the ring

I know...I haven't written anything in a while. However, just because I haven't been writing doesn't mean that I haven't been pondering things. This past weekend I was working outside for a bit in NY putting clear coat on the cabin logs. Since it was a rather mindless task, I had ample opportunity to reflect.

I do not watch many movies, however, the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy caught my attention several years ago. On the chance that you have not watched the movies, the storyline centers on a gold ring that gave the bearer of it unusual power. Unfortunately the power in the ring also destroyed anyone who used it to advance a selfish agenda. The whole story chronicles the journey of Frodo (an insignificant hobbit) returning the ring to the place where it was created so it could be destroyed. The destructive power of the ring was uncanny. It destroyed relationships, it destroyed people, its seductive power called out to those who desired power and the personal gain to be achieved from that power. Rational thought became a victim of its allure.

While the story is purely fiction, I believe it is also a powerful allegory. Today we have our own ring, our own means for grasping at power. For the past 20 years I have been involved in various leadership capacities in what I would call the institutional church. Far to frequently, the institutional church has become our "ring". It offers power, significance, and validation. Yet the personal destruction wreaked by the system of the institutional church is staggering.

My heart breaks with the frequent stories of people who speak to Bev and I about their pain; pain inflicted by leaders in the IC who used their position selfishly. We (Bev and I) recently had a discussion about the sources of pain in our own life; from where did it come and why. Without a doubt, the greatest source (and if I may add - by a wide margin) of pain in our personal lives has come from the IC.

Far too frequently, I have seen the negative transformation of people once they had a position of power in the IC. A number of years ago a local pastor spoke to me about a power struggle in his church. He was shocked at the way that perfectly nice people transformed into angry, vile antagonists if their perceived position of power was threatened. His experience mirrors my own. I have seen too many wonderful followers of Jesus destroyed by the allure of position and power in the IC. Give them a leadership position and they cease to follow Jesus, choosing instead to clutch to the thing that is giving them a sense of power. Over the past twenty years, I have seen more grasping for power in the IC than any other sphere of my life. Churches split over the desire for power. Relationships are destroyed in the grasping for authority.

On a personal level, not only have I observed what the "ring" does to others, I have experienced firsthand its seductive allure as well. When I started to walk with God twenty some years ago, my walk was characterized by a radical zeal for God. Gradually I lost my zeal, its fire replaced with an effort to "get ahead", to play the system. Oh I still prayed, read the Bible and did the other Christian things. However my relationship with God changed, my need for Him was based on my desire for the church to succeed.

In 2002 God invited Bev and I to relinquish our leadership position at Grace Covenant Church. At that point, my relationship with "the ring" was exposed within me. I did not know what God said about me. I had no identity beyond being a "pastor". At a weekend retreat, God broke through and spoke to me that He would rebuild the foundations of my life. True to His word, He began to work in my heart. As I allowed Him to transform me, I became increasingly aware of seductiveness of "the ring" and how I had subtly yielded to its influence.

Someone is sure to ask - Do we do away with the institutional church? Only God has that answer. I do know that if we relinquish our desire for the position and power that feeds our ego, we will become more impervious to the effects of the allure of the ring. In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo could be trusted to carry the ring because of his humility. He had no desire to use the ring for personal gain. We must be ruthless in dealing with the god of self, choosing instead to follow Jesus fully. I believe that the solution to the problem lies within each of us. How will I respond to the allure of power offered by the ring? Will I follow Jesus and take up my cross or will I clutch to my ideas, my desires, and the dictates of the self god?