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Thursday, April 14, 2011

So, What Do You Want?

This will appear in our May issue of the church newsletter:
I don’t know why this scene from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams came to mind the other day while I was out running.  But I thought specifically of that exchange in the movie in front of a Fenway Park concession stand between Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) and Terence Mann (James Earl Jones).  Ray had just asked Terence why he was no longer involved in the social movements he influenced by writing The Boat Rocker (fictional novel for the movie) in the 1960’s:
Terence Mann: I was the East Coast distributor of “involved.” I ate it, drank it, and breathed it. Then they killed Martin; then they killed Bobby; elected Tricky Dick twice; and people like you must think I'm miserable because I'm not involved anymore. Well, I've got news for you. I spent all my misery years ago. I have no more pain for anything. I gave at the office.
Ray Kinsella: So, what do you want?
Terence Mann: I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy.
Ray Kinsella: I mean, what do you want? [Gestures toward concession stand.]
Terence Mann: Oh. Dog and a beer.
Ray Kinsella: Two.

Nothing washes down a good rant like an offer of stadium food.  The Terence Mann that Ray Kinsella found in Boston was disillusioned and rather directionless in the twilight of his years.  He was so chronically disappointed as to be almost irretrievably discouraged.  So he thought all he wanted was to be left alone. 

It is an earnest desire of mine never to let that happen to myself.  It does happen.  It happens to good men and women who have vibrant contributions to make to the church and her interests.  I’ve known and observed “Terence Mannism” in the church.  It happens to pastors; it happens to laypeople.  They are “involved.”  They aren’t necessarily idealistic but they are motivated by the gospel.  They want to make a lasting difference wherever they direct their passions to produce what Jesus called “fruit that lasts” (John 15:16). 

But then they discover that the people they want to influence for Jesus have an interest in God but a passion for everything else.  When this realization sets in on the Terence Manns among us it is dispiriting like nothing else.  So their efforts to promote renewal or preserve health or reinvigorate enthusiasm or generate compassion are often discontinued instead of redoubled.

I first recognized Terence Mannism in myself when I was church planting in Murfreesboro almost a decade ago.  Standing in the line at the grocery store, I peripherally noticed the redheaded man ahead of me eyeing me.  He finally spoke: “I was in your church last Sunday.”  I then remembered him, seated in the back of the school auditorium where we met.  He introduced himself and continued, “Y’all have a good thing going here; my wife and I have been looking for Bible teaching in Murfreesboro like you gave Sunday.”  I thanked him and presented a thumbnail version of how we’d arrived there and what we hoped to accomplish.

He smiled and listened, but then looked at the floor and said, “Yeah, but we have two teenage boys who need a youth group, and y’all don’t have a youth group yet.”  I told him we wanted one of course (a youth pastor was to be our next hire) but it took a few families willing to pioneer with us to start one.  “Well, good,” he said, “we’ll check you out again when you get those folks.” 

Standing there with my milk and eggs and Cocoa Pebbles, it was the first time the “why am I doing this?” question viciously accosted my cerebral cortex.  Why am I even putting forth the effort if everybody thinks like you? 

Everybody doesn’t think like him, of course.  But I had come face-to-red-bearded-face in that grocery store checkout line with ecclesiastic consumerism.  And I didn’t like it.  It offended something deep in me.  He just killed my Martin, and my Bobby, and was headed back to Tricky Dick’s church next Sunday because we didn’t have a youth group.  I wanted more for this guy and his family than they wanted for themselves.  It wouldn’t be the last time I encountered such in God’s people.

Disappointing?  Sure.  Justification for Terence Mannism?  No.  No one really wants that.  A sign of growing in grace is keeping our disappointments with others from curdling into leave-me-alone discouragement.  I want that growth.  And to get it I need to look to the One who wasn’t the boat rocker, but the sea calmer.

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