3 Minute Ministry Mentor

I felt enthralled and overwhelmed by the sculpture of Mary holding Jesus (pictured above) when I stepped into the foyer at Belle Meade United Methodist Church to film this week’s episode of Three Minute Ministry Mentor.

And the name of the sculptor grabbed my attention immediately. Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, is among my favorite poets. Yet it turns out the poet and sculptor are not the same person, but cousins, sometimes mistaken for one another.

It took some investigation to sort out the story of two Kahlil Gibrans. The sculptor of this Piata (Mary and Jesus), born in 1922, was the namesake of his elder poet-artist cousin, author of The Prophet. The younger Gibran even wrote a biography about the literary genius of the elder poet. The sculptor often rendered artistic creations from found materials that he shaped into new works of art.

Preaching Jesus can be like this. Lots of investigation and sorting out identities. Working with found materials and fashioning new works of art. #3MMM

So many kinds of moments deserve this word!

When conducting interviews with 50 seminarians-on-the-way-to-ministry and 25 seasoned pastors and priests, we asked them all to tell us about and “aha moment” of learning in ministry. The Learning Pastoral Imagination data is thus filled with wonderful, surprising, and profound moments of learning in practice.

Rarely did we hear stories of classroom learning. What we heard were stories about Clinical Pastoral Education, internships and field education, camp experiences, and other moments when people were deeply immersed in the practice of ministry itself.

What are your aha moments of learning in the practice of ministry? #3MMM

This past weekend I took some of my seminary students to the “Beating Guns” tour where Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin led us in a powerful liturgy filled with statistics and singing, rap music and poetry, Scripture, stories, images, and fire. One of the aims of the worship event is to transcend the gun debate in America. One side says, “guns are the problem, and we must reduce the number of weapons,” and the other side says, “humans are the problem, and we just need to change hearts.”

We gathered in the nearly-200-year-old Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Nashville. The church is not only the oldest Episcopal church in the city, it is also the cathedral parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee. The Very Reverend Timothy Kimbrough welcomed us. And he reminded us that the first building of the church, located several blocks away at Sixth and Spring Streets, was built with the labors of enslaved people in the 1830s.

The rise of guns and rise of white supremacy came at the same time. To have this worship ritual at this house of worship was going to do spiritual and theological work on several levels.

Read more about Episode 16: Engaging Ritual #3MMM.

It’s the first Monday of Lent. How are your Lenten practices going? I am hoping and praying for mercy and grace to lead you along the way this season.

I have three things to share with you today.

First, today’s weekly post is about emotional intelligence. Certainly I have known pastors and ministers who don’t rank very high on their emotional intelligence quotient or EQ. Have you had that experience? In pastors, the effects of lack in emotional intelligence can be missed opportunities, ineffective leadership, or a lackluster pastoral care.

Yet in my observation effective and compassionate ministry is most often marked by significant emotional intelligence… #3MMM.

Prayer.

What is the connection between the practice of prayer and the practice of ministry?

The responses to this question could fill many pages of many books. (My own responses fill many posts in this blog.)

The connections we make between prayer and ministry also depend on how we understand each practice.

I grew up in a noisy, talkative tradition, where prayer was mostly words and communication with God – in the power of the Spirit and in the name of Jesus. In that same tradition, ministry was something white men called by God did. How they prayed outside of public worship was mostly hidden and unclear to me.

Read More about Episode 14: Contemplative Prayer #3MMM.

In this week’s episode of the Three Minute Ministry Mentor, I share a story from my first call in ministry. I have preached about this moment when I missed the point, thinking the call was for someone else. In particular it was an experience when I missed what was at stake when someone called for a pastor. I was looking for someone else, but the phone call came for me. Fortunately that failure to see what was obvious led to other learning when I began to see my mistake.

My sermon “Wisdom at the Crossroads” is published in This is What a Preacher Looks Like.  You can watch the episode here to get the story, but here’s the bottom line: someone called for a pastor, and I didn’t get that it was me. Instead I looked for our senior pastor, missing how I could have responded to the urgency of the moment. Read more about Episode 13 at #3mmm.