RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

your mind? I certainly think of picketing, organizing
advocacy networks, writing letters to decisionmakers
and media, making phone calls, holding
town halls perhaps, and so on. I wonder if we
couldn’t use more of our God-given creativity to
increase our menu of options. For instance, the
congregation I serve is full of business leaders. (At
board meetings I sometimes think we have too many
of them!) What are ways we can include and
encourage business leaders to be advocates and
people of justice in their work lives? Too often those
with resources are preached at or scolded. We
perpetuate the “money is bad” fiction.
I just accepted an invitation to speak on a panel this
fall about how businesses can create positive social
change. Over the last couple weeks, during my
discussions about the panel with the organizers, at
least two of their impressions have become clear:
First, they perceive religious leaders as ignorant
about the realities of social dilemmas, including
poverty; second, they perceive us as those who talk a
good game about social change, but rarely act to
actually change anything at all—in society or in our
churches. Whether or not we agree with these
perceptions is secondary so as long the perceptions
exist. And it certainly seems to be the case, from my
view, that the most productive social change work
right now is led by social entrepreneurs and
philanthropists. Often they are doing the systemic
change we are talking about. Now is the time for us
to connect more deeply.
I’ll just touch on this one: I’m not sure that
Christian unity and church unity mean the same
thing. In fact, I would argue that many people of
faith—Christian and other faiths—are uniting
precisely around issues of justice and prophetic
witness. Many times this work happens independent
of ecclesial structures. Are those structures
slowing ecumenical progress? To ask it another way,
is the unity and renewal of the church essential for
its witness? Or, can the witness progress just fine,
thank you very much, without being hampered by
concerns of unity in any formalized sense? Who or
what benefits from a more united church? When
Jesus was asked about finding God’s kingdom, he
suggested taking some action or changing some
behavior. Never is it recorded that he said, “Form
the right set of doctrines.” How, if at all, does this
speak to us about unity and witness?
I wonder if another communication hurdle we face
is due to the difficulty of measuring effectiveness in
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church life. Whether it’s the seminarians to whom I
referred earlier, or congregational clergy, or
judicatory leaders, or laity, I think part of our
problem stems from the difficulty of proving that
resources used on matters of furthering unity or
witness are producing desired results. They might
respond with that old joke about the man who went
to his boss and said, “Boss, when’s that pay raise of
mine going to be made effective?” Boss said, “As
soon as you are.” Measuring things in the church is
not easy, is it? Maybe that’s why we fall back on
counting noses and nickels. At least those are two
things we can count: what’s the attendance; what’s
the offering? Surely we can brainstorm ways to
prove the value of unity and witness.
They perceive us as those who talk
a good game about social change,
but rarely act to actually change anything
at all—in society or in our churches.
I want to conclude with a problem I have. You don’t
have enough time for many of my problems, so I’ll
just name one. I’ll call it the “Mark” problem. Mark
sang at the church I serve last fall. Mark’s special
music was just after my message in the worship
celebration, so he had no choice but to listen to the
message! The following Thursday, Mark stopped by
church just as I finished a class I teach about
forgiveness. We didn’t have an appointment
scheduled, so my assistant buzzed me to see how I
wanted her to handle it. I decided to meet with
Mark, so he came to my office and we talked. For the
first 30 minutes, there was nothing terribly
remarkable in our conversation. He asked some
questions about our order of worship, about why we
celebrate the Eucharist every week and about how we
mix genres of music.
Then he said, in what I first thought was his parting
statement, “Well, I just wanted to stop by and say I
thought your sermon was kind of, okay.” I laughed
and said that’s what all of us preachers strive for:
“Kind of okay” sermons! Immediately Mark
launched into conversation with new vigor. He said
that for him a “kind of okay” sermon was good. He
said he never felt comfortable in a church, and that
the only reason he sang in churches was to earn extra
money with generally pretty minimal expectations.
We talked about the openness of our congregation