Ministry, for her remarkable vision, direction, and determination.  It was Maria who planned an unprecedented program getting members into ministry, at least for the day (we called them “First Serves”). Probably 600 people participated.  Maria and her leadership team, a very impressive group, who all worked with discipline and dedication, seemed to do the impossible.

In turn, Maria would hold me remiss if I failed to acknowledge that the heroes of the day for all of us were the First Serves themselves.

When I arrived at the Cow Palace on Sunday morning, about 8:15am, I wondered into the ministers “backstage” area, where they were gathering.  Immediately I was struck by a feeling of déjà-vu. I was remembering my first experience of a weekend at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.  There, I was also wondering around the place before the service and I saw circles of people, hand in hand, apparently praying together. What was that all about, I thought. It turned out they were all member ministers, and they were praying for the people they would be serving. In the whole of my Catholic experience, I had never seen anything like it; it amazed me.  That was the amazing sight I saw Sunday morning at the Cow Palace.

You know, not so long ago around here, Easter was a crazy chaotic exercise filled with frustrated efforts, hurt feelings and lots of dissatisfied consumers. This Easter people got up out of the pews, donned the T-shirts of servants and served instead. And because of what happened this Easter, we are a different parish church. We’re in a different place, you’ll see.

Look what God has done among us, lift up your eyes and look.

What are you doing?

Here are three things you can do.

1) Pray for all those who are serving and for all those who are coming. Pray for those who are considering coming. Pray for the people who have never ever considered coming but see our sign on York Road and consider it for the first time.

(Have you seen the sign on York Road, across from the Giant?).

2) Fast for all of the above.

3) Invite someone (who doesn’t have a church) to come and be church with us on Sunday: perhaps a neighbor or friend, maybe a family member. That might mean the risk of refusal. But nobody is ever insulted to be invited, even if they don’t want to come. Your invitation might also mean some inconvenience if you have to accompany them or meet them there.

Do it anyway. We have 6,000 seats to fill and we can’t do it without you. Besides, right now God is preparing someone’s heart for your invitation. He doesn’t want to do it without you either.

This Easter is going to be an exceptional event, epic, unlike anything any of us has ever experienced.  Don’t just sit there. Do something.

Last Thursday we hosted a rally for the (get this) 600 people who will be working at the Fairgrounds next weekend. It turns out you need 600 people if you are going to do an adequate job hosting 6,000 guests, new comers and parishioners.  Our ministers will be setting up (all week long), cleaning up and taking down afterwards, parking cars, greeting guests, distributing communion and taking care of kids.  Many of these member ministers are serving for the first time, so this Easter will mark a significant milestone in the growth of Adult Ministry at Nativity.

Going to the Rally was a very moving experience. Seeing our church filled with people who are willing to get up out of the pew and make Easter not all about them, but about the people who aren’t even here, was awesome.

This weekend, as we celebrate Palm Sunday, we’ll have a chance to encourage everybody one more time to make an invitation to friends and family (who don’t have a church) to join us for church. There are no invitation cards left, we printed up 3,000 and they were gone last weekend (good job guys!). But you can still invite people, through our web site, or just the old fashioned way, face to face.  We need your help: we’ll have 3,000 seats and we want to fill them twice, our goal is 6,000 in attendance. That means you’ve got to invite your friends and family (who don’t have a church) to be church with us next Sunday.

If your friends and family (who don’t have a church) live elsewhere, you can still invite them to join us.  We’ll be live streaming both services, 9:30 & 11:30am live, on our web site, and it will be the whole Mass. Just direct your guests to the “LIVE!” poster on our home page.

We want to make an impact on our community this Easter, and help people who are far from God learn more about what God did for them, and what he can do for them. We want to help people make that move.  We want to be a movement of Christ followers who help move potential Christ followers.  We don’t want to be a monument on Ridgely Road.  We want to be a movement in north Baltimore.  That means we’ve got to move.

*(We are only doing the Vigil there for convenience.  Typically no more than a few hundred people attend, and they can easily be accommodated in the church. However, it would be impossible to do the Vigil on Ridgely Road and then move to the fairgrounds Saturday night and be ready the next morning. So, we’ll do it there, even though we’ll only fill a few sections of the space, it should be an interesting experience).

Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. We don’t earn God’s grace, but grace does build on nature, including our efforts and when it comes to working for God, he wants our best efforts, he wants excellence.

In parish work we need more people who understand the importance of discipline and skill. It seems especially so when it comes to the main tasks of our weekend experience:  music, ministers, and message. Skill brings excellence and excellence honors God and inspires people to worship him more fully. But skill only comes through discipline. To get good at anything requires persistence and dedication.

Oftentimes priests and pastors suffer because we do so many things that we don’t leave time to practice the skill of crafting a meaningful message and speaking it in an engaging style. We allow people to lead music, just because they want to, not because they’re any good at it.  We allow volunteer ministers to do ministry on their own terms, and sometimes in very mediocre and half-hearted ways just because they’re not paid. I know a church I visit on vacation and year after year the lector is always the same guy.  And year after year he is obviously unprepared.  Why is he up there? Probably because he wants to be. It’s serving his needs, unfortunately it’s not serving anyone else’s.

Our weekend environments suffer as a result of these kinds of amateur attitudes and far from a deeper celebration of the Eucharist, people are distracted and annoyed…and less likely to come back.

Scripture advocates we develop our skills and use them in worship. In Exodus, God instructs Moses to have those who are most skilled prepare for the liturgical worship. There is a whole list of skills in Exodus 26 and 28 that God wants employed to help the people worship him. Later David, who was probably more skillful in worship than anyone before him, says in Psalm 33,

“Sing a new song, play skillfully on the string with loud shouts.”

Skill matters in our worship of God and so our approach to worship should be a disciplined effort. As ministers we have to always be about growing in skills. I think that means a few basic things.

One, it means learning. As a communicator, I try to learn from other speakers. I listen to other speakers and try to find phrases or methods they use that seem to work. I also watch recordings of myself speaking. This is the most painful, most difficult thing to do, and it is also the best way, the fastest way to grow as a speaker. Growing in a skill means understanding the skill better, and understanding yourself better.

Second, as noted above, it requires practice and practice requires time. You have to set some time in your schedule just practicing your craft. Put time in your schedule and make it non-negotiable. As I am writing this (Sunday afternoon) the band is in the sanctuary rehearsing music for Easter, and I am sure they have been repeating the same song for the last hour. They’re good enough that they could walk in and wing it, but they’re not after “good enough” they’re after excellence that honors God. There are a lot of others things I could do that would be more interesting than my solitary work of weekend message preparation. But aside from the celebration of the Sacraments, there is nothing more important that I do.

Third, as leaders we must learn not to accept amateurs. The Church can’t afford to be amateur hour anymore, we simply can’t have people leading worship or ministry who are not skilled. In our culture, it will drive people away from God. If we are stewards of the most important message ever, the one the world needs to hear, then we should be relentlessly improving our ability to communicate it.

In church world, one of those realities is that we work weekends. Weekend time is our prime time. This separates us from most of the rest of the culture. When other people are at home on Saturday afternoon catching up on chores, or catching up on sleep Sunday morning or relaxing Sunday afternoon, we are in the most important hours in the life of the parish. This time is absolutely crucial to us. We have to be present and we have to be “on.” It is our time, the time when parishioners show up and new comers and visitors are willing to give us a try.

It’s as obvious as can be and yet, it was something we had to learn. And it was a difficult lesson to learn. And anytime a new staff person comes on board, it is a lesson we see them struggle with too. Frankly some of our staff would admit that they’re still struggling with it.

Any successful church culture will understand its employees have to work weekends. I didn’t get that at first. When I first came to Nativity, I would try to fit social events and other activities into the weekend and work around them. I treated weekends as I always had. That was a big mistake that made my job more difficult and less successful.

Not only did I get this wrong personally, but when it came to hires I also got it wrong. I hired people who would try to manage programs that took place on the weekend without actually showing up on the weekends. That was always a train wreck waiting to happen and actually created huge problems for the people who were working weekends.

When you or you and your church staff…all of your church staff…don’t understand and accept the reality that what they do is first of all about the weekend, they’re operating in a deficit and it is going to cause tension at home and at church and it will become unsustainable. And it is amazing how many people who work in churches don’t understand this. People in churchworld burn out all the time because they can’t make this transition. And meanwhile the weekend experience they’re providing parishioners and guests suffers.

Now I have learned that except for vacation times or rare occasions needed for family events I work weekends (and oftentimes I need to remind family, if they’re doing weekend parties, I can’t come). So about 46/47 weekends out of the year I am at church working and there is nothing that gets in the way. I try not to accept any social engagements on Friday or Saturday evenings (Sunday evenings aren’t even an option).

Church is first and fundamentally weekend work. The parish has grown as I have grasped that truth and brought people onto our staff who have embraced that truth as well. At times it is a cross to bear. Other times it is a blessing because I get off when others are working (I can go grocery shopping while others are at work).

What are the realities that are unique to your life or work that represent a challenge you have to embrace?