BC Conference General Meeting
Penticton, 2011
President’s Address
Rev. Dan Chambers
- Gratitude
I had a professor in seminary whose parents were missionaries and who was born and raised in pre-communist China. Whenever he spoke publically, which was often, and the audience applauded at the end of his presentation, he would applaud back. He explained that in China, it was standard for the speaker to applaud the audience for their generous listening.
Jesus had the odd practice of beginning an aphorism or a retort with the phrase, Amen, Amen…a phrase that was usually reserved for the end, as we might close a prayer with “Amen.” But he bumped it up front.
I’d like to merge these two practices, and begin with what usually comes at the end: I’d like to begin with applauding you and this is why. I often think we’re pretty sloppy at expressing our gratitude for each other. We can be quick to judge, quick to debate, quick to take sides, but reluctant to express our appreciation.
In the two years I’ve served as President of the Conference and have traveled around the Province to meet you and watch you in action, there’s one undeniable truth: the United Church in BC is filled with incredibly dedicated people. And if there’s one consistent feeling I’ve had, it’s one of gratitude. The kind of gratitude that makes you humble; the kind of gratitude that makes you shake your head with a mixture of appreciation and wonder. And since I, too, have been slow and sloppy with words of appreciation, I’d like to begin this way:
Thank you.
Thank you to all you in ordered ministry and all you lay people who make the church come alive through your faithful work.
Thank you to all who sit around tables for hours to discuss and pray about the well-being of the church.
Thank you to all those who serve on Presbytery and Conference and National Committees, you who take time away from family and work and leisure to do the unglamorous and detailed ministry of the church.
Thank you to you who serve as the Chair of Presbytery and you who serve on the Presbytery Executive and Conference Executive Committees.
Thank you to those who dedicate their considerable and creative energies to children and youth; you who sleep on floors with the youth and wake early in the morning to walk into the kitchen to make pancakes to give the youth energy for the day, and you who give them a sense of God, identity and purpose.
Thank you to those who take time away from families to answer emergency phone calls; those who allow their dinner to be interrupted to attend to a crisis, or who miss their daughter’s soccer game because of a memorial service.
Thank you to those who serve in ministry and live alone; those who find creative ways to connect with others so that the at times lonely challenge of ministry is not overwhelming.
Thank you to the children, youth and young adults who encourage and challenge us to envision a Church we have not yet seen and do not yet know and who inspire us all over again with their commitment and passion.
Thank you to those who drive five hours just to get to their Presbytery meeting and thank you to those who serve in the isolation of rural ministry as well as in the urban isolation of the city where you can be lonely in a crowd.
Thank you to those who sing in choirs and those who lead choirs and contribute your amazing musical skills to the service of the church, where you don’t get paid nearly enough.
Thank you to those who serve on the Boards of the Church or on Ministry and Personnel Committees and help us find harmony in a dissonant time.
Thank you to those whoflat-out disagree with each other, yet look at each other with respect and appreciation and make room for each other in the church.
Thank you to those who are willing to plunge into the uncertain waters of an emerging church and help guide us through this time of radical transition with hope.
Thank you to those who work in the Conference Office; you who often express gratitude to others but who don’t often receive words of appreciation for the essential and highly skilled ministry you so faithfully offer.
Thank you to the saints in our midst, and there are several here, who help us laugh, help us take ourselves lightly but our ministry seriously, and help us remember who we are and why.
This isn’t all, but you get the picture. So please join me as you look. Look to the rough and ragged and beautiful people at your table and the tables around you. Scan the room. And lift up your gratitude for these people of God with your heart-felt applause!
- Integration
Keith Howard, one of several gifted and dedicated leaders for whom I am grateful, challenges us with this question: Imagine someone came into your bedroom at night, shook you awake, grabbed you by the collar and asked, Tell me, quick: what is the cutting edge of the gospel for you?
Because if we don’t have an answer to that question, we likely flounder in our direction of ministry. What is the cutting edge of the gospel for you? Keith doesn’t ask this as a rhetorical question, so I invite you to write the question on a piece of paper. Think about it. You might even talk to each other about it around the table or during a coffee break. Perhaps by the end of our conference together you’ll be able to express the cutting edge of the gospel for you in one sentence.
It has been said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there are two kinds of people, and those who would never say such a thing. At risk of putting myself in the former camp, I’m going to venture into a gross generalization with hope that it helps offer some clarity in both the composition and dynamics of the BC Conference.
Generally speaking, it seems to me there are two groups of people in the church – those who feel the cutting edge of the gospel is faith in action; those who feel the cutting edge is a deepening spiritual life. Put another way: there are those who feel James had it right when he wrote, “Faith without works is dead.” And there are those who feel brought to the cutting edge when Jesus turns to them and says, “Come away with me to a quiet place.” The activists,and the in-the-world contemplatives.
Pretty much everyone I’ve met in the United Church agrees that the two can’t be separate: spirituality is not separate from social justice; a life committed to action is not separate from a life committed to prayer. But it seems to me that when one group looks over to the other, they don’t usually see integration. The contemplatives look over at the activists and see works righteousness. The activists look at the contemplatives off on another retreat and see a cozy, comfortable spirituality. Too often each group looks at each other with suspicion.
Either way they see the other group is falling off the fullness of the gospel.
Either way they see the other side is falling short of the way of Jesus.
Either way they feel judged by the others.
It seems to me that Jesus must have had these two aspects of faith seamlessly intertwined. He’s the embodiment of one who has integrated the quiet, mountain top retreat with a few friends that ended in the transfiguration with the passion that led him to turn the tables and whip the money changers right out of the temple. As followers of Jesus, I believe we’re called to work toward that same, seamless integration.
Is it possible that Rabbi Abraham Heschel was right when he put his reputation and body on the line and marched side by side with Martin Luther King Jr. on the walk to Selma, Alabama, and said, “Today, we pray with our feet”? And is it possible that the Buddhist teacher of Vipassana meditation, Sylvia Boorstein, was equally right when she said, “Don’t just do something, sit there!”?
What is the cutting-edge of the gospel for you?
What part of the gospel slices through your every rationalization and cuts to the bone?
What brings your soul to life?
This is not a technique we’re supposed to master. It’s not something that can be picked-up from a workshop mandated by the national office. It seems to me it’s a foundational calling of our faith: to live our life in such a way that prayer and action become integrated; that healing of the soul and healing of the world are not two activities but one because ultimately, the inner and the outer cannot be divided. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within/around you.” Faithful. Public. Witness.
- The Way Forward
As we attend to our own work of integration, our work of faith, we do so in a social context that is dramatically changing. While the road of Christiandom buckles and crumbles under our feet, we’re driven to be open to new ways of being disciples of Jesus in the world: we need, for example, to move from a culture of collegial competition to collaboration and cooperation. We need to think creatively and as entrepreneurs. We need to want to be better than we have been because something we care passionately about is at stake.
I care passionately that Canada has a vibrant and faithful progressive Christian community; I care deeply that children can attend a church where they’re accepted and loved for who they are, and where their spiritual life is nurtured by our Biblical story, questions and affirmation of wonder. It genuinely matters to me, as I suspect it does to you, as well, that there is a Christian voice that speaks out with respect for women, for gays and others with minority status in our society, for people of other faith traditions, for the place of science, and where the heaven we hope and pray for is not only after this life but more importantly in this very world of God’s, right here, and right now.
We know that we cannot live as if it’s still 1964 and most of society either attends church or at least has respect for it. This is no longer our reality, and this is not ground-breaking news. But we do need to find a way forward. And I don’t have the map. National has not yet provided each of us with our own GPS, so I’m not sure exactly how you should be or in what direction I should start sprinting. But I think it has to do with how we integrate our faith, how we bring together prayer and public witness. I think it has to do with how we work creatively together, collaborate and care for each other.
There was an event that happened on one of my visits that embodied how we might find our way ahead. The people from Fraser Presbytery have heard this story, and those from Kootenay Presbytery are likely to remember this event as I was visiting a Presbytery there about a year ago. In the closing worship service, I was asked to offer the sermon, which I did. In the middle of the sermon, I heard something fluttering above my head. I also noticed several people in the congregation had shifted their attention from me to the ceiling.
So I, too, looked up to the ceiling to see a wild thing flapping about. It was small, and at first I thought it was a Kootenay- sized moth. But upon closer examination, I saw that it was a tiny hummingbird. On this fine May morning in Nakusp, we had the doors of the church open, and a hummingbird had flown into the sanctuary to grace us with its presence. I thought this was really cool and perhaps a lovely symbol of the Holy Spirit descending upon this faithful crowd.
But it became quickly apparent that this hummingbird was in distress. It was not thinking about blessing or prayer. It just wanted to get out. You could feel the attention of the whole room focus on the hummingbird, who was now bashing itself against the florescent light thinking that was a window for escape.
We didn’t know what to do. Someone tried to reach up with a broom and guide the hummingbird out, but that only freaked him out even more.
Someone else suggested we turn out the lights so it wouldn’t be fooled by the light. We did that. Someone else suggested we all quiet down so we don’t startle it even more. We did that too. Some else suggested we pray and imagine the bird to safely fly out the door. We did that.
As you can see, by now my sermon was trashed. We had another sermon on our hands and talking wouldn’t do; we needed to act. One person had the clever but wishful idea that perhaps if we took the red flowers that were at the front of the church and lifted it to the hummingbird, the bird would be attracted to red and follow the flowers outside. So they tried it.
It didn’t work. It also probably didn’t help that the flowers were plastic.
Then someone had the smart idea of mixing sugar with water, and baptizing the flowers with sugar water. Very clever. So we tried it. It didn’t work.
Easily ten minutes had passed by this time. The person with the plastic red geraniums sprinkled with sugar water was standing by the door, trying to visually entice the hummingbird while the rest of us concentrated on imagining the hummingbird safely making his exit.
Suddenly Jeff Seaton had an idea. It too was a far-fetched idea but why not try it? Jeff remembered that just the other day he had downloaded a “bird call app” on his iphone. So he checked to see if he had a hummingbird call. He did. But he didn’t know if it was the right kind of hummingbird or if it was perhaps a competitor who would mostly scare the bejeebers out of our already dazed and petrified bird.
So Jeff walked back to the plastic red geranium sprinkled with sugar water and let his app do its thing. Still quiet, we all heard, “tzch, tzch, tzch!” It got the bird’s attention. Again, “tzch, tzch, tzch!” And incredibly, amazingly, it worked. It was a wonder to behold. The hummingbird flew to the flower, perched, and allowed itself to be carried out the door like an emperor on a throne.
We all broke into wild applause.
That was the sermon for the day. And the message is this: a familiar way of being church was suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted. We were presented with a challenge to which no one knew the answer. We collaborated, cooperated, people brainstormed, we tried several ideas, several of them didn’t work on their own, but we kept building on the ideas until, to our amazement, all the pieces came together and the bird was rescued, leading to a spontaneous celebration. Beautiful!
That’s how we’re called to be Church in the 21st century. There it is, in the story of the hummingbird: when we work creatively and passionately together with one heart and mind, we may by the grace of God stumble upon a way forward.
We might all be encouraged by the words of Wendell Barry:
It may be when we no longer know what to do,
We have come to our real work,
And when we no longer know where to go,
We have come upon our real journey.
I believe we’re called to the life-work of integration. I believe we’re in a time calling for collaboration, cooperation and creative thinking. I don’t know exactly what we should all be doing to discover the life-giving path for the United Church in the 21st century. But in our not knowing, I sense we’re being ushered into our real work, and it’s possible we have come upon our real journey.