Ministry as Waiting

OK, I'm back. I've been told that blogging etiquette requires regular posting, but I've had some extra responsibilities land on my desk -- including keeping our children's program going after the departure of our (fantastic) Children's Ministry Director, Sherry. I'm quickly discovering just how much work she did keeping connected with families with children.

Just reading novelist Anne Rice's spiritual autobiography, "Called Out of Darkness" -- confirming that you just never know about people. Anne Rice, famous for all those novels about vampires, relates how she grew up completely soaked in pre-Vatican II Catholicism in New Orleans, and how deeply it shaped her view of the world. She lost her faith in college (where else?) and went through a 38 year period of estrangement from the Church and what she calls "atheism." Then, at 57, she came back.

Interestingly, she says she "lost faith in atheism." She had to struggle to hold onto her rejection of God, just as many struggle to hold onto their faith.

My work with affiliates has impressed on me the truly rich diversity of spiritual narratives that are found in our churches. We're often blinded to those narratives by a predetermined template of what we think a genuine religious pilgrimage will look like. For many Protestants, the underlying narrative is one of "growing up and leaving behind Sunday School thinking" -- highly rationalistic, highly modern. You figure out that Jesus' miracles didn't really happen and then you're free to take a "grown up" view of faith.

That has always struck me as such an impoverished account when it's applied across the board. People simply don't do what we expect them to do. And, if you approach things from a perspective of faith, God doesn't do what we expect God to do.

Pastoral ministry used to be largely about guiding people through the various stages of development in their faith and religious expression. Today, I think so much of ministry has to do with waiting. Waiting for those people who suddenly "get it," who, often without visible warning signs, find themselves back in the world of faith. And there's really no predicting.