This Bird Has Blown It
I was disappointed when I read John Beukema’s “Today’s Nesting Habits” (Fall1999). I have watched the sad trend of church hopping in the San Francisco Bay area. I hoped Beukema would offer suggestions to help people strengthen commitment to their church home.
Instead, Beukema has acquiesced to church hopping as normal behavior. He does list one or two special circumstances when it is healthy for a person or family to attend another church (e.g. when a recovery or youth program is not offered at the home church). But his acceptance of issues-avoiding hummingbirds, self-gratifying waxwings, and the passive-aggressive protests of ruffed grouses as acceptable migration is flabbergasting.
I can appreciate [Beukema’s] sense of loving and nurturing his flock the best he can. However, I just don’t believe it does them any good to encourage lack of commitment.
Bob Lane Menlo Park, California
Dear Bob: I appreciate the time you took to respond to my article. You make valid points, all of which I considered prior to writing. I did not intend the article as seriously as it seems to have been taken.
My intent was to present the reasons why people have more than one church home, and to consider that some of those reasons are healthy. I think as pastors we have an immediate negative reaction to polydomous people, and I was attempting to challenge that a bit.
What I left unstated, or at least not openly stated, is that I am not tolerant of the negative aspects of the polydomous.
John Beukema Western Springs, Illinois
Approach with Caution
I salute Donna Schaper for her bold article “When Public Prayer Gets Too Personal” (Winter 2000). It is long, long overdue.
One Sunday I filled in for a sick pastor. The church secretary told me there would be a list of people to pray for on the pulpit. I dutifully read it and then followed with my own pastoral prayer. Several days later, I learned a woman whose name had been read from that list was very, very angry. All she had done was to go for a routine doctor’s appointment. Someone had seen her at the hospital and assumed that she needed (and wanted) their prayers.
During 32 years in the parish, I learned:
- always to ask the person or the family if the concern should be made public.
- never to give surgical or diagnostic details during public prayer. That should be left to the family’s discretion and in another place.
- always try, as Rev. Schaper did, to elevate parishioners’ minds and hearts to the wideness of God’s mercy, to the depth of God’s compassion for all suffering and pain everywhere and for everyone. The individuals who need those words personally will get your message.
Emily B. PrestonJaffrey, New Hampshire
When I was studying for the priesthood, the Dean at times would pray very pointedly (in a public service) about some problem or another the seminary community was having. Then one professor was often heard to mumble, “Well he did it again. He prayed to God and at us.”
I never forgot that point, and it has served me well.
Lynn Chester EdwardsPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A woman got up just before the pastoral prayer and said: “Please pray for my husband and me. We are leaving tomorrow for two weeks in Florida.”
This was not a request for “journeying mercies.” It was an announcement: “We are going to Florida while you poor devils freeze to death up here in Maryland.”
I should have prayed: “O Lord, who maketh the rain come down and the snow from heaven, let it snow in Florida for the next two weeks.”
W. Norman MacFarlaneReisterstown, Maryland
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