“In our ordinary life, we have the idea that things should gradually progress, but there comes a time when there is a tumble-up, a mixture of God and man and fiends, of crime and abomination, and all our idea of steady progress is done for. … We like to talk about the light of God coming like the dawn, but it comes in terrific upheaval.”
This observation from Oswald Chambers made me think about how God works in our congregations. For some bizarre reason, our world’s outrageous realities-from auto wrecks and the death of children to unemployment and broken homes-are the terrible workshop in which God touches persons and makes saints.
Contrasting personalities are sometimes oddly-and seemingly perversely-juxtaposed. And yet, shoved against one another, as they grind and jostle through life, God’s grace penetrates. This concept keeps coming through powerfully in our best Christian writers. The Dostoyevsky novel, the Tolstoy epic-full of petty misunderstandings, tragedies, triumphs-are a paradigm of how we might view God at work in our churches’ laughter and grief, anger and joy.
Frederick Buechner sees the sacramental and writes of God’s grace in the lives of far-less-than-perfect people.
Walter Wangerin, great preacher (as well as novelist) that he is, tells stories and declares emphatically that the key in his sermon is not the point he might extract and drill home, but the story. God is at work!
Paul Tournier writes of life as adventure; Tolkien describes life through his hobbits. Dorothy Sayers analyzes all this powerfully in The Mind of the Maker. Malcolm Muggeridge points us to great literature rather than to theology texts for theological insights.
Actually, theology and story, properly understood, are one of a piece. God’s grace is more like great literature than a neat package of rules and precepts. Chambers has a nice phrase: “the surgery of events.” God is at work. Grace will ultimately prevail.
Life is story. Redemption is story. Suddenly, at any turn, God is there.
The more we understand the vision of the Buechners, Wangerins, Tolkiens, and Muggeridges, the more powerfully we can communicate a whole message to our congregations.
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Recently, I was at the annual Christian Camping International Conference in Washington, D.C., where more than twelve hundred camp directors and staff attended. Again and again, these people with a specialized ministry would come up to me and say how much LEADERSHIP has meant to them.
We are discovering that many parachurch people, besides parish clergy, appreciate LEADERSHIP’S ministry.
Even so, I am sometimes asked, “How is LEADERSHIP doing? Can it maintain its strength?”
We believe it can and will. In a recent poll, 29 percent of all clergy cited Christianity Today as their first-choice magazine, which by far was the most frequently cited. The second most influential periodical among all clergy was LEADERSHIP, with 24 percent listing it as number one.
Going into year seven, overall circulation is close to 100,000. Financially, it pulls its weight. Editorial content, year after year, is judged excellent by both readers and outside journalists. Our staff has done outstanding work.
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Which brings me to an announcement. Senior Editor Dean Merrill, who has carried large responsibility here, has accepted a call to become editor of Christian Herald magazine. This was a tough decision for Dean-despite the new opportunity’s wide horizons, he felt intensely loyal to LEADERSHIP. We agonized with him and sensed he was carefully seeking God’s will.
At our CTi farewell for Dean, Jim Berkley and Marshall Shelley spoke of his integrity and professional skills. Paul Robbins, who twenty years ago traveled with him as part of The Uncalled Four (a musical group), spoke of his strong ministry concerns. My comments were also based on twenty years of friendship and emphasized Dean’s strong commitment to his family. I related the time in the early seventies when my wife, Jeanette, and I were returning from visiting Dean and Grace at Syracuse University, where he was earning a master’s degree in journalism. We remarked that of all the young marriages we knew, theirs was the most resilient and committed to create spiritual growth. It’s fully appropriate he should have gone on to author The Husband Book and, more recently, THE LEADERSHIP LIBRARY’s Clergy Couples in Crisis, and, with Grace, Together at Home. Our very best wishes and warmest prayers go with him and his family as they move to New York.
While making his decision to go to Christian Herald, Dean shared this insight with me. Following God’s will, he said, is something like driving at night. The headlights give you about two hundred feet of light. That’s all you need. As you advance, you keep getting just enough more to move confidently ahead.
This connects with a final word from Oswald Chambers in God’s Workmanship (p. 37). He quotes Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans that I am planning for you, saith the Lord, plans of welfare, and not of calamity, to give you an expected end.” Then Chambers says, “God’s purpose for you is that you depend upon Him and His power now; that you see Him walking on the waves-no shore in sight, no success, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because you see Him.”
-Harold L. Myra, President
Christianity Today, Inc.
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