If I can just get my act together and work a little bit more…..
If you are like me, you sometimes fall into this stinking thinking. (In AA that is what they call thought distortions, messages we have picked up that actually damage us.) We have been programmed by a productivity-based, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own bootstraps, there-is-a-magic-bullet-solution, busy-is-beautiful culture.
I think that if I could just get up an hour earlier each day, if I just found the right kind of planner, if I just conquered this one “demon” that has plagued me all my life… then life would be better, the church would thrive, I would be doing it right, and all would be well .(
I sometimes think the world depends on me “getting it right.”
Turns out, that is a big fat lie.
I am trying hard. So are you. So much that is absolutely gorgeous God-ness happens here. We love and learn and cry and laugh and have each others’ backs. And….
Collectively, we are grinding some of us up, and church has become a place where too much of our energy is about getting our finances straight and keeping the building intact, instead of a community in which you thrive and the world is blessed by your presence in it. As Lisa so beautifully proclaimed at the Town Hall, we need joy when we gather together in Christ’s name.
In her book Sailboat Church, former moderator of the PC(USA) Joan S. Gray uses boat metaphors to talk about church. She says some congregations move only by rowing while we could be wind-powered. Rowboat churches work harder and harder, trying to alter realities that they cannot handle on their own. What they do not have plagues them. Lack is everywhere, and they are afraid of failure, afraid of dying. Sailboat churches, on the other hand, look to angle their sails to catch the Spirit wherever she blows. They put their energy into developing a transformative relationship with the Living God. They learn to listen deeply.
Sure, we need to deal with the realities of our life in community. The problem is when we forget to put the deepest realities first. There is a time to get the oars out and work. This is not the biggest truth though. It is not the deepest reality.
We are the beloved ones of a powerful, Sovereign God who is LOVE ITSELF. We live within a flow of Trinity power. We are invited into a loving dance whose movements are peace and joy and hope and lovingkindness. When we let the Spirit lead our steps, when we angle our sails to catch the wind… oh, then so much more is suddenly possible.
What would happen if we thought and spoke and dreamed and lived from that reality?