Tod Bolsinger

Rooted for Storms

All anyone around the church office could talk about this past week was the early winter storm that blew through Southern California. Most of us were talking about a night of rain and winds as if we had just survived an Arctic expedition.

(Note to anyone who lives in places where they really get winter: We SoCalers are wimps. A little rain and the newscasts "go live from our Storm Center" and nobody leaves the house. Those of us in Orange County are even bigger wimps. We consider it cold if we have to wear socks or long pants.)

When a storm hits in Southern California, our biggest concerns are slick freeways, land slides and fallen trees. And on this day, the conversation was about our worship director who had to stay home after the storm to remove a tree that had fallen the night before. It happens every year, during a particularly harsh and blustery storm, many of the biggest and most beautiful trees are revealed for the mere surface decorations that they are.

When we think of trees, it's easy to wax nostalgic about something that has been planted for fruit, for shade, and for beauty that has endured the test of time. We think of oaks that are older than our country or redwoods that have been here since the days of Christ. But often the trees that line our streets or fill our yards have not developed the root systems that will hold when the days turn difficult. So a storm comes and the roads are blocked, the landscape littered with fallen trees. Not snapped off, but uprooted. A tragedy not of frailty but of a lack of depth.

Too often this is the picture of the church that so many have today. We look large and bustling, filled with people and programs--until a storm hits. And because so few of us are deeply rooted in our Christian communities, we pull out and head for another place where the winds are calm and the sky is blue. And the church falls.

The Bible says that people who are deeply rooted in the wisdom of God are like trees by a river that are well rooted and watered (Ps 1:1). Paul prays for his followers to be "rooted and grounded in love" (Eph 3:17). The life of the believer and the community of God's people are to be like trees with deep roots that can last out the storm.

This leads me to reflect once again on what I referred to as the spiritual discipline of "stability". Deep rooting requires two things: lots of watering and lots of time. For a Christian to be rooted and deep, for churches to be able to offer shelter and shade, both need long steady drinks from the river of God's word and Spirit. Christians and communities alike need to be planted on the truth and wisdom of God that runs deep. Like a river than can cut through a mountain side, the word of God is the only source for grounding our churches and our lives.

But rooting also takes time. The longer we stay in a Christian community that drinks from the river of God's word and wisdom, the deeper our roots become in the character of God. The longer we remain the more intertwined our roots become, our lives more deeply a part of each other, more able to stand firm when the winds come. Then deeply rooted, our lives and communities are there when people need us: when the hungry need friut, when the harshness of life send people looking for a shady spot to rest, when those who have lived in barren lands need to be reminded of lasting beauty.

As you consider today the idea of "staying put" let this question linger: What kind of tree do you want to be? The one above? Or this one...

More on Abba Anthony and staying put...

For those of you who liked the opening post to this series on Staying Put, here is a link to a sermon I gave that used Anthony's advice as a way to "The good life" and a way to please God at the same time.

Why pastors should stay put...

It was cold morning in Pasadena but an unusually high number of sleepy seminarians dragged themselves into a classroom for a muffin and weak coffee (this was before "The Starbucks Revolution"). The reason: Eugene Peterson, respected author and "pastor to pastors" was going to speak at the Spiritual Formation breakfast (which, as I have already noted, wasn't much of a breakfast).

To be blunt, Peterson wasn't great that morning. Maybe he needed better coffee to get going, too. The hour seemed to drag on and I remember being disappointed. I had come to hear this man whose books had so inspired and shaped my sense of pastoral calling and now I was leaving with a growling stomach and not much food for thought.

And then, the moderator threw out one last question. I think it was meant to be a simple little wrap up question, to inspire a nice feel-good moment of spiritual encouragement: "Eugene, what one bit of advice would you give to our seminarians today as the make plans to start their calling as pastors?"

His response was utterly unexpected. Peterson: "My advice to you is to spend your ministry in one church. Spend your life ministering to the same congregation. You see, pastors of past generations used to think of a call to a ministry las being ike a marriage. They felt betrothed to their congregations. Seek your calling and spend your life there."

At that moment, the room just went silent. The effect was devastating. Here was a group of maybe 100 pastors-in-training, most of whom had drunk the kool-aid of climbing the corporate ladder. It was the hey-day of the Church Growth Movement. We all wanted to be pastors of big churches and the best way to do that was to keep moving on and moving up every couple of years. But we all really respected Eugene Peterson and he was telling us to abandon that track all together. I found out later that this was a deep conviction of Peterson's. When one of my friends who knows him personally phoned to tell him that he had been called to a little town in Northern California, Peterson told him, "Congratulations, now go buy your burial plot."

Peterson's advice that morning shaped me more than almost anything that I learned in seminary. It slapped to consciousness the ambitions that I had been denying. It made me realize that I was afraid of knowing people too well and what that would demand of me as a pastor. But it also opened my heart to a different kind of ministry, something I really was longing for, something of the past that offered a genuine hope for the church today. The pastor as a genuine community-builder who is deeply bonded to, betrothed to, belonging to a people.

Yes, some of us will need to serve in more than one church, that will be our calling. Some of us need to leave behind churches that are not a good fit for us. Some of us will serve in some churches, only to gain the wisdom and maturity that we need to serve another for the rest of our careers. But far more of us need to recover the blessing of staying put.

Studies show that the healthiest churches in America are those with the longest tenured pastors and I believe that the only truly healthy way for a pastor to live is to stay around long enough for our people to come to really love us warts and all.

When I was called to San Clemente Presbyterian Church I was 33 years old. I didn't buy my burial plot, but I did invite everyone in the church to my daughter's high school graduation. She was 3 months old at the time.

Blessed are those who stay put

Someone asked Abba Anthony "What must one do in order to please God?" The old man replied, "Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes, whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved."

This little gem from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers introduces for most of us a most unexpected bit of advice: If you want to please God, don't rush off. Hang out for a bit. Sink some deep roots. Now, amongst the many vows that monks made in the ancient days, one was the vow of stability. They understood that for most good things to happen in the soul of a person, it takes a long time of hanging out with the same people going deeper and deeper in the things of life. And this feels pretty strage to most of us.

The truth be told the first two lessons offered by Abba Anthony are somewhat standard fare--Keep God before you and order your life by the Scriptures--but this third one is down right radical in a world where people don’t give a second thought to picking up and leaving whenever things aren’t going their way.

How many of us—be honest here even if it’s just in your heart—have bailed on relationships, switched jobs, dumped friends, changed churches, left marriages, and cut and run at the first sign of conflict or trouble. We don’t work through problems, we avoid them. We don’t confront challenges, we flee from them. We don’t stay in any place or in any relationship long enough to experience the depths and joys and lessons of a life lived in one place.

Of course, some, like my friends at Camp Pendleton Marine Base move around a lot out of necessity or calling--but even they should consider whether when they leave, if they do so, too easily. If we do live long in the same community, how many of us could leave it today without a second thought? We have few deep friendships, weak ties, nothing that would make the parting any sorrow at all.

Over the next few posts I want to take up this idea of stability as a spiritual discipline and a key to the life that God wants for us. Amidst all of the reasons to believe that Christian community is important, perhaps we have never really considered that our hanging out would please God.