Lately, I’ve been sitting with a lot of people in desperate and difficult situations.
Since last fall, I’ve encountered many people in healthcare settings who are feeling overwhelmed or questioning everything due to an encounter with pain or mortality.
While I’ve had few answers (not that I’m supposed to), as I sit back and digest it all, I recognize that simple presence amid pain and struggle can be a profound experience.
Most of us ordinary folks rarely have answers to life’s toughest questions, but the simple act of witness—allowing someone to be seen and heard amid their suffering—can make all the difference. To have one’s personhood and story understood and embraced in the darkness offers a beacon of light that cries out to the world: We are not alone.
I think of the big and small acts of presence from those who love me and who have attended to me when I have hurt. At the heart, this act of attending connects me to the core of the faith I am barely holding on to some days—the hope that God’s very self knows pain and suffering in full and can therefore be present with people in it to the fullest extent of the word.
If the church is the body of Christ, I wonder if the body is closest to the head when it is simply attentive to the pain of the world.
With this in mind, as I turn to the question of the “declining church” narrative, I hope it’s not too controversial to say that, ultimately, I’m not really that interested in that conversation. At least not in the form it often takes.
Many conversations about church decline are really about how to keep the pews full, the bills paid and the music humming. In short, it’s often about perpetuating the institution and its processes. Don’t get me wrong—institutions can be vital—but I wonder: when it comes to dialogue around decline, what are we talking about, really?
I came to Anabaptism in young adulthood in the classrooms of radical professors who taught me how Anabaptist communities and individuals of many times and places have come and gone across the past 500 years. Today, what stands out to me is how some of the most faithful
Anabaptists became the legends they are to us now (as recorded in places like our beloved Martyr’s Mirror) specifically because they faced an end.
Those most true to the Jesus Way have not always been (read: almost never been) rewarded with 10,000-seat auditoriums and perfectly balanced budgets.
In fact, those most faithful often meet a premature and painful end.
I think the body of Christ will live on with or without the Mennonite Church’s participation; God oversees “church growth.” Trust me when I say I know it is hard to consider the implications of that.
But whatever the future holds, if Anabaptist-Mennonites continue on, I hope it will be for really good reasons.
As I said above, what stands out for me lately involves attention and care to those facing the worst this world can offer, bringing the “good news” that people ought not suffer alone.
When we discuss church decline, if we pay attention to love and how churches can do that and witness to a God who is with us amid suffering, that’s an exciting place for the church.
If, however, we pay attention to fear and how churches can keep the doors open for the sake of days past, then count me out.
I’d rather risk letting it all go to see what can be reborn. The hurting and desperate people I’ve been sitting with lately, and the Anabaptists of old, both show me the power in that. They tell me: attend to the suffering and we might just find God there together.
Justin Sun is a student at Vancouver School of Theology/Vancouver Coastal Health.
Yeast by Bonnie Klassen
For many years, I accompanied Anabaptist churches in Latin America that wrestled with their smallness in the face of the historically dominant Catholic church and the fast-growing, prosperity-focused megachurches. I often turned to Jesus’s parables about mustard seeds and yeast as a framework for the significance of these church communities in the Kingdom of God. When good-quality yeast mixes through all the dough, and when seeds are grounded, sustenance and life emerge.
I witnessed a handful of believers start a movement for conscientious objectors that, in time, changed a nation’s constitution. I have seen precarious churches break bread and feed dozens more refugees than budgeted.
Living out the Kingdom wasn’t about numbers; it required vision, patience, care and opening the doors to many people that church members did not anticipate mixing with. Transformation occurred, but sometimes it took decades. People with deep wounds were consoled and healed, but encountering this pain discomfited original church members, and some left.
I resonate with Justin’s reluctance to talk about church decline. My mind returns to the image of mustard seeds and yeast from a different angle. The rising dough gets punched down. Seeds die. The parables of Jesus invite us to respond with hope, not fear.
Bonnie Klassen works at The Working Centre in Kitchener, Ontario, after living in Colombia for 27 years.
Presence by Cheryl Woelk
I’m drawn to the word presence in Justin’s reflection. I’ve been pondering this word this year, weaving it into my evening examen by recalling three moments from the day in which I remember being present.
Over the weeks, I’ve noted presence in beauty, pain and intention. I’ve noticed it in paying attention to my own body, the people I’m interacting with and the nature I’m part of.
In each instance, a powerful energy has emerged in the pause, the attending that emerges. When I am open and curious, I can let that Spirit energy take the lead with any words or action I choose. I couldn’t have planned what comes next, and yet it always seems to be just what is needed.
Reflecting on presence this year, I’m learning there may be a mysterious unfolding of God’s grace when we allow both our fears of the future and our regrets of the past to step aside. It’s a risk to enter into this presence instead of using our well-made analysis or strategies for survival, yet I sense it is here that we can trust God’s presence with us, in our life and in the life of the church.
Cheryl Woelk serves as liaison worker for Mennonite Church Canada International Witness in South Korea. She is fiilling in for Ryan Dueck, who is on sabbatical.
Discernment by Cindy Wallace
When does wisdom ask us to practice radical acceptance of decline, and when does it ask us to pour all our effort into healing? This is the question Justin’s reflection provokes in me.
I think about the discernment required by chronic illness, such as mine. Sometimes, I need to work with stubborn persistence toward wellness, and sometimes I need to accept what can’t be healed. Often, I must do both at once.
In the case of the church, I agree that fear is a poor motivation, as are power, prestige and the maintenance of institutions.
I also think we must discern the root of our churches’ sickness. Where is the body of Christ wounded? What medicines might bring restoration? What pains are beyond our power, requiring instead acceptance or patient trust?
Throughout history, the church has weathered many sicknesses. Through it all, God’s Spirit has been at work, accompanying some communities through hospice, others through something like amputation, and still others through healing and renewal. To partner with Christ in this moment, I think, requires humility and courage, a blend of attentive waiting and gritty discipline. We need all the hope we can find, and, yes, all the love.
Cindy Wallace is professor of English at St.Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan.
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