Finding Balance or Tipping Scales
In the wee hours of the morning I awake to find myself struggling with ‘Tracy’s Tidbits’. Initially my plan was to simply make a list and write about all the wonderful things going on in the life of the church: sending packages to college students, a woman’s spiritual life group, Vacation Bible School, another Dave Ramsey class, splitting the high school and middle school classes—yes, it has grown to that level, Summer Yoga classes, registrations for Lumber Jack/Jane weekend and Summer camp registrations.
Another option is to try to write a prophetic message that can somehow sum up the radical swing of the pendulum that ministry is these days—the continuum being everything from ‘we’re bursting at the seams’ to ‘How can I make our youth love Jesus as much as they love…fill-in-the-blank?’ Living and working within this tension sometimes becomes overwhelming and it is at these times when I find myself writing my article at 3:30 a.m. on what will be for me a 12 hour work day.
A few weeks ago, on a Wednesday evening when youth group was over and Choir practice not yet finished, a youth walked into the fellowship hall still dressed in her soccer gear, fresh from practice. (She was dropped off at church to ride home with grandma, who sings in the choir.) I looked up when she walked in and greeted her with a smile and told her we missed her at Youth Group. She explained that she had soccer practice. I somewhat jokingly said, “If I could just get you to love Jesus as much as you do soccer!” She looked at me as if I had just sprouted 2 more heads on my shoulders. My comment was meant as a gentle nudge and yet her response has plagued me for several weeks now.
Ministry has become, for me,…a conundrum. Last fall I wrote an article titled “The Decline & Fall of Sunday School,” to which I received wonderful feedback…from everyone who read it…The problem here was that all who read the article were already in a Sunday School class. There seems to be a correlation between Sunday School attendance and reading the newsletter.
I am blessed to work with incredible leaders of faith in our church! Our goal is always to find ways to engage everyone in the life and activities of the church while passing on the stories of our faith and a love for God and Jesus to all we serve. We have one Sunday School class busting at the seams and one collapsing in on itself. We have one Sunday where Worship & Wonder swells to proportions our room can barely hold and others where one or two children show up. I have youth meetings where we can barely manage a lesson because everyone is so excited to be there with each other and others where I have to totally renegotiate my lesson plan because only one or two chose to show up or stay.
I find myself struggling to find some kind of balance here, but what I yearn for is to tip the scales. And isn’t this the struggle of the entire church? Not just as in ‘we should all work together here’ (though this is true) but as in ‘across the nation’. One of my favorite professors at LTS continually reminded her students that what we do, and fail to do, as a church teaches our people something. With everything the church says and does, or remains silent about and fails to take on, teaches our people something. And then she will ask, “What are they learning?”…What are we teaching and what are we learning?
At some point our culture transitioned from giving our best to God first into giving whatever we had left. The world taught it, our churches remained silent on it and our children have learned this lesson best. The dramatic swings in our attendance, our volunteering, our stewardship and our participation are the results of years of teaching and learning in the church. We (the church) somehow transitioned into teaching to give what you can and the result has become just that…we learned to give back to God whatever we have left. We have become a society that largely gets to church when they can, brings the kids if they aren’t busy or tired and gives a little bit when they are here. Now we reap what has been sown.
This is by no means the end of the story. We serve a radical God who has the ability and the will to turn lasts into firsts, ends into beginnings and death into life. When the world is most at odds with itself God's answer comes in human form: a fragile child to an unsuspecting family at a place and time unremarkable in every other way. As Jesus walked and lived he chose not to reign supreme, but to serve humbly. And as the church struggles to not turn in on itself we look around at the great things God has done among us and wonder at the future to which we are called. But all the while we must continue to ask ourselves, "what are we teaching and learning as we await God's movement in our lives?"
As I write this I am ever mindful that we do, indeed, have incredible pillars of faith in the church and it is likely they will be the ones who read this article first. For each of you I am eternally grateful for your steadfast love and dedication to God and this congregation as well as your support and encouragement to Christian education and the work it seeks to accomplish in our faith community.
Blessings,
Tracy