Dr. Lucy Lind Hogan: Episode 2 -- Leading Prophetically

Music. Of our worldview, and a consciousness so that we see and perceive the world as God sees it. Music.

Brueggemann says that if you're going to preach prophetically, if you're going to be a congregation that leads prophetically, then our hearts need to break as God's heart is breaking. Music. Let me welcome you to Mindful Leader. My name is Dennis Shaw. I am the host of this particular podcast, which I have created to hopefully speak on leadership issues to the local church, both laity and clergy. This particular podcast is intended to be released on March the 3rd.

If I get it ready, I might drop it a little bit earlier. We'll see what happens. It's part two of a two-parter. Last week, I spoke with Dr. Lucy Lind Hogan, who is a retired professor emeritus at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and we spoke to the topic of leading prophetically. Leading prophetically. Now, I didn't mention it last week, but sometimes we get this idea that prophets forecast the future.

That may be something that is a part of their job description, but most of the time what prophets do biblically is that they speak words of comfort to the oppressed. Sometimes you hear it, they oppress the comfortable and comfort the oppressed. But the way that Dr. Hogan and I handled it last week, we started talking about it in terms of speaking the truth to power.

The little preamble you heard right before I started talking was Dr. Hogan, And she was speaking her impression, her words, her quoting of a fantastic 20th, 21st century, 20th century theologian named Walter Brueggemann. We'll get to that later in the show. I hope that this particular podcast, part two of Leading Prophetically, is of use to you in the local church.

Don't hesitate to send me a note if it speaks to you. God bless you, and I will welcome Dr. Hogan following a short pause. Music. For coming back a week later here. Happy to. We left that last conversation with you reminding people that they were not alone. I think we forget sometimes that in Greek and to some extent the Hebrew portion of the Bible, the word we translate as you is often a plural pronoun as opposed to a singular pronoun.

The word we translate as church is those who have been called out. It's not an individual who has been called out. That's right. I see a gathering. Yeah, it's a gathering. A gathering. So being prophetic is individual. We think of Martin Luther King, but it's also a community. Community is opportunity. And what your invitation of how you wrapped up last week was to continue to be part of that fellowship, a part of that community.

So do you want to pick the conversation? I think what you just said sort of strikes at the cause that sort of for many preachers, they have a solitary view of being prophetic. Yeah. That that is the image of the lone ranger, the person that is stepping out to call truth to power. And I think that that is not always good. Last week I mentioned, and I want to come back to that, my good friend and colleague in preaching, Leonora Tubbs-Tisdale, who taught for many years at Princeton.

And for those who are listening, I will put the book in the show notes, as is in the practice, so you can find it. And Nora, the subtitle of the book, Prophetic Preaching, is A Pastoral Approach. And I think that is an important reminder for those in leadership. It is a pastoral approach.

And in the introduction to the book, Leonora said she sort of set out when she was a new preacher and that she thought that once a month, she was supposed to preach something that made the people in the church angry. That for her, that was the prophetic preaching, that she would make them angry.

And but over the years i would remind students that we are pastors we are preachers we are pastors and one of the challenges with raising issues that are going to make people angry is that we can we can speak truth to power and by that i might mean the congregation We can speak truth to power on Sunday morning, angering one of the church leaders, only then to have that church leader have a heart attack on Sunday evening.

And now you have to go to the hospital and sit with that person and with his wife, who's really angry with you. You made him so angry he had a heart attack. Hmm. Of course, correlation is not causation, but yeah, okay. Right, yes, but... Last week we were talking about anamnesis and prolepsis and epiclesis and looking back, looking ahead. Much of what we do as church leaders, as clergy, as lay in the congregation, we're walking very challenging roads.

We are a community of people that have come together. It wasn't easy for Jesus and the disciples, and why should we think that it would be any easier for us? But one of the things that Nora does in the opening of her book is to say, well, she's talking about prophetic preaching, but I think we can enlarge it to thinking about prophetic leadership as well. Well, what do we mean by that?

Now, she offers her definition, and she says, well, to lead prophetically or to preach is to, it is, she said, what we're doing is cutting edge, and it is future-oriented.

And she says we're addressing public and social concerns if if you if you think back to what we talked about last week when when i mentioned my friend marianne who is the bishop of washington who looked at the president and i can assure you knowing marianne there was and having listened to that she was not being nasty to the president, but she was asking him to have mercy. And it was around issues of public and social concern.

Nora then offers several other preacher and biblical scholars definitions of what does it mean to be prophetic. And I do like what Walter Brueggemann, no one would ever accuse Walter Brueggemann of not being prophetic. It is his raison d'etre. But Walter Brueggemann writes that It is calling us as people of God to a radical reorientation of our worldview and a consciousness so that we see and perceive the world as God sees it.

Brueggemann says that if you're going to preach prophetically, if you're going to be a congregation that leads prophetically, then our hearts need to break as God's heart is breaking. And I think we've talked about what's happening in our world. And I think God's heart is breaking all around the world, all around the world. So what does Nora say are the hallmarks of prophetic preaching? And she offers several, and I think it's very helpful.

First, and we've talked about that last week, and we're talking about it now, that what we do prophetically in preaching and in leadership is rooted in the biblical witness. We're not making this up. And I think it holds us accountable. Where do we go for our marching orders? We go to the Bible. But what we're doing prophetically challenges the status quo. So not say, well, yeah, you want to do that, but I don't think that's what God wants us to do.

It is concerned with evil and shortcomings in our world. What's going on? And name what's happening. and we have to name where God is working in the world. Now, and I really appreciate this. I think that too many of us, I think last week I talked about the images when I called up the Google image of the prophet is the scolder in chief. Yeah. Well, even think about it. Don't preach to me. You're hearing people. Don't preach to me.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Okay. I'm going to come back. I'm going to take a little sidebar for a moment. Okay. I had a way that I would open my, when I was teaching the Foundations of Preaching class, I always offered my students the definitions of preaching. Sermon, homily, and all of the dictionary definitions in the multiple definition.

That you know there's usually several definitions it what it all ended up being essentially all of them were long boring tedious and so i i had i have a collection that i've gathered over the years and my students were always directed to find them how often something is talked about Don't preach what you just said. Don't preach to us. And it can be very often somebody on Capitol Hill, a senator or a member of Congress. Oh, they went to preaching a movie. Oh, that new movie. It's preaching.

That preaches to us. So, yes. So we have to, that's always there. We, we, so what we're doing is not scolding. We are offering, Nora says, we are offering hope of a new day. And we are encouraging courage and we're empowering. And that was what my son's mother-in-law, Molly, felt. And so she then says, what does this require of a preacher? And I would say that it is required of a congregation. To be prophetic, she says, we have to have a heart that breaks. We have to have a passion for justice.

We have to have an imagination, the ability to see things not the way they are. We have to have conviction. We have to have true courage. And some things I've already mentioned, humility, honesty, and something that I believe you mentioned last week, we have to have a reliance on the Holy Spirit.

So I want to offer a couple of prophetic actions that I think, As I thought about this, of your invitation for me to explore with you this dimension of leadership, I want to offer a couple of things that I think are very important in today. And one is to listen. Amen. To learn how to listen. And we talk about that we need to get out of our bubbles, that we all tend to be with people. And so I'm going to challenge, I think, a very prophetic thing.

So to not give into the status quo, a very prophetic thing that we can do as individuals is put down our phone. Now, you're laughing, but how many times have you been in a grocery line, and you're busy on your phone, and the person is checking you out, and you never look at that person? So one of the prophetic things that we can do when we say, who is our neighbor? We look people in the eye. And it's people on the street, people in the store, not just people in our congregation.

And so we have to learn how to listen. And that, I think, is very challenging. I would also recommend another book that you can put in. It's a book by a reporter, journalist, David Brooks. Yeah. And he has a new book that just came out, How to Know a Person. The subtitle for that book is The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. And I think one of the most important prophetic leadership skills that we can bring to our world is how to listen, how to get to know, how to honor people.

And i i i just will i i know our time is getting short but i'll just tell a story from from my class from that i i i i had students younger students who would come to me and say i am very nervous talking face-to-face with people. Now, obviously not with their friends, but if it wasn't your friend, they were very nervous speaking, looking at people and talking to them. And because they had grown so used to texting, and that was how they were communicating with people. So they didn't know.

Now, there could be some of your listeners who will say, Yes, I feel that too. I think some of your older listeners. Who I would put myself in that age category. I found it hard. This was a number of years ago when she said that to me. I said, really? She said, yeah, we just haven't grown up knowing how to talk to people. Now, I have continued to test it out on people, and my granddaughter is now

in high school and we were all together at Christmas. us and I said, do you have trouble talking to people face to face? And she said, I do, you know? And so I think that one of the prophetic things that we, as the leaders in the church can offer is how, how do you, how do you, how are we in relationship? Not just with the people, but with strangers. So I think that's, that's one thing we need to be working on.

And as I said, we need to be working on listening. People do not—people—listening is a skill. It is. And it is a learned skill. Now, even in seminary, the students would learn in the context often of their—and so those of you who are your listeners who are clergy, it was probably in your pastoral care class. And what you were learning there was what in the communications business, I actually, my PhD is in rhetoric and communications.

In the communications world, we call that therapeutic listening. So so many clergy have learned therapeutic listening but there are several different levels of listening and one a prophetic thing that we could do is learn how to listen you know with the levels of listening are one is just noticing that there's. That something, I'm hearing something, and usually it means I don't have to pay attention to it, but then the next level is saying, oh, I think I need to pay attention to that.

And then the next level is, well, I, what does that mean? Do I need to respond to that? And then finally, there's the level of enjoyment. Uh, I I'm, when I'm listening to music, I'm, I'm thinking critically about it, but I'm, I'm enjoying it. And I would have my students keep, one of their assignments was in one of the classes, they had to have a listening journal for one day and identify how throughout the day, the various levels of listening that they did.

And then when that exercise was over, the students reported to one another what it was like. And one of my students, as he shared with the class, was so upset. And the reason he was upset was he realized, as he looked over his listening journal throughout the day, that the only time he was really, really listening and really, really engaged was when he was playing a video game. That he, when he was talking to people, he wasn't really paying attention.

They were talking, his friends, maybe even at lunch, they were talking, but he wasn't really listening to them. So I think one of the most prophetic things in our world today is to help people in the church learn how to listen and really, truly listen, as David Brooks says, you know, to get to know people. He's talking, Brooks is talking relationally, and I want to come back to that. But Stephen Covey makes the quote, we way too often listen in order to reply.

Correct. Rather than to truly understand. Correct. Now, but I want to go back to what Brooks was talking about, which is the fact that when we really actually listen to somebody.

My brother passed away about a year ago. As a matter of fact, on the 14th of February, it will be exactly one year. And I confess that his worldview and my worldview did not coincide. But he really liked his older brother because I listened to him. I spent the time listening to him. And frankly, he would reciprocate by listening to me. So there was a reciprocity there. I don't think either one of us converted the other one. I don't think that was our attempt.

But we were trying to offer insight as to why we believe that we were there. Of course, as brothers, you'd like to believe brothers can be a relationship. But at the end of the day, that... Not always easy. Not always easy. Not always easy. And the point really is less about filial relationship and the fact that we are hoping within the church to be able to build a relationship with each other.

Just because you sit behind the pew behind me and I get along with you doesn't mean I agree with everything you have to say. Right. But I'm in a relationship with you. Exactly. And consequently, by being in a relationship with you, I have a certain amount of empathy for how your worldview, your worldview. And I think it's so crucial. I think Jesus modeled this for us to listen and to be face-to-face with someone.

Because one of the things that I really appreciate about the story in Luke 8 when Jesus is hurrying, or Jairus is hurrying Jesus, and all of a sudden Jesus stops, and he says, Who touched me? And of course the disciples say, What do you mean who touched you? You know, you're in the middle of a crowd. He said, Who touched me? me. Jesus felt something. He wanted to be face-to-face with that person. And I think there's a call for us in the church to be face-to-face with each

other, and to be face-to-face with those with whom we don't agree. So... We've got maybe 15 minutes or so, and frankly, I hope this doesn't surprise anybody. Dr. Hogan and I have sort of a rough outline that we're bouncing around from, but we're not reading from the outline. But there's a couple of points that we've sort of agreed to that I'd like to make sure we get to today, or we agree we're going to get to them another day and we'll just come back to them.

One of them was, I think you hinted at last week, that I don't think we've gotten to If we have, then help me out. But you wanted to share some observations about where you thought that holistic leadership, to include this idea of effective listening, prophetic leadership. Biblically leading, it's a multi-legged stool, three-legged stool. It's not just one element. But where has been your experience that some of that has made a difference?

Can you relate any stories from your time in ministry where you've seen that make a difference? Well, I don't usually. I mean, I would say, and I think in one of our earlier conversations, I was telling Dennis, it isn't so much now. I've been ordained over 40 years. But when I first was ordained, I did not have to worry about preaching or leading prophetically. The moment I stepped into a pulpit, the moment I walked into a room and sat in a meeting, what I was doing was prophetic.

Because there were so many people who were against women's ordination, did not think that it could happen. And I will remind your listeners, as I always reminded my students in all of my classes, the majority of Christian women cannot be ordained. The majority of Christian women cannot be ordained between the Catholic Church, Orthodox churches, a lot of Protestant churches will not ordain women. So, how have I seen it happen? By being a presence.

But I wouldn't even have, I didn't have to address the issue, but just my presence. And there was a point, and I look back on it now, and it was a good decision. Even in the Diocese of Washington, which is quite, on the whole, liberal and progressive, the bishop—and this is a number of years ago—there were always congregations that really, they would never think about. And you have to remember in the Episcopal Church, unlike in the Methodist Church, we have a call system.

So our clergy are not appointed by the bishop, by the conference, the leadership. So a congregation works with the bishop and identify what are their needs and what are they looking for. And then they, they put out and they can look in the diocese. They can look all over the country and, well, I guess all over the world. But the only way the bishop can, they can, they can issue a call.

The only way that a bishop, if the bishop is not happy, the only thing the bishop can do is if that person is from another diocese, they can say, I won't accept that person in my diocese.

So that's really the only place that the bishop can say no. But the bishop, this is a number of, as I say, a number of years ago, thought what he had me do was when a congregation was in the process of getting ready to identify people that they were interested in calling to be their rector, we called the pastor, the pastor, the rector. Before they began their interviews and as they were identifying people,

he had me go and interview with the congregation. Or this was several congregations, but if they were in that process. So he had me go and interview with them as though I were interested in the position. You know, that they were interested in me for that position. Now, were you a test shopper, or were you doing this? They knew. They knew that I really—no, no. They knew what the bishop was doing. Okay. The bishop was very open about it. He said, I just want you to have the

experience of interviewing a woman, you know, to sort of think about it. No. So they knew that I was not applying. I had a day job. I believe I was teaching at Wesley. Yeah. So I had a day job and I found it very flattering. A number of the places would say, whoa, would you like to come here? I said, no. But so what I was doing was a prophetic action because I was helping as, you know. Ms. Teasdale called it. Yeah. You were changing some minds. Open their eyes. Yeah.

Open their eyes to think about a new way of being, a new way of seeing things.

And so that is, I think, we must never underestimate all the things. And so I think, how do we, you, and you mentioned, I don't know if it was this week or last week, the churches that are feeding people or that are maybe having a meal. That was last week. Yes. Those are making a difference. Those are prophetic moments. those are because they're saying to the. The person that's, you know, getting food. I can't, you know.

One of the ways that we know those are prophetic actions is when something happens, and I'm going to point to something that they were on the news, They were interviewing a pastor in the Washington area who was very concerned because once a week, people would come to the church to get a box of food, of vegetables and canned goods. And the reporter was standing with the pastor out on the edge of the parking lot and the street.

And the pastor said, usually the street is the cars lined up or go as far as I can see. And this last Sunday, we had very few people. And the reason was because the people that they're feeding are many, many of them are illegal people, people who are here in the United States illegally, and they're not coming. They weren't coming out because they didn't want to come out because they were afraid they might be arrested. Yeah. So, you know, what does Jesus say? when we think about sheep and goats.

He says, you fed me. You gave me some water to drink. You came and visited me. These aren't earth-shattering actions. How are we going to do things holistically? We're going to do the simplest thing, Which is to give somebody a box with beans and rice and some apples and oranges, that those don't feel like huge actions, but clearly the fact that people were not coming out tells us they are huge actions.

Yeah. And so I think an important thing for preachers, I think an important thing for church leadership is to think about what are some of the small things, those small things that we could be doing that are making a huge difference. I was helping a church in Utah. It didn't end up well for them because the congregation didn't buy into it. But we were down there in this particular town, and we had—and LDS, Latter-day Saints, don't wear crosses.

And so this group of people eating lunch all had crosses on, so the waitstaff knew that we were not LDS. And this lady came up to us as a waitress, and she asked us who we were. We identified ourselves as Methodist pastors and visiting another Methodist pastor down here. And she said, it was interesting. Here's this LDS person saying, you're making a difference in our community. You're doing things that we would not be able to do or cannot do or choose not to do. I don't know what the issue is.

Interesting. But yeah, she—and it was interesting that another voice like that would remind us that sometimes there's other people that want to do this, but their structure doesn't permit them to do it. So one thing that you and I wanted to talk about a little bit, and I think it dovetails a little bit of what you were saying just a second ago, is the importance of role models. I mean, we talk about Dr. King. We talk about Walter Brueggemann, who I'm going to talk about at a future day.

We talk about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I've got a link to a conversation I have about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'll try to remember to put it in the show notes. This is the 85th anniversary of his execution on April the 9th this year. It's the 80th anniversary. But sometimes the examples aren't names that you can roll off your tongue. They are sometimes examples of people who sit two pews behind you and down in the corner, and they are tremendous examples for you. sometimes with preachers, it's voices.

It's a style of preaching. There's a gentleman that I watch on YouTube quite a bit. He's at Asheville, North Carolina, First Baptist. His name is Mac Dennis, and I think they're American Baptists, but he's a great preacher. It's a great preaching style, and if I were to go back to preaching, I would probably borrow his style quite a bit.

So I think the example that you and I talked about was is that there's nothing wrong with identifying a role model and saying, I'm going to take some elements from what it is they're doing. That was something I think I heard you suggest. Is that a... Oh, yeah, yeah. And yes, my students, there are so many people to learn from. One of the challenges though, then, is to find your voice. Who are you? Who are you? And I think that as we're getting close to the end, I want to encourage congregations.

And we hear these in a Sunday lesson, but if we're going to think about leading prophetically, I would encourage that people, preachers and leaders, to go back and sit with Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, that 12th chapter. And think about spiritual gifts. What gift have the individuals in your group been given? What gift have you as a preacher been given? And, you know, we have to remind ourselves that not everybody is to be a prophet.

Yeah. You know, so some are, some are apostles, some are prophets, some are teachers. Some are given gifts of healing. Some are given tongues. And so, and what, one of the things that's important is to, to identify. Who, who do you admire? Who do you want to be like? And then what can you learn from them? But also who am I? What can I do? I had a wonderful friend who taught at the seminary up, up just north of here in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Susan Hedal.

And Susan was a real character and she and I would meet regularly for lunch. And while we, she, she was just outspoken and one, one lunch, she was talking about issues that they were having at their faculty meetings and she told me something and I looked at her.

I said, you didn't really say that at the meeting, did you? She said, well, of course I did. And I thought, oh, Susan. But, so there are gifts that you have been given. I could, I could really admire her, but I could not be her. Yeah. And I have known people who could really, I have known friends who could, could, were just wonderful and could preach prophetically. And I would look at them and I think, oh, wow, I can't, I can't do that.

So I think it's about honoring our gifts and knowing our limitations and knowing what we need to strengthen. And I agree with you, but sometimes leadership development is also this ability of someone to look inside of you and to activate something that's inside of you that you don't recognize you've got inside of yourself. Oh, excellent. Yes. I personally saw myself for a long time as sort of a church administrator.

That's what I thought I was going to do, go to large churches and help keep the books straight and get people hired and get them their retirement and that kind of stuff. But that's what I did in the Army. And somewhere along the line, somebody basically said, no, you are really a good preacher. And I kept saying, me? You're talking about me? Me?

And so somebody had to sort of draw that out of me because my own self-identification would have been, if I've been listening to Paul with 1 Corinthians 12, I would have said, I'm an administrator. That's what I would have said. So I agree with Paul. We want to be able to honor those gifts that we have there. But at the same time, sometimes the recognition of the gifts that we have, we don't know that we have them.

And it takes somebody to put their bony finger in our chest and say, Dennis, you've got more gifts here than you're willing to admit out loud that you've got. Good point. Good point. So there we are. We've got about two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, something like that. You've got a hard stop in a few minutes. any point you want to offer sort of as a summary of a key point or anything that I've perhaps forgot?

I just want to say and I think I was telling you, couple, last week, before we even began our first conversation, how much I enjoyed getting ready for this. Oh, yeah. Because I said, you wanted to, I said, how appreciated that to not just preaching prophetically, but leading prophetically. And when you, when several weeks ago, we had our first conversation and you said, do you want to begin now? I said, oh no, I can't, I can't begin now. I, I have to think about this.

And I, I truly did have to think about it. And it really, I, I really enjoyed wrestling with it, thinking about it. And that, and that's why I thought, that's why when I, as I was preparing my notes, I thought, And, you know. One of the important ways that we can act prophetically is to really look at and listen to people. We don't think of that as a prophetic action, but in our world today, that is. And I think another way to be, that a very important way to be prophetic is

to be engaged in the world. and to be listening to what's happening in our world. It really bothers me when I don't hear it so much with people in the church, but when I hear people say, I don't listen to the news. I can't do anything about it. It just makes me unhappy. I don't listen. And I really can't understand that. How can you not know what's happening in our world? And so I think another prophetic action is to be involved, to be engaged, to be listening to what is happening to people.

And people are being hurt today. People are being killed every day.

There's so much happening in our world, and I think this takes us back to the beginning of our first conversation, which was when you said, we live in interesting times, and we do live in interesting times, not easy times, But they are interesting times that call out, that need us, need our witness of what, that God is in the world, that God is acting in the world. God is calling us to act in the world and to offer people hope and good news.

In this year of the 80th anniversary of the execution of Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of his leading questions was, who is Jesus for you today? Absolutely. Who is Jesus for you today? Perhaps the most important word in that phrase is today. That's right. Dr. Hogan, this has been rich. It's been a rich time. I hope we can invite you back again another day, and you can talk to us some more about a different topic that's on your heart and mind.

All right. Well, so good to spend all this time with you, Dennis. Thank you. I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I hope the audience, I hope those listening to our podcast has enjoyed it as well.

It's my intent to invite Dr. Hogan back another day. If you're listening to this podcast and it said anything to you, don't hesitate to share it with somebody, to sort of grab it from some source, whether it's Apple or Spotify or back to the Podbean basic site and grab it up and forward it to somebody and say, This conversation was rich and it helped me a little bit and maybe tell them why and send it on. It'd be greatly appreciated. This is Dennis Shaw. You've been listening to Mindful Leader.

And thank you very much for being with us this day. Peace be with you. Music.