Interlude (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 was talking about "secular ministry." Section Four looked at what I've learned in these three years in "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
4. What I've Learned: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
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It is now time to start putting all this writing together. The question that I am going to try to answer will be, in essence:

• Maximizing what I miss about parish ministry and
• Minimizing what I feel gets in the way of ministry;
• Utilizing what I've learned from being out of ordained ministry and the
• Strengths that secular ministry has opened to me, I want to
• Describe what church-based life and ministry would look like for me
• If I went back.

That seems like the most likely way for me to keep this orderly. In order to do that, let me try as succint a summary as I can of these points. That way I can get to the core of what I see as the essentials.

So, first, what to maximize:

• Community. This is one of the true essentials! I am convinced that without it the church cannot be the church. There are a myriad of ways this can be accomplished, but I have a hunch that we have to be more intentional about it today than in the past. There are just too many ways that such a community can be torn apart or that people find to get at least a pseudo-community.
• The possibility of experiencing and sharing The Holy. For me worship and study and life together are ways that help make the church-based community unique. This is the Spiritual dimension that allows us to be in touch- together- with the Power that empowers us to be a community. It is easy to be religious. It can be far more difficult - yet far, far more rewarding- to also be spiritual. When you have both, it can be awesome.
• Jesus and Bible Centered. I didn't mention this as something I am missing about parish life because I haven't lost it. Jesus and the Bible-centered life is what I continue to try to live. I should probably have talked about it separately from The Holy although they are strongly related. One cannot have a church that ignores Jesus and what He calls us to do. The Bible is the place we turn to see how others have been called and used by God and what it all means. To keep the basics of Jesus or the Bible, while remaining open and accepting of many differing interpretations provides a truly unbeatable foundation.

What, then, would I try to minimize:

• Christendom's leftovers of grandiosity. That feeling that the church has special permissions and special exemptions in society needs to be minimized. We have to begin to see- and accept- that even if we believe that we have something unique and special to offer (which we do!) that does not exempt us from dealing with the culture and the world's issues. We have to do that from a servant position.
• Clergy-centric institutionalism. And on the inside, the special class status of clergy can be downright dangerous. We must all be brothers and sisters among brothers and sisters with no one being "more equal" than others. This re-empowering of the non-clergy is a non-negotiable in my book.
• Inward self-centeredness. If we want a country club or a private for-me-only hospital, go found one. That is not the church.

Adding the strengths of "secular ministry":

• People orientation. A "secular" view of ministry reminds us that it is not the institution that is the beneficiary but the people who have a need. A "secular" view remembers that Jesus was always looking after people in need. He was not an institution builder. People orintation helps remind us of that.
• Outward looking. When the church looks outward beyond itselt as the place to do ministry, the church has found an often forgotten and overlooked aspect of Jesus. The community we seek to maximize is the internal support for ministry and our lives. Outward looking is where the inward ministry is called to be lived day in and day in an honest and humble way.
• Reality based. It is easy to live in denial in the church. It is easy to hide the needs and failings and worries that may no look nice or proper. But we are just a bunch of sinners trying to help other sinners find their way. Let's be real while at the same time working to live the difference that faith in Jesus can have.

That, then is the outline, if you will, or the underlying core values of what I see for the kind of ministry I would try to develop were I to return to the parish ministry. As we go further in depth with that over the next few weeks, I will try to remember that this is an ideal- a vision. I know it won't be 100% possible. Life isn't that tidy. I also know it needs God to become reality. If it were possible for us to do on our own, we wouldn't need the Holy Spirit.

One thing I will look at as well is the major question faced by many who have tried to do this: Is it even possible in an already well-established church? Might it not be better- and easier- to do it in new church plants and the many alternatives that are springing up? I don't have an answer to that, but I am going to explore it.

Next time we will begin to discover what I see as the forms and directions. I do know it is worth striving for. It is a life in mission with Jesus Christ.

What I've Learned (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. 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
4. What I've Learned: Part 1, Part 2
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

One more set of things that I need to talk about before I get to the ideas that I would work from if I returned to the parish ministry following my present time in secular ministry. There are some things that I learned that took me more by surprise than I thought they would. It is not a big insight. It even sounds obvious. But it still surprised me.

The world is full of sin.

This is far more true than most people are willing to admit or perhaps even aware of. It is going on all around us. It is embedded in our human psyche. It is part and parcel of who we are. What’s more it is far more embedded in each of us, even those of us who follow Jesus than we can confess. We try constantly to put a different face on our lives. We try to appear better than we are- striving, perhaps, to reach a higher level of action of faith than we can admit to.

Such is the basis of the cries of hypocrisy that come at Christians from many different corners. Such is the basis of the periodic revelations that cause the perfect TV or other preachers such pain when they are discovered to be just as human as any one else.

I discovered this issue when no longer wearing the symbolic mantle of “ordained clergy” in the daily world (again as Barbara Brown Taylor describes so well in her book, Leaving Church.) It is amazing how people act differently when they are not aware that you are or have been a clergy. You hear language and stories and actions that they would have hidden or been embarrassed to describe in front of a “person of the cloth.”

So all of a sudden I was seeing and hearing and participating in a world at its basic normal activities. I was hearing about things that few pastors get to hear about in their daily walks of life. These stories and events and words came from strangers, from co-workers, from clients, from atheists, from church members, from young, from old. In other words- from just about every walk of life. Some are deeply aware of this gap between action and morals, values and weakness. Some could care less.

Why was this so much of a revelation to me? I have no idea. I have always known the power of sin and its hold on us humans. Original sin is a reality that I have never sought to deny. I even know many of the surveys and polls that periodically show that church members, by and large, have the same basic activities and issues as the population as a whole.

But the whole thing took me by surprise anyway. Or, more to the point, I was surprised by how open so many people were about what they thought and in some cases did. I was used to the silence of so many of us in the church about the kinds of lives we and others in the church might be leading. I was used to the polite ways in which people keep their real selves away from the eye of the pastor-types.

Unfortunately it is in this make-believe-seemingly-perfect-world that we develop the potential for arrogance, holier-than thou attitudes, and the whole movement toward control and legalism in the religious and political structures. We give off the feeling that people need to be perfect before they can come to the church. We allow an attitude that says we love reformed sinners, but they better reform first. We can unwittingly appear judgmental and intolerant. Or worse, become judgmental and intolerant. In so doing we close the doors on many people’s honesty and perpetuate false fronts and deeply painful woundedness.

Yes, sin abounds, far more than most people are willing to admit or perhaps even aware of. It is going on all around us. It is imbedded in our human psyche. It is part and parcel of who we are.

But so is being formed in the image of God. One of my mentors for a few years, a wonderful retired pastor and missionary once brought me up short. In response to some mistake or shortcoming or sin I had noticed, I commented, “Well, we’re only human.”

To which my friend qquickly replied, “Only human? We are created in God’s own image. Only human is far more than you think! It is God at work.”

Amen to that, I realized. God's image is within us- not Satan's. We may be in the midst of being sinners, but that isn't our underlying foundation. God's image in our soul is.

Therefore I believe, grace is part and parcel of what the church is to be. If we are the Body of Christ incarnate in this 21st Century, then we cannot miss out on grace. We cannot allow legalism and fear of sin or judgment, especially by others to force us into the mask of sinlessness and the unbearable mantle of fake righteousness.

For I have learned that we are all imperfect, fallible, fearful human beings. All of us. Me. You. Christians of every stripe. People of every nation and language and race. We are far more alike than we are different. To deny that in ourselves, to deny that the church is anything but a gathering of such sinners, is to lose our ability to hold forth the opportunities for healing.

What I've Learned (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, Part 2
4. What I've Learned: Part 1
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Last week I talked about the humility that I truly needed to learn if I was to begin to notice what the world thinks of the church and of religions in general. If I wasn’t humbled before, I would certainly be once I got out into the secular world and discovered what is happening with many people.

They could care less if the church exists. Many have left the church behind in a world that we have long since left behind. Even those who still attend church may keep it quiet. Even Christians don’t always talk about what they believe or where they go to church. It is like being part of a secret society- without even knowing who the other members are. As a result church and religious views are often viewed as irrelevant.

Sadly the church doesn’t help matters any. Sometime go through the church listings on a Saturday and look at the sermon titles. Some are meant to be cute. Some are meant to convey some hint of the sermon. Most are nothing shot of yawn-inducing. The same is true with many notices on church signs. They range from dull to schmaltzy to “inside jokes” to (as I mentioned last week) downright offensive. The better ones- the ones that actually do what they’re supposed to do- are often thought inducing, positive, and hopeful, addressing real issues in people’s lives. The exception, sadly, not the rule.

Which leads to an even sadder understanding of the church in the greater community. We are irrelevant. We don’t speak to their world. The view they get from us is that we are disconnected.

And the view they get from the headliners of the faith makes it even worse. There they discover that Christians are bigots, anti-scientific, controlling, intolerant, and downright judgmental. And those appear as our good points. The hijacking of the church by the radical religious right may be one of the greatest theological crimes since the Inquisition. Yes, that is strong, but they have so ruined the image of the church that any positive work we do will often be brought into suspicious scrutiny and discounted, our motives seen as mixed or malevolent.

I have sat in groups and watched reactions from people when a Christian starts talking about their faith. I see eyes glaze over, people turn their heads, others try to look interested. Some, and I know there are many like this, fortunately, will listen intently trying to figure out if the person is sincere and open or a right-wing bigot. Some will listen for the kernels of hope and truth that they know must be there or the person wouldn’t be talking so intensely and deeply about something so personal.

In that is the hope! Because I have also learned that people are by nature spiritual. As a species we are incredibly open seekers. We look for hope or meaning wherever we can find it. We have our radar going in two directions at once- seeking out the BS factor while allowing the spirit that God has placed within each of us to seek for ways that will turn our lives into spiritually fulfilling lives.

Perhaps one of the ways we can see how irrelevant the church seems to many is the way the phrase, “I’m spiritual but not religious” has become so common. It is how we acknowledge that we are seeking for the meaning, that connection, that transcendence, that community that opens us up to more of what we need. At the same time it marks the boundary between us and those who would use the “spiritual” for less than spiritual purposes.

I was watching C-SPAN2/Book TV on Sunday with a panel from the Los Angeles Festival of Books. They were discussing religion and culture. Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything commented that he understood that religion is supposed to make one happy. Why then do they have to make the rest of us miserable? They are not happy until they get the rest of us to think like they do. He wants us to keep it to ourselves.

“God forbid!” was my response. But it was a powerful reminder of a very common attitude which also points out the great fallacy and weakness of our traditional understanding of the ways to do evangelism. Besides the fact they don’t work well, they turn people off. They shut more doors than they open. I know, I know. God rejoices over that one lost sheep. But I don’t think God is into the kinds of things we often do that harm us and our ministry for God far more than it helps.

I know that relevance and acceptance isn’t what we are about. Just look at Jesus. But then again, do look at Jesus. He did not look for the acceptance of those in power. He did not look for the acceptance of the religious leadership. He looked for the acceptance from those who needed him. Many of them didn’t accept him, of course. But many did. Too often the church is looking for acceptance in all the wrong places and from all the wrong people.

True Jesus-based relevance will be when we learn that getting the message to the people in ourselves and our lives is what it is all about. Living and giving – not to the church but to those who need God is what needs to be done. That is not just the pastor’s job. It is probably not even the pastor’s job. It is our job each and every day.

It is essential. I will talk about that next week in the third part of what I have learned in the secular ministry I have been doing- the incredible needs that we don’t even know we have as people and how God can do something about them.