(47) Pillars and Caterpillars

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Pillars and Caterpillars, originally shared on September 14, 2020. It was the forty-seventh video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   How do you feel about the future of your church right now? I think that there are a lot of reasons for hope.

   I served Christ Lutheran Church in Compton for 9 years right after seminary and ordination. Sally and I were married there and our son was born there. One of the many benefits of serving there was the great preachers I heard in Compton’s churches.

   I remember one sermon in which the preacher spoke about two kinds of church members: pillars and caterpillars. The pillars hold the church up, but they also hold the church back. The caterpillars come and go, but they turn into beautiful butterflies.

   I’d like to reflect on that today to help us gain a sense that though our times are uncertain (when haven’t they been), God brings all kinds of people to faith in Christ, the head of the Church, and that, because of that our churches are going to be OK.

   I watched a video on my phone yesterday that was just random, but I was drawn in by the headline, which was something like “Couple does the impossible and builds their own home”.

   Now, doing the impossible is always attractive to us. You know the motto of the Seabees (the Navy’s construction battalion, i.e. c-b’s): “The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.” That’s a mission statement to inspire great things.

   This video followed, in fast motion, the couple’s construction of their own self-sufficient home in the wilderness.

   It began with them setting forms and concrete pillars in the ground to form the foundation.  These pillars looked pretty solid.  It looked like that house wasn’t going anywhere. Which is good, if you don’t want to go anywhere. If you did, you’d probably buy a mobile home, which could take you everywhere.

   But for a solid base, a church needs its pillars. In fact, that’s what the people are who you can depend upon, who support the church as its foundation, who provide whatever the church needs, including a financial base and a pool of experienced volunteers that every church needs, as well as and a sense of history and groundedness. The pillars of the church. They sometimes encompass whole families, whole families of pillars.

   I once heard about a church where two former pastors had retained their membership, generally not a good idea, but it happened there. A new pastor had arrived.

   The new pastor evaluated the ministry of the church, came to understand its history and current needs, and over the first year or so decided that the church needed a new building. The pastor spoke with various members about it, organized committees, developed a budget and a plan, gained trust, and was ready to move forward.

   The congregation as a whole needed to approve the project so a meeting was called. There was a good turnout. The two former pastors sat together in the front row.

   The president shared all the information about money and resources and time with the congregation and the motion was made and seconded.

   “All those in favor, indicate by raising your right hand,” he said.

   Almost every hand started to go up. The two former pastors each raised both their arms and crossed them over their chests, and every hand went down.

   They were among the members who gave the church a sense of stability and security, the pillars. But, they were also the gatekeepers, the permission givers and permission withholders, the keepers of the sacred relics, the nice china, the knowledge of whose family gave what gifts, and the institutional memory of what has worked and what hasn’t worked. 

   The success of the church is their success, it’s failures the failures of others. The tend to want to preserve the past, their glory days, to retain their position as pillars. They hold the church up but they also hold the church back.

   This year, almost all of the leafy vegetables in our garden were infested with something that ate them up before they could be picked. I did some investigation and determined that they were something called cabbage worms. They feed on the undersides of the leaves, mostly at night, and then disappear. I also found that at least some of what looked like “worms” were actually caterpillars. They eventually turned into white butterflies, and then most of the crops came back.

   Caterpillars come and go. They’ll be there faithfully on Christmas and Easter. Sometimes they go to other churches during the year. They have strong ideas about how the church should be run, and sometimes they have ideas to share from other places, but they will rarely support them. They can carry pollen to stimulate and fertilize new ideas, but they can also cause a lot of damage. The thing about caterpillars, however, is that if they find a reason to stay long enough, they will turn into beautiful butterflies. They witness to the power of God to transform lives, and they will be the most active, productive, creative, and contributing members.

   You may have noticed that there are places in the New Testament where the role of   prophet, people who speak for God to the church, is listed among the dozens of spiritual gifts given for the faithful functioning of the church, but we don’t see anything of them in actual service. And then, as the timeline moves forward, we don’t see them at all.

   Some scholars believe that that is because people who believed they had the role of prophet in the early years of the church would go from place to place stirring everybody up, and then would leave and go to the next church, leaving the local pastor holding the bag. That didn’t last long, and the role was subsumed into the role of pastor, who was presumed to serve a local church long enough to have to face the consequences of the their actions. The standalone prophet was a caterpillar.

   The Church is the Body of Christ, with Christ as the head of the body. The members of the church have both gifts and roles. We all have the role of evangelist and of giving and of teaching, and so on. But some of us have special gifts.

   The hope of the Church, that is the church that is all baptized believers through the centuries known only to God, not our tradition or the name on the door, is not because we have the same gifts, but because we have the same head: Jesus Christ. Our effectiveness lies in our diversity, but our hope lies only in Christ, the head of the Church.

   The unity of the Church does not come because we agree with one another. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. The unity of the church comes through the living relationship with the living God that we share in common with one another. It comes to all of us the same way, as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

   Paul wrote to the Church at Ephesus:

*Ephesians 4:1-16
   Paul describes what a church is for, what builds us up, what sustains us through all seasons of life including this pandemic season. It is Living Water, the metaphor found in the Old Testament and the New for new life in Jesus Christ, a gift from God the Father, through the Holy Spirit.

   We are the body of Christ consisting of Christ as the had and we the many members. That is the original meaning of the term “member”.

   Today, one can be a member of a sports team, or of a service club, a musical group, political party, etc. But the original concept for a member was as a part of a body. Look at your insurance policy. You receive a financial benefit for “the loss of a member”. That means a finger, or an arm or a leg.

   We are members, parts of the Body of Christ, each with our own gift and function for the sake of the whole body.  But, whether we are pillars or caterpillars, Christ is the head of the Church, and that give us the reason for hope.