Go out into the world...

I will be away for most of this week at the planning conference for the Presbytery Pastoral Care Network. We will be planning the conference for this October. For you who read this blog and therefore are interested in the work we do, I want to alert you to the dates and place of this conference. Here is what we have on our web page.

October 25-29

San Francisco Seminary

Plan now to attend the 11th annual conference of the Presbytery Pastoral Care Network. Maybe you can even build in a few days of vacation on either side of the conference and explore the wonders of San Francisco .

Whether you are an individual pastor concerned with how to maintain a rich, creative balance in your ministry; have a responsibility for helping prospective members prepare for the ministry; or are a member of a presbytery committee charged with care of pastors, plan to attend. Arrangements are underway for Keynote Speakers and Workshops on the theme of Coaching, Mentoring and Spiritual Direction. This is an opportunity to share with colleagues who have the same interest and participate in invigorating workshops that will increase your skills

If you might consider attending and have some questions, let me know. After next week I should have some good information.

We live in a spiritually hungry, institutionally untrusting age. Millions of people claim to be spiritually focused, claiming belief in God and even acceptance of Jesus as the Christ, but not wanting any relationship with the church. Think of the flow of the church’s history. We began as a counter-cultural movement that was frequently considered a threat to the state. Then, roughly 500 years later, with Constantine, the church became a part of the state. There was a major split about 1,000 years after the church began between the East and the West. The result was the antecedents of the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church. After approximately another 500 years, the Protestant Reformation split the church further. Among many factors was the rise of nationalism and churches identified with their local states. Now, another 500 years later, millions of adherents to Christianity are separating themselves from the church as a stable institution.

I could name several dangers inherent in people trying to be faithful to Christ while separating themselves from the Body of Christ, but perhaps we also need to ask ourselves where God is in all this turbulence. The history reflected in Scripture is that God always remained faithful to the people God has called together but that faithfulness was often in unexpected forms. Denominations have been valuable but are clearly changing. Churches as structures are also scrambling to find a new form of faithfulness.

I don’t know what form the people of God will take in the future, but I do trust in the sovereignty of God and want to be open to God’s new creation as it evolves.

One of the rising concerns among those who care about clergy is the number of people who have a call, even gone to seminary, but can’t find employment as a pastor. This is not a new concern but it may be exacerbated lately because of the economic downturn. It is also affected by the rise of the mega-churches who may well be having the same effect among churches that Superstores have had on small businesses. Like a Wall mart, a mega-church can offer many services that smaller churches cannot and their very biggness seems attractive to congregants. The result seem to be the shrinking of many small churches. I read somewhere that more than half of all Presbyterian Churches have less than 100 members.

We can look at the meaning of all of this another time, but for the moment lets focus on the unemployed pastor. What does it mean for a person to feel a call from God, responded by making the necessary preparations, but not be able to find a church? It is a common biblical theme to discover that people have misunderstood God’s promise in their lives. Israel thought they could not exist without the temple until God helped them discover the synagogue. We sometimes try to box God in according to our definition of reality. Not finding a church that will employ you does not mean that your call was inauthentic. For some, God’s call may not include a church that can fully employ them.

While it involves new forms of “tent-making,” one of the trends in our culture is the rise of the home church or small spiritual group. In the history of Christianity, some found their calling as worker-priests, fulfilling their ministry in full time secular employment. Methodists employed circuit riders and continue to have multiple point charges. What are other innovative ways that God might be calling us in the future?

This may be the time for some deep, innovative, flexible thinking about the meaning of God’s call in our circumstances. It is clear that our age needs some profound theological thinking. Sometimes, depth comes at a price.

In editing a novel I am working on, I came across a description of the challenge of expectations, both the pastors and that of the congregation, that I think helps expose the conflicts that often lead to despair for many exhausted pastors.

His secretary has just challenged him about overworking. He then describes his own thought process. “He wasn’t offended. He just didn’t know how to meet his own expectations of ministry. The more projects he tried to address, the more parishioner needs failed to get his attention. The more he tried to meet the often legitimate needs of parishioners, the less time he could apply to the larger issues of the church and community. As the complexity of ministry increased, the more he felt inadequate to the task. The more inadequate he felt, the stronger was the feeling that people did not appreciate him.”

The Duke study on clergy health speaks of the effect of congregational criticism on the pastor. Many of us in the ministry are what are called “people pleasers.” We responded to the call because we wanted to help others and make the world a better place. The problem is that in any church there are a number of people who are quite certain what a pastor’s job should be but even they don’t agree with each other. On top of that, a pastor’s self expectation is shaped by his or her own understanding of the faith and the larger church’s expectation of what a pastor should be doing.

It would be an interesting exercise for a pastor to try to write down what s/he considers the most important aspects of being faithful to his or her call.

Next ask a couple of leaders in the church to look at the description and note where there might be tension between what the pastor expects of the pastor and what it is assumed the majority of the congregation expects.

A third step would be to ask the leadership to work with the pastor in addressing that tension and honoring the legitimate aspects of both.

Since none of us are in perfect accord with what the Gospel calls us to be as a church, it is natural that there are going to be tensions. We can avoid a sense of despair if we can name the tensions and develop a community approach in addressing them. Isolation is a powerful tool of despair.

In a success obsessed society, it is worth remembering that God’s call can not always be measured by the world’s criteria of success. How’s your budget? How is your attendance at worship? Is your church growing? Ezekiel 3 is a valuable passage when a pastor is struggling with what s/he is doing wrong. Ezekiel was called to eat the word but then was told that the people were not going to listen when he spoke to them. A critical element in our obedience to call is remembering who we are to obey. “Mortal, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart and hear with your ears; then go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them. Say to them, “Thus says the Lord God;” whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

This is not an invitation to self-flagellation or playing the victim. Rather, it is a reminder that sometimes God can use faithfulness even when it is not obvious in terms of the world’s response. There are plenty of pastors who have served small congregations in a way that has transformed lives. Sometimes they have been the chaplain to a dieing congregation because the people refused to hear but his or her task was to faithfully proclaim. Isaiah 6:8 ff is another example of the value of ministry that at times does not appear to produce fruit.

The central truth is that God is sovereign and we are to seek to be faithful to God’s call. Our dignity that can sustain us, even at points of despair, is that we have been named and called by God. See Jeremiah 1:5.