Pastors are Atheists
I spent the morning with Todd Hunter and about 20 urban church planters from the Seattle area. Todd was in town for a board meeting with Off the Map and Rose (new blogger alert!) had asked him to stick around for a couple hours of informal coaching. (Wasn’t that nice of her?) I like Todd because even though he’s a big wig he pays attention to little ole’ me and tells me encouraging things like: “Every time I’m around you I think, man, there’s the real thing.” (That kind of thing is really nice to hear, you know, especially in the middle of a two weeks migraine chain. Yeah…a little Todd energy could come in good right now.). Also, Todd he calls my husband “the hunk,” as in: “Where’s your hunk today?” which totally cracks me up. So basically Todd=good.
I have about six pages of notes, and I only took notes half the time. (The rest of the time I was, of course, obssessively knitting.) But here’s what he started off with, which is as good as anything for today. (These are my paraphrased notes.) :
Pastors and church planters, more than anybody, tend towards atheism. And by atheism I mean this, “nothing good is going to happen today unless I make it happen.” It’s not an ideological atheism. It’s a sort of functional atheism. And I know this from personal experience. But Matthew 17(?) says that we wake up every morning and step into something that’s already going on – that’s already been put into motion. So what are we really trying to do anyway?
What we should be trying to do is to create environments of grace for ourselves and for others. (Again, Matthew….”unforced rhythms of grace”…”I won’t put anything heavy or burdensome on you.”) As a leader you are not actually a victim of the corporation. You are a co-creator of it. What kind of organism do you want to create? You set the ethos. Will it be an ethos of grace? Will you recognize that it’s not up to you to make sure that something good will happen today? It’s up to you to live into the already-reality of what God is already doing.
I just got back from working in a township in South Africa for 2 months, and what Todd was talking about there was basically the most important spiritual insight I got out of it (leaving aside political, structural, and many other insights… and the fact that I totally cringe just writing “township” and “what I got out of it” in the same sentence.)
Church life in the rich West is really spiritually hobbled by the fact that we leaders have the resources (money, yes, but many others too) to Make Things Happen. They may not be God-things, but they’re “Good Enough” things. Run the program, hire the speaker, improve the sound system, hand out the handouts, and everyone will feel like something Happened. Whereas, as someone said to me in Africa, “there, see, all they HAVE is God.”
How do we wean ourselves of resource- and competency- addiction enough to be able to hang out in an environment of grace and let God take the initiative?
Cameraphone photos are available on my site. Knitting needles and fluffy pink stuff captured fuzzily, but it’s there.
Thanks for the comments (and so quick too
)
Great insight, Rachelle. Our church is just beginning a process of self-evaluation (voluntarily, before events force such on us!) and one of the most basic questions in this process is, Why do we exist as a congregation at all? As the process unfolds, I’d bet that one of our temptations will be to rush about “fixing” everything (we have an amazing talent pool). Todd’s insight, it strikes me, is a good antidote to that.
Beth,
I’ve been thinking about your question re: weaning ourselves from a pattern of doing “good things” even if they are not “God things.” I thought I had managed to do that when I left big church to do house church, leaving virtually all programming behind in my wake. But I still manage to do good things, just to fill a void. For instance, last night at Monkfish Abbey I had a level 7 migraine and had to go to bed, leaving the hostesing to Paul (which he doesn’t really enjoy doing.) Even in my haze of pain, I pulled together and activity (egg coloring) so that people would have something to do. Paul, in his wisdom, ignored my careful set up project and just let people hang. I’m sure that was both suificient and fruitful.
Sometimes I think we just have to stop and get comfortable with a void, with silence, with resting and with waiting. A void is not neccesarily a bad thing. Evil does not neccessarily rush into a void, and still hands are not the devils playground. A void, a silence, a pause between breaths can be the perfect playground for the Holy Spirit, a canvas for The Muse to prime. We, as leaders/pastors/whatever are exceedingly uncomfortable with that. Our market demands otherwise. But if we acquiesce to our market, we create not disciples, but consumers.
Just some thoughts.
Rachelle
Great comments, Rachelle. That void is very much where I personally am right now, and you’re right, it’s exceedingly uncomfortable…
Sounds like the old A W Tozer quote: ‘Most Christians live like practical atheists.’ Yes, it is church leadesrs (like me); but it’s a wider problem. Maybe, of course, the problem is that the church leaders have modelled ‘practical atheism’ (or ‘functional atheism’) to use Rachelle’s phrase.
Grace and peace
Dave