Renewing Ourselves

 

In the August 7 edition of the New York Times, G. Jeffery McDonald, a minister in the United Church of Christ serving a congregation in Swampscott, Massachusetts, wrote a guest editorial on clergy burnout.  Yes, he wrote, clergy work too hard, and therefore are prone to burnout.  But he felt there was a more fundamental problem.  Congregants, he wrote, resist the efforts of the clergy to help them to grow spiritually.  There is congregational pressure on the minister "to forsake his highest calling." Congregants are more interested in clergy who entertain them than those who edify them.  "As religion becomes a consumer experience," he writes, "The clergy become more unhappy and unhealthy."  (You can read the full text of the article at   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/opinion/08macdonald.html?hp)

The editorial received a number of interesting responses from readers.  One responder wrote that, in his opinion, the problem of clergy burnout was related to the loss of belief, among clergy and their congregants,  "in the fundamental narratives of Christianity and Judaism, the biblical concepts of divinity in relation to humanity."  He advocated a radically revised theological perspective that would respond to the radically new conditions in which we live.  Another responder put it more bluntly, arguing that instead of blaming congregants for being obtuse, we would more likely find the source of the problem in the irrelevant teachings of the church or synagogue.  

The letter that rang true to me was written by Bonnie Anderson, an ordained minister and the President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church.  She wrote that the source of clergy burnout was the provider-consumer paradigm that many Houses of Worship have.  In this model, the clergy are seen as "providers" and the congregants as "consumers" of services: 

"Ministry is not solely the work of professionally trained clergy. Rather it is a shared enterprise in which lay people are equal partners. Clergy burnout occurs because both parties lose sight of this fact. The result is clergy who believe that they must meet everyone's needs while playing the role of a lone superhero, and members of the laity who are either infantilized or embittered because they cannot make meaningful contributions to their church."

As we enter this New Year, it is timely to take stock of ourselves and ask how members can help renew our community and take more ownership for having their needs met.   Congregation Beth Shalom is already pretty much a shared enterprise where members are equal partners.  However, we are always in need of congregants to step forth and read torah, teach a course, visit the sick and homebound, deliver a sermon, run a program, or otherwise share in the wonderful enterprise that is Congregation Beth Shalom.  Doing so will strengthen and renew us all.

Shana Tova

 

 

 

Parasha Shoftim: Community

 Parasha Shoftim: Community

This week's parasha is Shoftim.  In it, the Israelites are commanded as to what kind of institutions they will need to set up when they leave their life of desert wandering to settle in communities in the Land of Canaan.  These institutions include courts, police, armed forces and a political system with which to govern themselves.  Where-ever we Jews have wandered, and then settled, we have followed this pattern of building institutions that will nurture and support communal life.  Without those institutions there would be no community. Without Congregation Beth Shalom, Jews who lived here would be merely a collection of individuals scattered over a wide geographic area who happened to be Jewish. With the beginning of our synagogue, the Jewish Community was created. 

I was thinking about the importance of community on my vacation this summer.  I was back in Connecticut with my wife visiting our son who lives there.  I wanted to visit my former community in Amherst Massachusetts – but where would I find it?  I mean, I could drive around my neighborhood and see if any of my former neighbors were about, I suppose. But it was likely I would find no one out.  I couldn't very well visit my former place of employment, the mental health center where I worked for almost 20 years.  Sure, the institution was still there, but everyone I knew there either retired, was laid off, or otherwise moved on.   The place where I would find my community, in fact, was obvious from the start.  I would go to my former synagogue, where I had been a member for the years before I decided to study to be a rabbi.  I would go on a Shabbas morning. And, sure enough, there were 30 people there that morning who I had known for much of my adult life, who had celebrated with me, comforted me, argued with me, sang with me, laughed with me and got angry with me.  And, now they were so happy to see me, and to hear about our new life in the mid-west. 

The writer Mitch Albom, who became famous with the publication of his book Tuesdays with Morrie, recently published another book, Have a Little Faith.  In it, he returns to the Jewish community of his childhood in New Jersey. In writing about the community of his childhood,    he begins to come to terms with all he had left behind and lost.  His plans as a young man – to become 'a citizen of the world' -- had largely come true, he writes.  He had friends in different time zones. He'd been published in foreign languages. He had lived all over the world.

But, he writes, "You can touch everything and be connected to nothing. I knew airports better than local neighborhoods.  I knew more names in other area codes than I did on my block."  Most of his relationships, he writes, were through the workplace.  Then he thought about workplace friends who were fired, or had quit due to illness.  "Who comforted them?" he wonders, "Where did they go? Not to me. Not to their former bosses."

Often, he concludes, they were helped and supported by their church or synagogue communities. "Members took up collections. They cooked meals. They gave money to pay bills. They did it with love empathy and knowledge that it was part of the supportive undercarriage of a "sacred community", like the one I guess I once belonged to, even if I didn't realize it."

We too often don't realize what we have in our sacred community. We take it for granted, or are disappointed in its shortcomings.  But where would you come if you moved from Naperville and wanted to visit your community?  I hope the answer would be "Congregation Beth Shalom."
Good Shabbas.