hope, and the gift of idealism

I am not generally an idealist.  I am not a visionary.  I do not have the gift of re-imagining.   

I am a worker bee, neither a leader nor a rebel. 

I copy others' ideas or re-work them to fit my situation.

But despite my pragmatic streak, despite a tendency toward pessimism (greater as I get older), I am still eternally hopeful...always hopeful that the future will be brighter.  Not convinced, maybe, but hopeful.  Even in my darkest hours, there is still a glimmer of hope. 

These days I have the hardest time hoping for our larger communities - local, national, global.  We seem to revel in divisiveness.  Sometimes it's hard to hope.  But it's still there.  A little glimmer.

I am finding greater hope in my hope for the Church.  Which is somewhat surprising.  Because my husband and I have both worked for a number of a churches.  I grew up going to many different churches (we moved a lot).  I know many awful stories of what the church has done to people, including myself.  And I know how far it sometimes seems from the community that God must have intended it to be. 

But I am hopeful.  This struck home with me yesterday when I read this blog post at A Church for Starving Artists about why many ministers want to leave the ministry.  The writer (a pastor) concludes with this:

When we are set free in the church to be fed and to feed others, there is no reason to leave. But when we are caged in the church - enslaved by rules that make no sense, assumptions that no longer hold, and people who are threatened by change for what they fear it will take from them, leaders will leave.

Where will they go? I have a feeling - or a hope - that we are on the cusp of starting a wave of new congregations that will try to be the church in a new way. There will still be an institution, but the institutionalization will make new things possible rather than hold people back. It will be so energizing that no one will want to leave.

So how should I read this blog post?  Is it depressing that so many ministers are "caged in the church" and that so many church members (and ministers) are "threatened by change."  Yes, absolutely, it is.  It wears me down.  It makes me scared.  Sometimes it makes me want to jump ship.  But ultimately I left this blog with a feeling of hope for the future.  Hope for a time when the church will be "so energizing that no one will want to leave."  I don't know if I will see that time, but sometimes I see glimmers of it, and sometimes more than just glimmers.  There are places near and far where churches are energized, and so I am hopeful.

And then I read this from Such as These (sorry for the long quote, but I couldn't adequately summarize it):

On the first night of the conference [the eighth letter conference in Toronto], Andy Crouch asked all the participants to write a short, one-sentence letter to the church of today and share it with one person that we didn’t come with. My letter said something about being what the church was meant to be and helping stamp out injustice. Clearly, it was worth remembering. I shared it with an older woman who was across the aisle from me. Her letter was blunt and somewhat depressing–she didn’t seem to have much faith in the church. After I shared my letter, she said, “You’re young.” I asked her what she meant and she went on about how she isn’t very positive about the future of the church. I felt like she’d given up on the church. In a cynical way, she told me to ”stay idealistic.”

What? Aren’t we all supposed to be idealistic? What about hope? What about the hope that God is at work in the church? Then I thought, idealism isn’t a fault–it’s a gift. It’s a gift that has been given to the young and can be sustained throughout life. Will we listen to the idealism of young people? I certainly hope so. They can remind us all to stay idealistic.

I suppose I am still considered "young," though I feel less so these days.  But there is still an idealistic core in me that hasn't been burned away.  Not yet.  And I hope, not ever.  I hope I will always listen to the young around me who have an idealistic vision.  I hope I will always listen to that still small voice deep down that whispers of something greater.  A new day.  A new hope.  A better ideal. 

Maybe a few years down the road, I will re-read this, and remind myself.