TURKEY DEBUT

My wife and I made our Thanksgiving dinner debut last night, to a delighted audience of her parents. Some highlights from this momentous rite of passage:

1. Wandering aimlessly in the grocery store like the stereotypical clueless husband, twice in a four-day span, while racking my brains deciding whether "heavy cream" was the same as "heavy whipping cream" and accosting any motherly type to ask what in the world "tressing needles" looked like.

2. Winning a twenty-pounder for spending a certain amount at our grocery store, and then being able to give it away to a family in our church because Amy was able to score a fresh turkey (killed that week) from the dentist she works with at her job.

3. Watching the fridge slowly fill up with desserts in various states of completion; Amy rarely has the time to bake, but when she does, she can be pretty darn prolific.

4. Waking up Thanksgiving morning and coming downstairs to find my wife, with apron on, stirring a pot, chopping veggies, and thumbing through two cookbooks, all while yelling instructions on our cell phone to the poor nurse who had to work Thanksgiving day and who was paging Amy every half-hour with questions and problems.

5. Sweeping, swiffing, and mopping every hardwood floor in sight, and tackling the bathroom with such strong cleaning agents that I almost passed out.

6. Jumping into the cooking fray when Amy tired in the early afternoon, and somehow pulling off a giblet gravy that the cook book needed two pages and change to describe -- all while catching up with a high school buddy on the phone, flipping the turkey every half-hour, washing dirty dishes, and watching the football game on a tiny, grainy, black-and-white TV we have in the kitchen.

7. Setting up the dinner table -- and by dinner table I mean eight-foot folding table – and cobbling together four chairs, only two of which match and one of which was borrowed from our tenants upstairs

8. Enjoying an evening of good food (go Amy!), pleasant conversations, and funny Thanksgiving stories from the past

9. Packing up two huge containers of turkey, one of which will go in the freezer since we probably won’t finish the other for another two or three weeks

10. Falling asleep, thankful for food in my belly and not even giving a second thought to sleeping in and letting someone else get the jump on Christmas shopping

FAITHFUL BUDGETING

Our congregation spent most of its official meeting this afternoon discussing a budget that was prepared by our budget committee and preliminarily reviewed by our session. While the session retains ultimate power to vote on the final document, which it will do in January, of course we desire the congregation's input. And the most interesting discussion centered around our use of our endowment.

It is a wonderful thing to have an endowment; many churches have no such thing, and therefore find themselves in constant financial straits. But with the blessing comes responsibility, and we congregants and leaders take that responsibility seriously. What, then, is the faithful response to an endowment; to safeguard it from whittling away or to spend it down on the things God would be pleased for us to be doing?

Having been on session for five years now, I've voted aye on five straight budgets which reflected a net loss and therefore a dip into the endowment. Many of those years, the actual financials showed no net loss, since we tend to overbudget and underspend. But this year's version promises to be a definite loss, and perhaps a very large one. Large enough, indeed, to make many people nervous about passing it.

One side are those who say we must go by faith: God has not given us a lump of money to sit on, but to use for His glory. It is not as though we are stingy givers and wasteful spenders; on the contrary, we are a remarkably generous congregation (given that we are mixed in our income levels, and not all upper-income) and tend to be spartan in our expenditures and our salaries.

Therefore, let's trust that those who gave to our endowment through bequests and other large gifts would want us to use their money to plug the annual hole that we have between what we bring in and what we spend out. In fact, in the past ten years, we've seen little change in our endowment even as we've dipped into it, because of 1) the bull market of the roaring 1990's and 2) new bequests that add to the endowment principal.

All well and good, say some; but this year promises to be different. It is prudent, even required in some industries, to spend down between 2% and 7% of an endowment; any more and you deteriorate principal, any less and you're not using the endowment for what it's there for. And while we've been around 5% for the past few years, this year's budget is probably going to weigh in at about a 14% dip into the endowment.

So rather than saying it's OK to dip in, or to merely encourage people to give more, we must get our red pens out and slash some things in the budget. If the leaders are asking the congregants to sacrificially give offerings, the congregants ought to ask the leaders to sacrificially cut spendings.

Whichever side of this fascinating argument we find ourselves on, we all agree that what's most important is that we subordinate our desires and plans under the lordship of Christ the King. And so I pray, that whether we dip deeply into our endowment, raise our giving, and/or spend within our means, that we do so by God's leading and for the sake of His Name.

SIDEWALKS ARE THE REAL URBAN PLAYGROUNDS

I wanted to pass along an insight I’ve gleamed from a gem of a book called “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” The classic, written by Jane Jacobs in 1961, still resonates with truth and immediacy today, and has aptly captured my “hard to put into words” love for large cities.

Jacobs’ book has very little data in it, on demographics or urban planning or architecture or housing. Rather, it is a running narrative of her keen observation of what makes cities work, from the level of the resident and passerby. It consistently debunks the erroneous assumptions of an entire generation of city planners – sixty years later, these errors are still being committed.

Take our disdain for sidewalks, for example. Under attack from both sides – by planners who want more space for driving, and by homeowners who want more space for living – the city sidewalk is further vilified when it is being used as a play area for children. Grimy kids chasing each other around on grimy streets is how negative things can happen, is the thought; and if only we could build more parks and playgrounds, or fix up the ones we have, kids would have the kind of play space they need – clean, safe, and accessible.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong, according to Jacobs. For one, sidewalks – at least good city sidewalks – are heavily trafficked by adult passersby and constantly observed by adult residents. The combination of eyes and feet make such places more safe, not less, for kids. Contrast this to playgrounds and parks, where the adult-to-child ratio is reversed. It is no wonder that “street” gangs do their worst business not on streets, but in playgrounds and parks.

And yet parks and playgrounds are a city planner’s favorite ace in the pocket. People and cities crave more parks, yes? If we want to encourage healthy interactions and a feeling of community, we ought to have more parks and playgrounds, goes the assumption. And I don’t totally disagree, for such places – if well-designed and well-kept – can and do become places to congregate and to pass through. And when people congregate and pass through, formal and informal interactions occur, people bond with friends and strangers, and children are safe to play.

But isn’t that what sidewalks do, too? Good sidewalks, which are well-trafficked and have the kinds of stores where people stop and meet, also promote gathering and passing through. Furthermore, in contrast to most parks and playgrounds, city sidewalks are surrounded by residences. Residences means more eyes on. More eyes, more traffic, more gathering – more safety, more social connection, more community.

Many people will argue that city folks are private people, who don’t want to get involved in other peoples’ business. And to some extent, this is true; city living affords a level of privacy that you can’t find in small towns, where everyone knows everyone and one’s private business is rarely that.

And yet Jacobs believes – and I would agree – that city folks, like all folks, welcome some level of public contact. We live for the interactions with our produce guy and his other customers, with our barber and her other patrons, with the guys on the corner selling newspapers and their colleagues. We don’t care to share our personal business, or even our names. But we feel more human for having dozens of interactions – moments – with people over the course of living, working, shopping, and worshipping in the city. And the sidewalk, far from being a cesspool of iniquity to be avoided, is the thoroughfare and gathering point for such interactions.

So let the kids play on the sidewalks. They are safer there, because of the adult legs that pass by and the adult eyes that keep watch. And they will grow up and become themselves adults, enjoying social contact with other adults at a level that allows them public interaction without sacrificing private boundaries.

WHERE I SPEND MY TIME

Just for kicks and giggles (and this just shows you weird I am, that this kind of thing is kicks and giggles for me), I decided to track where I spend my time over the course of a week, just to get a sense of where these 168 hours per week are going. Not surprisingly, sleep (54 hours) and work (40) are number one and two by a landslide.

The next tier of time users, surprisingly, are cooking/eating (11), reading/crosswords (9 2/3), personal projects [like blogging!] (8), quality time with my wife (7 1/2), and praying (7). After that goes exercise (4 1/2), errands/housework (4 1/2), sports [TV + Internet] (4.5), church stuff (3.5), and TV (3.5). Finally, bringing up the rear are travel by car [because of a work-related drive to Atlantic City for a presentation; normally time in the car would be much less, since I walk to work] (2 5/6), social time (2.5), hygiene (2 1/3), travel by walking (1 1/2), and travel by public transportation (1).

So as you can see, I live a pretty introverted life: not a lot of social time, lots of individual projects like reading and blogging and personal development, more work time by a lot than quality time with my wife. This is a relatively slow week, too, as I had no major travel engagements (besides AC) and nothing but free time over the weekend. My wife and I have been talking about taking our workaholism down a notch, and the numbers back that up.

Of course, some of these categories are fuzzy, as there are times I am eating AND spending time with my wife AND watching TV, and technically driving to AC for a work presentation could go under work. You get the picture; but as much as possible, I tried to divvy up the times in a fair manner. It's interesting to see where the time goes. It's kind of a pain to track for a week, but I encourage you to do it, too.

RECALLING MY SENIOR YEAR

Yesterday I got a chance to talk with a senior at the Wharton School of Business who is a Christian and is trying to decide what she wants to do next in life. She was encouraged to look me up by a mutual friend of ours, who saw similarities in our respective situations. This mutual friend of ours thought I might be of help to her, in sorting out how to be faithful and representative of Jesus in the process of choosing a vocational track. I was happy to make the connection.

Our conversation brought me back to my own senior year. As she shared – of the overwhelming tide of peers rushing into the traditional Wharton careers of IT, consulting, and investment banking, and of her own anxieties about how she could be a good steward of her business education while serving the purposes of the Kingdom of God – I couldn’t help but hear myself, circa my senior year, in her comments.

I reassured her that at the very least, one other person – me – worried their way through their senior year thinking about the very same things. I tried to help her to have perspective, that God is at work in special ways in the lives of people and groups that are in transition, and that thus even bouts of anxiety were part of that working out process.

I encouraged her to go through such a process in community (i.e. have friends who can prayerfully support you through your musings), and to have community as a criterion for where she should go next (i.e. who are you going to “do life with” during the next stage of your life), but not to necessarily equate that with having to stay with that same group after graduation (i.e. “community is important after I graduate” + “these friends are currently my community” does not equal “therefore I should stay with these friends after I graduate”).

Mostly, I tried to let her express her fears, and tried to share candidly how I felt, in retrospect, about my own senior year journey, so she had at least one other person’s experiences to look to for guidance and example. When we parted ways, she thanked me for taking the time to help her; but I too felt grateful, for our time together gave me the opportunity to reminisce about my senior year in college, and to worship God in the remembrance of His faithfulness to me in the midst of my worrying and frailty.

ENCOURAGEMENTS AND CRITICISMS

I've shared in this space that it's been hard for me to know how to find a balance between encouragement and criticism in my communications with the young entrepreneurs I coach. This afternoon's class afforded another opportunity for me to find that balance, and yet I find such a balance ever elusive.

Last week, we hosted a showcase for our young entrepreneurs, and I called on some business professionals from my rolodex to come out and meet them. Though I am hard to please and set impossibly high standards, I was genuinely delighted by my students' performance. They handled a pressure-packed room of inquisitive adults with poise, professionalism, and intelligence. I left the networking function feeling sky-high about my young entrepreneurs.

At the same time that I wanted to convey my pride, though, I wanted to make sure my students did not rest on their laurels, or take themselves too seriously. I have found that young people who have nothing going for them academically are very sensitive about criticism and failure; braggadocio serves as a convenient screen for insecurity about being exposed as bad or dumb. It's why entrepreneurship is so scary -- it involves taking risks and making mistakes -- and it's why entrepreneurship is so important to experience at an early age, in a nurturing environment like the one we try to offer.

So while I wanted them to hear my accolades and live in the reality of a job well done, I didn't want them to then swing to the other end of the pendulum and think that they were invincible and infallible, and that the hard work was over. So I tried to balance compliments with criticisms, encouragements with exhortations.

And I never quite got comfortable, never quite felt balanced. Sometimes I bristled at the arrogance of the teens, nervous that they were over-inflating themselves to the point of hubris and unreality. Other times I felt I needed to offer more encouragements, to remind them of just how momentous an occasion it was for them to have done so well in such a difficult setting.

I neither want to patronize my youth nor be overly harsh. I want them to soar in the knowledge of their talents and accomplishments, but I want them to be sobered by how much they must do to be able to participate and thrive in mainstream society. I want them to work hard, harder than they'd ever imagined and harder than any of their peers; but I want them to be kids, too, and I want them to be able to have enough perspective to look back and see how far they've come.

I only hope that my muddled mix of encouragements and criticisms can help these young women and men to grow into business leaders who are humble yet confident, and who can compete and succeed in our economy and in our society.

BUILDING MUSCLE FROM WITHIN

This morning, I met with a priest from a parish in the Olney section of North Philadelphia, who was interested in promoting business incubation in his neighborhood. What is a priest doing talking shop with an incubator practitioner, you might ask. I found him to be very far-sighting and strategic in his thinking.

As you may know, churches across most denominations have been bleeding members for the past three decades in older northeastern cities. White flight, crumbling communities, and decreased interest in organized religion have all contributed to the exodus. As a result, church leaders entrusted with providing spiritual nurture to their flocks are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make sure their flocks don't dwindle to zero.

In many regards, churches are analogous to business incubators. Both believe in the importance of place, as a hub for human contact, information, and nurture; but at the same time, place is subordinated to something greater that unifies that congregate in that place. Both seek to be resource providers and resource connectors. And both seek to strengthen the muscle of a community from within.

In this sense, both offer an alternate approach to community development than the flashier projects that make the headlines. Marquee developers sign on to do huge retail developments, politicians gather around a new housing development to cut a ribbon, and community leaders celebrate the successful wooing of a GE fulfillment center to their neighborhood and the hundreds of jobs such a facility will bring its residents.

And none of those headline-makers does much to strengthen the muscle of the very residents all that development is supposed to benefit. Instead, I'm finding out, many residents are upset by all the hubbub, disenfranchised and neglected as they are from such processes and activities. When a community improves itself in this way, it is telling to ask, "Who has the community improved for?"

Sure, nurturing businesses in an incubator and loving souls in a church don't make for good copy, and the results may take years and even generations to see the light of day. And thus I was glad to share a moment with a kindred spirit, who saw as I saw; with a long-term perspective, and with an eye for strengthening a community's muscle from within.

MY FIRST PASTOR

Today we commissioned our youth director, Anne, a little bit after the fact (she’s been on the job for over six weeks). I got a chance to pray in front of the congregation as all of us elders laid hands on Anne, and I asked God to make our church a place where teens knew we loved God and loved teens. And so may He empower Anne to lead the effort to make our church that kind of church.

I think back to my own teen years, and to Pastor Lo, whose wisdom and availability helped me come to faith. I didn’t grow up in a church, so when my friend Ben invited me to come with him to their Friday night youth group meetings, I was looking for good times and cute girls, not spiritual maturity and Biblical teaching. But God had other plans.

As I heard more of what it meant to be a Christian, and saw it lived out in the lives of the leaders and youth in this church, I began to wonder what it would mean for me to be a Christian. And Pastor Lo guided me through that process. I never felt pressured, nor patronized; I was never meant to feel like an outsider or a project. Rather, Pastor Lo was, well, pastoral. He was patient with my questions and my cluelessness, gentle in his answers and his advice.

It was thirteen years ago that Pastor Lo and I met with my parents to talk about my newfound faith, twelve years ago that he baptized me in front of the congregation. And I must admit I don’t often think about him, or of the gratefulness I ought to have for his time and love. But today, I remember my first pastor, and thank him for his kind pastoring of me into Christian faith and obedience. Pastor Lo, thank you.

STRIVING FOR AUTHENTICITY

Our church-wide conversation about the future mission of our congregation has run in parallel with the related topic of renovating our facility. Both have been heated but productive, and I’d like to report on a theme I see running through these intertwined discussions.

It seems our church strives for authenticity. We are a humble group in the truest sense, in that we really don’t know, don’t want to know, don’t want it to be known, about the great things that are happening in our midst. While it is nice to see true humility in action, it is also true that this can itself become a source of pride.

What do I mean? We’re not the prettiest bunch of people around, nor is our building the nicest. And we seem to be darn proud of that. We like that our human facades and our property facades are a little imperfect. We like that we are warm and welcoming, not flashy and charismatic. We like that the beauty of our Sunday School program is in the rosy cheeks of our children and the faithful hearts of our teachers, not in the innovation of our curriculum or the newness of our classrooms. We don’t sing the trendiest worship songs, or have sermons that focus on the three P’s of prayer, or have glossy marketing brochures with shiny happy people on the cover. And we like that about ourselves.

To be sure, it is a wonderful thing to see an entire congregation say no to the idolatry of prettiness, sophistication, and brand new buildings. It is disgusting to see how much attention and money gets thrown in this direction in this country, especially when 1) God chooses the foolish and weak to do His work in and through, and 2) our brethren overseas are so deficient in material resources.

Nevertheless, as I stated above, I believe this kind of true humility can itself become a badge of pride. And I wonder if our striving for authenticity can blind us from seeing and responding to what God would have us to do as a congregation. For example, our building dialogue has us divided into two camps. There is a group that sees renovating our old facility as essential to attracting a certain group of newcomers, like people from the suburbs, upper-class folks, and parents who wouldn’t dare send their kids to Sunday School classrooms in a dark basement with electrical and water problems. Then there is a group that rebels against any sort of reliance on building renovation to advanced God’s Kingdom; church growth and obedience to God should be reflected in the faithfulness of His people, not in the newness of a church building.

These camps have battled over an expensive proposal to hire an architect to survey our physical plant and make suggestions about what we should do to renovate and improve it. The pro-building camp sees this as the first of many important steps towards making our church building more attractive. The anti-building camp shudders at the thought of starting an expensive process at the expense of investing in the people and families in the church.

I for one am in neither camp. I’m for doing the architectural study on purely secular grounds. We are called to be good stewards of our resources; our church happens to be blessed with a historic facility. We should do what we can, in a proactive and preventive way, to safeguard this asset, and to take good care of it. The building has been around for 100+ years, and every once in awhile, you need to fork over $15,000 for someone to tell you what you need to do from the standpoint of maintenance and safety and preventive measures to make sure it’s around for another 100+ years. We would spend a proportionate amount making sure we got the most out of our photocopier or our sound system, I argue; therefore, we ought to do the same with our most valuable physical asset.

But I digress. I hear and buy the arguments on both sides, but I wonder how much the anti-building folks are influenced by a striving for authenticity. A capital campaign and a newly renovated facility would come across as showy, and take away from the grittiness and real feel of our plain, understated motley group of members. Far from being a liability to future growth, chipping paint and water damage and subpar Sunday School classrooms add to the kind of character we are and that we want to show to the outside world. Is this what people are consciously or subconsciously thinking?

I don’t presume to know what is right and wrong, what is being faithful to divine principles and what is being seduced by popular notions. I do have an opinion, though. And I will continue to follow these two intertwined conversations to see if and how our striving for authenticity flavors our preferences and our decisions.

NBA PREDICTIONS

I made these predictions a week ago, before LeBron had his coming out party and Lamar went down in his first game, but nonetheless, I'm sticking to my hunches. Of course, my baseball and football predictions are laughable in hindsight, so don't take what's below too seriously.

West: 1 Mavs 2 Lakers 3 Spurs 4 Wolves 5 Kings 6 Suns 7 Rockets 8 Nuggets
East: 1 Pistons 2 Nets 3 Hornets 4 76ers 5 Magic 6 Pacers 7 Celtics 8 Heat

1st round W: Mavs over Nuggets, Rockets over Lakers, Suns over Spurs, Wolves over Kings
1st round E: Pistons over Heat, Nets over Celtics, Hornets over Pacers, 76ers over Magic

2nd round W: Mavs over Wolves, Rockets over Suns
2nd round E: Pistons over 76ers, Hornets over Nets

Conf Finals: Mavs over Rockets, Pistons over Hornets
Finals: Mavs over Pistons in 6

MVP: KG
ROY: Carmelo
Coach: Jeff Van Gundy