Molting

It doesn't seem that long ago, but it was.  It's been almost a quarter century since we moved out of home to attend college.  Twenty-five years since I lived on the acreage with my parents, attending high school and...

Doing chicken chores. 

There were many mornings throughout my career as a stay at home child where I would have given anything not to feed the three hundred fowl that greedily waited one of us to feed them in the morning and night.  The worst time was during the winter when the water bowls would freeze solid and we'd make our way first to the basement to fill five gallon buckets with boiling water to melt the ice in the water pans.  As we carried these heavy buckets up a flight of stairs, we had to pry open the basement door and let the Old Man Winter's blast hit us in the face.  Maybe my recollections of life are slightly skewed now, but I don't ever remember having gloves and certainly there was never a scarf.  If it got that cold, we'd wrap a dish towel around our face and hurry out into the arctic chill.  Looking back, chicken chores doesn't seem so bad; but in the full biting fury of Jack Frost's breath, certainly I must have been miserable.

During the summer, though, chicken chores weren't so bad.  In fact, there were moments when the poultry seemed affable, friendly to us even if they mercilessly pecked our hands as we pushed them up in their roosts to thieve their eggs.  Strangely, I can still recall the disgusting feeling of walking barefoot across the yard and stepping in the chickens' previous dinner and sensing the odd moment when it squished through my toes. 

Anyway, summer was different.

One afternoon I walked into the old, rickety chicken house which leaned perceptibly to the north.  The pen outside was full of chickens, geese, ducks and a few stupid turkeys all picking up bits of scraps or wayward bugs to grind in their gizzards, but inside the chicken house, a few hens loitered chatting noisily in their coop or near the feed trough.  Against the sloping north wall, a chicken, or at least it had a chicken's head, sat miserably by an old wooden door.  The chicken had only splotches of feathers on its body; its wings sprouted a few pin feathers and quills.

"Dad," I said pulling on his sleeve.  "What's wrong with that chicken?  Is it dying?"

My dad noticed the poor chicken abandoned by her more beautiful, full feathered friends.  "Nope, she's molting."

"What does that mean?"  I had visions of the Wicked Witch of the West writhing under a bucketful of water shouting, "I'm molting!  I'm molting!"

Dad busied himself with filling the feed bucket from the converted cattle trough and unloading the contents in the feed pans.  "Chickens molt when they need a new set of feathers.  Kind of like you and I when we shed skin."

With horror, I looked down at my hand.  "You mean I'm going to lose my skin!"

He shook his head.  "No, you're not going to lose your skin.  The chickens shed their feathers, especially during the summer while it's hot and they can survive the heat, so that they have a fresh set for the coming winter.  It actually makes them stronger."

Now I shook my head.  "It might make them stronger, but they sure are uglier.  Are you sure they aren't going to die?"

"Guaranteed."

As I pondered this episode in my life, I reflected on how much it feels like the Church is molting right now.  In the midst of attacks from both believer and non-believer alike, whether sex abuse scandals, financial indiscretions or good old fashioned atheism, the church is shedding its skin.  What I mean by that is: the church is beginning to shed the image that it is just a social club looking out for its own due paying members.  It is starting to molt, to shed the old feathers that seemed only for the present inability to fly, so that it can grow new feathers reminding itself that the true purpose of Christianity is not simply to speak, but also to act. 

The scripture verse from Novo is especially pertinent to the molting church:  Philippians 2:13   for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.  For during this molt, it is a church turning back to God who is doing the work in us - In us! - so that we both will to fulfill his purpose but also be active in fulfilling it. 

Perhaps we've all seen a willing Christian, one who feels strongly about God's purpose in his or her life, willing to speak and tell others about who God is, but unwilling to act as if they really believe it.  This is the epitome of lukewarm Christianity.  And other times, we've seen Christians who are able to act, to volunteer and donate time in the cause of ministry, but were actually unwilling to do it for God's sake, only because they felt responsible to do it.  Once the action was done, they grumbled about all that they had to do.  Neither one of these Christian experiences is part of the Church molt.

But when we truly find a changed life, one that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 5:17  If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.  We find that will and action become almost synonymous in the new creation.  The molting has shed any lukewarm-ness and grumbling.

At Novo, I experienced some of the most amazing young people I have ever encountered, fully molted teenagers and young adults, who are on the verge of growing adult feathers.  And these young people are not chickens - they are like eaglets preparing to fly, to soar well beyond the boundaries of their imaginations.  Young people were praying and singing, starting conversations about the Bible and finishing with in depth questions about what they had been reading.  They were not worried about how their questions might fit into a traditional model of congregational life, only that the questions would actually be the wind that would allow them to fly.

Molting can be an ugly process and God knows the Church has needed to molt and it has been ugly at times, but as I scan the horizon of the future of Christianity, I am actually encouraged.  This is no ostrich in the sand moment, but an actual vision for how these young people are taking the name of God to the streets and helping real life people - not theoretical models of what a perfect 'Christian' seeker might be - to hear the name of Jesus and bend their knees.  Not just in reverence, but also in prayer.

I am encouraged by this molt.