I’m not exactly a John Wesley-level neat freak, but I’m happiest when my spaces are tidy and my life has moderate organization. In church life, we tend to get overwhelmed with cluttered spaces (I’m sure we’ll use that prop again for VBS in the next 10 years!) and cluttered ministries (I have no idea how to plug in when I join your church, and I’ve been coming for 10 years!). You’d think it would be a simple task to throw out that 25-foot painted cardboard backdrop after VBS. You’d think it would make sense to eliminate countless meetings that nobody wants to come to anymore.
So many pastors are called to lead churches into the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ. So many lay leaders step up to bring meaningful change into their church. Yet over and over, the clutter threatens to suffocate them and their church, and no one will let them do the hard work of pruning so that they might together grow in new life.
The Little Red Hen Problem.
I call this the Little Red Hen problem. The Little Red Hen found some seeds and had a vision of warm, freshly-baked bread. She asked for help to plant the seeds, care for them, harvest the wheat, mill the grain, and bake the bread. But nobody shared her vision. The dog was too lazy, the cat was too sleepy, the duck was too silly. So Little Red Hen did all the work herself, complaining about her so-called friends. The process was long, but in the end, she had what she envisioned. When the community smelled the warm, freshly-baked bread, they all wanted to share in it, but Little Red Hen thought she’d teach them a lesson and refused them. She ate the bread all by herself.
This fable is meant to teach children about the rewards of hard-work, but it is not a Kingdom of God story. The Little Red Hen constantly plays the martyr, isolates herself from friends, and ends up well-fed but alone, bitter and haughty.
A Church of Little Red Hens.
The church can quickly fill up with Little Red Hens, wonderful people of God who once had a vision for a great ministry of their own. At one time many people helped them. But that was long ago. They’re tired from the labor, but no one else wants to take over. Participation dwindles in their ministry, yet they insist on doing it just one more year (and then another, and another). They begin to believe that no one else cares about the church as much as they do. Before you know it, you’re surrounded by twenty Little Red Hens, blind to each other, each demanding that everyone give all their time and money to their project or group. And instead of being well-fed, they all feel alone and hungry.
I’m not trying to be ugly, but I don’t want to go to that kind of church. The world has enough fear and panic and anger and scarcity. Our churches create a clutter-culture that squeezes the life out of us. We fight the cross which calls us to die because we fear extinction. We refuse to lose our life so that we may find it, because deep down, we’re not really sure Jesus is Lord of our church and our ministries. They’re ours. Mine.
Tidying Up.
If you have any tidy people in your life, you’ve heard the name Marie Kondo by now. Her Konmari method of decluttering has inspired millions of people to find joy in doing laundry. If that sounds a little far-fetched or silly, I invite you to watch Tidying Up on Netflix, or read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-Up. Kondo invites us to imagine our life surrounded only by the things that spark joy. She then has a method (hey John Wesley!) for moving towards joyful daily living through the discipline (hey John Wesley!) of tidying up everything all at once.
Like St. Ignatius before her, Kondo calls us to an awareness examen of every object in our lives. Like Brother Lawrence washing dishes, Kondo calls us to stop and truly practice gratitude in the mundane.
The Method.
Pull everything out, and then, one by one, hold each precious thing in the light, ask yourself whether it continues to spark joy in your heart, give thanks for what gifts this precious thing has done for you. If it does not spark joy any more, faithfully and permanently discard it. You honor the gift that this thing has brought into your life by allowing its time with you to be limited, and by fulling letting go of it when you are done with it.
If the thing continues to spark joy in your life, faithfully and carefully keep it in a way that it is clear and easy to find among the other things that spark joy. We are better stewards of the things (whether they be objects, projects, or ministries) God has given us when we take time to collectively evaluate God’s ongoing purpose for them in our lives.
It will not be easy, but we belong to a religion with a cross that comes before resurrection. Why do we keep forgetting that?