Shifting from stones to boomerangs

Having a 3 year old results in being invited to other children's birthday parties.  After attending many of these recently, it has become apparent that parents of young kids do not know how to engage in conversations with other parents of young children.  Here is the scene:

The kids are playing in some communal play area. Bounce houses are common.  The adults stand around the communal play area most with a beverage while some are dealing with their kid who is "shy" (Jude is usually the shy type in this setting).  Small talk consists of conversations from parents to their children to ensure they are not hurting some other kid.  Other than that, most adults do not seem to want to or know how to engage in conversation with other adults.  Going to the bathroom or getting something to eat or drink are common activities as a way to get a break from these socially silent adult groupings.  

It is painful at times.  

Estee and I are people who will ask others questions about who they are and what they do and what their interests are.  This skill set, once thought as being natural to all human adults and as common as the skill set of shoe lace tying, is now a bit of an anomaly in these settings.  

I had a 15 minute "conversation" with a guy who sold name tags for a living.  When I say conversation I really just mean I am asking questions and the man replies with short terse responses.  One would think he did not want to talk but he never got up to leave in the silent times.  He just sat their telling me about the fantastic world of name tagging in tweet-like responses to questions.  

It has been described to me that great conversation is like playing tennis.  Someone serves, another returns it, then there is a back and fort that ensues.  Only to reach a "point" then another serve is given.  However, what is happening is that it is only one person doing the serving in these birthday conversations, and my shoulder hurts.  Ultimately, these "conversations" are not fun, not memorable and energy draining.  

And we perpetuate these conversations in Church.

Each Sunday morning worship, there is a moment in which everyone is invited to stand and greet those around you. As a friendly church, we all stand and share kind words and introduce ourselves to guests in our midst. However most of the time that moment feels like we are throwing out phrases which may or may not “land” on the minds of our neighbors.  

“Hello I’m Jason, nice to meet you.” That is the end of my greeting to you. I threw the greeting our there, and it is now your job to remember it, because I threw it to you. Which explains why we feel guilty when we cannot remember the name of a person we have “known” for years; they already threw us their name, and like a stone being tossed in a lake, we cannot ask them to re-throw the stone!

Boomerang and Conversation

Instead of throwing stones as a greeting, what if we threw boomerangs? What if we threw things that came back to us later? For instance, a boomerang greeting might be, ‘Hello I’m Jason and I love the music in worship, at the end of worship I would be curious to know what you found uplifting.” 

A boomerang is thrown and will come back to you both after worship so we can develop further conversation with this person. Asking open ended questions during greeting time allows us to shift from stone to boomerang throwing. Boomerang comments allow for future relationship growth, and let’s face it boomerangs are much more interesting than stones.

Back in 2009 I had a post that explored the idea that while Jesus learned the trade of carpentry, he did not use many carpentry metaphors when talking about the kingdom of God.  

After further reflection on this idea more thoughts have been stewing in my brain.  

Not only did Jesus not use much carpentry language he also did not use much fishing language to talk about the kingdom of God.  It is interesting to me that Jesus did not use much insider language with his parables.  

Jesus used a lot of farming metaphors, wedding metaphors and even the occasional sheep metaphor.  These are the images that the followers of Jesus, the crowd that surrounded Jesus, could understand because it was their world - their images.  

I can understand how the disciples never seemed to "get it" even though they were with Jesus all the time.  

He was using language that was rooted in the life experience of the non-believer and the crowd.  He did not spend much time trying to appease or create insider language with just himself and the twelve.  

Is this not a way to consider the mission of the church?  

Too often we gather on Sunday morning expecting the same things that we who attend, understand and "get". We use insider language and even are fearful to change things because we might "upset" the most faithful members.  So we continue to do what we do in order that those who are in the church can be comforted and those who are not in the church can continue to feel like church is, at best, weird.  

What would it look like to take a model that we might find in the way of Jesus?  What if we created a church that was so concerned about connecting with those outside the church that those in the church would even be willing to "not get it" like the twelve disciples.  

Do you get or understand Jesus, or are you like the disciples and continually scratch your head wondering what the heck this Jesus guy is teaching and saying?  

Rules of improv and Church

Tina Fey has a book out she titled, Bossypants which is amazingly funny and fantastic.  I recommend it.

In that book Fey shares that the rules of improv dovetail nicely not only as rules for comedy but also as rules for living and leadership.  I share the improv rules here as a way to encourage some thought and perhaps add a little thinking of my own.

Start with yes
Say yes, and
Make statements do not ask questions all the time
There are no mistakes, only opportunities 

In the church I have encountered the violation of the first rule more often than any other rule (or commandment). When there is anything in the church, from decisions to change a ministry name to let a ministry die to unorthodox teaching, few people begin with yes.  But this is not anyone's fault, it is the nature of institutions.  Brian McLaren shared that institutions are there to preserve the progress made by movements.  As such, institutions tend to look at new things as a potential threat to that which the institution is created to preserve.  I get it.  But it is not helpful to move forward in light of the numbers that point to the UMC has about 18 years left before we start loosing a great number of people (Boomers) to death.  Is the church willing or even able to start with yes?

Maybe it is because I do not hear most church leaders begin with yes that I do not hear the phrase, "yes and" but that is a very uncommon statement as well.  It is not unheard of, but uncommon in my experience.  It drives me nuts.  In a session when we are talking about ideas for a new way to connect with people in worship, any idea that is thrown out there is usually shot down if it is not thought out all the way through.  It violates all the rules of brainstorming there are, but churches seem to be excel at horrible brainstorming.  How can we help people brainstorm in the church, or is by nature of institutions to fear brainstorming as a potential threat to that which it was created to preserve?

Church leaders, myself included, are wonderful at asking a lot of questions, however that really can kill motivation of others to learn and participate.  Fey has this example in her book,


Bad improv:  Who are you?  Where are we?  What are we doing here?  What’s in that box?
(This puts pressure on the other actor to come up with all the answers.)
Good improv: Here we are in Spain, Dracula.

The problem with making statements is that it makes you vulnerable.  When a church leader makes statements they can become the scorn of the Church (see Rob Bell or Pat Roberson for examples).  To protect ourselves, church leaders ask a lot of questions.  Questions can be helpful for spiritual development but questions are also difficult to get people motivated to help create the culture of God.  Can you imagine if MLK's said, "I have a dream?"

Finally, Fey comments that there are no mistakes only opportunities.  This is a difficult mantra and outlook that is difficult for all of us.  We all have heard this, but we all have some sort of fear of failure. 

So improv and the Church.  Sure it can work.  It worked for Jesus.