Being Present: Ministry on the Edges of Organization, Church, and Mission

By Arthur A. Rouner Jr.

The message given in Pilgrim Center healing retreats for survivors of genocide and war is: The world has not forgotten or abandoned you. The Church of the world views you as its brothers and sisters, and we have come from them, to stand with you, and to love you on their behalf.

In this book, The Rev. Dr. Arthur A. Rouner, Jr., a parish minister for 40 years, lays out a theology for ministry through presence, based on the ministry of Jesus. It is a simple, practical, effective approach for reaching people who are difficult to reach, who are often withdrawn, silently suffering, and probably at the edges of Church life. Brokenness, Dr. Rouner says, is a condition of the soul of people high and low. It is a condition of the rich as well as the poor. It is a state of the heart. The broken can be found in all sorts of places, he says. The Church, as the Shepherd of the sheep, is called to find them, and heal their hearts.

Dr. Rouner challenges church ministers and congregants to expand their thinking about ministry, and to go to people, in their brokenness and isolation, in their places of physical and spiritual hiding, whether in Africa or down the block or at a coffee shop, to show care and love and compassion. He suggests that the Church needs to minister beyond its walls, at the edges of society, at the four corners of the world, in the middle of nowhere and everywhere, being present in unexpected places and in unexpected ways.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475907926

Arthur A. Rouner Jr.

The Rev. Dr. Arthur A. Rouner, Jr. is founder and president of The Pilgrim Center for Reconciliation, a nonprofit organization that heals the hearts of people debilitated by the traumas of genocide, war, conflict, and loss. Since 1996, his work has been with church, government, and community leaders in Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, and South Sudan. A graduate of Harvard College, Union Theological Seminary, and Luther Theological Seminary, Dr. Rouner served as a Congregational minister for 40 years. He is Senior Minister Emeritus of Colonial Church, Edina, Minnesota.

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Copyright © 2012 by Arthur A. Rouner, Jr.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-0791-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0792-6 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 06/19/2012

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1:   What Changes People?

Chapter 2:   The Longing To Be Close

Chapter 3:   Personal Relationships In Formal Ministry

Chapter 4:   Ministry To The Poor

Chapter 5:   A Journey Of Hope: Along The Trail Of Tears

Chapter 6:   Ministry To The Broken

Chapter 7:   How Healing Happens

Chapter 8:   Ministry Out There: Being Present, And Waiting

Chapter 9:   Going Deep: Getting To The Heart

Chapter 10: Beyond The Power Models: Servant Ministry

Chapter 11: The Style Of Jesus

Chapter 12: Beyond Creeds: Living The Life

A Post Script Lunch Without End

About The Author

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to that growing company of ministering people who dare to exercise their ministry beyond the lines and categories of formal organization and structure, by simply being personally present to all kinds of people, especially unknown, unimportant, and inconvenient people. They go where they are not expected to be. They take time with people who cannot pay them, promote them, or push them forward in any way. They sit with them, talk with them, walk with them, and care about them only for love’s sake. Often, inadvertently, they are following Jesus, the Founder of the greatest fellowship of friends the world has ever known. By life, and style, and spirit, they are pioneering the new, yet very old way of doing what the world first identified as ministry.

PREFACE

As the church moves through the first decade of the third millennium of its life, it has a variety of takes on how it will do its ministry, and on how ministers will be expected to function in their role of serving the flock of God.

In India, Christian ministry is very formal. The Churches of South India and North India have rigid requirements of theological education. And once a person is in the ministry, there is an emphasis on administrative culture, and rules, and even power. Considerable importance seems to be placed on rights in relation to property and assets. This is the milieu in which ministers are expected to act.

In Africa, while formal requirements for some years of theological study are made in mainline denominations—in Anglican, Presbyterian, and certainly in Catholic traditions—in many parts of Africa, the rising to the status of being a pastor is almost overnight. A young person can be converted one day, and the next, have a microphone in hand and be addressing a congregation under a tree or in a gathering room. The position of pastor, or even of bishop, is almost self-appointed, and has the most to do with acknowledged spiritual gifts and abilities. It is a charismatic business of emotion, and perceived ability, and persuasion.

In America, in its many traditions, all these approaches are probably present. But as great success comes to some leaders, and congregations swell even to mega proportions, there is an increasing pressure for the leader of that growing congregation to be the preacher who leads by his or her words and vision, but also to be the director, the organizer of an expanding array of organizations and programs within the developing ministry.

It is even described as a kind of CEO Model—in which the person oversees the progress and work of a complex network of organizations that all have a place within the larger, growing fellowship.

More and more the emphasis and expectation of boards and official leaders of churches is that professional ministers will provide the spark that will ignite all this into a smooth-working organization for doing good.

And, churches do good. They are still the institutional miracle of the world. After two thousand years, they still exist—the only institution that does. They keep going. Most individual congregations across the world are made up of tens, or scores, or very few hundreds of people.

And they have the problems other orders of human beings have. They have petty jealousies. They have pride and competition. They have sexual dalliance by leaders who know better. Sin within the church today is present in all the detail that was outlined by the Apostle Paul when he wrote, chiding the church in Corinth.

Great corporations are betrayed by their leaders. Forces within cause the self-destruction of the corporations, and soon they are no more. But, the Church goes on. Strong redemptive factors work to restore the Church.

It continues to proclaim a message of hope to people dying to hear it. It listens to the hurts of lives, and counsels and encourages people to go on with their lives. It gives hope on all sides. It sets a vision for living.

The Church is the scene of sin. It is the company of the highest ideals, and the most utter failure to live up to them. And yet, miracles happen there. Lives are changed there. Visions are caught there. Movements to transform society begin there. Cities, towns, and nations are profoundly influenced, even shaped and guided, by churches. The contrasts within the Body of Christ are inexplicable. And, the good that continues to come from the Church is strange and wonderful.

Whatever fears modern-day secularists have about church, and the enemy that media organizations seem to have made of the Church—making words like Christian and fundamentalist convenient epithets for their side—the Church still serves. It still helps. It still does good.

At the same time, the organization spirit, the programmatic thrust, the church as increasingly the scene of busyness, and hurry, and timetable schedules, and agenda-dominated meetings seems to be the subtly growing and overtaking style of the Church.

The question this book seeks to raise is this: Are we in the Church missing something that once was ours—a certain gift, and passion, and spirit that was specifically given us by our founder, that we have unintentionally set aside, and inadvertently lost? And, if so, how do we regain this something that is deeply essential to the whole understanding of how people are helped, how the Church is called to work, and how ministry is meant to function?

What have we, in our busyness, tended to no longer do? What emphasis did we once give that we need to give again? What are people looking for in the Church that we have not quite realized we have left out of the equation?

It is what some of us, who have been led late in life into distant and dark places of the human heart, have come to identify as Presence or The Ministry of Presence.

It is so obvious and important, yet we have let it pass without noticing, without missing it—until some day people wake up and begin to articulate a loss, an emptiness, a disconnect in their life with their Church.

The Church is so wonderfully the Body of Christ. It is mystically the place where new life is born, and first appears. It is clearly the place where deep chords are struck and where the strings of the soul are tuned and plucked, and make their first music—even where sin abounds, and even where the Dark One finds access and at times wreaks havoc.

Knowing this, I want to look at some very old ways of doing ministry. And I want to look at new emphases that could mark and typify the work and the spirit of the Church’s ministry, worldwide, in the twenty-first century.

1

WHAT CHANGES PEOPLE?

Experience Deep in the Heart

The Church is about changing people. It is about creating a life that can be lived commonly by a body of people together, in which mysteriously, through their interaction in worship, in study, and