Jesus at the Laundromat

Once, at a Joint Needs Assessment meeting, people from the church were excited about the new housing developments that were going up in their community. Surely all that

building would be good for their church.

"Who is moving into all those new houses?" I asked.

"Uh...."  Long silence.

"No, I mean, who is living in those new houses? Are they young couples, families, empty-nesters, retirees? Do they commute to work, register their kids in minor ball or hockey? Are some of them new Canadians?"

"Gee. We're not sure."

One of the church's main challenges in obeying Jesus' command to love our neighbour is that we often have no idea who our neighbour is.

Last week I heard a friend describe a church he knows about in Kansas that was wondering how to connect with their neighbours.

"Where do people gather?" someone asked. Well, Starbucks. The local bar. The gym. Where else?

One place they discovered that people gathered was the laundromat across from the

church. Many of them were single Moms. So folks from the church started to show up at the laundromat. They took a box of doughnuts (donuts in Kansas) and a pocketful of change. They paid for their laundry. And, since people have a lot of time to kill while they're waiting for the dryer to finish, they talked. But more importantly, they listened. Listened as these women at the laundromat gradually opened up and told their stories and relationships were built.

Churches are often frustrated that they feel so disconnected from their communities and don't know what to do about it. This is a story about a church that found a simple solution to that problem. They simply found out where people were, and went there to meet them, talk to them, get to know them, love them.

Not so they could entice them to come join their church, but simply because Jesus commanded them to love their neighbour.

Small is Beautiful

Often, the answers you get are determined by the questions you ask.
On March 19, I gathered with 21 wonderful people from seven small congregations with part time ministers at Bridgeport United in Kitchener. We spent a couple of hours sharing experiences and encouragement.

We started off with each person answering this question: "What's the best thing about belonging to a small church?"

I thought there might be some Umming and Ah-ing -- some awkward silences as people pondered "Gee, what is good about my little church?" I guess I'm just so used to folks from small churches feeling badly about who they are, their lack of resources, their problems challenges, I expected them to struggle with the question.

Boy, was I wrong. The responses came pouring out -- 

“Humour,”  “family,” “acceptance,”  “friendship,” “Everyone is needed,” “love,” "fellowship,” “Knowing people’s stories,”  “intimacy,“ "community,” “history,” “familiarity,” “Everyone can fit into Bruce's rec room when the heat isn’t working at the church,” “uniqueness,” “close knit,” “You know everybody,” “You can gain confidence in a small group,” “heritage."

If we just give people the opportunity to say what makes them feel good about being part of a small church, they are all over it. People love their small churches.

I then asked folks to "Talk about a time when your church was at its very best." They shared experiences of everyone working together to achieve a common purpose, when they rallied together to help someone in need, when they responded to a crisis.

Frequently, sharing food was at the centre.
They're well aware of their challenges -- shaky finances, too few people doing too much work, trouble holding onto young people, creaky old buildings -- but that's only to say that there's no such thing as a church that doesn't have to face issues and problems.

We also talked about assets. It's so easy to focus on deficits -- what's missing, what's lacking, what's in short supply, what we used to have that we no longer have -- that we fail to see the significant assets that even the smallest church possesses --

"God, faith, caring, determination, music, expectancy, our building, organ, labyrinth, people, our baconburger stove, knowledge, wisdom, humour, resourcefulness,  heritage, the Bible, space, leaders, location, seasons"

I really don't think that our problem is that we have so many small churches. All churches in the New Testament were what we would call "small." All New Testament churches were house churches, so they could only be as big as could fit into the house of the most well-to-do member -- in other words, around 40-50.

Most churches in the world are small churches, and the world-wide growth of Christianity is being driven by small, often home-based churches.

We are struggling with the fact that many small churches used to be much larger. They have declined. And, we're dealing with the expectation that a healthy church has to be a certain size, with a certain kind of building, full-time minister(s) and a busy round of programs for all ages. Our small churches are working against their own memories of what the church once was, and it's what is preventing them from re-imagining themselves and moving forward.

 

In any case, it seems to me that we have two choices. One, to simply watch small churches continue to grow smaller and more discouraged -- or, two, leverage the assets that small churches possess to develop a reimagined and reinvigorated ministry.

I know which choice I'm in favour of.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945)

April 9 is the 70^th anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the giants of Christian faith in our time.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer was born into a privileged Berlin family on February 4, 1906. He was a brilliant student, completing his Doctor of Theology at the age of 25, and seemingly destined for a distinguished career in the church and the university. Bonhoeffer’s true greatness, however, was in the way he combined rigorous thought with passionate commitment. He did not regard theology as an intellectual exercise, but a way of life that led, ultimately, to his death.

Rather than opting for a life of academic comfort and security, Bonhoeffer chose to oppose publicly the rise of Adolf Hitler. His Christian convictions alerted him to the dangers of Nazi ideology. Even in 1933, this was a dangerous course. For a time he left Germany, pastoring a German speaking congregation  in London, England, but felt called in 1935 to return to home to lead an underground seminary which trained pastors for the Confessing Church, set up in resistance to the Nazis.  The seminary was closed by the Gestapo in 1937.

Bonhoeffer went to America at the invitation of Reinhold Niebuhr to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Again, he felt the pull of home and returned to Germany in June, 1938, just before the outbreak of war. 

Bonhoeffer was forbidden to speak in public or to publish, but continued his opposition behind the scenes. On April 5, 1943, he was arrested and spent a year and a half in prison awaiting trial. The letters and other writings that he penned during this time were later gathered together by his friend Eberhard Bethge and published as Letters and Papers from Prison.

On July 20, 1944, an attempt to assassinate Hitler, led by senior military officers, failed. Bonhoeffer was implicated in this plot. He was moved to Flossenburg concentration camp and on April 9, 1945, he was hanged on orders from Hitler himself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has often been described as a martyr. We need to remember, though, that the real meaning of the word martyr is “witness.” Bonhoeffer’s importance is not only in the fact that he died for his beliefs, but that his whole life was a witness to Jesus Christ.

Bonhoeffer continues to speak to us today in many ways.

First, he reminds us of the “cost of discipleship.” He warns us the dangers of “cheap grace,” in which God is seen as the means to satisfy our desires without requiring anything in return. This warning is especially relevant in today’s world of religious and spiritual consumerism. Christian faith, for Bonhoeffer, is a call to surrender one’s entire life in service to God and the world.

Secondly, Bonhoeffer wrestled deeply with the question “What does it mean to follow Christ?” Every age must ask this question, but in a world in which “the great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts,” its challenge is uniquely urgent. Bonhoeffer’s reframing of the questions of faith and discipleship remain powerfully relevant today.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Bonhoeffer was one of the first to recognize that Christian discipleship and the habits and practices of Christian religion are not necessarily the same thing. In prison, Bonhoeffer pondered what it meant to be a Christian in a “world come of age,” where most people no longer need God to fill in the gaps in human knowledge, and where the traditional consolations of religion matter less and less. “What does it mean to follow Christ in a non-religious world?” he asked.

In prison, Bonhoeffer experimented with the concept of a “religionless Christianity,” distinguishing the claim of Jesus on our lives from the received habits and worldview of a religious system. The Nazis demonstrated how easily religion can be co-opted for ideological purposes. What does it mean today to confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ who judges all ideologies, including religious ideologies?

Bonhoeffer did not live long enough to work these ideas out fully, but he anticipated what I think is the critical question for Christians in our time: What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ when the religious structures that have supported Christianity for 1500 years are crumbling?

Bonhoeffer was leading a group of fellow prisoners in worship and prayer when they came for him. As the guards led him away, he said to his friends, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.” Bonhoeffer reminded us of the central importance of Christ’s resurrection to Christian faith and life. Eugene Peterson has written that Christians are called “to live a life of resurrection in a world where death gets the biggest headlines.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life, in my view, is a witness to that call.

Karl Barth wrote that Jesus Christ “forbids us to despair of ourselves.” The great danger to Christian faith today is not atheism but despair. We can be so overwhelmed by our circumstances that we are tempted to give up on God. I wonder if Barth was thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he wrote those words.

Bonhoeffer was fearlessly realistic and, at the same time, unshakeably hopeful. At the end of 1944, just a few months before he died, he wrote a hymn that is an encouragement to all who seek to follow Christ.

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
And confidently waiting come what may,
We know that God is with us night and morning,
And never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
Still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
For which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
With bitter suffering, hard to understand,
We take it thankfully and without trembling,
Out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us
The joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,
We shall remember all the days we lived through,
And our whole life shall then be Yours alone.

Elder Evangelism

This is the third in a series of blog posts inspired by Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.

Atul Gawande

Gawande writes about his experience as a physician and surgeon, but his real concern is the humanizing of our institutions. The story of medicine in the last eighty years has been one of break-taking technological advancement. But Gawande wonders if the patients have been forgotten amidst all the technical razzle dazzle.

The next phase in the evolution of medicine, Gawande argues, will not be technological but personal. It will involve rediscovering the patient as a mortal human being. Medical technology is about curing disease and fixing what is broken. But what happens when someone can’t be cured or can’t be fixed? What happens when medicine reaches its own limits? How do we deal with the inescapable truth that we are creatures who eventually wear out and die? By failing to face that question, medicine can actually do harm and deny to many patients the possibility of living as fully as possible in the face of the limits of mortality.

Gawande has put his finger on one of those wondrous paradoxes – that recognition of limits can be the path to a richer and fuller experience of life.  

I think there are many parallels here to the situation of the contemporary church. Modern churches, like modern hospitals, are products of a consumer culture. Programming is the church’s technology. For many years, churches were extraordinarily success in attracting religious consumers by offering a full range of organized programs for everyone, from cradle to grave. In turn, the contributions of those consumers supported modern denominational like the United Church of Canada.

But what happens when churches can no longer deliver the programs? As more energy and resources go into propping up a program based structure, does the spiritual well-being of people get lost in the shuffle? Are we preventing ourselves from being what we are able to be by our frantic attempts to be what we wish we could be?

For as long as I can remember, the mantra of most congregations has been “Children are our future.” If we don’t have children and young families, who will take over when we are too old to keep the church going?

But this attitude assumes that people are going to follow a lifelong pathway of religious commitment; that the wee ones in Sunday School today will grow up to be the church leaders and supporters of tomorrow.

That reality has almost completely vanished. Something like 4% of Canadians under 30 are active in churches. My guess is that most of them are in more culturally relevant so-called “evangelical” churches, which means that the number of “leaders of tomorrow” in mainline churches is vanishingly small, statistically speaking.

But here’s where Gawande’s insights might contain the seeds of a new opportunity.

As we age, we become more aware of our mortality. That’s especially true today when sanitation, nutrition and medicine can keep us alive for a long, long time. For most of human history, most people didn’t survive to see their fifth birthday, and of those who did, few made it past 50. Preventable diseases like cholera, typhus or puerperal fever could carry off otherwise healthy people in a matter of hours.  “Here today and gone tomorrow” was not just a cliché, it was lived reality.  

Today, most of us don’t think about mortality until the limitations of aging make it unavoidable.  

Atul Gawande argues that recovering a sense of mortality is essential to human well being.

But churches – especially churches with a significant number of older persons – are one place where it’s OK to talk about mortality. If people were to know that there is a place that will help them face their mortality with wisdom and peace and joy; that would guide them in living life to the full even as the natural limitations of time and aging become more pronounced – I don’t think our churches would need to spend so much time and energy frantically searching for a mission or a purpose.

Which brings us to evangelism. Evangelism is “sharing the Good News.” What’s the good news for someone struggling with aging and mortality? That is a question our churches would do well to consider very seriously.

My former congregation was next door to a 450 resident senior’s complex. Whenever the question of the future arose, someone would always say, “Oh well, we’ll be OK. We’ve got all those seniors moving in next door who will come to our church.”

To which I would reply, “But in the next 10 years, it will start filling up with old people who have never been to church!”

So what does it mean to introduce the Gospel to someone who is 65, 75, 85, and has no Christian memory? We assume that Christian formation is something that happens mainly when we’re young because that’s the paradigm of Christian experience we’ve grown up with.

But I predict that number of people whose senior years are going to marked by loneliness,

regret and the question “What has my life been about anyway?” is going to grow. And that may be a vast new mission field, white for the harvest, that we never suspected was there.

Let me repeat: This does not mean that we shouldn’t be concerned about ministry with children, youth and young families. It does not mean that we shouldn’t strive to build healthy intergenerational congregations. But I just think that, more than at any time in Christian history, the kind of community that traditional congregations are able to provide will be increasingly meaningful to people as they age.

With characteristic wisdom, Eugene Peterson has cautioned us about how “The church we want becomes the enemy of the church we have.” This insight may be the single greatest key to finding our way forward.

A Matter of Perspective

One of the most interesting parts of Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal is his description of research conducted by psychologist Laura Carstensen into emotional experience (pages 115-120).

Carstensen conducted a major study in which she followed the same group of people over many years, asking them to record of their emotional reactions. She found that, as people aged, the places where they found pleasure, fulfillment and happiness changed.

Younger people tend to be future-oriented. They are driven by the desire to achieve long term goals, and they strive to realize the plan they have laid out for their lives.

As people get older, their focus shifts more to the present, to the here and now, to the simplicity of everyday pleasures and the people closest to them.

When I read that, it helped me understand what is happening in our aging churches. It explained why churches in decline seem quite indifferent to doing things that could change their reality -- bold changes in direction or radically new practices -- preferring instead to be content with the comfortable and the familiar. Like most of their members, they sense that the future is not unlimited.

If this was all Carstensen was able to demonstrate, it wouldn’t be very interesting. But, what is really fascinating is that the difference is not really about age at all. It is not age, but perspective that counts. It is not how old you are that determines how you view your life, but your personal sense of how much time you have.

Young people famously believe they have all the time in the world. So they tend to focus on the long-term, on striving towards goals that may take them decades to achieve. When we reach our 60s, 70s, 80s, or beyond, however, we know that most of our years are behind us and so our perspective changes. We are more likely to seek contentment in the present moment.

But it’s more complicated than that. Carstensen was able to introduce variables into her study that changed the perspective of her subjects, and when she did that, she found that differences of age tended to disappear. For example, when asked to say whom they would like to spend time with, younger people tended to say people they would like to get to know, while older people said those closest to them now. But when the question was put to young men with AIDS, they responded in the same way as older people, because they shared the perspective that time is short.

Conversely, when she asked older people to imagine a medical breakthrough that could guarantee they would live at least another twenty years, their responses were more like younger people.

So what’s this got to do with churches? Many of our congregations live out of a sense that their best years are behind them and their remaining time is short. Like aging individuals, they are more likely to focus on what they are now (or perhaps what they once were) rather than what they might become.

Remembering Atul Gawande’s key question -- “How can we help people to live as fully and abundantly as possible, given the limitations of their situation?” – we might focus on strategies to help congregations maximize their immediate potential. We would explore how aging churches can discover authentic and life-giving fulfillment, satisfaction and vitality, rather than simply feeling like failures because they are no longer what they once were.

But – does this mean just leaving our churches to be contented with the status quo – the equivalent of “keeping the patient comfortable” until the inevitable end comes? What about the challenge of the Gospel? What about the power of God to do a new thing? Does that promise not apply equally to the old – either individuals or congregations – as to the young?

The key, I think, is to be found in another characteristic of that foreshortened time perspective that comes with aging. That is a heightened concern with legacy. As we sense the finiteness of time we become more focused on what we will leave behind. What difference will it make that we have been here? What do we have that we can pass on?

This is one point at which we need to recognize the differences between individuals and institutions. Institutions cross generations. They are not limited by a biological life-span. Individuals may grow old and die, but institutions have the capacity to reinvent and regenerate themselves.

And so the critical conversation is not “How can we remain contented until we die?” but “How can we maximize our vitality as a community here and now – with a view to leaving a legacy for the future?”

For some churches, that might mean reinventing themselves so that a new generation can find and experience faith. There are churches that have come back from the brink and found a new lease on life. Hillhurst United in Calgary is the one everybody is talking about. In ten years, it’s gone from almost closing to an average Sunday attendance of 400. My wife’s former congregation, Bethel Stone United outside Paris, Ontario, took a big leap of faith 25 years ago and hired her 1/3 time. Today, Rev. Adrianne Robertson is full-time and the church is looking at how to deal with a congregation that continues to grow. It can happen.

But the legacy conversation might mean that churches begin to talk about the long-term use of their financial assets before they are forced by dwindling numbers to disband.

It might mean saying, “We can no longer sustain ministry in this big old building, but we’re going to reach out to somebody who can” – even if they are not (heaven forbid) United Church!

Or it might mean saying, “How can we remain a viable Christian community and continue to serve Jesus, even though we can no longer afford our building or the other paraphernalia of the traditional congregation?”

Those are legacy questions – questions about what of value we have to leave to the future.

I think it starts with each congregation being honest about who they really are – not who they remember being or who they wish they were – and taking steps to be as faithful and vibrant a Christian community as they can – attending to what really matters here and now, and nurturing what is good, faithful and life-enhancing. One of the problems with declining congregations is that fear and anxiety cause them to dissipate their energies in needless conflicts or strategies that aren’t likely going to succeed. They need to locate the embers of their own vitality and fan those into flame.

And then to ask, “What can we do to ensure that the legacy of our faith is passed on so that it blesses those who are yet to come?”

It’s all a matter of perspective.  

“Foot Care”

Once I was visiting the oldest member of my church.  “How are you?” I asked.

“I’m doing OK,” she said, “but I just get so frustrated that I can’t do the things I used to.”

“Dora,” I replied, “you’re 105 years old!” The fact that she was able to wake up in the morning, recognize me and carry on a lively conversation was nothing short of remarkable at her age.

Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal is a reflection on what it means that we are creatures who, over time, age and eventually die. Human existence means learning to live within the limits of our mortality.

Gawande writes from the perspective of a surgeon. Modern medicine, he says, operates out of a paradigm centred on diagnosing and curing disease, and fixing what is broken. But what about when people can’t be fixed? What about when the problem is not a specific pathology but simply the limitations of being mortal which become more pronounced with age?

The tendency of the medical system is to a) continue to try to fix what’s wrong, often inflicting needless suffering on the patient, or b) simply give up. Care of the elderly eats up huge resources, but often with little positive results.

Gawande says the question needs to change from “How can we fix what’s wrong with this patient?” to “What is the best and fullest life possible for this person, given his or her limitations?”

I think there’s an analogy here for many of our churches. (Recognizing that any analogy can only be pushed so far. There are similarities between an individual and a community, but there are also differences.)

A lot of churches, like a lot of church members, are struggling with diminishing capabilities. They are not what they once were. They can’t do what they once did. Partly that’s the result of changes in our culture, which has pushed religious institutions out of the centre and onto the (almost invisible) margins.

The leadership in many United Churches are people whose concept of a vital and healthy congregation was formed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Even though they know things have changed, their attitudes and actions are still driven by powerful memories which shape their image of a healthy church.  Compared to that memory, the present reality of the church can only seem like a failure, a shadow of what once was.

The problem is that a lot of energy goes into ultimately futile strategies to try to “fix” what is wrong – to get the young families back, to change the music, to start this or that program. All of this can distract us from engaging deeply with the basic question: “Given the reality of where we are, what does a full, abundant life in Christ look like?”

The fact is that most United Churches will have a high percentage of older people. To change that significantly would really mean that the present church would need to cease to exist and something entirely different take its place.  So, the question is, “How can we be faithful and fruitful as who we are?”

Atul Gawande writes of shadowing a geriatrician as he treats his elderly patients. Ironically, in an aging society, gerontology is a dying specialty, with low in status and relatively low in pay. Few medical students are interested in specializing in the care of the elderly.

But geriatricians can make an enormous difference to people’s lives, often through paying attention to very simple things. Gawande watched as the doctor examined a woman in her 80s who had no specific medical condition. Her main problem was that she was old.

Gawande noted how much attention he paid to his patient’s feet.

That’s because one of the main threats to the well being of the elderly is falls, and one of the top three causes of falls is improperly cared for feet.  Simple, modest, low tech.  But crucially important.

I wonder:  What would the church equivalent of “foot care” be? What are the simple things we could be doing to prevent “falls” in our churches – those preventable crises that can fracture an already fragile congregation, incapacitating it and perhaps hastening its death?

We may not be able to “fix” everything in the sense of recreating the kind of robust strength of people’s memories. But what steps can we take to stabilize congregations so that they can continue living well.

Another key ingredient in the care of the elderly, Gawande discovered, is a reason for living. Boredom and depression are two of the great robbers of vitality. Helping people discover a reason to get up in the morning is enormously important to their well being.

It’s what, in the church, we call a mission. Many congregations are abandoning any sense of real mission because they believe they are too small, too old, too tired to do anything useful. But that’s because their mental image of being in mission implies strenuous physical activity or traveling to a different part of the world. Jesus calls every Christian to a mission and I don’t think Jesus intended to abandon us when we get to a certain age.

The real problem is that if nostalgia, loss and low congregational self esteem dominate, we become unable to discern the possibilities of the here and now.

I am not suggesting that all we should do is palliative care, “keep the patient comfortable” until the end. That is one of the differences between an individual and a community. A community is not limited by the life span of any one individual. Communities can regenerate and be reborn.

But, Atul Gawande advocates shifting the focus of medical care from simply fixing and curing to helping people determine what is most important and taking simple measures to minimize threats, enhance possibilities and instil a reason for living. Studies have shown that when these things happen, even the frailest of the elderly can experience a profound transformation in the quality and meaning of their lives.

As Christians, we believe in a God who raises the dead. We believe that real transformation is not our achievement, but a gift of divine grace. Our role is often to remove the barriers that prevent us from experiencing that transformation.

Perhaps if we became more focused on helping congregations determine what a rich, full life in Christ means, given the limitations of their situations, we might find that change happens in exciting ways we never expected.  

Unexpected Discoveries

I haven’t posted lately because I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

 And thinking. Thinking about how often we learn important lessons almost by accident. It’s not what we go looking for, but what we stumble across that makes the difference.

Almost thirty years ago I took the summer off to study music and practice the piano 

What does this have to do with
preaching?

intensively. It was a kind of sabbatical before we had sabbaticals. I learned a lot about music. But through the process of practicing, preparing and performing music, I learned more about preaching than I ever did in any homiletics class.

The historian J. H. Hexter wrote a wonderful essay about the process of discovery. He said that every historian has a field of research that he or she pursues intentionally; but real breakthroughs often come, not from that research, but from other sources – a book on an seemingly unrelated subject, or a random personal experience.

Hexter described this phenomenon using the metaphor of the medieval village, which was surrounded by an area of cultivated land called “the Sown.” That’s where the people systematically ploughed, planted, fertilized and reaped. But beyond the Sown was an area of uncultivated land called “the Waste” where anyone’s animals were free to graze.

The Sown, he said, is like the chosen field of research – or, if you’re not a scholar, the thing you deliberately set out to learn. But our discoveries often come from the “grazing” we do – the books and articles we read, the movies we watch, the conversations we have with strangers and friends.

I’ve been grazing lately. Several months ago, I read an article in The Atlantic magazine about whether our expensive health care system is doing what it’s supposed to do – make us healthier. The author of this article referred to eight or ten new books about the challenges facing our health care systems.  

One of them was entitled Being Mortal by the Boston surgeon Atul Gawande.

Atul Gawande

Lo and behold, it was available in the local library. I had to put a hold on it because it was checked out (always a good sign.) When I finally got to read it, parallels to my experience in the church leapt off practically every page.

Atul Gawande writes about the topic he knows as a highly skilled surgeon. But he really writes what it means to be human in an increasingly complex technologically driven world.  And it’s about whether our institutions achieve the purpose for which they ostensibly exist – to enhance human well being. And, if they don’t, what we can do about it.

After Being Mortal, I read his other three books.

Complications is about the incredible complexity of modern medicine. But it’s really about the humanity of the physician. No matter how much skill and training one has, mistakes and failures are inevitable, because the doctors from whom we expect superhuman ability are fallible human beings, just like their patients.

Better is about how to improve doctors’ performance. But it’s really about the importance of character. Doctors have all the training, skill and expertise they require. What’s needed are diligence, the wisdom to do the right thing, and ingenuity. Sometimes I wonder if, in ministry, we are intentional enough about trying to improve our performance, and how we would measure that improvement.

The Checklist Manifesto is about how a simple tool can make an enormous difference.  Gawande argues that medicine’s shortcomings will not be improved by more information. The problem is that there is so much information, it’s beyond the capacity of the human brain to cope with. Gawande helped to develop a simple surgical checklist that has drastically reduced complications and deaths from surgery worldwide.  I wonder what simple tools we could devise in ministry to be more effective at what we already know how to do?

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters Most is about the health care system’s inability to deal with the frail elderly and the terminally ill. Modern medicine is about curing disease and fixing what’s broken. But what do you do with someone who cannot be cured or “fixed.” Modern medicine, Gawande argues, is in a state of denial about the basic fact of human existence: we are mortal creatures who eventually break down and die. What does it mean to help people experience the fullest life possible, right up to the very end?

These questions cut to the heart of what we are facing as churches. Like so many of our individual members, many congregations are getting old, breaking down, coming to the end of their life cycle. My work as Presbytery Support Minister has shown me how we tend to discount those congregations because they can’t be “fixed” – and how we fail to nurture the life that is still in them to the full. What "matters most" in the situations in which our churches find themselves?  

But the implications of what Gawande is saying go beyond the issues of terminal illness or frail old age. He’s talking about living a full, rich and meaningful life even as we honestly face of the limitations of our mortality. "What matters most?" is a basic question at every stage of our lives.

Surely the Christian community should have something profound to say about this. We claim to have some insights into what matters most . Isn’t mortality one of the great themes of the Bible? Isn’t seeing mortality as a promise to be lived into, not a problem to be fixed, central to the Christian vision? Could renewal in our churches be less about institutional expansion and more about empowering people to engage with these questions in their own lives, especially as our society ages?

Sometimes I think the thing we need to do is read less about what to do about the church’s problems, and ponder more deeply what it means to be human in God’s world. And if we can help people on that journey, we’ll never need to worry about being “relevant.”

In future posts, I’m going to delve further into Atul Gawande’s books. I’d recommend them to anyone. They’re easily accessible and highly interesting and readable.

You can also check out these websites:

www.atulgawande.com

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/pastepisodes/the-2014-bbc-reith-lectures-the-future-of-medicine-part-1-1.2946586

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-2014-bbc-reith-lectures-the-future-of-medicine-part-2-1.2946642

http://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine?language=en