Whose Voice Will We Listen To ??????

Last night I watched the movie "Cinema Paradiso", which is the story of a little boy named Salvadore (Toto) who has a deep love of all things cinema and film. Toto begins by hanging around the projectionist Alfredo, who works at the Cinema Paradiso in a small mountain Village in Italy.

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Following a fire, Toto replaces a blinded Alfredo as projectionist and begins to grow into a fine young man who finds and loses love, and who when the moment comes for him to leave for military service in Rome is TOLD by Alfredo to "GO and NEVER COME back ..." Alfredo tells Toto that he is tired of hearing the young man talking, but instead wants him to go and leave and have the people talking about him instead.

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Alfredo sees HUGE potential in Toto, and wants Toto to see AND live that potential. He tells him to get out of the little village and see the world - to expand his horizons and to realize that change is not only inevitable it can and must be healthy and it will never really come to the little town stuck in a deep rut ...

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There is a lesson in this film for rural communities and rural churches everywhere ... we need to step out into the world and embrace the winds of change AND allow them to guide us to new possibilities and potentials ... we need to step OUTSIDE of our comfortable, familiar villages and embrace the REAL WORLD and live boldly and courageously.

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In the church particularly, we need to have the courage to hear the voices not of the gate keepers and the old guard who zealously guard the way things are, but the voices of those who have stepped away and who stand on the margins ... there are REASONS why these people are outside of the Church looking back in. The leadership of the Church (and the communities of faith) MUST have the courage to hear those voices and act on the stories they tell.

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Numerically, I have met more people who were ONCE in the United Church, than there are still active. There are good reasons for that transition. Those outside still look to us for spiritual nurture and feeding - YET - they won't come back because the same things that drove them away remain present, active and worst of ALL central.

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They are gone for a reason. If we want the Church to grow we need to listen to them.

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The Emerging Spirit Campaign is NICE, but it won't work if we fail to address what drove that generation OUT in the first place. Petty politicking, griping about money, positioning for power, and being blatant hypocrites helps NO ONE. Yet, too often in Congregations this reality is central and it is why we are continuing to close congregations at a frightening rate ...

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MY GENERATION want more ...

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I hear it over and over in the emails and comments that I receive here - I have lost count of the people in Minnedosa and across Internet, who say to me - "I used to go to church but ..." OR "THIS is WHY, I don't go to Church any more ..." and who connect with my words in a positive way ... Unfortunately their voices are continued to be ignored and drowned out by other voices interested ONLY in power and politicking ....

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Yet, the reality is - I'm being driven out of the Church. I'm being told to conform or be cast out (THAT is borrowed from a song by RUSH !!). I'm frustrated by the simple reality that NO ONE wants to move beyond the scape-goating that says - "He is THE problem ..." treating one of the symptoms rather than engaging the disease, a disease that many, many voices say repeatedly has been longstanding and deeply entrenched ...

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A Mennonite friend, and a neo-pagan friend have both counselled me to start my own congregation to minister to those voices both within and outside the church who are NOT being listened to, NOR ministered to ... I would, but my heart, even as broken as it is over this, wants to stay in the fold of the United Church ...

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So, I struggle ... I hear the voices from the margin crying out in the darkness and the wilderness and I simply ask - when will the powers that be begin to listen to THOSE voices rather than the voices of the gatekeepers who have driven them out in the first place????

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Or more importantly - when will the powers that be even acknowledge that there are GateKeepers interested in keeping those voices OUT ???

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It may be inevitable that one day very soon I will be part of a new Congregation that not only speaks to, but converses with those marginal voices that no one in the United Church want to heed ...

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In Cinema Paradiso, Toto came back as an adult to find his beloved theatre in ruins, his village aged and dying, and his old friend nothing more than a phantom ... In the Church if we fail to hear the voices of our Totos we will find ourselves standing watching our own Cinema Paradisos dynamites into oblivion because of our neglect and abandonment ... There is potential for survival and growth, but it demands a rethinking of who we are, and what we are about - relabelling simply won't work!!