Working Holidays... God Bless 'Em!

I have just returned from the Convocation on the Rural Church sponsored my Duke Divinity School. Generally, the convocation is only open to North Carolina residents, but on this particular occasion, they allowed ten members of the West Virginia Annual Conference to attend.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to attend the convocation and thoroughly enjoyed the brief stay at Myrtle Beach. I sat in on some very good workshops and learned quite a bit from the presenters… however; I have to admit that I spent the biggest portion of the time conflicted by the lavish luxury we were all enjoying.

It was clear from the offset that this convocation was as much about relaxation as it was about sharing knowledge. And that is fine. Most ministers are guilty of not taking enough time to truly Sabbath or to recharge before they begin a new program, a new week, or a new ministry. So, a few days basking in the sun on the beaches of the East Coast are a much-needed rest.

The conflict for me emerges from the fact that we were housed at the Sheraton, enjoying catered meals, and expensive hotel rooms. On the back of the door was the standard posting announcing the most that this hotel would be allowed to charge for the room in which I was staying. A rate that was in excess of $300 per night means that one night in the Sheraton cost more than a month’s rent for the people who live in my community. Imagine how much we could have done if we had stayed at a Holiday Inn further inland and gave the rest of that money to providing housing relief for the working poor?

I sat in a room surrounded by highly educated people, who often had no concept of the life being lived by McDowell County residents just four hours north of them. The stereotypes about West Virginians were overwhelming as I spoke to person after person. Some had traveled through the area and were awestruck by the beauty of the Appalachians. Some had come to McDowell County on mission trips and were saddened by the extreme poverty. Yet, not one of the people I spoke to actually knew that there is an Appalachia that most of us know that exist somewhere between those two extremes of romanticism and total degradation.

Mostly though, I was thrown off-kilter by the nonchalant way in which we accepted our meals from the working class who dressed in their confining uniforms and stood ready to swoop in and carry away our plates as soon as we had laid down our forks. One course was carried away as another course was brought in and when dinner was over most of us sitting in that dining room could not tell you the name of any one of our servers.

What does that say about our ministry when we work in rural communities, often surrounded by the working class and we don’t take the time to get to know them? Have we let our divinity school educations stand in the way of reality? Have we spent so much time studying about theology that we have forgotten praxis? Have we become so preoccupied by the discussion about Jesus that we have forgotten to be the hands and feet of Jesus here on earth?

Given the opportunity, I know I would return to the convocation again…I only hope that between now and then I find a way to reconcile the seeming hypocrisy between the life I am living and the life I preach about.