A 34-Year Memory

September 15, 1974.

That was a generation ago now in a world that is so much different than today I'm not sure how to describe it. Time changes- even when it is fast- and we adapt as it happens. We may still shake our heads in wonder at the Internet, but it is so common as to be taken for granted. When I was watching the Olympics live from China a few weeks ago I remembered the first trans-Atlantic TV broadcast through satellite. On July 23, 1962 the first live TV broadcast took place. It was black and white and grainy. Now you couldn't tell what was being broadcast from Beijing and what was coming out of New York. The Internet and instant world-wide communications are just two of countless changes in my generation.

Perhaps for me it has been the change in the church. Today is the 34th anniversary of my ordination as a pastor in the Moravian Church. I have been "outside" the church for the past 4 1/2 years, working as a drug and alcohol counselor full time. I left behind the "ministry in the church" to a ministry outside and not connected to the church. Six weeks ago I officially retired from the active ministry.

One enters the ministry, especially when 26 years old, with all kinds of visions and hopes. Some of them are quite idealistic- and even grandiose. "The only reason this church isn't the growing exciting church it can be is because I haven't been the pastor yet."But they are all based on a sense of call and an understanding of the church that comes from past experiences and the training one receives in Seminary.

As the world changes, usually quite quickly, the church is a slow-moving, slow-changing system. I could write on many different aspects of the changes. But as I reflect on it today, the greatest change is probably the one that goes on inside the pastor as, in my case, I went from a 26 year old "pastor" to a 60 year old post-modern outsider. In 1974 the church was still in the center of many cultural worlds. In 2008 the "traditional church" has lost many of one generation and on the way of losing much of the next. "Emerging Churches," TV ministries, The Religious Right have all shown how the church no longer has "One Voice" as it assumed it had in some ancient way.

I have learned that I have few if any answers. I have learned that my "golden age" of church ministry was when a bunch of us unwittingly and with great surprise came together as a community within the greater congregation we were all members of. Today we don't seem to be able to find that as times- and we ourselves- have changed.

Today my call has shifted outside the institution. I am more deeply involved in life-changing ministry than at many times in the past. Day in and day out I am attempting to touch and lead and instruct and heal lives. I don't preach- I minister. To people that are often not inside the churches. In my anecdotal experience well over 60% of all people I work with have no recent church connections. And they don't think they want them. I truly may be the only experience of God's grace they may have met in a long time.

But I am not "making disciples" as I would have preached about a mere six or seven years ago. Nor am I in a spiritual community of support and fun, prayer and worship. I am in a new leg of my pilgrimage that, for the first time in many years, looks more like the pilgrimage of most people in the churches. Seeking, yet serving, in whatever ways I am able.

As you may be able to tell I am not able to verbalize what this means, at least not at this point. Perhaps that is part of what this 7th decade of my life will have as a major task- bringing it together with the tiny bits of wisdom that I can find after years of experiences, good and bad, both inside and outside the church. I know there is a great deal that God has done with and through me over these years. I am immensely grateful for it. Perhaps I spend too much time trying to verbalize experiences, i.e. in theologizing when the best thing may be to keep it simple.

I am trying to be faithful to His Call and

God has done, and is doing for me what I cannot do for myself.

What more can I ask- at any time in my life.