Ideal churches and visions for ministry often look and feel the same. Both consist of mental pictures, or images, of good churches—except one is a projection of the ego and the other is the product of the indwelling Spirit of God.
—David Hansen
The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Each member of the board was a friend. Confident they would understand, I planned to tell them the truth. As their pastor I had listened to their pain in time of need; I knew they would listen to me in mine. After the business part of my pastor’s report, I shared my situation.
“I’m really tired,” I began. “The doctor says I have pneumonia. My load here is hardly bearable at times.”
I went on about my problems. One board member began fidgeting. His face reddened and wrinkled. He held his thoughts as long as he could (which wasn’t very long).
“We’re all tired,” he said. “We’re all stretched to the limit. Your job is no more difficult than ours.…”
His comments, which began civilly, degenerated into acid.
“I’m offended,” he continued, “that you think you work so much harder than we do. You need to understand us. You don’t know what we face out there.”
I defended myself by attempting to describe my unique responsibilities. Pretty soon I realized I was playing into his hand. The other board members were becoming offended by my defense. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted to tell them how tired I was. I didn’t mean to imply that I worked harder than they did. How did this turn out so badly?
During a lapse in his volley, I turned from the member who was first offended and said to the board, “I have spent many hours with each of you in private, listening to you express your frustrations and tiredness. Have I judged any of you or your work as you poured out your heart to me? Why are you attacking me now? All I expected tonight is that you would listen to me as I have listened to you.”
That sort of ended it. The board and I exchanged perfunctory, conciliatory remarks, and the meeting went on as if nothing had happened.
I didn’t sleep much that night.
The next day I chopped wood. The meeting was still hot in my mind. Internally I alternated between tirades at the board, well-practiced I’m-quitting-this-stupid-job soliloquies, attempts to think through the whole thing with prayer, and a mental game of assembling the ideal church that I wished I pastored. In this mythical church, the board supports me through my insecurities; my happiness is their mission.
When I’m mad at the church and my feelings are hurt, I like to crawl into a spot in my brain reserved for my ideal church. This imaginary church masks the parish I serve, correcting the faults in my present situation. I pretend it’s Jesus’ church.
Jesus vs. Barney
The process reminds me of a kids’ show designed to introduce children to the solace that imagination can provide. Its hero is a purple velvet dancing dinosaur. Barney teaches children how to withdraw into an imaginary world in which waistline-challenged reptiles are adored, everyone has fun, and everyone follows the rules. Barney’s rules, of course.
Sometimes I want Jesus to be like Barney. I want him to lead me to an imaginary church where everyone loves everyone, everyone has fun, and everyone follows the rules. My rules.
The fact is, Jesus dwells in the church that actually exists, not in the ideal church that exists in my mind.
The actual church is made up of sinful people and served by a sinful pastor. The actual church is where Jesus lives, the church that Jesus is building, the church that Jesus died for. We have no reason to believe that Jesus cares about our ideal church at all.
Vision or fantasy?
Ideal churches and visions for ministry often look and feel the same. Both consist of mental pictures, or images, of good churches—except one is a projection of the ego and the other is the product of the indwelling Spirit of God.
How can we tell the difference?
There is no sure way. Real visions do not come with holographcertification seals; ideal churches don’t come with purple velvet dancing dinosaurs. In this realm, we all stumble through, making mistakes along the way.
But as I’m trying to sort through the myriad pictures, ideas, and leadings, I pay attention to some warning signs.
If an image of an ideal church comes when your feelings are hurt, don’t give it the time of day. The debacle with my church board hurt my feelings, and it set my mind to wandering. If I just had a board that understood my needs, I would thrive in pastoral ministry.
This is a lie.
Even given the fact that the board didn’t handle my exhaustion well, my mental retreat to a church that would care for me was nothing more than a projection of an insecure ego. After the pain was gone, I was able to think and pray through the situation and I realized most of the board members were hurting as badly as I was. Christ was in the middle of the meeting the whole time. He wanted us to see that it wasn’t my board, it was his board that exists for all of us.
Seeing it as our board is a lot more complicated. That means that everyone’s feelings count, not just mine. It means that bad board meetings will happen again. That’s the real church. That’s the church in which Christ dwells.
If an image seems too good to be true, it probably is. An ideal image works in a perfect world; a vision works in a sinful, unpredictable world. The test comes when we’re shooting the breeze with friends and we spill our plans and dreams.
I’ve never heard a pastor describe an ideal church that didn’t sound biblical, that didn’t sound like it would do great ministry, and that wouldn’t be a great church to pastor. But I get skeptical when all the pieces seem to fit. When in theory the church should run like a Swiss watch, I can never believe it’s watertight. Sin can always leak in. It doesn’t take a Charles Manson in your church to goof up your best ideas. Sweet old Aunt Bertha on a bad day can trash a sure-fire plan to build the ideal church, even if it is backed up by the best-thinking church experts in America.
Vision, on the other hand, never comes with all the answers. It doesn’t promise to fix anything. Vision is, by definition, seeing something beyond the present possibilities, so it never seems as if it’s going to work. But vision works in the sinful church. It has a way of working in and through disparate personalities, theologies, and indigestion.
When the failure of an image threatens your call to ministry, be glad it failed. An ideal emerges from a self-established call to ministry; a vision emerges from prayer.
It is a big problem when our ideal church gets fused with our call to ministry. It’s something like a Cartesian perversion of the pastor’s call. Rene Descartes’ famous proof of self-existence was “I think, therefore I am.” (My favorite form of the proof comes from a fisherman’s T-shirt someone gave me: “I fish, therefore I am.”) The pastor’s twist goes something like this: “I know my call, therefore I am a pastor.” It’s a common way to view the call to ministry, and so is its corollary: “If God has called me to pastor a church, then the church I am called to pastor must exist.”
Naturally, the church that we assume must exist, since we are called into ministry specifically to pastor it, is our ideal church.
When reality smacks us in the face that our ideal church does not exist, this logically affects our sense of call: If our ideal church does not exist, then perhaps our ideal call does not exist. The argument sounds far-fetched, until you ask yourself if you know any pastors who have left the ministry because they could never find the church of their dreams. They wanted the church in Acts, but all they ever got was the church in Corinth.
Our call to ministry, however, is not based on specters in our head; our call is based on the Word in our ears. When we hear Jesus say, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34), and we know that he is calling us, then we realize that our supposed call to an ideal church is silly.
If an image comes from a previous ministry, make it do fifty push-ups at a council meeting. My first church staff position was at a large Presbyterian church in Southern California. We pulled off a junior high ministry that was bigger than some of the churches I’ve served. We built it on some simple concepts of ministry: love the kids, have fun with them, teach them the Word of God, and pray for them. Not too complicated. Of course, it had to have a structure too.
In the twenty years since, every time I have tried to conduct ministry on those principles, that ministry has succeeded; every time I have tried to duplicate the specific programs we used, that ministry has failed. The insight is not difficult: Churches are different. Things that work in one place don’t work in another. But scratch a little deeper, and we discover that our ideal church is often filled with images of our past successes.
If we want to try something in a new ministry that worked in an old ministry, we should submit it to the ruling board. They may affirm it, or they may send us back to the (mental) drawing board.
Whereas an ideal church is a myth, a vision for ministry is an incarnation of the will of God in a particular place. God often wants to do something new, and that can’t happen if we bog down everything with past successes.
If an image carries even the slightest scent of envy, let it bleach in the sun until it looks like a valley of dry bones. Then see if it rises again. Much of what we call “vision” today is nothing more than envy. It’s worth remembering that the apostle Paul lists envy—as common as corn flakes among pastors—among abhorant sins: “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21).
We visit successful churches and listen to tall-steeple gurus. Do we come away with an influx of inspiration or an adrenaline rush of covetousness? There’s a big difference between “I can do that,” and “I can do that.” We need to glean ideas from others who are conducting unique, productive ministries. The question is, how do we harvest vision and remove the taint of the sin of Cain?
Samuel Rutherford tells us: “Our pride must have winter weather to rot it.”
Instead of implementing mental images, we must abuse them. Lean them up against the fence in the backyard, expose them to sun and rain and frost, and when they are good and weathered, look them over to see their real skeletal structure. Frequently there’s nothing left. But sometimes it’s like Ezekiel 37. We see the bones, clues to a solid idea. We pray, and the bones begin to rattle.
An ideal church is an idol; a vision for ministry is a prophecy.
Communion of the (real) saints
The council meeting meltdown happened a long time ago. But things like that still happen. I still dream about the perfect church when my feelings are hurt. In weak moments, I’m positive I know the system that will solve the church’s problems. When my ideas get drubbed, I wonder if I’m really called into ministry. That I still envy goes without saying. But I’ve learned to see my church differently, and that helps me sort things out.
A few Sundays ago I was serving Communion. Standing behind the table, I speak a few sentences before the sacrament, my eyes scanning the congregation. As my mind gathers each face and forms them into a congregation, I see the communion of the saints; but this time my efforts fail at a few sets of eyes. My spirit gets stuck on some people who are mad at me, and some people who are bickering.
That kind of thing aggravates me. It irritates me that I fixate on the dumb little things in life, the inevitable things, the quirkiness and crankiness that seem to go hand in hand with being human. My first reaction is, How can I fix this? Whom should I call on? What should I say? How can I solve this?
I realize there is nothing I can do now, or probably ever, so I continue the liturgy and return to my seat as the elders serve the elements.
During the deliciously spiritual minutes in the service when the elders are administering the broken body of our Lord and I am all alone in my seat waiting and praying, it flashes through me that I have been granted the extreme privilege of serving a real church. The church isn’t splitting. It isn’t collapsing. The ups and downs and rights and lefts of our fellowship of the Spirit are as old as the New Testament and as contemporary as Uncle Grump and his oversensitive pastor. With joy and with love, I see what we really are—a real church, united not in my dream but in Christ’s plan, not in my work but in the body and blood of Jesus of Nazareth.
Sitting up there in my big chair during these solemn moments, I see the servers, who have finished administering the elements, returning up the aisle to the table. They will arrive soon (our aisles aren’t very long), and I need to get up and walk to the table to meet them. But I force myself to sit a little longer and take a moment to be grateful for the fact that the work is really finished—the church is one in Christ.
The irony makes me smile. The whiners are living proof that I pastor a real church. The fact that there isn’t a whole lot I can do about the problems points to the fact that Christ is in charge. This makes me relax because, to be honest, it takes a monstrous amount of mental effort to continually re-imagine the church. Barney really is a slave driver.
Copyright © 1997
