Thank you, Dad

A Father’s Day Note

            Thank you, Dad, for being steady. Almost never frazzled, whatever the situation. Thinking things through, rarely shooting from the hip. What a gift, to have a father who just didn’t panic about anything. (Except that time little Seth toddled out into the street and there was a car coming – I’d never seen you actually run till that day.)

            Thank you, Dad, for being such a stellar active listener. I remember the time we went to Mrs. Wilson’s house and she gave you the “organ recital” (health updates on every person in a 50-mile radius), and you just sat there at the folding table in her kitchen and listened. You were never on time for Mom’s big Sunday dinner because you were standing in the church yard listening to people, one after the other. And how many nights did Mr. Laverne or Mr. Leon or Emory drop in, unannounced, and sit in our den and talk with you for an hour or two? Your listening ear was almost always available, and the person in front of you was never rushed or dismissed, never half-attended.

            Thank you, Dad, for holding faith. How hard was this, after the car accident that rendered you physically disabled for the rest of your days? Once or twice, people mustered the courage to ask the question everybody wondered: “Are you angry at God?” Your response oozed faith: “Why would I be angry at God? He is God, I’m just a man.” You weren’t resigned or fatalistic, just accepting. God was God, we are not. Simple and true, and you could build your life upon it, and the rains could come down and the wind could beat against it, but your life would stand firm on that rock.

            What a true faith. That Jesus was your Lord when you were content up in a deer stand, and when you were sitting in a wheelchair cracking pecans. Jesus was your friend when you were preaching, like you were made to do, and when you were walking unsteady laps around the deck, holding tight to the rail, straining to keep as much mobility as you could in your life. Jesus had never left your side, and I don’t think it ever occurred to you to leave his.

            What an unspeakable gift to me, to see your faith. It infused me with a hope that took root in my bones.

            And thanks but no thanks for teeth that always need expensive repair, and bad eyesight.

            Thanks for being just scary enough to disappoint that I didn’t have the nerve to tell you I wanted to quit piano lessons, so I just kept going, and boy was that a good thing.

            Thanks for taking me bank fishing when I was three years old, and sharing Lance cheese crackers and warm bottled Coke with me.

            Thanks for grownup conversation on the drive back from school my senior year, and on our horseback ride that warm birthday in October, my freshman year of college, two weeks before your accident. Me and my Dad, riding horses, talking about real things like peers.

            Thanks for your patience as I learned to drive that horrid stick shift Volkswagen Rabbit. Yes, I do still hate that car. I don’t care that it’s been 34 years.

            Thanks for teaching me how to shoot a 20-gauge shotgun….well, you tried, anyway. I know now I was never meant to be a hunter.

            Thanks for the shark-fishing trip at Edisto when I was 14 – you were as amazed as me and my brothers when I hauled in that sting-ray and she birthed three babies while in the boat. I also know now I was never meant to be a fisherman.

            Thanks for the glimpses of goofiness that told me you could be fun – carrying a protesting Mom out into the ocean waves, both of you fully dressed. Laughing till you cried while watching Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” at Aunt Rita’s house on Christmas Eve. “Air conducting” Beethoven on the CD player.

            Thanks for giving me such a good picture of my heavenly Father. Thank you for living out your faith even when it was absurdly hard. Thank you for valuing people above things, always. Thank you for being my rock. Thank you for your wisdom, your patience, your steadiness, your perseverance.

            You told me once to remember Whose I am. Thanks to your example, I know what a life of that looks like.

            I miss you, terribly. I so look forward to seeing you again, in the presence of the Jesus we both love so much. When I get there, can we go on a horseback ride along the swamp, and catch up?

The church is a body (part III)

Personal experience + a plea for change

I love the Bride of Christ. She is his, he died for her, she is me, she is lovely even in her pitiable days, she is extraordinary in her resilience. She can be so miraculous. She can birth the Kingdom into existence on this rocky sphere.

She has been integral to every stage of my life, from the nursery at church when I was a baby, to just recently when I took a meal to a church friend who’d just had surgery.

The church has been my safe place, my teacher, my provider, my coach, a constant companion. She’s made me who I am. She’s been generous to me, mentored me, been a place of fulfillment and growth. She’s opened my eyes to the world and nurtured compassion in me. She’s been the source of my very best friends, & my husband.

I love her, so very much.

But the institution of her? That particular church out in the suburbs? She gave me a number, not a name. (Literally. I saw the spreadsheet.) She spoke to me only through form letters. She assigned me to a place and made sure I stayed in it. (Well, she tried, anyway. I did my own thing on the side. But knew better than to talk about it in Sunday school…)

And the other institution of her, the big building by the side of the highway? There was a 120-page policy manual. There was a separate manual devoted to the use of the logo. There had to be: it was an institution, with a brand, with a reputation, with collective power to do good – and all of that had to be protected.

Another institution of the church chewed up and spit out my friends. Wrecked the wellbeing of multiple families, in the name of protecting the reputation of the leader and the institution. Caused untold harm to the faith of dozens of people, harm which ripples to this day, manifested in fear, anger, doubt, grief, and so much pain I can hardly think about it. Why? To protect the “witness” of the institution – so it could continue to look and smell good to those inside and outside.

And these are just my personal experiences. I’m far from alone in them. Thousands upon thousands of individuals, families, and communities could tell the same heartbreaking story of the institutional church serving herself above her people.

It’s pitiable and depressing, the number of times we’ve heard the same plot – so predictable by now that, unless the current scandal involves us and our local church community personally, we almost shrug it away: another leader with a “moral failure”…..another deal with a political devil…another embezzlement case…another sex abuse cover-up…another revelation of blatant racism…(I could include multiple links for each example).

And in almost every single instance, the institution protects itself, as surely as a politician evades and spins. Also in almost every instance, the tipping point was brought by the civil authorities or the media.

The institution must protect itself at all costs, at all times, in all ways. It cannot be seen to be weak, or inefficient, or unsure, or unprepared. All these things are death to it.

I’m not bashing institutions here. They’re simply following their nature. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t have institutions; we need them, despite their limitations.

What I take issue with is the institutionalizing of the living, breathing, organic Body of Christ. There is no thought that we are a resurrection people, that seeds die before they grow, that life is always a gift, never a right. There’s no recognition that we operate – indeed, we exist at all – only by the good Spirit of God, which will lead, correct, expose, encourage, & provide all we need, if we will just follow him. Plans are good to have, but doesn’t the Spirit have the prerogative to adjust them?   

What if the church remained an organization, without becoming an institution? What if there were transparent processes for managing the money that individuals and families gave to the church? What if the leadership of a local church simply answered questions, rather than deflecting them? What if the church wasn’t a building with a budget? What if it was a gathering of believers in homes and parks and community centers and school auditoriums? What if we trusted the Spirit more than policies? What if we had plans for growth without being owned by a mortgage? What if we pooled our financial resources into open accounts?

Do I have the prescription for how we can be an organized organism without becoming an institution? Not really. The church is so identified with her institutional manifestation, so intertwined for so many centuries now, it’s very hard to untangle.

But I’d like to be part of trying. I don’t want to fly on my own (can’t, not meant to anyway). I want to be a passionate, fully invested member of the Body of Christ. I want to be part of a worldwide movement laser-focused on sharing and living the Good News of Jesus.

Can I somehow do this without signing up with an institution? Well….again, I’d sure like to try. And if you, dear reader, have any ideas how to go about this, I would love to hear them.

The Church is a Body (part II)

The limitations of institutions + a little early church history

Is there any organization that has benefited – in the long run – from becoming an institution?

Government as an institution? It has some merits, but on the whole, as history shows, every form of government eventually fails its citizens. From imperial Rome to imperial Japan to….yes, imperial America. Of course we need government; I’m just pointing out that, in the long run, institutions tend to serve themselves more than those they were set up to serve. Exhibit A: Congress.

Education as an institution? Oh boy. As a homeschool parent, don’t even get me started on that one.

Do-good, nonprofit work as institutions? Is there any such organization with any longevity that has not been buffeted by scandal? Breast cancer awareness that starts out noble, but then makes any number of deals with corporate devils just for branding’s sake. World Vision, bless it, doing such good work all over the world, until they decided to allow openly gay employees, and all hell broke loose with their child sponsors. The dear old United Nations – what would Woody Wilson think if he could see its behemoth state now – some true good, absolutely, but also power-castrated.

And then the one that consumes a lot of my thought, especially the past 5-6 years: church as an institution.

St. Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square, New Orleans (April)

The Scriptures describe the Church as a body, in particular, a Bride. Over and over in the New Testament letters, the Church is the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ.

Jesus himself didn’t use that terminology, but then he only spoke of the church a couple of times. Jesus was all about the Kingdom. (Jesus Went Back to Heaven and All I Got Was This Lousy Church? – Rachel Held Evans)

At any rate, there’s no suggestion that the church is or should be anything like an institution. Even as the early church began to organize, in Jerusalem, and throughout the cities of the Roman empire as it spread, it didn’t get all that bureaucratic.

By the fourth century, when Constantine co-opted the faith on behalf the State, there was some real organization to the church: bishops, other leadership positions, a mostly-formed, mostly-accepted canon, and a systematic catechism process for new initiates.

But it still hadn’t evolved into an institution. It didn’t have the fourth century equivalent of a constitution or bylaws, or policies, or, of all things, insurance. It had money but no fourth century equivalent of a business plan.

Why? Because it wasn’t a business.

The very early church, especially in the book of Acts, for all its manifold issues, did not deal with the chief problem inherent in being an institution: self-protection. To read early church history is to read about a movement not very concerned about protecting itself. Teaching the life and words and Way of Jesus – totally. Sacrificially caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the sick, the outcast, the demon-possessed, the foreigner, the slave, the seeker – absolutely. Earning the approval of civil or religious authorities? Nope. Protecting their reputation? Nope. Amassing influence? Nope again. The early church was pretty darn focused on sharing and living out the Good News of Jesus. It certainly wasn’t concerned with having a pass to the halls of worldly power.

And yet the early church turned the world upside down. Not as an institution with any power, money, or influence, but as individuals committed to following the Way. (Even if there was, admittedly, a lot of arguing along the way about what the Way was!)

When I treat my body like an institution or a machine, instead of the sacred, organic creation she is, I’m hurting her. When we teach our children as though they were blank slates on an assembly line, instead of the wildly complex & passionate, curious creatures they are, we hurt them, and all of our mutual society. When we take a good cause and give it a brand with an insurance policy and a street address, we eventually hurt the cause, because the insurance policy, the bean counters, and the lawyers will impose such fear of death the cause will become secondary to the brand.

When we take the holy Bride, the Body of Christ, and force her to become a thing with bylaws and constitutions and policies and insurance, she will struggle to be a living, breathing organism – because it is the nature of institutions.

(Next up: my personal experience with both the church as a body, & as an institution)

The Church is a Body (part I)

Bear with me, dear reader (all 11 of you). There’s a point, and it will be made in the follow-up posts; I just couldn’t get all my thoughts into one reasonable length post.

This series is (again!) about church. Specifically, the difference between church as a Body of Christ, and church as an institution. They shouldn’t be the same thing, but in our culture they are. And I THINK this might be the crux of my struggle with church/Church: I earnestly desire to continue to be part of one, but equally desire not to be part of the other.

It won’t take you long to discern where I’m going with this. But I wanted to start with a helpful bullet list; I’ll expound more in the next two posts.

A body:

• Grows naturally. There’s a pattern, but within it, there’s a LOT of variation.
• Subsists on nutrients, vitamins
• Needs sunshine, shelter, clothing
• Goes through different phases: infant, toddler, child, adolescent, young adult, middle adult, older adult, old age
  • Each phase has its pros & cons: infants are helpless but we see hope in them; old age is instructive, but slower; young adults are passionate but lack the wisdom of experience.
  • No phase should be rushed, right? Children should be allowed to play. Older adults should be allowed to walk slow. Adolescents should be allowed to test boundaries. We get this, when it comes to people.
• Is incredibly unique. Unique fingerprint, unique DNA, unique everything core, even between twins (according to new research).
• Is organized. Remember the body systems we learned in high school biology? Circulatory, pneumatic, skeletal, etc. The human body is extraordinarily organized, every bit doing its bit, no bit trying to do somebody else’s bit, all working together to keep this organism healthy. Things can and do go awry, for a million reasons, but the organizational system of the human body is originally just about optimally designed for optimal health. And when things go awry, what do we do? We ask questions, diagnose, and try to fix it. We don’t shame our blood sugar level for not working right; we just try to help it. We take care of ourselves (healthy eating & exercise & mental health), and when we do, our systems tend to work. This is normal.
• In the Christian worldview, a body is not afraid of death. First of all, we have cells that die every single second (hello, hair & nails), and it’s actually good for us. Second of all, since Jesus defeated death as our final destination, even the Big Bad Death holds a lot less power over us (in theory, anyway!).

An institution:

• Grows strategically. There’s a plan, probably in a three-ring binder somewhere. “We will do this here and that there, on these dates, so that we can do that here and this there, on those dates.”
• Subsists on income/input, power, & influence in all its spheres
• Needs money, plans, structures, policies, procedures, protection (insurance!), organization
• Can go through phases: birth, growth, stagnation/decline, death. Again, each phase has its pros and cons. Institutions generally want to get through the birth stage pretty fast….and NEVER get to the death stage.
• Can be unique. Or not. Certainly the people within it are unique.
• Has to be organized, or it dies. You cannot have an institution without organization, period.
• Is terrified of death. Will go to great lengths to avoid death (see: insurance, contingency plans, attorneys). The death of an institution means loss of its property, money, influence, power, and, yes, its corporate ability to do good.

The Scriptures describe the Church as a body, in particular, a Bride. Over and over in the New Testament letters, the Church is the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ.

Which of the above lists describes the contemporary church best?