 Hawaiian minister says PCUSA needs humility By John H. Adams The Layman Monday, June 30, 2008
"We need to be humble and say we have radically screwed up," the Rev. Dan Chun of First Presbyterian Church in Ko'olau, Hawaii, said. He spoke during the worship service that preceded the final business session of the 218th General Assembly, the PCUSA's national governing body. "Doing justice and mercy without humility is walking apart from God," Chun said. He was preaching from the assembly's theme, Micah 6:8: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" "Does our denomination have a major blind spot that needs help?" Chun asked. "We Presbyterians have a lot to be humble about. Since 1966, we have lost members every single year. If we keep losing members at a rate we did last year, in four decades there will be no members." Furthermore, Chun added, "In 2006, only 25 percent of our congregations grew. That means three out of four are going down. Out of nearly 11,000 PCUSA churches, only five churches had increased worship attendance in each of the last 10 years. I wish I were one of those churches, but we are not." "Do we despair? Do we pretend nothing's wrong? Do we say let's keep on, keep on going down? Or can we humbly face the facts and ask God for help. Can we take a radical inventory and discover that we made some bad decisions?" Chun used his own experiences to underscore the need for humility in the Christian's walk. After marriage, he decided to go to seminary. But his wife left him and seminary became the "worst years of my life. I was depressed. I lost hope. I felt I could walk under any door. I promised never to become a pastor." But a Hawaiian congregation called him to be an associate pastor, and he broke his promise. Later, he was called to another congregation to lead a singles ministry. "I was qualified because I was divorced," he said. Then he became the pastor of First Presbyterian in Ko'olau. The congregation bought a golf course with a large clubhouse. It runs the golf course as a commercial enterprise and uses the clubhouse for worship. Just acquiring the course was a lesson in humility, Chun said. The owners wanted $20 million and "we had only $200,000," he said. Acquisition was a miracle he didn't fully explain. "We should start the day by looking in the mirror and saying, 'I am not the Messiah,'" he said. "When we know how much we screw up, mess up, jam up, it will be easy to give God all the credit. The opposite of humility is not arrogance, it's ignorance – ignorance of God and the Holy Spirit, ignorance of what God has done in our lives." Humility requires that Chun take an assessment of himself every day. He discovered, he said, that "I have had people leave my church because I thought I made wrong decisions … taken risks and failed … I wondered time and again if I had the strength, wisdom, skills or endurance to be a pastor." "The Bible says boast of our weaknesses. I will do that any day, any time. For the decisions we have made and not made, especially this week, today's the call for humility." |
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