Day 332 - Getting Out of The Boat

I've got no answers to my friend kmm's entreaty to eschew seminary over remaining to work in the gulf.

I've gotten acceptance to enter Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I visited Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta last Thursday-Sunday. I'm getting subtle inquires from several of my previous professional life connections and calls out of the blue to work with them.

I'm struggling with some extremely complex and contradictory issues here in the Gulf.

I'm struggling with how to neatly severe and resolve a lot of financial issues to follow any of these paths.

All this piled onto to me (mostly self-imposed) over the last few weeks. I wrote this blog entry several days ago about the whole thing. I let it sit because I had said some very hard things. I've re-read it and tempered part of it, so here it is...

My friends and readers who are leaning on me, or maybe I should say offering me good advice are so valuable. You may have noted the comment left by one of them in my last post. She entreated me to stay in the Gulf to help our church mission organization - suggested the seminary would be a drudge. I must admit all this tears at me quite a bit. Even my two dear sons, remarkable young men, give me conflicting but loving advice. I'm really on a roller coaster because all this decision making carries long range implications.

I remember not too long ago, I led an interesting Sunday study program titled "You have to get out of the boat to walk on water." The title sounds a little presumptuous doesn't it?

But think about what that title means, ask what does it really say? I think what it says isn't "step off that cliff, God will catch you before you hit the ground" (sound familiar?) but it says "if you really want to do something important for belief you have to put your fears aside, rely on your faith and step out into the world into action."

This leads me to digress. What should the church look like in an age where more people are leaving or dying than are coming in? I'm told the number of people entering most mainline denominations has not really changed much over the last few decades, but the number who are leaving, or have left it behind, is increasing.

Why would this be?

I have a good friend in a fairly dynamic small, but conservative church. She says she has spoken in tongues and while it sounds sort of stretched, I know her and take her seriously. The church she led the music element of worship had no hymnals and used a projector for lyrics, yet they have a vibrant worship service. A presbyterian church of six or so, apparently too embarrassed to keep "presbyterian" in their name changed it to "New Life Community Church" here in Gulfport. It just died.

I see young people come through our villages who seem to have a passion for the kind of justice Jesus and Isaiah and the other prophets talked about (free the captives, care for the widow and the poor, the stranger in your own land). Where are these young people going to from our church?

I see people my age, still breathing but dead in spirit, totally alienated by the fanatical preachings of conservative dogmas, by church goers that condemn people for sinful mistakes and oust them from their sanctuaries, rather than speaking to people's hearts, rather than taking their hand in theirs and saying "we love you," or shedding a tear for the other's misery and estrangement. My God! What have we done to ourselves?

Let me digress a little further. This mission organization in Misssissippi and Louisiana has captured the attention of our church (you), and its leaders. At least that is what I hear. It is certainly what I saw last year in the many people who return, mission trip after mission trip.

There is the presbytery in Arkansas putting together multiple teams so they can adopt a family project and come down every two months until that family is back in a real home again. There is the church member in Virgina and in Minnesota/Wisconsin who decided the work is so important he is organizing a team of 6-12 for April after the January visit. I'm not sure of the reason, but it matters, I call it ZEAL. They care.

This entire concept of actually asking church members to do something with their hands, to actually stoop and lift up the helpless and disadvantaged is a radical change - actually to do something, to touch someone! Do the leaders of the church realize what is happening, what they have created? I wonder if some are fearful they don't know how to lead it. Or control it.

All you that come down to Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas are really engaging a new definition of the Church, you can call it radical or reactionary because it is an abrupt move back to the church's original teachings. How ironic that such a move by a frozen church is defining a "new" theological order for the 21st century! You are making history.

I've been reading a short book by Frederick Buechner, Now and Then. This book is his memoir of vocation on ministry. Buechner states, "To suffer in love for another's suffering is to live life not only at its fullest but at its holiest."

Well, back to my question/dilemma. If I ask, why stay in Mississippi past summer with this organization that is closing villages? What reasons do I find to justify "yes?" The church allowed Gautier to close and made no effort to restart it some where else. The church is letting Gulfport close and making no effort to restart it some where else. What if our lease and temporary use permit in Pearlington expires in October and I see no motion to relocate it, do I expect it to close then? I guess I can help an orderly closure and help set up the operations in Texas where help is needed.

Yet, should we find the means to stay where there is need? If I take you to the Red Cross or any of the remaining relief and advocacy agencies in Mississippi between Gulfport and Pascagoula, you find scores of families, who have financial shortfalls for funds to get back into their homes, some have funds, or materials, but no labor. Many face eviction from their MEMA cottages in March. These are people who have waited patiently since 2005.

Do we leave them for the dishonest contractors?

Or perhaps I take you to Hancock County where Pearlington sits and talk to the advocacy and relief groups over there. You'll find a lot of families in the same boat. Even more you may find our church seemingly thinking of marching in lock step with the cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Hancock County by pulling out. Those cities seek actively to prevent these homeowners from buying the cottages and placing them on their lots permanently even though the state says this is permissible. We, our church, may help create that disaster passively by inaction. The frozen chosen are we. We do this while our President has ordered a reassessment of the efforts for recovery in the Gulf.

But all the tears and blood serve no useful purpose without helping hands. The number of voluneeers has dropped signifiantly. Where are you? In Gulfport,we have a full house in March and a few in January, February and April, last year we had a continuing stream of volunteers.

What if there were an outcry and outpouring of volunteers who say "We shall not be so blind to the call for help. The church WILL serve the disadvantaged, the poor, those who cry out in need!" We shall be the "Church that Stayed!"

But maybe I'm too much the idealist...

Here is the other side of the coin.

Much of our decision making in the church, candidly speaking, seems to arise from advice of an inflexible older order that fears to risk job and position to stand against culture. It carries much irony that the advice comes mostly from older men who have long ago let the fires of youthful rebellion against such thinking expire, who have grown entirely too comfortable with their scotch and wine and mountain retreats or beach houses - men who have become the hyocrites they condemned in their youth. What did Groucho say? "I resemble that remark!"

The need for help Down in Mississippi is too remote from most person's experience. Most of us do not understand. We see but are blind. We hear but don't understand.

So...do I stay on here past July or August helping where I can in an organization that shows little evidence of flexibility or timely action and decision making, (and I mean on a historical perspective) or do I seek to become part of this new world order of 21st century theologians working to feed and energize that remnant of the church who still burn with zeal, that dynamo that is not afraid their zeal shows and who believe Christ's charge to our church?

Or let me ask you. Do you care enough about the state of affairs of this church and its dying numbers to do something about it? If you can't volunteer, write a letter.

Ask in your letter how many ministers of word and sacrament of our mission organization are out beating the hustings, literally shedding tears in the pulpit telling our story, meeting the small and large churches, asking for help. Where are they?

Get out of the boat, my friends! Get out of the boat.

So, what does Henry do? I almost think the question is rhetorical, don't you?

But as long as I am here in Mississippi, I will be standing at the gate to the village watching for you to drive in, with work assignment in hand to greet you as a long lost friend. If you go to another village, tell me. I'll come and greet you.

Throw a rock at me and keep me intellectually honest.

Peace and Grace, my friends,

Henry