Disciples teacher Dan Moseley believes the most valuable lesson he learned about Christian leadership in the church he learned lying in a hospital bed in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Suddenly stricken with illness during a church conference, Moseley was packed into an ambulance and taken to a hospital in a country whose language he didn’t speak, whose customs he didn’t know and whose questions he couldn’t answer. Moseley believes the fear and anxiety that gripped him is not unlike that felt by many church leaders today who look around and see the role of the church in society is very different than when they were growing up. He told a conference of Disciples elders meeting in advance of the 2011 General Assembly it’s difficult to know how to “be church” in this day and age.
“Most churches were created pre-streaming video, pre-Internet, pre-smart phone and pre-Twitter,” says Moseley. “Congregations exist in a place where change is deep, profound and permanent.”
Dealing with change in an uncertain environment can lead to conflicts within congregations, Moseley believes. He says conflicts arise because church members feel as if they’re losing a part of their church that is important to them and people fear losing something that is sacred and part of their spiritual lives. The good news, however, is that conflict is a sign people care.
Moseley told the elders that helping their fellow Christians through their fear and anxiety about an uncertain world takes courage and an important part of Christian leadership is the courage to tell the stories of the Bible and to listen to the stories of the faithful. In many congregations, he says, courage is “showing up.”
In Sao Paulo, Moseley says, the seminary he was visiting organized students to sit with him around the clock and to translate between Moseley and his doctors.
“That’s what we need in the church today,” he says. “We need translators. I felt alone because I couldn’t communicate with the people around me.”
Moseley says the students who helped him in Brazil grew up in a different culture, but knew the stories of the Bible and the same is true for the people of God in nations around the world. The hymns and spirituals sung in churches today were developed as ways of passing the stories of God’s people down from generation to generation and they have the power to inspire and transform today.
“The role of leaders in the church is to ‘Tell It’,” Moseley says. “Not in a way that abuses people or beats people over the head, but in a way that helps people understand what shapes you.” He believes that each time a story is shared, it changes both the teller and the listener.
He told the elders there are people in their congregations today dealing with the fear and anxiety of an uncertain world. Struggling churches are forced to scale back to deal with a new reality. They worry about relevance in a society where younger generations seek God in ways they don’t understand. He told the gathering the role of elders in a congregation is not to prevent change, but to provide stability and steadfastness in the midst of it.
“We need to create churches where people are free to experiment with new things without being burdened by the mistakes of the past,” he says. “How do we create a grace-filled space that frees people from their mistakes?”
***
By Mark Drury
[email protected]
