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it’s time for the pastors to stop cheating
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.
Though I consider myself to be first and foremost a Jesus follower (a Jesus freak is what we used to be called and I take it as a badge of honor) I am also part of that diverse movement known as evangelicalism. Within evangelicalism over the past thirty years or so, pastors have been passive on a whole set of concerns.
Like political involvement. Instead of doing the hard work of studying the Bible and church history and theology and the political process itself, we have allowed a relatively small number of voices to exercise considerable power over an entire movement, and a diverse one at that when it comes to the Christian engagement in the public sphere.
I’ve mentioned the role before of Paul Weyrich, a political think tank person in the formation of the Moral Majority and the role of Ralph Reed, a political operative behind the Christian Coalition. Add to that list Tony Perkins leader of the Family Research Council, the political arm of the Focus on the Family ministry, led by Dr. James Dobson. Tony Perkins is the most quoted Christian spokesperson in the media, according to a survey a few years ago. I suppose another influential voice on the role of the Christian in politics might be Charles Colson who was once a close aide to Richard Nixon and later founder of an excellent prison ministry called Prison Fellowship.
These men have one thing in common besides being men. They are not pastors pastoring churches. They came to their leadership in other ways, by founding or leading significant organizations. Their voices are amplified by powerful media outlets both secular and religious and so they have a great deal of influence within evangelical congregations. They also have a great deal of influence as spokesmen to the wider community regarding what Christians stand for in the United States. Nothing wrong with this. It just is.
They mostly lean toward the conservative end of the political spectrum. The only evangelical leader who has any kind of prominence from a liberal or progressive viewpoint is Jim Wallis, who since 2004 has become the second most quoted spokesperson in the media. Jim founded a Christian community now turned network named Sojourners, and I think he has a theological degree, but he doesn’t function primarily as a pastor in a church. Like the other leaders mentioned, he has written books and founded a Christian organization with a magazine, speaks at conferences, lectures, and so on. All this is fine.
But fellow pastors, are we going to let these leaders do all our thinking and praying and discerning for us on the question of what it means to be a faithful Christian in the 21st Century? Are we going to let them set the agenda for the evangelical Christian community without doing our own thinking and praying and studying and discerning….and leading?
When you run Christian organizations that aren’t churches and you are active in writing books and promoting different causes, yours is a legitimate seat at the table. But pastors also have a responsibility to lead. And we pastors have an important perspective. We interact with a diverse group of people at a fairly up close and personal level. Morality to us isn’t a political agenda so much as a personal struggle, a discipleship struggle, a family, inter-personal, business concern.
A pastor told me that he had a couple tell him that they were married for three years and just found out that they each had the same father. What should they do? Married people talk to pastors all the time about their marriage problems: a husband who is driving his wife crazy with his passive-agressive behavior. He is faithful to her in the sense that he’s not sleeping around with other women; he hasn’t deserted her, but he is making her life miserable. She is depressed and hardly able to function. The kids are suffering. They have tried counseling, but the counselor has given up trying to help her husband because he is passive-aggressive with the counselor. What should she do? A older single woman wants to adopt a child, but wonders about her ability to care for the child without help. She has a dear friend, another woman, who is also single. They are thinking of adopting the child together. They wonder whether or not they should do this for the difficult to adopt child. They’ve heard about civil unions. They are not lesbians, but they want to enter such a union for the sake of providing a stable home for this child. What should they do?
Pastors know that humans were made from dirt and dirt makes mud and human life sometimes is a little messy. They understand that theology isn’t primarily an academic discipline; it is primarily a communal discipline. They understand that study isn’t for the sake of passing a test or writing a book, but for the sake of helping people be faithful to God in the midst of their messy lives.
And pastors are eager for people on the outside of faith looking in to find a way in. They learn what works and what doesn’t. They know whether certain kinds of people, grad students in biology for example, are finding their way to faith in Jesus or not. Maybe the powerful voices in their denomination advocate for young earth creationism, say, but they know that this is an obstacle to these grad students coming to faith in Jesus. So they read Genesis and struggle to understand what it means with the grad students in mind. Am I so sure that my denominational leaders are right in their reading of Genesis that I should insist on this reading when the grad students ask me what is necessary to believe when one is a committed Christian? Is theistic evolution an option? Thus you talk to yourself.
It goes on an on and on and on like this, if you are a pastor. Less so if you are not a pastor.
And it’s hard to find time to do the study that’s needed to wrestle with these issues. And there are other things to pray about. And sometimes it seems like your discerner has taken a sabbatical. But still the people and their pesky situations beckon. It’s unrelenting.
And it’s a thankless task, in a certain sense, because if you come up with different conclusions than the conventional wisdom of the American evangelical community as it is currently led by the leaders I named, prepare yourself for an ordeal. Because these people are leaders in your church, even though they are not members. They are as powerful as any board member. Some of them counsel members of your church about how to deal with pastors like you who don’t agree with them on this that or the other.
So it’s easy to let other people do your thinking, studying, praying and discerning for you.
But it’s cheating. It’s cheating the Lord. It’s cheating your call. And it’s cheating the people.
Tags: cheating, christian communiity, church, civil unions, clericalism, conservative, discernment, divorce, family research council, focus on the family, incest, james dobson, jesus freak, jim wallis, liberal, passive-agressive, pastors, paul weyrich, people, politics, prayer, prison fellowship, progressive, ralph reed, richard nixon, study, theology, tony perkins, voices
December 26th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
WOW! Talk about living dangerously! This is a stupendous piece of commentary, and my first reaction was and still is and probably always will be: Thank God somebody in the clergy finally said it! May God also give us laity more such pastors….pt
December 26th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Ken, I think that there are many reasons for this. Certain kinds of people tend to become pastors, and they aren’t necessarily the type to go Crusading for the right or for the left. From my perspective as a sort-of-young Christian, there seems to be a division between spiritual interests and secular, with spiritual assuming primacy (due to the way we read the Bible), even when it comes to traditional evangelical issues.
When it comes to the very sticky issues that you name, I think that many of us layfolk who remain in the church have this divide in our lives. There are some things that we talk to our pastors about, but there are many other things that we assume that our pastors wouldn’t have much context for understanding… so we don’t talk to them about it. There is this perception that pastors don’t live in the real world, but somewhere in the realm between earth and heaven (laughs), so most of your folks don’t really expect you to get down in the muck with the rest of us. Christian leaders who aren’t pastors are different.
In order to change that perception, you’d have to fight several millennia’s worth of mystique that surrounds the pastor/priest/prophet role. Can modern-day evangelical pastors become something like Melchizedek — relevant to both secular and spiritual matters of their time? I’ll be staying tuned to find out.
December 26th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Ebony, Yes, I’m afraid you’re right, that many people don’t expect their pastors to get down in the muck with the rest of us. Who ever heard of a shepherd without mud on his or her boots, though?
December 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Ken, I think it’s important to realize that those you mentioned: Charles Colson, Paul Weyrich, Ralph Reed, Dr James Dobson, et al, give the credit to their various outreaches and ministries to their Pastors. Another person I deeply admire, Micheal Card, credits the late Dr. William Lane, his former Pastor, as leading him into a music ministry. He always saw himself as a teacher–now he’s doing both very successfully.
As the Scriptures teach us, the role of a Pastor is to teach and prepare the Church for the works of the Ministry. There is no way, as talented as you are, to create and run the homeless ministry, and bag and handout groceries for Compassion. That’s the job of the Church. Your job is to stimulate, encourage, “nag” the Church you’re leading. Which, by the way, you’ve been doing quite well over the years.
I think for too long many in the Church were willing to sit back and let their Pastors do all the work. They sat in the pews and filled their notebooks with hundreds of notes, but never reached out to the world and those who need Salvation and Redemption. They avoided the political world completely. Believing that was secular and not spiritual.
Finally, the Church has moved in and is no longer silent–letting the world Govern us, instead of having input as to how we will be governed–the silent Body of Jesus is voicing His concerns. There are several friends of mine who are in (or pursuing) political careers. Believer’s attempting to do their part in returning us to the original intentions of our founders.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:16 am
For me, it’s the resurrection — required believing for the Faith. Sometimes it’s still easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle…
Other than that, “Pastors know that humans were made from dirt and dirt makes mud and human life sometimes is a little messy” (Ken Wilson). I’m grateful that I can still quote you after all of these years. I’m glad there’s room for diversity of thought at the A2 Vineyard and my kids can take it all in and try to sort it out with that in mind ’cause it’s still all about Jesus — freakin’ right!
December 27th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Nick, Your point about the various leaders giving “their pastors” so much credit for their organization’s success is in my mind part of the problem; it emphasizes just how powerful these leaders are in a movement that is meant to be church based (Jesus leaving behind two things: the Spirit and the church). I just don’t think it’s been that healthy for us as a movement to be so powerfully influenced by these kind of leaders (who do, I think have a legitimate role to play, just not so dominant a role for the reasons cited: imbalanced alignment with one party and political philosophy, prominence of political operatives setting the agenda, etc.)
On your friends in politics seeking to restore the origional intention of the founders. There’s plenty of good original intentions of the founders but also some intentions I wouldn’t want to restore: like the intention to only have property owners who are men voting, or those of African heritage not being viewed as fully human, having any rights, etc. Many of the founders were deists, not Christians, and some of the Christians adopted views that I wouldn’t necessarily want to see restored, etc. So I sure hope those friends are discriminating!
December 27th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
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By using that argument I could say there are a predominate number of Christians in the Pro-Life movement are effecting too much as their direction.
If I feel something strongly enough that I feel the Government needs to intercede (or get out of the way), then I will gather other voices to join me in my fight . . .
December 27th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
This is one of your more powerful and meaningful posts.
There is simply no substitute for experience in the making of wisdom. Being now nearly as old as you (!), I have to say that contrary to popular belief I now firmly hold that the young are way more set in their ways than the old. The older I get, the more life humbles me. When I was in my twenties, I held the absolutes like hammers and was just as hard on myself with them as on anyone. But my life experiences demand that I lighten my touch, that I extend grace, that I constantly remind myself that until I’ve walked a mile in another’s moccasins I have no idea what I would be capable of in his place–and that there but for the grace of God go I. Having the down-in-the-mud experience that church pastors do, it’s important that their voices be heard by more removed ministries that have the freedom to deal in absolutes.
At the same time, life has taught me that the reverse is also true, i.e. the voice of absolutes is for something important. It may not be for what it thinks it is (as yours or mine may not be as well), but without it something equally prophetic is missing from the whole.
My question for the Lord is, Is it necessary for the extreme voices to belong to people who are deaf?
December 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Now your idea that anyone who believes that those of us who are seeking a return to the original intent of the Constitution are referring to eliminating voting rights to women or minorities or property owners is a red herring.
We want a return to the concept of Government being limited in it’s power and scope. Not interferring with business transactions, we want an abolition of the greedy taxing system–and a creation of a fair taxing system.
Reagan had his faults, but certainly had a steadfast grasp of the role Government was to play in our lives . . .
December 27th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
What’s a red herring? Wasn’t that original intent of the founders?
December 27th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
You got a point there . . . ;o)
December 28th, 2008 at 2:16 am
“I consider myself to be first and foremost a Jesus follower (a Jesus freak is what we used to be called and I take it as a badge of honor)”
Ken, old boy, I cannot honestly believe that Jesus of Nazareth was and is Almighty God based only on the evidence that Christianity presents to the world. Jesus is a character in a story, and a story alone will never, and should never, compel in me an honest, unbiased, dispassionate belief that a human being was and is Almighty God. After all Ken, in all honesty, we know what the difference is between a story and reality, don’t we?
December 28th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hi Nickolas, I am struggle with your comment “Not interferring with business transactions”. Who gets to draw the line and where does the line get drawn?
Hasn’t this become an obvious issue with the failing of the banking system? Business transactions are often founded on the pocket book (if not always) and corporations by definition are only responsible to maximize shareholder value, which has no accountability to God, Environment, Family, anything good. Greed is clearly the driver over corporations and if you own stock in Apple or HP you better hope that maximizing the bottom line is their number one priority if you want to retire at age 59 1/2. My concern is for the suffering that will continue if we don’t provide oversight into business. My hunch is without any sort of accountability it would lead to more failing companies that devastate 100’s of thousands of individuals and families who are dependent on the income they provide, coal burning power plants will continue to be built in the poorest of areas, Chemical companies would return to their polluting ways and the porn industry would be bigger than life having a huge impact on our children.
I would probably say I am more of a small government type of guy at this point in my journey, but although businesses have and will continue to do a lot of good, their whole premise is founded on $$$, not truth; therefore, I think a natural conclusion is that they will fail and so will the societies that are supported by them.
I would prefer your friends to grow as prominent politicians that take an aim on removing greed in our society rather than deregulating businesses and freeing up tax dollars. But then again, greed is a heart issue and I think we need to lean on pastors for that…so thanks Ken for being an example.
December 28th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
phil & nick, Every system other than the kingdom of God is grounded in what the bible calls powers and principalities as was the Roman Empire. Jesus has disarmed these powers and principalities. His politics are new and different than any other–whether Republican, Democratic or “origin founders restorationist.” When we throw our lot in with various political movements without realizing that they are fundamentally rooted in something other than the kingdom, we get taken for a ride. This doesn’t mean we can’t participate with political parties and movements, but we shouldn’t do so naively. Christians currently often think that capitalism is “godly”. It’s not. It’s rooted in self interest, which is a power that has been disarmed by the gospel.
December 29th, 2008 at 6:45 am
“Every system other than the kingdom of God is grounded in what the bible calls powers and principalities as was the Roman Empire. Jesus has disarmed these powers and principalities.”
Amen, Ken, and Praise be to Our Redeemer! It is striking how many names the New Testament writers invent to designate these ambiguous entities. They may be called powers “of this world,” then on the other hand “celestial powers,” as well as “sovereignties,” “thrones,” “dominions,” “princes of the kingdom of the air,” “elements of the world,” “archons,” “kings,” “princes of this world,” etc. Why such a vast vocabulary, made up apparently of such dissimilar elements? These titles can be divided into two groups. Expressions like “powers of this world,” “kings of the earth,” “principalities,” etc. assert the earthly character of these powers, their concrete reality here below in our world. On the other hand, expressions like “princes of the kingdom of the air,” celestial powers,” etc. emphasize the extraterrestrial, “spiritual” nature of these entities.
Ken, are we talking about the same entities in both instances? Are the powers called “celestial” different at all from the powers “of this world,” or are they the same? Enquiring minds want to know!
December 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Well, we’re on to something aren’t we? When the early church declared Jesus is Lord, the surrounding culture heard what they also meant: “Jesus is Lord (and Ceasar is not.) Because the so called authorities of the world often viewed themselves as representing or embodying gods or goddesses or transcendent powers of some kind. Jesus referred to money with such a name, Mammon. Was that true then, but not now? By de-materializing and spiritualizing the powers, have we simply blinded ourselves to them?
December 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Mark, I’m not sure the distinction you draw between story and reality is so sharp as you suggest. Story is what we do to make sense of a reality that streams chaotically over us without any editing. We come home and our roomate or spouse or lover or whomever asks, “What happened to you today?” and we tell a story about what happened. Imagine that we did so and our roomate spouse, lover of whomever says,incredulously, “Really!?” We select pertinent events and impressions of events–we edit the chaotic stream of reality coming our way–into a story. Because we have brains and brains are story generating units. If there were a God, and it was his or her or its desire to communicate to organisms such as we are with brains such as we have and an unavoidable drive to draw meaning by discerning or telling or forming stories, isn’t it possible that such a God would seek to communicate to the likes of us through such a medium?
December 30th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Ken, let’s assume for the sake of argument that what you just wrote is true:
“If there were a God, and it was his or her or its desire to communicate to organisms such as we are with brains such as we have and an unavoidable drive to draw meaning by discerning or telling or forming stories, isn’t it possible that such a God would seek to communicate to the likes of us through such a medium?”
Yes, it is possible. I think, therefore, that the following conclusions must logically follow from your argument:
[1] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Zoroaster of Persia.
[2] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Quetzalcoatl of Mexico.
[3] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Krishna of India.
[4] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Mithras of Persia.
[5] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Buddha of India.
[6] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Muhammad and the Qur’an.
[7] It is possible that God sought to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of the story of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.
Therefore, it is possible that God has sought and is still seeking to communicate to the likes of us through the medium of stories about ANYONE, ANYWHERE, AT ANYTIME.
Jesus of Nazareth was a human being. The worship of a human being who is not the Absolute Creator is a most serious sin, the sin of Idolatry. In my opinion, anyone who truly wants to be completely honest with himself will be forced by his own conscience to admit to himself that stories alone cannot provide the evidence necessary to justify one’s worship of a human being. I have admitted that to myself, have you?
December 30th, 2008 at 10:58 am
this is really encouraging ken…and makes me think of the right reverend henry duncan, who, while pastoring his church, was not satisfied with the “successful” revival taking place in his midst and took an idea to his parishioners to establish a bank to help the poor and establish a newspaper to speak out on issues of biblical justice. this was the first savings bank in history (that’s right, the first savings bank was established by a church, whose pastor lead them in the endeavour to help the poor…it was a social institution not just a financial institution)…now that is what i call leadership (in fact, it began the “savings bank” movement in the UK and the idea spread faster than “celebrate recovery” ministries nowadays)…
lead on pastors!!
December 30th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Mark, Yes it is possible–that was the only point I was trying to make. If Jesus was a real rather than a legendary person in history and If Jesus is currently alive and all the other individuals you mentioned are dead, then that would give him a communication advantage. It would be his responsibility to make himself known in ways that humans like us can know and it would be our responsibility to respond to his making himself known.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:16 pm
excellent! a most powerful post, kenny!
January 11th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Ken…I’ve experienced the ‘ordeal’ you speak of…and it takes the life out of you.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:09 am
any other pastors out there felt what daryl has?
January 12th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
It’s definitely “easy to let other people do your thinking, studying, praying and discerning for you.” That has been a frequent temptation for me. I was actually taught to do that in my younger days as a pastor when I was taught to be a loyal, faithful sheep to the shepherds, whoever they may have been at that time.
I would like to hear more from pastors about the ordeals you’ve experienced in this regard, in order to understand the grappling you’ve done with your consciences versus those NAE shepherds and others.