No Easy Answers

My wife just returned home after spending several weeks with her mother in Atlanta. The future of her church is one of the subjects that have been causing my mother-in-law intense grief and pain. At one time this church was one of the largest wealthiest churches in Atlanta. Unfortunately, the pastor most responsible for the success of this church also sowed the seeds for its destruction. Although he was a superstar Baptist platform preacher, one of the best I have ever heard, his grotesque mismanagement of church finances eventually led to his dismissal and the beginning of the church’s decline. Today the church is smaller than and not as wealthy as in years past. The pastor, leadership, and members of the congregation are facing some tough decisions.

Over 50 years ago, the church began as a satellite of a downtown church in the budding suburbs of a growing Atlanta. Today the church building is no longer located in the suburbs. Its large physical plant occupies an insanely valuable piece of real estate in a prime commercial area of the city. The church buildings are aging, requiring more and more money to keep them in repair. The congregation is smaller and no longer needs such a large physical plant. I expect that the geographic center of the current membership is somewhere miles to the North of the church’s current location. The logical move would be to sell the building for an obscene amount of money, use the proceeds to build a new more practical structure in a better location, and put the balance into new ministries for the new members.

But it isn’t that easy. My mother-in-law has been a member of that church almost from the beginning. She just missed charter membership by a couple of months. Her husband was a deacon, Sunday school teacher, and pillar of that church for about 50 years. They invested their entire adult life in that church and that church building, their time, their treasure, and their emotional energy. My mother-in-law saw her children grow up in that building and attended her husband’s memorial service in that building. Even though her physical condition has made it impossible to attend services for a number of years, she has continued to support the church in her prayers and with her money. The thought that her church will not occupy that piece of property after her passing is more than she can bear.

I saw this same scenario once before. One of my oldest and closest friends is the son of a Baptist preacher. His father earned a Ph.D. in theology from a German university in the years following World War II. He possessed both an extraordinarily powerful intellect and an electrifying personality. When I met him he was the pastor of one of the largest and wealthiest churches in another southern city. A similar story, an ancient decrepit building with no parking in a downtown neighborhood populated primarily by vagrants and winos. Along with the majority of the leadership and members, he planned a move to the edge of town where the new suburbs were exploding. He successfully built a beautiful modern building and moved most of the congregation into the new structure. Of course the years have proven they made the right decision. The church has prospered.

This success came at a price. Elderly, powerful, and wealthy members of the church in that other city could not accept the concept that God could be worshipped at a new location. It spite of their pastor’s best efforts, efforts that were well beyond the call of duty, the church split. He continued to pastor at the new location until he was convinced the crisis had passed, then he moved on. His health, both emotional and physical was broken. He was never the same man again.

Sometimes there are no easy answers. Doing the right thing does not matter because it is the source of too much pain in the heart of another. Sometimes following the Golden Rule could lead to a less than optimum outcome.

Pastors frequently observe that their churches should grow because they are living things. This is true. However, it is the nature of living things to grow old, to suffer illness, to die, and to decay. That is not an easy truth to face. It is hard to accept that I am not the man I was 30 years ago. My heart no longer performs as it should, something in my lower back will no longer allow me to pick up a 150 pound pan of rivets as I once did, and arthritis limits the motions of my knees. I fear that the day might come when my mind no longer works as it should. In that day can I pray, “O God, grant that I may understand that it is You (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) Can we, as members, of the Body of Christ, accept that in the end it is not our church but His Church and that the gift of God that we pass on to our children’s children might take a new form, one that is not what was once delightful and dear to us?

Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books of the Bible, but rather than quoting it again, let me offer a poem by Walt Whitman in honor of my friend’s father. I think his family would like that.

O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.