Welcome to the New World

The world has changed.  Our context for ministry has changed, and we quite frankly do not know if, or when, it will change back.

We are in the midst of a stubborn recession.  Our lives, the news, our governments, our churches are consumed with economic urgency.  We are anxious, fearful and uncertain.  Scarcity thinking is taking hold in many quarters.

This economic urgency is not without foundation.  The global financial crisis is bringing hardship and suffering to people in every part of the world.  For those of us in the USA, it causes anxiety and uncertainty about declining pension accounts and investments.

Many of our friends are devastated by unemployment and mortgage foreclosures.  And, for others who live in places with scarce resources or exist in conditions of extreme poverty, it means nothing to eat, no health care, and no prospects to even earn a day’s bread.

The crisis is generating increasing global unrest and violence, creating even more misery and an insecure world.  The International Labor Organization projects a loss of 50 million jobs globally by the end of 2009.

The World Bank warns that an additional 53 million people will fall into poverty (living on less than $2 per day) and that 200,000 to 400,000 more children will die by 2015 if the crisis persists.

The American Psychological Association released a survey of 7,000 American households showing that:

• 80% of us are stressed about the economy and personal finances;
• 50% are worried about their ability to provide for their family’s basic needs;
• 56% are concerned about job stability;
• 60% reported feeling angry and irritable; and
• 52% reported laying awake at night worried about this.

Who among us  is one of these statistics? These statistics are translating into new financial realities. Welcome to the “New World.”  This is the current context in which we are called by God to minister and to lead.  These are the new realities that are already defining and shaping or re-shaping our mission.

A living God is full of suprises

All of the gospels depict Jesus and his disciples as people on the move. They never stay anywhere long. Jesus teaches or performs some wonder, then immediately moves on. A dead god is a god who locates, settles in, never surprises. Abraham had a problem with that. He knew that a living God is a God on the move.

Today, God can move us from care-giving to passionate, transformative leadership.  This can happen as we let God use us to rebirth, new birth, and to transform our people to more actively participate in Christ’s mission.

Any church that cares more about itself and its inner life than it cares for the world is a church in decline. Pastors are ordained for more significant ministry than merely care of the congregation.

God can move us from contented church of monopoly, to church in competitive, missional environment. Today we live in a world where we find ourselves in a mission environment in which our churches must compete with the lures of the world for our people’s faith. It’s a time when the church has the opportunity to recover the oddness and the joy of the peculiarity of ministry in the name of Jesus Christ rather than ministry as service to the infatuations of the world.

God can move us from unconcern about results to attentiveness to results.  We must be determined to notice the numbers and to interpret the numbers as valid indicators of what God is doing among us. God intends for us to bear fruit and promises to give us what we need to bear fruit.

God can move us from preservation and sustaining to adaptation and supple, flexibility. We have put far too much stress on experience, wisdom, and continuity when we need more stress upon talent, adaptation, flexibility, and innovation.

God can move us from the pastor as head of an organization to the pastor as spiritual leader and congregational catalyst.  Pastors are are not  efficient managers. Pastors are preachers,  who tell the story which is the gospel, laying that upon the congregation on a regular basis and then pastors get out of the way, leaving Jesus to deal with his people. Pastors are there not to do ministry, no really even to lead ministry, but rather to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.”

We will not sit here until we die!

Crisis moments are opportunities for radical action.  We can wring our hands, we can hide in a cave or start writing our funeral sermon, or we can take bold imaginative action.

2 Kings, chapters 6 and 7, is a story of  how the people of Samaria were dealing with a war and famine and sure death if they chose to do nothing.  Four lepers sitting just outside the city gate say to one another, “Why should we sit here until we die?”  (2 Kings 7:3).

This is the key leadership question for our time and circumstance.  Why sit here until we die?  Why sit here when possibilities for ministry are emerging all around us?  Why wait for death when God calls us to celebrate what’s right with the world?

God is not done with us yet.  A broken world still hungers for the transforming power of the Good News.  The Reign of God is here – right here, right now!  If we really believe it, we will see it, we will seek it, we will live it, we will become it.  We will not sit here until we die!

“Which commandment is the first of all?”

In the book of Mark, one of the scribes is listening in on a debate Jesus is having with some Sadducees about resurrection.  Hearing the lively exchange of questions and answers and seeing how sharp Jesus is in his answers, he puts the question to Jesus:  “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus said,

“The first in importance is, ‘Hear, O Israel:  The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second:  ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”

The religious scholar said,

“A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate – that God is one and there is no other. And loving God with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together.” Mark 12:29-33

In response to the scribe’s question, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus recites the Shema.  The Shema is the most basic, essential profession of faith for practicing Jews.  It is recited twice a day, during morning and evening prayers.  The Shema is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5.  Shema is the Hebrew word for “hear” – the first word of the profession.

Christian perfection entails loving God and loving neighbor. Loving God with our whole being is not dependent on whether we feel good about God, or feel God has done something good for us.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves is not dependent on an emotional attraction or emotional bonding with our neighbor.  If it were, our circle of “neighbors” would be very small and would exclude the vast majority of God’s children in our communities and around the world.

Loving  each other has to do with understanding we love that which God has created.  God has created you and me.  And God has created our neighbors – black and white, straight and gay, Muslim and Christian, African and Asian, Black Swamp residents and Appalachian folks, immigrants and citizens, more conservative and more liberal, rich and poor.

The only way we can survive transitions and restructuring is to place our trust in God

If we are growing as human beings and as disciples of Christ, we will always be living in two worlds – where we are and where God is calling us.

Many people in our world today are living in two worlds.  Our communities and churches are filled with individuals living in the seams between having a job and earning a living, between health and physical limitations, between faith and fear, between belief and doubt, between hope and despair, between love and a broken relationship, between isolation and being fully included, between “illegal” and being welcomed, between moving forward and looking back, between current reality and God’s preferred future, between life and death.

The only way we can survive in two worlds is to place our trust in God.  Only God can calm our fears, sustain our energy, and keep us focused on God’s voice.  Left to our own human devices and frailties, we will lose focus and attempt to take control of the situation.  When that happens, we place our trust in ourselves, not God.

Living in two worlds is possible only if we are committed to discerning and acting on God’s purposes and direction for our lives and ministry.  Without a strong desire and discipline to listen deeply and attentively to God, any attempt to live in two worlds will lead to inner turmoil, frustration and, perhaps, depression.  It is this risk that often causes us to seek the security of what is already familiar and predictable.  Only Christ’s presence can grant us peace and joy in the midst of uncertainty.

We cannot live in two worlds indefinitely.  Nor does God want us to do so.  You can walk two simultaneous paths only so long.  Eventually, they must part.  God does not leave us hanging, uncertain and unclear of God’s intentions and desires for us.

Open my eyes

Open my eyes that I may see, glimpses of truth thou hast for me;

place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now I wait for thee, ready my God, thy will to see.

Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!