What is our Ministry?

I hate cutesy titles.

Just throwing that out there.

So when I look at a church bulletin and they have simply renamed every single thing they do as their "ministry" it always causes me to roll my eyes.

ministry of music, the ministry of toilet cleaning, the ministry of coffee hour, the ministry of envelope stuffing, the ministry of...

When churches do that I think they are just pulling a fast one, switching out the idea of an essential part of the workload by calling it their ministry. There is nothing inherently wrong with this... it just does not work for me.

You see - I don't think running a church is part of the ministry.

I know this is a controversial thing to say - but I want you to think about this in other ways. Maintaining a hospital is not providing health care. Painting a tank camouflage is not part of the purpose of the armed forces. Getting an oil change is not the purpose of a car.

There are in fact two distinct things happening when we look at a church and for some reason, we have never liked to separate them out. We are running an organization called the church, and we are doing the ministry of a Christian.

I think the two are separate and they do not overlap nearly as much as we think.

So we need to upkeep a building, keep records, worry about sound systems, transportation, budgets, and administration. We need to have background committees on every level to ensure the functioning of the organization. We need to hire and fire and discipline staff. And on and on and on...

This is not ministry - this is business.

Now, to follow Jesus we need to, figuratively, care for the widows and the orphans. In reality, we need to have outreach programs in the community to care for the disadvantaged, we need to host worship services for deepening spiritual understanding, we need to offer educational opportunities to learn about faith, we need to mentor and counsel people on morality and ethics, we need to provide life transition events like baptisms, weddings, and funerals in order to give meaning to existence...

In either category, there are thousands of other possible answers but I hope from these two examples you can see the line I am trying to create. There is the business and there is the outcome. And perhaps it is time to separate the two out.

Back to the cutesy titles. I think it is disingenuous of us to pretend that we are doing the latter when we are doing the former. I think most of our effort is spent on the business of being the church and too little of our time is on ministry.

And on top of that when we do ministry we are often doing it for the reason of business. We operate programs as if they were advertising campaigns... We do good works hoping that they will lead to engagement with the business.

If you do not think this is true I want you to think back to any planning meeting and ask yourself if you have not heard this statement in some form or another - "well, how does that put bums in the pew?" "Does this bring more people to church?" "Does this translate into increased giving?"

If any of those questions can be answered - then you are probably doing ministry for the wrong reasons.

Again, would it not be better to have the two things completely separated out.

We need to provide a school breakfast program... (because there is child poverty, because education is important, etc.)

What business strategies do we need to engage in to afford and manage a school breakfast program? (meetings, budgets, advertising, etc.)

You see where I am coming from?

We are always asking - how do we keep the church open? And then secondly we are asking what we can afford to do.

What if we turned that around and asked - what ministry do we need to do? And then secondly we asked how do we become able to do that?

Is Sunday Morning worship important for us? What outreach is necessary for the community? What would Jesus do if he lived here? NOW... after we answer questions like this... then ask - can we afford our own building? Where would the best place to operate out of be? How many people do we need to hire to do this? etc.

By the way - I do think we need to be very honest about staffing too... Right now most churches expect staff - whether orfained, administrative, or even volunteer - to accomplish all of category A, all of the business, while hoping that they are actually spending most of their time on category B, ministry.

I don't think we have really stopped to consider if this model works. Or if we are being honest about what we want and how to get it.

The Clergy Problem

There are two sides to every story... Although true, this is inaccurate, there are as many sides to any situation as there are participants. So I am going to ask you to take this post with the potential grain of salt that comes from knowing that it is based mostly on the ruminations of my mind and not on hard data.

That being said, I started writing this blog to say out loud what the last few decades in the church have made me think deeply about from an institutional point of view.

I am thinking of joining a union. There is an option, Unifaith - a community chapter of Unifor.

The reason for this is that I no longer hold any illusion that the United Church of Canada as an institution is looking out for or interested in the clergy. It has become a "keep the church open at any cost" type world where standards of education and practice are becoming lower and lower... It is becoming a world where I am expected to work full time for part-time wages and apologize for the fact that I am highly educated and seasoned to the point where I cost more money to hire because I have more experience.

The church wonders why there are not as many people becoming clergy. The obvious reason would be to say that people are not religious anymore, so why work for the church. Which is both true and too simple? So let's look at some other factors.

Money is a real one. Not only because it is necessary to survive - but also because it is a measure of value...

There are only four real comparable careers in terms of education. Doctor, lawyer, and university professor. (I know, there are thousands of others and variations, but I am using the easiest to understand)

Average salaries in New Brunswick for each look like this: $223,000 for doctors, $60,000 for a lawyer, and university professor is $86,000

After 25 years as a minister, my yearly salary is 45,000. I have 12 years of university education as well.

Not only that - but at almost every meeting of every church board, it is made painfully clear that my salary is breaking the bank so to speak.

When this imbalance began it was made up for in terms of perks. People brought clergy everything from vegetables to furniture. Car companies and YMCA gave us massive cuts in terms of what we paid. We got free housing, free heat, a free ride. Clergy paid almost no tax and were treated with respect everywhere. So in other words, the horrible pay was made up for by the simple fact that almost everything we needed was provided. Today I'm lucky to get some extra zucchini in the summer from someone's garden.

Ok, so let's say I am in it for something else besides the money. let's assume for instance that I am religious. Well - no one who goes to church actually cares. That might seem harsh, but it isn't, it is a reality. There are very, very few people who want their faith to impact them outside of Sunday morning. Most people will not engage in studying the scripture or their faith unless it is made SUPER convenient. And most people balk at the idea of paying any more than a couple of bucks a week to keep a church open. So you are going to end up being the ONLY person who cares about the faith in the way you thought everyone would.

Both of the above are disheartening - and would be bad enough, but the next two truths are actually more to blame with why no one wants to do this and very few of us stay doing this...

First, every single person you meet thinks they can do it better. The hymns you chose, the language of your prayers, even the way you schedule your days and vacation are subject to each and every person voicing their opinion. And it is not only about work... how you dress, what you eat, where you go, whether or not you are seen in a bar or at the liquor store. Everyone has an idea about how you should live and what you should do. And no one wants to hear that you have any problems.

Last but not least in this weeks tirade is something I call cumulative pain. I may have made this term up. But here is an example of what I mean. I started out in a church in Quebec and every four or five years I have moved. Not only have I never seen any of those people from any of those churches again - but most of them are dead.

Where you might go to two or three funerals that really affect you personally, I have buried hundreds of people I genuinely loved and cared about. I have also buried murderers, victims, loners, and street people. Beloved grandparents and teenage suicides. I have sat with a mother who did not even know their son did drugs till he overdosed and died. I have known and buried people drowned by friends, hit by snowplows, and who dropped dead suddenly while shaving.

I have performed over a hundred weddings and there are like two of those couples who are still together. I have baptized over a hundred babies who as adults no longer attend church.

I have watched congregations dwindle and buildings close all the while feeling the people's eyes on me asking the unspoken question as to why I personally cannot save the church.

Who in the hell can do this for a lifetime?

The answer is two types of people... The majority, unfortunately, are those that are so needy that they absolutely cannot leave it all behind. The lesser variety of which I count myself one are those too stubborn to let go of the dream that someday, in some way, this might make a difference.

But if you want to know another side of what is wrong with the church - this is it. Clergy are devalued and dehumanized. Constantly. I am going to give my life ad soul for a community you all seem to just barely care about in order for me to end up poverty stricken and alone... That seems to be the idea... and it has to change.

I DON'T BELIEVE THAT!

Creeds

I often hear people saying that the reason they cannot hold on to Christianity comes from their inability to believe in all the magic stuff - the supernatural stuff...

I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to either saying things like this or nodding my head knowingly when someone else says it. But for some reason, it has never occurred to me to ask what exactly I am talking about. What "stuff" are we having trouble with? And why?

I have simply made the assumption that people are talking about where science and religious history part ways: seven days to create the universe, Adam and Eve, the flood, parting the red sea, virgin birth, angels, resurrection of the dead... those sort of extravagant times when God causes the impossible to become reality.

I realize that thousands of years and far better minds than mine have fought these arguments and argued even wilder realities from how many levels of hell right through to angels on the head of a pin.

Without fact checking every verse of the Gospels I have to say that it seems to me that Jesus never, ever, said we had to believe certain facts, miracles, or proofs in order to follow his way. Not only that, but it seems to me he had campfire discussions with Nichodemus and upper room demonstrations with Thomas that made it clear that even the opposite is true. I don't care what you believe, I care what you do. That could almost have been the motto of the early church.

So what happened?

How did:
Do you follow Jesus - meaning do you live like Jesus lived
Become:
Do you believe this teaching?

In the traditional historical way of thinking it was the "church" that developed the "creed" As the organization got more power, and the people solidified who was in and who was outside of the church - certain statements of belief, the earliest being the Apostle's Creed and later the Nicene Creed became sort of gate-keeper documents. Believe this and you are like us... So basically you are talking about these points as a minimum you "must" believe:

 - There is one God who created everything
- There is one son of God, Jesus, who was born by a virgin named Mary
- Jesus suffered, was crucified, died, descended into hell, and rose from the dead three days later
- Jesus went up to heaven, alive, and is coming back to judge us.
- There is a holy spirit that is active in the world in between. 

I don't know - even that is more basic than where we are now. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of people out there who think that you are not a real Christian unless you believe certain things.

Fundamentalism

At the turn of the 20th century, there was a movement that traces its roots back to Wesley and the Great Awakening but basically culminated in the publication of a book called "The Fundamentals" which was distributed throughout North America for free and was sent to over 3 million clergy and laypeople. It made the case that there were certain fundamental things - there were a lot, but these are the key ones:

• The inerrancy of the Bible
• The literal nature of the biblical accounts, especially regarding Christ's miracles and the Creation account in Genesis
• The virgin birth of Christ
• The bodily resurrection and physical return of Christ
• The substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross

Okay, but seriously - why? Again the case is being made that what matters most is that you ascribe to certain beliefs, certain "truths" that in and of themselves do not matter...

I can believe the Bible is completely true, every magic thing Jesus did was true, and that Jesus died on the cross to forgive my sins - and I can also abuse my wife, own slaves, torture children and in fact kill a whole lot of people without contradicting those beliefs. How can that possibly be the truth?

But this is the thing we have forever lost sight of - the letter of the law is almost not important at all compared to the spirit of the law. If you want a biblical proof text to back me up, how about that whole time when Jesus said, if you were my followers you would have treated the widows and orphans better. 

There it is in a nutshell - following Jesus is taking care of all the widows and orphans. 

It makes me wonder what would happen if we totally lost the rulebook and started a church that just did what Jesus did....