As I lead retreats, pastors tell me, "I'm here because I can't worship when I lead worship." I affirm their need for retreat, yet the comment makes me sad. Can you imagine Aaron the priest or Miriam the prophet saying that? Or Peter on the Day of Pentecost? Or an Eastern Orthodox priest today?

Laypersons who get really involved often fall prey to the same spiritual 'dis-ease,' with comments such as, "It seems like doing church work is getting in the way of God." How can we still tout the priesthood of all believers as so essential? Can we no longer be priests to one another?

This common attitude belies a gnawing duplicity: How can we who plan and lead worship (lay or clergy) invite others into "the holy of holies" if we are not standing on holy ground ourselves? And if spiritual leaders cannot sense the Presence in worship, which exists for the very purpose of experiencing God, then how less likely when we go about the mundane administration of church programs?

Ministry itself is getting in the way of representing Christ in the world. It is a desperate call to restore the soul of the church. When I speak of soul, I am lifting up three positive qualities related to serious needs of the church:

Integrity. The phrase "selling your soul" conveys a sense of expediency: "I owe my soul to the company store." We illustrate this crisis in integrity when we lead worship but do not worship or talk love while disparaging others. The soul of ministry together is about practicing what we teach (see Matthew 23:3). It is about spiritual integrity: Can we embody our being in Christ through our doing in the world?

Passion. "To put your heart and soul into it" means to do something with passion. Seekers and leaders confess that church is often boring, lacking energy, like salt that has lost its taste. It is lukewarm — neither cold nor hot. In words reminiscent of Kierkegaard, this age will die, not from sin, but from a lack of passion. But passion also means suffering. To discover the passion of Christ in church structures will be painful, as old wineskins burst on the way to restoring the integrity and joy of soul.

Wholeness. "'Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone," wrote John Donne (Anatomy of the World, 1611). Ministry in an overspecialized world gets complicated. The soul of ministry is about healing personal and social fragmentation, finding simplicity in complexity. It is about defragmenting, as when my computer reunifies scattered information. As W.E.B. DuBois describes in The Souls of Black Folk, soul involves a totality of life's suffering and joy. Soul is a synonym for life: Nefesh in Hebrew conveys one's whole being. The Lord is the shepherd who restores my soul (see Psalm 23:1-2).

God's call today is for the believing community to represent these three qualities ᰬ the integrity, passion, and wholeness of Christ in the world. It is a call for this incredible fragile community by its own presence to embody its mission: to become a powerful serving force even while experiencing turbulent changes in personal and corporate life. Can the church be the "still point in the turning world," embodying change and tradition?

When the Apostle Paul looked at one of the most promising churches he helped plant, he saw enthusiastic faith, insight, worship, and music; but he also saw fragmentation, confusion — too much of a good thing. He tried to make sense of it, listing church members' various gifts and strengths. He reflected on the needs and weaknesses. In the middle of all this confusion Paul inserted the famous hymn to love, the "more excellent way" to restore the soul of community:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals
and of angels, but do not have love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all
knowledge, and if I have all faith, so
as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
      1 Cor. 13:1-2, NRSV

John, exiled on Patmos, wrote to a different kind of church, one that was discouraged and tired. John affirmed its strengths, its faithfulness, its toil, its patient endurance. Then he added, "But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (Rev. 2:4, NRSV).

To the buzzing "evangelical" church with too many bells and whistles, to the bored but faithful "mainline" church, the message is the same: "You have abandoned the soul of ministry. Look at your strengths, confess your weaknesses, and return to your first love."

(Adapted from The Soul of Tomorrow's Church by Kent Ira Groff, by permission of Upper Room Books, Nashville, Tennessee.)