Bishop Mike Lowry

The following is a note passed on to me by Senior Chaplain Eric Smith of THR – Harris Methodist Hospitals and used with permission.  May you look back with blessing on the past and forward with joy to the future.  Christ is with us!  -Bishop Mike Lowry

A Blessing for Heroes in Green

Still dark and cold outside, but already the “good guys in green” shuffle in for another 12-hour day.  These are the men and women who work in surgery at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southwest Fort Worth.  Ahead of them is a day of relieving suffering and saving lives of people whom they may never have a conversation.  These dedicated professionals will again walk the thin line between moving as quickly as possible and working as close to perfection as they can.  They perform this feat on a daily basis without a net.  They will do it on this particular Tuesday in December and again on Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, early in the morning and in the deepest hours of night.

But for just a few moments, they will pause to receive a blessing, a blessing of the hands.  This is a ritual provided to employees throughout the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospitals by your appointed Chaplains.  Warm water representing the Source of life and healing, the loving God, is poured over each staff member’s hands.  A prayer is spoken, asking God to bless these hands in their important work of caring for the sick and wounded, asking God to fill these hearts with compassion and purpose.  The Chaplains offer words of encouragement.  They share the appreciative words of post-operative patients that these caregivers rarely get to hear.

Twenty-five heroes in green silently await their turns.  Their hands are large and small, calloused and smooth.  Most respond with a quiet, “Thank you.”  A few tears are shed.  Each of them exits the room and walks into another busy day doing their very best to restore people to health.  They will do so with blessed hands.

Chaplain Timothy Madison
December 13, 2011

In my recent Kairos event at the Boyd Unit (Texas Department of Corrections), I was once again privileged to see God at work through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Love trumps evil. Sacrificial love can crack the hardest heat. At Boyd, this wasn’t theological musing but practiced reality.

A team member shared his own story of struggle to turn his life around. He shared his story of 36 years of walking with Christ. Listening was a brother-in-white who had been in and out of jail for most of his adult life (something around 25 + years). God was at work in his life. Christ was claiming his mind and the Holy Spirit was restructuring his heart.

The next day, that brother in white sought me out as a clergy to talk to. He told me he had tried Islam and two or three other things that (as he put it) “didn’t work.” He’d tried to control his life and it “didn’t work.” He wanted to (and did!!!) surrender to Christ. Surrender wasn’t a nice church term; it was a heart-wrenching change. Christ as Lord meant for him to “turn over leadership” of his life to Christ. This wasn’t theological cotton candy but tough stuff.  He leaves the safe place of Kairos and goes back into the compound. This chapel is holy ground. It will be hard out there, and there will be trials. But I saw (see!) God at work.  (I learned later that after a dramatic public profession, announced to all and celebrated with great joy at Kairos, the brother-in-white told the chaplain to change his papers from Muslin to Christian.  News spreads fast in the prison community and his change caused upheaval for he was one of the leaders of the Boyd Muslim community.)

This may sound prosaic, but it isn’t.  Stories of heart-wrenching, risky change abounded at Kairos.  The cost and risk of being Christian is high.  It can (and does at times) involve beatings and persecution.  It is not an easy way but brings more true joy and freedom (even in jail!) than anything else offers.  We free-worlders have much to learn from the courageous faith of the brothers-in-white.  God truly is at work!

Thursday and Friday I have been at a South Central Jurisdictional College of Bishops meeting at Lydia Patterson Institute.  Lydia Patterson Institute is a mission of the United Methodist Church and more specifically of the SCJ to share the gospel of Christ in a bilingual border setting.  There motto conveys the essence: “Building Bridges on the Border, where Faith and Knowledge Interact.”

I must confess that I have been blown away by the power of this ministry to change lives.  At dinner I visited with a high school senior who hopes to win a scholarship to a one of our United Methodist Universities.  Living in Juarez, the morning trip to school is dangerous but she “trusts God” to keep her safe.  She wakes at 4 a.m. to be at the international bridge by 6 a.m. “for the lines are long.”  She is engaged in a Christian ministry through the Methodist Church both in Mexico and in the United States.  After a nursing degree at College, it is her intent to answer a call from God to enter seminary.

The parents have formed a group to see the students (6^th grade through high school) safely to the bridge.  At the International Bridge, the students patiently cross over to the United States.  Despite the early hour (7:15 a.m.) the smiles and energy offers a sense of the Spirit’s presence.  Our College of Bishops met the students this Friday morning to walk with them the remaining 5 blocks from the bridge to Lydia Patterson.  We were the ones blessed by the walk. As we met these determined students at the bridge, the sacrifice, commitment and courage overwhelm me. I see both the love and power of Christ at work in this ministry.  Truly God is out and about in our world.  Healing, hope, and new horizons are dawning in dangerous circumstances.  The United Methodist Church is engaged in a redemptive work worth being both proud of and humbled by.

          Another Annual Conference is behind us and I find myself struggling with the paper work which any Conference generates.  As I wrestle with an overflowing in-box of letters to answer, articles to write, and people to visit, some questions from Conference come back to me.

            In the middle of a serious and good debate about the growing cost of Pensions and Health Insurance (P&HI), someone stood on floor and asked, “If the Bishop has stated that our current Pension and Health Insurance is unsustainable, how does simply direct billing Pensions and Health Insurance solve that problem?”  It is a great question.

          Initially, an honest response is that direct billing does not solve the problem of unsustainable increases in P&HI.  A major part of any solution cannot happen at the Annual Conference level. Pensions is a denominational issue and solutions dealing with underlying issues such as contribution-defined or benefit-defined must be solved on the General Conference level.  At the Annual Conference, direct billing pushes the issue down to a local church level. 

          A deeper and equally honest response is that direct billing does force answers to the sustainability question.  Putting responsibility on a local level does offer an extremely significant partial solution. Local direct billing for P&HI forces a congregation to make priority choices around mission. It means people need to decide is the pastor and the church worth the expense.  Very few American Christians tithe.  Giving 2% of our income is usually seen as significant (verses a biblical tithe of 10%).  Direct billing forces us to confront an issue of faithfulness.  Do we practice extravagant generosity (one of the 5 practices)?

            Secondly, direct billing will have a corollary impact of raising pastoral competencies.  Why?  People won’t pay for poor or mediocre ministry.  It will not appear worth the investment.  Finances will force both pastors and churches to get more adept at reaching out to a new generation.  Churches that turn inward to survive (a huddle and cuddle strategy) will die.  Church that turn outward in mission and ministry will thrive.

           All this gets me to thinking even further out.  Is God using the economic crises to reform our church practices?  I think so.  I think the Holy Spirit is in the P&HI crises – not as cause but as a divine use.  Do you remember Joseph’s response to his brothers? “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”  (Genesis 50:20)  God is at work here. That is really good news!

Last summer I read Jim Collins newest book How the Mighty Fall. It was a fascinating reprise to his marvelous earlier works Built to Last and Good to Great (including the added monograph Good to Great for Social Sectors). Recently I had the opportunity to revisit this work with others. In Collins’ work he talks about the “Hedgehog Principle.” In a summary he writes: “Greatness comes about by a series of good decisions consistent with a simple, coherent concept – a ‘hedgehog’. The hedgehog concept is an operating model that reflects understanding of three intersecting circles: what you can be the best in the world at, what you are deeply passionate about, and what best drives your economic or resource engine.” (Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall, p. 181)

I am mindful that churches are very different from businesses. Our mission is biblically and theologically defined. The power and presence of the Holy Spirit cannot be over estimated. At the same time (and not in contradiction), business models are helpful tools. They can guide the clarity of our thinking about our divinely called mission.

Bearing the above in mind, I am convinced that a significant question to ask is – what is our Hedgehog Concept? This applies to churches and conferences. It is also important to separate what we think our current Hedgehog Concept is versus what our Hedgehog Concept ought to be (reality verses aspiration). While I wrestle with both, I think at our best Methodism has lived with some version (you can argue about exact phrasing until the cows come home!) of the following Hedgehog Concept.

1. We are best at being (originally) at intentional Christian discipleship development (hence the name Methodist coming from being “methodical” about discipleship growth and development).
2. Our passion is to transform people and the world.
3. Our economic or resource engine (meaning more than just where does the money comes from but rather what drives our best development and transformational efforts) is the local church.

Now the big question is how big is the gap between reality and aspiration?