I have returned from a much-needed vacation. I pledged prior to going on vacation that I was going to accomplish a few major projects this year, one of them is starting to blog about church and faith. Blogging is a monumental task for me, I have experience years of silence and frustration in the role of a lead pastor of once dynamic congregations that had dwindled to survival mode by the time I had the honor of serving them.
I entered each appointment with the great hope of assisting the congregations to recapture the energy of the past and embark upon a future of service. Unfortunately, I discovered groups that lose their fire to change the world were a war zone for even a patient change agent. Too often groups that were doing great work were creating unsustainable chiefdoms, with a core group of power brokers. The identifiable movers and shakers of the groups were busy with doing “good.” They failed to realize that they were not creating opportunities and developing innovative leaders for the future. Their future was cumbersomely corralled by their present.
Vacation gave me a chance to reflect upon why I must break out of the safety of the fraternal order of ordained ministry and do a new thing, if I am to become the future me. I have been wrestling with this thought for a long time, but a bear sighting made me realize that what I had learned to be “church” was not really “the church.”
I thought I knew bears. I had seen them in captivity, the lovely polar bears at the zoo swimming in the water. I had seen them in nature shows, filming them in the wild. I had seen bears through the lens of cognitive dissonance. But, while on vacation, early in the morning I heard a noise. Initially, mistakenly assuming it was the neighbors in the cabin next door putting the garbage out early, I glanced out of the window to see a figure standing over the trash bin, the disappearing darkness of early dawn preventing me from seeing the person. Looking closer to my surprise, it was a huge frustrated bear that proceded to topple the secured garbage bin with ease. He was not alone, there was a larger bear approaching the cabin. I closed the opened blinds and peep through the closed blinds, horrified of creatures for which I thought I had such an affinity for until I actually saw them unrestrained by a caged environment or the safety of a video camera lens. No, these were huge animals that could have easily push open the cabin door if they desired. I discovered it was my very first time really seeing bears. The experience was exhilarating. I was awestruck and frighten.
Reflecting on the moment of peering out from assumed safety behind a breakable window and a blind, I realize that I was becoming tamed and less enthusiastic about doing what I initially thought my role in ministry would be like. The reality was that instead of leading churches which were mighty change agents in the midst of a changing world and communities, I was starting to feel like a babysitting service for the bishop’s use to be mission stations. The community-saving stations had become safe, secure and anesthetic observatories in the “wild world” of hurting people, system failures and doing good without true encounters.
The future me says no to this kind of institutionalization of the church. The new me want to explore the authentic community. The new me starts today to join the adventure of a becoming a disciple. The new me is living into my current church’s vision of “Punching Holes in the Darkness.”
Don Wilson 