Confessions of a Cynical Pastor and Reflections of a Humbled Father and Son

Caveat Lector: This is rambling and poorly woven together. It's more a long, stream-of-consciousness reflection on the last weekend than anything deliberate.

Step 1: Cynicism
I'm cynical by nature. It's not a spiritual gift, but a curse. I don't find it on any of Paul's more positive lists, like the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5), the "have this mind in you" list (Phil 2), the "clothe yourselves with this stuff" list (Col 3). I tend to get frustrated when I hear people at our community of faith talk about what a "giving congregation" we are. I see the budget, I know where we live and have an idea of what we could probably give as a group, but what I think I know and what I see in our monthly reports are not lining up quite as nicely as the subatomic particles in the wake of the Big Bang.

In my opinion, we have created a communal narrative of who we are that allows us to propagate poor giving. Language is the only game in town and our language belies the reality of our situation... or does it?

Step 2: Confession
This last Friday we discovered that one of our families was in dire straights. They have fallen on very rough financial times and their utilities had all been shut off about 10 days earlier. I went to work to track down the family, finally making contact at their home and assessing the situation to see how we might be able to help. The need was great, young family with several young kids, no electricity to preserve food and milk, no power for heat on Michigan's nippy spring nights.

I contacted our shepherds and our servant who cares for benevolence to see what steps we could/should take. We decided to ask our church family to help out on Sunday morning and then reassess what was needed. So, on Sunday morning brief announcements were made in our classes and a then again at the beginning and close of our worship gathering. Some people wrote checks, others grabbed cash and loose change. People were handing it to elders and our preaching minister during polite handshakes and greetings.

Now, as cynical pastor, I was already anticipating how much we might need to take out of our benevolence fund to help cover the need. On Monday the head of our finance committee sent me an email to let me know that we'd raised over $1200 to help this family in one morning.

Well, at least I got one thing right: our language, our stories shape reality. On Sunday morning, we lived into our best narratives.

God, forgive me for my cynicism and give me new eyes to see your people more clearly.

Step 3: Praxis
I am blessed in my job. There are many occasions when I have the opportunity to take my daughter with me to join in the work of the inbreaking kingdom of God. Today was one of those days. This morning MJ and I had the chance to help bring closure to the situation described above. We drove into Detroit to pay one bill and into Pontiac to pay another. We then put the balance of what was collected on gift cards to help alleviate the family's grocery and gas expenses a bit. Then we went back to see the family and give them payment receipts and the gift cards.

Now, I know that MJ does not understand what is happening right now. How could she? But, she is being formed, shaped, evangelized into a lived narrative, a way of life that is about ushering in the reign of God through embodying the kingdom to and for others. MJ gets to join me in these adventures and gets to have this type of living shape her life. I am just humbled that I get to be a part of it through my own praxis of walking the way of Jesus.

Step 4: Reflection
Now, why am I so confident that this will have a shaping and lasting impact in her life? I feel this way primarily because I know my own story. Now, I've told and written my spiritual autobiography several times, for small groups or as an academic exercise. Today, though, I had a chance to reflect on some very old stories again, this time as a son and a father.

One of the things that most deeply influenced my understanding of the life of faith was watching the way my parents lived the story out in their lives. My parents were sacrificial givers. Now, it didn't always seem that their giving was that sacrificial. We were an Oklahoma family in a para-petroleum company, and things were good when the oil industry was good. I remember when they gave our old station to someone close to our family whose car had broken down. It wasn't a huge sacrifice for them at the time, but it was cultivating a way of life in all of us that would whether the collapse of the oil industry in the 1980s.

In fact, one of the most powerful moments in my spiritual story was the night when I stumbled in on a conversation that my parents were having. To this day I am thankful that I wandered into the kitchen! Let me set the stage a bit. Our lives changed in some significant ways with the oil crash. My dad went without a job for nearly 2 years. We spent a lot of that time living off of college and retirement funds. My sister and I both were in private school at the time and they people there had become our family. We couldn't imagine leaving and our parents never even suggested it. When my dad did finally find a new career opportunity, it was a commission based job in a field that took a lot of time to build a network of connections. So, while we were never in danger of "losing it all" (at least not as far as I know), the financial rivers were not flowing freely.

Then came that night. I waled into the kitchen to discover my parents trying to figure out what they needed to do to pay the school bill. Now, that might not seem too surprising, but what mu sophomoric sophomore ears heard was them discussing three tuition fees. Wanting to be careful to protect one of my peers, they had never told us that they had been paying the tuition for a another family had told the principal that they were going to have to leave the school because of financial problems. The lived story that they wrote when things were good shaped how they continued to live even when the well seemed to have run dry. They had cultivated a mode of living in the world that continued to help them imagine hope in a world that had collapsed on them. They had "hope in the face of dominant despair," as Walter Brueggemann would say.

And their story has become my story, woven into the fabric of who I am and who I hope my daughter will become. Thanks mom and dad for shaping my narrative, and for giving me something to model for my own daughter. I'm eternally grateful. And just maybe, after the experience of this weekend, I'm starting to feel those walls around my cynical heart crumble....