Let go and step out in faith

Parish ministry

Let go and step out in faith

A spirituality of parish renewal

Father James Callan

At our lowest point, when it looked like our church was ready to close, the parishioners decided to share what we had with the poor and reach out to the prisoners and the homeless. As a result, our wound was quickly healed, and the sun began to rise once again on the parish.

When President Clinton took the oath of office last January, the Bible he used was opened to Isaiah 58. The biblical chapter he literally put his finger on is the one that speaks of a new springtime as we have experienced it at Corpus Christi Church in Rochester, New York.

"Free the prisoners who are chained unjustly," Isaiah 58 proclaims. "Share your bread with the hungry, welcome the poor and the homeless, give clothes to those in need, and don't turn your back on your own."

And what happens if you do these things? Isaiah goes on to say: "Then your light will shine like the rising sun, and your wound will quickly be healed."

That, in a nutshell, is our story, the story of the renewal of Corpus Christi. At our lowest point, when it looked like our church was ready to close, the parishioners decided to share what we had with the poor and reach out to the prisoners and the homeless. As a result, our wound was quickly healed, and the sun did begin to rise once again on the parish.

What do you do when your church is dying? What do you do when your religious congregation is dying? What do you do when your business is dying? You would think that the answer would be to preserve it, to hang on to it, to protect it.

No! Just the opposite. Let it go. Share what little you have. Reach out to the poor. Give it away even before you get it. Take a chance. Get out of the safe boat, like Peter did, and walk on the water. Only by stepping out in faith will you meet Jesus.

Let me tell you a story I often use to illustrate what happened at Corpus Christi.

Once there was an old man who lived on the island of Crete. He loved the land with his whole heart. As he was dying, he asked his family to place his body right on the dirt, on the very land he loved. In his dying moment, he reached out and grabbed some dirt in his hand, then clutched it to his breast as he died.

When he got up to heaven, he was still hanging on to the fistful of dirt. Saint Peter told him he had to let go of the dirt if he wanted to get into heaven. "Oh, no, I can't do that, " said the old man. "This dirt is precious to me. It's from the island of Crete, the land I love." Peter repeated that he needed to let it go if he wanted to get into heaven, yet the man refused again.

Pretty soon Jesus came out and told the old man the same thing, but the man still refused. Finally Jesus said very sternly, "Look, drop that dirt right now, or you don't get into heaven." After a long hesitation, the old man slowly let the dirt fall from his fingers.

Then Jesus gently took the old man's elbow and escorted him slowly up the stairs to heaven. When they reached the top, the old man looked out over heaven. As far as one could see was the entire island of Crete.

That's what happened to our parish. We had deteriorated from 5,000 parishioners on Sunday to 200. The diocese was talking of closing it. And at that low point we made a decision not to hang on to what we had. Instead we let go and reached out in faith.

In the spring of 1978 we took three radical steps—we gave away our money, we let go of our investments, and we eliminated bingo.

First was the decision to give away 10 percent of our collection to the poor. To the poor? Weren't we the poor? In some ways we were. That January, the gas and electric bill—for one month—was over $10,000. The collection each week was $450.

Some quick math tells you we were in trouble. So why would we want to give away 10 percent of our small collection when we ourselves were suffering? Simply because other people in the world were worse off than we were. At least we were eating every day. Anyway, we thought that Jesus would feel more at home in a church that was generous with the needy.

The Jews taught us the importance of tithing. In Leviticus 19 it says, "When you are harvesting your wheat, leave some of it standing along the edges of your fields. When you pick the grapes, don't pick them all. Leave some for the poor." So we made a leap of faith and started giving 10 percent of every collection to the poor (not including our own outreach ministries). A few years later, the Parish Community Forum voted to increase it to the present 12 percent. My personal hope is to raise it higher and higher as the years go onperhaps up to 50 percent, which is what Zacchaeus the tax collector said he was going to do (see Luke 19:8).

Giving the 12 percent away each week has been a challenge in light of the growing expenses of our many programs. Nevertheless, we make it the first check we write every week, even before paying salaries or bills.

Great blessings have come from this. You can't outdo God. Without saying a wordwe made a commitment never to give sermons on moneythe collections just automatically rose. Each spring the parishioners get a chance to name the charities or organizations they want to benefit from the money. It is a satisfying feeling to know that, when we donate money in the collection, we help the needy all over the world.

The second radical step we took was to eliminate all of our investments. We decided to sell our stocks and bonds, to empty our portfolio, and to give the money to the poor. This way we would have nothing to depend on except God and the generosity of the parishioners.

It would help us live more day to day, depending on the "daily bread" the way the Jews did when they were wandering in the desert. God told Moses, "I will let manna drop from heaven, but they are to pick up only enough to feed themselves for one day" (Exod. 16:4).

In an age that seeks more and more financial security, we wanted to be a countersign. "You cannot serve both God and money," said Jesus in his famous Sermon on the Mount. Getting rid of our investments was a deliberate attempt to live with financial insecurity in the hope that God would be our security. Having no endowments or investments also prevented us from holding stock in controversial companies that might be oppressing the poor in Third World countries.

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We took three radical steps—we gave away our money, we let go of our investments, and we eliminated bingo. After that leap of faith, the collections went up miraculously. It was like the miracle of the loaves and fishes: a spirit of sharing generates abundance.

Now there was also no stored-up money to argue over. Even though God told the Jews in the desert not to store up the manna, "some kept an excess for the following day, and it bred maggots and smelled foul" (Exod. 16:20). We wanted to have a church that was clean. The third step was to get rid of bingo. This was one of the hardest things we've ever done at Corpus Christi. Bingo was played in the church hall twice a week for decades.

It was played every Wednesday night, including Ash Wednesday, and every Sunday night, including Easter Sunday. When I first came to Corpus Christi, the pastor assigned me to bingo duty on Wednesday nights, since he had Sunday nights. I was to sell tickets and walk around to assist the bingo workers. "No way!" I said. "I hate bingo. I abhor it. I can't justify it. I won't do it." That didn't go over too well. It put me at odds with him, the bingo workers, and many of the parishioners. It created a lot of tension.

But by 1978 we managed to persuade the trustees and auditors that God would feel more at home in a church without bingo.

After they took that leap of faith, the collections miraculously went up far beyond the amount that bingo brought in.

Why were we so much against bingo? Because you can't run a church or school by exploiting people's addictions. You must have good means to arrive at a good end. Here's an example of what I mean. One time a sports bar had a fundraiser for the homeless. The owner brought in a Playboy bunny to autograph Playboy magazines and charged each man $10 to get in. They raised $800.

The owner of the bar called me and said, "We'd like to give the $800 to your Dimitri House program for the homeless."

I said, "We're not going to take it."

"What?" he asked incredulously.

"No, we're not going to take it."

"Why not?"

"Because we believe in the dignity of women here," I said. "I'm sure your intentions are good, but you can't help the homeless by exploiting women. You can't help one group by hurting another."

Bridges

When Allah the Merciful and Compassionate first created this world, the earth was smooth and even as a finely engraved plate.

That displeased the devil, who envied humanity this gift of God. And while the earth was still just as it had come from God's hands, damp and soft as unbaked clay, he stole up and scratched the face of God's earth with his nails as much and as deeply as he could.

Therefore deep rivers and ravines were formed which divided one district from another and kept the people apart, preventing them from traveling on the earth that God had given them as a garden for their food and support.

And Allah felt pity when he saw what the Accursed One had done, so he sent his angels to help the people and to make things easier for them.

When the angels saw how the unfortunate people could not pass those abysses and ravines to finish the work they had to do but tormented themselves and looked in vain and shouted from one side to the other, they spread their wings above these places and the people were able to cross. So the people learned from Angels of God how to build bridges, and therefore, after fountains, the greatest blessing is to build a bridge and the greatest sin is to interfere with it.

A story told by an old Bosnian Muslim, found in Ivo Andric's novel, The Bridge on the River Drina.

That was also our rationale for eliminating bingo. You can't exploit the poor of our neighborhood and their gambling addictions in order to help fund our ministries. It would be like someone selling drugs on the corner and giving the money to our child-care center, or like taking a person's life in order to improve the life of someone else. Good means must be used to attain good ends.

Dumping bingo felt like Jesus cleansing our temple. For too many years our church had seemed like a marketplace and a gambling casino instead of a house of prayer.

These three radical steps helped generate a new spirit in the parish. We had already begun with a Thursday night liturgy that had evolved into a very intimate, bonded community of people that were eager to put their faith into practice. This core group was now becoming the engine for the parish's renewal. As we took these risky financial decisions, people understood the need to share their resources more and that they were really needed now. It was like the miracle of the loaves and fishes: a spirit of sharing generates abundance, while a spirit of hoarding leads to a situation where there are never enough resources.

As our hands became free of money and investments, we used those hands to reach out to people in need. We took over an abandoned building and built a health center that today serves 12,000 neighborhood people. Next we started a home for ex-offenders and built a restaurant so they would have jobs the day they come out of prison. We opened a home for the dying for those with AIDS and other terminal diseases. We started a shelter for the homeless and a home for men in recovery. A child-care center was next, followed by a clothing store. We also built—and continue to operate—a health clinic in Haiti.

Today we have 700 volunteers to manage all this outreach work. The Sunday attendance went from 200 to 2,200. Babies are crying again in church. We're alive again! Corpus Christi started to experience a new springtime when we let go and took some chances. We let go of our money, our investments, and bingo. We shared our bread with the hungry. That's when the growth began. That's when our wound was healed and the sun began to dawn again.We discovered that faith meant leaving something behind and reaching out for something not yet tangible. In the Bible, believing means not staying in Egypt. It means heading out toward the wilderness. Abraham left. Moses left. To believe is to leave, to let go.

Jesus teaches the same thing—take nothing with you when you leave. Take no money, no extra clothes, no extra shoes. This is not a religion of safety and maintenance. Jesus calls us to free ourselves from what we have and from what we are. The child must grow up and leave home. The bride and groom must leave father and mother. The sheep must go out into the midst of the wolves.

In the story of the Prodigal Son the person reprimanded was not the one who left; it was the one who stayed.

We didn't stay. We let go.

Father James Callan is the administrator of Corpus Christi Parish in Rochester, New York.

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