Yellow footprints and a clipboard

There are two images I carry in my head. They come back to me from time to time as clarifiers. Two images: yellow footprints and a clipboard.

The sisters and brothers of the Order of the Ascension read a common book each year and engage in a discussion about it. This year we’re writing emails and will gather on Zoom. This year’s book is A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery: A Practical Theology of the Parish Church. Michelle Heyne and I co-authored.  (You can get the book from Amazon on this link)

After reading the initial responses my two images were calling me. The first was the yellow footprints you stand on as you begin your training as a Marine. Brother Lowell mentioned the image in his response. The second is a clipboard that Loren Mead carried around for many years. On one side was an organizational chart with its boxes of job titles and clear lines of reporting and authority. On the other side was this incredible messy web of rubber bands, string, and paper clips. Loren use it in teaching about how parishes really worked. He’d show us the organizational chart and say, “This is what you are taught to expect and establish. Then he’d turn it over and put a finger under one of the rubber bands and yank it. The whole system would vibrate. Every paper clip, piece of string and rubber band would move. He’d say, “that’s what you’ll experience.”

The yellow footprints had to do with entry into a dense culture with a rich sense of identity, integrity, and internal integration. The web of the clipboard was about unpredictability and complexity. You rushed off the bus and onto the footprints while a drill instructor demanded immediate action and perfection; the impossible. You would become more and more anxious, unsettled, even fearful. In the very first moments of becoming a Marine you had to show courage and persistence; you had to manage your fear. Loren’s clipboard was about how parishes were complex organisms. They were systems of interrelated parts. Touch one part and it impacted everything. You had to find a way to serve when everything was moving parts.

Then my mind moved to this polarity.   

All organizations struggle with how to adapt enough in a changing world to survive and continue in their mission while also maintaining their identity, integrity, and internal integration. If you’re the Marine Corps and you fail to adapt you will lose battles and lives. And if you over-adapt, you will lose battles and lives. What happens in the Episcopal Church when we fail to adapt, or we over-adapt to the culture?  

I stood on the yellow footprints many years ago. As things turned out, or maybe as God willed, that wasn’t to be my life. A Marine had died of an asthma attack on a forced march. That wasn’t too many years after several Marines had died in a training accident in Ribbon Creek. Hundreds of us with hay fever or asthma were given Honorable Discharges and sent home. They didn’t want any more training deaths.

I think my Drill Instructor was disappointed. He had mapped out a plan for me that included serving, going to Vietnam, staying in the Reserves while attending seminary, and returning to the Corps as a Navy Chaplain. I’m still glad I stood on the yellow footprints. It stays with me.

There have been many times while serving in the church that I’ve had to grab hold of something within that allowed me to persist and have courage. Some way of getting grounded. I had to manage my anxiety and fear and stay with two things: do the mission and take care of your people. Can’t say I always got that right. But I usually knew what I was called to be and do even as I failed.

The chapters of the book we’re reading and discussing that have drawn the most attention so far are “Power from the center pervades the whole” and “Cultural density.” Two matters at the heart of understanding and improving our churches. Stuff that applies to every parish—large and small, vibrant and listless, parishes of all races and political leanings. How do we help them be strong, healthy, and faithful? How does any priest do that when many people in the congregation are tentative, immature, or static about faith and practice? When those people constitute the emotional center of the parish? When the climate of the church rises from them? When they don’t see any need for change in themselves or the parish? No need for conversion of life? Really no need for true obedience and stability either?

Martin Thornton thought that 90% of the priest’s time needed to go to the Remnant (the Apostolic). Would that adequately address the situation? Or is it more about the skills and knowledge of the priest for shaping the processes and climate of the parish? Is it about the priest knowing what the “yellow footprints” would be for that parish? The ground upon which people might engage the mission and serve their people.

There’s another Image. A Marine Corps platoon leader, a young 2^nd Lieutenant, ordering people to take off their shoes and socks. Bending down to examine each foot. Giving instructions about how to care for them. An activity that is both about the mission and the people. There must be a huge temptation to ignore that practice. Who wants to look at the dirty, puffy, stinking, blister covered feet of 40 other people?  After all, they’re adults. You’ve told them the norm. You’ve taught them. “They should just do it I shouldn’t have to nag them. Crap, I’m only 23 myself.” But the fact is most of them are 19 years old, not very mature, and in that setting to take care of your mission and your people means checking their feet.

So then … what does it mean in a parish church that is overwhelmingly made up of people who are immature in faith and practice?  Who are in the middle and outer fringes of sacramental faith? What stance and practices does the priest need to take on that will serve the mission and care for the people? That will shape a people with “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you (God), and the gift of joy and wonder in all your (God’s) works.” What needs to be the initial experiences of people for whom adult Christian faith and practice is entry into a new way of life? Their yellow footprints? How is the priest as a person to live in the polarity of adaptation and integrity, identity, and integration? And how is the priest to best help the parish community manage itself when everything is vibrating, and all is in motion?

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The yellow footprints

The speech

The recruit's intial experince would be something like this.

The drill instructor screams for them to get off his bus and onto the yellow footprints. The recruits rush off the bus and line up on the yellow footprints.

The Drill Instructor: "You are now a part of Marine Corps Recruit training. Starting now you will train as a team. The word 'I' will no longer be a part of your vocabulary. Do you understand?"

The recruits respond, "Yes sir!" 

The Drill Instructor: "Tens of thousands of Marines have begun their outstanding service to our country on the very footprints where you are standing. You will carry on their proud tradition, do you understand?"

"Yes sir!"