By Adrian College Chaplain Chris Momany
As published on the General Board of Higher Education & Ministry website
This year I heard the best Advent sermon in more than twenty years of ministry. It was preached by one of my college students, and his message underscored the way we are seldom ready for God’s majestic love.
Joseph and Mary were hardly prepared for the reality given them. Are we any better prepared? If Advent is all about preparation, let’s be honest. We are seldom ready for the wonder of Christmas.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Preparation can be little more than a way to control our environment.
It is a splendid irony that the best preparation opens our hearts to the possibility that life is not about controlling our fate. I do not say this to excuse purposelessness. I know myself better than that. I am a certifiable control freak most of the time, and I bear a deep anxiety about disorder.
I like the rationale of cause and effect, especially when I possess power over the former. Christmas can seem like a tidal wave – the obligations, family pressures, and cultural demands. Yet the problem has more to do with my desire for control than with the event itself. We are never really prepared for the majesty of God’s love, but grace comes from a realm beyond expectation. That is why we call it Good News.
Seasons like Advent and Christmas make me ponder many things about our church. At the risk of speaking heresy, I question our increasing obsession with models of ministry that worship power and control. Many of these approaches are borrowed from the business world. There is nothing wrong with being intentional about mission, but in an attempt to remain “relevant” we risk swapping the inheritance of grace for a mess of pottage.
Especially dangerous is the conditional nature of many popular “leadership” models. There are always strings attached to the relationships involved. These approaches portray the church’s challenge as a matter of offering better services in an increasingly efficient manner. This may inspire some, but do we really need to be more like the cable company or other self-interested commercial ventures?
The connection between means and ends is critical here. Business models may not always claim that the end justifies the means, but they inevitably calculate worth according to the end desired. Even people are assigned value by virtue of their contribution to outcomes. “Underperforming” Christians don’t count for much in this thinking.
I am tempted by conditional models because they satisfy my need for control, but God does not treat people as a means to some end. In God’s economy people are ends in themselves. Sadly, during this season folks can find themselves used in a multitude of settings. Where will they find the unique affirmation of value offered by God in Christ?
It has been suggested that reticence about popular business principles is simply an unwillingness to try new things or an excuse for lazy faith. Nonsense. I would reach far fewer people with a ministry driven by the conditional thinking of most business models. The folks I know get it, and many of them live outside the established church.
People need the gospel of grace! Why are we afraid to trust that, share that, articulate the uniqueness of that amazing reality?
New ways of proclaiming grace and affirmation are one thing. Why give ourselves to alien philosophies that are, by definition, contrary to unconditional love? I won’t be ready for Christmas this year, but then again, I’m never really ready, if that means having the ability to control grace. I thank God for living beyond my preparation.
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