A candidate for rector of the Old Catholic parish in Frankfurt...just one

It genuinely saddens me that the Frankfurt parish, which is in a search process for a new rector, has only had one priest apply (see story in Germany on alt-katholisch.de). The deadline has now passed, and the election is therefore more or less a formality (unless of course the parish decides they don't want him, but that's not terribly likely).

Naturally I wish the candidate, Armin Luhmer, currently in Blumberg, blessings and much success with the Frankfurt parish, so I hope I'm not unduly causing offense by complaining about the lack of candidates. That isn't the issue at all, but rather, I'm concerned that this may be a sign of things to come – just one (or none) candidates for a rector position.

At the last synod, there was some discussion at the fringes where concern was shown about the likelihood of a shortage of priests in the near future, but little formal debate and few if any proposals. The thing is, "native" Old Catholic rectors, i.e. those ordained Old Catholic and who became a rector as such, are in the minority, as I'm informed. The bulk of Old Catholic rectors in Germany are those who were Roman Catholic and who changed jurisdictions at some point. There is a seminary, which is part of the University of Bonn and which is integrated into that university's Roman Catholic and Protestant programs, and there is a small number of students there (five or six, I believe). But there is a large wave of priests who will be retiring, opening up all sorts of vacancies that we simply cannot fill, at least not by full-time clergy, and the seminary won't produce enough replacements – compounded by the fact that Roman Catholic priests in Germany are increasingly hard to find anyway, so that supply is also dwindling.

There is one possible stopgap solution, which is non-stipendiary (i.e. volunteer) clergy. The Old Catholics do in fact have a theology distance learning course that qualifies people to become ordained as deacon or priest, but only on a volunteer basis, since under German law, an officially state-sanctioned church must require their rector to have a university-level theology degree and to pass the state exams. We do have a fair number of such volunteer priests and deacons, who could preside at services. But there are some major drawbacks to this.

First, in many people's minds, "priest" is synonymous with "rector", meaning that if there is a priest available, the unspoken expectation is that the priest will run the parish, which is a full-time job at least. Volunteer priests simply would be unable to invest that kind of time.

Second, without a strong and clear leadership in place, the parish government could quickly fall apart as the parish lacks direction. Again, there could be the unstated expectation that any volunteer priest would step into this role, which he or she will just plain not be able to do, neither legally nor practically. Meanwhile the sad truth is that parish vestries, which are also made up of volunteers, are often hard to motivate to invest enough time to govern and manage the parish, and again that requires leadership – and the rector is the logical person to do it. Without a strong rector, the vestry can quickly lose direction or motivation.

Third, having a priest available can make it too easy to just sit back and not bother getting a rector. A kind of "what, me worry" sets in, and people become too comfortable with the band-aid solution, rather than trying to get back to the original healthier state before. It wouldn't take long for the supply of stipendiary priests for rector positions to dwindle under such circumstances.

Thus while this "solution" would solve problems short-term, in the long run it would weaken the church further. Somehow, we need to motivate more young people to study theology and to become rectors. The problem is that there seems to be a cultural reluctance to encourage this at all, for fear of offending or stepping on toes. But I think it is better to openly state the problem and to ask people to step up and help out, either by choosing to enter discernment or to pray for those who do and include such prayers in Eucharist services, not just to ask God's help, but to remind people that the issue still exists.

Sad to say, I have often thought I would like to try to enter the seminary, but at my age it is unlikely I could expect to be placed as a rector. By the time I would graduate I'd be pushing 50. But surely there are others contemplating the idea who are better positioned than I, and who could use a few extra nudges from their fellow Christians to try to follow that path.

We will, with God's help. Kyrie eleison...

Just what is a gay service, anyway?

A few days ago, the German Old Catholic diocese posted a story on their site celebrating "five years of gay-lesbian services in Karlsruhe". Here is a translation of the text into English:

For the past five years, the Old Catholic parish in Karlsruhe has been host of so-called "Queer Services", which take place every two months in the Old Catholic Church of the Resurrection in Ökumeneplatz. To celebrate this anniversary, Bishop Matthias Ring will take part in the service on 9 October 2011 at 6 pm. The ecumenical project team that is preparing the service is pleased to welcome the bishop of the parish who church has been the venue of the services from their beginning, with no charge for the use of the church or the parish hall.

I'm not going to get into the thorny issue of homosexuality and Christianity here. Suffice it to say that enough heat and light (more heat than light) has been generated in the blogosphere to fire a thousand suns.

But I am perplexed at just what a "queer service" is supposed to be. Which isn't surprising, because I also don't see why it is necessary to have extra "women's" services or services for singles or whatever. The thing is, I find this phenomenon to be very unhealthy, because it turns the Church into little more than a fragmented collection of interest groups each trying to get their special share of attention, and tailoiring "their" services to their own needs -- which practically by definition will be alien, or at best strange, for others. It is a kind of auto-ghettoizing, whether intentional or not.

Yet the Church has always been quite clear that Christ is the Savior of all people. We have no record whatsoever in the New Testament of special meetings just for, say, Judeans or tax collectors or unmarried women over 35 with a car (sorry, chariot) and two cats. On the contrary, we are told explicitly that in Christ, there are no Jews or Gentiles, no male or female, all those divisions are overcome in the form of the Holy Church of God. Every attempt is made to have rich and poor, man and woman, all walks of life represented in each and every gathering. Paul's Epistles repeatedly berate the early congregations for not including everyone and not treating them scrupulously equally, and encourage every effort to bridge and transcend, not cater to each and every person. No special treatment, just one in Christ.

The major concept behind any service, regardless of denomination, and in particular in the Eucharist, is to attempt to create a vision of the Kingdom of God in our limited space. That is impossible if you begin to customize services for particular interest groups. Yes, I'm sure it is useful for marketing and publicity reasons. Yes, I know gays, women, etc., have all been oppressed and treated badly for centuries and could use a bit of special attention and care. Yes, I know that traditional forms of liturgy tend to be male- and Euro-centric and may have little to say to women or children or whomever. That's all well and good. But special services for individual groups is simply the wrong way to go about it.

Certainly the Church should reach out to groups who are or have been marginalized, and should do what it can to welcome them and to reach them with God's message of love and hope. Certainly things could be done to modify the liturgy or practice to accomodate as many people as possible, and attempt to include as many as the Church can.

But the truly exciting, breathtaking part of Jesus' message is not "take us as we are", but "that they may be one". That is the ultimate vision we get in Galatians 3:28 -- There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And again in Romans 10:12: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. Or most spectacularly in Acts 10:10-16,34-36:

About noon the next day,
as they were on their journey and approaching the city,
Peter went up on the roof to pray.
He became hungry and wanted something to eat;
and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
He saw the heaven opened
and something like a large sheet coming down,
being lowered to the ground by its four corners.
In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures
and reptiles and birds of the air.
Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’
But Peter said,
‘By no means, Lord;
for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’
The voice said to him again, a second time,
‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’
This happened three times,
and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
Later, Peter began to speak to the disciples:
‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
but in every nation anyone who fears him
and does what is right is acceptable to him.
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel,
preaching peace by Jesus Christ—
he is Lord of all.’

The vision of us all being one in Christ is what the ultimate attraction is and should be, and we should never lose sight of that, least of all for short-term goals such as pandering to ever-narrower special interests in hopes of filling the pews. The more we divide ourselves, the harder we make it to unite and to make that vision a reality.

No matter how well intended, using a church service to deliberately draw distinctions between us -- even if intended as a stepping-stone to something more -- turns this vision upside down, and ironically delays the ultimate realization by cementing division, rather than bridging it by providing a common home. By providing a service with a label, it reduces its participants to that label. Our home is Christ, not our own ghetto.

There is a perfect example of this -- V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop. From all I have been told and have read, he is a very spiritual and kind person. Aside from his sexuality, he seems to be quite orthodox and even a bit inventive in communicating difficult issues. And gays were understandably happy to have one of their own in such high office. But think about it. +Gene is nothing more than "the gay bishop". You see him on TV and in magazines all the time being interviewed about being gay, but never on the finer points of Christian morality or charity or any of those other things, except perhaps as throwaway questions at the end of the interview. He has been quite effectively reduced to being just gay, and all else is ignored. "Queer services" accomplish the same thing -- an own goal if there ever was one.

Ultimately we all have to ask ourselves: Do you want the people who come to your services to celebrate God, or their own sexuality or gender or skin color? Do we go to church to worship God, or ourselves? Is the Church a vision of the way things are, or of the way they should be?

Ordination of deacons in Koblenz, and the future of the north

Hat tip to Walter Jungbauer for the link to the photos.
Update Yet more pictures are available from Heike Kiefel. Many thanks!

On 3 October 2011, day before yesterday, three deacons were ordained by Bishop Matthias Ring in Koblenz. (I had hoped to go myself, but because of my day job and a critical deadline Tuesday, I decided against it.) One of them, Jörn Clemens, will be our full-time deacon in Hannover, which will be very welcome for our rector, Oliver Kaiser, who was under immense strain and pressure during the whole project of building the church.

Stefan Neuhaus-Kiefel, a priest and vicar in our diocese, took lovely photos which you can see on his photo album page. Additionally, Heike Kiefel also posted pictures from the service. Many thanks to both!

Not only was the planning of the church and managing its construction a Herculean task, but the position of rector of the Hannover-Lower Saxony parish was already taxing enough. Our parish has by far the largest territory of any in the diocese, essentially the entire state of Lower Saxony, and also by far the most members, around 1600 scattered around the state, with clusters in Hannover, Osnabrück, Braunschweig and East Frisia. By way of comparison, the average parish in our diocese has around 300-400 members and usually is only a few Landkreise (roughly the German equivalent to a county in the US) at most. The parishes in Nordstrand (an island in the North Sea close to Denmark) and Berlin also have similar problems, but are smaller in membership -- though it has to be said that Nordstrand's rector has to drive even farther, since his parish is responsible for mentoring the Hamburg parish, which has no rector of its own, and the small number of Old Catholics in Bremen.

Thus the situation in the northern part of Germany is particularly problematic for anyone to manage -- just plain too much area for one person to cover, in both cases of Hannover and Nordstrand. Until recently, the parishes in the north (Hannover, Nordstrand, Hamburg) were not even in their own deanery, but rather were directly under the bishop, with the vicar general (roughly the Old Catholic equivalent to an Anglican archdeacon) acting as dean.

The good news is that this is finally changing. Some months ago, right after he was ordained and took office, Bishop Matthias initiated a project that had been proposed by the rectors and vestries in the north. This project envisions a dramatic reconstruction of the parishes and their pastoral care. First and foremost, these parishes are now in the Deanery North (Dekanat Nord), and our rector was promptly elected dean. Second, the cluster in Osnabrück will be split off and made into its own parish, although the pastoral care will still be in the hands of the Hannover rector. Third, the so-called Speckgürtel (literally "bacon belt") of Lower Saxon counties adjoining Hamburg will be split from our parish and attached to Hamburg's, and eventually Hamburg will have its own full-time priest, thus relieving Nordstrand of the considerable strain of caring for Hamburg and Bremen.

Another bit of good news that is coincidental, but further helps this project, is that we have a new priest (albeit non-stipendiary) who lives in Osnabrück and who serves as a part-time priest there, saving our rector the effort of driving to Osnabrück every Sunday evening to conduct the services there (a good two-hour trip each way, roughly 160 km).

And now that we have a full-time transitional deacon, who will be ordained as a priest and become our vicar, the load on all the clergy in the north ought to dramatically lessen. Which is good, because frankly the load on the priests in Hannover and Nordstrand was downright inhuman. So I'm particularly happy that Bishop Matthias supported this project so well, and am also happy for our priest, who can now spend much-needed and much-deserved time for himself and his family.

So where to from here?

I'm hopeful that this new plan will also have a positive effect on mission work. "Mission" is a bit of a dirty word 'round these parts, but let's face it, membership in all churches here is in free-fall. It is not at all unusual to hear parts of Germany being described as "post-Christian". Many people have turned their backs to the church -- or rather all churches -- not least because of pedophilia scandals and maladroit handling of them. The deeper reason, though, is because the churches have singularly failed to stay relevant to people's daily lives and to actively reach out and spread the Gospel, rather than just sit and wait for people to walk in. The contrast with the US is striking. There, it is still common to attend church every Sunday; that is almost unheard of here, and saying that you do generally raises eyebrows.

In the US, the building of a new church would attract some mild attention, but not much, since it just isn't that unusual. In fact it seems like Americans are constantly building and re-building churches. But here, the fact that a parish is actually building a new church, in a climate where dozens of churches are being closed down and shuttered, was something of a sensation.

We got a lot of free press for it, and indeed attendance at the church's consecration was immense -- in the ballpark of 300 people. Our attendance has also noticeably gone up. Whereas our average Sunday attendance was around 17 or 18 people each Sunday, since we began using the new church at Easter Vigil in 2010, my rough estimate is that the average is now around 25 or even 30. In fact, what amuses me a little is that whenever I think our group is rather small, I count the people attending -- and invariably it's the old average, and rarely below it.

So we have lots of opportunities, and I think the hand and glory of God is clearly recognizable in all of this. We now have a great chance to stem the tide of the collapse of the church in Germany, maybe even to turn the tide, at least in our area. And we have the chance to revitalize ourselves after the strain of building our church, to reconnect with who we are and to carry the Gospel into our neighborhood. And that is all worth celebrating indeed.

Glory be to God on high, and on Earth, peace, goodwill towards men.

The voice from the whirlwind: Sermon for the Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, Proper 24, Year C

Job 38:1-7,34-41, Psalm 104:1-9,25,37c, Hebrews 5:1-10, Mark 10:35-45

Marcus and Dana (Note: Names changed for their privacy), as a father myself, I’d like you welcome you to the select elite of mankind: parenthood. We’re here today to give thanks for the safe birth of your first child, Daniel, and I can’t tell you how happy I am for you. Now, as a welcome to that elite of mankind, I’d like to give you a little bit of a heads-up: Parenting, as you no doubt know by now, is not always fun and games. Children can be difficult, even maddening. A friend said of his son that »he’s going from the ›terrible twos‹ straight on into the I’m-going-to-freakin’-kill-him threes«.

One of the ways your child will also certainly drive you crazy is with a one-word question. My daughter has discovered this question lately. That question is, »WHY?«

The child will pester their parents, wanting to know this or that, until it in variably ends in a sequence of »why« questions with no end other than the parent gritting their teeth and saying »just because« or »because I said so, now go to bed«.

The thing is, as childish and innocent as that question is, it is still gnawing at us even as adults. We still don’t really know »why«. We grope around such questions, asking why we’re here, why this Universe even exists. Science, of course, tells us all about the how, but it falls silent on the why.

In today’s readings, Job finds himself in exactly the same spot. He asks God that question, »why«, and gets a magnificent booming voice from the whirlwind. Yet what I think is fascinating about this is that God does not give Job simple answers. Instead, God answers with a serious of questions. Each answer opens up a new question. Life, as Job learns, is a never-ending sequence of questions, and only God has the fullness of knowledge and wisdom. Only God has all sides of the truth. We mere mortals are confronted with our basic human limitations: We only see just so much of the puzzle. We try our best to connect the dots, but ultimately final answers will elude us. We are reduced to children asking their parents, »why?«

So the question is, how do we find God? How do we come into that direct personal experience of God? Job had the whirlwind, Moses had the burning bush, Elijah the chariot of fire. They had the luxury of at least directly experiencing God. But what about us?

Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, gives us a clue. Jesus overhears people sending the children away, because they are (to the adults) being such a nuisance. But Jesus rebukes them, and says, »Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.«

As I grew into being a father, over time that line has resonated with me more and more. Because I came to recognize that children hold the secret. I see God in the eyes of my children. In particular I am reminded of a favorite story from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which I’d like to retell now:

One day some old men came to see Abba Anthony. In the midst of them was Abba Joseph. Wanting to test them, the old man suggested a text from the Scriptures, and, beginning with the youngest, he asked them what it meant. Each gave his opinion as he was able. But to each one the old man said, »You have not understood it.« Last of all he said to Abba Joseph, »How would you explain this saying?« And he replied, »I do not know.« Then Abba Anthony said, »Indeed, Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: ›I do not know.«

Abba Joseph, in other words, humbly accepts his humanity for what it is. He cannot and will not know everything. The thirst for knowledge is one that will never be quenched. Each question we ask of God, or of science, opens up new ones. We will keep asking »why« until the ends of our days.

But what Abba Joseph and Abba Anthony both also know is that they can put their trust in God that all will be well in the end. God is infinite knowledge, infinite love and infinite compassion. When we see terrible things happen to us – whether it is the death of a child, or a natural catastrophe that kills millions – our first reaction is naturally to blame God, to get angry with Him, to demand answers. But God answers us from the whirlwind: »Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, ›Here we are‹? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together?« Who indeed but God Himself, and none other.

We must avoid the hubris of thinking we have all the answers, or even can have all the answers. We must accept that as terrible as things may seem, God really does love us, and it is all worth it in the end. To a child, sometimes parents may seem cruel, heartless, spiteful. They don’t understand why we have to ruin their fun by taking away the markers they used to decorate your antique lamp, or what’s so terrible about tearing out the pages of Mommy’s favorite book. Through those negative experiences, though, we all learn. As Paul says in the Epistle, »Although Jesus was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered«. Children figure out pretty quickly that their parents know more than they do, and accept what their parents have to teach them, because they know the love that is there.

We must learn to love God and one another as a child loves – with simplicity, trust, open eyes and open hearts. We must remind ourselves to come into the presence of God through the sacraments of the Church, so that we can reconnect with that real presence, with the grace of God. Rather than intellectually seek God, we need to feel God. And the means to do that is frequent prayer and experiencing the sacraments of the Holy Church.

Indeed we went to great lengths today to have the Eucharist as part of this service. Rev. Feldes agreed to fill in for our priest today, who is on sabbatical, because Rev. Feldes and the Anglican rector in Berlin sensed how important the Eucharist is to us. And it is doubly important because of what we celebrate today – thanksgiving for the birth of a child. The word Eucharist itself means »thanksgiving«, and what better way to give thanks for the birth of Daniel than by communing with God in the most blessed of sacraments. For that reason I’d like to thank Rev. Feldes for making the trip from Berlin so that we could do just that.

Thus, Marcus and Dana, when your child asks you »why« over and over and over again, accept it with love and learn to see the divine in yourselves, but especially to see the work of God in your child. As today’s Psalm ends, »O LORD, how manifold are your works! in wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.« The voice from the whirlwind assures us, all will be well, there is a plan, and the Kingdom of Heaven awaits us all: it is there for the taking. Amen.