The Christmas I Stopped Singing a Lullaby

When my children were babies, I loved singing lullabys to them as I rocked them to sleep. They were mostly songs I learned from my mother and grandmother before me—“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mommy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird” and “Go to sleepy little baby ʼfore the Boogie Man gets you” were two of our favorites. Another favorite was one in the hymnal used in most of the churches where I grew up:

Can you count the stars of evening
That are shining in the sky?
Can you count the clouds that daily
Over all the world go by?
God the Lord, who doth not slumber,
Keepeth all the boundless number;
But He careth more for thee,
But He careth more for thee.

It was a sweet song expressing the faith that God would individually care for each little child. Holding my sleeping infant and softly singing these words was both a parent’s prayer, but also an expression of comfort and security.

Our second child was born in August of 1984—the year a terrible famine struck Ethiopia. That fall the news was full of stories about the hundreds of thousands of people dying of starvation. I sat down to our annual Thanksgiving Feast of turkey and dressing haunted by images of starving children with emaciated faces and bloated bellies. I tried to forget the images while I ate and avoid feelings of guilt for my gluttony while others were starving, but that just made me feel more guilty for trying to forget.

Then one night I began to sing that lullaby to Zack as I rocked him to sleep. I came to the third verse and the words choked in my throat—I just couldn’t get them out:

Can you count the many children
In their little beds at night,
Who without a thought of sorrow
Rise again at morning light?
God the Lord, who dwells in heaven,
Loving care to each has given;
He has not forgotten thee,
He has not forgotten thee.

I have never sung the song again. I can’t. I don’t believe it any more. It was a song of a faith that only made sense in a life of privilege and plenty. The words were not true for starving children in Ethiopia.

A few days after Thanksgiving a group of British and Irish pop and rock stars recorded a new song to raise money for famine relief.  The song was written by Bob Geldoff (of Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure (of Ultravox). Some of the biggest names of the day participated—Sting, Phil Collins, George Michael, Duran Duran, Bananarama, and more. “Do they Know It’s Christmas?” became a huge hit in both England and America.

I first heard it riding in the car in Chicago in the middle of the bustle of the Christmas season. The lyrics were piercing, disturbing, and inspiring.

But say a prayer, Pray for the other ones
At Christmas time it's hard, but when you're having fun
There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you

Do they know it's Christmastime at all?
Feed the world
Feed the world

I lost a song that season. But I learned a better one.

Something Has Changed

The other day I went to a run-down motel to pick up the belongings of a homeless man named Dwayne who has been part of our Reunion community. He had been sharing a room there with a man who was living on meager disability checks. Dwayne paid him about $15 a day to share a room, money he earned selling The Contributor on street corners. Dwayne has been in the hospital for weeks and is now in the respite care program at Room In The Inn. The roommate is moving back to his home state, and Dwayne asked me to go get his belongings for him.

I took some boxes and plastic bags and gathered his stuff. Two small boxes of books and papers. A few large bags of clothes. An electric blanket. Some personal items. I carried it all down to my car and packed it tightly into my trunk. As I closed the lid, it suddenly occurred to me…I just loaded a man’s entire earthly belongings into the trunk of my car. The trunk of my car.

And this was not a nameless homeless person we might stop to help or serve in line at a mission. This was my friend Dwayne. I see him every week in our home. Most Wednesdays we grab a burger and talk about life. I had everything my friend owned in my trunk.

Something has changed in my ministry these last few years. I’ve been involved in some way in ministry to the poor in the city for many years—whether starting a tutoring program for inner city kids in Milwaukee, or serving on the advisory board of a Houston charity, or preaching for a church with a food and clothing pantry in Nashville. I have considered myself a compassionate person with some level of understanding of the issues faced by the poor. I guess I would have considered myself a friend to the poor.

But something has changed these last three years. It all seems more personal—which might be expected since I now work for an inner city ministry—but it’s more than just my job. And it seems more complicated—I’ve learned so much more, and realize how little I still know (my father always said that the value of an education is not what you know, but what you know that you don’t know)—but that’s not what I mean either. The change is something more than greater knowledge or deeper involvement.

What has changed is that I used to serve the poor—now they are my friends. I don’t mean I am friendly to them (I think I always was). I don’t mean that I know them by name. No, I mean we are actually friends.

They have been in our home, and Judy and I have been in theirs. We were invited to her son’s wedding. He has slept in our guest room. Her little girls call us Miss Judy and Papa. I was up in the middle of the night talking him out of suicide.  He came to our home for Thanksgiving Dinner. We’re friends.

I’d feel better about that, but I keep wondering why I was near the poor for so long, but not close to them. Is it just that we moved into a transitional neighborhood? That’s surely a part of it. But I know it’s more than that. We’ve chosen to make friends with people who happen to be poor—not because they are poor, but also not because we have a lot in common (isn’t that the usual basis for choosing friends?). We have chosen to make friends with people in our neighborhood, and our neighborhood is diverse. We’ve chosen to make friends with people we are meeting in our ministry—and we’re ministering to people from more diverse backgrounds than ever before. We’ve chosen to make friends—not just to be friendly.

And I see poverty differently now. It’s not just about political issues or social causes. It’s not just about theological positions on social justice. It’s not just about feeling compassion or showing mercy.

No, now it’s about our friends.

Why I Did This, Part 3: Scribes and Disciples

Early in my ministry, Ezra 7:10 became something of a theme verse for me:

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

Like Ezra, I devoted myself to study the Word of God, to do it, and to teach it to the people of God. In retrospect, if I’m honest with myself, I devoted myself more to the study and teaching, than to the doing.

To some degree, I was trained academically to be like Ezra, “a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses” (7:6), and teaching seems to be my area of giftedness—at least, if you believe the spiritual aptitude tests and the feedback of church members. And I still don’t know what to do with the sense that I am not using my primary gifts very much—one or two adjunct courses a year at Lipscomb University, and an occasional guest sermon at area churches—a reality that continues to distress my devoted wife.

In our new home in the city, we have a storage room above our garage. I built some shelves in it to hold my books, in case I ever needed access to them. Several months after we moved, I unpacked box after box of books onto those shelves—commentaries, Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and grammars, studies on New Testament backgrounds, resources for ministry—hundreds of books representing years and years of perfecting my craft as a scribe skilled in the Word. As I unpacked a long row of books on worship, I found myself beginning to weep. It seemed as though I was putting everything I had worked so hard to become on a storage shelf.

But this too was a moment of truth. Perhaps, of all the discoveries I have made about myself and my ministry, I think the most troubling is this: I have come to realize that I have lived my life more as a disciple of Ezra than a disciple of Jesus.

What does one say after that?

“Sorry” seems trite. But I am sorry. I must apologize to God for failing to do what was most important in my service of him. I must apologize to Jesus for misrepresenting his ministry—my ministry didn’t look like his ministry. I must apologize to the good people who looked to me as a spiritual leader. I believe I failed at the central task of a leader—I failed to follow Jesus myself.

Followers of Jesus do what Jesus did. I failed to do that. It’s just that simple.

Ultimately, I feel this may be the greatest failure of churches today, whether traditional or contemporary. We don’t really pay our scribes to be disciples, and so we aren’t very good at making disciples. We have focused our efforts on making believers in Jesus—either preserving and passing on the traditions of the faith, or evangelizing people to become believers. As a result, our efforts have produced a reality that I only recently have come to recognize: most churches are full of believers in Jesus, but not followers of Jesus. As Denver Moore (The Same Kind of Different as Me and What Difference Do It Make) observes, we’re a lot more focused on Bible studying than Bible doing. I helped perpetuate that reality.

For the past 3 years I have been trying to become what for 30 years I failed to be—someone who goes where Jesus went, helps those he helped, teaches what he taught, and is friends with those who were his friends. It’s not been easy—but it’s been good.

And it’s 30 years too late.

Why I Did This, Part 2: Prophets and Priests

I often felt my calling in ministry was to be something of a prophet.  Not in the sense of someone who could predict the future. And not in the sense of receiving visions from God (my ministry-related dreams were sometimes more akin to nightmares than ecstatic visions). I mean prophet in the sense of one who speaks the word of God to his people, calling them back to faithfulness and obedience.

I thought of prophets like John the Baptist calling people to repentance (though I never had the guts to call a congregation a “brood of vipers”!). I thought of Peter boldly declaring to the temple authorities that they could threaten him all they wanted, but he would not stop preaching Jesus. I thought of Jeremiah, who would have quit if it were not for the burning fire inside that compelled him to keep declaring what he knew was true. And I thought of many voices in that prophetic tradition, my father among them.

I wanted to be like them. I wanted their integrity.  I wanted their insight into the will of God. I wanted to understand God’s message to his people and faithfully proclaim it with the clarity and passion and courage that I saw in them.

I was fortunate never to face the persecution they faced. Unlike John, I never risked having my head cut off (though I lost it a few times). Unlike Peter, I never was scourged in the temple (though, like most preachers, I left a few church meetings feeling a little beaten up). Unlike my father, I never was fired by good Christian cowards moved more by fear than by the Spirit (though there were brothers and sisters along the way who lobbied for my exile).

The tensions I faced over the years were not because of crowds and kings out to silence the prophets. I think much of the tension was because of the role I was in as a full-time minister. I was a prophet who was paid to be a priest. We do not really hire preachers to preach like prophets. We hire ministers to serve the church.

I don’t mean to discount the role of the priest and minister. Priestly service was God-ordained ministry. They were charged to teach the people the Law of God; to lead the people in worship and praise; and, to call the people before God in confession and sacrifice to experience God’s forgiveness. But I felt I was called to be a preacher more than a worship leader.

For too many years I found myself saying, “I’m tired of trying to keep rich, white, suburban Christians happy.” Those are hard words. They always felt hard whenever I uttered them privately to colleagues in ministry—who always seemed to know exactly what I meant. They are hard words because those suburban Christians were truly my friends, my family. I loved them, and always will. They are hard words because—perhaps, especially because—I myself was one of those rich, white, suburban Christians. (I’m still a rich, white Christian, just not in the suburbs.) But they are also hard words because they speak a disturbing truth about the role of church leaders in our contemporary, consumer-driven church culture.

I have often heard it said that the role of a prophet was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But most folk come to church only wanting the first part (especially since we all like to believe that we are afflicted). I must say that comforting the grieving became one of the most meaningful parts of my ministry. But overall, maybe it was a mistake for someone who felt called to be a prophet to get a job as a minister.

Prophets in the Bible were rarely priests—Samuel, Ezekiel, maybe a few others. Typically, prophets stood outside the institutions of temple, synagogue, and monarchy. Their task was to challenge the priests, kings, rabbis, and even other popular prophets, calling them back to righteousness, mercy, and justice. Their role was to stand like Jeremiah in the temple and warn the people not to trust in the church rituals. To cry out like John in the desert that God can make Christians out of rocks. To declare like Isaiah on the Day of Atonement that God hates their worship services.

So how do you do that and at the same time fulfill your responsibility to maintain the rituals, build the sanctuaries, lead the services, and give the children of Abraham an encouraging word with which to go forth and face the afflictions of life in middle class America?

I don’t know. Maybe if I figure it out some day, I’ll return to the priesthood. In the meantime, I just need to figure out what to do with what’s left of Jeremiah’s heartburn.

Why I Did This, Part 1: Ministers and Mission

I think I was awakening to something during my ministry in Milwaukee in the early 90s, without fully realizing it. We were engaging the neighborhood school near our church, making advances in racial reconciliation, and also breaking down barriers between Christian fellowships. Looking back, I think I was experiencing missional impulses that were moving me beyond our church walls.

For reasons too complicated to sort out here (and I’m still not sure I could), we felt called to a church in Houston. It was a church with a great, and well-deserved, reputation for supporting many good works in the city. It was also a church with an ecumenical spirit and equality for women. But it was not growing, and I set myself to the task of trying to help the church make the changes necessary to attract the unchurched to hear the good news. It was the only way I knew.

For years I had studied church growth, and nearly all the experts said the same things—and most established churches struggled with their recommendations. We brought in a consultant, read books, and felt the pain of trying to change. But there was a revolution already happening in Christianity, and I was only beginning to become aware of it. America was becoming postmodern and post-Christian, and the theories of what this would mean for the church were becoming hot topics.  If I had understood these issues better, I think I would have understood better why I was struggling so much.

Many factors make it difficult for churches to change—tradition, natural human resistance to change, institutional leadership structures, increasing cultural irrelevance. But I am convinced now that the most significant issue we faced was a personal issue in my ministry.

After several years there, we moved back home to Nashville and I continued the mission of trying to lead an established church toward growth and outreach—with many of the same struggles. Then, with the help of Randy Harris and David Wray, we began a study of the “missional church” (interestingly, the church in Houston began the same study at about the same time). The issues facing churches in postmodern, post-Christian America began to appear in sharper focus, as did some of the more substantive changes we would need to make if we were truly to begin advancing on mission in the world—which is not the same as trying to attract people to the church building and church activities.

We began to see that “mission” is not just one of several things a church is supposed to do. Mission is the reason the church exists. God is on a mission in this world, and he created the church for that mission. As missional writers often say, “The church doesn’t have a mission; the mission has a church.” And being on mission doesn’t just mean trying to have the kind of church that will attract consumers to its services and programs. It means living on mission in the world—serving those in need and being friends to those who don’t know God.

But change was no easier even with a clearer vision. In fact, in some ways it seemed to become harder. We still faced issues of tradition, human nature, institutional leadership structures, and cultural irrelevance. But I began to realize that the issues churches face are deeper than could be addressed with program changes.

It began to become clear to me that a great deal of the problem was that too many of us in leadership in churches—including me—were not living missionally. I was a minister on a mission in the church, but I was not personally on mission in the world. How could I lead a church to become God’s people on mission in the world when I was not on mission myself?

My job was the church; my church was the church; and my friends were the church.

I had long lamented this reality as a barrier to my ability to reach unchurched people. But now those words were moving from an excuse to a conviction. I had to learn a new way of living in this world. Perhaps I could have done that and stayed in my role as a minister, but I don’t think so. 

We don’t really pay our ministers to be missionaries. Everything I was reading and hearing said I had to spend time where people are, in coffee shops and pubs rather than in a church office. But there were three problems with this. First, I hate coffee and beer…seriously! So what was I supposed to do in a coffee house or pub? I figured out I could drink hot chocolate at a Starbucks and fit in ok, but at the neighborhood pub there is no hot chocolate option.

Second, what church pays its preacher to hang out in pubs and have a drink with worldly people? Jesus ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners, but preachers don’t (and look at the reaction Jesus got from church folk!). Good brothers and sisters who want to believe that Jesus had matzos and grape juice at the Passover would not be ready for this!

Third, and maybe most importantly, I liked my church office. I liked being surrounded by my books, with my colleagues and friends just down the hall. I liked using it as a base to prepare to preach to Christians, to teach classes to Christians, to have planning meetings with Christians, to lead small groups of Christians, to visit Christians in the hospital, to comfort Christians at the funeral home, and to attend ministerial association meetings with Christian ministers. I knew how to do this. I liked it. I was pretty good at it. But I needed to leave it.

So we moved into the city and have been learning a new way to live. It has taken us to new experiences, but more importantly to new relationships. We built a house in a transitional neighborhood, one where the privileged and underprivileged live on the same streets. (We hadn’t planned on building, but we met the builders at a neighborhood meeting—they live here too.) Some of our neighbors are well off and are building new homes near their downtown offices. Others are on government assistance. We love the socio-economic and racial diversity of these neighbors working together to improve their community.

Now we have open houses for our neighborhood instead of for church members. We have our neighbors into our home, go to restaurants and events with them, and plant the community garden with them. I play trivia at the pub with the guys (I’ve learned to drink light beer…and have almost learned to like it). Our neighbors invite us out to eat and to their birthday parties. For the first time in 30 years, we were invited to a Christmas party at the home of an atheist—it’s the first time in 30 years that I have an atheist friend.

And that’s what bothers me most—30 years of missed opportunities to be like Jesus. I look back now and see so many chances I missed to be friends with people Jesus would have been friends with . . . but I was too preoccupied with being a Christian.

Why Did I Do This? A Brief Introduction

I haven’t blogged in a long time—probably too long. I return now with an attempt to answer a question I am frequently asked (and often ask myself). After 30 years of being a pulpit minister, I am now working with a nonprofit that serves inner city children and trying to plant a missional network of house churches in the city—so, why did I do this?

The list of preachers in my generation who are abandoning the pulpit to work with nonprofits and parachurch ministries seems to be growing, and it reads like a “who’s who” of preachers in the Churches of Christ. I can’t speak for them, though I have talked to enough of them to know that some aspects of my story are similar to some aspects of their stories. But this is not an attempt to describe this troubling trend. It is merely an attempt to share my own discoveries in the hope that it will be helpful to others trying to make sense of what is happening to the church in America and to their own congregations and ministers—and perhaps what is happening in their own discontent with American Christianity.

I’ve been wrestling with this for almost a year. I’m still not sure it’s ready to share publicly, but maybe it will never be. I have promised others that I would share some of these thoughts, so here they are in a series of three posts on “Ministers and Mission,” “Prophets and Priests,” and “Scribes and Disciples.”