My Lovers' Quarrel

2024.  A new year.  We aim for change, but the reality is it’s hard to accomplish.

40 years ago, I started working in the institutional church.  I began as an eager and naive participant. Then experience and reflection caused me to question my assumptions.  I sought new insights and perspectives, which in turn led me to advocate for change.  It’s a relationship in which I have remained engaged for 40 years, working in various positions as an ‘intrapreneur’ attempting to inspire and lead change.  However, it’s not been an easy relationship. In fact I have had an ongoing “lover’s quarrel” with the institutional church.

I write this on January 1, 2024.  A day for contemplating change.  As I started with some reflection time, I read from a meditation I frequently use. The Lectio 365 reflection for this New Years Day ended up reigniting my lover’s quarrel.  Lectio's choice of words to characterize what mission advance means, elevated the ‘full time’ Christian worker, and by default undermined the majority of those who comprise the church.  It was inadvertent, I am sure.  But that’s a symptom of institutionalization, and the reason for my quarrel with it.  The institutional structure depends on the elevation and prioritization of certain roles & gifts because without them it could not sustain its purpose as an institution, nor it’s funding.  Its recruitment, training, and polity by default advance the class of people that are required to sustain the system.  This perpetuates a cycle of self preservation.  I have discovered as an internal change-agent that although this institutional system has the ability to change itself, its very existence is threatened by the change it seeks/needs.  A paralyzing irony.

Transitioning to the often-cited models espousing less structure and reduced dependence on a clergy class, so as to become a more scattered, organic and neighbourhood/marketplace model of existence, is often endorsed in the rhetoric and even strategic initiatives of church institutions.  However, this frequently falls flat during any attempt at execution.  Change is hard.  Execution is harder.  In the past 10 years I’ve led 3 change initiatives, all endorsed and funded by my denomination, that have either been closed or reduced to token, status-quo existence because of the relentless pressures of institutional thinking and demands.

I am not anti-institution, but I have a quarrel with it.  I stayed in it for 40 years advocating for and leading change until recently when I was released due to institutional budget pressures.  I still have hope that the church-as-institution might be courageous enough to change itself.  Where that isn’t feasible, at least be a sponsor/incubator of initiatives that eventually live and grow external to it.  In other words, be magnanimous and empower/cheer on what it can’t accomplish.  However, I no longer think that is possible for my denomination, nor for others. Whatever is now being birthed that is truly new and able to engage culture as effective Kingdom ambassadors, is for the most part coming from outside the institution of the church.  They are often small and scattered initiatives.  Most likely they will never gain the size, status or collective energy typical of the institution.  There is a part of me that wishes they could.  But then I suspect they would suffer the fate of the very institutions they were trying to influence and reform.

This is an historic tug of war.  A pattern that I believe is a divine check and balance to save the church from itself.  

The 5 core APEST gifts (see endnote) that are meant to simultaneously energize the church and keep it in dynamic tension, too often fall prey to their own competing values.  Rarely are they able to perform together in their natural state of tension.  Our humanity ensures that stalemate. Human nature leads us to prefer stability, captured in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  It’s how our brains work – which is why it is hard to change in the first place.  Logically then it’s how we work in collective community, such as in politics, clubs, associations and of course, the church.  Once we have established a measure of personal or collective stability, our preference is to remain there – whether it works for us or not! But change and growth comes from tension.  That tension in the institutional church’s context is the push-pull, the in-out breathing rhythm of the APEST gifts.  Their interplay is necessary to ensure a Christian community retains and displays the dynamic necessary to ensure true impact.  This isn’t happening.  Safety, security, and tolerance for incremental change dominates the institutional church psyche and strategy.

Here is where I part ways with many of my peers.  The church as we know it is not the hope of the world. Christ, the dynamic of that community, is the Hope of the world.  Let’s not confuse the institution of the church with the Community of Christ as some do.  They are not intrinsically identical.

I repeat - The church as institution is not the hope of the world.  Christ is.  Christ living and working through His people is the basis for how we are to organize and act.  The challenge has been, and is, that the institutional needs of the church really drive their agendas for change.  Choices around strategy, personnel or budgets are made in reference to its long-term survival or viability.  Let’s just be real here: rarely is a decision made that fundamentally re-shapes the posture and structure of the church, because its hard for insiders to be change-makers due to the existential threat to their own role, status and employment.  The usual outcome of a ‘what’s next’ vision discussion is a tweak that is trumpeted as innovation.  Tweaks can be communicated with bold rhetoric.  If a bold strategy is launched, I have seen how the cost is often experienced as too heavy to sustain.  The attempt withers.  The system is sustained.

My conclusion is that the church as institution won’t change to the extent needed for significant, relevant impact on this current world because it is incapable.  To reorganize away from institution to be a collective community of ambassadors of Christ, each empowered to build the Kingdom of God, is too threatening to existing livelihoods, missiology and ecclesiology.  As has been the case through history, change happens predominantly outside the institutional form. Some change agents may remain connected as though in orbit – still within the gravitational pull of the institution.  I’ve taken that route so far.  Others leave the pull of institutional gravity entirely.

I have my point of view.  You’ve read it here and in other of my blogs.  Yet the great hope I hold is that Christ works in and through all our imperfect organizational creations.  I truly wish the institutional system could change.  I dedicated the bulk of my career to that end.  I have seen some advances but also many disappointments.  My hope for its’ transmogrification is significantly diminished.  However, my hope lies in the universal Christ who is working through His community all around this world.  Those change agents/ambassadors are inside and outside the institution of the church.  Christ is ensuring that His ways are being advanced to bless and to change individuals and communities around the world.

So, let’s keep living and acting in hope.

Harv

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APEST = Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher.  Based on Ephesians 4 and popularized as a framework by Alan Hirsch in his book The Forgotten Ways.

Advent and Starfish

The in between.

Irrespective of our faith, humans often live in an ‘advent space’, anticipating the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event. For Christians around the world, now is the season of Advent. They remember the first coming (advent) of Christ, and remind themselves that they live in the ‘in between’ of that first event and Christ’s’ promised second coming. 

We all live the in-between:

• In between dreams and reality
• In between expectation and present circumstance 
• In between promises and fulfillment 
• In between hope and despair 
• In between careers (as I am now)
  

Currently global conflict and political rivalries have many of us living in-between our hopes for humanity and the brutal reality of ego, power, selfishness and outright hate. We hope and perhaps even pray, for peace. We protest and pressure politicians. Our desperate wish is that our leaders would lead change; would see fit to reconstitute the systems that support injustice and lead to conflict. Yet it seems so rare that this happens.

So, what are the options? Do we abandon our hope?

The best and most immediate path to change lies in ME. I may not hold political sway, but I hold sway around me. You and I as individuals are the ones who can, in the face of human need, show up with grace, mercy, love. We live in the trenches, in the street and the neighbourhood where needs are seen and experienced. While our individual actions will not necessarily change policy or the political process, they are immediately felt by the receiver. By the one.

But in a world of crushing need, is any effort worth the one?

It's like that old starfish story. A young child is walking on the beach. The tide is out. Hundreds of starfish are stranded on the sand and rocks, exposed to the sun and to predators. She’s concerned for those starfish, so starts picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean. Someone sees the futility of this effort and gets her to look up an see all the starfish on the beach and says “Look, there are so many of them. What possible difference can you make?” That child picked up a starfish, threw it into the ocean and said “It made a difference to that one”.


When we are confronted with the vast expanse of global issues, or within our own local communities, it is often overwhelming. The tide is out. It’s way out. People are stranded and exposed to crushing systems, indifference, and lack of courageous and principled political leadership. Many voices, including our own, say there’s no use trying. “What possible difference can you make?” It’s too big a task. Leave it to charities, non-profits or government. The system is too entrenched for your personal efforts to make a difference anyway. So, take care of yourself. Don’t vote. Don’t get involved. Don’t step in. Throw a few bucks to a charity. Then don’t forget to post your anger and indignation on social media.

But what if you could make a difference to one?

What if the one who showed up to address a need became a hundred?

What if those hundreds became millions?

This seems inspiring. Good fodder for a charity’s commercial or a sermon! But frankly there’s simply no guarantee your act of good will be repeated by others. How would you even know? Who is keeping count? You can’t control the math.

But that’s not the point. The point is to show up. Sleeves rolled up.

Yes, you can pray for leaders to lead. Yes, you can pray and/or protest for systems to change. Yes you can vote and hope for the best.  Yes, do those things and more - but don’t wait around for the answer. The small, repeated and real-time demonstrations of love and grace to fellow human beings will do more for a person now, in their time of need, than praying and waiting for miracle to happen.

For Christians, the point of the Advent season is not to be ‘hopeful’ about a second coming as though hope was a feeling. To hope is to act with that future in mind. To build a world that represents the wishes and ways of the One who is coming again.

For all of us in the human family, our hopes for an equitable and peaceful world are worthy. Worthy of action that starts with one small act. 

 

So, pick up a starfish. It’s an advent act.

Melancholy in the Middle

 

 

There’s a relentless sadness in my soul.  I wish I could shake it and be like some friends I know who seem to always express eternal optimism.  Their version of faith in God seems to protect them from sadness and discontent.  I am not there.  Wish I could belt out the worship songs like “Good, Good Father” with conviction.  But then the news of the world, the marriage break up of my neighbour, makes me choke back those words and wonder.  

 

Perhaps it’s just me.  If you’ve read my blogs you know I have an apostolic, prophetic bent.  It’s an orientation that requires me to manage my perspective ‘by faith’ to ensure I don’t descend into depression or cynicism. However, in truth I am pained by the gap between what is possible and what is, between the deep (potential) reach of the gospel into systems, neighbourhoods and relationships, and the limited impact we as an organized church seem to effect on society.  Perhaps my sadness comes because I am in the final phase of my career and have become jaded and cynical. Perhaps the pandemic has overwhelmed my outlook, making me incapable of sustained hope.  Perhaps I am dangerously close to not giving a damn anymore.  Let someone else; let another generation take up the angst and the action. 

Trying to maintain hope of God’s Kingdom promises amid the brokenness and pain of this world is a tough gig.  We all live in between goodness and brokenness, between hope and reality.  In the middle ground is sadness and melancholy. 

I remind myself that this emotion is NOT a sign of lack of trust in God.   Nor is it a negative character quality.  In fact, it’s an utterly human response to the gap between the promised abundant life of God’s Kingdom and the lived-in reality we face on earth.  If we choose not to feel this sadness, letting it grip our soul, we either retreat into a spiritual selfishness of Christian activity & forms of expression that cocoons us from the brokenness around, or we shift into high gear as activists, believing by our good efforts we can change the world, irrespective of any divine involvement.

Could it be that God is also sad, and that our sadness at the state of our world reflects His?  Could we perceive of a Creator who expresses this emotion, this unsettledness between hope and reality? Could it be that the melancholy in the middle that we experience is a sign of our being created in God’s image; a reflection of the divine in us?

One example of MANY expressions of Gods’ sadness comes via the prophet Jeremiah, who profoundly expressed the weeping heart of God. At one point God communicated through Jeremiah these sentiments: “Speak this word to them: ‘Let my eyes overflow with tears night and day without ceasing; for the virgin daughter, my people, has suffered a grievous wound, a crushing blow.’” (Jeremiah 14:17).  That’s divine sadness over the gap between hope and reality.  God also stays close to our own human sadness when He promises that He is “close to the broken-hearted.” (Psalm 34:18). How can God be close to someone who is broken-hearted and not feel their pain? Because our Creator feels pain.

This melancholy in the middle isn’t just an emotion.  It certainly isn’t a sign of weak faith.  It is the proof of the divine Spirit of God calling into your soul with the words “this shouldn’t be this way”.  Then, out of that sadness Christ speaks:  “There is a better Way.  Show that to the world”.

Harv

PS – For an inspiring story of someone who feels this sadness, yet steps into the gap between promise and reality, listen to Father Gregory Boyle here