Church Train Wreck

Posted on November 21, 2007 by sdjones.
Categories: Uncategorized.

Two weeks ago, the senior pastor of my church asked me to preach on Christ the King Sunday (Nov 25th). I was thrilled that he asked and also surprised. One week ago, that pastor resigned immediately from the church. Now factions are forming and what was an opportunity to simply preach to a happy Thanksgiving crowd of families rejoined for the holidays has become an opportunity to be a prophetic voice in the midst of chaos. What a collosal mess.

As a coincidence to all this, I have a paper due the day following my sermon on the presence of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments of the church and how the Holy Spirit provides insight into the ministry and mission of the church. Faced with the material, present particulars of my home church and the theological ideals of my seminary education, the gulf couldn’t be wider and as I contemplate my paper, I cannot conceive how the gulf is to be bridged.

I was thinking about all this with regard to my involvement in the business world. I have been fired, asked to resign and been in messy situations that came to the brink of lawsuits. In the business world, I consider it par for the course and presume that the motives of capital and power trump compassion and deliberation. Why does it look worse in the church, even though the same things happen there? I think two things: the expectations are that those cultural drives will not be present in church and people care that much more about the relationships in church. I haven’t thought it out, but based on my present experience, the reaction to the resignation of the pastor suggests such a situation is not becoming of a Christian church and therefore the expectation from within and without is that we are somehow capable of doing it differently. That is questionable. It is also hard to know the nature of relationships in church during conflict. The concern appears to be who is right and who is wrong, which seems to be, lowly seminary student that I am, the wrong focus entirely. The paradox being that the focus on rightness and wrongness is divisive and wrong; the truth being that the focus should be on Jesus, which means a desire for relationship and reconciliation. But that is just me. I could be wrong…but I don’t think so.

I saw a show on the Discovery channel about great engineering disasters. It was about a high-speed train wreck in Germany where the train left the track at some outrageous speed and slammed into a bridge abuttment, making an accordian of about 12 cars with people in them. The accident was the perfect confluence of unavoidable, yet preventable, events that all conspired at a single moment in time. It is a shame how easily we as a church lose focus of another singular moment in time 2000 years ago that conspired to reverse such confluences of disaster.

What do we pray for when there appears to have been no other possible outcome based on previous decisions made; where all the choices lead to divisiveness, conflict and pain? I think of Psalm 44, which I paraphrase to “You were there, God, in the past, but it sure seems you are not here now, so all I have to rely on is what went before, which really doesn’t help me now much. So now would be a good time to act again. Amen.”

Peace to all!

Seth

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Knowing what you thought you didn’t know when others knew…

Posted on November 6, 2007 by sdjones.
Categories: Uncategorized.

One of the most surprising things about being in seminary – again – and having been out of the faith for almost 13 years is the experience of having thought I believed one thing only to find out I in fact believe something quite different.

First, some background to that statement above: Part of why I was in the business world for 15 years was because when I was in seminary the first time, I actually lost my faith. I was young, full of doubt and felt it would be dishonest to go into ministry without a foundation of faith. Now, I am older, still full of doubt, but at least know that faith exists in an experiential, yet supranormal, realm that does not deny doubt. Further, no one was more surprised than I when, six months after having returned to the Christian faith, I still had a calling to the ministry. Before I came back, though, I was involved in all kinds of Eastern/New Age/Personal Growth stuff – Gurdjieff, Tarot cards, Native American spirituality, Zen, etc. etc. etc. Some of it is very good stuff. Most of it, at least the way I learned it, turned out to be an avenue of self-deception and manipulation by others.

So now that I have been in seminary for 2 full years with 1 more to go, I have the luxury of being able to reflect on what I thought I believed about the nature of the world, only to be struck that what I really believe is much different. The best example was reading John Calvin over the summer. Being a liberal New Ager, I had presumed Calvin to be a theocratic hothead with a penchant for tyranny and hate. Of course, that is the common attitude of those who have not read him. I was surprised to find out that Calvin holds the natural world in a pristine view. The natural world is not fallen. It mirrors the original creation. In fact, we should, of our own created accord be able to discern the salvation and power and presence of God in all of Creation. However, we cannot perceive the presence of God because we are broken, fallen people. We need help. I read that in Book 1 of the Institutes of Christian Religion and realized that I thoroughly agreed with Calvin. Who would have thought?

I am a firm believer that the journey to and through faith is what defines our spiritual life, not the doctrines we believe. That is not to say that doctrine is not important. We need to finally make a stand for those things that matter to us. The state of our spiritual being and the state of our world do not allow for wishy-washy-ness. Rather than that place where we make a stand as an expectation for the rest of the world, it is the place we see from and make our claims from – and in that lays the power of proclamation and faith. Not in the assumption that all should believe as I do (per above, I am not real clear on that a lot of the time), but in the assumption that in knowing where I stand, I am much more able to reach out to others and find out where they stand. Do I think my ground is more stable than some other approaches? Certainly. Do I wonder about whether the grass is greener or more satisfying where others stand? Most certainly.

But it seems to me, if our overriding concern is for discovering the nature of ourselves and the truth of our lives in this world, knowing where we stand is much more inviting. After all, Calvin’s understanding of the natural world would suggest that what we see is always “through a glass darkly”. How can we know anything if we are not talking with one another?

Peace to all!

Seth

1 comment.