From the Pastor
A college chaplain shares this story: “I know a young man who served a large church as the youth minister. The young people responded positively to his ministry and the youth group grew. All seemed to be going quite well. Then one day he appeared in my office to tell me he had been unceremoniously fired. Why? He said he had simply made a videotape containing a collection of TV commercials. Then at the youth meeting on a Sunday evening, he showed the tape and led a discussion of the various advertisements, discussing ways in which television tries to lure us into the acquisition, hoarding and grabbing of things that TV tells us will make our lives better. They discussed what this sort of getting and buying does to our families and to our souls. Some parents objected to programs such as this and the next week he was fired. He was told by the senior pastor, ‘That was a foolish thing to do.’”
I wonder what I would have said if I had been that senior pastor. As I said in a recent sermon, it is always so tempting, so painless, simply to have the church be an echo of conventional wisdom, as if the Kingdom of God and the American Dream are synonymous. How easily we convince ourselves that a growing church is a church that asks no hard questions, makes no waves, ruffles few if any feathers. And yet…there is a moment in the Book of Acts when a group of early Christians are hauled before a local magistrate and accused of being some of those people who “are turning the world upside down.”
As a new church program year opens before us. I hope we aren’t afraid to be a bit foolish from time to time: foolish in the name of compassion, foolish for peace, foolish in our openness to diversity, foolish in our determination to enhance the well-being of each other and our world, even foolish in our use of resources to advance God’s reign of peace and good will for all. Who knows, when they see us in action, other fools may even decide to join us.
Gene
