The hazards of pastoral ministry – Christmas

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The hazards of pastoral ministry – Christmas

Christmas is a wonderful time of celebratory services, a relaxed mood with strangers and neighbours, holidays, happy family days, feasting and leisure – right?

That’s what it is supposed be anyway. Even if we look beyond the indulgent cultural Christmas of the west, surely this is a season when serious-minded Christians can take advantage of the public holiday to sneak somewhere quiet to reflect on why the saviour needed to come, the fact and manner of his coming and the wonder of it all.

There are many for whom Christmas is something very different. For starters there are those who have no choice but to work at their employment or at unpaid care-giving duties for the aged, ill or people with disabilities. Then there are those with the empty and aching hearts in which there is a space for a loved one lost, for a lost love, lament at what was but is now not and regret at that which could have been but was not. And those for whom the daily struggle just to stay alive is made more painful by the sight of those awash in plenty.

Christmas brings special hazards for those in pastoral ministry. This is widespread. I felt it during my pastoral years and know of many many with similar feelings about Christmas.

So what is the pastoral hazard of Christmas?

It’s not the fact of working while others rest and party, for that is a weekly event for those whose heaviest work is routinely on weekends. Nor is it the 2am Christmas Day call to a hospital bedside, for that is a privilege of those with a pastor’s heart.

In some part it may be that the pastor’s family is far from their kin and cannot join the family gathering until a day or two afterwards. That can hurt, especially for the spouse and children and for unbelieving parents or in-laws.

I wonder if the larger hazard lies in the contrast between what lies on the true pastor’s heart and the demands of a typical church Christmas. A true pastor of God’s people will share the compassion of Jesus for the lost (Mrk 6:34-35) and the desire of Paul to present people mature in Christ (Col 1:28) by so ministering God’s word that people grow from fickle spiritual infancy to the likeness of Jesus (Eph 4:11-16). A church Christmas typically swamps these desires as a superficial religious goodwill takes the stage. It’s hard to keep the focus on striving for Christ and Christ-likeness amidst candles, camels, cards and the rest.

And so the hazard. The pastoral worker is expected to lead the church Christmas and tries to do so with genuine goodwill, while yearning for the Christ-centred calling in their heart. These two things can overlap, but often are in tension.

Thank God for pastors who live with this hazard rather than run from it!

Review: "The Silk Roads"

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Review: The Silk Roads – A New History of the World, P Frankopan (Bloomsbury, 2015) – 521 pages (in paperback), with notes, acknowledgements and index.

This is a book to take time with as Peter Frankopan attempts the double challenge of writing a world history and of writing it through a different lens.

Firstly, the challenge of a world history. History occurs at the intersection of space and time and so they give the scaffolding of a world history. This book starts with the laws of the Babylonian King Hammurabi (c. 1810 BC - 1750 BC) and ends in the year of its writing. That’s a big temporal scope and gives the writer a dreadful problem of inclusion / exclusion. Every reader will find omissions to bewail!

Despite the vast temporal scope, the book is not quite a ‘world’ history as proclaimed in the sub-title, for it is spatially limited. Frankopan self-consciously writes from an Asia-centric view (more on that below). Regions such as Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific only appear insofar as they impact on or are impacted by Asia. Even within Asia, there are limitations. For example, a major Asian nation like Indonesia is only mentioned once and that as a colony of a European power in its old guise of Batavia.  To see this is not to offer a criticism, but rather to note a limitation and perhaps to suggest that others write parallel world histories from other spatial lens.

Secondly, the book offers a world history through a different lens to most English language books of similar intent.  The standard English language history writes through the lens of western tradition as developed under Greek and Roman culture and then as flowering in Western Europe and North America. In these treatments, the rest of the world appears only insofar as it impacts on or is impacted by the western tradition. Frankopan’s scholarly base is in a small island off the north-western European coast, but he writes as a Byzantine specialist who knows the area east of the Mediterranean and through to the eastern shores of continental Asia. That being said, north Asia and South East Asia are somewhat under-represented in the book – with the notable exception of China. Russia presents another definitional challenge – is it Asia, Europe or something else again?

The result is a very different way of looking at the world. For me, the experience of reading was like seeing a world map drawn from an alternate physical perspective (such as a southern-centric map). Things that once seemed all-important are reduced in perspective. For example, western Europe and the Americas appear as late influencers on world history and ones whose present apparent demise risks them being seen as ‘easy come and easy go”. The flip side of this is that things that are footnotes in western-centric historical writing take centre stage. The book introduced me to empires, movements and people of whom I knew little. That’s welcome.

Frankopan contends that Asia is again on the rise, that new silk roads are being forged and that present-future world history cannot be understood outside an Asia-centric lens. That’s a more than plausible contention, as a glance at the nightly news shows day after yet another day. It would be quite wrong to read the book as a future guide, but it certainly sketches the spatial/temporal scaffolding of the present world scene.

This is why this is a book with which to spend time. It gives a different view of the past and an insightful view of the present.

Mercy at the margins

Mercy at the margins

Farming is a marginal activity. Is the seed of good quality? Will it germinate? Is it weed and bug resistant? Will the rains come when it is time to sow and time to water the growth. Will the rains stop as the field is white unto harvest and not spoil the crop? What will the yield be? What is the market like? What is the profit margin?

Farmers make their profit (and family income) at the margins. It’s the bottom field and the corners of the paddocks that make the difference between bankruptcy, survival and thriving.

What a challenge then to hear God speak about those margins: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not glean your vineyard, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am Yahweh your God. (Lev 19:9).

Mercy was to be shown at the margins of the fields.

Why this? The answer lies with God and with the history of his people.

God has a particular eye for the widow, the orphan and the stranger:  “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless (Ex 22:21-24).

He expected his people to remember when they were the stranger and to act accordingly: You shall remember that you were a bondservant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you: therefore I command you this thing today (Dt 15:15). And again: You shall not deprive the foreigner, or the fatherless of justice, nor take a widow’s cloak in pledge; but you shall remember that you were a bondservant in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you there: therefore I command you to do this thing (Dt 24:17-18 and see also 19-22).

It gets worse! Even the land that was promised to Abraham and which so vital to a farming community was not really theirs. It was always ‘borrowed’ from God and was to be used for him: ²³ “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. (Lev 25:23). Israel was an exile nation even at ‘home’ in the promised land.

Israel’s farmers were to leaved the margin of their crops for the marginalised people because that’s where God’s eye was.

God’s people after Jesus are likewise called to remember that we are exiles and strangers who don’t really belong (1 Pet 2:11). We too, are to remember that true religion consists (at least in part) in caring for marginalised widows and orphans (Jas 1:27). We too are to show mercy at the margins.

And so it is good for each to ask who are the people at the margins that are within my ability to show God’s mercy? Who is my ‘orphan’, my ‘widow’, my ‘foreigner’ and my ‘stranger’? Who is on the road to my ‘Jericho’? Who are the losers, battlers and those whom the passing world does not see or hear with mercy’s eye and ear?

Mercy at the margins – that’s what God expects from his people. And that’s what he showed in sending the child who was born in a barn to unmarried parents from up-country Nazareth and who was rejected by those at the centre and hung out to die outside the city wall.

Grace, like farming, is mercy at the margins.

Where are the odd-shaped people?

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Where are the odd-shaped people?

This church had old pseudo-gothic buildings with sunlight streaming through the stain-glass windows. Up front was the band that is now standard in evangelical churches, pumping out the usual range of contemporary Christian songs. Their work was competent, well-rehearsed and well-presented. Likewise for the worship leader and preacher. However, something jarred. Everyone up front was youngish, healthy, trim, bright-eyed and Caucasian. That was not true of the congregation who were of “all sorts and conditions of men (and women)” as the old prayer book puts it.

Another church had modern purpose-built facilities with an expansive foyer that included an information booth, video displays of current information, comfy lounges and a full-on café. Bravo! The auditorium had a theatre-like feel with sloping floors focussed down to an expansive stage with all the latest in A-V facilities. Again, the music team, worship leader and preacher were well prepared and competent in execution. But once again they were youngish, healthy, trim, bright-eyed and Caucasian.

Here’s another church. It meets in space rented by the hour from a public school, which means a weekly rush to set up and adapt to compromised physical surrounds with patched-up A-V arrangements that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. The music team had some young adults of mixed origins, an older man and was good enough for purpose. A grey-haired Asian man led the service and the Caucasian preacher had an obvious physical disability. The thing is, the people up front reflected the congregation of mixed age, ethnicity and ability and also reflected the surrounding community.

I get it that churches want high standards for those up front in order to lead well-presented and smooth-running worship gatherings.

However, where are the people who reflect the normal range of human beings in age, ethnicity, ability and body-type? Where are the foolish and weak of the world who are not wise and not of high birth, but who instead are lowly and despised (1 Cor 1:26-28)? Where are the people who reflect the Noah’s ark range of God’s church and human society? Where are the odd shaped people? 

Speaking the gospel in life and word

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Speaking the gospel in life and word

My wife and I recently took a lakeside walk. Along the way we passed a campsite run by a Christian organisation that caters to the sons and daughters enrolled in expensive church-run schools. We could hear teenagers doing as teens do by having fun as they played outdoor games. On our return walk we could hear them singing familiar songs of faith.

Then we noticed the litter. Some was concentrated in the public area just outside the campsite. We collected some to take home and dispose of through the garbage bin in the place where we were staying. I thought “kids will be kids” and (more darkly) "these are the sons and daughters of privilege, who know not what they do”.

Further along we passed and greeted some locals who noticed the litter that we carried and who remarked how the people in that Christian campsite didn’t bother to dispose of their rubbish properly.

Ouch! 

I can’t assess whether or not it’s a fair comment. However, I hear the words of Jesus: In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matt 5:16) and of Paul: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col 3:17).

And so I am reminded that a wordless expression of the gospel is to consistently speak the gospel with my life as well as my words – and especially before the sons and daughters of unbelief before whom I profess my faith. Yes, that means picking up my litter – and so much more.