Submitted by Rev. Dr. Joy Harrell Blaylock
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Mobile, Alabama
I recently filed my first “Rostered Leader Report” with the synod office. My mind swarmed with various ideas as I tried to answer, with some reasonable depth, the questions contained there: “as you reflect on the last year, what were the most significant developments, events, or accomplishments in your life and ministry?” Surprisingly, I found that I had space for only 125 words or less. How do you negotiate a trip to seminary, ordination, first call, and budding ministry with all its joys and sorrows in that space?
As a systematic theologian, brevity has never been one of my strong suits. My mind races through philosophy, words, hermeneutics, the appropriate choice of adjectives and the like. The egoism and excess of academia is hard to suppress. One word that leapt to my mind as I filled out my RLR was praxis and yet I failed to somehow include it in the words I submitted.
In making the transition from the ivory tower world of theology and the protocols of academia, the post-hermeneutical ethical buzz word flashed in my mind over and over like a neon sign: praxis, the living out of our faith. The joy I have found in answering a call to ministry has been the profound simplicity of being with people in all their glory and their brokenness. This is a facet that I missed entirely as I wrangled with students who longed to grasp the profound truths of Christianity in their studies. Yet, there is nothing special about this revelation. We often miss the depths of discipleship as it unfolds in front of us in simple things like shared meals, conversations, or a ride to work.
What I struggled with most was articulating and somehow defining my newly ‘ordained’ symbolic function within the community at large. In reading Douglas John Hall’s recent article in the Christian Century “Against Religion: The Case for Faith” I was reminded of this symbolic struggle when I read his words:
In every religion, there are vulnerable points—ideas, attitudes or emphases which, under certain historical conditions, are bound to become flash points of conflict. But surely there is no point more redolent of potential violence than this kind of spiritual certitude itself. In a global village where religious disputation no longer limits itself to quarrels within the various historic religions but spills over increasingly into the unprecedented meeting of world religions, every one of them made newly insecure by their felt awareness of one another and of rampant secularity, the greatest flash point of all is inseparable from the religious impulse as such. With its clamoring for ultimacy, its frenetic triumphalism, its incapacity for existential doubt and the entertainment of alternatives, such religion inevitably courts violent opposition.
What I wanted to convey in those 125 words or less but couldn’t is something more along these lines: In what way, as I fasten the collar around my neck and enter the community, do I represent such a religion that clamors for ultimacy? How do I affirm my call as an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament, a personally and socially accountable witness, without succumbing to this frenetic triumphalism of bureaucracy and the pseudo-religiosity of political structures?
I began then a long series of conversations with myself (systematic theologians are notorious for this introverted activity). In what ways have I already failed in my present call to embody the life that God has given us in all of its grand simplicity? How have we, corporately, failed to discern the workings of the Spirit in such a way that we are not self-deluded, stuck in a leadership mode grounded in mere survival or an unhealthy navel-gazing orientation? How are we living into our potential and launching out into the radical, self-emptying call of the life of faith?
There is no doubt in my mind that the filtered effect of our praxis, the living out of our faith in life, is that the church is inevitably seen as a purveyor of goods and services and our members are constantly shopping and ‘trading up’ for another church that can better meet their needs. How does our praxis come to be reduced in this way? How can we avoid this? What would our synods and churches look like if we were willing to subordinate everything for just one missional reality: the goal of being and forming Christ-like people, people who live in the way of love, the way of peacemaking, the way of the kingdom of God, the way of Jesus, the way of the Spirit?
I suppose the answers to these questions will help to determine the way in which I carve out an answer to the second question in the Rostered Leader Report: “as you look forward to this year, what will be the special emphases of your ministry?” The short answer: people. The long answer: to embrace the anxiety and the courage of leaving behind the fixed foundations offered by the world and even religion to live into a mystical embodiment and engagement with faith every day, a faith that is good works and good works that are faith in action, a faith that gives witness to the truth of God’s promise to Abraham: I will bless you, God said, and I will make you a blessing to others. I will make your name and nation great, and through you all nations will be blessed.
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Mobile, Alabama
I recently filed my first “Rostered Leader Report” with the synod office. My mind swarmed with various ideas as I tried to answer, with some reasonable depth, the questions contained there: “as you reflect on the last year, what were the most significant developments, events, or accomplishments in your life and ministry?” Surprisingly, I found that I had space for only 125 words or less. How do you negotiate a trip to seminary, ordination, first call, and budding ministry with all its joys and sorrows in that space?
As a systematic theologian, brevity has never been one of my strong suits. My mind races through philosophy, words, hermeneutics, the appropriate choice of adjectives and the like. The egoism and excess of academia is hard to suppress. One word that leapt to my mind as I filled out my RLR was praxis and yet I failed to somehow include it in the words I submitted.
In making the transition from the ivory tower world of theology and the protocols of academia, the post-hermeneutical ethical buzz word flashed in my mind over and over like a neon sign: praxis, the living out of our faith. The joy I have found in answering a call to ministry has been the profound simplicity of being with people in all their glory and their brokenness. This is a facet that I missed entirely as I wrangled with students who longed to grasp the profound truths of Christianity in their studies. Yet, there is nothing special about this revelation. We often miss the depths of discipleship as it unfolds in front of us in simple things like shared meals, conversations, or a ride to work.
What I struggled with most was articulating and somehow defining my newly ‘ordained’ symbolic function within the community at large. In reading Douglas John Hall’s recent article in the Christian Century “Against Religion: The Case for Faith” I was reminded of this symbolic struggle when I read his words:
In every religion, there are vulnerable points—ideas, attitudes or emphases which, under certain historical conditions, are bound to become flash points of conflict. But surely there is no point more redolent of potential violence than this kind of spiritual certitude itself. In a global village where religious disputation no longer limits itself to quarrels within the various historic religions but spills over increasingly into the unprecedented meeting of world religions, every one of them made newly insecure by their felt awareness of one another and of rampant secularity, the greatest flash point of all is inseparable from the religious impulse as such. With its clamoring for ultimacy, its frenetic triumphalism, its incapacity for existential doubt and the entertainment of alternatives, such religion inevitably courts violent opposition.
What I wanted to convey in those 125 words or less but couldn’t is something more along these lines: In what way, as I fasten the collar around my neck and enter the community, do I represent such a religion that clamors for ultimacy? How do I affirm my call as an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament, a personally and socially accountable witness, without succumbing to this frenetic triumphalism of bureaucracy and the pseudo-religiosity of political structures?
I began then a long series of conversations with myself (systematic theologians are notorious for this introverted activity). In what ways have I already failed in my present call to embody the life that God has given us in all of its grand simplicity? How have we, corporately, failed to discern the workings of the Spirit in such a way that we are not self-deluded, stuck in a leadership mode grounded in mere survival or an unhealthy navel-gazing orientation? How are we living into our potential and launching out into the radical, self-emptying call of the life of faith?
There is no doubt in my mind that the filtered effect of our praxis, the living out of our faith in life, is that the church is inevitably seen as a purveyor of goods and services and our members are constantly shopping and ‘trading up’ for another church that can better meet their needs. How does our praxis come to be reduced in this way? How can we avoid this? What would our synods and churches look like if we were willing to subordinate everything for just one missional reality: the goal of being and forming Christ-like people, people who live in the way of love, the way of peacemaking, the way of the kingdom of God, the way of Jesus, the way of the Spirit?
I suppose the answers to these questions will help to determine the way in which I carve out an answer to the second question in the Rostered Leader Report: “as you look forward to this year, what will be the special emphases of your ministry?” The short answer: people. The long answer: to embrace the anxiety and the courage of leaving behind the fixed foundations offered by the world and even religion to live into a mystical embodiment and engagement with faith every day, a faith that is good works and good works that are faith in action, a faith that gives witness to the truth of God’s promise to Abraham: I will bless you, God said, and I will make you a blessing to others. I will make your name and nation great, and through you all nations will be blessed.
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