UPDATE: I have written a note to the Morang family, explaining my motivation for writing what I wrote below. It can be found by
clicking here.
Warning: explicit language may follow.
Yesterday my wife and I (with our very well-behaved eight month old daughter) attended the funeral of Kevyn Morang, the sixteen year old son of my friend Tarrell Morang. It was a heart-wrenching, devastating experience, not only because of the death of Kevyn, but also, and chiefly, because of the gospel of death preached at the audience of teenagers and mostly nominal Christians by the pastor of this Assemblies of God church in Galena, Kansas. By the "gospel of death," of course, I mean the gospel of "life after death."
I sat in the pews and listened as this pastor manipulated Kevyn's death for his own agenda. Apparently, two weeks prior to his death, Kevyn gave his life to the Lord at that same church. (I assume this means Kevyn was led in praying what's called the "sinner's prayer.") Therefore, Kevyn's death, according to this pastor, was not a time for mourning but a time for celebration. If his death saddens us, it's only because we don't understand that Kevyn is up there with Jesus right now.
But, for this pastor, Kevyn's death was not so much about Kevyn's life after death, as it was about the choice facing this audience. "Where are you going to spend eternity?" "Have you asked the Lord Jesus Christ to come into your heart?" The crying in the audience stopped. The sanctuary grew cold. The pastor could tell that his audience needed some more incentive to make the right decision. At a time like this, with Kevyn's (timely) death on their minds, it was easy for them to be distracted from the
real reason they came to church that day. So, the pastor asked his vulnerable listeners, "What would Kevyn want you to do? What decision would Kevyn, up there with Jesus, want you to make?"
I think at this point the pastor realized his audience was going to stubbornly continue to mourn Kevyn's death, rather than face up to their responsibility to accept Jesus into their hearts. So he changed tactics. God has a plan. Kevyn had run his race. By age 16, he had done what God had put him here to do. So God took him home. We all go when God decides our time is up, and this, according to God, was Kevyn's time. It could be our time at any moment. "You might not make it home before you leave this building today." (That is an exact quote. Read it again.) So, there's the answer to your problem. You're sitting here mourning for no reason. It was God that killed Kevyn, and he could kill you at any moment. Are you right with God? You better get right with him so that when he kills you, you get to go be with him. That's the good news. There is life after death for everyone who accepts Jesus into their hearts before God kills them.
Obviously, the pastor didn't use these words. But how could this not be what the audience was hearing? In between angry glares at the pastor, I was scanning the crowd. I saw confused faces, angry faces, tormented faces, and oblivious faces. Nevertheless, the pastor concluded his evangelistic message with a biblical analogy. David and Bathsheba had a son. The son became sick, and David fasted and prayed, hoping God would make him well again. But, when David's servants informed him that his son had died, rather than going into mourning, David got up, washed his face, and went about the business of being king. Why mourn when mourning won't change anything? It is better to live the life ahead of you. "Why spend your time mourning" the pastor asked, "when you have this life ahead of you to live? The question is, what kind of life are you going to live? Are you going to go on in indecision, or are you going to accept Jesus into your heart and go to heaven when you die?"
Back up! David and Bathsheba? The death of their firstborn son? What the hell is this man thinking?! Anyone in the audience familiar with the narrative knows that David and Bathsheba had an illicit affair, after which David murdered Bathsheba's husband and she conceived a child. According to the narrative, the death of their first son was punishment from God for their illicit behavior. Similarly, anyone in the audience familiar with Kevyn's parents knows that Kevyn was conceived "illicitly." The implications, for anyone not too stupefied by the last forty-five minutes of "pastoral consolation," are pretty clear. Kevyn's death was punishment for his parent's behavior.
Now, let me be clear. The pastor certainly did not intend to make that claim, and I imagine that the vast majority of people in the audience aren't familiar enough with the Bible to put two and two together. But what happens when Tarrell gets around to reading the life of David, and he remembers the analogy the pastor made? What kind of tormenting questions is that going to raise in Tarrell's mind! What kind of irresponsibility, what kind of incompetence is requisite for a "minister of the Word" to make such an egregious blunder! Even apart from notions of divine punishment, where does he get off trying to tell Kevyn's family and friends to quit grieving and accept Jesus!
Eric Lotz and his wife were sitting next to me. Eric is an Ozark Christian College graduate, the current music minister at First United Methodist Church, where Erica and I were married. Eric and his wife are going to be missionaries in Haiti. They are going to run a school for rural children. He is one of the most unassuming, kind, and patient people I know. Eric turns to me and says, "Would it be wrong to go up there and punch that guy?" I, a stanch pacifist, said, "No. It would be right!"
Then the pastor led us all in a prayer, and asked us, all "heads bowed eyes closed," to raise our hands if we wanted to accept Jesus. I seriously contemplated raising my middle finger, but I had already written a note to the pastor, asking him to call me, and I didn't want to reveal my hand just yet. Needless to say, if I had raised my middle finger, I would have been the only one to respond to his manipulative bullshit. He closed his prayer for our souls, and the crowd began to move in procession to see Kevyn's dead body before leaving the building. The pastor stood a few feet away from the casket, as if it were his own son's dead body, to shake people's hands and accept their thanks as they passed by. I handed him my note, with my name and number, and a simple message that I needed to talk with him.
Erica and I waited toward the back of the very large auditorium, and watched as Kevyn's family took turns weeping over his body. The pastor stood by, talking to a youth pastor. I watched as he smiled and laughed, while a few feet away an entire family was dead inside. He was speaking loudly enough that we could hear him from the other side of the auditorium, which means he could certainly be heard by the grieving family not but a few feet away. "I've buried five members of my family in the past year. We didn't have funerals. We had jubilees!" he said with a smile, to his trusting disciple.
I envisioned myself doing just what Eric had suggested. It would have been so easy. I go up there and I give the guy one good solid punch to the jaw. That would shut him up for a while. I thought about it from a pacifist perspective, and at the time, I couldn't see how it was inconsistent with my most basic convictions. Punching this guy's lights out seemed like the most merciful thing I could do for him. I knew already based on their comments to me as I passed by Kevyn's casket that several members of the family would not have been unhappy with me if I did lay the guy out.
In the end, the only reason I decided not to do it was because it would have detracted further from Kevyn. The minister had already reduced Kevyn to an evangelistic tool. He had already robbed Kevyn's family of their homage to his short life. Decking the guy would only give everybody something else, besides Kevyn, to remember about that day. So I determined not to let myself get within thirty feet of him for the rest of the day.
I broke that rule when Tarrell approached the casket to take one last look at his son. The pipsqueak pastor came up beside Tarrell, put his arm around him, and began to counsel him. I rushed up there to take the pastor away from Tarrell, but when I got there I hesitated and then the pastor began to pray. Not wanting to interrupt the "prayer," I sat down, defeated. Tarrell's last moment looking at his son was shared with an imbecile who thought he had the power to make Tarrell's pain go away. After that, Tarrell became completely despondent. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach by my own timidity. I was ashamed.
At the burial, the pastor made one last evangelistic attempt (which lasted five or ten minutes), before reading a passage from Romans as if to console everybody. You know, the one about how neither death, nor anything else, can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Never mind that Paul is talking about being fearless in the face of persecution, and Kevyn was killed in a random car accident. I'm sure nobody picked up on the absolute incongruity between the two contexts. I'm sure everybody was consoled. The pastor had done his job, and he was now free to go home to his sons and daughters. That is, if God hadn't killed them during his sermon.
Later that night, I got a call from the pastor. I prefaced my comments with the fact that I myself am dedicated to the ministry of the Gospel, and that I wanted my comments to be considered prayerfully. Then I told him most of what I said above. He objected. He hadn't reduced Kevyn to an evangelistic device at all. To which I replied, "Maybe not in your mind. But in the minds and hearts of Kevyn's family, that is precisely what you've done. They feel robbed by you. Rather than consoling them, you've wounded them. Are you going to blame them for feeling that way just because that's not how you see the situation?"
I told him his gospel was unbiblical, that it was a neo-gnostic escapist fantasy, and that the life and teachings of Jesus proclaim a gospel in which "life after death," while significant, is certainly not "what it's all about." "It is what it's all about!" To which I could only respond, "Well, I guess you'll have to read it all again. Focus on the teachings of Jesus. Oh, and do you remember the shortest verse in the Bible? Read that one again, and then go on and tell these families at these funerals that they don't have to grieve."
In the end I got him to agree to pray about what I'd said to him. I suspect that means he's going to pray for my soul, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he'll take it to heart, God will speak to him, and he'll begin to see some things with new eyes. I doubt it, but I certainly hope for it. I told him my wife and I would be praying for him, which I have been, and we will be. I hope that next time around he'll be more aware of the danger his strategy represents. At the very least, I hope that in the future he'll be afraid enough of pissing off people like me that he'll tone down the manipulative bullshit. Sure, it would have been more effective to break the guy's jaw so he couldn't preach for several months, but there were cops in the building, with guns! (Let's not get me started on that again.)
16 Comments:
While I worked as a youth pastor, the senior pastor had to "do" a couple of funerals. When asked a couple of days later in a staff meeting how the funeral went, the only thing out of his mouth was "I got to share the gospel." He viewed this as a golden opportunity to evangelize. I don't know what he was thinking, but if he viewed the pain of this person's death as first and foremost an opportunity to preach, then yeah, that's pretty crass and dehumanizing of the deceased and his/her family. But at the same time, it is a good chance to introduce thoughts of eternity when so many people refuse to face their own mortality. I agree the pastor you describe did a very poor job of both pastoring and preaching - what would you have done differently?
Wow, Nathan ... there are so many other things that can be said and done to love people into the Kingdom other than "share the Gospel." It would seem that just getting to know them and inviting them back to the church after the funeral might be an ample first step. Let them know they are worth more to God than a notch on some guy's bedpost. That's what most evangelism has been reduced to ... it's a numbers game that shines egos.
Sonja -
You'll hear no disagreement from me on the evangelism game - I think you're right on. However, in speaking to what may be a reasonably crowded hall, how does a pastor "get to know" very many people in order to invite them back? Assuming he goes to the reception as well, he might be able to reach 5, maybe 10 people at best. I think Thom's criticisms, and yours, are entirely valid but part of sharing the Good New of Christ is just plainly telling them about Christ. Yes, that has to be backed up with action and love, but that does not negate the telling. And as I said, and have ample experience with working in the healthcare field - very few people in our culture are willing or able to face their own mortality. Is it always wrong to use a traumatic experience to get them to ask some hard questions? Or is it possible to share a subtle Gospel in this scenario without disrespecting the deceased or alienating their family?
I think it might be possible to share a subtle Gospel message without disrespecting the family or using a tragedy to further one's own agenda. I agree with you on that ...
On the other hand, here are some subtle assumptions you are making in your analysis of the situation. First, it seems in this scenario only the pastor is capable of both delivering the Gospel message and then leading people to whatever the next step might be. As a died-in-the-wool Protestant, I'm not so certain I agree with that assessment. It would seem to me that any believer might be able to lead a person to faith in Jesus at any time. Another thing that jumps out at me is an assumption that many of us evangelicals make that the Gospel is so urgent. We've got to share it RIGHT NOW! We're so arrogant with that.
I think it depends on how you ask the questions and whether or not you have any interest in establishing a relationship within which you can answer them. Otherwise you may just be opening the people up to spiritual attack that they may not be able to withstand. Too often we view evangelism as hit and run, but how did Jesus approach it? In the context of relationship and community. What were the things Jesus talked about? Well, you can read about some of them here ( http://tinyurl.com/2v9po8). But then I wonder exactly how that Good News might be presented subtly at the funeral of a 16 year old boy? How do you tell his parents that really, there’s Good News here? It’s only in the upside-down Kingdom that there’s good news, but they aren’t there yet. Even in the upside-down Kingdom, God is mourning ... He did not create this world so that His children could/would die and die young. It’s a tragedy all around. Death, loss, separation, and grief all cause pain and denying that pain even in small measure does nothing to reconcile us to one another or to God. It creates more chasms than it fills.
So I guess I’d have to say that I really don’t agree with you that a funeral is the place to share the Gospel. Unless the family specifically asks for it. I think the time is too touchy, sensitive and wounded to begin with and the potential is there to add another layer of wounding without intention. However, I do think the potential is there for a church to begin building relationships with people that could lead to sharing the Gospel at a later date when emotions are not so frayed and fragile and when the decisions made are not “fire insurance” so to speak.
Sonja -
Yeah, there can be a lot false urgency in sharing the Gospel. The yahoo on the corner screaming fire and brimstone at the top of his lungs is clearly letting his urgency and zeal eclipse even the message he is trying to share. But I don't assume that the pastor is the only one who can share the Gospel, only that he is the person best situated to reach the widest possible audience while at the same time being pastoral. Even though not everyone in attendance is a member of his flock, he still has an obligation to shepherd.
"Even in the upside-down Kingdom, God is mourning ... He did not create this world so that His children could/would die and die young. It’s a tragedy all around. Death, loss, separation, and grief all cause pain and denying that pain even in small measure does nothing to reconcile us to one another or to God."
Absolutely! Which is, I think, precisely where to begin. I've been mulling over an answer to my own question since asking it and I think a simple and ineloquent "this frickin' sucks and God thinks so too" might be a subtle Gospel. Saying God hates death so much that he came to kill it might be as well. We should definitely avoid adding to anyone's pain but at the same time, we don't want to offer false or misleading comfort. That doesn't help either. It doesn't help the grieving find any degree of meaning or significance in their loss, it doesn't help them reflect on their own lives and relationships and certainly does nothing to introduce them to the Christ we know and love. But you offer a good and well-taken reminder to not forget relationships in all of this. I sometimes forget the power of mere presence.
Where is God when life is miserable? Emphatically not "up there" counting the hands raised in the audience. God is in the muck and shit with the people he loves. I am sorry for your friend's family, and sorrier for the people whose (mis)leader is so inept. Thank you for sharing what, I'm afraid, is an all-too-typical story.
Eric
I might copy your post and use it in training pastors in how not to conduct a funeral service. The pastor, as you describe him, was in fact anti-pastoral. And yet it is not inappropriate to talk about eternity in the face of death.
I will pray for your friend Tarrel and those who loved Kevyn. May the God of Peace comfort them in ways that flawed and struggling saints can't. And may the flawed and struggling saints around Tarrel, find grace and wisdom to love him with more than the fruit of their lips.
I might copy your post and use it in training pastors in how not to conduct a funeral service. The pastor, as you describe him, was in fact anti-pastoral. And yet it is not inappropriate to talk about eternity in the face of death.
I will pray for your friend Tarrel and those who loved Kevyn. May the God of Peace comfort them in ways that flawed and struggling saints can't. And may the flawed and struggling saints around Tarrel, find grace and wisdom to love him with more than the fruit of their lips.
I stumbled upon your blog from another one. I would like to hear your thoughts on Ozark Christian College. I was considering going there, but decided on Oral Roberts University instead and developed a much different world view from the Roberts'. Good post.
Your post was very similar to a podcast from WiredJesus podcast. I couldn't find the link in the wiredjesus.com site but I found a link to it from another blog. Here is the link - http://www.revdarth.com/index.php/2005/10/12/
I am glad to see that there are a people that still have a HOLY DISCONTENT with the way Pastors and churches handle the 'non-follower' and even the new follower. Maybe if we all called out some of these Pastor and leaders that preached this way a little more often instead of being led around like cattle we could actually make a difference. Of course I am not saying to go cuss out your pastor. Prayer is an absolute.. and especially if the spirit is prompting.
I really appreciate your thoughts Thom and look forward to reading more.
Being the probable age of the pastor who presided over the funeral, when I read the account I was shamed and somehow felt accountable also for those my age whose Religion so often hurts the hearts of those who they come in contact.
I'm somehow compelled to say, 'I'm so sorry for his behavior." It was not too long ago that Father broke through my superior religion and allowed me to see how many I had hurt.
Please keep speaking up. Please keep confronting. All the while please keep loving, even the religious, knowing that they can change when somehow God shows up and shows them they are wrong.
I saw a similar funeral, also conducted by a Pentacostal pastor, when I was in college. It took years for me to stop judging all Pentecostals by this bullsh**t! In the case I was unfortunate enough to witness, the family were not Christians, but the deceased daughter was. After that, the family vowed never to have anything to do with Christians--and I didn't blame them.
Thanks for this challenging post. I have linked to it over at my blog. I don't agree with many of the points you make, but I think you (and many posters here) raise excellent points which many of us inside the "Evangelical" movement don't think. I lost my father in college, and a service like this was a great comfort to me. Honestly, a "grief-centered" service would have hurt me instead. But then, my father was a Christian and died from cancer, and thus it was a completely different situation.
You have given me a lot to think about, and I am going to chew on this for a long while and think about it. And pray about it. Thanks again.
I once was asked to sing a few songs at the funeral of a man I did not know. Apparently, he was not a believer. The pastor of the little church got up and preached for twenty minutes about how this man was in hell and probably screaming as the fire tortured him. I will never forget the agony of that funeral. There was no hope given. Several people walked out. Those who remained were groaning and crying uncontrollably. I was asked to play soft music on the piano as the preacher, a manipulative jerk, tried to get the family to come to the alter and get saved. I felt terrible, having played a part in this tragedy. That day was one of the pivotal points in my journey out of classic Pentecostalism.
Isn't God awesome to love us inspite of such flagrant abuse of the gospel? May God help us to repent and produce fruit in keeping with the magnificance of his love for us.
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