Longing for Spring

Ah, nothing like getting up early on a Monday morning to get a little exercise in and then off to Jury Duty! Of course I had my cell phone with me and my father's pocket knife I always carry so I had to hike back home and put them away, then back to court to "hurry up and wait."

There was an upside to this however. I was able to read a good bit of a new book that is saying things I have felt for sometime about the Methodist Church and where it's future lies. It's entitled "Longing for Spring: A New Vision for Wesleyan Community" by Elaine A. Heath and Scott T. Kisker. It seems to be speaking to a new reformation of the church as a synthesis of monasticism and a rapprochement of Wesleyan thought and structure. Hugely exciting so far, very well done. Well, I could quibble a bit about a short section on Benedictine history, being a bit of a Benedictine, but nothing that would affect the premise of the book was in question.

It seems to me that we have got to start a discussion at the highest levels of the church about the post-modern church in a cyber age and stop spinning our wheels over institutional maintenance. The emergent church is here and is not going away, and we can either dig in our heels and resist this new reformation or we can open a dialogue that will lead to a new Methodism built more on smaller communities of believers and not on buildings and structures as we now know it. A more fluid church to replace a static one. One where Evangelism is not so much viewed as "getting them in to maintain the institution" as it is inclusion in a community of spiritual formation. We will not survive as we now are, plain and simple.

I finally was called to the jury pool from which twelve were to be selected to hear a drug case. The young woman, the defendant, had very much a "deer in the headlights" look. She kept looking at us, looking from face to face. Finally it struck me why I found her gaze so compelling...in it was a complete absence of hope, a cry only for help. I wondered what had brought her to this place in her journey? There was mention of children, but not of a husband or father. She had been found with a couple of prescription drugs that were not her own. What was she seeking in those small orange containers? What ghosts or demons was she trying to shut out? Or was it maybe just a world, a community, with neither time nor inclination to become involved with her dysfunctional existence? And isn't that exactly where the church should enter in? I know her sad face and sallow complexion will haunt me for quite a while.

And maybe that's one of the biggest arguments for a new church, one that cuts its ties with maintenance and opens itself to the winds of the spirit and to a Christ-community approach to ministry. A church where worship is what we do all the time and only occasionally as community. We are too tied to Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and organs and ornate structures and God is out in the streets caressing the young man or woman with AIDS, soothing the baby born crack addicted, and sharing ever new teaching stories with his followers. And what of the lady in the docket? God has time for her and loves her just as she is, can we not follow his lead? Redemption and salvation for her begin with a loving encounter with Christ as mediated through his followers. The church must be a functioning tool, not an idol.

Well, more later...by the way, the prosecutor consented to my presence on the jury, but the woman's attorney did not. I guess he noticed me staring in her direction. Come to think of it, I wonder what he, and she, saw in my face? I fear it may not have been my Savior. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it was...may God make that so. Amen for now.