Two articles worth reading

Eric Van Meter has got a new article in the United Methodist Reporter as a part of his "In Therapy" series that takes a creative look at how young adults relate to the UMC. In his ususual, insightful way, Eric takes aim at how the church tends to want to "package what it values" so that young adults will buy into it. The problem, as he sees it, is that what the church is packaging (or re-packaging) is oftentimes a "connectional web" of structures, processes, and institutional forms that offer little sustenance to the hunger that young adults feel for true Christian community.

He doesn't say it exactly this way, but I think a lot of what Eric is talking about is the way in which the church so often tries to offer a program for something that can really only be lived. What young adults want is what the grace of the Holy Spirit teaches them to want, deep in their souls: sacrificial discipleship in a community of Jesus' friends.

Also, I don't know how I missed this one, but John the Methodist (of Locusts and Honey blog fame) also has a really good, short article in the Reporter where he looks at the issue of calling in ministry. Countering the oft-heard statement that you should "only go into ministry if you can't see yourself doing anything else," John cites numerous biblical examples of calling where figures such as Elijah and Jeremiah remained faithful to the calls even when their own lives would have been made easier by doing something else.

I would want to qualify John's closing statement: "Those of us who serve in full-time ministry ... do not do so because we find it blissful. We do so because we are called." In one sense, he's right - but only if you define 'blissful' as the kind of sugary, superficial consumerist gratification that the world names as happiness. For that matter, the article's title: "A calling: not the same as happiness" evokes the same distinction (only with 'happiness' instead of 'blissful').

It may be the case that calling or vocation should be understood not through the world's definitional claims but rather through the new meanings for words like happiness, bliss, joy, and love that we learn when we are formed in the community of the church. The Johannine account of what it means to be a follower of Jesus is key in this changed understanding. Take, for instance, Jesus' words to the disciples in John 15:15: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." There, we have an example of how Jesus' calling on the disciples opens up new meanings to them - specifically, they know Jesus himself in a new way, and that will change the whole lens through which they view the world.

Another Johannine example is in 1 John 3:16 - "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." Again, in our day to day lives, we don't often equate love with sacrifice unto death. But here, we have love redefined for us - and this has connections to what we ultimately understand happiness and joy to be.

So I think calling can and does bring real happiness. But only if we understand what real happiness is all about. I would go so far as to say that the experience of ministry is sublime. The practice of ministry itself is a means of grace that can open up levels of deep joy and love one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

John, I hope your time away from L&H has been restful. You are missed.