Tomorrow is All Saints Day. Many churches choose the Sunday nearest to that day, in this case probably November 4, to remember and honor not only some of the great saints of the church, both locally and historically, but also to remember the members of a local church who have died in the previous year. Often this is done with some sort of litany in which the names of the deceased are spoken aloud by the congregation or the leader of the liturgy.
I think that is often a very significant moment in the life of the church. I also think there should be a time in church life in which we pause to honor the living saints of the church. The problem, of course, is that there are so many of them who simply and quietly serve in the life of every church. Most of them would resist being called a saint because they mistakenly use the modern definition of a saint as someone who is perfect or very pious and devout. According to Scripture, a saint is not necessarily a pious person. Rather, a saint is someone who is called by God even though s/he has all the limitations of most of us humans. In that sense, from a Reformed perspective, the members of the church, called to be part of the church by the Spirit of God, are the saints of God.
Another category, which would be equally uncomfortable with the label of being a saint, are the clergy. Clergy have sensed the call of God and have responded. Now they are serving a church, which as I have repeatedly emphasized, is not an easy task in our contemporary world. As I was preparing for the Webinar that I mentioned a few days ago, I came upon a study of the health of clergy. In the 1950s, clergy had one of the highest health rates of any profession but by 2010, they had one of the highest death rates due to heart problems, diabetes, obesity, etc.
I recently returned from a conference on Compassion Fatigue for clergy, Over the next few blogs, I will share some of the things that I learned.
