Saturday night, I was at a charity gala. My date (who is also my husband) looked darling in his tux, and I enjoyed being dressed to the nines myself. There was an auction at which people were bidding in the tens of thousands of dollars for exotic trips and desirable concert tickets. It was a fun evening, with lots of laughter and high spirits. Until. After the bidding was completed, they showed a video. It was about how a father felt when he discovered that his daughter had type 1 diabetes. As he described his heartbreak on her behalf, the mood in the room changed. There were many tears, especially from those of us with children with this incurable autoimmune disease. As the video came to an end, there was silence in the room. The auctioneer took the stage with nothing in his hand to auction off. Instead, it was time to “Fund the Cure.” Auction-style, he took pledges from people in the room who wanted to give money to help cure this disease. He started at $50,000 and worked his way down incrementally. The man at the table next to me raised his bid card at $50,000. And again at $25,000. $10,000. Every category of pledge, the man raised his card. I’m sure his total must have been near $100,000 when he was done. When it was over, I couldn’t help it. I leaned over and, still teary-eyed from the video, said, “Thank you. We have a daughter with juvenile diabetes.” We all left the event with a renewed sense of urgency about curing this deadly disease. And hope.
Tonight, two nights later, I am at a gathering of pastors of large UM churches in Missouri. We’ve been listening to various speakers and, best of all, talking to each other about what works in our churches. We’re aware that, if things don’t change, the United Methodist Church is on a trajectory of decline. We want our churches to be sources of growth, not decline. However, we realize that it is no longer a given that large churches will continue to grow, and we realize also that the things that were effective thirty years ago no longer are useful. There is a sense of urgency here. And hope.
A life-threatening disease. Churches facing life-threatening challenges. Urgency. And hope. All mixed together.
There’s a funny thing about hope. It does not simply occur in a vacuum, but it can require a lot of hard work and sacrifice. Hope requires hard work, yet it pulls us into the future. And so we keep working and hoping.
