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Good pastors are about empowering people to do the Jesus stuff.  So there is a great need for pastors who can learn to trust others to do things better than themselves.  Clericalism, the view that pastors are the Christian professionals who can do Christianity better than anyone else is boo-honkey.

But it’s my belief that many pastors have been too passive in their leadership.  We’ve allowed ourselves to be cow-towed by other voices within the wider Christian community.  We let them take the lead because they have the biggest media megaphones, or the biggest mailing lists or they have somehow gained the ear of many people.  Which is fine.  It’s good to have a mix of voices in any movement.  But we’ve given too much of our pastoral leadership task away to some voices.
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As a young pastor many years ago, I couldn’t help but look around for pastors to be like.  Oh I know we can’t be like anyone but ourselves, but part of that process involves admiring certain others if for no other reason than to encourage the best in our ourselves.  Let me suggest someone for you to admire, young pastor: try Tri Robinson on for size.  Tri just did a post in the Huffington Post titled, Please Forgive Us.

Tri pastors the Vineyard Church in Boise Idaho.  Idaho is the most conservative state in the union.  It’s not blue, it’s not purple, it’s deep red.  And Tri by culture, temperament and conviction is a pretty conservative guy, theologically, and I’m guessing–though he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve–politically.  Yet he has the boldness, the conviction and the humility to do a guest column in the Huffington Post, that paragon of the liberal media, titled, Please Forgive Us.
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My friend Rich Cizik, a prominent leader of the National Association of Evangelicals resigned recently after the proverbial firestorm of protest.   He candidly answered some questions posed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.“  Cizik revealed the following things about his personal views when asked: that civil unions in his view are OK, that it might be wise for the government to offer contraceptives to those who can’t afford them in order to reduce the number of babies who are aborted rather than born, and that he voted for a Democratic candidate (Barak Obama) in the Democratic primary in his state.
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It’s as simple as that.  We can’t afford to put so much of our energy into the culture war.  We’re in a global economic meltdown.  People are losing their jobs.  We’re in this thing together with our neighbors around the world.  Oh yes, they are our neighbors, inasmuch as our fortunes are linked.  We can’t afford the polemics that culture wars generate.  We can’t afford to believe the worst about our neighbors.  We have to look for common ground in order to serve the common good, or else we’re going to pay a heavy price.
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Our brains manage meaning by the use of metaphor, comparing one thing to another so as to illuminate the other. Jesus did the same with his parables: revealing the unknown kingdom by the known mustard seed, sower, pearl of great price, daft woman who lost a coin, grieving father.  We are ruled by the metaphors we embrace.  Jesus said, “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily, and follow me.”  Carrying a cross, a beam of wood used to execute criminals, is the metaphor he chose to illuminate what it means to be his disciple.  To be his disciple is to accept this metaphor.  It is time for us to critically examine a metaphor offered to us in recent years to illuminate what it means for Christians to engage the surrounding culture: the metaphor of war, and it’s application by the Religious Right, that to be a faithful disciple of Jesus is to be a culture warrior.

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