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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Tending to the smaller things in life Eric Van Meter, Dec 2, 2009
Eric Van Meter
By Eric Van Meter Special Contributor
You can learn a lot from a chicken. Even about church.
Ask my 5-year-old son what he wants to be when he grows up and he’ll usually say “a paleontologist.” This might not seem like the most lucrative career goal, but given his last life ambition—to be a velociraptor—his mother and I are quite pleased that now he at least plans to be human.
Not long ago, we decided to help Zachary practice his would-be trade. Denise bought a whole chicken and boiled the meat, then stripped it down to the skeleton. We wrapped the bones in plaster and buried them in the sandbox for Zachary to find. I helped him dig them up and clean them off. Then we set about piecing them back together.
What we ended up with looked nothing like a chicken, of course. Biology was never my strong subject, and Zachary was determined to make whatever bones he found look like something more exotic than dinner. Nevertheless, the intent of the exercise was accomplished: We had some good father-son time and he felt as though he’d made an epic find.
I know better, of course. After all, I planted those “fossils.” If I’m going to dream of discovery, I want something a bit more dramatic. I want to unearth a previously unknown species of carnivore, 60 feet tall with razor-sharp teeth. And eyes that shoot laser beams.
Real paleontologists are more like Zachary, however. They get excited about the little things—an ankle bone or feather imprint. They pay attention to the little things, because even the tiniest of details can unlock a world of wonder.
I’m afraid my Church and I get too caught up in a quest for the spectacular. We frantically dig in search of something noteworthy, and in the process, throw dirt on some truly important finds from our children.
But what if we learned to stop trampling the ground in search of success and took time to examine what’s buried right beneath our feet? What if we explored what we think is familiar territory with the eyes of our children? We might find discover some incredible possibilities.
Driven by success
We Americans are addicted to success. We don’t particularly admire imagination unless it can lead to profitable innovation. Our heroes are not artists, but entrepreneurs. We are hooked on success, which we almost invariably define as growth.
The very worst thing we can imagine for our economy, our power, or our churches is a decline. When the numbers trend the wrong way, we stay up late and wring our hands and look for ways to turn things around.
Those of us who lead churches like to say that we’re different. We complain about the year-end forms we have to fill out and how they reduce pastoral work to facts and figures and formulas. We say that numbers don’t really matter, not to us.
But we lie, to ourselves most of all.
The truth is that success is almost all that matters, if our practice is any indication. We fret about membership and worship attendance. We spend countless hours on budgeting and fundraising. We formulate strategies and angle for religious market share.
When that doesn’t work, we build. In the last four years, churches in our conference raised nearly $63 million for capital campaigns, our bishop pointed out at last summer’s annual conference. We have invested so much in facilities, staff and programs, but our participation continues to decline. He’s concerned, and so am I.
The issue is more than simply return on investment. Participation numbers are important, as are financial figures. But these are measures of success, not faithfulness. They are only partial indicators of our posture before God. They are fruits, not roots.
Lately, I’ve had to question my own participation in the Cult of Success.
When I began in my current ministry setting, I pointed to fall 2009 as the semester when my goals would be realized. After a little more than two years of hard work, I expected our attendance to have doubled, our finances to be stable and our facilities to be much improved.
Almost none of that has happened. I can blame the economy, the weather or anything else I want, but the fact is that on paper at least, I’m a failure. For weeks I poured more and more effort into my job. I called in heavy equipment to dig through my ministry, convinced that success must be around here somewhere, if I could only get at it.
Then a minor miracle restored my salvation. A student wanted to be baptized. Then another. As I listened to their stories, I began to realize how close I’d come to overlooking them in my search for larger success.
I turned off the heavy equipment and started listening.
I think I’m starting to learn something through this discipline. I’m beginning to understand how important it is to cherish each pebble I uncover. I’m realizing how much I can learn about God when I stop my frantic work in the name of God—when I just listen.
Tending the ordinary
I want my children to grow up in a church that cherishes them more than it does success. I want those who guide my children’s spiritual journeys to care for them as individuals as much as I do. I want my children to encounter people who will take time to sift through the sand with them, to uncover ordinary things and arrange them in extraordinary ways.
But I can’t expect my Church to treat my kids this way unless I make some changes myself.
The way I formulate my goals this year, for instance, will be very different. Instead of setting numerical targets and developing strategies to meet them, I’m considering how the posture of our community needs to change in the next 12 months. I’m imagining what kind of people we should be and wondering how we can develop those traits. Any numbers we talk about will serve these ends, rather than drive them.
I’m trying to think smaller. I’m trying not to care about my career or my reputation, except when it comes to giving myself fully to Jesus and to fully loving the people around me.
I’m redefining what matters in my own life and encouraging others to do the same.
The structures we spend so much time and money maintaining are little more than pre-fossils. When we are gone, they will be artifacts for someone else to discover, to sift through and piece together the culture of these Methodists. Our architecture and literature and precious little art will signal how we lived, what we valued, what our dreams were.
I wonder what the person who excavates my part of the world will find. I hope what I leave behind reveals more about caring than about wealth, more generosity than accumulation. I hope the religious beliefs and rituals they unearth reveal not just theology but love lived out.
And if they find my son’s journal, I hope it tells the story of a Church that cared enough for him to think small and care big.
The Rev. Van Meter is director of the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University.
Eric Van Meter
Driven by success 
