By Amy Butler
There are many important things we learn when we attend seminary, and there are many important things we never learn until long after we leave those hallowed halls.
One important axiom of ministry I learned long after I graduated from seminary and set out to change the world is this: “Desperation is a wonderful gift.”
The first few times I learned this lesson were just due to circumstances. When it’s five minutes before worship starts and you realize there’s steam coming out of the scalding hot water in the baptistery because no one thought to regulate the temperature setting on the new water heater, all of the sudden the commercial icemaker in the kitchen takes on important liturgical significance.
Desperation invites us to look at things in radically new ways.
On this adventure of ministry one often finds oneself at a dead end, facing a situation in which none of the typical solutions seems workable. It’s then that the strangest possibilities and most unlikely opportunities — things you never would have thought of before — suddenly become the most obvious course of action.
Desperation is a wonderful gift. Any pastor who is even vaguely paying attention learns this over and over again, even if they didn’t teach it in seminary.
Recently I attended a conference of ministers invited to discuss the future of the church. Discussion was heated, as is to be expected in a group of folks who like to hear themselves talk. The ultimate conclusion was that, from wherever you stand, things are looking rather grim for the institutional church. Having largely lost its authoritative voice and role in the community, the church, everyone seemed to say, is an institution whose future — at least in the expression we have known it — is in question.
What does this mean for our denominations? How does it impact our financial resources? Do people still need faith communities? If so, what will they look like? How does this change the way we educate our children in the church, make disciples, plan worship, call and train clergy or fund missions?
As the discussion progressed it became clear. Many questions plague modern church leaders, questions clearly of significant import, and nobody seems to have many answers.
The clear thread running underneath all the conversation was all kinds of fear: fear of change, fear of an unknown future, fear of displacement and more. Here we were, leaders of the church, voicing our own bafflement over the future of this institution to which we have offered our best professional skills, deep commitment and hopes for the future.
Sitting there steeped in fear, voicing questions we had all been thinking to ourselves for some time, I thought of the disciples of Jesus, gathered in a locked room in the wake of his crucifixion. Surely they were paralyzed by fear, even some of the same fears voiced by my colleagues: What does this mean? Where do we go next? What will our lives look like in the light of this new reality?
If desperation is in fact a wonderful gift, perhaps our focus should not be the perpetually elusive answers to our fear-filled questions. How can we ever tell the future, anyway? Who knows what might happen when we finally let go and admit we don’t know the answers?
Desperation may be just the place in which the new path becomes suddenly and unexpectedly clear. One thing we do know: God’s work in this world is tenacious and ongoing, and it will be accomplished one way or another.
If we could just get desperate enough to see the new possibilities we never considered before, who knows what might happen?