Translation

I have been thinking a bit about the churchy catchword missional lately, and I there has been this gnawing sense of unease about the word.  Usually I just chalk that feeling up to being jargon averse thanks to my undergraduate education in Environmental Science as well as my Seminary education and participation in Presbyterianism, each world being rather rife with jargon, and two of which have idolized to some extent the term missional.  I was just talking with some colleagues this morning at a Lectionary study group about idolizing mission, and the danger of the church becoming a service organization, and the bind that we find ourselves in, as pastors and stewards of an institutional structure.
Then I got back to my office and read this article.  It's kind of long, but I'll summarize: a couple of seminaries have recently run into rough patches because of the personalities and behaviors or their presidents.  I'm not going to comment on the particulars, because I think the article does that fairly well.  I also appreciate his connection of these crises in leadership with the Jerry Sandusky debacle at my alma mater, and I also like his use of Bonhoeffer and 2001, in short, I'm a fan of what he has to say, but I want to translate a little, from the context of an institution of higher education, to the local church congregation, because I think local churches have, by and large, been making the same mistake or substituting mission for formation.
One of my morning conversation partners is fond of summarizing the mission of the church as making disciples, which should seem obvious in light of the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, but which can be easily obfuscated by the general business and busy-ness of the church.
It is something we must recover if we are going to use the word mission with any sort of integrity.
As nice as it may sound, the purpose of the church is not to help the poor, or work for justice, or even educate people per se, rather the mission of the church is to form people into disciples who will do those things, and fully internalize those purposes.  When we attempt to perform those functions on an institutional level we are usually just successful enough to be dangerous, meaning that we can rob the individuals within the church of their identity as disciples.
Consider the rampant over-functioning of pastoral staff, an example I will use as a sort of mea culpa.  I know it is much easier to do things myself than it is to ask others to do them.  I know it makes me look good and valuable and worthy of my salary if I am always on the ball, and in the loop, and any other such metaphors you care to dream up.  But it is also true that if I do everything, people will let me.  I will never grow more leaders if I lead everything.  I will never make disciples if I do everything myself.
Jesus asked and expected his disciples to listen and learn, but he also required them to do.  Which brings me to another point that is central to the article and is also a function of our busy-ness: we are supposed to be making disciples of Jesus, not indoctrinating people into "the way things are around here."  Which is referenced in the article as a tendency towards isomorphism, and which I heard someone on a radio discussion describe as "the normative influence of the actual."  Which can also be said in less jargonish language as "what already is tends to seem right."  Which is a powerful force in the life of congregations: "the way we've always done things," which at best means mean we're rooted in tradition and at worst means we're stuck in a dysfunctional rut.
I sometimes wonder if it's essentially the only force that really stands in our way.
It would be nice if it was simply as easy as unplugging the memory chips from HAL 9000, but in the case of most church congregations, the memory chips are people.  They can be people who don't particularly agree with your approach to the mission parameters.  They can be people that mean well, but who simply aren't interested in becoming or making disciples.  They can even be people who see the mission, but just don't know what to do about it.  And a lot of times, these people can be the pastors of the church.
That's a somewhat painful reality, the people who are supposed to be casting a vision and leading people and continuing the chain of Christian discipleship, are often as caught in the systemic dysfunction as anyone, and so you have bullies, and people with moral failings, and all sorts of sinners, trying to lead congregations.  Even if they manage to differentiate from the system, that doesn't mean they'll be able to overcome the malfunction.  To go back to the 2001 comparison, even when Bowman realized HAL was the problem, he still couldn't solve the problem in any way that was going to allow him to get out alive (though again Jesus didn't get out alive in the traditional sense either).
In the case of Joe Paterno and Penn State, it was remarkable to see how his reputation fell from practical sainthood, to sinister villain and then settled somewhere around a sort of Frankenstein tragic figure who was destroyed by the monster he created.  It's what happens when we make idols: they eventually prove their falsehood.
So, I want to call out the idol of the word missional, because I think there are people out there who think that it's going to save the church, but it won't unless we understand that our only real mission is to make disciples.  To do some very hard formational and transformational work in the lives of the people we serve.  We are not here to fit people into an institutional puzzle, no matter how elegant it might seem.  We are here to live out a relationship with a whole bunch of different, broken and beloved children of God.
If you think about it, that's what Jesus did, and it all started with "follow me."

Explaining Away

I'm really having to wrassle the text (Matthew 22: 1-14) this week, but not like I did last week, because this time I get the connection, but I'm wrasslin' with the reality of God as a King.  After all the nice things I said about God loving and forgiving, and even forgiving the very crucifixion of Jesus, here comes a parable about a wedding banquet, and a bunch of people who disrespect the king.  The King is anything but forgiving, he is... well... King-like.  After all, these people don't just not show up to the feast, they defy the King, they abuse and kill his servants (again like the landowner from last week).  The King has a rebellion on his hands, and he puts it down, because that's what Kings do.
I get all this, it's what the various commentaries say is going on, but I also have a bit of a twinge that I sometimes get with sympathetic bible commentaries, I think they might be trying to explain away too much.  I think they want to resolve the tension of a loving God and a righteous King a little bit too badly.  I know I do.
I want to find the mercy in all this, I want to focus on that second crop of people that are invited to the feast, isn't it great for them?  Isn't it great that a whole bunch of other people will be invited in the place of the ungrateful rebels?
But I still get this feeling that the King is somehow cheating, the hall is filled, yes, but there's not really a genuine celebration going on, and he's on edge.  He sees one guest who hasn't even bothered to put on nice clothes and he goes a little bananas, because that's disrespectful too, and quite frankly I think the King is a little tired of being disrespected, even by a common person who was only invited because the chosen guests refused or ignored the invite.
I'm quite sure there is a way to explain this whole mess with all sorts of historical context, I mean, the political angle, and understanding what Kings are all about is helpful, but I think trying to explain it away is a pretty good way to miss the point.
I'm going back and looking at the text again and again, and I keep noticing that the real rebellion is in ignoring and despising the invitation.  Throughout these parables, the easy way out is to look at the wicked tenants and the non-committal wedding guests through the lens of the relationship between the Jews and Jesus.  It's pretty obvious that the Scribes and the Pharisees are just ripe to be the bad guys in these parables, but if we simply read them as an invective against people and way of being that has been over and done with for two thousand years, then we're missing the point.
After all, what are the common excuses for people not coming to church?  Too busy, not interested, just had enough of "organized religion."  Aren't the modern responses to the living community of God's people pretty much the same as the ones of the folk in the parable?  Aren't we even more like them than even the Pharisees and the Scribes?
And when we do come are we coming properly?  Are we coming in expectation of a glorious celebration or are we slouching in our everyday attitudes, saying, "Impress me."  I don't want to read the last part of this parable as a cautionary tale against dressing like a slob at church, I don't think the metaphor is intended to encourage fancy hats and three piece suits, it is meant to indicate a willingness and participation in something glorious.
The church often takes the blame for people's disinterest.  The blame can be a matter of doctrine that is either too lax or too rigid, the blame can be worship that is too old and dull to get people excited or too slick and entertaining to really have depth, the blame can be that you're not friendly enough, or that you're too friendly and you smother people, the blame can be that you don't advertise enough or in the right way or it can be that you are overexposed and become something people despise like that Gerber Life commercial, and that's far from a complete list of faults.
But what if we look at this parable that way, I mean, what if we blame the King?  It's well known that his wedding feasts are no good, or boring, or that his food just isn't the kind that young families are looking for.  I'm becoming convinced that we, meaning the church, have been doing just that, we have been ashamed of our King and unsure of what we are.  We certainly don't have the power, nor should we try to strong arm people into attendance.
But it bears repeating that, at no point, does this dynamic indicate that the King should somehow alter his preparations or change the wedding banquet to suit the rebels.  That's probably because it wouldn't work, they would come up with another excuse.
This is a cautionary tale for the 21st century American Church: don't go changing just to change, you can adapt yourself right out of the wedding feast.  As much as God loves you and, as much as God will forgive, God will not force you to attend, but if you don't show up, you're riding into oblivion.
This is not to say that the church should not strive for relevance and try to reach out to the lost, but I have been thinking lately that many sheep aren't so much lost as they are just willfully ignoring the call of the shepherd, and that's a different thing isn't it?
I'm still wrasslin'.  Lucky it's only Tuesday.

The Other Side of Apologetics

I often speak in favor of nuance and finding the reasonable center of things.  Generally speaking, I think that the thing that is lacking in many of our dialogues is an inability to experience empathy and to truly walk a mile in one another's shoes.  I believe that people are generally good, but that they often buy into systems that are utterly twisted.  I believe that there is a such thing as sin, and I think it has very real power in the world, and what's worse, the power that it has is given to it by the choices of humankind.
I believe it is possible for good people to do bad things, and it is fairly common for good people to allow bad things to happen.  I also believe that there are fair number of people who have become so twisted by sin that they no longer see their violence, greed and lust for power, as being evil.
Every so often, we get a full on glimpse of these sorts of lost souls: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Charles Manson, Osama Bin Laden, they range from garden variety sociopaths to megalomaniacs bent on genocide.
The appearance of a truly epic villain does not happen in a vacuum.  If comic books and movies have taught us anything, a villain usually has a pretty compelling back story.  A lot has been said in recent weeks, including by me, that we should not judge the global religion of Islam based on the actions of ISIS.  I'll stand by that.  I'll stand by it, because I wouldn't want to be judged as a Christian because of the acts of the Klu Klux Klan, or the Westboro Baptist Church.
But to be fair, I also think we need to examine where and how the system that produces hateful fundamentalist groups.  We can pin all of the blame on cultural circumstances: poverty, ignorance, fear of change, but you have to also acknowledge that most of those systemic problems can be ameliorated by a true religion that preaches faith, hope and love, rather than a false one that preaches, hatred, anger and fear.
There's this line in a Jethro Tull song that has always kind of stuck in my head as a Christian, "Well if Jesus saves, then he'd better save himself, or the gory glory seekers, will use his name in death."  Maybe it's the Reformed idealist in me coming out, but I think the best defense against extremism in any situation is a truly self-aware orthodoxy.  Let me explain what I mean by that: a grounded center of people who are fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their belief system and the culture it produces.  Christianity has this, currently it is beings staffed by the likes of Eugene Peterson, Walter Brueggeman, and N.T. Wright, but it does not just consist of big celebrity author types, it is represented by the large majority of faithful pastors and laypeople who do not buy into the madness of the lunatic fringe.  This does not stop the lunatic fringe from existing, but it keeps them for, the most part, from becoming violent.  The rise of the Nazi party in pre-WWII Germany was an instance where the center did not hold, and by the time the "good" guys got around to writing the Barmen Declaration it was already too late.
As it turns out, it was important for Christendom to take stock of it's racist and imperialist tendencies, and it took a villain as out of balance as the Nazis to make it happen.  Up until WWII it was unheard of to question the assumptions of nationalism and exceptionalism that were so central to the Nazi sales pitch.  Until it erupted across Europe and produced the apocalyptic horrors of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Sobibor, good Christian people never would have believed that a "Christian Nation" would have been capable of such atrocities.
The idea that your mission is sanctioned by God makes you dangerous, always.
ISIS currently has that idea, and no one, including the voices of their more moderate Muslim brothers, is going to convince them that they're wrong.  It's going to take a cooperative effort of all the world powers to root out ISIS, but even if we manage to defeat this villain, as the Allies defeated Hitler, unless there is some extensive soul searching to follow on the part of Islam, there will just be another one to take their place.
Islam has become a fertile breeding ground for villains.  It is not the religious aspect alone, just as it was not Christian doctrine alone that created Hitler.  It is a combination of economic and imperialistic catastrophes that have made the Arab world what it is, but the militaristic and often misunderstood teachings of Islam have certainly added a necessary and dangerous ingredient to the stew.
I am not saying that all Muslims are terrorists or villains, but very few of them are actually willing to examine the hard truths that produce things like ISIS and Al Quaida, most would prefer to just insist that "we're not like them."
This is akin to saying, "It's not my fault," it's not particularly helpful.  Global Islam has some real problems: factionalism and inter-sectarian violence, the treatment of women, the troubling imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, and a general backward motion in many regards that does a great disservice to the heritage of the followers of Mohammed.
I am committed to trying to examine the log in my own eye, meaning I want to constantly examine the systemic injustices that Christianity is complicit in perpetrating.  I'm not a big fan of the constant violence and imperialist activity of the "Christian" west.  Some would say, "well we can't exactly call the west Christian any more," but that's a cop out, and it's exactly the same sort of thing we decry when moderate Muslims say, "we don't like ISIS, but what can we do?"
Well, I believe in this process called sanctification, which means that we should always try to do a little better, which means we should always try to be a little more like Christ.  Being like Christ does not require a specific cultural context, or at least it shouldn't.  Being like Christ doesn't mean that everything around me needs to shape up, it means that I need to see the way things are with the eyes of a loving and merciful God.  It means I need to challenge the assumptions of the world around me, to show them "a more excellent way."  That often means pointing out what is wrong with the way things are.  It means admitting all the ways we're complicit in unjust and violent systems, it means never getting to cozy with the status quo, even, and especially, when it's working out just fine for us.

As You Like It

As much as I would like to think that my beliefs are a product of deep reflection on Scripture interfacing with my personal experience, guided by and rooted in the long traditions of the Church, and rigorously analyzed with my faculties of reason, the fact of the matter is that that's probably mostly window dressing.  The process I just outlined, using four elements: Scripture, Experience, Tradition and Reason is sometimes called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (Methodists rejoice).  I had to write my first Systematic Theology paper about it, and it has generally held up pretty well in the practical theology that one uses most in my line of work.  We were asked to rank them in order of importance and justify our rankings, my ranking then: Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reason.
In brief, my definition was that Scripture is necessary as revelation of God's story, tradition was the long and sometimes difficult task of interpreting Scripture through the ages, experience was the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in ones life, and reason was the means by which the other three were processed into something coherent.  Sounds pretty good right?  I also backed it up with all sorts of citations and was learning to inject a good amount of appropriate humility about tension and ambiguity and the mystery of God, I got an A on the paper.
But over the intervening years, I have come to realize that most of us come to believe what we believe by a much less methodical process, (apologies to Charles and John Wesley).  We believe what we want to believe, and no clever quadrilateral process will be able to change that, absent some rather stark smack upside the head.
I first encountered the most admirable admission of this reality in the New Testament and patristic classes I had with Dr. Dale Allison (name dropping, sorry).  Dr. Allison is a well known Biblical scholar, co author of the International Critical Commentary volumes on the Gospel according to Matthew, in other words he is about as serious an academic as you can get.  As Dr. Allison taught, he would outline several different possible interpretations of a text or positions in a theological debate, and after each one he would say either, "I don't like that," or "I like that," and then explain why.
It was there that I began to consider whether I "liked" the things I said I believed.  It was then that I started to admit that my own theology was much more shaped by experience than I had wanted to admit in my Introduction to Systematic Theology paper.  It was an intellectually freeing moment, and I am very glad that I learned it from Dale Allison, because in doing so, I learned that being guided by your heart does not mean turning off your brain.  In fact, it meant allowing your heart to challenge your brain to re-evaluate dogmatic positions the brain holds in order to maintain equilibrium.
You do realize of course that our commitment to the status quo is a survival mechanism.  If we constantly challenged the "way things are" our societies would descend into chaos.  If we didn't abide by conventions and learn from the experiences of the past, we would be utterly lost and unable to make any progress whatsoever.
But every once in while, perhaps we ought to stop and ask ourselves, "do you LIKE this?"
Do you like the fact that the world is run by violence and greed?
I'm not asking if you believe that it is or whether or not it's inevitable, or anything about the nature of sin.  I'm just asking if you like it.
Do you dislike it enough to try and change it?
Do you like the things you "believe?"
Do you like believing in an angry god?
Do you like believing that your enemies are going to get what's coming to them someday?
Do you like believing that your beliefs are going to be the dividing line between salvation and damnation?

If you like believing those things, you're probably going to keep it up, no matter what anyone tells you.  I found I didn't like believing those things any more.  It started with things like the rapture, and taking Genesis literally.  I found that believing those things put Scripture, which I still believe is important, at odds with Reason to a large extent, but also with Tradition and Experience as well, and I didn't LIKE that feeling.
So here's what I do like to believe, and have, perhaps not surprisingly found supported more than adequately by Scripture and Tradition:

1. God is not angry or wrathful, God is loving.  God loves us enough to want to show us how to live without hurting each other, but God also loves us enough to let us make mistakes and to help us learn from them.  Do our mistakes upset God, yes, just like I get upset when my kids disobey or do stupid things, but there's nothing they could do to make me want to utterly destroy them.  I like to believe that God is at least as loving as I am.
2. God is generous.  You might even say wasteful.  God does things like sunsets and flowers, over and over again.  Do we strictly need them to survive?  No, not so much, everything could be gray and uniform and probably a lot more efficient, but what about beauty?  If God, like the Prodigal's father and the vineyard owners of the parable, is forgiving and generous then we probably ought to prepare for the reality that he's going to be that way with everyone, not just the churchgoing folk.
3. Salvation is a relationship.  I don't like to see my relationship with a living God as a burden.  I admit sometimes it feels heavy, but it's a lot better than feeling alone in the universe, that's absolutely crushing.  I live out my relationship with God in a community of people, who teach me how to love as I should, not just people that I like or am attracted to, not just people who I agree with, but everyone.  The Church teaches me how to love my neighbor, and my enemy.  I get to practice on real people!  I like that, and that feels like being saved from selfishness and sin.
4. God will do NEW things.  God is going to show me new people, things and ideas to like, sort of like Facebook, but better (I suspect a lot of the things will also involve puppies, kittens and babies).  When I stopped worrying so much about how the old creation happened in a literal sense, I opened up to the wonderful reality of God's on going creativity and also to the real hope for a Creatio Nova, a New Creation.  When I stopped believing in a silly thing like the Rapture, the idea of Christ coming again sounded hopeful and joyful again.

I just realized I could go on and on about this.  Because it turns out when you like to believe, you can do it better.  Try it, I bet you like it.

The Path to the Dark Side?

As I discussed earlier this week, authority is a peculiar thing.  Claiming authority in the postmodern context is an even more peculiar thing.  In the dominant mythology of my childhood: Star Wars, the peculiarity of power and the exercise thereof were at the center of the story of Anakin and Luke Skywalker, father and son, a man seduced by the Dark Side of the Force and his son who sought to avoid sharing his father's fate.  It's a simple story really, and George Lucas crafts the Force as a mysterious  power, which blends several of the world religions, into a quite attractive, if somewhat  vague, spiritual stew.  The Force is life, the Force binds us together, the Force can be an amazing source of power, but the force also has a Dark Side.

As I grew up with these stories, I sometimes felt a bit frustrated by the limitations of the Force, if you are going to stay on the "light" side of it.  The Dark Side always seemed more powerful and one step ahead of the light.  Even Yoda, the last true Jedi Master, is in exile on the distant swamp world of Dagobah when we meet him.  He can only stand by wringing his little green hands as Luke flies off into danger and almost certain failure.  Meanwhile Darth Vader is choking dudes out with the Force and blowing up planets without so much as a how do you do.  Oh yeah and there are lightsabers, which Vader also rocks with amazing effectiveness.

Throughout episodes IV and V all you ever hear about is how doing anything actually useful with the force is basically a path to the Dark Side, and you begin to wonder if maybe you've picked the wrong side to root for.  It's not actually until you see Anakin finally loose his mind and his soul in The Revenge of the Sith that you really see the power and the cost of the Dark Side.  I mean, sure you knew some bad juju had to take place to make a handsome young Jedi into an eggplant inside a robot, but until you sort of "live through it," I don't think the full insanity of the Dark Side sinks in.

Of course, one of my biggest critiques of the Star Wars narrative is how "quickly" Anakin goes from a guy who mostly tries to do good things to a guy who slaughters younglings.  Especially given the fact that the level of Jedi training he had achieved at that point (he was a Jedi Master trusted with his own Paduwan Learner if you follow the Clone Wars narrative) should have given him the insight to see that the Sith Lord was yanking his chain, again the "light" side of the Force seems pretty deficient and way too bound up in the rules.

But it is his railing against the rules and his impatience with doing things peacefully, as much as his fear of losing everything that ultimately blinds him to the subtle whispers of evil in his ear.  He justifies a lot of his rebellion against the "right" way of doing things with an exceedingly transparent utilitarianism.  Which brings me to the debate about what to do in this galaxy, in our time, on our lonely little planet, where there are no Jedi and no Galactic Empires and alas, no lightsabers.

We are faced with a moment where the use of power and violence present us with an existential crisis.  Do we lash out and destroy our enemy?  Do we take the slow and frustrating road, while so many are suffering and dying?  Can't we defeat evil with it's own weapon, if we just wield it with enough skill?  Aren't we the chosen ones after all?

It was not lost on cultural observers that "safety" and "security" through utter domination were the goals of the Sith.  They were, in fact, the ultimate utilitarians, defeat all the opposition and hold the power to keep the peace and the order of society, until someone was strong enough to take it away.  Eventually they managed to supplant a difficult and corrupt democracy with a crystalline and brutal tyranny.

As we step back, or at least tap the brakes on our latest adventure in the Middle East, I can't help but wonder if our intervention by violence is the best idea.  After all, hasn't ISIS duly demonstrated that when it comes to brutality, they brought their big boy pants?

Don't you think they're drawing a line in the sand and just daring us to step across?

Sure bombs seem like a good idea, even if they're not doing a whole lot of good, it still feels good to be doing something, and maybe make those savages go boom in the process.

But I can't help thinking that the whole thing is pushing us just a little closer to the Dark Side.

Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

I have read Dr. Seuss books to my kids since they were in utero, and there's a pretty solid reason why my blog is titled The Thinks You Can Think.  The good Dr. teaches kids about environmental stewardship in The Lorax, about the silliness of keeping up with whoever in The Star Belly Sneetches, about self esteem and also how to deal with bad times in Oh, the Places You'll Go.  But one that I keep reading them as they grow up in this affluent American culture is Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are. 
As I listened to the radio news on NPR this week, I am reminded how lucky we truly are.  We could live in West Africa and be staring down the barrel of an Ebola outbreak that our nation's medical system is woefully ill-equipped to handle.  Here, I have heard more worry from CDC about a bad flu epidemic than I do about Ebola, it's not an airborne pathogen (therefore more easily contained) and it is actually treatable with the resources and medicines available to us (if you will notice the American folk who were shipped home a few months ago and treated are mostly doing just fine).  I shiver when I think of the number of human lives that are going to be claimed by this disease, just because they aren't "lucky" enough to live in a place that could stop it.
Also, I think about the children in Ukraine, who went back to school later than usual because of a teacher's strike, oh no wait, it was because of a war, that a whole bunch of people on both sides don't want to admit is even happening.  Hearing a description on the radio yesterday of a reporter on the scene and he said it was shocking to hear the sound of children playing and parents sending them off to their first day of school while mortar shells exploded some five kilometers away.  It choked me up a little.  I wondered if I would have the courage to send my kids to school if I knew mortars were going off anywhere in the vicinity.  I was awed by the adaptability of human beings, and I was sorrowful that some of us have to adapt to that sort of horror. I get the sense that perhaps "lucky" is a bad word to describe what we are.
And now Hong Kong, people are protesting in the streets and calling for a change, and it seems mostly peaceful and somewhat hopeful, but a man, who covered the 1988 events in Tiananmen square, said that it seemed that way there too, until the army and the tanks showed up.  I wonder if China has changed very much in almost 20 years, and then I remember how old China is, and how slowly they change, and I worry for all those people in Hong Kong, who just want a little more "luck."
Finally, there was the report from Baghdad, Where some "lucky" Iraqis were enjoying themselves at a park along the Tigris river, or trying to enjoy themselves if it weren't for the very Irish sounding BBC reporter who kept reminding them that the Islamic State fighters were only a few miles away, and that their defense forces were probably not going to be able to stop them.  I wondered how lucky they felt when their best choice was to "invite" the imperial powers of the west back into their city, to once again occupy and once again start the bombing, in order to protect them.  I wonder if they feel "lucky?"
We live in a culture that believes, by and large, that you make your own luck.  We are the work hard and play smart and you'll rise to the top, but we don't adequately account for all the luck that goes into being able to believe that.
Telling ourselves how lucky we are doesn't necessarily produce the necessary empathy for the plight of our fellow human beings.  We must remember that we don't deserve our "luck" any more than they deserve theirs.  Jesus said, "to those to whom much has been given, much will be required," most people think he was talking about some spiritual gift of salvation, but maybe he was simply talking about "luck."
In that case, perhaps we should re-think some of our foreign policies.

As One with Authority

Once upon a time, so they tell me, clergy had authority.  Sometimes I allow myself to believe it, usually when someone anachronistically shows deference to my position.  I try to be aware of the fact that I may be wielding it so that I don't unintentionally damage others.  But for the most part I don't really feel like I've got much clout, and yet, I'm what most would call a leader.  Here's an attempt at an objective description of "leading" in a Presbyterian Church:

1. We're basically a democracy, so I'm chosen by vote.
2. My salary is public knowledge, which is again approved by vote (the only part of the budget that is), and in a lot of churches said salary is one of the single largest line items on the budget.
3. I can preach, exhort and cajole, but ultimately I can't order anyone to do anything.  I cannot fire anyone, or cut them from the team, I can't make them be more committed to the church.
4. I have learned that guilt trips and political maneuvering are manipulative behavior and sign of bad boundaries and can perhaps even be considered bullying, at least if I'm the one doing them, because I have "power."
5. I constantly have to balance between over-functioning (doing everything) and being seen as a slacker.  And I have to deal with the reality that people will think I'm doing a lot better job at the pastor thing if I over-function, even though personally and for the sake of the community it's one of the worst things I could do.
6. I do not have any magical powers.
7. I do have feelings, and they can be hurt, but I'm supposed to try super hard to love the people who hurt them..

I'm working through Matthew 21 right now, where the religious leaders in Jerusalem question Jesus' authority.  He responds with questions of his own, parables and in many cases some fairly insulting judgments against them.  And while rhetorically and in public opinion Jesus wins the argument, we know a cross is right around the corner, because Matthew keeps reminding us: "they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds."

I am not trying to equivocate myself and Jesus, nor do I intend to complain about my congregation or my vocation as a whole. I actually like my job, with all it's peculiar quirks.  What I would like to examine is the nature of authority and specifically what constitutes authority in the context of the 21st century church.

The office and the education only go so far.  I know a lot of things that absolutely no one cares about.  Harry Emerson Fosdick once quipped that, "no one ever goes to church to find out what happened to the Hittites."  Well, first off, I know who the Hittites were, and I have read an assembly of theories about what became of them, but this does not give me ability to transform lives.

And what about the authority of the office and the ordination?  Well, I remember in Seminary and shortly thereafter, hearing all sorts of cautionary tales about how people can abuse the "role" of pastor.  Occasionally I have had people defer to me because of the role, but more often than not, in a non-hierarchical (and well... Scottish) structure like mine, any attempt to wield power or authority meets with almost automatic resistance.

People from Baptist traditions often speak reverentially about the role of Pastor, so do people from certain immigrant backgrounds, but these are just rare tastes that sort of help me understand what ministry "used to be like."

I'm under no illusions that the way it used to be was somehow better.  I see how, even now, egomaniacs can "succeed" in ministry, but I have no desire to walk that road.

I guess I just have to look at Jesus, who didn't actually grasp at the power that he pretty surely could have had, neither did he pull back from those who questioned his authenticity and intentions.

This sort of thing leaves me feeling helpless and powerless, and maybe that's just where I need to be to lead.

Didn't Jesus say something about the meek inheriting the earth?