Ponder: ministry and domestic work

"We tend to conceptualise working harder as producing more.  Yet the wisdom of the medieval theologians of church growth would suggest that the work of ministry might be more helpfully seen as parallel to domestic work--washing, ironing, cooking a meal and washing up--which needs to be done, but then needs to be done again, than to artisan or factory work, which produces a measurable product.  This does not mean that growth does not take place, but it is more analogous to natural, organic growth--the growth of a garden or a child--rather than to capitalist expansion and productivity."

Mirada Threlfall-Holmes, "Growing the Medieval Church" in Towards a Theology of Church Growth (2015), 195

Ponder: "We do not strategize"

We are never inventing, or constructing the Church anew, as if your congregations or dioceses or national structures — as if Israel — could be invented anew or constructed by the Israelites. The issue is not invention; it is always and ever “obedience.”

We tend to pursue our ministries on a continuum between activism and quietism, which orders most of our lives: do this; build that; organize, strategize. Clergy conferences are all about that, as are all the books and blogs of the world. And if that’s too much — as it surely is — we then give in to fatigue, withdraw, hide. Most clergy end up doing that.

But there is an alternative continuum to the activism/quietism spectrum. It is simply to do what God asks; to follow where God leads. And only that. No more, no less.

God Gave the Growth

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” I Cor. 3:6

My family and I were delighted to receive the call from God to come and join you at Saint Timothy’s.  I look forward to leading you during this time of transition as you say farewell to Father Brad, and prepare in time to receive the ministry of a new permanent rector.  It has been a special gift to be able to work alongside Father Brad for nearly a month.  It’s lifted a bit of the burden from both of us, and he has helped me to understand many different ways that God is doing wonderful things among you. 

I can certainly understand why you have come to love him so much.  He is a man of great compassion and wisdom, and you bear the stamp of his leadership in many ways (as I’m sure you do also of your associate rectors and those who lead you before he arrived).  Father Brad’s insistence on God’s love for all people has shaped your active mission program and gathered together a deeply diverse and open-hearted congregation.  I know that you will all want to take time in the next few weeks to speak or write to him, thanking him for the way he has helped you to grow in faith and discipleship.  You will also want to spend time praying for him and his family as he discerns how to continue using his gifts in retirement.

To Completion--A Sermon for Pentecost V

“It is best for you now to complete what a year ago you began not only to do but to desire, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.”

  II Corinthians 8:10-11

As you would expect, there has been quite a bit of sorting going on in the Rectory these past few weeks.  We will move to our new and much smaller home in Virginia next week, and we’re using the situation to draw a clear line between the things we really need and those we can do without.  We’ve plumbed the depths of the cellar and the dusty corners of the attic, and pulled down all those boxes from the highest shelves of the closet.  And it’s amazing what you find in the process.

I’ve uncovered the relics of so many abandoned past projects.  There was a box of papers from my plan to write a proper scholarly history of my hometown, and cross-country skis and poles to go with those bindings I never bought.  There were bottles, tubes and corks from my summer as a home winemaker; Thackston’s Introduction to Syriac, and the list goes on and on.  I can hold these things in my hands and remember how excited I was to begin the project they represent: that crisp January day skiing around the golf course, picking and pressing all those fragrant mulberries, my hopes for new discoveries in early Christian liturgy.  But of course, over time, things became more difficult.  I gathered dozens of pages of notes for my history, but couldn’t find a unifying argument.  I produced wine from six different fruits, and it was uniformly undrinkable—no matter what color, it tasted exactly like musty Kool-Aid.  To my untrained eye, four of the letters of the Syriac alphabet looked identical, which makes getting through the sentences in the second lesson almost impossible.