STATEMENT ON MINISTRY
Some time ago a homeless woman who occasionally attended worship at the church where I was doing an internship asked me if I would officiate a memorial service in a local park for a homeless man who had died earlier in the week. Several days later I found myself kneeling in a prayer circle on the grass, clasping the hands of those on either side of me, singing Amazing Grace at the top of our lungs. A dozen people had come from their tent homes under the bridge near the river to sing, pray, cry, hug, grieve, share stories and remember their friend Matt. This was the most profound experience in ministry I had ever had.
I had served food in soup kitchens, walked in CROP walks, and a myriad of other socially responsible activities, but this was different. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling the incredible sadness of those people living out there in the elements, people we try to ignore and pretend don’t exist - people whose faces and names I now knew. It came crashing in on me in a very personal way that this is what Jesus was calling us to do, and it isn’t easy. Those other activities kept me removed somehow emotionally, from the systemic problems they presented - enabling me to continue my safe, secure life, not really involved. I was doing ministry for the homeless, not ministry with the homeless. There’s a big difference. Jesus was doing ministry with the homeless, the sick, the oppressed - hands on - face to face. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt.11:28) “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matt.23:11-12) I felt very humbled that day.
Christianity for me is about relationship - my relationship to God, to others and to all of creation. Out of those relationships emerge my beliefs, which are continually changing and evolving. It’s a never ending journey, and I will never know the answers for sure. The answers may not be what’s important, it’s how we live our lives - that holds the key. We are all pilgrims on a spiritual path. Our beliefs and our way of life are molded by our experiences. Each person must be respected where they are on their journey, and like flowers, encouraged and nurtured to bloom. What has resonated with me over the years, after sitting with my mother and various friends who were near death, was their agreement that what mattered most in their lives was love, their relationship to God and to those they knew in this life. Everything we do is measured by Jesus’ greatest teaching: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind...You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt.22:37-39)
In order to know what is in the heart of God we must stop and listen. I believe there is a hunger in this world to know God. Much of our secular society is looking elsewhere, outside of traditional organized religion, to explore their spirituality. As a church, it is our responsibility to help people recognize how God is revealing Godself in their everyday lives. We need to create experiences that help open people to the possibility of knowing the reality of God more fully: through worship, ritual, nature, service, prayer groups and a variety of spiritual practices.
I believe the primary role of the church today is to continue Jesus’ ministry of creating the Kingdom of God here on earth, and we do that most effectively as a community of ministers: teaching, sharing, challenging, supporting, healing, worshiping, participating in the sacraments, and holding each other accountable for our actions in this world. This requires us all to live out our roles as ministers. Jesus did not call his disciples together for an hour on Sunday morning for a sermon followed by coffee. He sent them out into the world to preach and heal. “Now you are the body of Christ... And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.” (1Cor. 12:27-28) This can be highly problematic in our hectic, over scheduled lives. But I think it is the challenge of our church today. It is so easy to write a check and let someone else do the work. A chaplain I met said “If we want to know what God wants us to do with our lives, we must find out what is in the heart of God, and then find a way to do it.” He proposed that in the heart of God is healing. We are called to be healers. We must start with ourselves and then reach out to our church communities and the world. It is only through human contact that our hearts will be truly opened and our lives and the world transformed. One of the greatest privileges of ministry is being present with people during the most significant times of their lives; during the joys of baptism and marriages and the sorrows of illness and death. Pastoral care is at the heart of what I do.
I am passionate about worship! I come to ministry after thirty years as a professional actress and artist. I feel like everything I have done in my past life was preparation for this calling. My life has been about creativity and spirituality and that informs everything I do, especially worship. Worship is at the center of what we do as a Christian community. For many it is the primary source of spiritual formation, education and community life. My theology of worship is that we are all ministers, coming together to shepherd and care for each other, to encounter and celebrate God’s transforming power and share it with each other and the world. I believe liturgy is a work of all the people. We are no longer a society held captive by the spoken word, although I believe it is important. We are a sensory, visually stimulated society and our worship should reflect that. Worship should be an embodied experience, a relational and participatory experience; mind, body and spirit, not just an intellectual exercise. We are a people of multiple intelligences: verbal, musical, spatial, bodily and logical. I believe in creating intellectually challenging and spirit filled liturgy using as many of those intelligences as possible, so that each person, no matter what their age and context, can relate to it, and through the experience, encounter God.
I also believe that Christian religious education permeates every aspect of our church life. I think the health and future of mainline Christian churches is dependent on the quality of religious education, not only of our children and youth, but of our adults. Modern biblical scholarship and theology need to travel from our seminaries into our pulpits and classrooms. What drew me to the UCC was a denomination that challenged me to think, to question my beliefs and expand my personal theology. We are here to teach and learn from each other. I look to scriptures and Jesus’ life as a “how to manual” - educating an entire person in living the Christian faith. It’s not a garment we take off and leave at church. We wear it out into the world in our daily lives. We never stop learning. The world then provides the opportunities for practice.
Transforming lives, those of individuals, a church community, or the world, requires vision: looking within, reaching out and seeing our past with new eyes for the future. This vision comes from both the clergy and the laity. I am called as a minister to guide my congregation through this process. I am called to help each member discover their spiritual gifts for ministry, and ways to use them. I look to Jesus as my role model. He was a social being - loved dinner parties - never backed away from a political or theological debate. He was a healer and a teacher of alternate wisdom - a way of living arising out of a core value of compassion. He was a social prophet and Jewish mystic. Out of his experience of the sacred came his vision. I am called to have visions too, of what the world would look like if we each grew into our full humanity as God has created us to be. I am called to challenge myself and my congregation to step out of our comfort zone, to trust God to lead us into transforming experiences.
Reverend Susan Brecht
