How To Live Like A Believer

I bought this book over Christmas, too. (I was in Boulder, at one of my favorite bookstores). It’s very good, but I wouldn’t recommend it to these people:

I had in mind creating a space that was not a place for my agenda, but theirs. They would walk into a quiet room and bring their own prayers to the front and light a candle, and meditative music would play in the background. It would be a place of nurture that affirms their connections to the divine. But they brought their religion with them, which is mostly Southern evangelical Black church. The music evolved from being instrumental to being gospel and organ music and singing. Rather than long spaces of silence, people gave testimony, they gave sermons, they encouraged each other, they praised God using common African American prayers like, "I thank God for waking me up this morning!" The music I felt was calming, they didn't like. One woman told me, "It sounds like a funeral."

That's a white clergy describing her experience ministering to people living without homes (her term: “I prefer ‘people living without homes.’ It's a people-first language. I prefer saying they don't have homes rather than saying they're unhoused, because a home is a place of safety and nurture, more than just a house.”). She strikes me as a Protestant Dorothy Day, ministering to people where they are and who they are. It’s true ministry to people who aren’t you, respecting them for who they are and that they aren’t you.

The toughest lesson of ministry is accepting people for who they are. Well, and getting them to respect who you are. Ministry is not a doormat. Which is not to say you minister “over” people. You minister to them. Which is trickier than it looks; or sounds.

I preached, once, at a black UCC church, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. As you can imagine, I’m the polar opposite of an Africa-American pastor. I’m not fiery, I don’t proclaim like Dr. King or the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But the congregation was gracious and supportive and more of a blessing to me than I was to them. And where I’d finally gotten used to a silent room listening stonily to what I said (try it sometime; it’s stranger than you think), their interjections were so supportive I craved them in my very German congregation for weeks afterwards. (I think I even got one “Preach it!” as I warmed to my new “style.” I floated in that cloud a long time.) But I still prefer my “church music” to support contemplation, and I would rather learn the wisdom of the monks.

It takes all kinds. But God grant me the serenity to be happy with my preferences, and to recognize the value of the expressions and preferences of everyone else, especially those I still approach as “other.” Let me especially see the Christ in them that I want to be seen in me. Because if I don’t, they won’t either.

(If the above quote doesn’t already encourage you, read the full post over at Thought Criminal. It’s extremely good. And it points to another book I need to add to my reading list.)