The Pastor’s Pen – January 2010
January 6th, 2010Living Healthy, Living Well
We are always living in “in between times.” As Christians we live “already but not yet,” meaning that while our justification has been fully accomplished in Christ, we long nonetheless for God to bring to completion the good work Christ first began in us. Martin Luther once penned these words about the Christian life:
“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
We live in “in between times;” I write this column just five days after members of the US Senate gathered on Christmas Eve morning for the formality of voting on their version of health care reform. There is probably no need to ask whether or not the final version of the bill or its mandates will ever “gleam in glory” if we pause to remember “how laws and sausages are made.” Yet during the process, we are left wondering what will be and how our lives will be impacted by decisions others make on our behalf.
Purveyors of health and wellness related services seem to agree though that in the future, living well and choosing preventative measures related to our health and wellness will be their essential counsel. The ELCA’s Board of Pensions, our own church’s administrator of retirement and insurance plans, has been espousing the adage, “Healthy Leaders Enhance Lives” for some time and has on its website the following words to encourage living well:
“Ultimately, that’s for each of us to decide. Seeking to live well in mind, body and spirit is a personal journey, undertaken for personal reasons. But we also live in community ? together with family and friends, our congregation, our employer, the ELCA. Our state of health impacts the people and organizations around us.”
That last statement, the one about how our own “state of health impacts the people and organizations around us” is what caught my attention. That is because it resonates with the underlying theory behind the Healthy Congregations workshop series we will begin hosting in another week (look for more info in this newsletter or on our website, www.st-matthias.org ). The Healthy Congregations workshop series is based upon the work of The Rev Dr Peter Steinke, a Lutheran pastor who maintained that congregations are more apt to thrive when they are attentive to the emotional processes inherent within the system of congregation life. Steinke based his theories along with the Rabbi Edwin Friedman who examined family systems theory from the perspective of congregational life in his book, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue on the work of psychologist Murray Bowen in the 1960s.
The workshop on Saturday, January 9th will not delve deeply into the theoretical yet will focus of some of the practical issues pertinent to family systems theory and what it means to be an intentional community of faith in Christ. The topics on that day will include:
- Healthy congregations accept differences (rather than deny)
- Healthy congregations focus on their strengths (rather than weaknesses)
- Healthy congregations focus on mission (rather than “getting along,” the past, survival, “the minister,” or some other thing or issue)
Just last Sunday, when our worship gathered us for the Service of Lessons and Carols, I made an appeal from the altar that as you busy yourselves in making resolutions for the coming year, that you consider making it a point to be intentional about your spiritual life and the life of this gathered community. A nearby colleague of mine reminded me of the advice from the writer of James, who encouraged the disciples of Jesus to avoid being “double-minded,” yet instead display single-mindedness in their purpose and mission. We have no less than a stellar opportunity before us if we will seize it and seek, prayerfully and faithfully to be the body of Christ as St Matthias church. To heed the words of Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “Do one thing every day that scares you,” may I suggest that you take risks for the sake of Christ in the precious gift of time that will be the year of our Lord, 2010.
Together Faithfully,
Pastor Alan