Prayers and Children's Time - Advent 1 (Dec 1, 2013)

Welcoming:

Good morning.

We see the white roofs every morning these days, and the white frosts that gently touch and lay on the grass, and they tell us what season we are entering - not just early winter, but the season of waiting, the season of hope, the season of seeking the Light of Christ in the midst of a dark night’s silence.

Welcome to Chemainus United Church’s first Advent Service of the year. This Sunday we begin our journey of Advent; In the end we will arrive at the mystery of Christmas, which is not just a simple holiday for us Christians. It is a time when we see a ray of light in the darkness, hear the message in the silence, anticipate the suffering of Christ that is not yet unrevealed to the joyful crowd gathering around the happy occasion of a new birth. Welcome everyone into this Great Wakening and Waiting.

CALL TO WORSHIP: ADVENT WREATH LITANY

ASSURANCE OF GOD’S GRACE

Hear these words from the Apostle Paul: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”

May the love of God the Creator, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit sanctify you and equip you with the armor of light, so that you can be a light and hope for many who come to you. Amen.

CHILDREN’S TIME

Good morning, my friends! Advent blessings to you!

By the way, what time is it…?

(Anxiously ask as if I really need to know what time it is now. Checking my pockets, my wrist to see where I put my watch…)

Do we have anyone who can tell me what time it is now?

(Props: put a watch, a clock, a calendar around the nativity set.)

Okay,  got it!

So the time is 11 AM on December the first, 2013... Which is the first Advent Sunday... Which is the time of WAITING…for…???

(Receive answers. If the children can’t answer immediately...)

During Advent, what do we wait for …?  (Receive answers..If no answers, ask WHO do we wait for?)

Yes! We are waiting for THE CHRIST CHILD. BABY JESUS. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD to come to us.

You know, since I was a child, I have been wondering, “Hmm.… what is so special about the fact that Christ came to us as a BABY?”

What does it mean that Jesus, who has come to the earth like any other baby, is the LIGHT of the world?

(Prop; a ball that lights.)

THIS SEASON OF ADVENT is a time to prepare ourselves for welcoming Jesus into our hearts, as if we welcome a new baby brother or sister into our family with love and prayer.

WILL YOU PRAY WITH ME?

Dear God, let us prepare our hearts as loving homes for the coming Christ Child. Amen.

OFFERING PRAYER                                                                               

God is about to send a message of hope to the world.

May our offering today be a message of hope for all. Amen.

COMMUNION

Dear friends in Christ, it is our great joy that we are welcomed to the feast of bread and juice – an ordinary meal, less substantial than our breakfast, ordinary food that is made with mere grains and grapes, ordinary - yet sanctified to be holy for the love we receive as we share in this feast.

As an invitation for today’s communion, I would like to share a story from the Philippines.

Ed de la Torre was writing about developing a “Eucharist of rice” in the Philippines, using the rice cakes called bibingka and native palm wine as the agents of communion. Preaching about the breaking of the host to desperately hungry peasant farmers, de la Torre explained simply, “We BREAK it because we are poor, and we don’t have enough. We must share the little we have.” Later, from jail, on a hunger strike, de la Torre wrote a poem and smuggled it out to his church. “To starve after justice,” it began, “to ache for it, like food.”

At this table we starve after hope, justice, peace, love. We ache for them, like food. So we gather around this table. For those who know their need, God is immediate – not an idea, not a theory, but life and food.

L: May God be with you.

P: And also with you.

L: We open our hearts.

P: We open our hearts to God.

L: Let us give thanks to God.

P: It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Creator of the Universe, you speak in the darkness, bringing song out of silence, dance out of stillness, life out of death.

Your life fills us now and gives us the power to praise you and bless you.

So we sing a song of great thanks and praise with the company of saints here and all around the world, of men and women and children, in ages past and in the present, as one body, God’s body, in endless diversity.

MV 203

Beholding your holiness in all our human lives, we praise you and bless you.

On the night before his friends betrayed him

and enemies took him away to be killed,

Jesus shared supper with them all.

He blessed bread, broke it, gave it to them and said,

“This bread is my body,

making covenant with you and all humankind.

Whenever you eat it, remember me.”

Then he blessed the cup and said,

“This is the cup of life, my blood poured out for all,

making covenant with you and all humankind.

Whenever you drink it, remember me.”

Now whenever we eat this bread and juice,  

Jesus rises in us and makes us one body.

REMEMBERING THE COMMUNITY

After all, we can’t be a Christian by oneself.

God, on this table of the great sharing of your love,

Where bread is broken and juice is poured out,

We remember those who suffer and are in need of the nourishment of healing, in need of encouragement and the hope of a new life;

We pray for those who are hungry, sick and afraid, those who are in prison and without homes, enemies and friends, the violent and those who suffer at other’s hands.

We pray for those who are lonely, scared of the uncertain future, depressed or hopeless, and those who mourn for the loss of a loved one. Sustain and strengthen their hearts with your love, consolation and faithful presence.

Especially we pray for the bereaved in our church family who still hurt from the death of someone they have loved, and for all those who are currently going through a life-changing moment. Let us never spring back to who we WERE, but transform – “metamorphose” into a new way of being we may have never imagined for ourselves but YOU have imagined for us.  

LORD’S PRAYER

Life-giving God,  

you raised Jesus in glory from the tomb.

Now show us his body alive in your children.

Open our hearts to your Spirit, enlivening us.

Heal us, inspire us and give us your power

so we may live as Jesus lives and love as Jesus loves.

“Holy Gifts for Holy People.”

DISTRIBUTION

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

God, when the world is just too much, when our life bogs down in mess and challenges, we break, and try not to see you, because it is too painful to believe that you are with us in the darkness. Yet, in the process of breaking, you never let us be the same, unchanged. We TRANSFORM within the shelter of your being, readied for the future that is only known to you. May this food we have eaten sustain us into the future that only hope and trust in you will bring to fruition, with your sustaining love. Amen.

Note (2) from Leading Adaptive Change Workshop - including personal case study

USE OF POWER
Authority Zone – meeting expectations

Leadership Zone – working on competing values

Power Zone – abuse of position

What congregation teaches you “you don’t really understand what our congregation …makes music leader choose more comfortable music…

How music is fitting into the our worship right now

Stepping out and boldly more in …

If you don’t abuse power – leadership is always about…

People’s expectation on leadership – directing, protecting, ordering (technical problem solving)

Leader should be able to expose threats

Adaptive leadership and technical -> don’t always mix

Difficulty providing adaptive leadership

Adaptive work often ….outside of authority structures

Work Avoidance

Work avoidance is what we do in place of adaptive work

Diverting attention / displacing responsibility

Blaming/scapegoating – technical solving only – telling a joke, take a break, deny the problem, create a proxy fight, take options off the table to honour legacy behaviour

Displacing Responsibility

Shooting the messenger, scapegoating someone, externalize the enemy, attacking authority, delegate the work to someone who can’t do anything about it (consultant committee, task force)

The leader’s task is getting the work back to the people who have to do the adaptation

It is not managing change: It is about regulating the pace of loss.

Frustrating expectations at a rate that people can stand.

10-12 % people will never change because their core value is being threatened.

Always asking: who stands to lose what? (what’s being left behind)

CONTAINERS

Dialolgue inside the governing body

(experiment: (lava) and see how the congregation respond to it)  ex. At the end of the summer

Finding the PRODUCTIVE ZONE OF DISEQUILIBIRUM

(3 pictures of the pots of boiling egg in the water)

Until the heat warms up to a certain level

The second picture: system shutdown

9. Holding Steady.

THE DANCE FLOOR – OBSERVE, INTERPTRETE, INTERVENE
What’s happening in the balcony – create a space for observing balcony

YOU KNOW WHEN ALL ADAPTIVE CHALLENGE WHEN  p.10

-          There is persistent gap between aspiration and reality

-          Available responses are inadequate

-          Difficult learning is required

-          New stakeholders need to be included

-          Long true frame needs to be changed

IDENTIFYING FLAGS OF ADAPTIVE CHALLENGE
the language of complaint is overused..

Failure, frustration, stress

p. 11.

LEARNING AN ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION

Involves testing hypothesis – ex “we don’t have children in our worship, it means..”

Example of adaptive intervention: adaptive challenge: A congregation in pastoral transition: what does it mean to prepare our congregation for new leadership after a highly successful and visible pastorate of 18 years.

The intervention; people become to ask all the sacred cows. Anxiety level is heightened.

Conversation, container

Leaders want to reduce board size from 21 members to 9 members to improve board decision making effectiveness.

YOUR DECISION TO BE NON-REACTIVE can be ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION

최대한 예배를 구성하는 힘(power)가 더 많은 사람들에게 주어지도록 한다

FRACTION IS NOT SIGN OF FAILRUE; IT IS A SIGN OF MOVEMENT
We treat that as DATA

Stakeholders begin to use our perspectives

Be careful not to carry somebody else’s water

DIFUSSION OF INNOTVATION (Everett Rodgers)

Innovators 2.5 % likes changes for the sake for changes

Early Adaptors 13.5 % if when some makes sense to them

Early Majority: 34 %
Late Majority: 34 % head back for a while – skeptical people

Laggards 16 % Laggards are never coming along, never going to endorse to change, no explanation would get them to move along

Target for change – not for the sake of laggards, but for late majority

Usually we spend most of our energy mostly to the three groups – innovators, early adaptors, laggards, but the place for you to put your leadership and energy are Early Majority and Late Majority.

Say to the Laggards: “I am so sorry that it’s so painful for you, but we are going this way.”

ACTING POLITICALLY (Matthew 10:16)

In ways of getting things done in MISSIONAL AND COVENANTAL WAY

Through the strategic use of power

Am I deepening my influence reservoir or draining it?

Ø  Our ambivalence about power

Ø  Concerns about means and end

Ø  Preference for individual over collective performance

Ø  Preference for decision making over implementation

Fair Fighter (FF) Dirty Fighter (DF) Balanced Fighter (BF)

Q. What is an appropriate response to those who try to sabotage you?

Be aware: the use of negative currency will always escalate the power dynamics.

Engage the HEALTHY BYSTANDERS, POWER OF THE COMMUNITY

EXAMINE YOUR IMMUNITY TO CHANGE
(Now away from the congregation system to YOUR LEADERSHIP SYSTEM

ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION FOR MYSELF

Book: Immunity to Change

COLUMN 1 : POSSIBILITIES

What things (if I could do them more frequently or better) would help me to be a more adaptive leader in my context (for example, not worry about pleasing everyone, ignoring things that I don’t really need to pay attention to…)?

Ø  My personal answer:

I need to develop leadership skill that is political in a healthy and appropriate way and influential enough to bring adaptive changes that church does need to go through as an outcome of the adaptive leadership.

1. Developing healthy, political leadership skills that would practically bring as an outcome healthy changes that the community need to experience. (developing healthy skills of using coalition tactics as one of my influence tactics)

2. Self-confidence and endurance to not stop promoting an adaptive change in the face of others’ resistance and exercising an inappropriate attempt.

3. Being firm and standing on my ground when I articulate on the adaptive challenges, without falling into becoming emotional. Not becoming a victim.

COLUMN 2 : LOYALTIES AND VALUES

What loyalties or values underlie your column 1 responses for each response in column 1, complete this sentence. “This response suggests that I am loyal to”

Ø  I am loyal to health of community, being ‘missional’ as a core value of my identity as a Christian and the church’s.

Ø  I am loyal to the commitment and desire to develop need skills and exercise leadership that is politically healthy and practically influential (political influence).  

Ø  Independence, influence, confidence, endurance, health of the community, being missional, practicality, standing on my ground.

COLUMNE 3: DOING/NOT DOING

Look at what you recorded in column 2 and answer this question: “What am I doing or not doing that is keeping me from more fully honouring these ‘commitments’”?

Ø  I have been too conscious of and sensitive to whether the time is favourable or not to speak the truth and do the needed action that would actually make any influence on the dynamics of the congregation.

Ø  I have hesitated to do anything that may make fraction among others.

Ø  I stop doing any effort to make changes when I face strong resistance from a group of people. I don’t usually confront others.

Ø  I have never used coalition tactics as a possible influence tactics that I may benefit from using it.  (making allies..with healthy bystanders).

Ø  I have never considered to be political. (being political is opposed to being faithful.)

COLUMN 4: HIDDEN COMPLETING COMMITMENTS

WORRY BOX: If I imagine myself doing the opposite of what I recorded in column 3, what is the most uncomfortable, worrisome or outright scary feeling that comes up for me?

Ø  Creating conflict, fraction, a certain dynamic that I may contribute to and then I will have no control over.

Ø  After all, if I don’t accept the wishes of those who would never comply to me, they would eventually leave the church for their own deeply saturated frustration and resentment.

Ø  I am worried that the others begin to convince their friends to believe that I am not competent, and that I lack important capacities, skills, faith and knowledge that they believe are the cores of leadership (including worship leadership). (Put it differently, proving my competence and excellency so that I prove I am valuable is so important to me.)

Ø  If I act politically, I may lose fairness and inclusivity. Being political means losing fairness.

THE WORRY BENEATH THE WORRY

Ø  I am valuable only when I prove that I am competent and excellent.

Ø  People may leave if I don’t comply to their wishes, and that means I fail in ministry. I will be considered as an incompetent, bad minister.

For each behaviour you listed in column 3, identify the commitment driving that behaviour by completing this sentence: “I may also be loyal to…”

Ø  The values of fairness, inclusivity, others’ feelings and desire to feel happy and good, caring and being faithful to everyone, especially those who are not well,

Ø   proving my competence, excellence, people’s evaluation

Ø  Staying away from what stresses me, inner peace.

Ø  Harmony. Liking each other.

Ø  You cannot possibly satisfy those two different sets of commitments. I cannot live in the both worlds at the same time.

Ø  Column 2 protects Column 3 from worries, so we get stuck

COLUMN 5: BIG ASSUMPTIONS

A mindset or way of constructing reality that inevitably contains a blind spot: something we don’t initially recognize as an assumption but as the truth.

Ø  I have not believed that my proving of my capacity and competence can be measured by how I have made healthy fraction and whether people begin to adopt the vocabularies from my vision, - the signs of the adaptive changes – rather than by the numbers of the church attendance or seeing who have come and who may never come back to Sunday service.

Ø  That if I don’t comply, people would leave is an assumption that I have never tested.

Ø  I have assumed that coalition tactic is always not healthy and leads to lose fairness.

COLUMN 6: FIRST SMART TEST

What are one or two concrete and tangible action step that you could take to test your most problematic assumptions? Safe enough to test the assumption that I hold as truth

Ø  Acting politically; whenever and whatever Helen and others use inappropriate attempts, I say no. And assure them that we can have a conversation in a container setting that is appropriate, healthy, public, official and visible.

Ø  Engage with the healthy bystanders like Gloria, David, Lana and others and ask or receive their spontaneous support. Use Coalition tactics, make allies, work with bystanders. Share.

Ø  Don’t use ‘legitimate tactic’ to Helen, Marian and others as it seems that it does not work at all.

Ø  Speak the truth and act politically with appropriate, healthy means.

Ø  Try and to be in a way that deepens my influence reservoir. Always be reminded.

Ø  Try to be disengaged as much as I can from Helen. (Don’t put too much energy to persuade and work with Helen.) Try to be more engaged with the group of Early Adopters and Late Adopters and share my vision with them.