As my term as past chair on Presbytery executive comes to an end I find myself wondering where the business of the Church really happens. Something about Roberts Rules of Order can benumb the most scintillating discussions. I can only hope that my colleagues and I are more interesting in the pulpit than we are on the floor of Presbytery or Conference.

And since when was "policy" the main work of the Church?

And so, I've been pondering ever since: What would the Church do without Presbytery, Conference, and General Council? Committees? The staff it takes to operate all of the above? What would the Church do without Jesus?

Kenneth Martin, who supervises stupendously effective church planting for the Episcopalians, has an interesting take on mainline churches. He says we have the churched, the unchurched, and the dyschurched. The latter are those hurt or even damaged by churches. These may include divorced Catholics, survivors of a wicked church fight, refugees from obsessively strict upbringings, and the list goes on and on and on. He says churched people are into church because they like Church. They like the culture and are comfortable with the theology. As for unchurched persons, he compares them to a non-Moslem who attends mosque out of curiosity. A non-Moslem will expect to see a Koran prominently displayed and to hear a talk which somehow applies the teachings of Koran to everyday life. The visitor may not agree with what is said but will not be shocked or surprised or particularly offended to find it so. If an unchurched person goes to a church, they will expect to see a bible prominently displayed, as well as other Christian symbols, and they will expect that at some time a clergy will give some kind of talk applying the bible to life. Again, while they may not agree with what is said, they will not be shocked, surprised or outraged to find it so. What does shock the unchurched person is going to a church where the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 is read and the minister speaks to the congregation saying, "Of course, we do not believe this story is true, but let me speak further."

Martin says mainline churches are safe havens for dyschurched people. We welcome the wounded, the rejected, and the ones who don't fit into other places, the ones who carry the scars of dysfunctional community. We are deeply sympathetic with the compassion of Christ. And that is a good thing.

He says the problem arises when we fail to understand that people who are still raw from their wounds have different issues than people who have come to a measure of healing or have lived a gentler life. We must understand that the issues born of pain that cry out to the dyschurched: hurtful sexual relationships, authority issues, God/Fatherhood, Jesus, are not issues that speak either to the churched or the unchurched. In fact, where dyschurched folk control the agenda, they drive away both the churched and the unchurched. The new generations stay away. Policy and issues revolve around the pain.

In church planting, especially, it has immediate consequences. The church is stunted, requiring long term life support, or it dies.

Was Jesus the nurturer of the wounded or their transformer? Saviour? Lord?

Is policy and procedure the agent of transformation in churches or Christ crucified and risen?

At a recent Presbytery executive meeting we realized that three committees had been inactive for more than a year. No one complained. No business was left undone. No one noticed except the nominating committee which was having difficulty producing their quota of warm bodies to fill all the slots.

For all the protests: "We are not a congregationalist church, but a connexional church," I still see more thriving congregations out there than connexions - or connections, or whatever. The real connecting is happening informally over lunch. Probably the saving grace of the Church, and bane of attempts to standardize, is that we are not one big corporation but the equivalent of a chain of independently operated local businesses. Most are small, almost all more prone to trust their own reading of local conditions than district and head offices. Most get along better with clergy who like and appreciate the local culture than the ones who are there to educate them to a higher standard of music and policies formed in another world. I know there are prophetic personalities in the church, but as I recall scripture, they were never put in charge of anything, and as I recall history, there were good reasons for it.

Would there be a positive correlation between denominations that see the main task as helping congregations thrive in contrast to those who see congregations as revenue streams - to promote staffing - to educate congregations to policy decisions. It is interesting that many of our urban congregations are more profitable to the corporation dead than alive.

This brings us back to that Jesus thing and evangelism.

An Anglican friend refers to "vampire evangelism" where a group gathers in a church basement to discuss the need for "fresh blood" in the church.

Are we still doing evangelism?

At the National Church Planting Congress in Vancouver last year I heard Leonard Sweet comment that evangelism is a hot word in the world of business. In a positive way! He said that while the church has disowned the word and is still in retreat from a 25-year-old memory of televangelistic scandals, Microsoft enthusiastically sends software evangelists to share applications for their operating system.

Rediscovering evangelism in our United Church is like the discovery of the spectacular ivory-billed woodpecker in the wetland forests of Arkansas. Last seen in 1920, it was declared extinct. If a bird lives in the forest and nobody sees, does it really exist? I thought of that discovery this past spring in Victoria, Newfoundland, where the good people of the United Church community advertised four mid-week days of evangelistic services. Already a vital, vibrant United Church community, the final night saw more people fill the building than attended the biggest community funeral held. Church people know the significance of that.

It really isn't about numbers. It's about a terrific thirst for God. Specifically a thirst that is satisfied by that "Jesus thing!" Ad hoc evangelism in the United Church, and across denominations in Canada, is enjoying a tremendous resurgence - on an informal level - often among clergy and within churches that have never considered themselves part of any grouping that would be named evangelical.

Good church leaders recognize those things that bring life, and transformation.

I had the privilege in London, England, this past June of hearing Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household. He said, "Owing to our past, we are better prepared to be 'shepherds' than 'fishers' of men; that is to say, better prepared to feed the people who have stayed faithful to the Church than to bring new people in or to 'fish back' those who have wandered away." He endorsed Alpha as an aid to Christians of all traditions to communicate Jesus Christ in a post-modern world that is as responsive to him as the pre-modern world.

What the good people of Victoria, Newfoundland, and their minister have not surrendered to extinction is our genetic Methodist heritage of great meetings where the spiritually curious can explore - or more. Imagine - evangelism born, nurtured, and preserved in an entirely Canadian and entirely United Church context. Nothing backward about those Newfoundlanders!

I also had the privilege of hearing Dr. Patrick Dixon of the London Business School, and author of 12 books including Futurewise, who says that in the rapid changes of the new millennium many corporate boards throw up their hands and choose death for their organization before taking the risks of trying what they have already rejected or marginalized. He said our visioning processes and focus groups are of almost no use in today's world because a focus group can only tell us what it likes today. It cannot imagine what it needs tomorrow. Like many others, he sees the world-wide resurgence of relational Christian ministries among young people as a sign that we the church have much to offer if we are not ashamed to proclaim Jesus and relinquish control to those whose roots are in the new millennium, not the old.

Just what is our good news for the world - if not specifically Jesus?

Why do we have those intersecting sticks on the front wall of the sanctuary if it's not to focus on something that happened to that Jewish guy from Nazareth?

Why are we still feeding people stale wafers and Welch's grape juice from the front of the church? Because if it has no ultimate meaning, I vote that we at least change the menu.

The notice below was circulated through a Conference mailing list, but no one can convince me that its ethos is United Church.

We want to invite you to an upcoming event meant to introduce you to an exciting new faith formation resource hot off the press!

It was like getting a birthday invitation for those who don't like cake and ice cream - or the person throwing the party - or the person having a birthday. I almost went to see who turned up. Am I the only one to see something funny about getting an invitation not to come to a party?

Long ago I visited a parishioner who had literally cut every reference to her 'ex' from the family photo album. I never saw who was missing, but he left a considerable legacy of holes behind. His vacancy filled every room and every picture frame.

Northrop Frye, the wry literary critic from Victoria University used to provoke his students to read the bible saying, "Why does this huge, sprawling, tactless book sit there inscrutably in the middle of our cultural heritage. . . frustrating all our efforts to walk around it?"

Reading the non-invitation, it struck me that something will rush in to fill any vacuum.

Could "United Church policy and ethos" be the new fundamentalism? Will it try and stake us to 20th century structures and theologies and baby boomer ethics? Will Education and Student Committees use it as an absolute standard for incoming ministers?

It depends on whether we will be ruled by the pain - our own or others - or by the transforming power of Jesus Christ.