ADMINISTRY

I should be on a plane today, heading home to see my family.  Instead I am stuck here…with a moose as my only companion.

I normally do not like Thanksgiving, but I was hoping to be home for this one.  I have not really been with my family for several months.  I saw my newborn son for only a few days and was looking forward to holding him.  I have missed my wife and curling up into bed with her.

I had planned to eat a huge meal with my family and talk about being stuffed for hours.

I had planned to play with my children and laugh and tell them stories.

I had planned to enjoy debates with my college age student.

I’d like to say that there are important reasons why I am not at home…but it comes down to one word: administration. I am still here because admin was not done properly.  People failed to communicate what needed to be done.  Emails went unanswered and deadlines were missed.

This means:

No meal

No games with my children

No lively debates

No holding my newborn son

No curling up with my wife.

Because of ADMIN.

We often do not take administration seriously.  It is one of those tasks that we will get to if we have time.  Especially if it is tasks for other people.  People ask us questions and we do not answer them.  They send forms and we shuffle them into the stack of the more important paperwork we need to get to.

We do not understand that paperwork is not just paperwork.  This paperwork often represents the hopes and dreams of people.  It represents the livelihood of families and the lifeblood of hard work. We can treat it like a nuisance and an unwanted task. Not sexy or glorifying.  It is something we do in between the times we are doing something else to make us feel important.

My family has not been properly paid in months.

Because of ADMIN.

Because I can’t get people to talk to each other.  To listen to each other.  To understand each other.

Because of this, my family has been struggling for the last few months.  We do not know whether we

will have the money to pay the rent or to feed hungry mouths.

We know there will no gifts under the tree this Christmas and we wonder how we are going to make car payments.

What we consider to be a nuisance, or a pain may very well be another person’s life.

Emails and questions represent hopes and dreams of people.  A request for leave represents the yearning desires and anxious plans.  A request for proper pay may be the difference between making it and being swallowed by financial demands of the world.

Unanswered emails lead to frustrated and angry conversations which lead to hurt feelings and wounds.   

When we are doing administration, it might be tempting for us to do what is easiest for us.  We don’t always take into account the toll our shortcuts have for other people.  Because it was easier for someone in Washington, I will lose two years of life with my family.

Two years is 730 days. 

My son will be two years old when I get home again.

I will miss teaching my daughter how to drive.  I already missed the first one.

My older son will be a teenager.  I may miss teaching him how to shave.

I will miss birthdays, holidays, concerts, vacations, and camping trips and pizza nights.

Because it was easier for someone else.

This is not to say that I am not happy to serve the Navy.  I am happy and proud to be part of the Navy every day.  It does not mean that I am angry or resentful or will not do my best where I am going. I will serve, and I will work hard and I will be glad every day I get to serve with America’s Navy.

But it does help me with my own look at Admin.  How do I do administry? Do I make sure that I am doing my best to address the needs of people who come looking to?  Am I making sure that I answer emails and address problems correctly? Am I looking out for the best for my sailors whose evals I write?

Administration is a ministry and in many ways it is one of the most important ministries.  We must admit that life is largely dictated by forms and paperwork.  Everything from our romantic relationships to our health care is dictated by the work that other people do in filing forms and managing records.  When we do administry, we have the power to affect peoples lives in ways that go beyond our normal ways.

But this is usually not very exciting or glamorous or noteworthy.  Often times it comes down to mundane tasks such as making sure our expectations are clearly communicated, making sure we answer those emails and ensuring that everything we are responsible for is done in a timely, efficient manner. It’s more George Marshall than Dwight Eisenhower,  more Marshall Matthews than Emimen, more Pepper Potts than Iron Man.  But sometimes we need to put aside our pride to ensure justice for everyone.

Because when you communicate your expectations and outline the process clearly, more families have time together.

When you answer emails, you create a collaborative working environment that leads to a peaceful exchange of ideas.

When you do the paperwork properly, goals are met, dreams are fulfilled, and the world becomes a slightly better place.

 It is time that administration becomes more than that…it becomes a ministry…administry. 

Where is God?

“Where is merciful God, where is He?”

This question was asked by a man in a concentration camp as he watched two men and a young boy being hung for stealing food. It is perhaps the defining question that echoes not only from the camps, but also haunts our own lives as well.

Elie Weisel describes the scene in his book Night.

“Then came the march past the victims.  The two men were no longer alive.  Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish.  But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writing before our eyes.  And we were forced to look at him in close range.  He was still alive when I passed him.  His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. 

“Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’

And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This where—hanging here from this gallows…’”

No sadder words have been written, and no truer question has ever been asked.  “Where is merciful God, where is he?”

I listen to people’s pain for a living.  It’s what I do.  I may not be good at it and the Navy may not consider me necessary, but it’s what I do. 

The scenario’s change on a daily basis, “I don’t love my wife any more,” or “My husband is cheating on me…” or “when I was young my father put his hands on me…”  “I’m tired of hurting, Chaps….I’m tired of pain…”

Behind it all, whether they know it or not, they are all asking the same question, “For God’s sake, where is God?”

Now, this is not to compare my life, or any of our lives to the horror of the Holocaust.  There are no words to describe my horror at the events of the camps or to describe my awe in those that survived.  But there is a sense in which we all ask that same question when we think of the pain in our own lives.  Where is God in the midst of all the things we go through:

Broken marriages

Financial Crisis

Cancer

Estranged relationships

Parkinson’s Disease

The death of a beloved child

In my own life, I ask where “God” is in the midst of my estrangement.  I am in virtual exile from my church and my Christian Community. The people I work with on the ship neither understand what I do nor find any value in my position.  I am alone on the other side of the world wondering if this sacrifice is worth it.  More often that not, I feel alone and wonder what I have done to be ostracized.   There are times when I wonder if God is completely done with me, casting me out and abandoning me to the forces of oblivion.

“For God’s sake, where is he?”

As I encounter people on a daily basis, I wonder if God is aware of all that we are going through. 

This is nothing compared to the other horrors of the world.  A mother kills her daughter so that she can stay with her boyfriend.  A man shoots up a church in the name of racial cleansing.  And all day I am surrounded by people who laugh at other’s misery, who take bets on whether someone will kill themselves and who consistently advocate for violent and destructive answers to problems and who belittle and bereate and dehumanize people to accomplish their own goals of self-agrandizement.

“Where is he?”

Wiesel closes that section of his book with the following comment, “that night, the soup tasted of corpses.”

In that sentence, he perfectly captures the desertion of joy, the abandonment of hope, and the futility of life.   There can be no satisfaction in life while the cries of the wounded echo throughout our world.

“For God’s sake, where is he?”

As fate would have it, at the same prison camp that Wiesel wound up was a young theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also asking the very same question, but from a different vantage point.  He writes, “The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who let us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.  Before God and with God we live without God.  God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us…The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering.  Only the suffering God can help.” (Letters and Papers from Prison). 

Only the suffering God can help.  God suffers.  He not only suffers for us, he suffers with us. God is not absent nor has he abandoned us to our fate with no more concern than we have for pizza boxes.  Jurgen Moltmann builds on this and states that the only help we have is the crucified God.  God knows our suffering because he Himself suffered and continues to suffer and will continue to suffer until his kingdom comes in full.

I come from a tradition that has a hard time the crucifix, or at least the corpus on the crucifix.  For a long time, I did too.  After all, Jesus has been resurrected, he is off the cross and no longer suffers the pain of death.  But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I begin to see the crucifix as a reminder that God still suffers.  He suffers on our behalf and he suffers with us and at times he suffers through us.  Perhaps this part of being crucified to the world through the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14). 

When we are going through terrible times in our lives, we can perhaps join our voices with Wiesel, “Where is merciful God?” “He is there” and we can point to the cross, we can point to the wounds of our own lives. 

Chaplain Soup

Christianity often fails not because of intellectual assertions, but because of the actions of their believers.” –Unknown

                Today I am writing out of pain.  I know this and want to be upfront about this.  Maybe my view has become distorted…it often is.  Maybe my mind is overly pessimistic…it often is.  Maybe my experience is not normative…it often isn’t.  But I am writing this as an expression of my pain and as a reminder to myself not to act in similar ways. 

                I get that nobody is perfect and that we all have bad days.  I understand that we all make mistakes and we don’t always measure up to the standards we embrace.

                But as I stood there trying to meet the fourth Chaplain in an area and was greeted by a gruff, “Who are you?”  When I explained that I was here on a ship, I got a “well, we are in a meeting.”  There was no ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ or even “can I help you?”  A minor thing, perhaps…but it’s those minor things that can often matter the most.

                See, because this was on top of meeting other chaplains who didn’t ask my name, but proceeded to tell me and each other what great chaplains they were.

                This was on top of a solid year and a half of being belittled, demeaned, and cut out by another chaplain.

                This was on top of watching Chaplains fight and bicker over whose ‘people’ they have and who they were allowed to talk to.

                This was on top of watching pastors undermine other churches in town and steal their members.

                This was on top of watching pastors scream and yell at each other over who was in charge.

                This was on top of being neglected and ignored by my church leaders as I repeatedly asked for help in waters that were too strong for me.

                Maybe this has been my experience alone.  Maybe others find nothing but acceptance from the church and from church leaders.  So maybe I write from the outside looking in. 

                At times, it has been a long tough haul.  It leads to a great deal of emotions and a great deal of questions:

                Maybe I’m not a good chaplain.

                Maybe I’m not a good Christian.

                Maybe I’m not a good person. 

                Maybe I deserve to be ignored.  Maybe I deserved to be overlooked.  Maybe I’m not worth your time. 

                But I serve a God who accepts me.  Today, I think about the words that Paul Tillich said, when he wrote: “Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted.”

                Pastors, chaplains, and church leaders may not accept me.  But God sure does.

Once Upon a Sand Creek

Nov 29, 1864 probably doesn’t mean much to most of us.  But it should.

The name John Chivington probably doesn’t mean much to most of us.  But it should.  Especially to the Church.

On Nov 29, 1864, in modern Kiowa County, Colorado, approximately 150 Cheyenne, mainly women and children were slaughtered near their homes by the United States Calvary led by Col. John Chivington.  Chivington had claimed there were upwards of 500 Warriors in the village, but no evidence collaborated this.  Instead, 700 men ran down a village that was little equipped to defend itself.  After the ‘battle’, Chivington’s men returned to the scene to collect trophies of scalps and other body parts, including genitals.

Col John Chivington was known as a cold and brutal man, who employed violence to achieve his ends.  He was known for an accidental attack on a Confederate Supply Train during the Civil War, whereupon he threatened to kill his prisoners. 

But what makes Chivington noteworthy, and infamous, is that he was a Methodist Preacher.  He was a Christian.

Chivington had been appointed as a preacher by the Methodist General Convention and sent to Colorado. He was known as a ‘hell and brimstone’ preacher, one who preached the anger and wrath of God.  He preached against the existence of the Native Americans and urged his congregation members to exterminate them.  When the Civil War broke out, he applied for a commission.  When offered a commission as a Chaplain, he refused, insisting that he was going to be a warrior.  He served and was never punished for the events at Sand Creek.

Today, Chivington should remind us in the Christian Church about the dangers of extremism, of fundamentalism and of hatred wherever it shall be found.  This should be a reminder that we are not called to hate, not called to violence, but to love and to peace.  The Church needed to have helped the Cheyenne and all Natives.  A little less than a hundred years later, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would remind us that the Church has a duty, “not to simply bandage the wounds of victims of the wheels of injustice, [but] we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Sand Creek should remind us of our failures of the church in the past to even bandage the wounds.  The Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Navajo, indeed all Natives and all slaves, needed us. 

We should mourn the 29^th of November as a day when a man of peace became a man of violence.  And we should renew our commitment to serve others, to love others and to be that instrument of justice and peace that God has called us to be. 

The Hope We Sing

Isaiah 64:1-9

                Healing begins in pain.  Joy begins in sorrow.  Hope begins in Lament.

                It is Advent and soon we will be enjoying Christmas parties, Christmas carols, the lights, sounds, and smells of the ‘happiest time of the year.’ There will be mistletoe strung up for young (and not so young) lovers to kiss under.  There will be fires and egg nog and Christmas trees and sappy movies on TV.  People of all races, denominations, economic status and orientation will join their voices in singing Silent Night.

                But not today.  All of that will happen later.  Not today.

                Today as I sit the only singing I hear is the protesters in Ferguson, MO demanding to be heard.  The only fires I see are those burning up buildings in a once proud St Louis Suburb and the only decorations I see are the garish displays in department stores eagerly anticipating people to come and worship at their altars. What should be a beautiful and hopeful time of the year has turned into a parody of itself.

                And maybe that is why this reading from Isaiah is so appropriate for today.  Wheras the Old Testament readings for Advent are normally prophetic songs of coming happiness and joy, today’s text is a painful exploration of God’s absence and a lament over what has happened to the people of God.

                Isaiah lives in a time of deep turmoil where nothing is certain except disappointment, despair and destruction.  His nation has been attacked at every side and what was once a great and mighty kingdom is now destroyed and burned to the ground.  The Assyrians have come and attacked the people of Israel.  They have taken most of the kingdom off to captivity or dispersed it to the seven winds.  All that was left was the tiny city of Jerusalem, and even that is surrounded and almost brought to the place of destruction. 

                Jerusalem! The Holy City! Was burning and was under the threat of being completely and utterly destroyed.  How could such a thing happen? After all, Jerusalem was the Holy City! It was the city that YHWH lived in and from where he protected his people.  Had YHWH been defeated? Had YHWH abandoned his people?

                And that is the question that dominates this reading: where is God? Where is YHWH? Where is the Divine Presence that would come and take care of the people?

                Just before this passage, Isaiah sets the mood for it by stating: “We have long been like those who you do not rule, like those not called by your name” (Is 63:19).  We are not your people…you have forgotten us, left us, departed from us.  We are not special…even in your sight.

                And then there comes the great cry from Isaiah that opens this chapter: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!” (Is 64:1).  What a great image! Oh God! Just tear it off and come down! Make yourself known! Be with us! Help us! Set things right!

                Isaiah looks back at history and knows that God has helped his people in the past by wonderful and mighty deeds.  So where is God? Where is He now? Why won’t he help? Why does he not care at the situation we now find ourselves in? This entire passage speaks of Isaiah’s pain…it is pain seeking understanding! WHERE IS GOD?

                Don’t we wonder the same thing too? WHERE IS GOD?

                We see a city burned to the ground – WHERE IS GOD?

                We watch as a twelve year old boy is shot by police – WHERE IS GOD?

                We watch as our loved one suffers with debilitating cancer – WHERE IS GOD?

                We watch as terrorists behead innocent people and kill thousands more – WHERE IS GOD?

                We struggle to make ends meet, give our children clothes and food, and we get further behind every day – WHERE IS GOD?               

                Does He not care? We know that he performed miracles all throughout the Biblical times.  He walked on water, gave sight back to the blind and raised the dead.  WHERE IS HE NOW AND WHY DOESN’T HE DO THESE THINGS ANYMORE?

                Now most of us wouldn’t think to ask these questions in church…because it may sound irreverent.  Others say that He does do these thing today and provide scanty and anecdotal evidence that cannot be verified.  But even if He does, he doesn’t do it on the grand scale that He did in the Bible.  He doesn’t part the Red Sea or raise the dead or provide food for the millions of people starving around the world.  

                We are not the only ones who think about this either.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was imprisoned by the Nazis.  As he thought about this very problem, he came to a very different answer:

               God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him.  The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34).  The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.  Before God and with God we live without God.  God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.”

“

                In essence, God allows himself to be moved out to the corners of existence because that is where he can help us the most.

                But this may not help when we see Ferguson burn or hungry people struggling to find food or single moms struggling to find answers, but maybe it provides a reason. 

                This divine absence has its negative effects on the people.  Notice in verse 5: “you were angry and we sinned, because you hid yourself, we transgressed” (64:5). Perhaps it’s a notice that we don’t do well as a people without God, without the divine essence.  Because of this, we read, "we have all become like one who is unclean and our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” (64:6).

                Now this is a happy tiding for the beginning of Advent, isn’t it? How come there are no Christmas carols about this?

                But there is truth in this.  Isaiah is looking at his community and he realizes that there is no one who is righteous, no one who is immune from the evil and no one who has it completely ‘right’.  But more than this, we all have our sins and we all participate in the evils of our community.  We are all, in a sense, part of the problem.

                In the reaction to Ferguson, I have noticed that there have been some who have tried to paint this into other people people’s problems.  This about ‘looters’ or ‘thugs’ or ‘police’ or….fill in the blank.  What they fail to realize is that what happened in Ferguson is indicative of the fact that our society is broken and that is because it is made up of broken individuals.

                We may never know the exact details of what happened in Ferguson.  Since there will be no trial, there will be no further chance to examine evidence.  But what we do know is that Ferguson reveals a major crack in our culture and in our society.  Our world is broken and we cannot always sing for joy when we see these cracks. 

                But this does not mean that there is no hope.  Isaiah begs and pleads with YHWH, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and not remember iniquity forever.  Now consider we are all your people” (64:8).  Even more desperate is the end of the chapter, “Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.  After all this, will you restrain yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent and punish us so severely?” (64:11-12).

                The answer there is supposed to be a ‘no’ that we are expecting God to show up and answer his people and to reveal his presence to us once again.  Even though our world is a mess, even though our relationships are in tatters, even though our security has been breached and even though our economy is anemic…God is not done with us and He will be heard again.

                It may be easy for us to look at Ferguson and wonder where God is.  It may even be easy for us to dismiss his presence and say that he has abandoned us and this world…but this is not the whole story.

                Advent reminds us that even in the most ruined of places, in the most desolate spots in our lives, hope can still be sung and joy can still be found.

                Right now, things look pretty bleak for race relations in the United States…even and especially in the church.  Despite Paul’s insistence that there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gal 3:23), Sunday is the most racially divided day of the week.  The break down on opinions about Ferguson came down on racial lines with over 70% of white people believing that Michael Brown got what he deserved.  The posts on the internet range from borderline insensitive to downright offensive concerning race. 

                And yet, in spite of this…there is a sense of tremendous hope.

                Church groups are beginning to bring up the issue of race in their midst once more.  Church groups are responding and reaching out to those who have needs.

                Advent reminds us that just when things seemed their most desperate, God showed up.  After 400 years of not hearing from God, Israel could have easily abandoned their beliefs about God altogether.  Their kingdom was gone, tattered in ruins.  Yet in the midst of those ruins, in the most unlikely of places, God showed up and the world was never the same.

                As we look at the smoldering ashes of Ferguson, a world tattered and in ruins, dare we to hope that God may show up again this Advent…to change the world once more? 

How to De-Moralize Your Staff in 5 Easy Steps

Let’s face it, we’ve all had bad bosses.  We’ve had the well-meaning, but incompetent boss.  We’ve had the mini-dictators who think they are gods and we’ve probably had the burned out boss.  But there are a group of bosses that are…special.  These bosses are the reason we know that there is evil in the world.  These are bosses who excel in making the lives of other people so contemptuous, that they consider leaving the work force to go grow moss on a moss farm….or something.

These bosses are so colossally good at sucking, that I have to think that there is a training manual out there somewhere that makes these bosses study from.  Surely nobody can be this bad….surely!!!!

And yet here we are.  We know they exist because at some point we’ve had our soul sucked out by them.  Every day we go to work, we can hear a gigantic vacuum noise.  At first we thought it was the cleaning crew…but we know now it is the sound of our joy, energy, and creativity being syphoned off, one soulful morsel at a time.

So as I thought about this, I think I have observed, through induction, the Five steps these bosses use.  Let me know what you think.

Step # 1 Make everything…..EVERYTHING…about yourself

The peons who work for you are NOT….repeat…NOT important.  In fact, they just get in the way of what is truly important….YOU! Your career, your power, and your control are what is truly important about the office.  Sure you may have people who have career goals for themselves, but they DON’T MATTER!!!

One way to make sure to do this is to make sure that every conversation comes back to you.  That helps reinforce with people that you are truly the most important person in the room.  Observe:

                Steve: My family was in an accident over the weekend….

Bill: Ah! That reminds me, I’m going on vacation this weekend, can you cover my reports for me?

Did you see how Bill was able to save that conversation from the jaws of defeat? Steve was trying to talk about his family, which would have shifted attention from Bill.  But Bill was able to recover! (Not to mention the added bonus Steve gets by feeling important enough to do Bill’s work! – you DON’T always have to think about yourself!)

Another way to do this is that when you are introducing people, make sure to introduce them in relation to YOU!

                Bill: Have you met my assistant, Steve? Steve works for me in the office

That’s a clever way to (a) reaffirm your dominance over a lowly peon and (b) redirect attention back to you!

 

Step 2 – Schedule meetings, lots of meetings, with your staff

                Meetings are ways that you can keep your staff from doing anything important….or (more importantly) independently!

                The secret to this step is to make sure that the meetings have no point!  Have the meetings…and most importantly make sure that you control the content of the meeting.  Having meetings helps the peons feel important, but they don’t get to actually do the meeting. They get the pleasure of being with you (which may bring you down, but you do have to make some sacrifices – it’s not all lollipops and candy canes!)

                This will show you how to run meeting properly:

Bill: Thank you all for coming to my monthly meeting.  Before I begin, let me tell you about my weekend. I had such a goooooooooood weekend.  My wife and I had some buddies over and we played lawn darts.  The funny thing about lawn darts is that you have to have a particular kind of lawn dart…a professional lawn dart.  I got my lawn dart for $300 over Ebay.  The got wanted $400, but I was able to talk him down because I am such a good negotiator.  So I was able to beat everybody at lawn darts…

Notice Bill’s good use of language to reinforce himself as the center of attention. Those lucky employees get to hear about what a real weekend was like.

Step 3 – Make sure that ALL information gets channeled through YOU!

                This step is crucial and it is vitally important that you control all INGOING and OUTGOING information.  This helps from uppity peons thinking they are better than you and knowing more than you.

                The biggest threat here might be if you have a subordinate who has connections outside the office.  You need to cut this off in the bud RIGHT AWAY!

                This may require you to eliminate people from email distribution lists, to talk badly about somebody behind their backs, but this is essential to make sure you remain the center of attention. Make sure everybody CC’s you on every piece of outgoing email.  You probably won’t look it, but you will need to keep that psychological control. 

                The best way to distribute information to your staff is either by (a) enigmatic emails that nobody can decipher or (b) by dropping casual hints to the information in one of your many, many meetings (see above).

                Let’s say your security manager needs to get some background information on a contractor for a project your department is running.  Here is how you may want to disburse that information.

Bill: So Ocular Rift is going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread.  I know this because I was talking to the head of Cyberdyne Security about how much money I will be getting when Ocular Rift is released.  Oh by the way, Lou needs….um……some kind of form….for that guy you are working with…..make sure you get that to me, right away. So I was thinking about lawn darts again and how wonderful my new lawn dart is……

Good on you, Bill!!! You kept the focus on YOU and you also got that information out to your staff.  Of course, when they can’t figure out the information, you can yell at them….and then you can produce that information and SAVE THE DAY!!! Way to go, BILL! If it wasn’t for you, this place would surely burn to the ground!

Step 4 – Make sure Upper Management Knows how Good YOU are!

                This step really goes without saying, because upper management should already know how good you are…..after all….you’re YOU, right? But sometimes management gets lost in the details they have deal with on a day to day basis.

                Now, when you can save the day, make sure the Higher Ups know it! You need to promote yourself, after all! Those peons down below sure aren’t going to promote you, so you need to do this.  This might mean you need to throw a few people under the bus…but what the hell, they don’t matter. 

A simple way to do this is a memo to your supervisor, like this:

                To: Supervisor, Soul Crushing Enterprises

                From: Bill, Human Care Department

               

Sir, it came to my attention that I was able to save the company a great deal of money.  Steve, one of my employees, was badly mishandling security issues with his contractor from Satan Industries.  He was unable to produce the contractor authorization papers, even though I had pointedly and repeatedly asked him to do so.  So, after firing Steve, I took control of the situation and was able to produce the papers and able to reduce the wait time.  I am humbled by the opportunity I have to work at this company, which I consider my home.

Way to go, Bill! Look how many times he promoted himself and referred to himself as the center of attention.

Poor Steve had to go, but that helps accentuate

Step 5 – Replace your staff often

                Your staff is incompetent.  You know that.  They probably know that. But you need some people to supervise, otherwise how would others know you are important?

                But you are going to wear them…and they are going to wear YOU out very quickly.  So you need to get rid of them often and to have a complete turnover.  Make sure that the new crew doesn’t talk to the old crew because you don’t want them sharing the greatness you have earned over the hard course of your life!

someone may have already beat me to the punch

                Ways to get rid of your staff vary.  Some fire the people, some of the staff leaves every so often, and some love to work on a rotational basis.

                But when they leave, make sure they are discredited about anything they may say.  Some staff members are angry when they get fired or replaced and so may make up wild stories and attempt to sue for ‘harassment’ or ‘creating a hostile work environment.’  I don’t know why so many employees turn on their bosses when we get rid of them, but you have to make sure that everybody thinks they are crazier than Miley Cyrus hopped up on pixie dust.  A good way to do this is before they leave, refer them to see the building’s medical officer.

Bill: So, Steve, I am sorry that you are angry that you got fired.  However, that does not justify the fact that you claim I sabotaged your career.  I may remind you that you were the one who wasted time inquiring about Ocular Rift and my lawn darts.  Perhaps if you were not so tied up in recreation, you might have had a successful time here.  But because you are now threatening to ‘choke me out,’ I am highly suggesting that you see our doctor.  We have no ill will towards you and want to make sure you get all the help you need during this difficult time.

Of course, you will have to make sure that all future potential employers are aware of the mental problems.

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And that is how I think some managers learn to excel at sucking the life out of people.

Do I really want to be a Christian?

Lord, I want to be a Christian…in my heart

                Or so goes the old hymn.  Many of us who have gone to church know the song and we sing it with mild enthusiasm.  The idea behind the song is that we need God’s help in being a Christian, so that it permeates our very heart and soul.  There is just one big problem.

                Christians irk me.

                Not just a little, but a lot. 

                I mean A LOT!

                We can be bigoted and self righteous towards other people.  We can tolerate some sins, but absolutely not others.  We can be conceited and treat each other like dirt.  And we fight….about EVERYTHING.  Clothes, tattoos, tobacco, sex, worship styles, politics, theology, and about everything else we drag each other through the mud and we do it in the name of God. 

                I know this is nothing new.  This has been going on since the Church was established.  In fact, most of the New Testament is about Christians fighting each other.  Just about every other page is a new heresy or bad decision (usually by Peter) or about food sacrificed to idols.   It’s amazing that there never seems to be a period of agreement in the Church. 

                With all of the fighting that goes on and has gone on, we tend to forget the clear and central claim of the gospel that Jesus offers: “Follow me” (Mark 1:17).  In fact most of the gospels seem to be about expanding that call and discovering what it means for a disciple to come and follow Jesus.  This call seems to have dire consequences on the believer because Bonhoeffer writes, “when Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.” Bonhoeffer wrote his book Discipleship around the central issue of following Jesus.

                But can we really do this today? What does it mean to ‘Follow Jesus’? The disciples were lucky in this regard because they could literally follow Jesus from place to place.  We don’t have that luxury. 

                When I think about the call of Jesus, I certainly think it extends way beyond the paths of fighting about dogma and about deciding what side I am on concerning sexual orientation. I get the sense that Jesus is calling us to something higher, something more productive, something….bigger than our traditional squabbles. 

                Perhaps it’s time that all of us Christians look at ourselves and really begin to question what it means to follow Jesus.  Maybe the question is not do I want to become a Christian? But perhaps the question comes to be: what sort of Christian do I want to be?

                And for me the answer is, “I want to be a Christian that follows Jesus”.   What that means, however, has yet to be fully explored.