"Having Nothing, Possessing Everything": A Conversation with pastor and author Rev. Michael Mather

Phil Amerson [00:00:03]:
This is Philip Emerson with the Belonging Exchange and just a few words of introduction to an event that occurred on June 6th at St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. Michael Mather had been to the Indiana Annual Conference preaching the night before for the memorial service. And then there was a conversation time at noon on June 6th. We thought you would appreciate hearing some of Mike's stories, some of his experiences in ministry. And so we've, we've offered snippets of what he said that day. There's some reasons we didn't include the whole session. One was we didn't have permission for some of the recordings of questioners.

Phil Amerson [00:00:51]:
And we also didn't want to get bogged down with some of their rather long comments and questions. And we wanted you to hear the important counsel that Mike has with his experience. Michael Mather is pastor of First United Methodist Church, Boulder, Colorado. He served for many years at parishes here in Indiana, in Evansville, in Indianapolis, and in South Bend. I also wanted to offer just a quick word of introduction. Mike and I have for many years been working in the area of how the church best is in ministry in a diverse setting, multicultural, but also places of low wealth and high wealth, and how the church can figure out how to be the church in such settings. Three things I want to share with you that seem to me important. Number one, the church struggles with the question of how not to be paternalistic.

Phil Amerson [00:01:58]:
And some people say, well, we need to say ministry with rather than ministry to. That's good, but there's more. Some people talk about the dilemma of paternalism. That's good, but there's more. It's the question of turning people into clients or into the other that is the most challenging, I think, for us. For example, we can look at people as having little or having needs, or we can see that they are pretty much just like us, only we're the lucky ones. We've had the good benefit of wealth and education and opportunity. We may not be wealthy.

Phil Amerson [00:02:42]:
I'm not particularly wealthy, but I certainly have had more benefits than many of the people with whom I've learned to be in ministry, yes, in ministry with, but not turning them into clients, not wearing the white hat in the, in the storyline. So that's number one. Number two, part of what I think you will hear from Michael and what we've learned is ministry with anyone, anywhere is a journey, not a destination. Too many times people want to tell us about the great program they've started or the great program that they're going to start. And programs are okay, but they're not the end. Not the end all and be all. In fact, change is always upon us, and the need to evaluate and begin new programs and end some ministries is essential. So those are a couple of reflections as we turn to Michael Mather and to hear what he shared on June 6 at St.

Phil Amerson [00:03:58]:
Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis.

Phil Amerson [00:04:03]:
Mike, last night you preached a. A fine sermon about illuminators. Can you tell us a little bit about that word and what it means for you and maybe what it means for your ministry now?

Mike Mather [00:04:19]:
So what it means to me now is that. That I may. That by the light of these people who work, who live and work in our community, and they live on the street. It's. It's Nesty and Gabe are the illuminators. They live on the street and they identify the gifts, talents, dreams and passions of other people who live on the street. And then we sit around and talk about that. And we.

Mike Mather [00:04:55]:
We also have somebody we called animador. It's a word that in English would be translated animator. And this person connects social capital to the gifts of people who identified on the streets. Yeah, yeah, they. They're just hanging around and meet them. Well, so when I first moved to Boulder to be the pastor, it was the pandemic, July of 2020, and all the libraries were closed. And our church has a very large patio in front. And it became a place where people who lived on the street would gather.

Mike Mather [00:05:43]:
Because you couldn't go to the library anymore, probably. I'm trying to think if we had WI fi there. Library. Absolutely. Yeah. But. But mainly it was just to be together. I mean, people talked and got to know the people for hanging out there.

Mike Mather [00:06:02]:
One of the things that happened with this, Phil knows this story, is that, you know, people from the church would drive by. Again, everything's closed, including the church. Right. Nothing's going on. And people from the church would drive by and see people hanging out on the porch. And they'd say to me again, I'm new there. And they're saying to me, you need to kick the people off the porch. And I said, why? And they said, well, because we need to keep our children safe.

Mike Mather [00:06:33]:
And I said, well, first of all, nobody's here. And secondly, you know, your children have a lot more to fear from people in their own home than they have to fear from strangers who they don't know. What do you mean? But anyway, people kept talking to me about this, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. So after, oh, a month or so of people asking me this, I said, I tell you what, I won't kick them off. But you could kick them off, but you can't kick them off until you learn their names. So a few days later, some of the leaders of the church came to me and said, could you set up a meeting? Sure. Happy to do that. So we had five people from the porch and five people from the leadership of the church, and we sat together in a circle outside because it was the pandemic.

Mike Mather [00:07:25]:
And people went around and said their first name, where they were originally from and what brings them joy. Each person. The five people from the congregation, the five people from the porch. That took about 10 minutes, people going around and saying that. Then they just started talking, and they talked for about half an hour based on what they heard from each other, right? Oh, I used to live there. Oh, I know that place. Oh, you know, that type of thing. Or, oh, I have grandchildren too, you know, Whatever it was, the people were saying what brings them joy? And after about 45 minutes, I said to the gather group, to the.

Mike Mather [00:08:09]:
I turned to the people from the congregation and I said, so is there something you want to say to people here? And they're like, no, we're good. Because once you get to know people and know people's names and know a little bit about what brings people joy, it just leads to a different. A different and more interesting conversation that we don't want you here. Right. So, I mean, some of those pe. At least one of those people who was hanging out there later became an illuminator. Yes.

Phil Amerson [00:08:45]:
There's a wonderful book entitled When We Walk By. And in that book, part of what the author identifies is that most of the people who are without shelter really are from. And it's a huge number within 30 miles of that location, and they have family that are nearby. And when you want to treat people who are on the streets as if there's some kind of moral failure rather than a sickness or an addiction, part of what happens, or a series of unfortunate events, or a series of unfortunate events, part of what happens is they become disconnected from their family and community. So, Mike, I wish you would finish part of what happened, I think the next day or so with a member of the church.

Mike Mather [00:09:42]:
So actually, it happened that same day. So later I went back up to my office and was up there, and one of the leaders of the church who'd been in this meeting came up to me and said, mike, I. I think I know, Chris. I said, what do you Mean, she said, well, I think he grew up in my neighborhood, but it's been years since I've seen him, and I don't know. I know his parents. And I said, whether they still live there? Yes, well, go talk to them about it. So she came back to me a day later and said, yes, that was Chris, and his parents didn't know where he was. And just because we sat there and had this conversation, you know, we found that out.

Mike Mather [00:10:33]:
So we have a general. Yeah, we have a general rule, which is people are endlessly fascinating. But it took me a while to learn that, even though Phil tried to get that into my head decades ago. But I. I went to serve a church in South Bend in 1992 and. And named Broadway and Broadway Christian Parish United Methodist Church. And we had a food pantry. And when people came to the food pantry, we got government surplus food.

Mike Mather [00:11:07]:
So we asked people the questions that the government gave us the forms for. How much is your income? How much are your expenses? It says, well, my income is $600 a month, and my expenses are twelve hundred dollars a month. Oh, there's a lot we can do with that. At the time, we were a little congregation of 40 people, not a group with deep pockets. And, you know, there wasn't something we could do about that. About one. Right. So we took that information, we put it in a file cabinet.

Mike Mather [00:11:41]:
So we came to Pentecost, and we're sitting around in the church talking at Pentecost. And. Because after worship, there's the lunch there at this church, every. There was lunch there at this church that had been going on for 10 years, that little group of 40 people, meal for whoever, anybody could come to the meal. So we'd be down at the meal, and whatever table I sat at, you could talk about whatever you wanted to, right? So we're sitting there and this woman says, it was Pentecost. She said, you said that Peter, reading from the book of the prophet Joel, said that God's spirit flows down on all people, young and old, women and men. And I thought, how good am I? I'm an excellent preacher. It's a half an hour later, and she remembers what I.

Mike Mather [00:12:31]:
I'm really good at that. Yes. Yes, that's right. And she said, so how come you don't treat people like that? I'm like, what do you mean? She said, well, when people come into the food pantry, you ask people how poor they are. If you believe God's spirit flowed down on all people, young and old, women and men, how come you aren't asking them that. I don't know. Well, we're getting to that. So the very next day, the day after Pentecost, we started asking people 10 pages of questions about what their gifts were.

Mike Mather [00:13:16]:
And we stopped asking people any questions about what their income was. We ask people, have you taken care of older folks? Have you taken care of children? Is it because they're members of your family? Because you've had a job somewhere? Because you're helping somebody out? Can you fix a toaster? Can you drive a car? Do you play a musical instrument? Do you sing? Have you cooked for more than 10 people? Have you cleaned up after more than 10 people? We asked three questions at the end. What three things do you do well enough that you could teach somebody else how to do it? Because everybody, I want to stress this. Everybody has something they can teach. What three things would you like to learn that you don't already know? And who besides God and me is going with you along the way? Well, the first person who came to us was a little woman about this tall named Adele Almaguer. Lived half a block from the church with three generations of her family. And she said, I'm, well, you know, I'm a good cook. And we said, prove it.

Mike Mather [00:14:18]:
She said, what do you mean? We'll cook for the custodian, secretary and pastor, lunch on Friday. So she cooked for us. It was great. We paid her for it. Great. Leadership of the neighborhood organization was meeting. We said, don't meet somewhere else. Meet here at the church and let Adele cook for you.

Mike Mather [00:14:34]:
She cooked for them. They loved it. Over the next nine months, she cooked for Studebaker elementary at a PTA meeting. Southeast side Neighborhood Health center had an open house and Memorial Hospital had a press conference in our neighborhood. She cooked for all those. Then the Chamber of Commerce called. We want to have an all day meeting of our leadership program in your church building. Well, that day works.

Mike Mather [00:15:00]:
We can do that. Since we're going to be there all day, we need to use your kitchen. We said, we would prefer you use our caterer. They said, okay. We took 20 bucks and bought her a thousand business cards. Said La Chaparita Catering, Spunky, Tex Mex Food. And she fed 70 of the business and civic leaders in the community. They passed out her business card to everybody there.

Mike Mather [00:15:28]:
Through that, she got connected to the Michiana Business Women's Association. And a year and a half later, she opened up Adelica's Fajitas and at the corner of 8th and Harrison and Elk. Now, if we had Said to her, tell us how poor you are. We would have all ended up poor for it. And we would have missed a lot of great food, Right? If she would have shown up the day before Pentecost, we wouldn't have known this. It would have been true. She would have had those gifts. But we wouldn't have known because we wouldn't have asked.

Mike Mather [00:16:04]:
We can't do anything with something we don't know. And so to go back to your thing about to get the food. So the Red Cross, we had to go to this regular meeting and turn in the stats, and the stats we turned in were the gifts of people in our community. And they said, well, this isn't the form we need. And we said, well, this is the only one we have. If you want to stop giving us food, you can. And they didn't. And then the other thing is, more recently in Colorado, the version that happened with this is I was talking to a church group about this, and somebody said, well, you know, in Colorado, and this is true, the food banks that are run through Colorado do not allow people who are not poor to eat that food, the food that they distribute.

Mike Mather [00:16:57]:
So in theory, you cannot eat together, Right? You have to be eligible to have the meal. You know, you got to prove you're poor enough. So somebody held up their hand and said, what do you counsel in this case? And I said, I counsel disobedience. Because, I mean, these rules are crazy, right? I mean, how do we. How is it ever going to happen that we're going to get to know each other, be together in ways that will enrich us and each of us? The. The other thing I'll say is that I did two funerals two summers ago for matriarchs of the church. Each of them, both of them have a son who lives on the streets of Boulder. This is not somebody else thing.

Mike Mather [00:17:49]:
This is us. Well, just. I mean, actually, in the UK Right now, the Methodist Church is having conversations about how to end poverty. And one of the things they say is, how do we end poverty? And shut. They call them. What do they call them, Food boxes or something. But. But that.

Mike Mather [00:18:12]:
That's what the Methodist Church in Great Britain is having a conversation about. I don't think I've ever in this country been invited to. To a group of Methodists or others who want to have a conversation with me about ending poverty. And yet I once was invited to Boston with a group of people who they call themselves from outdoor congregations. They live outside. And they were the only group in the United States has ever asked me to come and help a talk about ending poverty. So the one other thing I want to say about that is a few years ago, about four or five years ago, I got a call from an insurance company in New Jersey. Vice president of the company called, said, I read your book.

Mike Mather [00:19:01]:
Okay, well, can you talk to me about poverty for a little bit? Sure. So we talked for an hour, and then she said, well, could you be a consultant for us? And I said, no. And she said, why not? And I said, because a consultant's a job. I have a job. I'm a pastor. I don't. Yeah, it didn't have time to do that. And she said, well, can I talk to you about it every once in a while? Yeah.

Mike Mather [00:19:25]:
Six months later, she called and said, we're getting together a group of people from around the country, about 15 people in health, education, transportation, health, housing, to talk about ending poverty. Would you be part of this five hours a week for a year, we're going to have this conversation? And I said, okay, but I want to. I have two questions. One is, why is an insurance company h. Wanting to have this conversation? And they said, well, we're a. She said, we're a Medicaid insurance company, and we know that if people have more money, people are healthier than people who have less money. We were, of course, shocked at this news and said, okay, that makes sense. The second thing I said is, how many people who don't have money are a part of this conversation? And she said, none.

Mike Mather [00:20:25]:
And I said, well, then I won't be a part of it. And she said, would you know anybody? And I said, yes, but they charge $300 an hour. And she said, okay. And they hired three people from our parish in Indianapolis and paid them over the next year, each $300 an hour for five hours a week, $72,000 each. So I don't know if what we talked about did any good, but that did some good. And it. But when we had the group together, when the group was together and we were talking, 70% of the people involved in this conversation were people who are parts of religious communities. And one of the things my friend diamond and I asked them was, who here has had a conversation about ending poverty in your religious community? And not one of them.

Mike Mather [00:21:32]:
And yet it was something that an insurance company was asking people to have. Why aren't we having that conversation? Well, I think the best strategy we found is asking different questions instead of asking people what they're missing. And you can't do Anything with what's missing. Instead, what you've tried to do is ask questions about what people have and who they are, not necessarily their gifts. You can ask, who do you love or who loves you? And tell me that story. Right. You can ask people, what are you most proud of in your life? Oh, my gosh, the stories you get, the things people say to you, mostly because, man, there's nothing better than asking somebody a question they don't expect, because then you're really hearing something. Actually, there's an actress who won the MacArthur Genius Grant Award who talks about three questions you can ask which will get you the truth in one of those three questions.

Mike Mather [00:22:35]:
Tell me about your first day of school. Tell me about a time you were accused of something for which you did not do a couple things. I want to say one other thing about the helpers and things. I don't think it's Christians who want to be helpers. I think it's everybody. I think everybody wants to be useful and everybody. So. And one of the ways I know this, if you ask a child, and this is something I learned from Phil Emerson, if you ask a child when they're growing up, what do you want to be when they grow up? When you grow up, what do they say? I want to be a teacher.

Mike Mather [00:23:11]:
I want to be a nurse. I want to be a doctor. I want to be, you know, fireman. Yes. Fire. Police officer. Yes. All these things.

Mike Mather [00:23:20]:
Not. Not one child has ever said, you know what I want to be when I grow up? A client. You taught me that.

Phil Amerson [00:23:31]:
I'm sorry.

Mike Mather [00:23:38]:
I. We would invite. Every Sunday at Broadway in Indianapolis, we would invite somebody for what we call a lesson from the contemporary church to tell us about what they were doing, what, you know, what they cared about in the world and what they were called to. I used to do that when I was at Broadway. The first time, I would do this once a quarter, and when I do it once a quarter, I would invite somebody to come in and say what they did, what they needed. What did you, you know, oh, you didn't have enough money for school supplies. Oh, you didn't have this or that. I mean, because that's what I.

Mike Mather [00:24:14]:
That's what I was doing or thinking I was supposed to be doing. And years later, I changed that. And so it was the same people, but instead of asking what was needed, you know, I'd say, so what do you care about? What do you love? I still remember had these young people, these kids who were, I don't know, 8, 9, 10, 11. And they had done a fundraiser in the neighborhood. They lived in the neighborhood, and they were doing a fundraiser. And I said, what are you selling at your fundraiser? And among other things, one of the kids says, cake in. My mom makes cakes in a jar. And I said, what are cakes in a jar? And he looked at me like I was stupid, and he said, they're cakes in a jar.

Mike Mather [00:25:02]:
You know, I mean, if you ask, if I. Everybody has something to offer and finding a way to see that and say that and publicly celebrate it well, and. And we think about in different ways, right? Because one of the things I've noticed that have happened as people have gotten to know each other at Boulder first, where I serve now, is one of the things is like one of. One of the illuminators was talking to me, and right then, one of the other people in the church came up and said, oh. Josie said, oh, I'm going away for a couple weeks. Hey, Gabe, do you need a place to stay for a couple weeks? Could you watch my cat and stay my place? He's like, yes. So, I mean. Which was a lot better choice for him than staying in a shelter, right? And he had a good time.

Mike Mather [00:25:56]:
Then he did it again. Then he did it again. And it began to build relationships and friendship between people that ends up changing things. I think Jesus said in John 15, I no longer call you servants, but friends. We often talk in churches about servanthood, and maybe we should talk more about friendship. No, I'm. I'm a big fan of trying stuff. I'm a big fan of failure.

Mike Mather [00:26:23]:
And it's. And it's stunning to me that a denomination which is based, you know, a faith that is based on the idea that our God gets killed can't embrace failure and know that it's not the end of the story.

Phil Amerson [00:26:38]:
Anyway, so one of the books Mike and I appreciated a couple of years ago is written by Anglicans in Great Britain, and it's entitled Being Interrupted. So I want to tell a story, and then I see one hand here. One Sunday, I was. I went to the communion service at Broadway Church in Indianapolis, and Michael was to lead it. And I was a senior pastor, and he wasn't there. And I got more and more agitated. It's me five minutes until. Four minutes until I go out and try to find the elements for communion.

Phil Amerson [00:27:20]:
They're not there. And I'm. I'm really prepared to give this man a hard time. And then I hear sounds, people coming up the stairs. And Michael had the elements at home, and on his way to church, I.

Mike Mather [00:27:42]:
Realized this is a core city church.

Phil Amerson [00:27:43]:
And there are houses next to one another. But he was serving communion all the way from his home, that was about five blocks away, to the church, and people were tagging along behind him, came up those stairs, and suddenly our circle, that was five or six people for communion, became 20 people because he was interrupting the normal. Well, the spirit was interrupting the normal flow of things. And I got taught a great lesson that day, Mike, you may remember that. I'm going to go back here for another question.

Mike Mather [00:28:21]:
Oh, yeah, there's a couple of questions here. Oh, Marianne, you wanted to say something?

Mary Ann Moman [00:28:27]:
I always have a question, but I. I also think, getting a kick out.

Mike Mather [00:28:35]:
Of this stuff, and you're getting a kick out of this.

Mary Ann Moman [00:28:40]:
Four years old. Isn't that wonderful?

Mike Mather [00:28:42]:
Yeah.

Mary Ann Moman [00:28:43]:
Yes. Anyway, I. This is the most incredible experience in terms of learning about medicine. And I guess my. My caution in all of this is that we're all different.

Phil Amerson [00:28:59]:
Yeah.

Mary Ann Moman [00:29:00]:
We all do things in different ways. And I've learned a lot in this process of ministry over the years, because.

Mike Mather [00:29:14]:
Aren't you going to be 74.

Mary Ann Moman [00:29:18]:
In this process? I think it's been one of always being open to learning something new. And so. And the other thing I just want to say is my book is not a prescription.

Phil Amerson [00:29:34]:
No.

Mike Mather [00:29:36]:
And it says that.

Mary Ann Moman [00:29:39]:
Over the years, I think as people, we always want to invest, to turn something around. And this is not madness. This is creating relationships and friendships, and every person I love is broken. And it's such a good thing.

Mike Mather [00:30:01]:
It's a way to look at the world. Right. And one of the things is. One of the things that's written about in the book is what we called around our place, learning journeys. And one of the things when we would send people on learning journeys from our parish, both people who are in the congregation, outside of the congregation, to go and learn and spend some time with somebody. The only instruction I gave was, do not come back and tell me you want to do what you just saw. Tell me how it inspired you, what it made you dream about and think about. That's.

Mike Mather [00:30:34]:
Yes, absolutely.

Phil Amerson [00:30:38]:
Would you join me in thanking Michael for sharing? Marianne's quite right about. There's no formula. If you didn't get a book and would like one. Elaine's got a sheet here. We'll try to get some to you if you want to sign up for one. It's not a formula, but the other magical word there was magic. And the word is relationship. Relationship.

Phil Amerson [00:31:11]:
Relationship.

Mike Mather [00:31:13]:
Yeah. So you get the last word.

Phil Amerson [00:31:17]:
Phil, I, I always did actually. I'm going to give it back to you because I, in the end, I want you to talk a bit more. I think people don't, don't maybe hear how you had to move through steps toward the illuminators and the animators and how long did that take? How did you identify people? What happened if they failed, that sort of thing.

Mike Mather [00:31:45]:
So, so I, I got to the church five years ago. The illuminators, we started talking about and implementing last October. So four and a half year, four and a half years after going there. Right. We, I mean, yeah, it didn't try to. I didn't even have that word in about something. It was just things we talked about. And several years after I was there, we, we started trying this.

Mike Mather [00:32:16]:
What, what did you ask about? Failures?

Phil Amerson [00:32:18]:
Well, yeah, have, have there been failures?

Mike Mather [00:32:21]:
There's been plenty of failures, yeah. Right.

Phil Amerson [00:32:23]:
You want to tell us about some of them?

Mike Mather [00:32:26]:
Well, one of the things I want to say is, and you'll read this in the book. People often ask me about the book. Well, why don't you tell a story of failure? It's all about failure. The story starts with me doing things to improve the summer program and then nine young men dying in the course of nine months from violence in the four block radius around our church. And one of the things I always say is that not enough failure for you, I mean, and people, I mean the failures happen all the time. So gosh, I'm trying to think of one of them. But you know, I, I had done these things to improve the tutoring program, right. When and when I came back to Broad, I'd done those things in the 90s, 80s and 90s to help improve this tutoring program we had.

Mike Mather [00:33:18]:
And when I came back, I started asking the question, what's the graduation rate in this neighborhood been over the last 20 years that we had been running this program? And, and every year it had gotten worse. It didn't get worse because of what we were doing. I hadn't even thought about it. So failures were. So some of the failures were hidden. Other failures were things like. And again, do you want me to talk about First Church or do you want me to.

Phil Amerson [00:33:46]:
Whatever you want.

Mike Mather [00:33:48]:
The other one, and again I talk about this or another one, is that when I was Broadway in the 80s and early 90s, we had this great thrift shop in the place. And the, and it was, it was great. People came from the local community, all this stuff, a lot of stuff got donated. And when I got back there in 2003, the 80 and 90 year old folks who were running it didn't want to run it anymore. And none of the folks who were younger wanted to take it over. And so it stopped. And we put in the bulletin every Sunday, this no longer the thrift shop no longer exists. But people kept donating to it.

Mike Mather [00:34:32]:
You know, so one of the practices we started, and it was around failures, was celebrating ministries that had ended. And we did that because we realized that people were feeling bad about things that had ended, as if, you know, that was the end of everything. And so we started doing this thing at the end of worship one Sunday a month, right before the last hymn, we would celebrate ministries that had ended, ministries that were beginning and ministries that were continuing, and the ministries that had ended. We did. The first one was the thrift shop. And we invited all the people up who'd ever volunteered in it and we gave them a gift. And then we asked everybody in the congregation who'd ever donated to it to stand. And then we said together, well done, good and faithful servants.

Mike Mather [00:35:30]:
And people knew it was finished. It was done because we corporately had recognized that it took us several years to bury everything that was dead. We didn't kill things. I want to be clear about this, we did not kill things. We buried the dead. And I still remember the lay leader coming to me and saying, well, I've got one more Mike. And I said, okay. And she got in front of the church that Sunday and she said, well, anybody who's ever said we've always done it that way before, please stand.

Mike Mather [00:36:06]:
And then together we said, as a congregation, well done, good and faithful servants. And people laughed. And when people laughed, they were learning, right? We were learning.

Phil Amerson [00:36:19]:
So anyway, well done, good and faithful servant.