Sad is Happy for Deep People

My mother passed away. It's been a couple weeks now, but I'm still having a struggle getting back into the writing of this book. Mom always wanted to become a writer, but never did. I seem to have inherited her gene that makes one want to be a writer, but unable to put pen to paper.

Our niece reminded me today of a Steven Moffat quote that I used in Mom's eulogy: "Sad is happy for deep people." The simple point I was trying to make was that our sadness in remembering one who has lived long and loved well drives us deep into our memories, memories of our deepest happiness. That is why tears and laughter go together in a funeral.

How does that connect with our missiology? It is a key understanding. I have been noticing all the literature on church growth and watching our leaders respond to the crisis of the loss of membership and vitality in American mainline denominations (like United Methodists), and I'm seeing a deep, and apparently invisible to most, flaw in our thinking.

Our leaders are running away from pain. Growth is associated with positive emotions, decline is associated with negative emotions. We're trying to "happy" our way out of decline.

Here's the thing: The power of the cross was not that Jesus defeated evil by numbers or strength. (How's the song go? "He could have called 10,000 angels") He "beat the devil" (I'm thinking of an old Kris Kristofferson song here.) by taking into himself all the fear, hate, anger, and rage of his world.

The remarkable numerical success of The United Methodist Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (according to Interpreter Magazine, 254% membership gain from 1999 to 2009, the war years) was not due to any evangelism campaign or certainly not a slick marketing plan, but to the pastors and lay leaders staying with the villagers as they were over run by marauding armies. When all other community leaders were fleeing, they stayed and endured the full brunt of the war. We lost many, and many are now maimed for life. These lives given were not combatants, nor were they innocent victims. They were those who could have run for their own lives, but for the cause of Christ and the sake of the people they were sent to serve, and in obedience to their bishop, they didn't.

We've spent the last two years intentionally wandering the war ravaged villages in the mountains and along the Congo River in the Katanga Province. We sit and listen to their stories and receive their pain. We sit long enough for the village to drive their pain deep enough into the soul until a true, deep, and abiding happiness is found.

The problems of this world, Congo or Indiana, are not solved by slapping a new tin roof on a bombed out school building or producing a new marketing plan, but rather, they are solved by intentionally embracing people's pain and fear in all its ugliness and conflict, and holding the people in safe and dependable arms as the community discovers, names, and works through its deepest issues. It's what Jesus did and what his disciples are called to do.

BTW Damn the numbers. (I can brag of doing 310 baptisms this year, so I'm not looking for a theological excuse for not being held accountable.) Remember that resurrection is a gift of God. Hold the Church accountable to the task. God will take care of the numbers.

In the meantime, sad is happy for deep people.