What's Going on in the Church?

"John, could we get together this week? I want to find out what's really going on in the church."

The person asking is a friend, a retired military chaplain. Even though he spent most of his professional life serving the spiritual needs of the highly diverse military population, he retains a keen interest in the Adventist system. He figures that I--a current employee and former editor of Adventist Today--have my fingers on the pulse of the denomination.

I don't. And there is an even more significant barrier to our conversation. When Larry says "Church" he means the denominational system--committees, presidents, elections, policies, funding streams, institutions. When I hear "Church," I think of the several hundred people who are in my phone book because of my title, Pastor. People I've done funerals or weddings for. Relatives of church members who once or twice in their lives have needed the services of a clergyman. My wife's horse trainer who feels safer talking to me about "God stuff" than to the priest at the where he's a member. The Church of God pastor working as a hospital chaplain who finds our congregation a safer, sweeter home for his family than the local congregations of his own denomination. The young people who haven't lived here for years, but still count North Hill as their church and me as their pastor when they have need a preacher's word or service.

So, what's going on in the church? Pat's having surgery for cancer today. Gresford, Judith and Tawny are thinking about how to bring the format of our worship service into the third millennium. Dee is planning our late-night Christmas Eve service. Gary and Eric are preparing for baptism. Gary's life is full of problems. Eric's is full of promise. What does baptism mean in those different contexts? Bill wonders how to make sense of "God is love" and the observable "unlove" of the world. Henry is asking what is left to believe in if creation is ancient and the New Testament is not absolutely inerrant. I'm preaching through the book of Revelation, tyring to persuade my congregation it is really about grace and peace instead of doom and plagues. Several women who are relatively new to our congregation are trying to figure out how to break into the cliques of old timers.

What's going on in the church? People are trying to access God's help to deal with alcoholism, marriage, parenting, failing bodies, aging parents, lost jobs, unwanted singleness, depression, in-law troubles, game-addicted children.

I'm paid by the denominational system. My little local community could not exist apart from the institutions and social networks of the denomination. So I owe it respect. But the people in my phone book are so fascinating, so challenging, so all-engrossing that when I'm asked about the church I don't think about Pardon Mwansa, Lowell Cooper, Juan Prestol, Clifford Goldstein, Max Torkelson, Don Schneider, Angel Rodriguez. Instead I see the faces and imagine the stories of a few hundred people near Tacoma, WA.

For me, that's what's going on in the church.