Here and Now -- All We Have

When a family has problems, counselors advise talking about them. It may not change the situation, but it may preserve and strengthen the relationships. These days people like to replace the word “problems” with “challenges.” Whatever you call them, they seem to become worse with time and inattention.

We, as a church family are being challenged to look to the future of our church with hope at a time when our hope, our energy and our enthusiasm are being sorely taxed. People are zeroing in on the negatives — it’s easy to do — like the national priest sexual abuse scandal, the decreasing number of priests, a depressed presbyterate, a church that continues to treat some members as less than equal. The list could go on.

In some cases, we don’t want the pastor we have, or we don’t have a pastor. Our glasses are decidedly more than half empty. Headlines and rumors give us more to pack in the already heavy baggage we’re carrying. We want a pastor who cares for the people, speaks to us of love and forgiveness, who understands our needs and meets them 24-7. In short, we want Jesus for our pastor. Maybe we already have him and don’t recognize him because of the “plank” in our eyes. Would we listen to Jesus if he were the pastor, or would we find some reason to ignore him too?

If we want strong and resilient parishes and pastors, we need not only to support them but to understand that they, like us, have had some bad days. We have some wonderful pastors, great homilists, good managers, excellent at encouraging the gifts of others. However, because someone can be good at one skill doesn’t make him good at all of them. The really good all-around pastors call their people to share their own gifts and talents with each other, inspiring them to be Christ to one another, to fill in the places where the pastor is stretched beyond his limits.

Our family — pastors and parishioners — need to give each other a large dose of hope and acceptance, whether he or we see each other as too old, too young, too loud, too withdrawn, too boring or just too real.
If we are to move into the future with hope and joy, we need to pick up the shards of our broken dreams and together create a new, and perhaps better, design of who we are as a people of God. Being negative is easy, let’s us opt out of responsibility for our lives and our church. We need to acknowledge the pain and then use it to build a stronger, more responsive, body of Christ here and now. It’s all we have to work with and all we need to make a difference.