c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. He lives in Durham, N.C.)

LA MADDALENA, ITALY _ Almost overnight, this island north of Sardegna changed character; the tourists arrived.

Every beach is jammed. Cars and tour buses crawl through narrow streets. Sidewalks swarm with slow-moving amblers. Restaurants present their summer menus, with fancier lettering and higher prices. Street vendors line the harbor-front piazza. A dog circus arrived.

Except for their swimsuits and floral skirts, tourists don’t look much different from the regulars. There are the usual pushy people who can’t imagine that these waves, like all others, won’t part at their coming. But for the most part, tourists seem to be normal souls.

What distinguishes them is that they have nowhere to go and nothing to do. They are on vacation. They have time to look into gift shop windows. Like new arrivals at a buffet line, they walk off the ferry or tour bus and have this entire town set before them, one delectable dish after another. They graze.

Grazing isn’t a bad thing. Even though I’m in Europe to work, I spend my weekends grazing the local buffet. I’m just aware that vacationers have one approach to the day’s business, and workers have another. The differences have to do with sense of purpose, use of time, feelings of urgency.

When Jesus commissioned his disciples to go forth and replicate his ministry, was he sending them out to work or to tour? Were they to stride or to amble?

The immediate answer, of course, is work: they were sent out to continue the work Jesus began. They had a high sense of purpose, a feeling of urgency we probably cannot begin to understand, a sense that time was running short.

If you were to put two sidewalk-goers side by side _ a fast-walking business person carrying a briefcase and talking on a cell phone, and a swimsuit-clad tourist drifting from store to store _ which would be the image of a disciple? Over the years, Christians have tended to take the fast-walker as their model.

Whether they were founding churches, mounting crusades, building cathedrals, launching universities and hospitals, conducting heresy trials, starting publishing companies and Christian business directories, laying ground for visiting evangelists or planning church budgets, believers have tended to see faith as purposeful and religious life as an earnest activity.

In recent years, as the business model has pervaded our culture, church life has come to resemble corporate life, with tight agendas, efficient meetings, working lunches and dinners, clock-conscious classes, performance evaluations, data-driven planning and a corporate-board approach to leadership.

The problem is: Jesus was an ambler. From all appearances, he had nowhere in particular to go and no set plan of what to do. He drifted _ from town to town, house to house, life to life. He let the needs of others set his agenda. He didn’t seek to impose his will on the world, like some master-builder turning cornfield into church campus. Rather, he told stories to whomever would listen.

Jesus didn’t exactly browse gift shops, but he probably looked more like a browser than a fast-moving corporate strider.

It’s partly the difference between doing and being. But even more, I think, it’s the difference between imposing one’s will and allowing others to shape one’s time and intention. Jesus ambled, I think, so he could be available. A hard-charging business type communicates little availability. Who would approach a grim-faced physician dashing from one patient to another, or a professor who is scurrying from class to class with an armload of papers, or a parent who has cell phone in hand, face set in determination, and a clock obviously ticking?

How does one script a tight agenda on behalf of a meandering ambler? How does a Day Timer-minded pastor proclaim a rambling story-teller? How can clock-watchers listen? How do the sensible serve a master whose sole thought about money was to give it away and who never handed out minutes of previous meetings?

We’re way beyond nostalgic adages about smelling roses. We’re dealing with the very essence of faith: who is in charge _ the clock-watchers or the one who was before time? The purposeful and earnest or the one who went wherever the wind blew him?

DEA RNS EHRICH