Bonus Rant

Additional rant because of a letter I received into today's mail.

This letter comes from a ministry I admire and is written by a man I respect. I think that if I talked to him about it, he would understand and correct or at least explain his wording. But the fact is, the wording (I believe) betrays the real thinking of many of those who are in full-time ministry about their position as contrasted with the position of those who are not in full-time ministry.

The actual letter is to announce that the ministry has chosen a person to become the new Director to replace the letter's author, who is the current Director and is retiring at year's end. We will use the name Buster Bilge for the new Director. With the insertion of the new name, here is the paragraph exactly as it appears in the letter:

"Buster has experience in the business world as well as in Campus Ministry. He worked for two years in Research and Design and as Head of Conceptualization for a large toy company in St. Louis. He has started and sold off two small companies himself. He has been offered other jobs but turned them down because he wants his life to make a real difference in the world. As he put it in a casual conversation with me one day, "I want my life to count for Truth with a capital "T." He believes Jesus is that Truth and that Campus Ministry is the right place for him to invest his life."

Okay, I will not quarrel with Buster's motivation and statement, but I will absolutely take issue with the idea presented that leaving the secular world and pursuing full time ministry as a vocation is the way to make a real difference in the world.

That secular-sacred dichotomy creeps into everything. As if those in "secular" work cannot be ministers and cannot make a "real difference in the world."

NEWS FLASH: If it wasn't for those of us in "secular" ministry who see part (and only part) of our ministry as being the support of the full time vocational "sacred" ministers ... where would you be? You definitely wouldn't be kicking back at Starbucks on a Monday morning with a bunch of other spoiled, soft and snide shepherds discussing the latest problems with the flock.

Here's an idea ... spend some time with us peons in the trenches and see how it is that people really suffer. In the trenches people suffer by degrees and die by systematic attrition of idealism. In the "real difference"-making world of full time ministry, you have to pick up the pieces after a major melt-down, but here in the non-"real difference"-making work-a-day world, we have the opportunity - nay, the obligation - to help people who are struggling with the all-too-real erosion of their hope, security and understanding. You may see one in ten sinners who come to your church on your terms to receive help as you define it and administer it - all on your schedule. We see all ten and, get this, have the opportunity to be the church - to be Jesus - to them as they need it: when and where they need it.

If you want to make a real difference, the realize that you are the church wherever you are. Wherever you are called to be. Whether in the trenches of society, or in the ivory towers of churchy-church-church.

Get on with it.