“When you three decide which one is the real reincarnated John the Baptist, I’ll be in my office!”

 Mother Mary Comes to Me!

From my undergraduate college days I remember Milton Rokeach’s book, The Three Christs of Ysilanti, a celebrated psychological study published forty years ago about three patients at a state mental hospital in Michigan, each of whom believed that he was Jesus. Despite the presence of the other self-proclaimed messiahs and the fact that no one accepted their claims, the patients persisted in their beliefs and avowals.  As I recall, they worked things out among themselves, deciding that they constituted the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

For seven years I was the executive director of Freedom Counseling Center, which helped reconcile families that had been disrupted by the conversion of one or more their members to any one of a number of religious groups known as “cults.” One of the most remarkable, amusing, and frustrating aspects of my work was working with individuals who alleged and/or whose followers believed that they were God manifest, Jesus returned, an reincarnated apostle, the only prophet of the end times, etc.

One memorable day, my dear friend Jim phoned to chat and asked me if I were doing anything interesting. I told him that I had just spoken to Mary the mother of Jesus, who came to see me in my office.

“Did she offer you a blessing?” he asked.

“No,” I replied,  “She tried to sell me some costume jewelry--at a discount.”

At which point, Jim exclaimed, “Look, I was raised a Catholic and I think this conversation is getting sacrilegious, so I’m hanging up!” And he did.

On another occasion, I spoke with three different families during the same week, each of which had a son who believed that he was Jesus Christ returned.

I located missing persons in several small groups—6 to 8 members—who believed that they were the only true church of the last days and that their leader was one of the witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation (11:3). The believers were usually 20- to 22-year-old college students who had dropped out to lock themselves in an apartment with their leader and await the coming of the Great Tribulation. I also dealt with leaders and followers in large and notorious groups headed by such well-known personalities as Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, Da Free John, Swami Rama et al.

For years, my fantasy has been to rent an auditorium and invite all of the Gods,  gurus, Christs, apostles, prophets, and only true church members to confer and to divide the territory amicably and harmoniously among themselves as did the three Christs of Ypsilanti.

 “After 97 years you just decided to seek him? My advice is get a Bible and a good book on speed reading!”

 Average Age? Dead!

 In my denomination, the United Church of Christ, more than half the members are 50 or older; fully one -third are 65 or older and retired. The median age is 50.

At the Little Brown Church, the average age was dead. Less than a third of the membership was under 60. The median age was about 70.

The average UCC church has about two hundred members; Little Brown had about 85 active members. The church had been in business for forty years and many of the then current members were among the congregation’s founders. The church’s first pastor was still a member! Among the originators, about twenty members circulated the major offices among themselves. Every one of them had been moderator, deacon, trustee, etc. on one or more occasions.

I accidentally locked myself out of the church edifice early one evening when no one else was around. My car keys were in my office and I lived twenty miles away. Fortunately, I had my church directory with me. I walked a hundred yards to a service station and phoned the first person in the “A” listings, Adele Aaron.  Sure enough, because she had been a trustee a few time over the years, she had a key! (Almost every member was or had been a member of the Board of Trustees. Former members always neglected to return their keys when their terms expired.) With key in hand, Adele joined me in the church parking lot in five minutes.

A small church such as Little Brown is more an extended family than a spiritual community. Sunday morning is a ritualized family picnic. Old friends get together and bring one another up to date about their respective children, grandchildren, medical problems, and mutual acquaintances.

A pastor is like a stepfather. He was not there in the beginning, at birth. He is not party to the history of interpersonal trials and tribulations, past hurts and reconciliations. He does not know which cows are sacred and which closets are filled with skeletons. He has never sworn allegiance to the unspoken pact by which small churches live: “We’ve always done it this way. We’ve never done it that way.” Like stepchildren, members do not have to pay attention to him because he is not their “real father.” As the moderator of Little Brown Church bluntly put it to me, “Ministers come and go but our church is forever.”

“...and if you ever want to know anything about the Old Testament, just ask.I was there for most of it!!”

Bananas by the Bunch

 Maybe it was an old joke but I had never heard it before.

I was sitting outdoors at a cafe in Miami Beach. The place was kind of a joke itself. It was a Chinese -Jewish-Cuban-Mexican-American restaurant. A tiny place with a huge multi-lingual menu.

As I perused the menu, two men sauntered toward me. One was an old man, probably well into his eighties yet erect and buoyant in his stride. He was attired in Florida rest home chic—black-and-white checked polyester slacks, a bright yellow golf shirt, and white vinyl slip-on shoes with matching belt.

The other man was in his forties. He wore gray flannel slacks, a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, a conservative maroon tie, and cordovan wingtips. In his left hand, he carried an expensive snakeskin briefcase. As he spoke, his right hand traced grand, sweeping gestures in the air.

When they strode past me, I noticed the emotional contrast between them. The older man appeared cheerful and relaxed while the younger man seemed dramatically over-earnest. He was perspiring profusely in the south Florida humidity.

I could hear the younger man say in a rather pompous yet pleading manner, “Sam, we really should discuss your long term investment goals.”

“Goals, shmoals,” replied the elderly man, interrupting himself with a moment of hearty laughter. “At my age,” he continued, “I don’t even buy bananas by the bunch!”

By the grace of God and through the love of those who surround me, I am once again buying—and I am laughing. In the words of Allen Klein, “Humor in the darkest of places is a sign of emergence from grief and depression. It is an indication that I am beginning to embrace life again and that healing is taking place” (The Healing Power of Humor [New York: Jeremy T. Tarcher, 1989],p. xxi).

 “I’m so glad the trustees hired me. My last job? Special Forces, U.S. Army. Why?”

  Locked and Loaded

 Whether ministers are routinely turned over like hamburger flippers at McDonalds or somehow entrench themselves, the expectations that the minister is responsible for the success or failure of the congregation is deadly to the congregation. Ministers are neither football coaches nor corporate CEOs. They cannot fire the congregation, get rid of deadwood among the church’s officers or dismiss wayward members who refuse to meet their responsibilities. They have no control over finances, cannot tax the membership, buy or sell church property or even order office supplies without committee approval. Often they cannot hire or fire church staff members. Frequently they can be stuck with incompetents who owe their jobs to sympathy (“Who else would hire them?” So what if they can’t do the job. This is a church, isn’t it?) or family connections within the congregation.

I have known of long-term church secretaries who have ousted successive ministers over a number of years. Among church secretaries who worked for me over the years are numbered two alcoholics, one gun-toting paranoid, two who insisted on bringing their large guard dogs to work, two who brought their young children, several who could not type or use our word processing software or the church computer, at least two who flagrantly violated rules of confidentiality regarding members’ serious family problems or contributions, and so on.

At the Little Brown Church, a church secretary was a luxury the congregation neither needed nor could afford. With word processing software, I could design the weekly bulletins, announcements, and newsletters within an hour a week. A local copy shop could duplicate them more efficiently and inexpensively than a secretary could do on the church photocopying machine. And virtually the only midweek drop-ins at the church office were older members with time on their hands who loved to gossip about everything and anything but especially about the pastor.

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