Hiding all away...

Do you know the old show Harry Nilsson did for TV back in 1971:  The Point?  I used to love it and still think of it sometimes...

It kept running through my head throughout the day as I got comments and reactions after today's worship:  some folks GOT what was going on ~ they were in-synch with the music and message about being playful and grace-filled in community when it comes to the mystery of baptism ~ while other folks were perplexed and even annoyed. Who knows what they wanted or needed ~ it was just clear that today's non-linear conversation left some folk with more questions than answers ~ and they were uncomfortable.

That was, I suspect, what was supposed to happen:  those who were ready to be playful found nourishment while others scratched their heads ~ or even complained a little. Now, it used to really freak me out when folks complained to me about not getting my message ~ or being disconnected from the flow of worship ~ and my insecurities ran wild. But over the years I've come to two conclusions about all of this.  First, I am not really in control of worship: after the worship leaders give it their best shot, the rest is up to the Spirit. 

And second, most complaints (about worship or the pastor or church finances) are really a "veiled lament about deeper issues of the soul" according to M. Craig Barnes of Pittsburg Theological Seminary. In his book about the pastoral ministry, he writes in the opening chapter of The Pastor as Minor Poet:

Since people are unaccustomed to exploring the mystery of their own souls, they will often work out their spiritual anxieties by attempting to rearrange something external. like a church's music program. But it doesn't matter how many changes they make to the environment around them. They will never succeed in finding peace for the angst of the soul until they attend directly to it.  And this is why people have pastors. To be of service to the Holy Spirit, who is at work in human lives, the pastor can never reduce ministry to servicing parishioners' complaints about the church... (No we have to) invite people to look beneath their complaints to their personal loss.

And THAT is the POINT ~ the perspective ~ the reality I embrace at the close of this day. It was a rich day for us all:  we reclaimed sharing joys and concerns in worship and shared some deep prayers of joy and sorrow; we sang with gusto and listened for what the Spirit was saying to the church, too.  And then some of us gathered for a feast in the late afternoon and shared loved and music and stories and lots of laughter.

Barnes writes:  Poets have been blessed with a vision that allows them to explore, and express, the truth behind (our) reality. Poets see the despair and heartache as well as the beauty and miracle that lie just beneath the thin veneer of the ordinary, and they describe this in ways that are recognized in the mind, but mor eprofoundly in the soul. (Most of the time) what a congregation needs is not a strategist to help them form another plan for achieving a desired image of life, but a poet who looks beneath even the desperation to recover the mystery of what it means to be made in God's image.

I give thanks to God for the chance to explore faith poetically this day... and pray that I will have another shot at doing likewise tomorrow. More than that is out of my control, yes?