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Subscribe to CommentsYou’ve already heard what he said: the earthquake in Haiti is the outworking of a spiritual, not a geologic history. A supposed pact made with the devil around the time of Haiti’s birth as an independent nation. The wrong thing to say at the wrong time for so many reasons. But let me just point out one of those reasons: laziness. Robertson was cherry picking historical factoids.
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In case you haven’t noticed, your brain is wired to pay special attention to criticism. And it doesn’t matter that you are your own harshest critic, now that email makes it emotionally painless to offer correction (don’t you love the anonymous “propetic” emails?), you will have plenty of opportunity to focus on your shortcomings. So when the encouraging words come, hold on to them. Yesterday I had doozy, and I aim to savor this one.
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Maybe you’ve notice that pastoring seems to be a near occaision to mainline anxiety. I’ve been battling anxiety for the past year myself, thank you, but I seem to be on the mend. Thanks in no small part to the best book on leadership I’ve read in years: A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. Stop, drop, and read this book if you are a young pastor battling anxiety.
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Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back is a book I wrote as an evangelical, by which I mean, as someone who cares about communicating the good news (gk. evangel) among those who have not heard good news. Right here, for example, where I live. It is based on a certain reading of the culture in which I live. We who have received and therfore have a responsibility to be and share good news, also have a responsibility to face up to the cultural context we operate in. Here’s the challenge: we have a branding problem. We who love, admire and seek to follow Jesus of Nazareth, must acknowledge that the Christian brand in America has sufferred something very like trademark infringement.
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How did we, the friends of the friend of sinners get to this place? Jesus was known as the friend of sinners. He took a lot of guff for being the friend of sinners. These “sinners” were a social class, not simply a theological category. They were people on the outside of Israel’s accepted circle for a host of reasons. They were not mobsters or murderers or notorious offenders. (You notice that “tax collectors” and “prostitutes” were often given a distinct designation alongside “sinners” in the gospels.) Jesus so identified with “sinners” as to bring upon himself the judgment of the religiously self-righteous. He expects us to be the friend of sinners, which means our righteousness has to exceed that of the Pharisees; it has to be a righteousness of pure sermon-on-the-mount love, not a righteousness that depends on harsh condemnations and judgment of others–the “business as usual” approach to sinners. We need to get our gentle back.
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So you’re a young pastor. Have you noticed that people sin? Yes, they do bad things. Some they do to you–complain about you to others for example because they are afraid to speak with you directly. Oh that’s galling. So you will be tempted to focus on those sins because they make an impression on you. But that’s not what the poor sinners need so much. They need someone to talk to about the struggles in their lives which often involves sins–the sins of others or their own or the communal sins that affect them. As you are sitting there listening to a poor sinner, you will be tempted to assume the posture of the expert.
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It was an odd encounter, but not the first of it’s kind. I had been asked to speak at a Catholic conference on what Catholics might learn from evangelical churches. The participants were kind, responsive and incredibly humble–sitting there listening to me, a pastor without a seminary degree for heaven’s sake. When it was over, a very decent, thoughtful, intelligent–and I would presume kind–man approached me and asked why I wasn’t Catholic. Oh-oh, I I thought. Been here, done this. The conversation from hell–that circles endlessly and nobody leaves happy. But when speaking to a group of people your pre-frontal cortex gets tired, and your willpower is weakened and you take the bait, and converse, knowing that that it’s not going to be a conversation.
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Advice to young pastors: to be a pastor in the context of the evangelical landscape is a privilege. By all measures evangelical Christianity is the most vibrant form of faith in the United States. Evangelical Christians volunteer more, give more money to their churches and give more to non-church charities than any other group. Nothing says “I love you” like time and cash. Evangelicals get things done, so you could do worse than to be a pastor in an evangelical setting. But there’s also a cross to bear and your being truly evangelical requires that you bear it. You must be willing to face and confront religious hostility in the camp.
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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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