the tension of future and present

in my time as a member of the United Methodist church, I have been privy to many, many conversations about the state of the church.

whether it be church council meetings in the basement of my home church where we fretted over budgets and checking accounts or annual conference meetings or jurisdictional meetings or general conference or general agency meetings, the theme doesn't change much.

where we are is broken and where we're headed is unknown.

I was at an annual meeting of United Methodist communicators a few weeks ago where we had a panel discussion with leaders of various general church agencies. During the question and answer time, one of the communicators asked the panel members about what it means for us to not forget to tell the story.

And in my mind, every time she said "the story," she meant "The Story." The story of Jesus, the story of the Gospel, the story of redemption and grace and life in Christ.

But the answers did not talk about the Story. The answers were about telling the story of United Methodism, of reminding folks that our churches do good things, of sharing about our larger church's efforts with malaria and missions and connectionalism.

where we are is broken and where we're headed is unknown.

There were lots of questions about what is going to happen at General Conference this spring and how things will be restructured and what we are going to do about all of the things that seem to be falling apart around us.

That's the tension we live in. As a church, as an individual, as humans.

We know where we are in the now, we know it's not working, we know our sin, we see the way the things around us are not as they should be.

And yet we are afraid. Afraid of change, afraid of risks, afraid of what will happen when what is becomes what was.

And that is not wrong. It is not wrong to fear.

It is wrong to allow our fear to prevent us from following where Christ is leading us. It is wrong to pretend that if we stay still enough nothing will ever change. It is wrong to pretend everything is okay when it is so clearly not. It is wrong to stand and complain and whine instead of moving forward into what could be different.

The story is in the tension.

The Story is in the refining of our hearts, the transforming of our lives, the messy, gritty process of surrendering ourselves before our Creator and being made into who we have been created to be.

It is in the in between space of beginning and end, start and finish, birth and death.

The church is found in the place between.

I have heard so many sermons about how the church must change. I have listened to so many seminars and presentations about how we must grow and adapt or we will die.

But when we talk about it as something that will happen in the blink of an eye or the snap of our fingers, we forget that our Story is one of the process of grace and sanctification.

Christ did not create the church so that it might undergo a structural face lift every few decades.

Our practices might change, our worship styles might adapt, our understandings of the life of the church might expand, but we cannot shed who we are now when we look at who we want to be later.

The church is a testament to the ongoing journey of walking with Christ. We will try to be faithful and we will not always succeed. And so we will keep on, we will walk the in between and we will find grace in the tension.

For the Story we have to tell isn't about a perfect church or a perfectly holy heart.

It's about our cracks, our holes, our wounds and the Christ who fills them.

where we are broken and where we're headed is unknown. Thanks be to His holy name.