We know how to be Christian when we are poor, under-educated, and culturally marginalized, but we struggle to be Christian when we are affluent, educated, and have a full place in the culture.

These over-simplifications speak volumes about the state of the church in the Western world.

Simply put, today we are better at dealing with someone already sitting in our church pews than we are at getting anyone there in the first place.

Our churches are strong on maintenance, weak on being missionary.

This is everywhere evident.

We look at our churches today and we see so many wonderful things:

• faith-filled individuals,
• good liturgies,
• good preaching,
• good music,
• wonderful programs sensitivity to justice,
• faith-sharing groups,
• excellent theology,
• ecumenical openness,
• soul-work in our renewal centres,
• beautiful church buildings, and
• an ever-increasing lay involvement.

It has been centuries since we have done so many things so well and maintained church life with such quality and balance.

But we see something else too, less positive:

• One-half of all baptized Christians rarely enter a church,
• our churches are greying,
• the culture is increasingly marginalizing the church, and, most serious of all,
• too often we cannot pass on our faith to our own children.

Even as so many good things are happening within the church we are losing ground.

The crisis, it seems, is not in the area of parish program, liturgy, or theology but in the area of the missionary dimension of Christianity.

We know how to run a church, but we don't know how to found a church.

What's needed?

We need to become more deliberately, reflectively, and programmatically missionary within our own culture, to our own children.

We need to send missionaries into secularity in the very same way as we once sent them off to faraway countries.

The church in the secularized world needs a new kind of missionary.

What will this new kind of missionary need to bring?

Before anything else, real faith.

What we need are men and women who can walk the workplace, the marketplace, the academy of learning, and the arts and entertainment industry, and radiate a faith that is not infantile, over-protective, paranoid, colourless, or compromising.

We need men and women who are post-affluent, post-sophisticated, post-liberal, post-conservative, and post-fearful in their faith.

Their faith needs to have a double strength: It must be strong enough not be defensive in the face of secularity, even as it has the capacity to sweat the blood of self-renunciation rather than compromise the great future for present consolation.

Beyond personal faith, the missionary to secularity will need these things too:

• A new language for a post-ecclesial generation,
• a new gospel-artistry to refire the romantic imagination of a secularized mind,
• a new way to connect the gospel to the streets,
• a new way of moving beyond personal gift and charism to the building of lasting community,
• a new way of connecting eros and spirituality, justice and piety, energy and wisdom, and
• a new way to combine God's consolation with prophetic challenge.

No easy task.

In all these areas we are, right now, still searching for new ways.

Perhaps the person we can look to for guidance is Henri Nouwen.

To the extent that our age has had a missionary to secularity, he fits the bill. His life and his writings touched people in all walks of life and not just inside church circles. His approach was deliberate and faith-filled, he was trying to speak to the heart of secular culture from the perspective of the gospel.

Slowly, through many years of writing, he developed his own language.

He re-wrote his books many times over in an attempt to be simple without being simplistic; to carry real feeling without falling into sentimentality; to speak the language of the soul without falling into psychological jargon; to be personal without being exhibitionist; to put forth Christ's invitation and challenge without being preachy; to challenge towards community without being churchy; and to offer God's consolation without falling into mushy piety.

He didn't always succeed, but he did it better than the rest of us.

And more so even than the popularity of his writings (that unique appeal and effectiveness of the language he developed) Nouwen is a model to us in terms of the quality of his faith.

He walked inside secularity with a visible faith, raw, without fear and without compromise (albeit not without tears, heartache, and breakdown).

In the end, what shone through was faith, his belief that God's existence is real and is the most important thing of all.

We need to learn from people like him, learn the difference between providing church-maintenance and being missionaries.

We know what to do with people once we get them into a church but we must learn again how to get them there.

• Used with permission of the author, Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser. Currently, Father Rolheiser is serving as President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas. He can be contacted through his website, www.ronrolheiser.com. Now on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser

In a brief article, L'Osservatore Romano called the comedian and actor an "unforgettable clown with a heart of gold".

Williams had recently been battling severe depression , according to his publicist. He was known to have bipolar disorder, depression and drug abuse problems.

"Born in Chicago July 21, 1951 and raised in Michigan, he graduated from the Juilliard School in New York," L'Osservatore Romano noted.

It pointed to how "Williams came to popularity in the late seventies interpreting the hyperactive alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy".

The publication recalled Williams' numerous memorable roles - in both comedy and drama - including "Good Morning, Vietnam" (1987), "Dead Poets Society" (1989), "Hook" (1991) and "Mrs Doubtfire" (1993).

It also noted the Academy Award that he won in 1998 for Best Supporting Actor in "Good Will Hunting".

Mental health experts said that the fact that a universally loved figure like Robin Wllliams could commit suicide "speaks to the power of psychiatric illness".

Ken Duckworth, medical director of the US National Alliance on Mental Illness, said the tragedy "speaks to the need for better treatments and the need for society to be more welcoming to people who have these conditions".

Oblate priest Fr Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, who writes an annual article about suicide, stated in 1998 that suicide is the most misunderstood of deaths.

For most suicides, it is not true that it is voluntary, he wrote.

"A person dying of suicide dies, as does the victim of physical illness or accident, against his or her will," Fr Rolheiser wrote.

"People die from physical heart attacks, strokes, cancer, AIDS and accidents. Death by suicide is the same, except that we are dealing with an emotional heart attack, an emotional stroke . . . an emotional fatality."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide (CCC#2282)".

Lifeline 0800 543 354

Youthline 0800 376 633

Suicide Crisis Helpline 0508 828 865

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Religion News Service
• Ronrolheiser.com
• Vatican website
• Image: Empire Online