Love the Ones You're With - Christianity Today

My insomnia was sin. I spent hours a week awake in bed envisioning our church as another church. I even had a new name and logo, Emmaus Road Presbyterian, in the trendy all lower case letters with an ancient, but modern, open Bible and broken piece of bread. At 2 a.m. I agonized over our worship, wishing it was passionate, "authentic" (whatever that means).

Committee nights were either couch nights, so my wife could sleep, or medication nights, so I could sleep.

I remember a particular couch night several months ago—worship committee. The agenda consisted of discussion about the controversial change in schedule from our 10:30 service to 10:00, the excitement of the traditional singing of "For All the Saints" on All Saints Day, and when to decorate the church for Christmas, since Advent started in November last year.

Insomnia and church transformation are not a good combination. My insomnia was sin because these were the people who called me to be their pastor. These were the people who called me to love them, and serve them, and grow with them, and I believe these were the people whom God called me to pastor.

But, dare I say it, I spent most nights each week wishing they were other people, with other gifts, younger tastes, and sharper minds.

I had college friends visit last summer, and in the weeks leading up to their visit, I burrowed a nice dent in our pillow-top mattress. I wasted hours fretting about how embarrassing it was going to be when they came to the service on Sunday. I often wonder if people my age actually know that there are still churches like ours in the world. We don't have screens, let alone a satellite campus. We don't have podcasts. We don't have much youth. We don't have a latte machine and guest kiosk. We don't really have youth, did I mention that already?

Five people in our congregation (including me, my wife, and our one-year-old daughter) would know who David Crowder is.

And if you mentioned the "emerging church controversy," "ancient-modern worship," "postmodernity," or the bankruptcy of a "Christendom-based attractional model" of church mission, pretty much everyone in the congregation would look at you like you were speaking "freaky-deaky Dutch" á la Austin Powers, although 99 percent wouldn't know the Austin Powers reference.

Who did God call me to?

I remember reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's advice to never say anything negative about the congregation you have been called to serve. I found myself, shortly after arriving here, doing nothing but that. Not publicly, of course. My stock answer was always, "Things are going great."

But at night, when I should have been sleeping, I brought my complaints before God. I justified myself at first by referring to the Psalms. Here were faithful people complaining to God about their lot in life, inspired by the Spirit to be included in Scripture, wouldn't my complaints be just as just?

Then I turned to the "After all, isn't this God's vision?" excuse. What I dreamt up at night was for our church to be more effective in God's kingdom mission. Wouldn't God want us to have a worship service that connects the great truths of the gospel to the contemporary culture? Wouldn't God want us to be filled with young families and children? Wouldn't God want us to rid the world of our pea-green, 1960s choir robes? Wouldn't God want me to be known as the pastor of that dying mainline church that turned things around?

This was about the time I read a chapter on sin by Timothy Keller. Keller explored Kierkegaard's observation that breaking any commandment was in actuality breaking the first commandment. Sin is choosing to find our identity in anything other than God.

Even if what we find our identity in is inherently good, in my case the desire for a healthy, flourishing congregation, if our identity isn't found solely in Christ, that is idolatry, and thus sin.

Each night as I stared at our ceiling in the darkness, I had been engraving an idol out of the ministry I thought I deserved and the people I wanted to pastor. And as Keller observes, when this god failed me, my identity was in crisis and the bags under my eyes grew.

Seeing who's really here

Then, one Tuesday morning I was sitting in my office when Myles knocked and walked in the door before I had a chance to say, "Come in."

Myles is probably in his early 70s, and every Tuesday he goes to the hospital to visit people. He retired from a long career of teaching biology at the local community college, and he looks like how you would imagine a retired professor would look. Every week he makes notes on 3×5 cards and always tells me who he visits, how many people are in the hospital, and how many ships are in the harbor (the local economy is driven by logging, and it has been months since he saw the last ship).

On this particular Tuesday, he went to visit a shut-in from the church. My mind wandered to the passage I was studying for next Sunday's sermon as Myles described their conversation. They talked of flying and sailing, their children, and the struggle of getting old and trying to decide when to transition to more dependent living. I found myself smiling and nodding, thinking I had much more important things to do.

But when Myles left, I had this overwhelming feeling that Myles got it and I didn't. He cared about this man because he spent time with him. I on the other hand, cared about a mirage, a projection of the kinds of people with whom I wanted to spend my time. Then I began to notice this trait in many of our congregation; they cared for people because they took the time to get to know them. What a concept.

I am slowly learning that loving an idea of what you want people to be isn't love but idolatry.

Judy is retired. Every Thursday she plans, cooks and oversees the distribution of lunch for about 75-100 struggling people in our community.

Scott and Glory moved to the area because Scott was in a government-sponsored program for his Physicians Assistant degree and was required to work in an under-served clinic for two years. They started their two-year countdown the moment they arrived, anxious to get back to the Midwest. Eight years later Scott continues to work at the clinic, and Glory works for the city as an ombudsman for the elderly. They serve the community with every bit of energy they have.

Jo, also retired, brings her dog Riley to two local nursing homes on a weekly basis to visit and cheer up the residents.

Kevin installs conveyor belts. He works hard and mostly on weekends and holidays when the mills aren't running. About five years ago he was helping at the Alpha Program at church and Christ became alive to him in a way that had never happened before. This led a rough, self-admittedly gruff, belt worker to lead a Bible study at Carr House, a dependent senior center in town where his father-in-law was a resident. Most of his class members wouldn't remember his name from week to week. But he kept going, inviting them to read no matter how painstakingly slow they were or whether they would remember what paragraph they read just minutes later. It is a bit humbling for a pastor when the people you are called to love teach you how.

There is nothing extraordinary about any of these stories. This is what happens when people are empowered by Christ and the Spirit to love God and to love others. What was extraordinary to me was that no one in our congregation would know what the word "missional" meant, or that it had replaced "purpose-driven" as the latest Christian buzz word.

What they know, and what they are teaching me, is that if you really want to love people, you have to get to know them. I am slowly learning that loving an idea of what you want people to be isn't love but idolatry.

Real ministry, real and small

We are a small congregation. Unlike larger churches it would take little effort to really get to know the majority of our members on a deep level. I am starting with the A's and getting back to the old-school habit of visiting my members at their homes, one family at a time. I am actually sitting in their living rooms and asking them how they are doing. Cyber-networking isn't really an option here. I bet most in our congregation think "blogging" is teen jargon for making-out.

What I am learning is that getting to know our congregation isn't making ministry easier. One of my seminary professors always said that "If you've got people, you've got problems," a nice summary of the first seven chapters of Romans. Real problems are actually much more difficult than the ones I hoped to face when I went into ministry.

Listening to an elder tell the story of his heroine addict son who has spent the last three Christmases behind bars is far less glamorous than a trendy Bible study at the local pub. It is not easier, but getting to know my congregation is giving meaning to ministry. I am now praying for and speaking to needs that are really there, rather than needs that I want to be there. I still would love to have 20- and 30-somethings in my office struggling with what their faith looks like in relationships and careers. I would love to sing on Sundays in a way that connects stylistically with what I grew up with rather than what my parents grew up with, but God called me to First Presbyterian Church and not my dreamt up Emmaus Road.

I still can't sleep, but I am starting to worry much less about the ministry I don't have and much more about the ministry I do.

My insomnia is now more a nuisance and less a sin.

Doug Basler is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Aberdeen, Washington.