Pages

Saturday, November 28, 2009

"Out of the Wild......."



For Sunday, November 29th, 2009


Lectionary Reading Luke 21:25-36

"Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment" is a Discovery Channel reality show.  It involves a group of people dropped off into the Alaskan bush. Subsequently, they hike their way back to the civilized world which takes nearly a month. Their means for accomplishing such a feat relies upon a compass and map that shows the path they’re to follow. Laden with make shift backpacks, a small amount of food, and other survivalist gear, the group begins their journey. Wisely, they take basic survivor training prior to the trip. Of the nine who begin the journey, only four or five complete the experiment. Those who opted out utilized a button box device that summoned a helicopter. The helicopter would rescue the overwhelmed person and get them back to civilization.

Now I must admit that I watched all eight episodes of the show’s first season. By the end of the season, I felt considerable admiration for the participants who completed the trek. I admired what they endured and achieved, particularly the close sense of community and family that developed between those who stuck it out. I also admired their resourcefulness in the face of adversity. I admired what each person discovered about themselves as a person living under great hardship due to lack of food, inadequate shelter, no transportation or medical services, and life in extreme weather. I appreciated what each individual learned about the person they became because of hardship. Lord knows I couldn’t have made such a journey.

The availability however of the button box device was an interesting touch to the show. It’s ability to summon a rescue chopper amounted to a modern day manifestation of, “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home!” With a press of a button a person could be whisked away from their misery to a comfortable hotel, a hot shower, plenty of food, or to a doctor if the need required it. Wouldn’t it be great if each living soul on the earth had such a device? But then I must remember that “Out of the Wild” is a reality show, which means that it’s contrived life, not real life. Its contrived life since no one – at least to the best of my knowledge -- is handing out button box rescue devices to the 6.7 billion persons who comprise our world population.

It would be nice if there was such a device for the 1.07 billion of us who go hungry every day. It would be nice to have such a device for the 2.5 million individuals displaced by violence in Darfur. It would be nice to have such a device for the women and girls who have been sexually violated due to Darfur violence. And such a device would have been a huge life saver for the six million Jews tortured and murdered during World War II by Hitler and his Nazi following.

Jesus once said that when hard times are upon us, it is a sign that God’s Peaceable Kingdom draws near (Luke 21:25-36). During such times leading up to then, he counseled that we hold fast, that we pray for strength, and that we not let our hearts and spirits be weighed down by worry, or allow various distractions, compulsions, or addictions to rule or entrap our lives. He counseled these things so we’re able to see and act for the cause of the Peaceable Kingdom here on earth.

The German pastor theologian, Dietrich Bonheoffer, once described in a sermon his sense of what these times are like. He described present-day life as being a worker in a mine. Day after day a person toils away in unpleasant circumstances. Then one day, the worst happens. The mine caves in. The worker knows that those above ground are aware of the cave-in. He knows and believes they’re doing everything possible to rescue him and his co-workers. He knows there’s no magic button to push to rescue him from his dangerous circumstances. So along with his fellow miners, they follow their protocols for treating and assisting the injured, preserving oxygen, readying and conserving their emergency resources if rescue takes longer than expected. Everyone works together to keep each other’s spirits up. Slowly, the rescuers draw closer. Soon the trapped miners hear equipment working through the devastation and debris of the cave-in. Rescuers call out reassuring the trapped persons that help is on the way and soon they’ll breakthrough and all will be saved. The trapped are told to have courage and hold on and there may be need for help from their side of the cave-in. Finally the breakthrough is achieved and all are reunited. Treating the hurt and injured becomes the priority, but eventually everyone is freed from the nightmare and brought up and out into the light of day.

Shortly after Bonheoffer preached this sermon in England, his countrymen requested his return to Germany to help rescue a citizenry trapped by Hitler and his Third Reich. Despite the urging of many that he not go as returning to Germany would be suicide, Bonheoffer ignored his friends’ concerns and went back to his native home. In essence, he joined the company of the trapped, trying to support and encourage them while the rest of the world worked from the other side of the moral cave-in wrought by the Third Reich. Bonheoffer did so while the world worked to clear out the devastation and debris that resulted from the Nazi tsunami. Bonheoffer worked diligently, even feverishly, from his side of things but in the end the Nazis robbed him of his own life’s breath by hanging him for plotting against Hitler. In Bonheoffer’s case there was no button box device summoning some chariot to whisk him away from the gallows. What a blessing it would have been to Bonheoffer, his family and friends, the world, and his native country had he possessed one. But once again, that’s not real life is it.

The answers to our problems and difficulties, challenges, and evils of this world will not go away with the press of a button. Yet some things can be more easily achieved than others such as committing and spending the $13 billion dollars the United Nations estimates as needed for basic health and nutrition for all the world’s poor. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars the United States gladly spends to maintain military domination over the rest of the world, thirteen of those billions seems a small price to pay to alleviate the suffering caused by hunger. It also seems a very small price to pay rather than sitting helplessly by the side of every child who dies horribly every five seconds from starvation – a total of 3 million children who die so terribly every year. How many of those bedsides could anyone of us sit by before we ourselves would need to press the button box device? That we allow anyone to suffer in such ways is a testament to the dark cave we’ve mined out together with our fellow human beings.

There’s a saying in my faith tradition that we hold quite dear. Many of us have it memorized. It’s inspiration that came through one of our leaders several decades ago. It’s written upon our hearts and into the fabric of our beings. For the benefit of discussion here I will paraphrase it by saying that “God’s Peaceable Kingdom is no closer or further away than our spiritual condition justifies.” And lest you think that such a condition means spiritual navel gazing, let me disabuse you of that right now. Let me also disabuse you of the notion that in some singular moment of a day known only to God, you’ll suddenly have some sweet chariot whisking you up and away from the injustices and challenges we face. That’s not real life, its fantasy life.

Real life means there are no magic answers, no magic buttons. Real life is often dirty, cruel, and far more about indifference and satisfying one’s self-interests than we want to think about or acknowledge. Frequently, real life pits us against people who never learned two of life’s basic lessons and often those individuals are little more than wolves in sheep’s clothing. What lessons didn’t they learn? Well, they didn’t learn to love God with all their heart and mind and strength. And they didn’t learn to love others as much as they learned to love themselves. I’ve seen quite a few of them in my time --- some even call themselves ministers --- and it never ceases to amaze me what they get away with and how others allow them to do so. This is the moral cave-in of our time. This is the extreme weather and hardship and deprivation that are ours. What will change it? The answer is you and me and the end of our passivity and collusion with such persons – no matter how minor their behavior seems to be. The next healthiest step any of us can make is joining a solidly self-aware community that’s proactive for justice and the fruits of justice such as peace itself.

Tell the indifferent, the cruel, the greedy, the self-absorbed, and even the wolves that you’ve had enough. Tell them you’ve had enough of a world that they think exists to service them rather than the common good. Don’t be surprised that they’ll resist you, diminish you, and even subvert you. It’s what their cowardice does in the face of a good their selfishness cannot control. Had Hitler been so convinced of the rightness of his path, why didn’t he stick around on the world stage after his defeat to defend his point of view at Nuremburg? He didn’t because the monster’s cowardice required suicide instead.

So if you’re caring or compassionate, selfless or generous, visionary or dreamer, ask yourself what you can do to aid the rescue effort. What is the Spirit of Christ urging you do from our side of the cave-in to usher in God’s Day of Peace for all? Please forego living into life’s intoxications and distractions, letting yourself be trapped there unable to do anything useful. Come back from out of the wild my friends, you’re needed more than you know for helping us dig out of this mess.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

"For This I Came.."


Lectionary Scripture:

John 18:33-37

December 14th, 2005, a group of 115 faith leaders took up a position outside the U.S. House of Representatives Cannon office building in Washington, D.C. On that frigid blustery morning, men and women and young and old went down on their knees to block an entrance to that building. They did so “to testify to the truth” that federal budgets are moral documents. What prompted their civil disobedience was Congress' plan to pass a budget making deep cuts to services and support for the country’s most vulnerable and needful citizens. They planned to do this while also giving generous tax breaks to the country’s wealthiest people. It was nothing less than a case of robbing the poor to reward the rich.


The anticipated budget called for funding cuts to food stamps, student college loans, healthcare for the poor, enforcement of domestic violence no-contact orders, and resources for child foster care. In short, what Congress planned to do was immoral. So faith leaders from around the country assembled to protest. Peacefully but with one loud clear voice, these faith leaders proclaimed to Congress, “Shame on you!” Before the protest was over, all of them were arrested. I know because I was one.

Unlike Jesus in his encounter with Pontius Pilate, we were treated respectfully duirng and after our arrests for speaking the truth we came to proclaim. For proclaiming his truth, Pilate mocked Jesus and then humiliated and tortured him.  Pilate did so to placate the religious authorities who arrested Jesus on dubious grounds of treason for claiming kingship over the Jews. Pilate found no basis to those charges and it's likely the religious authorities could have cared less about the claim as well. What actually terrified them was the message Jesus had for his people.  It was a simple yet straightforward message that God loves us unconditionally and calls us to create an earthly kingdom wherein we love one another as fully and completely as God loves us.

What terrified the religious authorities about the message was its immense popularity; a popularity which threatened to unravel their carefully controlled system of rewards and punishments and ritual purity; a system which garnered them incredible influence, power, wealth, and control over the people.  It was therefore a message the chief priests and scribes weren’t going to allow.  So on trumped up charges they took Jesus to Pilate. Believing that only death could stop Jesus, the priests threatened Pilate with appeals to Caesar unless he executed Jesus.  With Pilate being the only civil authority possessing power to issue a death sentence, Pilate literally washed his hands of the situation.  He did so out of fear for the loss of his political capital in Rome should appeals go forward to his superiors in Rome.  Pilate then complied with the chief priests and through their complicity as "the powers that be", Jesus was then put to death.

Nearly two thousand years later, we’re still struggling against the powers that be to proclaim and bring to life the truth that Jesus was called to proclaim. The dynamics of domination and empire-like control over the world continue to preoccupy so many of our political and religious leaders.  At times, it seems a form of psychopathology and dysfunction all its own.  For me, the worship service the night before our arrests in December 2005 served as a reminder regarding how critical it is that we continue to proclaim God’s love and pursue the cause of the Peaceable Kingdom, especially when our government forgets itself and those for whom it exists to protect and serve.  Leading out with such a witness at that worship service was the Reverend Barbara Williams-Skinner of the Skinner Leadership Institute. She immediately captured our attention as she spoke of God’s imperative to overcome poverty.  She then admonished that we don't know who we are anymore. We may call ourselves Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, or whatever, but all that is immaterial she said, "....for what we are is Kingdom People and that means we strive to free the world of poverty, war, sickness and disease."  To do that, Barbara said we must get a grip on the fact that first and foremost we are children of ”the most high God and as such we are warriors for the poor and voices for those who've been silenced by our culture and society."

Following Barbara, the Reverend Ray Riviera of Latino Pastoral Action spoke and counseled that when the empire and its laws sacrifice the poor, then it cannot expect continued support.  He then urged that while not supporting the empire’s decrees may offend some of our constituencies, we should take courage and place our trust in God remembering that within the workings of the empire we're to keep first and foremost in our minds to whom we ultimately belong.

Perhaps the oldest minister speaking at the service was John Perkins, Chair of the Christian Community Development Association. A young man during the 1960s civil rights movement he had participated in numerous acts of non-violent civil disobedience. At the beginning of his remarks he said, “I’m getting too old for this.” Everyone laughed and applauded.  John then followed with quotes from Matthew, Chapter 25, which says that when we care and respond to the least of God’s children then we have ministered to Christ himself.  John then witnessed of growing up on a plantation as a share cropper, a life which he said wasn’t any different from slavery and how that life caused his mother’s death from starvation while she tried to nurse him as a seven month old baby. John then closed his sharing with these words, “You serve God when you serve those who are broken in our society.”

Jim Wallis followed as the last speaker at the evening. He summed up the spirit of the gathering and encouraged us for the events to follow the next morning.  He said, “Any gospel that doesn’t bring good news to poor people is not the gospel of Jesus.”  Bolstering our resolve for the prayer vigil and arrests to come the next day, Jim shared emphatically that Jesus always stood with poor people and that we confuse them if we fail to do likewise.  He spoke passionately that the real scandal of Christmas that year had nothing to do with forcing Target and Wal-Mart to greet customers with “Merry Christmas.”  The real scandal he said are those who would send away the hungry to fill the rich -- they are the ones living in total contravention to the love of God.  Jim then asked us to pray for changed hearts and changed votes in Congress and to remember that the following morning we’d enact a Christmas Pageant of our own as the police picked us up and carried us off to jail. Keenly aware of the distress we’d feel at being arrested, Jim closed the service with a text from Hebrew Scripture in Habakkuk. It’s a text that he carries around at important times and it reads as follows, "Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay." After the scripture, we joined hands and sang the spiritual, "We Shall Overcome." Following a benediction, the worship presider asked us to turn to each other and wish one another a good night by saying, "Hope to be arrested with you tomorrow."  Laughter and hugs followed as we left the church sanctuary.

The next morning following a press conference with the media outside the House of Representatives office building, we went to the nearest entry of the building. We took up a position blocking the building entrance and then knelt in prayer and sang songs. Before long where we knelt, I found the feet of a Capitol Police officer before me.  A few moments later I was arrested for unlawful assembly and refusing police orders to leave the area.  My arrest happened early into our protest likely because I evidenced signs of exposure. We had been out in the cold for several hours and I was trembling uncontrollably from its effects.  I was certainly grateful to the officer for taking notice.

Handcuffed and then bused to a makeshift jail inside a large garage at Capitol Police headquarters, we finally had a chance to warm up.  Officers searched and documented us and ordered us to give up our coats and any other belongings we had, the items would be returned upon our release. Officers then removed our handcuffs and instructed us to sit on plastic chairs that had been set up in long rows. We were not to move from the chairs at any time unless an officer gave us permission and escorted us by the arm. Even a trip to the washroom required an officer escort who maintained line of sight upon us at all times. It was clear that we were under arrest and detainees, but there was always an air of respect and even admiration from the officers. One sergeant said to a small group of us, “We’ve never had such a pleasant and polite mass arrest as this one.” As the last of our group cleared the initial processing and police began to release us one by one after paying a $50 fine, we sang Christmas carols to keep up each other’s spirits. We were a choir of angels all our own.

The whole experience yielded an important lesson for me which is that the truth which Jesus came to proclaim continues to need ardent proclamation now. In the week which followed my arrest, I felt led to write this adaptation of the Magnificat which is also known as the Song of Mary, the mother of Jesus. You can find the original version in the Gospel of Luke (1:46-55).  My adaptation reads as follows: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior who has looked with favor on our lowliness. Surely, from now on all generations will call us blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for us, and holy is God’s name whose mercy is from generation to generation. For God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts and has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; filling the hungry with good things. The servants of Israel are in remembrance before you, O God, praising your mercy according to the promises made to our ancestors and descendants forever and ever. Amen."

As to the success of our protest and its goals of changing hearts and minds and votes, there was a bit of success with Congress. Publicly some House of Representatives members shamed Congress with the knowledge of the arrests of faith leaders from around the country who had felt it necessary to leave their houses of worship and pastoral duties to go to Washington and protest.  In response, Members of the House decided not to cut food stamps as deeply as they had first planned, but they still cut everything else and gave a big hand up to the rich.

So the proclamation must continue my friends and it will surely remain a long hard slog toward God’s Peaceable Kingdom for all, but as a Canadian friend tells me, “Sometimes as persons of faith we have the honor of raising our voices together in protest. At other times, it takes courage to speak in a lone voice above that of others.”

If you’ll be the voice in your community helping God to heal and reconcile and bring about the kind of justice that respects and uplifts all human life, then you like Christ will know the reason for which you were born. Like him, you too will speak your truth to the powers and majesties of this earthly realm and say, “For this I came...”

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

"Sorry Pastor Rick, but...."



Lectionary Scripture - Mark 13:1-8

          Sorry Pastor Rick, but I’m in a completely different place than you. Ever since 2004 when I read part way into your book, "A Purpose Driven Life", I’ve had to swear off the “purpose-driven” sauce. It’s due to particular comments in your book. Most of those comments revolved around one specific condition for joining the family of God. The condition? A person must accept Jesus Christ. Sorry brother, but my spiritual journey went beyond that a long time ago.  Now I’m sure that countless lives have been blessed by your book and for that I am grateful.  For me however, I set your book down and haven’t picked it back up. I simply haven’t the time for religious exclusion or theological segregation.

When I heard however that you spoke at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in Washington, D.C. this past Fourth of July, I wanted to find out more. So I watched a brief video of your remarks (Rick Warren at the ISNA Conference - July 4th, 2009).  It touched me to hear you confess your love for your Muslim brothers and sisters and neighbors. It also touched me to hear you acknowledging globalization and how it’s drawing people from different faiths closer together. And I loved hearing you ask about how we can live and work together in greater harmony for the benefit of the common good. Lastly, you asked a really important question in that address. You asked about how we can deal with our deepest differences in order to achieve these things.

By that point Rick, you had me on the edge of my seat. I listened and hoped intently for some new insight you’d had, but then you said really disappointing stuff. You asked your Muslim brothers and sisters how we might pursue such things yet maintain “our separate traditions without compromise.” You lost me there brother and I bet you lost some of your Muslim participants at the convention. You lost me because I will not, and cannot, accept the family of God as a “Christians Only” club.

Friends, when I hear faith leaders professing love for others as Rick Warren did, I wonder why they haven’t taken the next and so obvious step in their faith journey. What’s that step? Well, it’s the step which says that everyone is part of God’s family, particularly if they hope, desire, pray for or seek after a just and peaceful world. The only people not part of the family of God are those who choose otherwise. No “ifs” and or “buts” about it as far as I’m concerned. If this world is to heal and become whole, folks who take a “Christians Only” view to the family of God truly need a “come to Jesus” moment.

Wonder what that moment’s about? Well, in the words of Catholic theologian Hans Kung, he writes in his book "Global Responsibility" that there can be no genuine world peace until there is peace among the world’s religions. So what that means for me is that as long as any persons of faith maintain a mindset of exclusionary criteria for being part of the family of God, then our world will never find its way to peace. In this day and age, such mindsets within the Christian faith serve only to increase society and culture’s dismissal of the Christian path, which in my opinion is too important a path to lose.

For those of us needing to maintain religious and theological segregation, I think that spending a day at Jesus’ side a couple of millennia ago might be a good thing. You probably know the day. The Apostle Mark reported about it (Mark 13:1-8). It’s the day Jesus and his disciples walked out of the Jerusalem Temple and he found them awestruck by the impressive buildings and sights surrounding them that heralded the religious system of their time.

Seeing his followers caught up in awe and possibly intimidated by what they saw, he confronts them and tells them, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” In time, what Jesus prophesied came true when the Temple as a symbol of religious empire was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. But that wouldn’t be all, Jesus said, for the end of time would also include wars and rumor of war, friends and family betraying one another, kingdoms and nations and empires rising up against each other, and even famines and earthquakes. Even then, Jesus said, these things will not be the end, but rather the “birth pangs” of what is about to come.

In my playbook, the birth pangs Jesus spoke of will be what herald the birth of a new enlightenment -- one that will be long and slow and painful in coming about. One realization of that enlightenment will be that no single group of individuals has the right of ascendancy over any other. Furthermore, humanity will finally commit itself to the ideal that war shall be no more and that any resource capable of benefitting the common good will be a resource that all have access to. In my opinion, it doesn’t require much imagination to identify what those blessings will be my friends, but let’s name a few just so we get the idea, e.g. 24/7 security throughout all the earth, housing, universal healthcare, living wage jobs, safe and healthful food, clothing, education, and the list goes on and on. In short, we’re talking no less than God’s Day of Peace for each and every living soul. Some of us like to call it the realization of God’s Peaceable Kingdom.

As we haven’t arrived yet to that time, it says to me that more empires will fall. For me, I think there’s one empire ideal in Christian thought which needs demolition for sure. It’s the notion that “only Jesus saves.” You might ask, “Well Brad, don’t you believe that Jesus saves people into the family of God?” Well of course I do and following Jesus has definitely worked for me. Jesus is my brother, my friend, my confidante, my guide. I don’t know what I would do without him. But I know far too many other people who are Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu who devote themselves completely to what they experience as God. Not only that, but they are humble, peace-loving, caring, devout individuals who sacrifice regularly for the betterment of the common good and a healthier world. Will a loving God simply cast those persons aside or say, “Get Jesus, otherwise it’s hellfire and damnation for you!” I doubt it. So it’s here where my experience of God and Jesus differ greatly from those who want the family of God to be a “Christians Only” club.

For my Jesus tells me one simple truth: All are loved by God and all are within the family of God. Hopefully that means that even the vilest person who ever lived will have the possibility for redemption in God’s Peaceable Kingdom. They will have it because whatever contributed to bringing about their evil will have a chance to be healed, even as Jesus healed and cast out demons during his earthly walk. In the end, the only souls casting themselves into oblivion will be those who decide that such is what they want. Long and short of, I guess I side with Native American Nez Perce Chief Joseph who once said, “We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit home according to his deserts; if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe and all my people believe the same.”

So what keeps great faith leaders like Rick Warren and others from taking the next step in their spiritual journey? I frankly don’t know. Perhaps they are worried that if they do their followers will abandon them. Well possibly that could happen. They have built their empires -- stone upon stone -- on the back of a principle that the family of God is an exclusive “Christians Only” club. So people wanting that kind of club huddle by the masses in their huge mega-churches, but time marches on and society and culture grow weary and dismissive of such things. There’s a fray developing at the edge however and a single thread could undo it all for them. It’s a thread with a voice that’s quite familiar to most of us today. It says, “I’m spiritual but not religious.”

Faith leaders and their churches rail away at that thread and voice, but it’s too late to cut the legs out from beneath it. And if faith leaders try to befriend it, they rightfully worry that their empires will begin to crumble stone by stone, particularly if that friendship leads to the logical next step in their faith journeys which is that all belong to the family of God. Maybe such leaders worry that they’ll be labeled heretics and one follower after another will head for the exits out of their mega-church empires because it won’t feel like their church anymore. Yes, maybe some of that will happen particularly for folks who like to gorge on the notion that God favors one faith tradition over another. I certainly know what it’s like to be part of such a club since I was raised in one. Thankfully, we moved on from that notion.

My guess however for those of us still struggling with the “one true church” or “one true faith” ideal is this: If we can take the next logical step in our faith journeys and let our minds acknowledge and our spirits confess a broader understanding of God’s love, there will still be plenty of folks willing to hang out with us. In fact, it will be a bigger and even more delightful family of God than we might have ever imagined. It probably means however that what we call – or think of as – church will change and change quite dramatically. I suspect that through the life course of our two youngest generations, we will get some pretty clear notions of what’s to come.

So my counsel for great guys like Rick Warren is this, “Keep a familiar hymn close to heart.” It’s the one with a couple of wonderful lines in it such as, “We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind,” and, “The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.” If we can grab hold of that, through and through, I’m sure it will make God’s day and Jesus will have one big bear hug waiting for us at the Pearly Gates. Heck, I’ll give you one right now. Have a great week my friends!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Wraparound! What a concept!


Lectionary Scripture - Nov 8th - Mark 12:38-44

Wraparound! What a great means for people helping other people in their community. Its healing benefits for one’s community could increase its well-being a thousand fold. How so? Well by faith groups wrapping their heads around it to provide it, that’s how. Seriously! In fact, I believe that if they did so it would foster a new revival for faith all across the country. Furthermore, I think my politically conservative friends would love it to pieces. Why? Because of the savings it brings to the public dollar.


Wraparound, in a nutshell, is focused on helping individuals and families get unmet needs met and met sustainably. It involves bringing together a group of people for the purpose of support. The group often consists of loved ones, friends, relatives, and professionals as needed. The group forms into a care team. Their work is driven by the voice of the person or family the group seeks to support. A mission and vision develops out of the group’s work for getting unmet needs met. Subsequently, the unmet need involves a brainstorming process. Creatively and resourcefully, the team identifies and pursues means of getting the need met. Once the needs have been met and met sustainably as evident through a review process, life for the individual or family often takes on new meaning and purpose. Life becomes more satisfying often with fewer and fewer crises occurring. Initially, care teams meet frequently. But as life becomes more healthful, the care team meets less frequently. Eventually, persons or families manage on their own. If there is more than one need to address, the team works on the next need until that need is met and so on. The beauty of wraparound is seeing lives take on a radiant glow as a new vision for the future takes hold and comes into being.

I had the good fortune of being trained years ago by one of the nation’s leading experts in wraparound, Carl Schick. At the time, I had no idea that Carl was a member of my denominational church family. Carl’s training left quite an impression on me. I then spent much more time in training with his associate, Pat Miles, also a leading expert. At the time, I worked in the publicly funded mental health system in Clark County in Washington State. Having oversight and care management roles for the adult part of that system, I witnessed service providers billing the daylights out of Medicaid and Medicare. Sometimes people spent years in services achieving little headway. Little hope seemed to exist for recovering from the devastating impact of mental health crises and unmet needs. Expensive psychiatric hospitalizations consumed vast sums of tax payer dollars with little benefit apparent for the patient, their loved ones, or the community they lived in. Hospitalizations focused mostly on medications and keeping a person from harming themselves or someone else. When the person appeared safe towards self and or others, hospital discharged persons as quickly as possible back to the community. This often occurred without adequate support in the community. Long and short of it, the system was broken. Even to this day the system struggles mightily for resources it needs. It does so because there is little public will to see that mental health care is provided at the level that’s needed in our communities.

Into this dark world came wraparound. The training I received offered new vision and hope for struggling lives. Gradually, in my care management role, I identified opportunities in the Clark County system for wraparound. As a licensed mental health professional with a strong clinical reputation among my peers, I persuaded adult service providers to start care teams for persons in services but for whom those services yielded little benefit. Teams, as previously described, formed up. The results astounded us all. Expensive hospitalizations dropped dramatically. People’s lives stabilized and found new meaning. Above it all, I heard one need expressed more frequently than others. It was this: “I need God and my faith community back in my life.”

Stepping back to a few years earlier, an amazing psychiatrist supervised me in the Clark County system. He was and is the most gifted and caring doc I ever knew in 16 years of public practice. Once during supervision, Dr. George Mecouch, shared these amazing words, “Churches could be marvelous places of healing for our clients. The only problem is that their Judeo-Christian God isn’t big enough.” George’s words struck home. I resolved from that time forward that my God would be big enough. My God would be big enough no matter how hard I had to press faith communities over their resistance to change and the dysfunctional way they existed mainly for themselves. And my God would be big enough no matter how hard I had to press the public in terms of its dysfunction. It’s dysfunction you might ask? Yes, it’s dysfunction. It’s dysfunction of closeting mental health issues and stripping funds away from related services nearly every chance it gets. As for the mental health system, its dysfunction involved resistance to means and methods other than what it traditionally used.

Experience teaches me however that the battle, fraught with challenges and disappointments, has never been easy. Despite a bit of headway here and there, it seems as though things are always on the losing side. At points, I wonder why bother anymore. Why throw one’s all into the task only to encounter huge resistance or outright efforts to dismiss, discredit, or be cast aside all together?

I sense that Jesus must have felt that way at times. He struggled mightily against a bankrupt religious system, bankrupt in ways obvious to him yet lost on many others. Yet Jesus chose to stay the course in ministry and mission. He chose that path because small and seemingly insignificant events demonstrated that all was not lost. Small and seemingly insignificant events indicated progress towards the Peaceable Kingdom. All of it depending however upon loyalty, sacrifice, and commitment to service.

One of those seemingly insignificant events involved a widow making her offering at the temple. Nearby her, the scribes and wealthy made their public display of impressive offerings at the temple catching everyone’s eyes. By contrast and with much humility, this poverty-stricken widow places two small copper coins into the offering, an amount not even worth the value of a penny. The moment escapes everyone but Jesus.

Turning to his disciples after witnessing her offering, Jesus counsels them not to be swayed by the spectacle of the scribes and the wealthy. Instead, he tells them, “This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." In short, though the religious system is bankrupt and does not serve the needs of the widow, let alone serve her well, she continues her faithful giving. She continues giving her all believing that one day God will work all things out for the common good of everyone.

It’s nearly two thousand years since the widow dropped her coins into the temple offering. Despite all the time gone by, God still works for the common good, especially through seemingly insignificant events. God does so through human beings because we’re all that God has for turning things around. It’s a task we must do; otherwise we never learn the guiding principles that are truly important for our world to arrive at being just and peace-filled. In this great undertaking, faith communities and their leaders need to learn about, and deal effectively, with mental health needs and the related social issues. Yet faith groups often dismiss that which does not fit neatly into their evangelism program or favored church growth models. Often those things get viewed with doubt and suspicion or worse yet, “It’s not the church’s responsibility to do social work. We don’t put our money toward that sort of thing.” When I hear such statements, it’s as though people think that God’s Peaceable Kingdom will magically happen in some way or another. The mental health system for its part is so strained, overworked, poorly resourced, and fragmented that people have little energy or vision or inclination to work more closely and directly with the community. In short, little happens that advances the common good toward a just and peace-filled world as mentioned a bit ago.

In response to this dark circumstance, let me offer one story of wraparound that involved people of faith coming together with social work and mental health professionals and family and loved ones to support a struggling individual. It’s simply one of many stories that I and others who’ve participated in wraparound could tell you about it as a tool for ministry. Jean (not her real name) was a quiet, passive, dependent older adult. She lived a lonely life especially during and after her husband’s long and troubling illness. During those years, Jean served as the primary care giver. She continued her isolated lifestyle long after her husband’s death. She knew little else. She came into the mental health system following discharge from the local psychiatric inpatient unit. Admission occurred due to suicidal feelings with plans to kill herself by overdose with Tylenol. Subsequent medication monitoring and outpatient therapy failed to achieve relief from her symptoms. As a result, Jean continued to experience rapidly repeating psychiatric hospitalizations; that is until she participated in wraparound. With her care team consisting of family members and professionals concerned that she might achieve suicide given the severity of her depression, Jean identified several needs that might help her get better. The one need she identified above all others was this, “I need God and my faith community back in my life and I don’t know how to do that.”

Feeling guilt that she had been away from those things so long, Jean shared that no one in her church would probably remember her or care to be involved with her. Jean allowed a team member however to go to work on the need. The team member contacted the pastor at Jean’s old church and explained the situation. The pastor subsequently discovered three women who remembered Jean. The pastor reported back to the team that the ladies would gladly attend Jean’s next team meeting. Meanwhile they would contact Jean to reconnect and bring her to church if she wanted.

At the next team meeting, the three ladies from Jean’s church were there. The team and Jean talked further about an unmet need of what to do when Jean felt anxious and thought all was lost and that she should die, all of which led to expensive hospitalizations. Together with Jean, the team decided that someone participating with Jean in different things she liked to do might be sufficient to distract her from the suicidal feelings. The activities which Jean identified as potentially helpful included anything from playing cards to talking on the phone to going shopping or to a movie or attending church.

Bless their hearts, the three church ladies -- at that team meeting -- said they’d be glad to help with that need. So the next time, Jean felt anxious and suicidal she called one of the ladies from church. And guess what? The plan worked!! Jean’s hospitalizations fell to zero over the next six months. At care team meetings, Jean took on a glow of happiness that loved ones hadn’t seen in years. For her part, Jean found confidence in her new abilities to deal with the world and the losses she’d had the past few years. In short, she found new meaning and purpose in life, all because of wraparound and three church ladies who extended themselves to help with Jean’s need. They gave of themselves like the widow gave her coins. Despite others who gave up on Jean long ago, the church ladies didn’t give up on her or consider her a lost cause.

So many faith communities suffer decline these days. Many face the likelihood that their best days lie behind them. This need not be. Faith communities simply need to rebirth. They need to rebirth into something relevant and capable for making God’s Day of Peace possible for all. Sometimes that means dying to a past way of being that’s no longer achieving much. Sometimes it means becoming something new altogether.

For me, I know of one very small congregation trying to do the hard work that’s needed. I’m sure there are others. So I want to say that my hat is off to the Anchorage Community of Christ in Anchorage, Alaska. They are a congregation whom I had the pleasure and privilege to support over the past several years. My hat is off to the nurse practitioner pastor there, James Williams, who caught the vision of wraparound for his struggling flock and how that vision is being supported by Carl Schick, a close personal friend of Jim’s. My praise goes to the congregation members themselves for their willingness to use wraparound as a means for reaching Anchorage’s young adults and their families in this phenomenal new way in hopes that a future can yet be realized for the congregation. My hat is especially off to the congregation selling their building so they could realign their assets in order to provide wraparound’s powerful process to serve the common good of Greater Anchorage. Lastly, my hat’s off to John Smallwood, Missionary Coordinator for the Greater Pacific Northwest Mission Center of the Community of Christ (www.cofchrist-gpnw.org) who’s hoping to offer wraparound through the faith communities he supports in Central Oregon.

Perhaps nothing else gives a sense of what the future could become than if we open and extend ourselves in service and sacrifice and monetary support through new possibilities despite other parts of the system that struggle and seem broke. At a family camp the same summer that the Anchorage Community of Christ decided to sell its building, one of the mothers with a young child shared her testimony of a dream she experienced one night. Concerned with the plan to sell the church and feeling quite against it, the dream changed Laura dramatically. For in her dream, God showed her how the congregation would be renewed and revitalized and how powerful and substantive the ministry of the congregation would become over time to families and individuals and children in the whole of Anchorage. From what she experienced in her dream, God told her how necessary she would be to the wraparound work and most of all her support for the work. She then experienced a brief moment of fear for her young son, Wesley. “What about Wesley?” she asked. The Spirit replied, “He will be part of this as well. He will be fine.”

I want to share the above as far as widely as I can. I hope you will pass the story along. Some persons hear the story and the Spirit that’s moving within it. Others do not. There are also those who continue their denial that the church doesn’t need be anything other than what it already is. Their words are to the effect of, “It was good enough for me and my children. So it will be good enough for all who come along after us.” You be the judge, what do you think?