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.
Trocmé’s pacifism can be taken as a kind of symbolic posture
before the world: we do not strategize. Period. It is interesting that there
are no statistics on those Le Chambon saved. Hence the uncertainty of the
actual numbers. There were good practical reasons for that. But it goes beyond
keeping records from the Gestapo.
Le Chambon embodies the opposite of today’s great “Church of
the statistical fraud.” If you take in the stranger, that is because you are
asked to; if you teach children about God and his laws, that is because you are
so commanded. If you pray in church, it is because God is worthy of it. If you
evangelize the unbelieving, it is out of love. So, your second charge: Stop
counting. Don’t even start. Just be obedient.
Ephraim Radner, Ministry in Enemy-Occupied Territory, Covenant 2 June. 2016.
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