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Subscribe to CommentsYour job, young pastor, is to maintain a non-anxious presence within the church you pastor. Knowing that we live in a time when anxiety is everywhere–a time when religion, in particular, has been whipped into a paralyzing frenzy of anxiety by those who are served by fear. Easier said than done, maintaining a non-anxious presence. Where to begin? Befriend the book of Psalms.
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Many pastors I know are subject to the mental cruelty of their own rumination. Oh, it’s the bane of pastoral ministry! Rumination, like a cow chewing her cud, swallowing, regurgitating to chew some more, ad nauseum, pun intended. It’s as unpleasant as it sounds when it happens in your head: going over and over the same thought, the same problem solving inner dialogue, the same rehearsed conversation for extended periods, ad nauseum, no fun intended.
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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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Phyllis Tickle, in her latest and greatest, The Words of Jesus, writes in the introduction about an “actualist” reading of the canonical gospels. Typical Tickle: lay it out and let the readers make sense of it themselves. Or perhaps lay it out as if she needs the readers’ help figuring out what she’s written. Well it hit me like a ton of basement block and I’ve been trying to make sense of it ever since. Not a “modernist” reading of the words. Not a “literalist” reading of the words. But an “actualist” reading of the words.
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So I need to explain something. I’ve been to the same place for vacation for the past 28 years. I know, boring as the post office. Which is exactly the way I like vacation. Maybe as a result, vacation clears space in my head. Maybe for God to speak. Several years ago, I’m guessing now but 1998 or 1999, I’m praying on vacation and a voice gets through saying, “Pay attention to what I’m doing among liberals.”
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One of the reasons you don’t pray more has nothing to do with your dedication to God or your capacity for self discipline or your forgetfulness in matters spiritual or your busy life. It has to do with your need to learn how to calm your praying brain. Too often you close your eyes to pray and it’s an unpleasant experience. You become more aware of your underlying anxiety. You become more subject to your grinding thoughts. You put up with it as long as you can, then open your eyes and move on to the next distraction. There are ways to calm yourself. Thankfully many ways. Here’s one: a way to present your embodied self to God, and it goes like this….
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Skills, gifts, knowledge, passion, all pale in comparison to the emotional intelligence you’re going to need, young pastor. Of course, there are many other jobs with intense emotional demands–teaching, parenting, medicine, running a business–but this business is surely one of them. The emotional intelligence that’s needed involves the cultivation, simultaneously, of a thick skin along with a tender heart.
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