Summer Newsletter

Are we too afraid to take risks? Is the desire to be safe holding us back?

These questions have been floating through my mind since our last Council meeting. At that meeting Martha provided the devotional and that is what brought those questions to my brain

The devotional started with a reading of the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:13-30. To refresh your memory, this is the parable where three servants are given money to care for. One is given 5 talents and doubled the money. Another is given 2 talents and also doubled the money. The third is given 1 talent but is afraid of what might happen if the money is lost and so simply hides it away, making nothing – not even interest. The king rewards the first two servants richly but the third is punished. As individuals, and as a community, where are we in this parable? Is it better to play it safe or to take risks (hopefully educated, well-considered risks)?

Martha then shared an article by Dan Hotchkiss with us. In the article Hotchkiss suggests that churches are very risk-resistant. Most often, as Hotchkiss lays it out, this shows up when someone has an idea for a new program. While other non-profits often have a system where innovative ideas are weighed against the mission of the organization and a decision is made whether or not to allocate resources to them (because realistically all new ideas will need resources allocated to them if they are to happen) the church tends to freeze as soon as resources are needed.

Risk is a challenge. How do we know if a risk is acceptable? How do we know if it is worthwhile?

The third servant resonates with me. I tend to be very risk-resistant (and to be honest I think I am getting moreso as I age). Playing it safe, protecting what you have, make sure you don’t lose. These sound very sensible to me. But there is a problem.

Where do you grow when you play it safe, stay with the comfortable, protect the status quo? Simply put, you don’t. And in many cases you lose ground. The servant in the story buried the talent in the ground. It did not lose value but it also gained no interest. Which means that it did not keep up with inflation. When organizations play it safe we protect what we already have. We stay in a comfortable place. It keeps us with the familiar. But we lose ground.

What risks do we need to take if we are going to thrive as a community of faith?

This leads me to the question I asked in the “Words from Gord” section of the meeting. I asked “To keep us fresh and avoid falling into a maintenance mindset what should we do differently?”. One of the dangers I have seen n the church is that we fall into a rut, I know I do anyway. And that seems easy. But I don’t think it is being faithful to our calling.

We need to be able to try new things, or at least try doing old things in new ways, if we are to grow. I am sure we all want to grow. That may be in numbers or in finances. It may be to grow in our understanding of what it means to be people of Christian faith. But to grow we have to do things beyond maintaining what we already have.

The first two servants in the parable could have lost it all (which may have made for a very different parable). They were willing to take a chance. In many stories of churches that have grown I find there was a time when someone convinced them to risk losing something valuable. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But rather than worry about the risk they took another one. This, I think is the path forward for St. Paul’s, for the United Church of Canada, for the Church Universal.

I am not naturally adventurous. Far from it. But when I am realistic I know that continuing to be the church as we have been, to continue to maintain what we have, is a path to decline. For us to pass on this church to the next generations we need to be willing to take risks, to step out of the comfortable, to take the chance that something might fail miserably and then shake ourselves off and try again. And yes, to a degree that terrifies me.

I am not suggesting we become careless. The apostle Paul teaches that we have been passed a treasure in clay jars. We have to consider and research and discern what risks to take. But we have to be willing to take them. I need your help to step out and try different things.

What risks do we need to take? What risks are we afraid to take? What risks will we take?

Who’s in it with me?

Gord

{PS: the great irony is that doing nothing different, to keep maintaining they way we have been is a risk too. There is always a risk whatever choice we make.}