Expecting Traditional Nurses to Treat Hospice Patience

Recently a friend of mine shared that she worked for a nursing company. It was in the economic interest of the company to get into the hospice care market. The nurses were put on a rotation of patients, however now some of the patients had received hospice orders. The nurses moved through their rounds going from home to home and engaging with different patients as they always had done.

It was a disaster.

The nurses did very well with the regular patients, but were not good for the hospice patients. It all stemmed back to the way the nurses were trained. These nurses were trained to help people recover their health. However, these same nurses were not equipped to work with patients that were not going to ever recover their health. The nurses were not bad nurses but they were the wrong person for the patient on hospice.

The Universal Church faces a similar situation. Clergy are trained like these nurses were - to help churches recover health. But the current reality is that many churches are not going to recover health because the role of church in America is in decline. The Church has congregations who need help recovering health and yet other congregations need a hospice nurse.

Clergy are not equipped to work in churches on hospice and there are many churches on hospice.

I understand that this is a bit of a taboo to speak. Nurses are trained to think in terms of health and not in terms of dying. The irony is clergy have the language of death and the hope of resurrection in Jesus, yet clergy resist talking about churches dying. It is as though clergy forget that death is not the last thing and that resurrection is what we testify to! Could it be that we as clergy have a resistance to talk about dying because we have an underdeveloped theology of hope and resurrection?

The problem of having clergy trained to bring churches back to health is similar to the problem of having nurses working with patience on hospice - there are misplaced expectations, clergy feeling like they cannot midwife the church into the next stages, and congregations are harmed. We as a Church ought to take seriously the questions of what it means to be clergy leaders to an institution that has major sections on hospice.

Will we continue to operate out of fear? Will we re-tool clergy so that we are equipped to this new challenge. Will congregations accept hospice care?

As a people of the Resurrection we ought not fear death. Rather, we hope that resurrection is the Truth of creation and that nothing, life, or death or life beyond death, can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is a Feature Not a Bug - Conflict in the Church

The most naive among us, believe that the Church is conflict free, or if there is conflict then it is minimal and quickly resolved. This is not the case.

It is sometimes the case that people will work in the Church and see the “other side” of things and decide to leave Church. Others are victims of the conflict within Church, and this is painful. Still others seek out Church conflict because there is something about the conflict that they are addicted to or get some need met by being a part of the conflict.

The truth is conflict is universal and unavoidable. There is not just the conflict we have between one another, but we also have internal conflicts. Conflict is nothing to be ashamed or afraid of.

The Church understands that with conflict there is the chance to practice reconciliation, forgiveness, listening, compassion, mercy and justice. Without conflict the Church cannot practice these things. And like all other parts of our lives, the things that we do not use, atrophies and dies.

What is remarkable about the Church is that it sees conflict as a feature of the institution, and not a bug.

Some worry that too much conflict for too long will lead to a sort of war. The assumption is that war is the ultimate form of conflict. We have been taught to think this is the case. However, comedian Dylan Moran makes the point that war is not ultimate conflict but it is the inability to have conflict. Moran’s point is that waging war means you would rather have the other person dead than have conflict with them. War is not the ultimate conflict, it is our inability to have conflict.

What if by refusing to be in conflict we are not choosing peace. What if it means that we are choosing war? If we believe that it would be better (more peaceful) when the “other side” is gone, then are we engaged in a sort of ecclesial war?

Conflict is the feature we have in the Church that gives the chance to practice repentance, mercy, forgiveness and justice. Taking the conflict away may not lead us to the peace we say we desire. It may lead us marching into war.

Expect Peace After Only Eight Years

Benedicta Ward translates this story:

A hermit who was anxious went to Theodore of Pherme and told him all about it. He said to him, ‘Humble yourself, put yourself in subjection, go and live with others.’ So he went to a mountain, and there lived with a community. Later he returned to Theodore and said, ‘Not even when I lived with other men did I find rest.’ He said to him, ‘If you’re not at rest as a hermit, nor when you’re in a community, why did you want to be a monk? Wasn’t it in order to suffer? Tell me, how many years have you been a monk?’ He said, ‘Eight.’ Theodore said, ‘Believe me, I’ve been a monk for seventy years, and I’ve not been able to get a single day’s peace. Do you expect to have peace after only eight years?’

We have an anxious church that is seeking peace. It is a church that asks how long must we wait for the peace we say we all desire. If a single monk, Theodore, did not have peace after seventy years, then what makes a denomination of 3 million think that we can have peace after just fifty years?

We can split the denomination, I understand it has happened before. I understand that growing by dividing is possible. I understand there is harm being done. However, what makes us think that the split that the UMC is facing will be THE split that brings us to the peace we long for? What makes us think that any denomination or church could ever be at peace?

Maybe the peace we say we long for is just the excuse we cling to in order to divorce ourselves from one another.

How long must we wait for the peace we desire? Longer than we have tried - if we have ever started. A split will not bring us the peace we think we will get. Fights will continue, just read the Bible. Do we think that this is the generation that will arrive at the peace the church says it desires?