Bike tour, church, and the collision of passion

            And we’re off! Well, almost. On May 8^th I’ll be heading to Turtle River, Minnesota and the start of a week-long bicycle ride across the NW Minnesota Synod of the ELCA to bring attention and raise money for hunger-related causes. It’s been quite the undertaking already. There was route planning and lodging and meals. Then there were the events along the way. We’ll be having concerts, a film screening in a local theater, a hunger simulation, programs on Indian Reservations and local schools, roundtables with local governmental and church leaders, a mini bike tour of Bemidji, visits to food shelves, and worship services all along the way.

            In short, this has been a lot of work even before turning over the first pedal. But it’s also been the best kind of work because it’s been people who are passionate, finding the intersection of things they believe in. In all, we’ve had around 100 people in on planning local events, and many more on the various moving parts of putting the whole picture together.

            For me, it is an important reminder that when we find things that we are passionate about the work doesn’t feel like work. I’ve seen that in the Cornerstone Food Pantry closer to home. The amount of hours that have gone into making that a success and the continuous resources that go into it are difficult to fathom, but it’s where peoples’ passions lie. Nobody complains because there is nothing they’d rather be doing.

            I wish we could be this passionate about everything else we do. It’s tough. I mean, nobody gets as excited for a church council meeting as we do for a bike tour meeting or a food pantry shift and I don’t expect that to be the case. But I wonder if what we do as church shouldn’t be feeding the same kinds of passions. This is no knock on people (least of all those who are already serving!); it’s a knock on the church’s ability to address the serious needs and desires of human beings.

            Not everything we do is going to be fun. That’s not really our goal. In fact, some things are going to be terribly uncomfortable. But the end result has to be something that speaks to people in the 21^st century—not lowering ourselves to sheer entertainment but addressing the fundamental struggles that people deal with in their lives. The church needs to understand that nowadays we all start with the questions, “Who am I?” and “What am I passionate about?” before we ever get to the question, “What is the church?”

            It’s messy, because we want to believe that the church is the people. But too often the church is just a subset of people who are using the institution to preserve their identities, completely indifferent to whether that institution speaks in the same way to others who are on the outside. I know because I do this all the time. I think that “the church” is here to protect the things that give me meaning. But the Reformation call of the church that we are “semper reformanda” (always reforming) is more needed today than ever. We are in need of purpose in our lives and, if the church has decided that our questions don’t matter, then we’ll turn to other things—sex, exercise, food, cars, politics, the internet—to answer those questions for us.

            The church exists to show us a better way. It exists to show us Jesus. At its very best the church reminds us that I am not the ultimate authority, but through Christ I have an identity that is inherently worth something. Then, the church gives flight to my passions. It makes a seven day bike tour possible; not just to ride a bike but to serve others who are in need along the way. That’s the work of the church: it’s taking what you love more than anything else and helping you to see where your love speaks truth to Jesus Christ dying on the cross and where it is in need of redirection for the sake of the betterment of all God’s people. The church is not about you, but it takes that first selfish step in the door to ever get to that realization.

            My worry is that we are so preoccupied with the church that we don’t allow that first step. And I hope in the future we can work together to strip down those boundaries that are holding us back.

            That’s what I’ve learned from a bike tour already. Who knows what wisdom I’ll have when I roll into Moorhead?