Whenever I hear this phrase it reminds me of Sam Shoemaker, the founder of Faith
At Work. For him it was a description of the ministry of F@W – to be a welcoming
presence at the door of the church, inviting others into a deeper relationship
with God, others, the world and self.
For about forty years, Sam’s guidance to “stand at the door” grew within me, changing into a call to “hold the door open" and help create a safe place where others could find their faith in God, and their own voice. It encouraged my self-image as one who helped keep the program going so others could come and grow as they desired. I didn’t just stand at the door. More often I’d help arrange the chairs in the sanctuary, distribute the bulletins, and lately, serve as liturgist, holding the worship service so all of us could pray and preach and celebrate.
It was a comfortable place for a strong introvert, and even though I have had lots of opportunities to serve as leader of one organization or another, the role of a “helper,” the Enneagram Two, has been a place I gravitated toward as soon as my shift was over.
Guatemala
For the past five years I’ve helped with our F@W pilgrimages to Guatemala. There, each year, two dozen of us have worked with PAVA, a Mayan community development organization, and residents of a remote village to help them build a school for their children. It is a week of wonderful, hard work in breathtakingly beautiful country, at elevations of 8,000 feet. Mostly we pilgrims do unskilled labor, digging trenches for the foundation, forming the reinforcing structure to help minimize earthquake damage and hauling sand and gravel to make cement.
On the first trip it was all new, all strange, all a stretch between novel and threatening. I was committed to getting as much done as we could in the week we were there. I worked hard and hoped that by my efforts things would be better. Working with Bill Johnson and my wife, Marjory, to help organize our work and structure our community time gave me that familiar feeling of my version of standing at the door, helping to hold a structure that all of us could work within. I could see myself in that self-identified role as holding the container for others.
Last year I wasn’t in as good condition as I’d been on earlier pilgrimages. I couldn’t shovel in the mud for hours on end, couldn’t run wheelbarrows full of sand up the hill all afternoon. I watched others doing more than I could and realized that I wasn’t leading by example. I realized that I was tired and couldn’t expect of myself as much as I had in the past. But I began to see that doing less didn’t mean that I was useless.
I did know the work, and I could help us figure out how to work together. Doing some but not the most was a new kind of leading by example for me: steady rather than strong. I began to see that there still was a place for me. I might name it a place of blessing rather than doing, or a shift from “doing for” to “working with.” But was it God’s fresh call on my life.
Platter to Prophet
After last year’s pilgrimage, I went through a round of diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer. My lack of energy before the treatment was a prelude to a long, slow winter of being really tired. There are still days when I have no energy for the kind of “standing at the door; making space for others” that had been so clearly God’s call on me for so long, such a comfortable place for me to be part of community. I was looking across that threshold with fresh eyes.
I’ve begun to see that the threshold God is inviting me to cross is stepping into a place of tighter focus, of letting go of possibilities in order to focus my energy on particular opportunities. The inner voice says: “Don’t take on the whole truck load of gravel – just open a path on the road so the pickup can get through and take the place of the wheelbarrows!”
The threshold before me seems to be connected with getting older, a shift from doing to blessing; a shift from “in the future” to “in the moment.” I held it like a platter.
Back home, the shift has continued. It feels to me that God’s call on me is shifting from holding the container to something new and much more scary. I have the sense that I am being called to discover and raise up new opportunities for my community.
At first I thought of it as a shift from being a “container” for my community to being a “tent pole,” one who holds up a part of the fabric of who we are, making room for others in the shelter of the community. Later, my image of this shift changed again, from being one who helped hold community life to one who would name the truth of that life, from “platter” to “prophet.”
As I began to contemplate the idea of being called to be a prophet to my community my energy curled up in a little fetal position. “Oh no, not me, Lord!” But that sense of being called to something that focused on particular opportunities wouldn’t go away. And that was an affirmation that I really was on holy ground, wrestling with God’s fresh call on me.
This may well mean putting my self on the line much more explicitly than I ever imagined while I was standing there at the door, pointing to the bright lights near the altar at the other end of the dark central aisle. Frankly, it feels like the stuff of prophets, and I know how life turned out for many of those old men. But if this IS God’s call I’m in good company: Amos and Joel and Micah were all pretty reluctant to take up the work God had in mind for them. It cost them their lives, but as I’m learning with each visit to the doctor, my life is being spent one way or another. And this new call to discovery may just make a difference for more than me alone.
Naming a New Call
Sometimes the most important part of a turning point is finding the right language to describe what is happening. Last spring I took my annual silent retreat at Dayspring Farm, the retreat center that is part of the tribe of tiny churches (including Seekers Church) that have grown out of Church of the Saviour. The silent retreat lodge sits on the edge of a grassy meadow, full of birds and bugs, deer and foxes, that stretches across the valley to Lake of the Saints, where rest the remains of many of us from Church of the Saviour.
On Friday evening I’d asked for a sign of healing – for myself, and for my faith community. On the first morning of the silence I was given one of those “good words” that can make a lot of difference.
For a long time, I’ve understood my calling to “stand at the door” as an expression of the Boy Scout values that have been part of my foundation for six decades. Being trustworthy, helpful, friendly,… has been a firm foundation for my life. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But this sense of being called by God to something new has been stirring me to think about leaving the comfort of my well-known place and heading out into uncharted territory.
Here’s an excerpt from my journal on the Saturday morning from that silent retreat, a dialog with the Divine:
For all my talk about ‘duty’ I seem to be more curious than dutiful. For many, many years that has been hard – nay, impossible – for me to admit. That’s why the Boy Scout won out for so long … duty seemed a much more praiseworthy face than curiosity to offer the world. But in truth, what makes me feel alive? I get lost in the images, the crochet, the Imagineering.
So this recent shift, from ‘platter’ to ‘prophet’ – from Boy Scout to Explorer <WOW!> – this shift feels like a sign of healing for me.
The “WOW” came as I realized that Explorers is the name of the program for older Boy Scouts. Explorers are folks who head out into relatively unknown territory to see what’s there and bring back reports for those who will follow of what to anticipate on this new journey into a foreign land.
As I began to think about myself as an explorer I was reminded of my prayer the night before.
Do I want to be healed?
Yes, Lord, I want to be healed!
Then feed my sheep.
What?
Feed my sheep. You know how to do that. Go out into the meadow. Keep your eyelids up. Find the morsels. Bring some back for those who stay on the porch for fear of the bugs. Tell folks what you found and where you found it. Look for the small, beautiful things. You won’t ever be able to force folks to change, but you might be able to encourage some to see things differently, to change their diet,…
Amen. Thank you, Lord.
Can I stand at the door to welcome myself into some new call? Probably not. But there are others in my faith community who are so hungry for me to follow God’s call that they will put up with the possibility that as I head out into the meadow to look for morsels there will be an empty space there at the door. And, if I have any sense of God’s love, there will be another who is called to stand where I have stood, welcoming others into a deeper relationship with God, others, the world and self.
And when I come in from the meadow, there may even be a table set, ready to receive the morsels I have brought back from the frontier to share with my family of faith.
Thank you, Reverend Doctor Shoemaker for your abiding, evolving image of what it means to stand at the door.
Peter Bankson is on the servant leadership team at Seekers Church in Washington DC. He is a long-time member of the F@W Board of Directors and, for the past six years, has co-led the F@W Pilgrimage to Guatemala.