I have never told anyone the whole story behind why I originally called this blog "The Empty Pulpit."
In 2007 I was approached by an academic institution about coming on their faculty. It threw me. Although I had entertained the idea off and on, what jolted me the most was the idea of leaving congregational ministry, and not preaching on Sunday mornings among people who lived out in the proverbial real world. I started blogging as a sort of contemporary attempt at reflection in hopes of both personal as well as communal discernment. What would life be like if I emptied my pulpit?
Then something happened.
I realized after about two weeks of introspection that whether I left congregational ministry or not, my pulpit still needed to be emptied of a few things. Like John the Baptist who once said of Jesus that he is to become more, and I to become less, I had to reassess why I was so attached to preaching in the first place. Was it power? Fame? Habit?
Around that same time I was invited to join a group of ministers on a two week retreat to Israel. In the midst of my own internal upheaval it occurred to me while standing on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee that I was a Christian because I was a preacher. I had to find my way back to being a preacher because I was a Christian. I was at the starting line of a spiritual gauntlet. Working with congregations for so long had desensitized me to my own walk with God. I had become the very creature they warned us about in seminary.
I wanted to stay in ministry, but it had to be for other reasons.
For the past few years I have come to love the church in a completely different way. It is no longer the institution that funds my preaching habit. Instead, it is a collection of clay jars who carry around the Gospel in order to reflect the image and likeness of Christ to a world suspicious of those who claim to reflect the image and likeness of Christ. I came to love Glenwood in a new way. Although I lost all interest in the administrivia associated with congregational ministry, I gained a new love for simply walking with people who are daily being saved.
Then in 2008, I took a break from the blog that had become too much navel gazing. I stopped blogging until just recently when I thought we might be moving to Houston to start a new work with the Bering Drive Church of Christ. Once again I was forced to rethink why I stayed in congregational ministry. I picked up the blog again, only this time as a reflection on other people's reflections about ministry. I swore off autobiography in exchange for simple contemplation about loving people in the name of Jesus.
But for today--(especially in light of the fact that this Sunday I will empty my pulpit at Glenwood and spend a month "not preaching" until arriving in Houston in April)--I decided to break my own rule in order to get ready for my month-long empty pulpit. My prayer is that the month of March will be a time of personal refreshment when God may prepare me for a ministry at Bering that goes beyond what I can ask or imagine. I want to walk into Bering in April as a simple lover of the bride of Christ. Maybe, just maybe, church and ministry and friendship and following Jesus is as simple as something Henri Nouwen wrote that I saw posted recently from a friend of a friend:
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
What if that's an image of the church?
