A couple weeks ago, while working in Oklahoma, my wallet disappeared - apparently stolen, but who knows? This required some very unconventional procedures working through TSA until I could get my new drivers license. Normally, I use my passport to fly, but the passport was tied up at the Chinese Embassy in a file requesting a Visa. Perfect storm.
However, I discovered something lovely, flying with unconventional forms of identification. TSA folks were patient, careful and often extremely good humored in Oklahoma City, Dallas and DCA. The woman running my particular security line at DFW was outstanding. Then I came to Houston: an airport no busier than DFW or DCA, but a place where the systems were ill equipped to get an agent free to run the security drill necessary to get me on a plane. Furthermore, reports of Barney Fife's death are greatly exaggerated - she lives and works in Terminal A of IAH. Agent Fife asked me to sit in a window sill for over ten minutes, and when I asked if anyone was coming, she looked like she might send me to Sing Sing. (In the other airports, they took me immediately into an alternative protocol - no waiting in a window sill.) I realized that the situation wasn't entirely her fault, but that the snag was further up the food chain of management. She called them more than once, but to no avail.
Not wanting to miss my plane, I sneaked away (when Fife wasn't looking) to another security post in the airport. Here my experience was a little the same and altogether different. The next agent (I will call her Agent 99) took my documents and kept them - so there would be no running away. She called repeatedly, but met up with the same systemic problem - no one would come. So, 99 looked at me and motioned for me to follow her. She pushed through the line. She got someone's attention. She walked me to the head of the line in fact, partly compensating for the amount of time I had spent in window sills. And she made things happen. I turned to thank her and she had quickly disappeared - to get back to the people she had left standing in line in order to help me. She left people unattended to help me. She did what it took. And, because of her, TSA was able to accomplish its mission - getting me on my plane and guaranteeing safety for all. (It is not the mission of TSA to sit people in window sills - but to help us all fly safely.)
Agent 99 reminds me of the very best pastors that I coach. Some of them deal with denominational protocols that they find offensive to the gospel. Others of them deal with clunky, bureaucratic systems at their mother campus, systems not at all designed for their mission or their critical population. These pastors do not spend their time stymied by the systems. They just do what they need to do. They make stuff happen! They create unsanctioned websites, they print alternative stewardship materials, they even sometimes apply water to people already baptized in ways that could be construed as re-baptism. They solve problems by asking forgiveness rather than permission. They refuse to leave God's children in a windowsill.
And, ya, they sometimes get in trouble.
WWJD? Always bend a protocol for the sake of the larger mission. And there is no record of Jesus ever apologizing for it.
People. Follow Jesus.
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