Making a Difference

The workshop I helped lead Tues-Fri is called Making A Difference. It is based on the reality that people in ministry (lay and ordained) truly want to 'Make a Difference' and yet find it impossible to do so on a consistent or reliable basis. Making a Difference is often like bumping into the furniture in a dark room. The workshop is designed to turn on the light.

Here's an example of how I bumped into 'making a difference' once. About 7 months after I left the first parish I served and became Rector of St. Paul's in New Haven, I got a letter from Howell Browder, one of the parishioners of St. James, Charleston. In the letter, she told me (and I quote) 'how much a difference I had made' in her life and the life of her son.

Here's the problem: though I remembered Howell well, I had no idea what she was referring to and barely remembered that she had a son!

I had 'made a difference' but had no idea how or how to replicate it....

The workshop uses two tracks: a conversation about a series of 'distinctions' and Centering Prayer to give the participants a handle on what 'makes a difference' in ministry. It boils down to this: making a difference is ontological rather than functional, 'being' rather than 'doing', 'coming from' a stance or declaration rather trying to 'get to' a result.

My declaration in the workshop when I took it in the late 1980's was: "I am Priest". The amazing thing was that I went to the workshop to 'figure out' how to renounce my vows and do something else with my life. What the workshop gave me was my priesthood transformed, made new.

The workshop is about 'transformation', not 'change'. Changing things is arduous, frustrating and damn near impossible and ends up, most of the time, resembling rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship goes down anyway.

Transformation is effortless, astonishing and created out of nothing just by 'saying so'. My declaration, so long ago, freed me from trying to 'do' the work of priesthood and gave my a place to come from out of 'being a priest'.

(That all may seem simplistic and a tad mysterious, but I swear it is ontologically accurate.)

Here are two things that happen in the workshop: near the beginning the participants introduce themselves by telling everyone their name, where and with whom they live, what their ministry is, whether they have special relationships with anyone else in the room and an optional statement.

That part gives me goosebumps as a leader since it reveals how powerful the people in the room truly are and how remarkable their ministries are. And those powerful, remarkable people have come to a workshop that is not cheap to learn how to 'make a difference' more truly.

Then at the end--when they have done a lot of hard work and wrestled with their angels--they introduce themselves again as their declarations as 'who the BE in the matter of their ministries. Those introductions go beyond goose bumps to being near tears of joy because 'being' is so much more powerful than 'doing' or 'having'. Those introductions complete the following open ended statements: "Who I am I;....". "The actions you can count on my for are...." "I will enroll ________ in my possibility...." And, "The difference I now see I can make is...."

I swear to you that each person's visage is transformed by the end of the workshop! They look transformed and transfigured. And each introduction is met by cheers and applause from the people in the room. Truly. I kid you not.

I have two more workshops to help lead this year--one in Chicago and one in Ireland. And as much as I hate to leave home, being the homebody I am, I am convinced I will come back from each of them transformed and enlivened anew.

I just will.

(Want to know more? Google "The Mastery Foundation" and read about the programs the foundation presents. And if you'd like to do the workshop and  have September 12-14 available, I'll be with you in Chicago....)