MUSTARD SEED MINISTRIES—THEN AND NOW [Sat, 4-1-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter— MUSTARD SEED MINISTRIES—THEN AND NOW [Sat, 4-1-23]

 

 [A continuation and expansion of the last two CIW columns, about the HELP/PATH organization in Normal-Bloomington, IL.]

The 1960s were a turbulent time on college campuses—civil rights, voting rights, abortion rights, the draft, the war in Viet Nam... Those of us in campus ministry scrambled to find ways to be helpful to our constituencies, especially students.

At ILSU, in the town of Normal--so named because ILSU was originally a normal school, meaning a teacher’s college--Presbyterian campus minister, Jim Pruyne, and I started a problem pregnancy counseling center. Then Jim put a 24-hour suicide-help phone line into his campus ministry center and called it PATH [Personal Assistance Telephone Help.] Then I started a town/gown organization called HELP, to serve as a center for information and referral on any kind of help needed, and direct service where the existing social service agencies had gaps. Jim offered to let HELP use the PATH telephone number. Sometime after I had left Normal for other ministries, HELP and PATH became one organization, using the name of PATH since that was the telephone number. Their current logo incorporates both names: “The Path to Help.”

Today, PATH has gone far beyond the ILSU campus. It is not only the social service referral and action center for all of McLean County, but it is the crisis/suicide answering center for the entire state of Illinois, with more than 300 calls per day.

But at the beginning, it was just a mustard seed.

That, of course, is one of Jesus’ most famous parables, recorded in Mark 4:30-32. The mustard seed is the tiniest seed, but it grows into a plant so big that birds can roost in it. That’s what the Kingdom of God is like.

Jim Pruyne and I didn’t think that we were planting mustard seeds. We were just trying to meet a need.

That’s what the church has always done. We tried to meet health care needs, and huge hospitals resulted. We tried to meet higher education needs, and huge universities resulted. We tried to meet old-age needs, and huge retirement complexes resulted.

Once those mustard seeds have grown into full plants, the society at large says, “Oh, yes, that really is a need, so great that it should not be left to the church; we’ll take it over.” An institution might retain a churchly name, like Methodist Hospital, but it’s no longer of the church.

That’s okay. Jesus didn’t think of the Kingdom of God as something to be just of the church, apart from the rest of the world. He wanted the whole world to be the Kingdom of God.

So the question now is: What new mustard seeds need to be planted by the church? Not to create more church-stuff, but to meet a current need?

 

Old people are mostly too feeble to work in the fields all day. As the old song says, “He’s getting too old, he’s done got too old, he’s too old to cut the mustard anymore.” But we can still plant those little seeds. Think about it… then tell somebody what seed you think needs to be planted…

John Robert McFarland

Bill Carlisle wrote “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” It was released as a single in 1951. The Ernest Tubb and Red Foley versions were probably best known and most played. Our high school marching band was working up a half-time show for a football game. Our director asked for suggestions for a song we might play to honor Coach Delbert Disler. Dainty flautist Carol Hardy suggested “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” I’ve forgotten what we ended up playing for Coach Disler, but that wasn’t it.