The Risky Business of Ministry
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller
We are not used to thinking of ministry in terms of risk. Risk implies an element of doubt and uncertainty. It suggests dangerous initiative. Risk is a frontier word, a word borrowed from the arenas of war and business.
Religious propagators, on the other hand, tend to present the church as a risk-free zone, a haven of rest floating on clouds of salvation. This view has understandable roots. God has promised us the security of eternal life. Where is the risk in such certainty? Many of us have sung the Daniel Whittle hymn: "I know whom I have believed / and am persuaded that he is able / to keep that which I've committed / unto him against that day" (italics mine). No uncertainty there. With such an absolute theology, it is only natural to think that a church, properly functioning, hums along without the risk associated with the secular world.
Intuitively, local church leaders know different. They know the gut-wrenching decisions they are forced to make and the pain a misstep, or even the proper step, can bring. They have made many difficult decisions and waited for the consequences — occasionally peaceful resolution but more often explosions of varying magnitude.
In spite of such crises, the popular image of the church as a smoothly operating temple of God's Spirit remains strong. It is an image all of us would like to believe, so we sometimes work on two different planes. On one level, we present a smoothly functioning facade to the world (occasionally even in our own thinking), all the ...
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