The Church According to Merv Griffin?

The Answer: A world-renown cellist recently interviewed on PBS and creator of “The Silk Road Project,” an ensemble of musicians from over twenty countries with a new release called A Playlist Without Borders. In describing the project its creator said, “The idea is, here’s a cultural group of musicians… that actually reflect the way the composition of the world [is] and the way that it could interact… so basically lots of people from different population groups, different traditions… [asking] how can we work together?”

The Question: Who is… wait for it…! Yo-Yo Ma!

In the interview referred to above Yo-Yo (I suppose that’s what his friends call him) was asked: “What are the skills necessary for a life in music?” Yo-Yo’s response? “Actually, I think the very skills that we talk about that are necessary in our 21 C workforce – exactly the same ones – collaboration, flexibility, imagination, innovation…”

When Yo-Yo Ma responded to the question (what is necessary?) with that answer (collaboration, flexibility, imagination and innovation) the words washed over me like his cello playing does. As the interview continued Yo-Yo Ma added that after those four prerequisites the most important thing is listening because “as soon as you are able to listen while you are doing you are not using all of yourself or your ego… you are actually creating mental space for others in order to make a connection, and that’s, that’s the thing.”

I suppose you knew that it wouldn’t take me long to bring our little game of Jeopardy round to the topic of the church, right? So… the final Jeopardy question is: What are the skills necessary for the life of the church? Might part of the answer be… Collaboration, flexibility, imagination, innovation and… listening while we are doing such that we create mental space for others in order to make a connection?

For people like me who are obsessed with obtaining the skills necessary for a life in the church this little game of Jeopardy opens up a legion of things to ponder. If the answer above is even partially correct, how does the church listen while it does and forgo its ego in order to make mental (physical?) space for others – for connections? With whom must we collaborate? How’s our imagination doing? As an institution governed in large part by tradition what and how must we innovate?

The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ Our Lord, wrote Samuel J. Stone in 1866. And the Jesus who is our foundation was, to be sure, a collaborator (whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these… Jn 14.12); a flexible sort (but sir, even the dogs eat the crumbs from the table… Mt 15.27; Mk 7.28); a man with an imagination (with God all things are possible… Mt 19.26; Mk 10.27); without doubt an innovator (you have heard it said… but I say to you… Mt 5.21ff); and very fond of listening (Hear, O Israel… Deut 6.4; Mk 12.29).

A few years ago, at a gathering of church leaders discussing a church that many people assumed to be a church in jeopardy, a friend of mine said, “I can think of no more exciting time to be an Episcopalian.” What I understood him to mean was that there was never a better time to be an Episcopalian because in our (relatively) recent history risk wasn’t necessary; the future of the church was inherited not created and collaboration, flexibility, imagination and innovation weren’t all that necessary; being the church was a matter of returning to the familiar. But each of the possible answers above, collaboration, flexibility, imagination, innovation and listening, suggest an end which is not familiar but unfamiliar; like Jesus himself – they are new (See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43.19).

What is the answer? What is the Question?

Happy Monday… and put your thinking caps on.

Jim

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

1 Response to The Church According to Merv Griffin?

yalilla says:

January 6, 2014 at 7:21 pm

Thank you. A rich answer to the questions posed by all the institutions and bureaucracies……it’s in Shakespeare everywhere, and Chekhov, and in all the instances you cite….thanks for this.