A Season for the Important (and Most Important) Questions
by Bill Ireland
Maybe this time it’s for real! After two-plus years of COVID-related stopping and starting, we appear to have reached a point where churches can re-open and re-engage their work and ministry more fully. The long season of adapting, improvising, and creating on the fly may finally be coming to an end. Time to dust off the “We’re Open!” sign and hang it in the window. Time to let folks know we’re ready to get on with the good work of being church!
As welcome as this grand re-opening is, churches will have to do more than throw open the doors and launch into a fresh round of frenzied activity. Some important questions will also walk through our open doors, and we will have to welcome those questions if we wish to do more than step into some well-worn ruts. Entertaining the questions will help us resist the temptation to go back to the way things used to be and be good stewards of our exile in an unsettled season. For example, now is a good time to ask ourselves the “what?” question. What are we supposed to be about? What is God calling us to do now? This is a threshold question, one that invites us to think deeply about our calling and our mission in this changed world. In tandem with that inquiry, we’ll also need to engage our imagination and ask ourselves where we’re headed. Where do we want to be this time next year or five years from now? What kind of a future do we wish to create for ourselves? Over the last couple of years, we’ve been forced to think and act differently. We unleashed our creativity to address the moment. Now is the time to funnel that energy into thinking about what’s next and where we want to be longer term. Most certainly, we’ll have to devote some time and attention to figuring out how we’re going to get where we want to go. What steps and plans are necessary to get from here to tomorrow? What do we need to do to flourish? These are indeed important and essential questions we must ask if we want to avoid simply jumping back into old habits and patterns.
To my way of thinking, however, there’s an even more fundamental question we have to ask ourselves: Why? This question stands at the head of the line, and all of the other questions take their place behind this one. This question is certainly one we as ministers must ask ourselves on a regular basis. Here’s what I mean. Since elementary school, I have been nearsighted, and anything more than a few feet away is nothing more than a blur. I have found that nearsightedness has also shown up in my work. With so much to do on a weekly basis, it’s easy to reduce ministry to accomplishing the required tasks: prepare to preach, teach Bible studies, extend pastoral care, tend to the business of church, and work for the good of the community. But ministry is more than a checklist, and periodically we have to ask ourselves why we do what we do. All our activities, while important, must connect to a larger purpose. Addressing this question gives us the necessary corrective lens with which to look beyond our limited range of focus and ask what all those tasks add up to. What larger picture do those weekly snapshots of work create? Even more important, we can (and should!) put the same question to the congregations we serve. Why do we worship, host fellowship meals, engage in ministry and mission, and do the other thousand and one things we do during any given week? Our answer has to be bigger and better than, “It’s what we’ve always done.” Asking “why?” forces us to think about identity as the people of God and the distinctiveness of the gospel that binds us together. Whenever we ask ourselves “why?” we’re digging around our roots, applying some much-needed fertilizer, and giving ourselves a better chance to flourish and thrive.
While the uncertainty of the last couple of years may indeed be in the rearview mirror, giving attention to these questions will help us navigate the way forward.