A couple of days ago I received an all but ordinary email from an Adventist chaplain. When I say "all but ordinary" I am thinking especially of its uncompromising yet thoughtful ardor, its exasperation and frustration. Even as I re-read it there seemed to be no way of picking a circumspect path through the words and sentences so that their effect would be a little less disruptive to my more conventional ministerial mind. Here's a slightly edited sampling quoted with permission:
"The October '99 Ministry cover featured 'Church Planting/Recapturing the Vision' but after the letters section I could not see myself reading any more! Is this really where we're at 155 years after 'The Great Disappointment?'. .. People are starving around the world. Children are naked in the streets of our cities. Those in jail sit in isolated silence waiting for a word of hope from some visitor. And what's our 'hot button' topic?... Jewelry and hermeneutics. I'm so sick of seeing our time and emotional energy drained away by a preoccupation with such issues by all the stuff that keeps us from feeding, clothing, and visiting. I'm fed up with being part of a church that exhausts its spiritual resources on arguments at such a level."
Before your well formulated soul rises, as mine did, to object to such an outburst by saying something like, "Now there's a man, unbalanced by his anger" or "... Another attempt to compromise the unique evangelistic call of God to Seventh-day Adventists," let's look squarely into the eyes of what is true in what our colleague has said. For instance, in Jesus' most penetrating exposition on the end of time and the judgment he concluded by speaking explicitly about the fact that it is how we work or don't work with the hungry, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned and others like them, that will determine how we will be appraised by God in the final hour (Matt. 25:31-46). The same concern is at the heart of the "woes" of Matthew 23, where Jesus takes on the matter of paying tithe on mint and anise and forgetting the weightier matters; observing religious decorum and etiquette while the central, enduring substance is all but non-existent.
James defines pure and undefiled religion in God's eyes as visiting "orphans and widows in their distress and [keeping] oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:17, NASB). And so we could cite line upon biblical line, particularly if we look at Scripture's overall emphasis and its almost omnipresent call for justice and mercy and especially if we ponder the profoundly well balanced ministry in which Jesus immersed Himself the ministry which defines ours.
Certainly other aspects of ministry are by no means to be neglected, such as the one in the second half of James' exhortation above that we remain unspotted by the world. But I am afraid and I am convinced that our obedience to the summons of the first half of that text (to minister meaningfully to those in concrete physical, emotional and spiritual need) has been seriously sidetracked in our local congregations. This neglect is largely due to our inordinate and unbalanced concentration on "hot-button" issues such as those recently presented in Ministry and thus commented upon in the letters column in the October issue of Ministry' to which our colleague refers.
There are of course a lot of things Adventists do along these lines, such as the ministry of ADRA and the work of our Health Systems and prison ministries and our local community services, but what I am concerned about is the essential orientation of the ministry that is called forth by us as pastors in our local churches around the world. Here it is not difficult for us to become immersed in less important concerns so that the things that really matter are neglected.
I think my friend is right. Like much of the religion of Jesus' Jerusalem, we spend huge proportions of our emotional and spiritual capital on casuistic theological and behavioral fiddling, while the world suffers and dies around us. And this tends to be true whether we happen to be on the "liberal" or the "conservative" side of today's "hot-button" issue.
Even as I write this editorial, I know there are some who will reflexively oppose its essence on the basis of its supposed rejection of "the standards of the church." Such reactions are far off the spirit and content of my appeal. I am calling for the balance of Jesus' ministry to be ours, or if you like, for the balance expressed in the whole of James 1:17 to be ours. I am not calling for compromise but for a higher, holier and more complete practice of Christianity and Christian ministry. I am calling for this because, along with my e-mail friend, I think we are in urgent need of rethinking and reworking the proportions of our calling.
I wonder what would happen to our evangelism if along with our uncompromising presentation of the great truths God has called us to proclaim, we were known to be genuinely and effectively a people who unselfconsciously serve the real needs of the humanity about us. I cannot help but believe that our proclamation would be much more effective, just as Jesus' was.
May I dare you who are at all challenged by this line of thinking, who have a vision for this kind of ministry or who may have done some work along this line, to write a thoughtful article for Ministry outlining how this kind of emphasis could be implemented in the average pastor's ministry in the average congregation. The question of such an article would be, how may the consciousness and action of the congregation be raised so that more in a local church become involved in personally and genuinely reaching out to the weak and the poor of a given neighborhood? (See the Masthead of any Ministry issue for details about article submission.)
