“...and deliver those with television addiction!”

When a church seeks a pastor, they want the strength of an eagle, the grace of a swan, the gentleness of a dove, the friendliness of a sparrow, the eye of a hawk, and the night hours of an owl.  And when they catch this rare bird, they expect him to live on birdseed!  The Perfect Pastor has been found.  He preaches exactly twenty minutes and then sits down.  He condemns sin, but never steps on anybody's toes. He works from 8 in the morning to 10 at night, doing everything from preaching sermons to sweeping.  He makes $60 per week, gives $30 a week to the church, drives a late model car, buys lots of books, wears fine clothes, and has a nice family.  He always stands ready to contribute to every other good cause, too, and to help panhandlers who drop by the church on their way to somewhere.  He is 36 years old, and has been preaching 40 years.  He is tall on the short side, heavyset in a thin sort of way, and handsome.  He has eyes of blue or brown (to fit the occasion), and wears his hair parted in the middle, left side dark and straight, right side brown and wavy.  He has a burning desire to work with the youth, and spends all his time with the senior citizens.  He smiles all the time while keeping a straight face, because he has a keen sense of humor that finds him seriously dedicated.  He makes fifteen calls a day on church members, spends all his time evangelizing non-members, and is always found in his study if he is needed.  Unfortunately he burnt himself out and died at the age of 32.

 

God’s Eye Witness News Team

There are various styles of witnessing:

1.      The witness of religious truth—telling others what God wants them to know;

2.      The witness of social conscience—telling others what God wants them to do;

3.     The witness of integrity—being what God wants you singular and you plural to be, which includes what you know and do.

As an example of the witness of integrity, I think of two friends and exemplars from my late teens, Miss T and Charles. Miss T was my supervisor at Moody Press in Chicago. She encouraged me to return to college and even offered to lend me the money for tuition. Charles, an Old Testament scholar, arranged a scholarship for me at Temple University in Philadelphia.

They were both dedicated Christians. They didn’t just believe, they believed in me!

And that made all the difference. They didn’t just teach; they modeled!

Phil Donahue, in his autobiography, Donahue: My Own Story, tells of the time he was starting out as a young television reporter. He was sent to cover a mine disaster. It was late at night. Snow was on the ground. It was freezing cold. The rescue team was down in the mineshaft. The worried relatives and friends were gathered at the opening of the mine, waiting anxiously for some word of hope.

Someone began to sing, “What a Friend we Have in Jesus. . . .” Other people joined in singing, “all our sins and grief to bear.” Still more voices joined in, “What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.”

Then it was quiet. A minister stepped out of the crowd and said, “Let us pray . . .” It was a brief but very moving prayer. Donahue said it was such a moving scene that he got goose bumps. The only problem was that it was so cold that the television camera froze up, couldn’t use it. Donahue held the camera against his body, and got it functioning. He went to the minister, asked him to repeat the prayer.

The minister said, “No.”

Donahue said, “I’m a TV reporter. I represent 260 stations. Millions of people will be able to see you and to hear your beautiful prayer.”

The minister said, “No.”

Donahue said, “Perhaps you don’t understand. I’m not representing some local TV station. I’m with CBS. The whole nation will be able to see this.”

The old country preacher said, “No,” and walked away.

Donahue was dumbfounded and furious. He couldn’t understand it. But about a year later he said that it hit him. He wrote that he realized that he was witnessing something called “integrity.” He wrote: “The man wouldn’t showbiz for Jesus. He wouldn’t sell his soul for TV, not even for national TV, not even. . . praise God. . . for CBS.”

That was the witness of integrity.

As Gandhi taught, “The rose does not propagate its perfume. It just is.” The story is told of an Easterner who walked into a Western saloon was amazed to see a dog sitting at a table playing poker with three men. He asked, “Can that dog really play cards?” One of the men answered, “Yeah, but he ain’t much of a player. Whenever he gets a good hand he wags his tail.”

Don’t hide your feelings. Witnessing grows from the recognition that one’s life is a miracle.

Share the awe. Don’t be afraid to wag your tail!

One Sunday on their way home from church, a little girl turned to her mother and said, “Mommy, the preacher’s sermon this morning confused me.” The mother said, “Oh, why is that?”

The little girl replied, “Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. Is that true?”

The mother replied, “Yes, that’s true, honey.”

“And he also said that God lives in us? Is that true, Mommy?”

Again the mother replied, “Yes.”

“Well,” said the little girl, “If God is bigger than us and he lives in us, wouldn’t He show through?”

Scientists have learned that the nucleus of most snowflakes is a tiny piece of snow from another snowflake. It takes snow to make snow. Likewise, it takes faith to make faith. You have to have it to share it. It takes love to make love. It takes responsible responsiveness to build a community of the faithful. Jesus calls us to fellowship. We respond by becoming God’s Eye Witness News Team. The power of God’s Spirit is here and now—in our midst and in our lives. And we are his witnesses.

 “Dear God, I don’t ask anything for myself, but please send Rev. Lowell a really cute female dog!”

 The Amazing Gus

 In 1993 I wrote:

 Gus is my twenty-year-old platinum poodle. Gus has been a member of our family since shortly after Connie and I married. He is very precious to us—even though he can no longer jump five feet into our extended arms, or run down rodents, or stand on his hind legs and steal food off the kitchen table, or tunnel under fences to keep romantic trysts with canine girlfriends several times his size and weight, later bringing them home to met his people—all things he once did.

Nevertheless, Gus is still Gus—the paradigm of unconditional, affectionate companionship.

Gus is a dog in retirement. As befits his senior citizen status, Gus suffers from arthritis, cataracts, and partial deafness. So I have tried to prepare myself for his inevitable passing. Twenty years is a considerable age even for one with Gus’s zest for life.

About two years ago, I experienced one of the most harrowing weeks of my life. Gus was ill. He had lost his dinner, had become disoriented, and could scarcely walk. Moreover, his head hung at a strange angle, as though it were not connected to his body. I rushed him to the animal hospital. The prognosis was not good. Even if he survived, I was told, it was unlikely that he would ever return to normal.

For six days and nights, Gus was on life support—IV’s and catheters keeping him alive. His condition worsened by the day and the bills mounted alarmingly. I was advised that I should put him to sleep. Over the weekend, he had been transferred to an even more expensive emergency hospital, where visitors were not allowed.

On Monday morning, when I was able to see him, he tried to stand and walk over to me, but could not. He raised his chin—his signal that he wanted to be petted. That was all he could manage.

I arrived Tuesday, expecting to be with him for the last time. I was led to the room where he was caged and asked if I could be left along with him to bid him farewell.

I opened the door to his kennel. There was no reaction. An open, sad, imploring eye was the only sign of life. I talked to him, pleaded with him, and cried over him. And then I prayed aloud. I said something like this: “God, I don’t know if it’s proper for me to pray for my dog. It seems selfish somehow. But he is a wonderful friend and I wonder if you could find it in your heart to give him back to me for just a little while. I’m not ready to say goodbye to him just yet. I need him.”

Suddenly Gus began trembling as he pushed his front elbows into the kennel floor. In a few seconds he was on his feet. His head listing bizarrely to one side, he shambled and slid toward me, his muzzle lifted to receive a pat on the head.

An hour later, he walked for the first time in a week. He began eating and drinking again. Other functions returned. He was weak and unsteady, but definitely on the mend. A day later, the amazed and delighted veterinarian asked me to take him home. “Come and get him,” the vet said, “he’s eating like a pig!” One thing for sure—Gus’ recovery was a faith healing. The only question is: whose faith, mine or his?

 [I added the following update at our new home in Cottonwood, California, in 2002.]

I did need him. Unknown to me at the time, I was suffering from two unrelated forms of cancer (colon and kidney) and diabetes. Gus lived to be 23, the oldest dog ever seen in our veterinarian’s practice. He comforted me through two major surgeries, debilitating chemotherapy, the loss of my job as congregational pastor, and post-operative and post-church depression. The colon cancer had spread into my lymph nodes. I was told that I had two years to live. That was nine years ago. You see, I had a guardian angel—that’s what animal companions are, messengers of the grace of God. I had a guardian angel named “Gus,” to distract me from worry, to make me feel loved and needed, to urge me to get up and go for walks, and to make me laugh.

After his death, the memory of Gus inspired me to write two books about my companion animals.

Thank you, Gus. Thank you, Lord, for Gus.

“Actually, I have three resumes—small, medium and large. Which would you prefer?”

Which Resume?

 “What would you have to do to become a pastor?” my wife persisted over my objections.

“Well, first, I would have to apply for standing with the Northern California Conference Committee on Ministry. I tried that once and was rejected as though I were an undocumented alien trying to take away somebody’s livelihood.”

“OK, but you could try again,” she commented. “What else would you have to do?”

“I would have to create a ministerial profile - that’s a series of documents like a resume.”

“How do you do that,” she asked.

Before long, I had reapplied to the Committee on Ministry, obtained and completed the required forms, and was granted the seal of approval. I was a minister with full standing in the Northern California Conference of the United Church of Christ.

I made an appointment with the associate conference minister in charge of placement for the Conference and was told to expect that it would take approximately two years for me to find a parish. So I subscribed to “Church Openings,” a monthly listing of available United Church of Christ congregations and began submitting my profile to churches that interested me.

After having received nearly identical form rejection letters from hundreds of churches throughout the United States, I had come to come to despair of the process. It seemed that no one wanted a forty-something-academic Ph.D. with no seminary degree and only limited parish experience. My many interesting and relevant experiences in other fields counted for nothing. My writings, radio and TV work, political involvements, computer expertise, and minor celebri­ty actually seemed to work against me. Or so various conference and associa­tion staff members advised me. “Search Committees are afraid of you,” I was told. “Your accomplishments intimidate them.” So I would rework my profile and try to conceal whatever made me stand out - a humiliating process.

 “ I vote we lighten up on Rev. Lowell for a while. He’s started writing his sermons with a crayon!”

One sunny Sunday morning, Henry Gibson awoke to find his wife standing over him, shaking him by the shoulder.

“You have to get up,” she urged. “We have to get ready for church.”

“I don’t want to go to church,” he replied. “I want to stay in bed.”

Her arms crossed over her chest, his wife demanded, “Give me three good reasons why you should stay in bed and not go to church.”

“OK,” he answered. “First, I don’t get anything out of the service. Second, I don’t like the people there. And, third, no one likes me. Now can you give me three good reasons why I should go to church?”

His wife responded, “First, it will do you some good. Second, there are people who really do like you and they will miss you. And, third, you’re the minister!”

*         *          *

I returned to parish ministry in 1989 after a gap of nearly thirty years. In my twenties, I had been pastor of a small Congregational Church in Philadelphia while earning my first college degree. At age 50, after three decades of other pursuits (college teaching, mental health admin­istration, cult-related counseling, computer consulting, and free lance writing), I had decided to try the parish again.

My wife had been a major influence. She had not married me with the expectation of being a minister’s wife, but after we had been together for fourteen years she totaled up what she knew about me (which is just about everything) and decided I should be a minister. Her logic: You love religion, the Bible, counseling, public speaking, working with people, being part of a community, helping people, etc. Therefore, you should be a minister.

I was very resistant to the notion. I had worked in and with various congregations over the years and had developed an allergy to small church acrimony. One of the principal intellectual benefactors of my college days was Samuel Klein, who had taught Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Temple University. A gifted communicator and a paradigm of the Orthodox way of life, Klein was often asked why he had not become a rabbi. His often-voiced reaction was, “If I had wanted to be a politician, I would have run for Congress!” And being a pastor is like being a mayor of a small town that holds its elections every Sunday.

 ”Let’s keep looking. I was hoping to find one with pinochle tournaments!”

No Perfect Church

 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 65.

The average DCC 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, Mary 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.) She 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.

From my first year as a Christian on, I have been aware that there is no such thing as a perfect church. If there were, they probably would not want me as a member anyway. Religious institutions are both the greatest obstacle to and the sine qua non for the actualization of true humanity. It is in, through, and despite the self-interest of the present ecclesiastical structures; in, through, and despite the factionalism of the suburban edifice explosion (no subdivision is complete without three competing Lutheran churches); in, through, and despite bake sales, bingo, sewing circles, and junior cherub choirs; in, through, and despite the follies, foibles, and frustrations of institutional religion that the spirit of God produces a remarkable number of authentic, concerned, responsible, and responsive men and women. The world may be where the action is, but it is, in large measure, in, through, and despite the institutions that men and women willing and able to struggle for the redemption of the world are recruited. It would appear that largely despitethemselves, the churches and synagogues may be doing something right!

 To go to the next page, click here.