Beth Lindsay Templeton's Blog

I can surely testify that God works in mysterious ways. Back in late August/early September when I learned that I may be asked to become the Bridge Transitional minister at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC, my thoughts were, “Nope. I don’t want the responsibility.” As time went on while various options were being discussed by the Personnel Committee, I was asked to consider agreeing to be at the church for four months, October-January while a search committee looked for a full-time interim. I thought, “Well, I like to preach during Advent. With the pandemic, I will not be traveling to be with family. I’ll do it.”

I began to be impressed with the Session’s involvement and the willingness of various members to be active in the life of Eastminster. The staff made worship a real pleasure.

During these months, God began tugging at me to begin those kinds of things I am good at regarding organizational development. I began some processes knowing the interim could use what we’d already done whenever he/she arrived. I waited along with the rest of the congregation to find out how the search was going. I knew the committee was having significant and thoughtful conversations about next steps.

Then I was asked to stay another month through February. The interim search did not become as successful as originally hoped. So now, I will be the Transitional (Interim) Minister through the end of 2021. During this time, the congregation will begin a search for a full-time installed pastor.

I truly believe that God has been preparing me for this position my entire ministry. I had often thought that I might be an interim at this point in my life, but nothing seemed to be moving in that direction. Nevertheless, I had already trained as an interim; I had served on the Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry which oversees ministerial relations; I was on the Transitional Think Tank of the presbytery where I was privy to exciting conversations about the future of the Presbytery and our congregations. I had also been studying and teaching materials for several years that feed into my sermons now and in the future.

Some years ago, I was in a place of questioning. I screamed at God asking what was I supposed to be doing? The message I “heard” was “When the time is right, I will open the door for you.”

I retorted, “But what am I supposed to be doing in the meantime?”

I “heard” this wisdom: “Build your skills and learn your lessons.”

As I look back at how I have ended up in this wonderful place with amazing people and challenging opportunities, I realize that God has indeed opened the door and I’ve spent years building my skills and learning my lessons. I am convinced that I still have lessons to learn and look forward to learning them with this particular congregation.

My tasks as an interim/transitional minister include helping raise up new leadership, strengthening ties and understanding of the Presbyterian Church USA, and helping the congregation move from what was to what shall be. We will look at what is essential already to Eastminster and where opportunities will emerge. The pandemic has made these tasks even more important, yet different in how they will be executed. I see my role as teacher, spiritual leader, and catalyst. The congregation and I will grow as we explore where and how God is leading us as individuals and Eastminster as a congregation. Things will change and we will discover that we and this church are even more who God sees us to be.

The service is lived streamed on Facebook and You Tube beginning at 10 am each Sunday.

Eastminster.com

I heard a fascinating interview with someone whose name I did not catch as he talked about analyzing marketing materials for political candidates.  He said that in this age of technological media, candidates’ pundits can immediately analyze which words carry the most voter impact even which clothes the candidate should wear for specific markets. As soon as “the handlers” know what works for which groups, those words will find their way into speeches.  All this is to motivate us to react positively for the candidate and vote for him or her.  We know that television ads don’t just happen but are carefully crafted to get us to react emotionally, to tap into our fears, and to market the candidate for our locale, needs, and wants.

I propose another way to evaluate a candidate as deserving my vote… as a servant leader which I define as leadership that helps people grow into their full potential for the good of the community and themselves.

A servant leader is different from a leader who leads for power or money. The servant leader values people first, tasks second.  A servant leader listens…not just to those who have power but also to those whose voices have been silenced by poverty, oppression, violence, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

This leader listens to understand. He or she focuses on the meanings behind the words, the spaces of silence, and the non-verbal cues of the speaker. The servant leader seeks to relate to others, even those with whom disagreement is foremost.

The servant leader seeks to bring healing by transforming the status quo, by challenging the way things have always been, and through compromising when necessary. The servant leader resists polarizing language, solutions, and policies. The servant leader uses persuasion rather than coercion to help make needed changes for the community.

The servant leader is aware of what is going on within all the subgroups of his/her constituencies.  This leader understands that people who live in poverty are struggling to survive daily and are not often concerned with what’s going on within the national scene. This leader understands that people with power often make rules that benefit them and those like them. This leader realizes that people who are recent residents of the community see things in very different terms than those who have lived in the area for generations. The servant leader considers all these differences and seeks to help everyone reach his or her highest potential for the good of both self AND the community.

That’s the challenge…for leaders to search for ways to address the needs and concerns of the individual AND the community, of the grandmother raising her grandchildren and big business, of our country and the international community. A servant leader lives and works within these tensions and keeps them always in the front of the decision and law making processes.

The servant leader is self aware. She knows herself, her strengths and her weaknesses. She can laugh at herself.  He is humble enough to surround himself with people who complement  him (not compliment as in giving constant praise but complement as in balance out his weaknesses.)

The servant leader is a visionary and sees beyond the immediate dilemma to look toward the future with insight, creativity, and a big dose of curiosity. “What would happen if…” is a great question for such a leader. This leader can move beyond “common sense” and think with abstraction and conceptual skills.

The servant leader believes that people have tremendous growth potential. People and a community can thrive when given the kinds of infrastructure required to get and keep jobs, opportunities to meet all basic needs that make us human, and environments that build trust and generous relationships with all kinds of people.

Some will see these criteria as unrealistic and naïve. They will agree with Machiavelli who said, “It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”

Nevertheless, indeed, what would our community, our region, and our country look like when we had servant leaders guiding us into our future?

I used to feel enlightened regarding racism when I could proudly say I was colorblind. I enjoyed interacting with people of different color or ethnicity. I felt comfortable.  I felt nonjudgmental.

That was until I learned more about diversity and systemic racism. Now I know that when I am “colorblind” to someone whose skin is darker than mine, I am discounting who they really are. I am refusing to acknowledge that their life experiences are different from mine. I am choosing to see them as just like me. What an insult to them and a loss to me!

Some years ago, the local paper ran an article about a young man who decided to hop a train from Raleigh, NC to Charleston, SC with $25 in his pocket. Within six months, he had saved $2500 and had a furnished apartment. This young man’s story reinforced his belief that if a person would just apply himself, get a job, and stick to a plan, then life will turn out okay.

Many of us want to believe that. We want to know that when we stay in school, apply ourselves at work…whether we enjoy it or not…and play by the rules, our lives will be everything we wanted. To believe otherwise is simply too scary. The newspaper story was delightful and inspiring to those folks who operate with these beliefs. We cannot imagine why everyone cannot do as this young man did.

But the real story of the newspaper article was not that the young man made it. After all, he had a college education, he was white, good looking, and understood middle class ways of thinking and acting. He did not come from poverty where the rules of middle class are unknown. As far as the story went, his family was stable, he learned to speak in formal, educated English, and no one in his immediate family was an addict or mentally unstable. He could interact with employers because he intuitively understood their language, their rules, and their values. Charleston, the community of his experiment, had an adequate public transportation system. He had no medical emergency. Of course, he was able to succeed.

The real story was that many of us believe that his story is true for anyone in our country. After all, we have claimed to be a bootstrap nation. We believe that we create our own destinies. We are masters of our fate. We can be whoever and whatever we choose to be.

Tell that to someone who grew up in a family where violence was a usual occurrence. Every night a child’s sleep was disturbed by screaming and the noises of hitting and throwing things. Every day that same child could not concentrate in school because of sleep deprivation and so fell farther and farther behind. Tell that to someone who had an undiagnosed learning disability, dropped out of school, and was limited to working three part-time jobs in order to care for the family. Tell that to someone who worked for years in the same position only to discover she was no longer employable when the plant closed. Tell that to someone whose employer could not afford to provide health care and the heart attack meant loss of everything material. Tell that to the young person of color who is suspect because his name sounds “foreign” or simply because his skin is dark.

Many of us want to blame people who live in poverty for creating their situation. It protects our own sense of security. Until we realize that we have been enriched by situations, experiences, and systems of privilege that are not of our own making, we will continue to see with only limited vision and understanding the depths of problems and the heights of barriers for certain ones of our neighbors. We will not grasp the depth of the challenges or the height of the obstacles faced by people who live in poverty.

—Beth Lindsay Templeton, Loving Our Neighbor: A Thoughtful Approach to Helping People in Poverty, p xvii

Recent events of blatant racism in our country have set off strong responses on all sides. Hate, violence, compassion, and love have been spoken, acted out, and streamed. I find myself disoriented by both extremes and wonder what my role is in all this.

I was shaken when I learned that my great-great grandparents were slave owners. They called the three people who worked in their household “servants” but when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, two of them left immediately while the third, the cook and care provider, stayed a bit longer. My great-great grandfather offered her “wages” if she would stay. She chose to return to her childhood area for a new life.

I grew up in the South in the 1950s when Jim Crow laws were still in effect. I asked my mom about the “White Only” sign at the water fountain in the old Sears Roebuck building. I wondered why we entered the doctor’s office in one door while people with darker skin went to the door in the back. I was not raised in a totally lily-white bubble because my family interacted with people of different skin colors and nationalities.

I have devoted my life to reaching out to others: through my former work in a large nonprofit that continues to help people of various skin colors (many who live in poverty) to emerge from their hurting situations, with my writing, through teaching people with resources about poverty so they can reduce judgment and increase compassion, by working in churches, even at one time preaching twice a month for three years in an African-American congregation. When I was in seminary two men with dark skin, one American and the other Nigerian, were often guests in my home. I have worked with people of color both as staff and volunteers.

I say all of this not to say how enlightened I am but to undergird my belief that racism is deeply held at places in our spirit that are not even rational or conscious. I have wondered about this for a long time.

I went to a conference on peacemaking that focused on racism. I was astounded when the presenters, one a black woman and the other a white man, began their presentation with the white man announcing that he was a racist. I almost left at that point. He went on to add that he was against racism, he was an antiracist, but he could never call himself a nonracist. He explained that his white skin gave him privileges that he did not even know he enjoyed. They both talked about the insult of claiming to be color blind. They explained that being “color blind” means that one refuses to acknowledge a person in his/her God-given wholeness.

I am still confounded, embarrassed, and horrified when I react internally to certain things. I note the increasing number of mixed-race couples on television and appreciate their presence…but I still notice. I am glad that I am aware of that in myself and can choose to move past it. I feel uncomfortable when I see a man who is different from me in skin color or socioeconomics where I was not expecting him to be. Part of this is being a woman alone but…part of it is subconscious racism and classism. As I write this, I see a female neighbor with darker skin walk by. I notice her in a subtly different way than I do when a white neighbor walks by.

I choose to be antiracist. I yearn to discover for myself how to best respond to what is happening. I want to be a catalyst for change. I also know that writing this piece, as important as it is for me,  as well as witnessing others who call for action OR participate in peaceful protests OR preach powerful sermons OR proclaim the gospel of love, only touches the surface of dealing with the centuries of exploitation, repression, and dehumanizing attitudes that are part of my whiteness and even my deepest self.

Fear makes me lose my best self. Recognizing in another’s face a connection that is beyond my “instinctive” response is something to strive for, pray for, and consciously work for. My current prayer is that I will not let this moment pass unnoticed AND that I will trust that true change is an ongoing intentional process for me and the world.  I may not be able to change the world…even though I often believe that small steps can make a huge difference…but I can change myself. And when I change myself, hopefully, that change will ebb into all with whom I interact.

‘You may think that life as you knew it is over.

“It is. Something has changed. You are in transition. …

“Life will continue to change. It’s up to you. You can bemoan what is no more or you can decide to look at your life now and redefine your new normal. Change the lenses in your glasses from this-is-the-way-things-were to this-is-the-way-things-are and life is good.“ (BLT, Uncharted Journey, p 21 and 26)

(I began rereading my own book, Uncharted Journey, which is about living through transitions, all kinds of transitions: getting older, losing a job, children growing through various stages, death, etc.  I realized that it is speaking, too, of the transitions of living through this pandemic.) 

“Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

“When you choose to live as if all of life is a miracle, then you align in mysterious ways with the mysterious—call that God, the universe, chi. You admit that you do not really know much about life and that even when you are not happy with life at the moment, you are willing to hold on until you see the sun peak out from behind the clouds. By the way, how does that happen?

When all life is a miracle, things happen that you do not like and…and…then they change. You live with hope because miracles surround you. They are above you, below you, beside you, inside you. They make life an adventure, no matter what in particular is happening. Even pain is a miracle because the pain leads to growth in small or large, ordinary or strange ways. …

“When you get to a certain point on your life journey, this question of everything in life being a miracle or nothing being a miracle becomes more important. Your decision affects your attitude, your sense of value, your openness to face whatever is on your path. You can choose—yes, you really can—how you will proceed through the next hours, days, weeks, months, and years. You may revisit your decision at any time.

“Current evidence may point you to the position that nothing in life is a miracle. That’s a way to choose to live. Later something may happen that knocks you off your well-planted feet and you decide that everything is a miracle. Or you may decide that all life is a miracle and then you begin to suspect, because of what’s going on in your world, that you may be wrong. You reverse your choice.

Keep asking the question of whether everything is a miracle or nothing, no matter which end of the spectrum you choose. Think about it when you’re brushing your teeth, driving to the store, preparing a meal, returning messages, getting dressed, waiting in line, or just waking up.

As you live with this challenge from Albert Einstein, watch what happens. If you like what you experience, YAY! If you don’t, then let it go. The choice is yours.”  (BLT, Uncharted Journey, p 14-15)

I began rereading my own book, Uncharted Journey, which is about living through transitions, all kinds of transitions: getting older, losing a job, children growing through various stages, death, etc.  I realized that it is speaking, too, of the transitions of living through this pandemic.

“Have you ever seen a meadow a year or so after a wildfire ravaged it? It is a glorious sight. The fire created openness so the sun could flood the field. The ash from the fire, the rot from the fallen trees, and vegetation created a rich bed of soil for glorious wildflowers to grow. Just imagine a field covered with red, blue, yellow, purple, orange, and white flowers. You can hardly walk without stepping on a magnificent gift from the creator God. Without the devastation of the fire and scorched earth, the flowers would not have grown.

That can happen to you. Sit, be easy with yourself. Know that from your brokenness, something new will sprout up. The new growth may be very tentative at first. It may not look anything like what came before. On the other hand, it may resemble what was broken…and yet, it will be different in its own beautiful way.”

If you’ve been holding your breath in your pain, you will discover that you begin to breathe easily again. Not all at once. You may still struggle to get a fully deep breath, but you will notice that your chest is filling up a bit more. You will be able to forget about your brokenness for longer periods of time. You will! “ (p.7-8)

Psalm 84: 1-2: How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Psalm 89: 46, 49: How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?… Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?

How satisfying to know that the poets and hymn writers of old experienced both the joy of knowing God’s presence and the sense of abandonment in God’s absence.

Postings on social media, virtual devotions and worship services, and our own feelings and emotions  tend to one or the other end on this continuum but God is at both ends and everywhere in the middle even when, and maybe especially when, we do not know or experience this.

Thanks to the Psalmists who remind us of this.

Years ago after someone indicated that he thought he was worth more to the community and his company than others were, a staff member at United Ministries said, “Imagine that all the CEOs in Greenville went to Myrtle Beach for a week. Would anything happen? Now imagine what would happen if all the minimum wage workers left for a week. What would happen then?”

Now we know!!!