A Weekly Witness:
Thoughts on Ministry, Justice, and Life Together from your Presbytery Leader
I am going to take an opportunity to let you in on a little secret that very few church people will say out loud:
I love meetings.
Yup. I said it. (Please don’t groan! Wait, don’t go anywhere, stay with me! Don’t close your friendly reading window yet!)
The reason I love meetings comes from our theology of how God meets us. I remember in seminary when it first clicked for me. I am one of those Dual M.Div./M.A. seminary students who focused on Christian Education, which means I come from a line of teaching that holds that the primary role of the teacher/facilitator/small group leader is that of host to the Holy Spirit meeting us in the space before us. The work of meetings is hospitality. The work of the hospitality is inviting the Holy Spirit to enter in. Approaching our meetings as hospitality means bringing our fullest selves with an open posture to let positive energy flow through us into the space where the Holy Spirit manifests.
When we talk about Jesus and our work, we have to talk about how incarnational God being with us is. When we talk about the Holy Spirit, we have to talk about how embodied the Spirit is among us. Part of being proper hosts for the divine involves our WHOLE selves–our bodies as individuals, and our body as a group, our body as a community, and the body of Christ as a bigger reality we are each connected to and with and in.
To that end, there are certain things I look for in almost any given meeting that help or hinder the kinds of conditions for the Holy Spirit to meet us as a body.
- What percentage of the group around the space are actively contributing?
- Who is speaking first?
- What energy are they shaping the space to feel like by speaking first?
- Is the meeting engaging all three: head, heart, or body?
- Has anyone smiled?
- Has anyone laughed?
- Where am I personally carrying tension or stress in my body during this meeting?
- Are we breathing, or are we talking quickly to get our word in as we compete for space and attention?
- What kinds of questions are being raised, and what do those feel like?
- Is there a sense of hope, or a sense of despair?
- Is everyone here who needs to be?
- Has anyone accidentally or mindfully excluded, and why?
- Is everyone clear about their role?
- Is everyone clear about our goal?
- Are we dealing with technical or adaptive challenges?
- Are we offering gratitude for each other?
- Are we recognizing others gifts and our own?
- Is there permission in the space for someone to say “Can we slow down, I don’t know what that is,” or do we just pretend we know what’s going out so we don’t look ignorant?
Think of any meeting, and run that above checklist by your experience of that meeting. Can you name a meeting space that has a poor showing on all of those questions? (I can.) Can you name a meeting space that has EXCELLENT showing on ALL of those questions? (I can!)
All or any of these questions could help us reveal how well we are making space for the Holy Spirit to show up in our meetings as we share hosting responsibilities by virtue of being co-participants together.
If we view meetings as an opportunity for hospitality, we can find ourselves being present in rich and lifegiving ways. I notice how often we can get frustrated in meetings because we feel we may not feel very present with each other. We can spin our wheels in frustration (especially when we are addressing adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems!). Sometimes when we feel like we are not making headway, we want to DO something, which can lead us to make final decisions without fully attending to everything the space. Before we know it, we are leaving a meeting without feeling a sense that the Holy Spirit was even with us. And that, my friends, is what can make meetings feel so…blah.
And why I stand by that I love meetings when they happen in the way where the Holy Spirit is felt.
I want to make space for the Holy Spirit. I want our meetings to be Spirit-led. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean MORE prayer, MORE Scripture, MORE of doing something–especially if it just makes us feel busier and less present. Making space for the Holy Spirit may mean first decluttering some things that come into our meeting that take up space that could otherwise be used for prayer, scripture, joy, relationship-building, kin-dom imagining, and holding space for each other through our common struggles.
This isn’t a new concept! When we invite company over to our homes, we make sure the walkway is clear, the kitchen is clean, and bathrooms have toilet tissue (This is just good hospitality!). If we were to approach meetings in the role of host, looking at our discernment as an act of hospitality for the Spirit and each other, perhaps there are ways we can “tidy up” the room so to speak so we can get right to the hors d’oeuvres while they are hot!
In my time here as your presbytery leader, I’ve noticed a few technical pieces that tend to get us most tripped up in our meetings, causing us to spend time and energy on pieces that could have been prepared in advance. So here is something I have developed that I have called the P.R.A.C.T.I.C.E. model, intending to provide hospitality in our decision-making spaces, creating an even playing field or all of us at our meetings, so we can all have equal access to the same information so that we can move more readily into our discernment.
The PRACTICE model challenges us to make sure the following pieces to be shared in front of everyone at the meeting so that we all build a table together with the same access to information, the same imagination for what it will look like, and the same direction for where we are going together.
Precedent: “What is our usual way of operating?” (And has that been working out for us, or do we need to do something different?)
Roles and Relationships Involved: “Who is responsible for what part, and in what capacity are they acting? Who else is involved and what is their role?”
Authority: “By what mandate are you acting?( ie: Provide Book of Order and Bylaws references that would sort out much of their role confusion”)
Common best practices: “What is the result decided by others in similar situation?” (Maybe we don’t need to reinvent the wheel!)
Timelines: “What are the next steps and timeline for follow-up, so we are assured of movement?”
Implementation Plan: “From start to finish, what are the steps of what we can expect?”
Contextual Dynamics: “Is there anything unique about this situation we need to be aware of?”
Explicitly Written: “Is any of this written out in advance with plenty of review so all can come to the table evenly equipped to engage together?”
I have found that discernment together that tends to have most or all of these pieces together have helped the space feel more present with each other, because bringing this kind of tidying up before entering decision points helps us be better hosts, allowing us to make more space for the Holy Spirit and our full selves. If there is resistance to providing any of these pieces ahead of making a decision, might there be a barrier that we haven’t addressed together? It’s possible that a barrier—fear, anxiety, other agendas—may be taking up space in a seat preserved for the Holy Spirit!
You are welcome to take this PRACTICE model and share it with your teams, your session, your committees. Before discerning together, see how many of these pieces are equitably present before you make decisions together.
If you do, let me know how it changes your feeling of your role of host!
May our meeting spaces be areas where we can PRACTICE hospitality together!
Ryan
Rev. Ryan J. Landino
Presbytery Leader
Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery.
Presbytery Leader Outs and Abouts Since Returning from Leave
(Sunday visits and confirmed upcoming plans):
8/3/25: Sharing prayers and assurance of continued solidarity with Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church (at the location of the former First Presbyterian Church of Ferguson)
8/17/25: Celebrating with Faith Des Peres upon installation of Rev. Bill Smutz as Pastor
8/25/25: Preaching at Florissant Valley Presbyterian Church ahead of Rev. Sean Butler’s surgery
8/31/25: Assisted with Worship at John Calvin Presbyterian Church in Bridgeton to provide support and back up with Pastor Brandan being sick
9/13/25: Apple Butter Cooking Day at Grace Presbyterian Church in Crystal City
9/20/25: (upcoming) Celebration of Serving Brunch (Third Presbyterian Church)
9/21/25: (upcoming) Preaching at Grace Presbyterian Church in Crystal City
9/21/25: (upcoming) Celebrating and Participating in the Ordination and Installation of Rachel Finken at First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood
9/27/25: (upcoming) Celebrating Lawson “Cal” Calhoun at the St. Andrews Ageless Remarkable Saint Louisans Gala