Ah, Wilderness?

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Philippians 2:1-13

My blog today offers my reflection on our concerns as church leaders about decline and finding ourselves in what has been described as "wilderness". And so, I have to ask -

Is Our Church Truly in the Wilderness?

 

It is hard for me, as an Indigenous bishop to understand the worry about being in the wilderness. I was brought up to see all the riches that wilderness offered, learned to navigate by the stars and find food in hidden places. We generally don’t go into the wilds alone, instead the youngest and the eldest ones are surrounded by the able bodied. We teach and learn together. We tell the stories of survival and strength and show the scars of our challenges.

We spoke about the church being in the wilderness following statistics about church decline, small churches getting smaller and the lack of funds needed to sustain ministries. As far as I can see, and my eyes have certainly dimmed with age, we are not in a wilderness, but rather in a turning time, a time when the ancestors can speak to us and the holy spirit can use us. Before now, we thought we knew everything. We were righteous, actually self-righteous. Now we have been brought low by our own privilege. For centuries our church has lived a life of privilege, with gorgeous buildings in fashionable places, while our little missions have continued unfunded and neglected. And yet, the little missions, on reservations and degrading city streets are surviving on next to nothing, thriving as they serve their neighbors.

True wilderness for us, individually, would look more like life in our cities' food deserts, our neglected schools, our tent cities, and aching bellies. Our bellies are full, we have shelter and security. We might be troubled, undone even, but this does not seem like a wilderness to me. Actually, it seems like a place of invitation to gather, to tell the stories of survival and strength and to show the scars of living beyond the crisis and the battles. Our Creator is most often drawing close when we are unsettled and confused, not when we vie for power and righteousness. When we learn and forage together, across generations, then our Creator will stir up more possibility and more vitality than we can even hope for.