Remarks I didn't quite get to make...

Last night, my former employer, the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference Board of Directors, sponsored a "celebration" of my service as a Conference Minister. Held at Los Angeles Faith Chapel, about 90 sisters and brothers came out for an evening of music, stories, and food.

I had been invited to prepare a closing response, but due to time and logistics, I was not able to deliver much of the response. I know I said I was going to use this space to blog about other issues, but, well, I worked hard on these remarks, and I thought they should be somewhere...

So, I invite you to get a warm cup of something, settle in, and read on...

Remarks to the PSMC Event, 2009-10-03

I

I want to begin my remarks tonight by thanking the committee who put this event together: Bishop Clement and Sister Evelyn Nwani -- you have always been a great source of encouragement and friendship to me. I also want to thank Pastor Fatunmbi, and acknowledge his colleagues on the Conference Board and my immediate successor, Dr. J. Stanley Friesen who are in attendance tonight.

I want to thank Joel Shenk for his friendship and for his participation tonight, as our MC. Joel is a young man full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit. Joel, despite your questionable taste in NFL teams, you are blessed with tremendous gifts, and I look forward to seeing your servant’s heart in action for years to come.

I especially want to thank my dear friends, Pastor Chuwang and First Lady Grace Pam for their hospitality on this night, and on countless other occasions. I have said it publicly before, and I say it again, God did not bless me with biological brothers, but God did give me spiritual brothers, with whom my bond is as deep as blood, and as true as family. Chuwang is my brother, even though that acknowledgement has cost my brother from time to time over the years among those who are quick to find fault and quicker yet to be jealous. We have been very careful over the years to honor each other’s role and office - it has been “Pastor Pam” and “Bishop Jeff” with us for many years. Chuwang, may this event be the transition point, where we can now and henceforth honor one another with the privilege of the familiar form of address.

I also want to say a word of appreciation to others from my past tonight: Kathleen Krecklow, my former assistant at First Mennonite Church of Upland, who shared with me the bright sunny days of shared ministry and weathered the dark stormy days of personal attack and deliberate misrepresentations with equal measures of good humor and savvy.

I also honor those whom I have been privileged to serve with on the staffs of the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference and the Center for Anabaptist Leadership. Overall, in 22 years of service to the regional church through these two institutions, I have served with over 60 people as staff, interns, and volunteers. I need to thank Pastors Tom Longenecker and Ron Faus, who served with me as PSMC Lead Elders in a ministry of shared oversight. Tom and Ron shared the challenges, the pain, and the burdens of oversight in ways no committee ever could or would. We especially remember Ron tonight as he recovers from cancer surgery in Arizona. Bishop Brian Bauman was a colleague both on the staff of the PSMC and CAL who caught the vision. Today, one of every five active church planting projects in the combined denominations of Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA are under Brian’s supervision in Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, where Brian now serves as Missions Minister. Dr. Joe Manickam, and, of course, Pastor Irene Mendoza, my former colleagues at CAL have been my greatest friends in our shared vision and in our shared work of seeking to equip a truly urban, multiethnic, Anabaptist movement in this great metropolis to which we have been called for a season. To them, I can think of no greater valedictory than the words of the song, “…greater things are yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in the city…”

Finally, and most importantly, I pay tribute to my family. My wife of 28 years and my best friend for even longer, Debbie loves me even when I am unlovable. She has been my friend and my confidant and a far better judge of human character than I will ever be. I have come, often through the hard way, to trust completely her people insights. Debbie, thank you. Thank you for marrying me instead of Elgin. I am looking forward to at least 28 more years with you, if you will have me… My daughter Beth has been a participating partner in my work, interning at the CAL office, serving the homeless at Los Angeles Faith Chapel Thanksgiving dinners, and doing Ministry Inquiry Program at Pasadena Mennonite Church. With her husband Marcos, they now serve the church through leadership of a Mennonite Mission Network Service Adventure unit in Philippi, WV… A special note of thanks to my niece Alyssa Gossen, the newest member of our household. It is a joy to call you family and to welcome you into our home, thank you for allowing us to be a part of your journey of discovery… My son Jordan - how proud I am of this young man who revels in the hard questions and welcomes into his life anyone who dares to be enough of an adult to take him seriously. How proud I am of this young man who, with the love and support of his fiancée, Celina (of whom I am also very proud and look forward to calling my daughter-in-law), have together faced and dealt with the challenges of a special child… Many of you here tonight, have prayed for my grandson, Jacob. While some voices within the PSMC community have voiced the feeling that Jacob and his disabilities are a judgment from God upon me, for sins real or imagined, I am here to say tonight that Jacob has been, and continues to be, nothing but God’s blessing.

God has given me a rich assortment of friends and colleagues in this journey. God has given me a wife who loves me unconditionally. God have given me children who had the good sense to listen to their mother, who have gone to university and studied hard and who have found spouses that complete them. I am blessed by my wonderful and sometime wacky extended family. And God has so far given me one grandson who teaches me every day about how special life is, and I look forward to a whole load of grandchildren to keep teaching me how special life is…

II

Enter the word “leadership” into the search engine of your computer, and you will get back over one million returns. The permutations and variations associated with the term “leadership” are so vastly different that they defy a common definition. For every M.B.A. in the room, there will be at least two definitions of leadership. Perhaps “leadership” as a concept can only be understood as the result of a duck test -- we know a leader and the exercise of leadership when it quacks like a leader and leadership.

An even greater folly than attempting to arrive at a single, universal definition of leadership may be any attempt to associate the trait of leadership to the office of conference minister within the framework of Mennonite Church USA polity. Think about it. There is little, if any, formal or institutional power accorded to the position. Pastoral Leadership Committees and Conference Boards are established constitutionally with decision-making prerogatives. The office of Moderator is designated within Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference polity as the Chief Executive Officer. The fact of the matter is that the PSMC bylaws were drafted in an environment that did not assume there even would be such a role as conference minister.

To be a Mennonite Church USA Conference Minister is not unlike being the manager of a baseball team. You suit up like the other players, but instead of pitching, catching, or hitting, you guide the efforts of the game on behalf of the general management to the best of your ability and hope for the best, until such a time that the general management feels someone else should guide the efforts of the game. As Leo Durocher, the manager that played Jackie Robinson once said, "If you don't win, you're going to be fired. If you do win, you've only put off the day you're going to be fired."

It is in that vein that I share these remarks with you. Ultimately, almost all baseball managers, in a way, are failures. Either time catches up with them and they die or retire with their goals unfulfilled. Or they are removed from their role by the general management with their goals unfulfilled. Few, if any baseball managers have ever completed their bucket list of goals and walked away satisfied. The same, I believe, is true for conference ministers in MCUSA. Our bucket list of goals never quite empties, and if it does, it is because we have stopped trying. The consequence of such a reality is, if we are genuinely honest with ourselves, with our community, and with God, we who have held the office of conference minister in Mennonite Church USA, end our tenure in that terrible and holy office feeling like failures…

III

Now, before we all either agree wholeheartedly with the pronouncement that I am a failure, or conversely, try to paint the happy face of denial on that assessment, allow me to explain: I believe in failure. Without failure, there can be no such thing as success. More to the point, I believe in the redemptive power of failure. I believe embracing our failure is not the starting point on the way to some other destination we label “success“; embracing our failure is success itself.

I stand before you tonight as testimony to the power of failure to accomplish meaningful purpose. It has been my failings as a leader and a person that have occasioned whatever success we celebrate here tonight. Thus, I want to share with you the stories of three heroes of mine -- men whose failings inspire me and motivate me in my life and ministry.

Don Newcombe was a pitcher for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1949-1951, and from 1954-1958. He missed two seasons, 1952 & 1953, due to military service in the Korean War. A big, powerful right-hander with an awesome fastball and a great curveball, he was also a great hitter (9^th all-time best batter among pitchers), a solid base runner, and a good fielder - an all around great player. He was a four-time all-star, Rookie of the Year in 1949, and the first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win the Most Valuable Player award and the Cy Young Award (for best pitcher) in the same season (1956). While the statistics and awards are impressive, the truth is, his career in baseball was cut short and his life ravaged by the disease of alcoholism. His life fell apart in the late 1950s and early 1960s because of his addiction. His career was cut short by his own inner struggles over an addiction that is badly misunderstood to this day. I know. I am the adult child of an alcoholic father. As a child, I saw my father, a proud US Army officer before I was born, collapse into the pain and despair of an addiction that ultimately killed him. I know the shame and fear and guilt of a father with an addiction.

What makes Don Newcombe my hero has been his determined sobriety. A recovering alcoholic since 1967, he has served the Dodgers and Major League Baseball as an ambassador for recovery. More than one Dodger thanks God for Don Newcombe’s dogged efforts in their life. Don Newcombe ultimately failed in his quest to be baseball’s best pitcher ever. He likely will never be in the Hall of Fame as a pitcher. But the failures that shape his life teach me of the power of playing through the pain of one’s own brokenness, and constantly working to reinvent one’s self, refilling the bucket list with new vision, new purpose, and new goals.

Benedetto de Goes died sometime in 1607, somewhere on the edge of the Gobi Desert, on the border of what is now Gansu Province in China. This Jesuit brother had invested the final five years of his life in a great trek. He engaged in an intense and relentless quest over deserts and mountains to find an overland route connecting Europe and India and China -- a rediscovery of the ancient Silk Road. His goal was not the adventure of travel or commercial success. His goal was to find a way for the good news of Jesus to move eastward from Europe to India to China. This tough Jesuit brother was a rough-hewn former solider -- not a polished theologian. Along his journey, he braved the elements of travel across desert sandstorms and freezing mountain passes; he adapted to the misunderstandings common to the effort of working and living among many cultures at the same time; and, he plunged ever forward in spite of the lack of meaningful feedback from his superiors. He did all of this in an effort to forge a new way. In the end, he failed. It would be 200 years before transport technology could catch up with vision, and Europe could link up with the rest of the massive Eurasian super-continent with greater speed and safety. Yet in his failure, the Jesuit mission to the rest of the world grew. De Goes died exhausted, alone, with no one to minister to him in his final failing hours. What makes Benedetto de Goes my hero is his tenacity even in the face of complete and utter failure. His failure teaches me that ultimate success is never measured solely by the event of just one life, but by the continuing efforts of a sustaining and sustainable community, not in the form of institutions, but in the form of people carrying out the mission of God in the world.

The Apostle Paul was a failure by any objective evaluation of 21^st century management performance. He changed sides in the religious and intellectual conflict within the monotheistic communities of the East End of the early Roman Empire, flipping from being the prized student of the greatest of all Rabbis - Abba Gamaliel – to pretender to apostolic authority in the early Christian movement. He was reduced from the comforts of executive assistant to the Sanhedrin, to iterant preaching and self-support through employment in the mobile housing industry in order to fulfill the call he believed Jesus Himself had given to him. He was mistrusted within the system, attacked by the very leaders he had helped to develop and continued to serve. He endured a painful, damaging, and life-long rift with his former best friend over missional priorities and personnel. Ultimately, he found himself in prison, and soon enough was to be executed by beheading. In those final days, maybe hours, Paul came to dictate the following words to his friend and faithful ministry assistant, Timothy:

2 Timothy 4.5-7 (TNIV)

5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near.

7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

These words make Paul my hero. They are not words of defiance -- they are words of courageous Gelassenheit -- of surrender to God’s glory and abandonment into His amazing grace. They are words that embrace a conclusion to a work not yet finished. Paul’s fight, his race, was over and he had failed. He was not there at the end organizing, strategizing, and teaching, but the challenge endured. It now fell to others to run the race, to fight the foes, to keep the faith. Paul’s failure teaches me that I can lead in good faith, doing everything I believe to be right and noble and proper, and still I must surrender to the truth that while others will not always agree with me, others will willfully misrepresent my motives, and others will abandon me in crisis, none of that matters. All that matters is that my life is an offering to the God who loves me and saves me through Christ.

IV

My work -- the work I believe Jesus called me to -- the work of missional leadership among a rag-tag, financially struggling, multiethnic group of small urban, Anabaptist churches on the edge of survival -- has come to an end. And while I don’t believe a beheading awaits me (however, I have been wrong before!), I do believe that I have fought the good and necessary fights. I do believe I have finished this leg of the amazing race. I do believe I have kept the faith. But the challenge endures. I won’t presume tonight to suggest the shape and scope of that challenge for the churches I oversaw, or the missional work I led, or the area conference system I helped to create. Nevertheless, the work is not complete, and the challenge endures, sisters and brothers. The challenge endures, and we remember the words of Winston Churchill, “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

V

So I enter a new era, buoyed by the gift of God which is the Madison Street Church - these sisters and brothers who give me courage to continue on the Jesus journey, when, frankly, I’d rather dwell on the pain of past hurtful comments, and wallow in rehashing the poor judgments of others. But through this church, God is moving me on in the work Jesus calls me to -- the work of missional leadership among a rag-tag, financially struggling, multiethnic, urban Anabaptist congregation. This congregation who looks at my pain and brokenness, my rough-hewn, quixotic intensity, and my calling to follow Jesus, and still welcomes me as their pastor to lead them as mission strategist, community organizer, and teacher-preacher in this season. Madison Street Ministries -- the congregation, the Community Development Ministry, and Urban Expression North America are quite small and are just developing their cohesion. Will they result in success? Or will these efforts too be judged by the detached and the disconnected as another insufficient failure? I do not know. To be honest, really honest, I no longer care about the simple arithmetic of success and failure. The founder of the Jesuit movement, Ignatius of Loyola, when once asked what he would do if all the work of the Jesuit order were dismantled and thrown away, replied he would need 15 minutes of prayer, and then he would be ready to do what God next commanded.

By God’s grace, He and I have had our 15 minutes, and I am ready for what is next in the adventure. I candidly admit to you all, especially to my friends here tonight from Madison Street Church, that I am a failure (as if you didn’t already know that!). But the Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, and the Bible says, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I am a failure, but I am God’s failure to love, and I am God’s failure to command. For God, victory remains in love. When all is said and done, there is just one thing that matters: have I done my best to live for truth? Have I lived my life for God?

By God’s grace, I have kept my head in most all situations. I have endured the hardships of misunderstanding and misperception and miscommunication. I have done the work of an evangelist - a communicator of good news. I have discharged my ministry as a Bishop of the church. Like Don Newcombe’s pitching, Benedetto de Goes’ travel, and Paul’s apostolic ministry, my work as a Bishop of the church has ended, the symbols of office surrendered some eight months ago. But the challenge endures.

By God’s grace, a new chapter begins. I am still a failure, but still God’s failure. His to command. His to love. A new chapter begins, with a small, rag-tag, financially strapped, multiethnic, urban Anabaptist community. A new chapter begins: to serve anew as a mission strategist, a community organizer, and a teacher-preacher. A new chapter begins: to pastor the Madison Street Church; to lead its Community Development Ministry; to train, coach, and consult through Urban Expression North America.

The hymnal of Mennonite Church USA contains the words of a powerful song: “This is a day of new beginnings, time to remember and move on, time to believe what love is bringing, laying to the rest the pain that’s gone…”

By God’s grace, the past and it’s failings – my failings and the failings of others – are laid to rest as fights well fought, races well run, and faith well kept. And a new chapter in the story, rich with it’s own failures, and full of determined sobriety, tenacity against the odds, and the healing, hopeful words of the Gospel, continues…

By God’s grace…