March 4, 2012
Rev. Fritz Ritsch, D. Min., Preacher
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Six St. Stephen members and I dared the trek to Dallas this week for the second Next Church Conference, which was at First Pres. It’s always good to go to these things for me. I get to see old friends, make new ones, and get new ideas. The purpose of this conference is to envision what God is planning for the future of the PCUSA. It was inspiring and challenging.
But there was a moment at the NEXT Church Conference in Dallas that made my jaw set and my stomach clench.
The director of the Ecclesia Project, the Rev. Judd Hendrix, was speaking. The Ecclesia Project intentionally cultivates bi-vocational pastorships–pastors with “real” jobs who are pursuing alternative ways of creating churches. It sounds kind of fun, out of the box, the kind of thing Presbyterians don’t normally do–a guy starting a running ministry, a French-speaking African fellowship, that kind of thing. Way to go, I’m thinking.
Then Hendrix starts on me.
What’s standing in the way of more creative, exciting ways of doing church?
Hendrix tells me that I am.
Me, because I am professional clergy and my salary and pension and all my future and my family’s future and even my congregation’s self-understanding are tied up in the fact that I am a professional, full-time clergy person. I am standing in the way of my congregation doing ministry because they count on me to do it for them. I am standing in the way of creative, out-of-the-box ways of doing church because churches that can’t afford a teaching elder are called “dying churches.” I’m standing in the way of non-traditional ways of developing and installing clergy because I’ve got a very strong investment in the present job description.
Hendrix asked, “How many of you are ruling elders here today?” Half the hands went up.
“You–don’t–need–us,” Rev. Hendrix said.
And my jaw set and my stomach clenched because he was right.
And a quote from Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison kept running through my head:
“The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the freewill offerings of their congregation, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. … It will have to speak of moderation, purity, trust, loyalty, constancy, patience, discipline, humility, contentment, and modesty. It must not under-estimate the importance of the human example…; it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power.” (Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, New York: Macmillan (SCM Press), 1971. P. 383)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this as a prisoner of the Nazis in 1944. It was the thesis of a projected book, his response to “humankind come of age.” Bonhoeffer believed that the modern world had outgrown traditional Christianity. God had become unnecessary to the human equation, replaced by science and humanism. Some in the church complained bitterly about the change, about “the unreasonable costumer” like a lot of businesses do when the public no longer wants their product.
But Bonhoeffer was proposing adaptive change. Change to meet a changing world, he said. The church must abandon its paternalistic approach to ministry and allow the capable, independent faithful to be the body of Christ. The church must shed itself of its conservatism–by which Bonhoeffer meant its investment in keeping things the way they are–by ridding itself of property and special status in the state. Clergy must be bi-vocational, taking “real” jobs and subsisting on “goodwill offerings.”
Most important, he says, we need to shed ourselves of arguing about belief and dogma and focus instead on what we do. “It is not abstract argument, but example, that gives [the church’s] word emphasis and power.” He even pushes that further, proposing “revising the creeds (the Apostles’ Creed); revision of Christian apologetics; reform of the training for the ministry and the pattern of clerical life.”
I think that some seventy years after his death, the time may finally have come for Bonhoeffer’s vision to become reality.
Bonhoeffer would have appreciated the theme of theologian Stacey Johnson’s presentation at the Next church con. Johnson called us back to the “logic of the cross.” The logic of the cross is that death leads to resurrection. “Our future is with God,” Johnson said. But we’ve been operating on the logic of survival–the fear of “perishing,” of death. Instead of daring the new, we’re invested in protecting the old. Faith calls us to risk and to dare, to try adaptive change, and to trust God with the future. Survival thinking makes us focus on technical change–how to get more people in the pews, whether to use traditional or contemporary music, that sort of thing. But what’s needed is nothing less than death and resurrection.
That’s what Jesus means when he tells his disciples, in our passage for today, that “If anyone would come after me, let them take up their cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel will find it. For what will it profit anyone to gain the whole world and forfeit her life?”
“The church is the church only when it exists for others,” Bonhoeffer said.
That became one of Bonhoeffer’s most important definitions of the church. The church is called to exist for Jesus Christ, first of all; and second of all, in its concrete form, to exist for others. This was the source of his personal outrage at the way the German church had failed to stand against Nazism. The church had tried so hard to survive that they’d lost the heart of the Gospel. They’d gotten wrapped up in themselves and forgot the Other. So the church didn’t speak out when the Jews, who Bonhoeffer called Christ’s brothers and sisters, had been horribly persecuted; the church hadn’t stood against the unjustified horrors of a war Germany had started. They’d been afraid of dying, so they did not live for Christ.
“The church is only the church when it exists for others.” Jesus calls us, individually and corporately as the church, to put others ahead of ourselves, to actively seek Christ in the neighbor, the stranger, and the enemy. But too often all of us get wrapped up in, what is my church doing for me? What am I getting out of church?
And we pastors get caught up in that, too. We get a lot of perks from being pastors, not just the obvious ones. One psychological one is that it’s so nice to feel needed. That’s why a lot of us got into the ministry in the first place, after all—we wanted to feel needed. And so we often unconsciously create an atmosphere where a church can’t seem to be a church without us. Hendrix, of the Ecclesia Project, pointed out that the way we define a “dying church” is that it’s a church that can’t afford a pastor. But why is that? he asked. It’s not the pastor who is supposed to be Christ’s presence in the world—it’s the church!
At the risk of my own job security, I say again: You don’t need us. You are the church of Jesus Christ.
My job as your pastor, our job as your staff, is to enable you to fulfill your calling to be Christ’s presence in the world. Bizarrely, that means that I need to be working to put myself out of a job.
But your job, as the church, is to be the church. Our job as Christians is not to look for the perks and benefits of being Christians, of being on God’s good side, but to put our needs and wants on the backburner, and to put Christ and neighbor and stranger and enemy first.
St. Stephen is quite gifted at reaching out to the Other. It’s one of the things people remark on when they join the church—they like our mission outreach, our intentional inclusiveness, our focus on the community. For instance, after church today the Mission Committee will have a meeting to discuss plans for a summer mission trip to replace the Mexico mission trip we used to make. What’s wonderful about that is that we aren’t allowing adverse circumstances to sideline our focus on mission. Can’t go to Mexico? Go someplace else instead. No matter what, focus on the Other. The church is the church only when it exists for others.
The challenge to all of us is to remember, the gospel isn’t about ourselves, about our survival as a church, about our personal salvation or how God can make us rich and happy, or God and the church helping me when I’m in trouble. “The church is the church only when it exists for others.” Who are the others that God is calling us to exist for? How can your pastoral staff support you and enable you to minister to those others—to reach out to others in need and welcome others into the church?
When we are thinking about others, and not about ourselves, then we’re the church of Jesus Christ. If we lose ourselves for Christ’s sake and for the Gospel, we will surely find out who it is that Christ is calling us to be. Only when we lose ourselves in Christ do we find ourselves.