we got to get ourselves back to the garden

You’ll remember the classic line from The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy first steps out of her tornado-transported home into the Land of the Munchkins. Clutching Toto, she looks wide-eyed around and says, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Getting home to Kansas was the heart and soul of the story. As wonderful as it was to know the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, there was no question that Dorothy was going to abandon her comrades as soon as she learned how to go home. “There’s no place like home (tap, tap), there’s no place like home (tap, tap), there’s no place like home…”

That longing for home beats in all our hearts. The Odyssey, I’ll be Home for Christmas, Lassie Come Home, Norman Rockwell paintings, leaving the porch light burning… the stories, songs, and images of coming home are found everywhere in our culture, revealing our universal longing. People who find at last a worshipping community and religious tradition that they feel “really at home in” (there’s that word again!) have written a variety of articles and books often with similar titles reflecting the Coming Home theme. No matter how great the vacation has been, Jeanne’s first words when we step through our own doorway is, “Oh, it’s so good to come home!”

This theme in our hearts is not about staying home or being home — it’s about returning home. It’s not about a journey of discovery to someplace new and wonderful: Dorothy sought the Emerald City not to discover or experience the wonders of that place, but only as a means to returning home. Like Sinbad, many of us are addicted to travel, adventure, and discovery —we have wanderlust and traveling shoes. But in the end, homesickness overcomes us, and we must return home. As Crosby, Stills and Nash sang, “we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

There are any number of ways to make sense of the quest that lies at the center of our religious life. But I wonder whether there is any better way to make sense of it than just this: we’re longing to come home. More than finding wisdom to govern our lives, more than finding inspiration for life, more than finding comrades to work for a better world, more than finding relief from guilt or fear, we’re longing to come around the bend to see the porch light burning. We’re longing to come home.

The Lord be with you,

The Downside of Lay Ministry -- Control Issues

One of the big motivations that drove me to theological seminary in 1976 resulted from my frustration with the ministry “glass ceiling.” It was my experience that in many congregations, freedom for ministry had little to do with one’s call from God, little to do one’s passion for the needs of the world, and little to do with one’s abilities, skills or “spiritual gifts.” Instead, freedom for ministry was enormously limited by those in control, apparently only to maintain control – to avoid congregational messiness.

So I imagined how one might become a sort of ministry “Trojan Horse.” I imagined sneaking into the ordination process in the middle of the night, so that once inside the gates and walls, I could open the gates while the institution slept, and let my friends in to take over the city, winning the struggle for freedom for lay ministry.

That motivation stayed with me over the years. So perhaps it is not a surprise that my work with and observation of congregations -- both Episcopal and evangelical – still convinces me there is an inverse relationship between control by rectors and senior pastors and ministry participation by both staff and members. Micromanagement not only fails to enhance and encourage the imaginative, expanding ministries, especially lay ministries, it freezes it out, limits it, dampens it, suffocates it

Over the years I’ve talked with many ministry leaders, lay and ordained, who came to ask how our congregations were inspired to create some really amazing ministries. “What did you do,” they ask, to make this happen?” My answer: “Nothing. I have no idea how to create or inspire imaginative ministries. I just refuse to quench the Spirit by controlling them.”

Believe, me, the Spirit will capture the imaginations of individuals, and things will happen – if you just won’t give into the temptation to micromanage.

Hilariously, their next question often is, "but how do we control what happens?" My answer is, "I just told you… you DON’T! You have to choose between controlling things and letting things happen. You can’t have both."

They then ask, "but won't people sometimes do the wrong ministries… or not do it right? What if people complain that a ministry springs up to focus on Need X while nobody is focusing on Need Y?”

My response is two fold: “First, if the Spirit let that group to focus on Need X, that’s the Spirit’s initiative, not mine. Go as God, not me! And second, if you’re aware of Need Y, while that other group is focusing on Need X – could it possibly be that the Spirit is calling YOU to do something about Need Y? Instead of complaining about that other group is NOT doing, why not applaud what they ARE doing, and follow their example by focusing on a need that YOU see?”

The Lord be with you!