It's taken me a while to process this.
It happened last week at a Pastoral Oversight Committee meeting of Presbytery.
In the course of our business, one of the ministers on the Committee shared a story of a ministry he was recently called to offer to a local corporation.
It was an exorcism.
Of the building in which the business of this corporation was conducted. And in which increasing numbers of their hundreds of employees were feeling the presence of an abiding darkness. A darkness that was manifest in abnormally high numbers of employees falling ill and dying of a variety of diseases over the past few years. That was felt in a deep and general un-ease among people in the building. That they increasingly felt as something toxic in the place where they worked.
The minister's church has a connection with this corporation through other work they do in the community. So when the minister received a call from someone there, he was not surprised. At first.
The surprise came when he found himself being asked to come and help rid their building of the darkness and the toxin that seemed to be invading and infecting it.
He said he would be glad to, but did the caller know what he was asking. Yes, the caller said.
He would be glad to, he said, but he needed to know, have you run this past the CEO? Yes, the caller said, this is the CEO's idea and I'm calling you at his direction.
So then he would be more than glad to, he said, and the arrangements were made for him to be there at an appointed time and day to tour the building, hold a service of worship, praise and prayer for all who wanted to attend -- on company time and in a large common room, and to call on God's light to banish the darkness from that building.
A majority of the hundreds of employees were there.
As I say, it's taken me about a week to process this information.
The problem -- and the reason it took so long, is that I was beginning with what I know and what I am used to, and was trying to fit this story into that box. I kept trying to figure out how this fits into the United Church as I know it, how it relates to our usual practices and traditions of outreach, pastoral care, and discernment, and how on earth I could ever offer something like that with what I have been trained and practiced to do.
And then I realized I was starting from the wrong place. The starting point for real mission is not inside my own -- inside our own, box of tools and the way we are used to using them. When we start that way, all we end up doing is reproducing what was developed as effective mission by an earlier generation for an earlier time.
The place to start is with what the world around is asking for, needing, and hungry for NOW. We listen for that, and then we start rummaging in our tool box to see if there is something we can use. And if we don't have the right tool, we go and get it. We find it. And get trained in how to use it.
The minister who shared this story said the two things that blew him away were the clear and strong perception of the employees of that corporation of the reality of spiritual darkness in the building, and their hunger -- deep and desperate hunger, to be free of it and to live and work in the light of God.
I wonder if we are open to, and aware of the real and deep hunger that is felt by people around us today, and that may need tools we are not used to using.
Or if we are busy just playing with and polishing tools already in our tool-box that were developed by an earlier generation, and wondering why no one is calling us to use them.
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