By Rajmund Dabrowski
Connie and George Target were an extraordinary couple. I remember them from my years in England. A detailed obituary of Mrs. Target in a local church paper, Messenger, stated that she “lit up our lives unconventionally and with colour.” For years a Bible instructor, she and her husband George were “larger than life, flamboyant and different.”
They say that freedom does not chill the spirit, even though some people might try to impose their views, rules and regulations, aiming to dampen our innate freedom of spirit. Connie became a Seventh-day Adventist during her upbringing while in Australia. Joining our faith community, her spirit didn’t dampen, though she was disappointed “on discovering she would never go to dances when grown-up, a cherished childhood dream,” Cynthia Benz, my English teacher at Newbold College, wrote in the obituary.
Connie, among her other occupations, was also teacher. Benz recalls that Connie “once taught some unruly girls, who immediately called her a “Bo.” Unsure what they meant, she asked them. ‘Why, Miss, a Bohemian!” She’d won them over and they never gave her any trouble. (Later Connie joked that teaching Newbold students was quite boring by comparison!)”
As for George Target, his life was well recognized in The Telegraph obituary. A novelist, poet, and broadcaster, George “had little patience with doctrinal debate (‘twittering men arguing about inessentials’)” and critiqued churches as “crumbling grey stone edifices.”
Brought up in a Catholic family, Target became a Seventh-day Adventist, and with Connie, who was his second wife, supported the local Hastings church. Later, associated with the Quakers, he continued to be recognized as an evangelical “with vigorous views on the failings of organized religion,” his obituary in The Telegraph said.
Already during my years of being a student of communication in the 1960s, I saw George Target as a challenger of dead “covered-by-moss” religious practices. (My views are not covered by any such rust even now.) Those were the days of Coronation Street, a TV soap series. George Target threw a test to the Anglican church’s ability to communicate “whether it could rewrite the Sermon on the Mount to be delivered during a commercial break.”
My memory recalls a story about his strong conviction that the Christian church, as such, needs continual freshness. As a lay preacher, George visited one of the Adventist churches, whose congregation was proud to gather in a historical church known for its old stained glass windows. As his preaching moment arrived, he walked onto the podium with a brown bag under his arm. Mounting the pulpit, he unwrapped a brick, turned his back to the congregation, and threw it into an old stained glass window, a stunning feature of the old church.
“It’s about time we brought some fresh air into this church,” he said.
He paid for the repair later, but the moment of consternation sent a message still valid in many congregations.
Did he smell “yesterday’s religion,” or was he inspired by a Pauline reference to “stench of death,” vis-à-vis “an aroma redolent with life” (2 Cor. 2: 14-16, MSG)?
Since then, I keep asking how comfortable are we in our “same old, same old,” well-regulated, cookie-cutter Christianity, displaying our Adventist features, stuck in their XIXth century “present truth?” I am a part of such a tribal malaise, yet I also recognize the presence of a need for freshness in what Adventism offers.
Would Jesus feel at home in your church? Would there be enough air to breathe with enough left over for others to enjoy as well? Would Jesus repeat what He read in a synagogue, a reminder of what we ought to be, as God was begging His people to become, on and on and on? Yet, He came to His own, but they rejected Him. Would we allow the car of our lives to be driven by Jesus, as per His invitation? “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am” (Matt 16:24, MSG).
A whiff of some fresh ecclesiastical air, anyone?
–Rajmund Dabrowski is RMC communication director and editor of Mountain Views. Email him at: [email protected]