What I've Learned (1)

Section One of this series dealt with what I miss now that I am doing "secular" ministry after thirty years as a parish pastor. Section Two was about what I don't miss. Section Three is talking about "secular ministry."
Links to earlier sections:
Introduction
1. What I Miss: Part 1, part 2, part 3
2. What I Don't Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude
3. Secular Ministry: Part 1, Part 2
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Before finally getting to the point of all this rambling- what I would do differently if I went back into parish ministry- I want to lay another foundational layer that comes as a result of working and living these past three years outside of the institutional church. It’s time to talk about what I have learned – about the church and about life in the non-church world.

Actually, my learning process goes back about 18 years. When I discovered that I am an alcoholic I began attending various 12-step meetings in and around my community. Most of the time, as is appropriate for anonymous organizations, most people didn’t know what I did for a living. Even in a relatively small city it can be surprising how few people really know who you are and what you do.

So the first thing I learned from all that was humility. I was not the center of attention in the city just because I was a pastor. Even in other situations when someone would find out I was the “Moravian pastor” even long-time community members might ask- “And where is the Moravian Church? I’ve never heard of it.”

Ah, the power of humility. The church is not the center we thought it was. Yes it may have been, but that humility was an important step for me- and should be for the church. If we think everyone knows us, we are going to miss a lot of information and opportunity to grow and learn about the people around us.

In those 18 years I have also worked and talked and shared lots of fellowship with people who are not church connected. A goodly number, in fact, have very little good to say about the church. Don’t get them started or you will be sorry. They taught me that the church’s grandiosity and self-centered message turned off more people than brought them in the door.

One of my closest friends over the years was a self-proclaimed “agnostic” who nevertheless had a remarkable spiritual life. One day we were driving to a gathering and passed a church with one of those cutesy message boards. This one said something like the saying:
No Jesus, No Peace. Know Jesus, Know Peace or
Life without Jesus is life without meaning.

They don’t know me, was his first response. They don’t know a thing about what I feel or know or how or where I find meaning. How arrogant.

All I could do was agree- because I knew that he was a man of deep love and meaning and would go out of his way to offer a hand to someone in need. I never agreed that he was an agnostic. It was his way of separating himself from the church-people. No, he wasn’t a Christian or even religious. But he did have a spiritual life that gave him peace and meaning and joy.

Or there was the other close friend who was Jewish. I learned a great deal about the breadth and depth of spirituality from him. His most memorable line to me was about driving east to work in the morning.

Sometimes I have to turn off the radio because the sunrise is so loud.

I knew exactly what he meant. Life took on a joy and a meaning thanks to these caring spiritual friends. They didn’t need to know Jesus to teach me something about God and faith and life.

The arrogance, grandiosity, self-centeredness of the church and many of us as Christians was painful to learn. These are signs of illness, of addiction, of potential personality disorders like narcissism and even anti-social personality. I would often fall in humble contrition before God when faced with such awareness from people I trusted and liked so deeply.

But at least many of these people paid some attention to the church and religion, even if it was to react against it. The second thing I learned which I will talk about next week is the way that a significant minority of those we meet have no interest at all in what we in the church do and have basically ignored us and received a very biased view of us.

But to learn that I had to first go through the humility of these earlier years.

What is Secular Ministry (2)

Section One of this series dealt with what I miss now that I am doing "secular" ministry after thirty years as a parish pastor. Section Two was about what I don't miss. Section Three is talking about "secular ministry."
Links to earlier sections:
Introduction
1. What I Miss: Part 1, part 2, part 3
2. What I Don't Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude
3. Secular Ministry: Part 1,
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I have to admit that a great deal of my current thought on "secular ministry" following years in parish ministry has been influenced by Barbara Brown Taylor’s amazing memoir, Leaving Church, especially the sections that deal with her new life outside the establishment. It has given some focus to a lot of things that I had rumbling in my mind for the first two years after my moving outside.

Here are some of her thoughts:

• The job of a priest is to recognize holiness in things, hold them up to God and to speak of them to others so that they can recognize the holiness in those things, too. A priest is a priest no matter where s/he happens to be. Outside the church, s/he is working without a net. (pp. 204-205)
• I knew that while the scenery had changed, my vocation had not. I was still on holy ground. All the familiar human sorrows were in that room, all the human hungers for meaning and love. I was still in the privileged position of choosing words that fell into deep water and asking the kinds of questions that mattered. (p.208)
• I was in a room full of 18 and 19-year olds, a group of people most clergy see very little of in church... (p. 208)

As I reflect on those thoughts in my own "secular ministry" I realize again and again that we are not different when called into secular ministry. The setting is different, though. When the world was "officially Christian" ministry took place in and through the church. It was the left-over of a different world. Today when so few (relatively) avail themselves of that ministry it may be time to think again of the model of Jesus' ministry. It was outside the institution- which is where he found the people.

Does this negate the "internal" mission and ministry? Not at all. It simply places it into a new perspective of a postmodern world where the opportunities for ministry are far more varied and less apparently "holy." All the more need for a priest who can reach out and discover the holiness and hold it up to be seen in whatever ways the world may be ready to see.

I, too, am still on holy ground. When I walk into my group room at 6:00 each evening or 9:00 on Saturday morning I am walking into a place where God already is. I may not use "holy" language or "religious" ritual or even "traditional" sacraments. I do come to minister in its best and holiest ways. I am not there to convert or convince or evangelize. No, I am there to feed and clothe and visit and heal. I am bringing into reality the possibilities that God (however they may understand God at that point) has a better and deeper and more peace-filled way of life. I bring grace to a group that may not have heard that such a thing could even exist- especially in their lives.

In our postmodern world we "secular" priests/pastors/prophets are working in places that don't look holy but are just as filled with holiness as any other place in God's presence. I am working with people most clergy would love to see in church, but won't. Like Barbara Brown Taylor's classroom, my group room or counseling office become sanctuaries- safe places. They become holy ground where I stand in awe of God's power at work day in and day out.

One more quote from Leaving Church.

• I saw that my humanity was all I had left to work with. I saw in fact that it was all I had ever to work with. There was no mastering divinity. My vocation was to love God and my neighbor and that was something I could do anywhere, with anyone, with or without a collar. My priesthood was not what I did, but who I was. In this new light, nothing was wasted. All that had gone before was blessing and all yet to come was more. (p. 209)

I guess maybe my cutesy introduction to secular ministry a few weeks ago may not be as far from the truth as it felt. Secular ministry may very well be nothing more- and nothing less- than doing ministry just like Jesus did it.