THE FALLEN CLERIC

I haven’t put up a new post in a very long time.  Even as it sit typing this one now, I’m doing it to avoid getting down to business with prepping a sermon for Sunday.

That’s right, 3:29 on Friday and still no sermon.  Nothing even started.  To every person in every church on every Sunday morning who feels like they don’t want to be there, know this — the man (or woman) up front is often fighting the same battles.  We get discouraged too.  We get exhausted. We feel we have nothing to say, nothing to share, and nothing to give.  We often feel the tension between what we profess and how we live.

But Sunday comes every week and none of the above will suffice for not having something ready to say.  And nothing should.  One of the best (though not one of the funnest) things about being a pastor is that we are reminded, by necessity, that sometimes the best we can do is simply show up.

I understand not wanting to get up and go to church.   I understand staying up too late on a Saturday and just wanting to sleep in, or not wanting to be around a big group of people in the morning.  I understand struggling with prayer.  I understand being in a place in your life where, sometimes, for long periods of time, you don’t even care, and feeling like no one could ever identify with how bad you feel or how hopeless things seem.  Every pastor understands those things.  Some might not admit it.  Some might prefer to let you think they are super-human, but that just means that they’re one day going to have farther to fall.

Sunday comes every week.  And there’s a fine line between being a hypocrite on one hand, and simply acknowledging on the other that with the spiritual life — as with so many things — showing up is more than half the battle.  So I’ll sit here right now writing about how hard this is going to be.  After I stop writing this post I’ll probably still spend several more hours agonizing over what I’m going to say and how I’ll say it.  But I promise you that between now and Sunday, I will write a sermon.  And when I get up there Sunday morning, it’s not going to sound like I’m phoning it in — like I just threw some drivel together because I didn’t care.  If you come to be encouraged, you might find encouragement.  If you come to be challenged, you might be challenged.  If you come simply because your husband or wife dragged your sorry butt-end out of bed and you’re not looking for anything at all, well — know that on some days the only difference between us is that getting up there and being prepared is what I get paid for.

But the thing is — that doesn’t for one second mean I don’t mean every word I say, that it’s not full of truth.  All it means is that the messenger sometimes struggles not to get lost before the message reaches you.  Actually, the message is all the more powerful in contrast to the frailty and weakness of the messenger.

The passage below is adapted from plural to singular.

2 Corinthians 4:7-9; 16-18 (MSG)
⁷ If you only look at me, you might well miss the brightness. I carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pot of my ordinary life.  That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with me.

⁸ As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that I’m not much to look at. I’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but I’m not demoralized (at least not right now!); I’m not sure what to do, ⁹ but I know that God knows what to do; I’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left my side; I’ve been thrown down, but I haven’t broken.

¹⁶ So I’m not giving up. How could I! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on me, on the inside, where God is making new life, [I know that] not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.
¹⁷ These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for [all of] us.
¹⁸ There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.

That’s a future promise, but this is present reality.  Here and now, times are tough.  Hearts break, people live without love.  Many rarely know joy.  We struggle to let others know us and even harder to let them love us.  We run out of money, life loses its gloss, and we grind out some of our hours by sheer resolve and force of will.  That is part of life in a broken world.  Parts of all of our lives, of all of our days, are broken.  Even Sundays find themselves among the broken pieces of the world and we can be sure that — on those days too — we will sometimes feel the loneliness and pain, or the apathy, of our brokenness.

Still, Sunday comes every week.  We show up not because life is perfect.  We show up not because we are not broken or bleeding.  We show up not because we are good.  No, we show up because life is full of struggle.  We often show up broken and bloody.  We show up not because we are good, but because we need to be reminded that God is good.

It’s the farthest thing from hypocrisy, my friends.  No one knows when you’re at church how much you had to overcome just to get there that day, how many excuses you had to shoot in the head and lay to rest, how much apathy or fear or suspicion you had to wade through.  No one knows, that is, except  God.

I hope to see you Sunday, to shake your hand, look you in the eye, and exchange a knowing glance with you.  If that happens, I’ll know you read this post, and you’ll know that I may have more in common with you than you had ever imagined.  Showing up is more than half the battle.

ADDENDUM
It is now 10:11 pm.  The sermon is finished.  I am exhausted, having sat here for the past seven hours either procrastinating, writing, or both.  But I love what I have here, and am excited about sharing it Sunday.  I may be tired, I may not even want to get up Sunday morning, but once I get up there and spread my notes out, I’ll be engaged.  No phoning it in.  We don’t have to want to do things, but we might as well do well whatever we have chosen to do.

Recently Glenn Beck said, ”If you find the words social justice or economic justice, on your church website, run as fast as you can.”  He suggests that congregants in churches that teach social/economic justice should leave their churches and find new ones, and that these words are code words indicating communism or Nazism.

“Good god, are you kidding?”  Nope.  Watch this.

Beck is ignorant. Rather than running from churches that preach social justice, people should be flocking to them. It is the church’s job to shape society, to hold it to a higher standard. The church, more than any other institution, should be calling our social and economic systems to account.

It is simply indisputable that Jesus cared deeply for the poor and the disadvantaged, and devoted his life to serving them, challenging his followers to do the same. There is room, perhaps, for disagreement on how a faithful follower of Jesus should respond to this challenge — whether by asking more of our social and economic systems on a government level, or whether by working for justice through private organizations. These are two responses to that challenge from Jesus that are determined not by any objective command from Christ, but rather by one’s own political point of view. Those who believe that government has a responsibility to structure itself on behalf of the “least of these” will see Christ’s words as a command to ratchet up government programs. Those who do not believe government should be involved in helping the poor will see Christ’s words as a command to do all one can for the poor voluntarily, both as an individual and through support of private programs.

But I almost forgot my main point, which of course is that Glenn Beck doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. I am a pastor, a counselor, and a college instructor, therefore I avoid giving people advice on how to fly airplanes, or play rugby. Glenn Beck is not a theologian and should probably consider not advising people on what is and is not appropriate for their churches to teach. As you see from the video, he apparently does not even understand his own religious tradition’s take on this.

Every church should teach social justice, because it is simply indisputable, looking at scripture, that the poor and disadvantaged are close to the heart of God. Biblical Christians can certainly disagree over what should be done, but not that the commands are there to do something. In fact, any church that neglects this teaching is missing what is apparently a key priority for God, if 2300 verses in scripture about money and/or poverty bear any weight at all. (More verses on money and poverty than any other topic in scripture.)

For anyone interested more in reality than in hysterics, you might check this out:

I’m a Social Justice Christian_PSA from New Name Pictures on Vimeo.

Originally posted 2010-04-12 00:15:17. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

I have a friend who has a friend who is looking for a good church.  In the middle of his search, he went to a church where he heard that “the church is not meant to serve you and meet all your needs.”  Now he is feeling guilty for even looking for a church that seems like the right place for him.  Is it okay to shop for a church, to look around for one that seems to “fit?”

The answer, I believe, is yes.  AND – the church is not meant to serve you and meet all your needs!  It’s fine to look for a church that has beliefs and practices you are okay being involved with.  It is fine to look for preaching that “works” for you, as long as “works” means challenging you, prodding you, making you think, and maybe even sometimes making you mad.  “Working for you” should mean you won’t always agree with everything, will sometimes feel a bit offended, and will frequently be challenged and urged to think.  If you are not stretched and challenged, you are not learning anything.  So find a church where the preaching challenges you to grow and makes you think in new ways.

On the other hand, it’s not a good idea to approach finding a church from a consumer mindset.  Churches that are doing the best work are critiquing the American “you can have it all” way of thinking.  Churches that have anything important to say are saying – at the very least – that the real meaning of life is something other than getting everything we want, or even everything we think we need.  [In my opinion, any church that is not constantly returning to this idea has lost its way and now believes it is part of the culture.  Churches should stand outside the culture and never become beholden to it.]  Finding a church is not like deciding what to order at McDonald’s.

I think finding a church is actually more like finding a mate.  Because of the size of the commitment you are going to make to a mate, you are serious about the search.  You don’t just settle for anybody.  At least you shouldn’t!  You date.  You think through what it is you’re looking for and what marriage is going to mean.  (continue reading…)

Originally posted 2009-11-17 19:47:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Some who read my last post might be tempted to think, “Dude, what’s up with the raw emotion there? You obviously had some crappy experiences.” And anyone who thinks that would be right.

All of us are going through life reacting to early experiences; in school, with our parents, with friends, (Freud would say with potty training), and with church. Of course I am reacting to early experiences. And to later ones, for that matter. Unless you grew up in the church, you cannot understand exactly what’s happening here.

The church embraces and espouses some of the most noble messages on earth. Love, refusal to judge, dignity for every person — those are great universal themes that appear in the Bible and in many other religious books. Every Christian church will feature sermons on these themes. But when it comes to actual practice, many churches carry on as if they have never even read the Bible at all. Others are strict literalists about things like getting tattoos, but seem to be unfamiliar with passages about love. Some can break their understanding of sin down into minute detail, but have such a narrow understanding of grace that it can no longer even serve as the “cure” for sin that the New Testament suggests.

To grow up in this environment, where these great themes are taught, but so often not practiced, creates massive dissonance for many people. So many of the people who come to Wildwind report incredible cases of abuse — pastors and teachers who said unconscionable things to them when they were at vulnerable places in their spiritual journeys. Where in God’s name have churches and spiritual leaders gotten off in treating people (the people Christ loved and – we believe – gave his life for) with such irreverance?

So yes, this experience does create a kind of post-traumatic stress for some people. It certainly has for me. Some decide the whole enterprise is bogus and just walk out. Others remain but become cynics. Still others work desperately to be honest about where the church has gone wrong and lovingly (although firmly) get it back on track. That is what we are trying to do at Wildwind. We are not perfect, but we are trying to keep ‘the main thing the main thing.”

Trust me — this only appears simple. But if it were, all churches would be doing it. And those of us trying to do it would be doing it better.

Originally posted 2007-05-03 18:00:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

By and large, churches are still trying to shame people into right living.  Some of the biggest-selling books on Christian living in the past few years are shame-based books.  Shame-based books are written by (usually well-intentioned) shame-based people who live shame-based lives and preach a shame-based gospel.  You’d think after centuries of the shame-game, we’d realize shame, fear, and threats do not work.  If they worked, the Catholic countries would be the most moral countries on the planet, but they’re not.  If they worked, the Holocaust could never have happened in “Christian” Europe, but it did.  If they worked, Christians would be known the world over for their compassion, their generosity, their love, their kindness, and their openness to people who might think differently from them, but we’re not.

As long as I have been in ministry, my message has always been, “There’s something wrong with the way we’re preaching the message.”  We’re  not getting it, and we’re not getting it on very deep and fundamental levels.  Levels that lead to depths of violence and lovelessness that are stunning to those who are  not Christians.  This is not about shame.  This is not about feeling guilty for anything.  This is not about working hard now so I can know God later.  This is not about earning the reward, it’s about finding that after all our years of trying to earn it, we had it all along.  But shame won’t allow us to take it.

In a Christian world without shame, many pastors would have little to preach about.  In a Christian world without shame, many Christian authors couldn’t find readers.  In a Christian world without shame, many of the people who now flock to our churches to receive more lashes every week would find that the relentless love of God does not demand more of them but less — and then eventually leads naturally and easily to the “more” we are all seeking in our tortured efforts.  But we’re shame-based people.  Taking something we haven’t earned is — well — shameful.  We must deserve it and if we don’t deserve it, we must reject it.  That is why the lavish grace of God, freely available to all people, languishes on the shelf.

I hear regularly of preachers who will not do weddings for couples who live together.  After all, it’s important to stand on principles, isn’t it?  After all, if preachers don’t create those firm boundaries, who will?  But the point of the gospel, the point of the Christian god being a bloodied and naked man hanging on a piece of wood, is that love has no limits.  Love does not seek to divide.  Love does not say, “I care for you, but it’s important no one gets the wrong impression, so I cannot be open to you in the following ways…”  When love is truly love, it dies for the one it loves.  It suffers the humiliation and pain that sometimes comes with love, taking pain into itself and  never seeking to make victims of anyone else.  Isn’t marriage what we want to see, pastors?  Don’t we want to see people making those commitments to each other?  But we stand in judgment over them for living together without marriage, then refuse to actually bring them into matrimony because they live together, and then judge them for living together?  Is this madness?  Scratch that — it really wasn’t a question.  Yes, it is madness.

Love wills the good of the object.  That’s love.  Love wants what is best for the one loved.  If a pastor believes marriage is better than living together, and loves the people in front of him/her, then he/she will seek to “love them into marriage.”  Turning people away because they are wrong (regardless of how strongly we feel about their lives, choices, behavior, etc.) is exactly what Jesus NEVER did.  How do we come up with so-called Christian systems of ethics that not only endorse things that Jesus never did, but that actually claim that our Jesus-less way is the most moral and ethical thing we could do?  Until we can come up with a way of understanding Christianity that actually allows us to love people the way Jesus did, instead of creating systems of excuses for not loving them, we’re missing something so critical that our entire message is in danger of being invalidated completely.  Attesting to this trend are millions of God-seeking and God-loving people who have found the church to be an inhospitable place for them or people they love, and dropped out in pain and frustration.

But this is what shame does, and the only thing shame can do.  Many who can no longer stand the shame and are hungry for love (which, of course, is what the message is supposed to be about to begin with and which, ironically, almost no one denies, even while we continue to teach shame) end up leaving the church.  For those who outgrow their shame-based identity and hunger for love, it becomes difficult to find a Christian church that preaches that gospel.  Those who remain in the church are often (though not always) those who haven’t  yet gotten enough of shame and fear and guilt and are not yet ready to receive grace.

And guess what?  God loves them all.  Because that’s what God does.