Administration – A Ministry

Ezekiel 34: 11 – 16; Matthew 25: 31-40

In the May 12^th section of Brightest and Best A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts by Sam Portaro it is Florence Nightingale who is remembered. As the author says in the text, “Florence nightingale is probably best remembered for her service in the Crimean War … where she reordered the military hospitals in less than three years … and during the same period she established the Nightingale Fund for training nurses.” He goes on to say that, “… her contribution was not in the particular care she rendered…” (to individuals) but that she “… was an administrative genus  - something we do not often recognize as heroic.” We often think, justifiably, of administration as being guardians of the status quo. An opinion we have accepted through observation. Florence Nightingale, however, did not fit this mode of doing administration. As the author says, “Florence Nightingale had to be both innovative and creative in her administration … in her time and ours, the old patterns and the accustomed ways will hardly serve our stewardship. No doubt the fire she knew on the Crimean battlefield was as nothing compared to the strafing she took within the human institutions who resisted … the reform she advocated.” (Emphasis mine)

I can imagine that as a priest in exile Ezekiel had to deal with change for probably the people in exile with him would say, as do the lyrics in a Godspell song, “How do we worship God in a foreign land?” Jesus too had to deal with change that was resisted by the religious authorities of his time. For example, they said that his disciples should not be gleaning grain on the Sabbath for it was against the law (the rules the established way of doing things). Jesus, however, was more concerned that his disciples were hungry than he was with the establishment rules. He was also more concerned with the welfare of people when he healed people on the Sabbath, again a crossing of the establishment rules. Compassion dictated a change in the rules; the accustomed way of doing things.

As Ezekiel and the people of Israel were in a foreign land that required change in how they worshiped, as Jesus attempted to drag the people of his time into a “foreign land” of change and as Florence Nightingale did the same thing in her time; today we find ourselves “in a foreign land”. Our accustomed ways of “doing church” do not seem to be working. Our congregations grow smaller and grayer and the emerging generations, for a variety of reasons, are not coming to church. So what do we do in this foreign land of the post-modern twenty-first century? Perhaps a part of the answer resides in the phrase I used above, “… not coming to church.” Perhaps it is the church that needs to get outside its walls and go to them. Perhaps we need to recognize that some things have been left behind in Jerusalem and it is time to “sing a new song”. This is not a comfortable place to be or a comfortable task to embark upon; but where is it written that comfort is a prerequisite to Christian discipleship? Indeed, much of scripture would suggest otherwise.