The calendar has turned on my first year of retirement. I said to a friend recently that in reflection it appears that I think more as a retired soldier than a retired pastor. In other words I think my military paradigms were quite active even in pastoral ministry. Staff at church seemed to see that clearer than I did, especially when they would make sport of my desire for order, precise protocols and decorum. It also affected the way I viewed the Church and participation within the church (The change in case is intentional.). When people would float in and out of the local church, even for seemingly logical reasons, it would bother me. When some abandoned the community in protest (e.g., COVID-19 policies) I was very provoked. I categorized such fluidity as disloyalty. Loyalty surfaced as one of my most important ideals. This conviction became more obvious when I was recently reading, THE PATROL, SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A CANADIAN SOLDIER IN AFGHANISTAN by Ryan Flavelle . He writes,
“At that moment I realized just what an important thing choice is. Not the choice between shopping at Walmart or shopping at Superstore, but the ability to choose whether to participate in things that directly affect your safety. I had given up that right. I was going to get into the back of that LAV, stand air sentry, cross my fingers and toes, and hold on. That was my only choice.
The cold, hard reality of military life is that no one makes any effort to treat you as an individual. You are a soldier; that is all. It is refreshing to be reminded that no matter what our third-grade teachers taught us, we are not all unique and delicate flowers; we are people who together form a community . . . In the military we are painfully aware that each one of us is merely a cog in a much larger machine . . . The military doesn’t view us as unique, and it doesn’t need to.”
Of course I would err to take Flavelle’s accurate view of military life and apply it directly to Christian communion without some nuancing. The New Testament certainly acknowledges the individual, individual gifts, individual genders, culture, etc. But the New Testament also points to community, to oneness, and to one another-ness. In our culture that emphasizes individuality, freedom, autonomy, etc., we would do well to heed the community aspects to our Christian faith. Much of the New Testament is written to us in our plurality, not individuality. The most basic prayer starts, “Our Father . . ..”
Just like it is unique to military life to see the whole as more important than the part, it is also unique to life in the Christian community. The initiatory act of baptism symbolizes that. One might wonder if the militant Church on earth wouldn’t be more effective if people would acknowledge that certain individual freedoms are forfeited the moment one becomes part of Christ’s Body. Today we have a weakened Church because everyone wants to be treated as an individual. Thus they live and make choices mainly on what satisfies their needs and their desires. It might be a time to make ourselves nothing and see the glorious “larger machine” that we are “merely cogs” within.
I recently overheard a spouse say, “I get to be me!” Perhaps a better marital ideal is, “I get to be us.” The same is true for the Church. So I don’t apologize for my military influence that places loyalty to the Church in such a prominent place. And if you still float between churches like shopping between Walmart and Superstore, I’m still provoked by your heightened view of your own self-prominence.
There are good reasons to leave a church. That discussion is not part this article. Tim Challies has an excellent Blog on that topic. Akin to marriage, when we go into a fellowship with the notion that we can remain autonomous and leave when we want to we start at the wrong place. When we start at the point of “may death do us part” we are on the right path to true Church life. It is counter-cultural but it is Scriptural: the whole is more important that the sum of its parts.
