Death and the Maiden

My wife just underwent emergency surgery.

She is fine. It is better. The sickness is cut out in the form of a blocked duct and she is one gall bladder lighter and comfortably recuperating at home.

Over the last year and a bit, I had four surgeries.

I am now cancer free - but for a while there, what with a grapefruit-sized tumor that could very well have been stage three by the time it was found - the future was uncertain at best.

Still - the one thing I had to come to grips with really fast was that I was dying. If I was "lucky" I would survive this, but with no guarantee that I was not on a quicker path to demise then others. The survival rate for colorectal cancers in Canada is only 64% at five years.

And then who knows - my body has been proven to degrade to cancer in one place - odds are small, like 3% chance of a second different cancer... but there are odds.

I don't say all this to get sympathy - but rather to tell you about the aftermath... The plan...

You see, when you realize that death is imminent you do everything you can to avoid it. Thus four surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, cannabis, and a change to a whole food plant-based diet. None of which are easy or pleasant to cope with when you are forced to do them (well - that is a lie - cannabis is pretty easy and pleasant ;) )

But when faced with great odds of death and poor odds of continued survival - change seems necessary and most of the arguments against it go out the window.

There is also that moment when you look back and realize - if I had not smoked for 20 years, if I had not continued to dip my arms shoulder deep in a vat of acetone while working as a fibreglass canoe modeler, if I had not have eaten meat for almost every meal, and so many other horrible choices - This may not be where I find myself now.

Ok - so this is a church blog - and this is the thing - Jesus used Parables to explain reality in an acceptable way so that we had religious and spiritual understanding. And the above is my parable... and what I want you to say is this:

Imagine there is a church that discovers it is dying...

Ahhh..... there's the rub. You see. This is exactly what happens to us as an institution.

There comes a moment when our mortality takes centre stage. There comes a moment when we say, the survival rate at five years is 64% at best. There comes a time when we frantically do everything possible to try and prolong that life expectancy.

And how much easier, how much better would it have been if we either did the things from the beginning - or at least had yearly check-ups where we asked ourselves, how can we be healthier? Where are we declining the most?

There is a clear parallel here and for some reason, human nature is all about pretending it won't happen to us. But it will. Or something else will. But mark my words. If we just pretend everything is okay, one day it won't be.

My church has 5,000 set aside to hire a new minister. For advertising, moving expenses, etc. Now - most of them hope I never leave. But wouldn't it be less stressful to have the means to put on a really good job search should that day ever come?

This is the way we need to start thinking about everything. Aging people are going to stop contributing. Population shifts are occurring. There are a hundred little changes happening year over year and we should be proactively looking at them and adapting.

Which is also - if you want to look at it a different way - what Coca Cola or any successful company does. At some point, someone pointed out that people were getting healthier and so the next year coca cola started selling health drinks, then straight up bottled water - changing year after year to meet a different perceived need.

Time for some serious health checks and product evaluation...

The Truth About Change

In the United Church of Canada, we have something called a Needs Assessment. It is a document that is created every time a church wants to hire a new minister. 

There is a formulaic way that a Needs Assessment is created and it ends up highlighting the community at large, as well as the congregation. It spells out the benefits that will be paid upon the successful hiring of a candidate and all that jazz - but at its heart, the document is exactly what it says it is. This is what we need. 

At the risk of sounding bitter - I can tell you what your church will say in its assessment before I even read it. 

I have read scores of them and helped to create a handful more. They all differ in terms of what they describe their community as, and to be fair and upfront one in a hundred will be different from what I am about to say - but in a nutshell, despite the idea that each church is creating a unique document, they are all the same...

Here is what they need:

- an engaging, biblically focussed preacher who can connect to all ages

- a minister who loves to visit and will always be there in times of crisis.

- a minister who will perform weddings, baptisms, and funerals.

- a minister who works well with others.

- a minister who loves children and youth.

- a minister who will do administration tasks.

- a minister who will be visible in the community and represent the church well.

In other words - someone who does what has always been done and does it better than the last gal.

If you read the whole package, the surveys, the write-ups, and everything between the lines - here is what I imagine every church means by this.

 - You have to be interesting enough that people will flock to hear your sermons.

 - You need to seek out every single person who ever attended this church and have tea with them and hope that makes them feel better and perhaps even come back on Sunday.

- You need to be willing to baptize our grandchildren from away while at the same time doing such a good funeral that we all feel taken care of.

- You need to not rock the boat. There are people in this congregation who have been doing things here longer than you and you have to honour their wisdom and play along.

- Bring back our kids. Pure and simple. Our church needs more people paying the bills and somehow that will be accomplished if young families come and bring their children.

- We need you to manage all the forms, census, housekeeping etc. in such a way that we do not have to worry about it, but simply vote on it. 

- Bring more people to church by going out there and being so popular and present that everyone who sees you anywhere wants to come to church on Sunday. 

And the unwritten expectation is this - you need to keep our church open, by getting more people, who will give more money, simply to enjoy the show on Sunday morning. 

You have to realize that this blog is where I air my own grievances and frustrations - so I apologize if that sounds bitter. But I think we need to start owning the real problems of the church. And this is a real one.

Every congregation seems to harbour this secret fantasy that they will magically return to the 1950's and 60's when their church was the "boys club" of professionals and the "wive's club" of the community and everyone went and everyone had coffee together, and maybe there was a church picnic, and there were bowling leagues and couple's clubs and everyone loved being there but no one really had to do anything.

The world has changed. Society has changed. Faith has changed. Technology has changed. Hell, everything has changed and the church is the one single organization that spends the entirety of its effort trying to go backward. 

We are not living in the past - we are actively trying to recreate it. To return to it. To glorify it. 

You know what - just because everyone came did not make it better. People were not more faithful. People did not follow Jesus and more closely. It was a sham. 

If we were serious about this whole faith being the important thing we would be spending all of our passion, energy, and enthusiasm in figuring out what we should BECOME and how different that needs to be from what we WERE.