Be a dreamer this Advent

I have one of those weight-lifter art books that nobody really reads. You know, the kind you get one of the kids to help you drag off the bookshelf onto the coffee table when company is coming over. Well, in this tome is a picture of a painting by a 15th-century painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, titled “Adoration of the Shepherds.” It’s a nativity painting in which the whole world is coming to adore the newborn Christ child. Seriously, this painting looks like it could have been inspired by the crowds at LAX the day before Thanksgiving. And every one of the throng is focused on Jesus. Everyone, that is, except Joseph.

Joseph is oblivious to the commotion, gazing far off into the distant sky, looking, in fact, in the opposite direction of his adopted son. He is depicted as an elderly man, and, when I saw the painting, I thought he’d already slipped off into dotage.

We know from Matthew’s gospel that Joseph is a man of dreams. And we know that a guy who dreams up the kind of stuff Matthew tells us about—angels appearing right and left with life-changing exhortations like “flee to Egypt”—isn’t a guy who only has three or four dreams in a lifetime. This guy lives in a dream.

How did Joseph get to be saintly? After all, when he found out Mary was pregnant, he planned to divorce her (Mt 1:19). Not shocking, but also not what you’d expect from a saint. It was his dreams that changed him. Because he was a dreamer, he was able to welcome Mary into his home and into his heart.

I took another look at the picture. In Ghirlandaio’s painting, Joseph is not an addled old man. He is a man of purpose. His hand rests firmly on a sarcophagus that serves as the Christ-child’s crib in the painting and a foreshadowing of his fate. That is to say, Joseph is grounded in the paschal mystery. With that foundation, he looks to the sky, far off in the distance, focused on what everyone else is too busy to see.

The challenge that Advent poses for us is to dream. And to teach our children to dream. But what are we to dream of? Joseph teaches us: A messenger of God, bearing good news.

The wicked stewardship problem

"Stewardship" has become the new beige. It goes with everything and seems pretty neutral.

Here's what I struggle with. If the parish belongs to the parishioners, how do we get them to take ownership? At the same time, how do we legitimately assert the authority of the bishop and the pastor to make "final decisions"? And, in the midst of all this, how do we ask parishioners to pay for the re-sources needed to accomplish a mission they don't always feel completely responsible for?

How do we even begin to solve the problems surrounding stewardship? If you are like me, you fantasize that there is "an answer" out there. Some parish or some person smarter or more experienced than I am must have solved all this already. But down deep, we know that really is a fantasy, don't we?

Wicked problems
These kinds of problems are what Horst Rittel, a pioneering theorist of design and planning and late professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called "wicked problems." Rittel figured out that many problems cannot be solved by "experts" dropping in and delivering a ten-point plan, even if they have experience in your specific area of difficulty. This is, in fact, the very type of solution most of us go looking for. We go to a workshop or buy a book or hire a speaker to just tell us what to do. The thing that makes your problem "wicked" is that there is no one solution. And each potential solution raises other problems. And, this is really key, each problem is unique.

Jim Conklin, author of Dialogue Mapping: Creating Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, went on to develop Rittel's ideas further. Conklin says wicked problems have these characteristics:

1. The problem is not understood until after formulation of a solution.
2. Stakeholders have radically different worldviews and different frames for understanding the problem.
3. Constraints and resources to solve the problem change over time.
4. The problem is never solved.

Don't you just hate that last one?

There is no "solution"
But think about it for a minute. Isn't the lack of a "solution" the very thing that makes the whole of parish life an encounter with grace? Stewardship is not a puzzle. There is no final answer. In the end, we are stewards of a mystery—a mystery of love. How do we solve that mystery? We can't. We can only enter into it.

Conklin says, "Because of social complexity, solving a wicked problem is fundamentally a social process. Having a few brilliant people or the latest project management technology is no longer sufficient." We might paraphrase that to say that because of the radical, loving relationship of the Father and the Son (in which we are immersed through the power of the Holy Spirit), solving a wicked problem is fundamentally an ecclesial process. Having a few brilliant theologians or stewardship experts is insufficient.

The answer is the community
In other words, stewardship is the responsibility of the entire parish community.

This means that all the multiple, complex, disjointed, busy, and distracted parts of the body of Christ must share a commitment to entering into the complex process of stewardship together. And they must share a commitment to love and support one another in that process. This won't "solve the problem." But it will bring us all more fully into the love of Christ.

[This was inspired by knowledge-management expert Jim McGee. See his post on "Solving puzzles or framing mysteries" for more information on wicked problems.]

Stewardship: Hospitality is the key

In the September issue of Today's Parish Minister, Cathy Rusin describes how hospitality is the key to good stewardship. She offers some criteria for measuring the "welcome factor" in your parish:

• Can people locate and read your sign, including Mass times?
• Is the entrance to the church building easy to find and attractive?
• Once inside, what sort of experience will they encounter?
• Do new members simply get a set of donation envelopes, or perhaps a basket with a ministry handbook, city map, and freshly baked bread?

Learn more
For more on stewardship and hospitality, Cathy recommends you contact the Archdiocese of Louisville (502-636-0296, comm@archlou.org). They publish Christian Hospitality, a comprehensive handbook which “provides a theological basis for hospitality,…tips for welcoming all people, and a sampling of models and programs…. Parishes will be able to evaluate their hospitality ministry and find suggestions for improvement.”