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Minutes of Meetings with God |
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A Whack and a Kick ... |
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| It's something that doesn't happen too often, but every now and then
circumstances conspire to whack me on the side of the head or kick me in
the seat of the pants and force me to think about something that I otherwise
wouldn't think about too terribly much. Usually when I get such a "whack"
or a "kick," it means I need to think in new ways about something I have
become comfortable with, something I think I have a clear understanding about,
but for some reason, the old understanding doesn't work any more. Circumstances
have conspired to get me thinking and re-thinking about what it means to
be the Church.
The first of the circumstances in this conspiracy had to do with one of the congregations that I serve. It was London Church's building needing something done to repair its roof. The earliest "ball-park" estimates for the cost of the repair indicated that the job could go as high as $40,000. Later, we found the job could be done for just under $8,000 (folks were generous and we were able to pay cash for the repair). But, for a while there, I was beginning to wonder, "Is it worth $40,000 to re-do the roof of this church building?" and, "Could $40,000 be best used to build or to buy a new, larger building?" Anyway, the roof at London started me thinking about church buildings and the importance of the place of worship (the building) to life of a congregation. The second set of circumstances in the conspiracy had to do with visiting the new church building that houses the congregation my brother-in-law pastors. A congregation of under 70 members managed to raise the money for and to build a new church building. The building includes a sanctuary that comfortably seats 200, and an equally large fellowship hall that can easily be divided into Sunday School classes. The building is impressive, but what is more impressive is the miracle of faith and vision, and the creativity that made the construction of the building possible for under $300,000 (that's in 1995 dollars). The third part of this conspiracy was an Administrative Council Meeting at Azalia Church (Azalia is the other congregation that I serve) during which we grappled with some of the hard questions of the meaning of church membership and of who should be kept on the membership roll. There are now under 40 people on the active membership roll at Azalia, and some of those folk have not had any contact with the congregation in years. Should those folk be kept on the rolls. On the other hand, there are folk who are at church every Sunday, who support the church and participate in many church activities, but, they really don't want their name on the membership roll. Just what is church membership about, anyway? The next part of this conspiracy of circumstances came in the form of a conversation with one of my cousins at family reunion. This particular cousin is associate pastor of a church in Athens, Tennessee. That church has gone through a period of rapid numerical growth and of heightened spiritual intensity, both of which continue. As we talked about the things that were happening in the Athens church, it became pretty evident that a vital element to it all was that, in that congregation, a certain "critical-mass" had been reached. A Christ- centeredness, a prayerfulness, a heightened sense of ministry to each other and all people, and a commitment to make room to grow, both physically and spiritually, reached a level at which a "spiritual chain reaction" began. Barriers began to tumble and the church began to grow like crazy. The congregation out-grew its sanctuary (a traditional setting for worship) and began worshipping in its gym (a very non-traditional setting for worship), that seemed to help free things up, too. People began to ask: "What else can we do to make the Gospel real for ourselves and others?" rather than saying "the 7 last words": "We never did it that way before!" The last of the bit of this conspiracy has to do with the Service of Consecration of the new sanctuary at the Dundee United Methodist Church. Our Bishop delivered the sermon that morning. In his words to the congregation, the Bishop congratulated them for their very good work in constructing the new building. But, he also gave us all the reminder that it is the people who worship in the building who are the most important. It is the people's relationship to God and the way people allow their relationship to God to influence their relationship to each other that counts the most. I came away from the Bishop's message thinking to myself: "a building can never be the Church, the Body of Christ. Only people working together, loving each other in Christ, can be the Church, the Body of Christ!"
Like "a whack on the side of the head," this stuff has set my head, my
thoughts, spinning. And like "a kick in the seat of the pants," it has motivated
me to want to think and to do differently than what I've been thinking and
doing. I find myself coming back, over and over again, to the questions:
Other questions that have been spinning through my head are:
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