Elijah is my patron saint.
That’s a line I have used several times recently in speaking to or about my calling as a pastor in the mainline church. Last month Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte invited me to speak in chapel about the upcoming conference, “Renewing the Call,” to be held in Chicago August 8-10, 2010. I will also be visiting other campuses this spring.
“Renewing the Call” is about inviting a new generation of ECOTs (those who consider themselves evangelical, conservative, orthodox, and traditional) to join those of us already in the mainline churches. When the Board of Directors of Faithful and Welcoming Churches met with Rev. Geoffrey Black, newly installed General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, two weeks ago, he was very encouraging and supportive as we shared our vision of inviting more ECOT pastors to shepherd those congregations in the UCC who would like to have an ECOT pastor.
As an ECOT pastor who chooses to stay in the mainline, I’m not very American. Our national religious history encourages Christians to separate into groups where people agree – not only on the essentials of the faith, but on most matters of theology, ethics, and even politics. As a result, congregations become places where the likeminded meet to affirm each other’s insights and blind spots.
Elijah would not have understood that.
Elijah found himself in a difficult place, a frustrating place, a lonely place. He prophesied in the northern kingdom of Israel when Ahab and Jezebel were in charge. Simultaneously in Judah, Asa was king – and he was followed by his son Jehoshaphat. Revival and reform were the operative words in Judah.
But God didn’t call Elijah to Judah. He didn’t need Elijah in Judah. God needed Elijah in Israel. It was much harder there. Not everyone wanted him there. Sometimes he just wanted to die. But he didn’t leave; he couldn’t leave.
When I shared this as a devotional at our Faithful & Welcoming Churches board meeting, one of my FWC colleagues reminded me that we have to be careful in sounding like we are the godly ones and our mainline setting is pagan. Arrogance hardly serves God or his church.
We all need a dose of humility. But part of that humility is the awareness that God has the sovereign right to place his servants in the place where there may be more criticism than affirmation, more frustration than progress, more losses than wins, and more dependence on God than self-fulfillment.
Elijah would understand.