The basic contours of what it means to do ministry are gone. Our congregations miss much of community life. How do we engage the various layers of loss.

Welcome to Pivot, a podcast for church leaders, co-sponsored by Luther Seminary Space Lead and Lead.

Welcome to Pivot, where this week's episode is on loss. I'm Terri Elton from Luther Seminary.

and I'm Scott Cormode from Fuller Seminary.

I'm Louise Johnson and I work with LEAD. You know, as I was thinking about last this week, it reminded me of a story. have a really good friend who called me the other day on the phone and he and I both have just traveled for lots of years for our work and our jobs. And he called me on the phone as he might have six months ago and he said, hey, what time's your flight? And I went, huh? And he said, just play along.

So I said, yeah, I've got the 430 out of MSP. And he said, yeah, my flight's out of such and such airport at such and such time. And it was just a moment to kind of rehearse a pattern that we had known so well and is now just gone from our lives. It was a funny moment, but a kind of bittersweet one too, as we just acknowledged together in that kind of way the loss that was in front of us.

It's funny because what we all know is that our ministries are built around a structure. know that if this is Thursday morning, these are the kinds of things I'm typically doing. If this is Tuesday afternoon, these are the kinds of things I'm typically doing. If it's a Wednesday, I'm probably on a plane. If it's Sunday, I'm probably preaching in a church. So much of the basic decisions that we make are already made for us because we know

We have staff meeting every Tuesday or every Wednesday or whatever it is. And all of those things are gone. The very basic contours of what it means to be doing our ministry are just gone.

You know, I've been calling people in our church and overall I've been super surprised that they're doing pretty well. You know, they're sad, certain things are gone. But the thing I hear most is I miss the people. It's I can get worship. It's okay online. I don't really love it or whatever. But not only do I miss seeing people and being in the same room, but I miss hearing what's going on in their lives.

I miss the checking up on their grandchildren or the meaningful relationships that they have. And I think one of the basic issues with loss is it has so many layers to it. One of my colleagues in a meeting this week said, I think we have pruned 90 % of our schedules and our life. And what does it mean to live?

in this kind of stripped down world. So if loss is kind of everywhere around us, how do we pivot? What do we do at this moment?

I've been thinking a lot about a metaphor for understanding this moment. There's something that every pastor knows. There's a moment that every pastor knows that might be really helpful to us. You're pastor, you get a call, somebody's in the emergency room. And so you go and you sit with somebody in the emergency room. And you're with a family and they're not sure how long it's going to be. They don't know how serious it is.

There's just this bundle of awkward anxiety. You're trying to make conversation, but you really don't want to be over-functioning, but at the same time, you're there as a ministry of presence. There's just all these kinds of things that go on in that moment. But you all know that that's a short time, that whether it's hours or whatever, it ends. We're all living in that hospital waiting room.

We're all sitting here, all wondering how long is it going to be? How serious is it going to be? And we've got this floating anxiety and this sense of when's it all going to go away? And there are certain things that you would always do in that hospital waiting room and certain things you would never do in that hospital waiting room. You would always in that hospital waiting room listen. You would always listen for all the different ways into which your people are struggling. But there are certain things you would never do.

You'd never, if somebody asked a question, think, this is a good time for a doctrinal lesson on how the church thinks about law and gospel. Or you would never say to yourself, this is a good time to do business on whatever difficult question. This is a good time to try and hit them up to say, I'd like to talk to you about your giving at the church. These are just, these are not things that we would bring up in the hospital waiting room. But what do we do with this moment? We're all living in this moment.

Where do we start? Right now, I have a book coming out in September on the innovative church, and it's about how do we respond to new and difficult social situations. It was written long before COVID happened, but I'd imagine it might address some of the things that COVID addresses. And there are five questions that we have people start with. I'm not going to go into all five, but there's three of them that I think are really helpful for us right now.

The first question is to ask who are the people entrusted to your care? You're sitting in that hospital waiting room. On the one hand, the people entrusted to your care, the people right in front of you. But say it's a family that is involved in your church. Well, you recognize that many of the people affected by this are not actually in that room right there, but you carry them into the room with you. At the same time, the second question is how are these people experiencing longings and losses?

There's all sorts of ways in that hospital waiting room where people are experiencing loss. It's not just about the medical questions. It's about the larger questions about life, about difficulty. And we need to start to categorize what are all the losses that our people are experiencing? Because ultimately the third question is how do we make sense of those losses? And specifically because we represent Jesus, how do we make spiritual sense of those losses? That's the place that we encounter. That's what we're dealing with. And there's that whole

Well, there's a whole layer of these losses. It's not just one loss.

You know, I think of as church leaders, some of those layers are our own personal ways of mourning how I'm leading church now, right? I got to preach on Zoom as opposed to a camera this last week, and it was so exciting to just see faces and have some community, some live interaction, even though it was virtual, right? So there's a sense of loss around our Christian practices and

Wanderings and longings about what finances will look like or our buildings. But there's this whole other layer of loss that I hear from the people around me. I think of listening to my neighbors and they're just trying to figure out how to be with their grandchildren. I think of people who have health insecurities in some ways or aren't sure about their job or

there's some other thing going on in their life outside of COVID that this is just now more complicated by the situation that we're in. And I think the layers of all of these losses are just in the air. You can almost feel them even if you can't name them all at a time. And there are days it's just so heavy.

Yeah, I appreciate your name and that I think that's really true. There are all these layers of losses and I know sometimes I when I'm working with people and you know, we typically do the kind of check-in thing at the beginning just to hear how people are doing and I hear the stories right of people who are grieving deaths and who are walking with people in sickness and who are navigating

financial difficulties or who are trying to parent toddlers in the midst of this. And I think to myself, you know, I've got it pretty good. and, it, have a tendency to sort of like, just push down the losses that I'm feeling or experiencing because I think, well, they're not as bad as other people's. And it's kind of a way both for me to play the comparison game, right? Which is really not a good, that's the voice of evil. I think that speaks to us in ways that aren't helpful, but it,

It also means that I just get to avoid the grief that's around that loss. It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago, I just sort of thought, you know, as I was thinking back over the last several weeks, it's about once a week, I just go off the rails, right? Like I just can't handle the day. I wake up and I'm mad or I'm sad or I think the world is ending and I just don't have the bandwidth. And I just think it's those losses, right? That just...

compound and compound and compound and they come out one way or the other and so, you know, I just feel like That's really just a lot of what's happening to us right now that the losses are coming The grief is coming even when we don't want to acknowledge it

You it's interesting as you talk about that, as I've begun to name it in my own life and encounter it at work or with my neighbors or with friends, and I start kind of looking for those losses and those that grief rather than playing that comparison game. I just have a whole lot more empathy. I just, I don't want to compare what mine is. One of my colleagues was supposed to be at Disney with her family.

And her kids are just the right ages. And I got to do that with my kids. And rather than compare mine to her, was just leaning in to her grief. And I just felt bad for her. I said, I'm sorry for you. That's a bummer. It must be hard to be here today. And just let it go, right?

the struggle is that how many times a day do we have to say to ourselves just let it go. Any one of those is not that big a deal, but it's the cumulative effect. It just weighs us down. I have come to believe that I have a spiritual discipline in this time. My spiritual discipline is to try to feel grief and gratitude at the same time. Oftentimes whenever I feel grief, I feel like I've lost something.

I think, no, no, I should be grateful because like Louise was saying, I don't have it as bad as anybody else. We have some friends who we're in a Bible study group with and they have young children. They have children in elementary age. And they were saying to us the week before all of this hit, they were saying how incredibly busy they were with all the coming of the new baseball season and the new this and the new that. And they said, we just wanted some time where we could just spend time alone with our

kids and we all laughed like yeah that can't happen and two weeks later we get together as a Bible study group over zoom this time and they're like I don't want to tell anybody but this has just been magical for us we played games together as a family you know yeah we got all this but all the things we wanted we get to do but I can't tell anybody that there are people who are suffering and dying and as we've continued to walk with them they've had difficulties with having

a bunch of kids in the house and all that kind of thing, but they've experienced this as a time of gratitude. And I've begun to realize in my own life that I am good at feeling grief and I'm good at feeling gratitude and I only do them one at a time. If I'm feeling grief, I can then go into the, say, this is a time of grief and I'll talk to God about the things that I've lost and about my anger about.

Or if I'm feeling gratitude, it's a choice that I make to see the things that God has provided. And that works for me. But the problem in this moment is that my life is inundated with grief and gratitude all around me. And I have to feel them at the same time. And I keep thinking about something that the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has written about. He talks about in a theology of abundance. He talks about the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness, and God gave them manna.

And the question became, was the man of scarcity or abundance? On the one hand, there was only enough for today. So that felt like scarcity. On the other hand, there was enough for today. And that felt like abundance. And in my own life, I recognize that I want to have enough that I'm no longer dependent on God. And if I have to go back to God every day,

for manna or whatever God provides today, it feels like scarcity. And Brueggemann's point is that we sometimes turn God's abundance into scarcity. But in this time right now, I realize that I am experiencing genuine scarcity and genuine abundance at the same time. And it's all mixed together. And my spiritual discipline is that I have to come to the point where I can pray the way the Psalms pray.

I can talk to God the way the Psalms talk to God. The Psalms are filled with laments and praises, and I have to be able to do both. It's a spiritual discipline.

appreciate what you were saying about the mixture of loss and scarcity and abundance and all of that at the same time. Our family is going through a health issue right now that has that every that roller coaster every day and I'm surprised at both when the waves of grief come and I'm surprised where the moments of gratitude come and they come sometimes in nuggets.

and sometimes they come in waves. And I think that has given me a perspective for each day to just take it as it comes and to say my joy comes not from one of those or the others, but that God's in it all.

One of the questions that comes to mind for me is how do we walk with one another as we negotiate, particularly the grief and even Scott, as you said, the scarcity, I can certainly find myself in that place. so I've been thinking a lot about that, just, know, what does it look like to be a companion with someone in the grief?

And it reminded me of a story from the West Wing. If any of you out there are West Wing fans, you'll probably remember this scene where Josh, who has been through a traumatic event, spends a day with a therapist. And it's a contentious and important session and turning point in his own life. The session goes long into the evening and

As he comes out of the session and walks through the lobby, he runs into his friend and his boss, Leo. And Leo, he's surprised to see Leo there. He says, you know, what are you doing here? Why are you still here? It's late and you should have gone home by now. And Leo tells him a story, a parable of sorts, if you will.

And he talks about how there was a man who fell in a pit and the man's down in the pit and he was looking up and he sees a physician who walks by on the street and he says, hey, can you help me? Doctor, have fallen down in this pit and I don't know how to get out. And the doctor writes a prescription on her pad and tears it off and throws it down into the hole, keeps on walking. And a few minutes later, a priest walks by and

The man in the hole yells up, says, hey, father, I'm stuck down in this hole. Can you help me out? And the priest writes a prayer and tears it off and throws it down into the hole and keeps on going. And a little while later, the man's friend walks by and he says, hey, Joe, I'm stuck down in this hole. Can you help me out? And before he knows it, Joe jumps down into the pit with him. And he looks at him and he says, man, you're crazy. What did you do that?

Now we're both stuck down in this pit. And his friend says to him, yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out. think at least in part, that's what this kind of accompaniment looks like right now.

I

I love your idea that what we have to do is jump down in the pit with people. And at the same time, I say to myself, sometimes I don't know the way out.

It's true. It is hard sometimes to know the way out. I think lots of us are feeling that sense of helplessness, right? We want to be with people in their grief and loss, but we also want to be able to help them. All of this talk though about being down in the pit reminds me of Psalm 40. And I think maybe that's a helpful piece for us right now, because Psalm 40 is told in retrospect, right? So,

The psalmist talks about having waited patiently for the Lord and how God draws him up out of the desolate pit and out of the mire. And I love that language of the pit and the mire bog because some days that's just what it feels like slogging through the loss that we're experiencing right now. But I think the promise is not only that our friends

pods.

accompany us sometimes in the pit and the bog, but that the presence of God is there with us as well. That the promise is that God not only enters into that with us in Jesus Christ, but that God knows the way out. Sometimes that takes some waiting and I never quite understand why God waits so long. think I would like God to hurry up in lots of ways, but the psalmist

bears witness to the fact that even after the waiting, that God is the one who knows the way out and who draws us out of the pit oftentimes in really unexpected ways and in ways that we can't see or know or sometimes even understand until we're looking back.

I'm brought back to your image of the waiting room that you started with Scott and I and I think for me the takeaway out of this is what does it mean to be in ministry with people communities a society that is experiencing this cumulative loss and I think for one thing it means listening just being there to listen to

to lend an ear, not to fix, not to solve, but to listen. But I think it also means being in the pit, jumping in, coming alongside, finding ways to be present even when we're socially slash physically distancing from one another. There are ways I think that we can be with people in this time of loss.

What you're saying, Terry, reminds me of how important empathy is. Brene Brown has this wonderful video where she talks about the meaning of empathy. As a matter of fact, in the video, there is a bear stuck in a pit, and what happens after that? So the whole pit image works really well with it. But she talks about empathy as, have to conjure up within myself a feeling that I see in you.

So if you're telling me about this medical situation that you say is in your family, I have to then not just say, isn't that too bad, but I have to think about times when I've experienced some kind of medical situation. It may be a completely different thing, but I know the fear. I know the anxiety. I know the waiting. I know all those pieces. And I have to go there with you. And when you can see on my face that I went there with you, you have experienced empathy.

It's something that must be done in community. We talk about grief and we talk about gratitude together. think about a congregation I was working with last week where specifically they were working with their young adults. It's a large church that has 120 young adults in it. And they were trying to decide how they were going to do ministry with young adults. And they were trying specifically to decide whether or not to have a weekly lesson that they record in advance and send out on YouTube or whether they have a Zoom meeting.

And the initial response was that they probably wanted to do something on YouTube because they wanted something that they could control and would be very professional. But they began to think about the need of community. And eventually they decided, yeah, think that for empathy to happen, people have to be able to see us respond to them. So they decided to do a Zoom meeting. Well, something interesting happened in the Zoom meeting. A woman who raised her hand physically

and then also in the Zoom meeting and they were called on her. And she says, you don't really know me much. Such and such a person has invited me here, but I want to tell you my story. She told a story about how she was struggling with her family and about what God was doing. And a couple of people responded to her. And by the end of it, the woman was in tears, room was in tears, the leader was in tears. The empathy in that moment came not just that the woman could go there and show her tears.

but that everybody else in the room went there too. She felt deeply understood because she could see that her story conjured up something in somebody else, that they went there. That's what with means. So we have this thing where the takeaway today is that we need to go with people into the pit. But that still doesn't help us to fully understand about how to do loss.

And so next week we're going to take up the next question. What's the best way to respond to loss? And we will argue that the appropriate biblical response to loss is lament. And so we'll talk next week about lament as a helpful way of responding to loss.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of our Pivot podcast. For more leadership resources from LEAD, you can go to waytolead.org or from Faithlead, go to faithlead.luthersam.edu.