Our target audience

I came to understand in a new way last week that Jesus didn't come for people like me.

I mean, I know He came for everyone, but rich, white-bread church folk like me weren't precisely his target audience. He came for sinners - you know, adulterous women, embezzling tax collectors, bi-racial multiple divorcees, panhandlers. The kinds of people that never come into my church.

I have known for a while that His target audience should be my target audience, but I didn't know how. We seem to have so little in common that I honestly didn't know where to start. Or maybe it's just that I didn't have enough practice, speanding so much time among my own kind...

So when my class schedule demanded that I fulfill the practicum element of my Master of Divinity not with church ministry, but with a unit of CPE, I was glad. CPE stands for Clinical Pastoral Education. In my case, I will be a chaplain at a local hospital for three months. I will have regular visitation rounds to make, as well as six 24-hour on-call shifts, during which I will be The Guy at the hospital, praying with dying people, calling spouses and parents to tell them their loved ones are in the trauma ward, leading prayer in the Chapel for the families of the sick and injured.

Last Wednesday I followed an on-call chaplain for two and a half hours. In that time I met a young woman crying alone in a neck brace, recovering from a motorcycle accident. I saw a Mexican construction worker with no ID brought into the trauma room following a major head injury caused by a fall. I saw the doctor declare him dead. I met his wife and infant daughter, saw the translator try to explain what had happened, and why the chaplain was there.

This was nothing like the ministry I was used to. I don't want to completely denigrate everything I've done in my church, because I've seen God move there too. Indeed, He called me from there. But this was new. This was real. These are the people Jesus came to save, the wounds He came to heal.

My first on-call shift is Thursday. I feel unprepared, but at the same time I'm eager to spend time with my target audience - with Jesus' target audience. Regular people, regular in their irregularity. People with strange ideas of faith and religion, or with no faith at all. People whose illusions of security were shattered by unforeseen tragedy, or who already know heartache intimately.

I'm not sure what God will do to me, and through me, in the next three months. But it's plain as day that He's at work, that He's got me right where He wants me.

I'll keep you posted.