So what am I doing wrong?
Why am I having so much trouble getting volunteers for even a single (minor festival) day, involving at most an hour or two? And that requiring nothing more strenuous than keeping the church open? Just when did so many unselfish, caring, conscientious people - and most of them comfortably retired - become so unbreathably busy?
But here's a disturbing thought. The fact that the ministry isn't all that strenuous or challenging - might that be the problem?
My late father used to talk about certain things in life - however many or few - that were simply "more trouble than they're worth." In other words, not everything is worth doing merely because it's intrinsically difficult. Even in a church. And if even those ministries of the largest inherent worth can somehow be made easier, more approachable, more humanly breathable, then surely - in most cases - some measure of net gain will be secured?
Which to me only suggests, why, how far we've progressed from - what? ignorance? inefficiency? barbarism? God? - since 1970.
My point is that, in today's operational world, I suspect my father's dictum would be all but incomprehensible. And not just in corporate venues, but perhaps even more so among busy church people. No doubt our modern rejoinder should be best rephrased as a question. As in: "Wait a minute: if it's not troublesome, then what's it worth?" Or, more to the immediate point: If I'm not contantly multiplying and accelerating the amount of trouble I'm enduring on your behalf, how on earth are you - much less anyone else - ever going to know how much I love you?
More and more it occurs to me that Love Today (even - or especially? - in its most giving modes) is not nearly so much a matter of relying and trusting - in God or anyone else - as it is of proving and demonstrating: proving our worthiness, our dedication, our willingness to sacrifice, our up-to-the-challengeness. And so, of course, the more visibly dramatic or even excruciating the challenge the better: the better to cover ourselves in . . . credit? respect? or even glory?
And why not? I mean, how else does one distinguish oneself in any organization - much more that of the Church - than by taking on more and more and more? Again, you do want to distinguish yourself, right? I mean, if you're not willing to take yourself seriously, why should I? And if nobody takes you seriously, how are you ever going to be given anything really important to do, and so accomplish real and significant good? And on the largest possible scale? (Which is where everything really counts, you know.) Finally, if these are precisely the incentives that have made us most effective in the World, shouldn't we of the Church be able to at least triple their effectiveness? Or what's an omnipotent God for, anyway???
And then simpletons like me marvel at how our Modern Acts of Charity have become so grim . . . and tense . . . and strained . . . and (dare I say it again?) competitive.
Now remember, the point of competing is to win. By winning, we at very least demonstrate our competence, possibly even our fitness to exercise authority. Or even to wield power? Indeed, what good is virtue - necessary as it is - apart from the power and authority required to make it effective, and authoritative?
The real question, I suspect, is whether and how far the most effective - i.e., the most loving - kinds of power are primarily external. Does our Maker more convictingly demonstrate His might by changing governments, or systems, or technologies? Or by changing hearts?
Which latter is, of course, an immeasurably more gentle, osmotic, insinuative power than anything we mere humans have so far achieved. Yes, even with those we profess - and strain - to love.
My final point, then, concerns the nature of power at its most inward. The kind of power that, before it does anything of a mere external nature, somehow actually manages to reach into, and enter deeply the silence of, and therefore change, our hearts. Why, if I'm not mistaken, there's even some fairly solid Scriptural evidence for it. Indeed, as the present Church liturgical season - now called Ordinary Time, but which some used to call Pentecost - ought to remind us: Power at at its most love-full (awful phrase, I know) should not be understood as something taken at all. It is not something that you win, or gather, or amass, or earn or summon or conjure. Power at its most godly, and thus humble, and thereby effective, is above all something you receive.
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