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Dear friends, I recently read a piece from Eugene Peterson's book, Subversive Spirituality, "Teach us to care and not to care." He is riffing on a line from T.S.Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday. Peterson draws a distinction between the care we extend as it arises from the “wasteland” or care offered as it arises from the reality of resurrection and new creation. In asking to learn “not to care” Peterson is talking about the gift of knowing God and letting God be God as the starting point for all we do in the real world, rather than starting with the pain and sadness of the fallen world. He writes, "If we are not constantly brought to an awareness of this huge God-dimension, trained in attentiveness to this immense God-presence, we will act and speak out of context, as if we are in a wasteland. But … We are in a garden.... No matter how purely motivated we are, we will finally do more damage than good if we do not operate in response to God rather than the environment. We live on holy ground. We inhabit sacred space. This holy ground is subject to incredible violations..... [And] If our lives...are shaped in response to violations, to the sacrilege, and not out of the holy, our lives are shaped wrongly. We are responding to the wrong environment, a false environment, a wasteland environment. We are called to be gardeners, not garbage collectors." He is simply asking that we live with such openness to God that all we do and think and dream of arise from the deeper truth of God’s presence and abundant grace. My experience as a pastor the last 30 years tells me that we find it easier to confess this truth more than live out of it. Amidst growing frustrations with the world, culture, politics, and so on, we forget we inhabit the world of Resurrection and abundance. This truth is more solid than the wasteland of the fall and broken world – however bold its presence often feels. We forget that we are beloved of God and all fear is cast out. Advent is a season of repentance in which we are invited to explore all the ways in which we forget the truth of who God is, what God has done, and what God promises to finish. What does it look like for us to pull this practice of repentance into our engagement with the mission of church planting? What does it look like to learn to “care and not to care?” Most simply it means discerning the motives and posture of our care through church planting. Are we taking this vocation up with a deep awareness and delight that God is with us and we are following him in faith into the world, or are we doing so out of some form of fear? Out of the hurts and pain of our ruined world – the wasteland? My hope is that we are cultivating a deep awareness of God’s presence, of the truth and gravitas of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and so, starting congregations that learn “not to care and to care.” And so, creating the kind of parish life that bears witness to the greater reality of resurrection. We have come through a tough season with Covid and political frustrations and… If you weren’t able to be present at Synod or tune into it, I invite you to listen to the stories of a couple of our church planters and to my report to Synod here. It has been and unusual season of fruitfulness and since synod we have made progress on a third church plant in Richmond and Charlottesville. I look forward to saying more about both in the weeks ahead. For now, join me in giving thanks for God’s gracious presence and provision. And I invite you to consider a year end gift to the to the Vision for 50 Fund, which is a simple, but important way we engage the mission of church planting. Blessings friends, Tuck Bartholomew
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