What If I Went Back?
Conclusion
Section One of this series dealt with what I miss now that I am doing "secular" ministry after thirty years as a parish pastor. Section Two was about what I don't miss. Section Three was talking about "secular ministry." Section Four looked at what I've learned in these three years in "secular ministry."
Links to earlier sections:
Introduction
1. What I Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
2. What I Don't Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude (1)
3. Secular Ministry: Part 1, Part 2
4. What I've Learned: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude (2)
5. What I Would Do: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What I miss
what I don't miss
what I learned
what I would do.

That's what I promised I would talk about in this series. I hope I have done so in a way that opened up some different angles or perspectives on the church and ministry. I have had many eye-opening insights over these past three and a half years working outside the church. Perhaps to many of you who are not pastors those insights were "Ho-hum" or "So, you just realized that?" For me they caused at least some small shifts- and some large ones.

To sit on the outside of the church has challenged me most by showing how narrow a vision it is easy to develop when we think we have "The Way." We begin to think we are perfect and only if people come to see it our way will they be on the right track. That grandiosity, which doesn't fit Jesus' style at all, stands out as one of our greatest obstacles to living His way and hearing the cries of need around us.

I have not, repeat, absolutely not, given up on the church in all of this. Each and every day of each and every year since the first Pentecost the people of God have been involved in some of the most incredible and life-changing ministries. People are finding God. People are being uplifted and upheld. People are being liberated from sin and oppression. Sometimes it has been the organized church that has done the leading to these occurrences, and many times it hasn't. But it is happening. It will continue to happen.

If I were to go back into parish ministry, then, I would seek to find more and more ways to allow those things to happen more and more often. I would not want to take a call that would be just to maintain a church's status quo or be their chaplain. I would not want to pastor a dying church just keeping its doors open until the last of the group dies or leaves. That is a hospice care. I am not called to that.

Somehow or another in the translation from Jesus to the modern church we have lowered our sights, we have narrowed our vision, we have become the Pharisees seeking to maintain whatever edge on God we think we have. I am as guilty of this as anyone. It is probably a disease of religious leadership no matter the style or denomination or faith. It is part of our human sin.

As a pastor I would seek to be a leader, not a manager; a change agent and not a hand-holder. Yes there are times and places for those in any church. Christians (members of the church) are in need of support and care. But that is not, cannot, must not be the focus of the ministry. It is far broader than that. It has to do with the world around us.

The world has changed drastically since that September day in 1974 when I was ordained. We are not in that world- and have not been for many years. It took my stepping outside the church into secular ministry to see how much that is true. I don't know if God wants me to go back into the church or not. He has given me such a hit up the side of the head these past three and a half years that I don't know what that would look like.

But I have to admit that as I stop and think about it- it won't make much difference which way it happens- secular ministry, church ministry, or something I haven't even thought of yet. As long as it is God at work, I will do whatever it is as faithfully as I can. I have a hunch that, even as I start my 60th year, there is probably at least one more great adventure ahead for me with God.