The poet Donald Hall once told the story of a New Hampshire hermit, a man who passed away leaving behind sheds full of stuff. His friends and neighbors helped sort through the avalanche of … well, everything under the sun … that had been accumulated over decades. In one of the sheds, they discovered a box labeled “string too short to be saved.”
Our best work, our best selves, our best ministry can get caught in just such a trap. We so easily settle upon a sense of who we are, a vision of what we have to offer, a version of what needs we are trying to address through ministry, that we end up with a shed full of unusable ideas we have held onto for decades. It’s hard to come to the point where we understand that these ideas are truly no longer usable, and that, even at great cost or pain, we need to discard them in order to make room for new understanding, to look afresh at our task.
This can be especially difficult in times of stress, grief, or instability. We want to reflex back to what we know. We crave certainty, even when it is not helping us gain traction in our work in the world.
This box full of “string too short to be saved” presents itself to your church board in many challenging moments. It may show up when you are facing the reality that growth in your congregation has brought to it people you do not know, who are bringing with them new ideas. It may show up when you are convening difficult conversations about institutional decline. It may land on the table with a thud in the wake of a stinging election. It may materialize when you start talking about inter-generational stresses in your congregation over budget, missional direction, music, and nearly everything else.
In all these moments, we are also presented with the possibility – the gift – of curiosity. Or, we can waste energy searching through the sheds of threadbare ideas and plans. Both options can be painful. One leads to growth.
What would it take for your church board to cultivate curiosity in the next three months? Curiosity about new forms of ministry, about what your neighbors think and need, about new uses for old buildings, about what you can learn from people who don’t know your ways, didn’t vote the way you did, and weren’t around when the pieces of string got cut that short in the first place?
In the Book of Acts, Paul went to Athens, a very new and different place for him, a place where none of his usual cultural approaches would work. Acts 17:17-18 recounts:
19 So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.”
Perceiving their curiosity at this new expression of the holy, Paul brought the message of Christ crucified and risen into that strange setting. The world and Christian faith were never the same again.
Curiosity is rocket fuel for depth and growth. It is a gift from God for all of us right now.
What strikes you about the Athenians’ response to Paul?
Can you think of a moment in your own life when you expressed this kind of curiosity about something that sounded “strange” to you? What happened as a result?
What boxes are you are hanging onto at home, that you know you should let go of? What would it mean for you if you let go of those boxes?
What is in your congregation’s box “of string too short to be saved”?
What would it mean for your church board, in this time of uncertainty, to let go of that box and move toward curiosity instead?
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