What I Don't Miss (Part 3)

Section One of this series dealt with what I miss now that I am doing "secular" ministry after thirty years as a parish pastor.
Links to
Introduction
What I Miss: Part 1, part 2, part 3

Section 2 is all about What I Don't Miss
Part 1, Part 2
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"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side."
--James Baldwin

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Putting together what I don’t miss in as clear and careful way as I can is that the institution has, in many instances, lost its mission. We can see the roots of that in the other two things I have already talked about- the sense of control and the entitlement of Christendom. Let me explain.

Thirty-five years ago when I entered the parish ministry we thought we still lived in Christendom. Underlying that is the belief that everyone, with a couple exceptions here and there, was a Christian. Some may be of one type, some may be of another, but underneath it all we are all the same.

Since everyone around here is a Christian, the mission of the church is really to be found in far away places where the non-Christians (sometimes called heathens or pagans) live. Mission festivals celebrated this work. We collected money and other goods to ship over there. Once in a while a son of the congregation became a missionary (or a daughter married one) and went overseas from where we got all kinds of letters and updates and sometimes an interesting show when they came home on leave.

My Moravian denomination was built on this work. Overseas mission was- and still is- essential and honorable work and definitely not to be overlooked. When the Moravians in 1731 decided to send missionaries to the West Indies they were thought to be crazy. They became the first Protestant missionaries. When they came to America in the 1740s they did so to bring the Gospel to the Indians. They often treated them well and did not participate in most cases with the oppression that was building.

Most American denominations have supported mission workers around the world. They never thought that the mission field was actually growing around them while they lived in their understanding of Christendom. Pretty soon, however, more and more different types of Christians showed up. A community that had once had only three churches now had seven. Denominational loyalty became more difficult- or the flip side- even more determinative. When you feel under siege, you circle the wagons. Little did we realize that the siege wasn’t even happening. We were slowly finding ourselves as outside the thought of many people.

That’s where the control sets in. And blaming. And inward looking. In the centuries of Western Christendom, though, we lost our understanding of who we are. We are not the anointer of the king or the political partner of an ideology. We are not a place for US. We are a place to go from. We expect people to come to us- hence we have to advertise. In reality, if I read Jesus correctly, we to be a community we leave from to bring the least and the lost and hurting and hungry and naked and imprisoned back to join us.

Mission. We don’t have it. We don’t want it. The people we bring in might be dirty or different or obvious sinners or drunks or …. We still use the language. We still think we are doing that mission. But too much of the time we are not.

I am saddened by that. I do not miss it for one moment. Or more to the point, I do not miss trying to convince us (yes, me, too) that we should be about something else.

Please don’t misunderstand me. As Philip Yancey said in a recent column in Christianity Today, a lot of good things DO happen in the church.

The world is full of pain. The prosperity promised on religious television must exist in some alternate universe from what I encounter as I visit churches in person. For all its faults and failures, the church offers a place to bring wounds and to seek meaning in times of brokenness and struggle.

It is a shame that we cannot do that more often to those beyond our current boundaries, boxes, and fears. I dream of a time when we can rediscover the incredible power, strength, peace, hope, and joy that mission work can bring. Not to mention the even more unbelievable feeling of doing God’s work.

Before taking up the next phase of this series by looking at the idea of “secular ministry,” let me repeat a story that I have used before. It was the Preface to the classic Introduction to Pastoral Care and Counseling by Howard Clinebell. When I first read it in 1972 I was overwhelmed. It has set the definition for my ministry (though not as well as I would have liked at times.) I would preach it every three years or so, even if they had heard it before. It is that important to me. It speaks today as well as ever.

"The Parable Of The Lifesaving Station"
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the new members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea.

They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they redecorated it beautifully and furnished it as a sort of club.

Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work.

The mission of lifesaving was still given lip-service but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the lifesaving activities personally.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half-drowned people.

They were dirty and sick, some had skin of a different color, some spoke a strange language, and the beautiful new club was considerably messed up. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal pattern of the club.

But some members insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the life of all various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast.

They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another lifesaving station was founded.

If you visit the seacoast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but now most of the people drown!