:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I used to fight for contemporary worship songs at the various churches I attended.

It was a stupid fight because it was also an unnecessary fight.

Incorporating new worship songs was a no-brainer. There were plenty of people who supported a mix of old and new songs in church.

But I encountered some resistance, and therefore I resolved to fight against the traditionalists. We needed fresh expressions of God alongside the tried and true hymns of yesterday, and I carried my guitar off to war.

I believed the church should look a certain way. I had allies affirming me, patting me on the back as I retreated each Sunday after launching a rhythmic salvo. Some even told me I needed to start a new service that left the hymn crooners with their dusty, yellowing hymnals.

Others believed the service looked just fine as is. They had their supporters too.

One side wanted to preserve the church’s worship style. The other wanted to change it.

Both were fighting for a personal preference rooted in culture. The 1800’s and the late 1900’s were engaged in a church-rocking struggle.

Once, I met a young pastor in the midst of a particularly intense worship war. Suddenly, when I saw a worship war from the outside, the black and white lines of my own struggle evaporated. As he talked about the combat his worship leader waged against certain members of the congregation, the futility of it all struck me.

I’d been wrong to fight, even if the church really did need to freshen up its song selection.

At the climax of his story, the young pastor recounted a conversation with his worship leader. He told the worship leader, “You are the leader, you’re in charge, you need to make them follow you.”

I said very little in reply. My heart broke. Who are we fighting against?

The irony of worship music and worship in general is that we all bring personal preference and past experience into a mix that is tough to join together each Sunday morning so that we can all sing to God with one voice. We are members of the same body, worshipping the same Lord, and yet it’s so easy to become defensive, fighting for what we want the church to look like.

In the midst of fighting for a certain feel in the church, we lose sight of one another. I know I certainly painted some people with broad brush strokes, writing off their perspectives, and they did the same to me.

One thing a lot of people didn’t realize about me back in the days of the worship wars is that I actually really like hymns. My problem as a worship leader was my lack of musical ability. I couldn’t play them. When I did try to play them, I often messed up or lost my way around the third or fourth verse.

Why didn’t we have that conversation?

I knew I was one of the only people pushing to bring in the new worship songs at that time. If I admitted that I’m not quite cut out for leading worship, which I wasn’t, who would carry the flag for my side?

Mixed up in the worship wars, we all faced a far deadlier enemy, our selfish desires for control. As I witnessed one side holding tightly to its way of doing church, I chose to wage a frontal assault. In the end, we ended up fighting one another instead of our perceptions about what church needs to look like.

So far as I can tell, there is a truce in many of the worship wars. A treaty has been brokered. However, there were casualties. I know I caused a few of them.

Whenever I feel tempted to exert an opinion about the way a church handles worship music these days, I stop myself. Such things are not worthy of my breath or brain waves. My guitar has long since been disarmed, hidden in the peace and quiet of my bedroom.

Whatever we end up singing, I’m done fighting worship wars. I’m a worship pacifist. I can just say thank you for the people around me. I need the people around me far more than I need my favorite songs, and that has been one of the greatest lessons I could have ever learned about belonging to a community.

Today’s guest post is by J. R. Goudeau, whose mother literally wrote the book on women in ministry:

I’ve spent most of my adult life going back and forth between wanting to do ministry and running from it like the plague. I know the gifts that God has given me, teaching and loving and helping people in need, are designed for ministry. I know that because I inherited them from my mother, who is one of the most gifted ministers I have ever known.

The reason I’ve run from them is because I’ve seen firsthand what it can be like for a woman in ministry.

Over the many, many years my mother has been teaching, in Sunday church, ladies’ class, and now at a Christian university as a theology professor, she has been patient, kind, and loving. Mostly, people have listened well to her. Sometimes she has been boxed into stereotypes—a woman who speaks must be “pushy” or have an agenda.

My mother does not. She is gentle and strong, thoughtful and discerning. She is not afraid of saying what is truth, but she is not out to shove an idea on a church that is not ready for it. I’ve heard her counsel churches that were tackling the role of women in their congregations to take their time, to pray, to listen to each other, to base their changes on strong theology and not on feelings or emotions or the economic power of a rich influential few.

My mother is not afraid to challenge freshman boys who enter her class ready to spew their opinions on anyone. But she spends most of her time working with young women who plan on using their gifts and young men who listen to her as a teacher, regardless of her gender.

She has earned her place among her mostly male colleagues through her teaching, her scholarship, and her desire to partner with them. She literally wrote the book on how to handle balanced and loving partnership between men and women in the church. Her book, Bound and Determined, argues that “we are bound together as Christian women and men by God’s design and that we must live with a determination to be God’s holy people in all of our partnerships.” It takes both women and men to have this conversation.

I watched as she lived out the stories that became her book. I watched as she navigated over the years the deeply-held convictions of people who thought that her gender kept her from using the gifts that God gave her. I watched her pain from, and forgiveness for, people who said hurtful or untrue things over the years.

She handled these situations with maturity. In my immaturity, I couldn’t always understand why she bothered.

The role of women in the church was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

And then I had two daughters. And the thought that they might ever feel like I felt at the age of seven, when I wanted to be a boy so I could preach, keeps me up at night. And I finally understand why both my mother and my father talked and prayed and moved to make a space for women in the church where I grew up, where women now teach.

It was for me. And my sister. And my brother. Because our legacy of faith is the most important thing for both of them. Because they value our voices, male and female. Because they want us to grow up to be the people God has called us to be, nothing more and nothing less.

Since becoming a mother, I have found myself moving back into ministry, just like my mother. When I was little, they used to strap my pack ‘n’ play in the back of our big van (it was the ‘70s) and haul me to college ministry devos. Now we bring our daughters along (in car seats, of course) to poor neighborhoods all over Austin while visiting Burmese refugees. In the last few years I’ve spent most of my time with mothers who weave and create traditional handicrafts in their home. I was drawn toward ministry even when I wasn’t looking for it. Looking back on the last five years in which I’ve been a mother, I realize I’ve created the same balance of academia, ministry, and motherhood my own mother cultivated in my growing-up years.

I couldn’t be prouder to take after her. And I can never thank her enough for the path she forged, for me and for women like me. I’ll spend my life trying.

My oldest daughter has already begun rolling her eyes at the things I say. I hear her tone, the distinct “MOOOOOM” only a daughter can roll out, and I know the road ahead of us could be long. I’ll probably embarrass her over the years. But I can only hope she has a fraction of the respect and love for me someday that I feel for my own mother.

I’ve entered ministry, full-on with my sleeves rolled up. I’m ready to talk and teach. Because I want my daughters to be the women that God created them to be. I’m ready to carve out a space for their precious, intelligent, beautiful voices. Just like my mother did for me.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

J. R. Goudeau is the Executive Director and co-founder of Hill Country Hill Tribers, as well as a grad student in English literature. When she’s supposed to be working on her dissertation, she can usually be found blogging about books, babies and Burmese refugees at loveiswhatyoudo.wordpress.com.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed. Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.

Next week’s blogger: Nicole Unice

I should have known right away why the church we visited in Connecticut felt like a place I could belong. I just needed to compare it to every other church that felt like a round hole for me, the obviously square peg. However, the thought eluded me.

Rather than wondering why I felt like I belonged, I began to wonder why it didn’t repulse me.

For years I’d sat in services micro-analyzing everything. I’d grown so attached to my opinions on what the church should be and look like, that I found it hard to accept anything. I used to obsess over the ways everyone wanted me to meet with God, rather than just letting go.

Something had changed in me. God taught me to go to church and listen for him with his people. Sometimes he took me in a very different direction than the actual service. Sometimes I didn’t sing along to the songs that made no sense—like that one really popular song that mashes together a bunch of biblical ideas from the second coming to a revival in a way that I could never sort out.

I just closed my eyes and meditated on God as my savior rather than fighting the song. This was a small step for me.

I stopped trying to shape the church into my own image. I don’t know how I arrived at that point. Honestly, I think seven years outside of the church was the only cure for me. God had to strip all of my desires to control away from me.

While outside of the church I knew two things for sure:

1. I wanted to be in Christian community more than anything else.

2. I was a toxic threat to Christian community as I tried to let go of my preconceived notions for the church.

While God certainly changed me, there was something else that happened when I started going to that church in Connecticut: I found people who were asking the same questions and worshipping in ways that made more sense to me.

Just thinking superficially, our sanctuary felt more like a “cozy” café than the “bright, generic conference center feel” of the churches built by my parents’ generation. I put my cultural opinions in quotes there. It’s not like one is right or wrong. They both reflect the styles, habits, and values of cultures.

These values permeated everything from the questions people asked to the season of life for our friends. We were a church that consisted primarily of generations X and Y, and I had no idea how dramatically this impacted me until a friend pointed it out.

We certainly had some diversity of generations, but our church clearly reflected the values of my own generation. There was something so familiar and life-giving in discovering people who had the same struggles, questions, and ways of meeting God. They created the kind of sacred space that I longed for in my spirit.

I still don’t know what to think about all of this.

I don’t like the idea of letting one culture’s values shape our church culture so radically for each generation. What will my own kids think of a church shaped by Generation Y? It will no doubt appear to be extremely dull to them.

As I returned each Sunday and began to attend small group, I gave in to the allure of joining with my own tribe. I’d been in the wilderness for seven years. I couldn’t afford to hold myself to some kind of high standard where I waited for the perfect church that somehow transcended generational boundaries and provided the perfect mix of race, gender, and affluence.

Does such a church even exist?

Sometimes you need to just work within the limitations of our world, and even within limitations and flaws you can create something beautiful.

And besides, whether you attend a Roman Catholic Church or a staunchly fundamentalist Bible church, you’re experiencing a version of church from a particular time and place. It’s not like I’m doing anything different by attending my Generation X-Y church.

Our problems start when one church starts to declare it has tapped into the only biblical way to worship God. After my friend pointed this out to me, I realized that sitting in the round in a sanctuary graced by earth tones and a rocking worship band was tapping into the familiar.

For that season, I needed something familiar.

I needed to belong. I needed to know I wasn’t the only person like me trying to find God. It was the beginning of a long journey out of the wilderness. Sometimes you need to find your own people in order to figure out the path home.

Sometimes I write totally ridiculous stuff about pastors raging with testosterone who pound on pulpits. Other times I play with hyperbole in response to pastors who dress business casual and say pretty awful things about women in the nicest way possible.

When I write with these over the top conventions, I think I sometimes make guys think, “Whoah!”

For those not familiar with guy speak, that can be translated as, “Hey men, get off my case!”

It’s possible I may be using hyperbole right now.

Translation matters aside, I wonder if my over the top introductions give the wrong impression. While I’m making light of the more extreme masculinity stuff, I certainly don’t want to shoot down any guys. In playing off the extreme ways that men have alienated women, I don’t want to alienate men in the process.

In fact, I believe that equality in the church can happen through a very simple formula.

Less win for men + more win for women = Everyone wins.

That an English major could express an idea in mathematical form, no matter how basic, is just about as shocking as a certain pastor in Seattle going on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy—especially since that show is probably cancelled. I’m also sure there’s probably a more complex way to write out that equation with parentheses and exclamation points or whatever they use for math these days.

Be that as it may, here’s the tension we face:

Do we need to tear men down in order to build women up? Not exactly.

This isn’t an either/or situation, but it does require some changes and shifts. It may even require some downgrades for men. However, the talk of equality doesn’t need to turn into a matter where there is a winner and a loser.

If you follow The Office, you know that it’s possible to have a win/win/win solution. You win, the other person wins, and I win because I helped you both win. It’s so crazy that it just may work.

The key to gender equality, in my eyes, is that it requires one side winning a little less so that everyone can win. That may feel like a big deal, but think of it this way, if women can actually stop losing and win a bit more, the men may end up winning in other ways… ahem. 

Think of it like this… let’s say hypothetically that on a certain occasion I am failing to communicate with my wife—not that such a thing EVER happens. But just in a fictional, make believe world, I commit the twin offenses of keeping my thoughts to myself and failing to listen to my wife.

Most of you should be able to guess what happens next. If not, we need to talk.

My wife will feel neglected, and that failure on my part puts a ton of strain on the marriage. Worse than that, my failure to build lines of communication make my wife feel helpless. What can she do if she feels neglected and can’t communicate with me?

THAT is our problem in the church. Many women feel ignored, have been abused, and don’t have any way to pursue a solution. They can’t even say how they feel in many churches. The inequality and neglect women feel in the church is cutting men off from something awesome and beautiful: empowered women who can reach their God-given potential, serving alongside of them and supporting them when they grow weary.

When I say that men need to “lose” a little, what I’m really saying is they need to trade some of their dominance in order to listen and to cultivate more equality with women. When they lose some of that dominance, I think they’ll gain something far better in the end—a healthy role for women in the church.

This trades a structure in the church defined by power for relationships in the church defined by love. For people who follow a dude who made his disciples into his very own family rather than keeping them as servants, this is a pretty basic concept to grasp.

So when we talk about equality for women in the church, I think we need to beware overstating our case or threatening men in unhelpful ways. We don’t want to make this sound like men need to lose everything. This isn’t about the end of masculinity. This is a shift, a relatively small lose in the long run that has a huge pay off.

Men can go shoot stuff, grill it, and watch a boxing match or whatever. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the power in the church is slanted so far toward men that women feel neglected and boxed in. That’s something nobody wants.

With equality in the church, we’re creating the ideal environment where everyone can win.

Guys like me can till manure from my rabbits into my vegetable garden.

Other guys can pursue God with a sense of strength and adventure.

Women can express their God-given gifts without fear or limitation.

Even if getting there takes a little bit of uncertainty and shifting, we all can win,

Win. Win. Win.

Just like The Office.

We’re welcoming Jamie Wright as this week’s guest blogger in the Women in Ministry Series. You probably know about her incredible blog Jamie the Very Worst Missionary. 

I’m just gonna come out and say this: I never, ever, in a million years, wanted to be a “woman in ministry”. Never. And I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would actually be one.

I grew up far from any church influence, so the very narrow example I had seen of women in ministry came mostly from television, where they were often portrayed in the form of nosy, judgmental, gossip-loving Bible-thumpers. As a teen, when I finally crossed paths with some real live women in ministry, I found them to be…well…nosy, judgmental, gossip-loving, Bible-thumpers. (“You know who’s going to burn in Hell? You, honey.” That’s how a youth pastor’s wife so gingerly shared the Gospel of Jesus with my 15 year-old self.)

Many years later, when my husband and I began the process of moving our family into full-time ministry, I wasn’t exactly aching for a chance to join the ranks of Pastor’s wives and Missionaries – at least not the ones I’d been exposed to, with their Bible tracts and sensible shoes, and their strong, loud opinions about who is going to burn in Hell.

The truth is, the women who ministered to my own wanting soul weren’t “women in ministry” at all. They were good neighbors and generous friends. They were soccer-Moms who took my babies off my hands for a few hours at a time, when I most needed help. They were steaming coffee dates where no subject was off limits, where laughter flowed freely and tears of anguish were met with tears of empathy. They were gentle spirits who whispered the Love of a Savior into my life, slowly and sweetly, because they understood that, through friendship, Grace abounds. It just does.

Those women didn’t work in churches. They had government jobs, they were part-time consultants, some were homemakers, one was a personal trainer, another ran a daycare. They taught me that there’s a really big difference between “women in ministry” and “women who minister”. And they showed me that a woman’s ability to deeply impact the world around her, her value in ministry, isn’t limited by her job title (or her husband’s).

That means that Missionary or not, I am a woman who is called to minister. Pastor’s wife or not, you are a woman called to minister. Sunday school teacher or not, your wife/sister/daughter/friend is called to minister.

Our neighbors and co-workers are counting on us to use our God-given gifts and abilities to bring Hope to this broken world. Our families and our friends are depending on us, with our uniquely feminine voices, to speak into their lives with wisdom and authority. And the God who created us, in all our girly glory, has released us to feed the hungry, care for the sick, love the unlovely, and guide the lost.

He has invited each and every one of us into ministry. Even the chick who never, ever, in a million years, wanted to be a “woman in ministry”.

About Today’s Blogger

Jamie writes from her home in Costa Rica, where she lives with her husband and three sons. She is best known for candid conversations about life and faith on her blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary.

If You Appreciate Jamie, Read This

I (Ed, the owner of this blog) couldn’t invite Jamie to contribute to this series without thinking of some concrete ways to support her and her husband Steve in their ministry. Jamie had no idea I was going to do this, but I’ve been plotting  a special ask of this series’ readers. Here it is:

1. Steve and Jamie are trying to figure out their next step in ministry. Will you commit to praying with them?
2. Whether they stay in Costa Rica or move someplace else, Jamie and Steve are going to need some serious bucks. They have poured themselves out in ministry to others, and I would like you to prayerfully consider donating toward their ministry. In particular, can you give at least $10? They have some major expenses coming up that we can help them meet so that they can focus on their ministry and family. Go here to donate: Donate at PayPal Now.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book if you sign up in January)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed. Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Alise Wright

As a veteran of Catholic elementary school and a survivor of fundamentalism, I like to think of myself as rather experienced in the realm of poorly exercised authority. My elementary school seemed to teem with sadistic teachers who only knew how to punish us in groups because of the one undiagnosed ADD kid.

At their worst, the fundamentalists figured out a way to make the Bible feel like my sadistic Catholic school teachers—a guide to the punishments we’re bound to receive unless we’re perfect. As a child, most of the religious authority figures I knew were rather heavy on the guilt and punishment end of things, save for a few women who were amazing teachers and Christians.

Attaching the word “loving” with authority strikes me as impossible in some unguarded moments, and yet, for Christians, this is really the only way authority truly works.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I searched for general “leadership failure” and the overwhelming results mentioned the failure of Christian leaders.

From affairs to power struggles to personal meltdowns, the internet results suggested that Christian leaders have issues with time management, character, sin, relationships with colleagues, and communication. Are Christian leaders alone in the failure department?

I dug into general leadership failure trends, and I found an article at Psychology Today that shared the following numbers:

“In the past two decades, 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs have lasted less than 3 years. Top executive failure rates [are] as high as 75% and rarely less than 30%. Chief executives now are lasting 7.6 years on a global average down from 9.5 years in 1995. According to the Harvard Business Review, 2 out of 5 new CEOs fail in their first 18 months on the job.”

Those are some pretty staggering numbers. The article goes on to suggest a number of reasons why leaders fail. These include hubris, resistance to change, and hostility toward colleagues.

It’s hard to say whether the existing conventional wisdom on leadership is inherently flawed or whether these washed up CEOs are simply failing to execute wise practices. Likewise, it’s hard to point to a cause behind the failure of Christian leaders. Do we expect too much from them? Are they just as sinful as the rest of us?

I’m honestly the last person to prescribe a path forward for Christian leaders, but I’ve seen what seminary students and pastors read when it comes to leadership. I know what church leaders talk about and where they look for their examples of excellent leadership.

Our church leaders look to the business world for lessons on leadership.

Can we learn something from good leaders? Sure. This is not a black and white matter.

The main point for consideration in my view is that we need to ask whether the high failure rate of CEOs in the business world tells us anything about the quality of the advice in our business books. Even if a small percentage of CEOs can rise to the top, overcome tremendous odds to succeed, and publish a book about “how they did it,” should we fawn over the advice they offer? What works for a small group of successful CEOs may not apply to other CEOs, let alone the pastors who read leadership books.

What’s more, if that Psychology Today article is right about CEOs failing because of pride, resistance to change, and failure to communicate, the solutions to these problems are not necessarily found in leadership books.

Do you struggle with pride? The cross has something to teach you about that.

Do you fight change? The Holy Spirit can change your mind.

Do you fail to communicate effectively? Love will help your relationships stay healthy.

The failure of a church leader is a tragedy, but today it’s not surprising. In fact, church leaders are in good company, since the leadership models that many churches follow seem to produce high failure rates in the business world as well.

Christianity has something to say about leadership, failure, restoration, and rethinking a new way forward. A good place to begin is admitting that the CEO leadership model is not the most healthy way forward for our leaders and their churches.

The solutions to our problems may be right under our noses.

Did you read what a celebrity pastor wrote on his Facebook wall?

I hope not. However, if you did, I’m pretty sure you heard about it because other Christians told you about it.

Ironically, you, your non-Christian friends, or anyone who may feel “bullied” or “attacked” by his insensitive remarks would probably never have heard what he wrote if some other Christians hadn’t made a big public outcry out of it.

And that leads to a dilemma when we deal with offensive Christian celebrities.

We feel like remaining silent just lets them win. If we don’t speak out, we’re letting down everyone who is wounded by this pastor’s coarse jokes.

And so blog posts are written, the word spreads, and the message goes out: “Celebrity pastor is a bully, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Unfortunately, the part that tends to stand out in people’s minds is the first part, “Celebrity pastor is a bully.” That’s what the news media wants to report on. That’s what will remind people of old wounds.

Here’s what I’m wondering about all of this…

In this particular instance, must we really care what some pastor on the west coast writes to his followers on Facebook? Yeah, a few thousand people read it, but then he writes something else about Jesus being a cage fighter with tattoos or whatever and his insensitive remark fades away.

Very few people who could actually be offended by his remarks would have actually read them. He’s going to keep making them, and the sooner we leave him alone with his remarks and his gang of followers, the better. The perception of an assault from outside of his ranks only strengthens him and convinces his macho followers to ignore any calls for change (see the Backfire Effect).

Is there another way forward?

I have a couple of examples in mind, but the most powerful example I can think of is the “It Gets Better Story” in the aftermath of a teen’s suicide over homosexual bullying. Fort Worth councilman Joel Burns shared his own story of growing up as a homosexual, and his vulnerable moment overshadowed all of the outrage and transformed that horrible situation into a beautiful step forward.

Granted, there wasn’t a celebrity or organization to target, but the story changed from teen suicide to open dialogue about supporting teens during a particularly fragile time in their lives. Instead of focusing on the offense, everyone’s attention turned to healing.

How could anyone listen to such a real, powerful story and persist in bullying someone? (Well, let’s hope at least, eh?)

I think that could provide us with a good path forward in this particular case.

While it would be appropriate to confront a pastor in our own congregation, a nationally known celebrity who makes offensive remarks is another matter. Offensive celebrities need to be drowned out by a counter-message so that they can fade into their own obscurity—especially since this pastor’s personal brand is being offensive.

We need to drown out his message because once we confront him publicly, we give him free publicity that he probably wants and spread his message to people who don’t need to hear it. I doubt very much that he cares about critics outside his congregation and affiliations. He probably doesn’t even have time to consider it.

Therefore, the best way I can think of countering an offensive message, such as the one delivered on this pastor’s Facebook wall, is to tell stories of Jesus’ radical love and inclusivity and how those stories have shaped us—how we’ve put his love into action. This macho pastor would probably want to punch himself in the face if he ever understood the extent of Jesus’ radical, inclusive love that accepted sinners who were willing to repent.

That is, he’d punch himself in frustration for underestimating the love of God.

Dealing with celebrities and public figures is not the same as dealing with someone in your community. We can personally confront someone in our community, and if they want to be part of our community, they will reform. Celebrities don’t have the same things at stake.

Celebrities thrive on exposure. They draw their power from attention. If we deny this pastor the oxygen of attention, his flame that burns so many can be reduced to a tiny spark that few will notice or care about outside of his immediate circles.

And while we may think we’re somehow standing up for someone by opposing this man, the truth is, we really aren’t adding anything constructive. We are just telling others what we’re against. We need to oppose offensive remarks with real neighborly love to people around us, creating stories that overshadow what this pastor has done.

This is not the easy way forward. It will cost us our lives to create stories powerful enough to overcome messages of intolerance, hate, and fear. But the costly path of love is the only way I can think of changing what this pastor writes on his Facebook wall.

Perhaps one day this pastor will ask for examples of the best ways his readers have been loved in a time of need. He’ll only do that if we give him something to write about.

While in college I called my Dad and told him I was dropping my English major in favor of Biblical Studies. By the time I hung up the phone, he had convinced me to stick with English and to add Bible as a double-major.

He didn’t raise his voice or tell me what to do. I remember him spending more time reminding me of what I liked.

By the time I stumbled out of seminary unsure of what to do with my life since a career as a pastor wasn’t an option, I was really grateful to have that English degree. If anything I understood the jokes in Prairie Home Companion about the Professional Organization of English Majors.

However, during that fateful phone call, my dad saw something that I should have seen all along. Writing and books are important to me.

My teacher in sixth grade assigned free-writing activities every week in our notebook called an “Anything Book.” I filled up every scrap of white paper in my Anything Book. My imagination went crazy, even spilling stories into the number charts on the back cover.

During seventh and eighth grade, my friend and I would toss around a football after school and then sit down at his MS DOS computer and rewrite fairy tales with a twist. The one that stands out had something about the big bad wolf being framed by those horrible pigs.

In high school I moved away from fiction and toward more academic forms of writing with lots of research. I thought that writing was just a nice thing I did in addition to my other work. I also had no clue about what to do with my life. I didn’t know how people found jobs or selected careers.

The post-college world was terrifying to me. Books and writing always made sense, and I’m thankful that my family never questioned my English major in college. The English program in college became a safe haven for me until I thought that I had another path figured out as a pastor.

My dad wisely persuaded me that I shouldn’t toss away all that I’d already invested in studying literature and academic writing. Even after sticking with the English degree, I’m writing stuff today that I never pictured myself doing.

Today I help pay the bills by writing for blogs and websites, while I plug away on a novel that most closely resembles the zany stuff I scrawled in my Anything Book in sixth grade.

It’s fascinating to see that our parents can’t tell us exactly what to do. There’s no way my Dad could know that I’d end up writing for websites or I’d love writing fiction so much. However, he tried to keep me faithful to what he’d seen of me so far.

Parents aren’t perfect, but I’m grateful for the times when they keep us pointed in the right direction at the right time. I couldn’t have asked my dad to do anything more, and I’m forever grateful for that conversation.

Read more Father’s Day themed posts at Faith Barrista for the Thursday Jam.

While in seminary I read a lot of job descriptions for pastors and letters from search committees. They usually consisted of bullet point lists that were about as long as any other job description. However, as I read these lists I realized I wasn’t qualified for these openings.

In fact, I’m not even sure if Jesus would have been qualified for the positions at most churches.

I’m sure that someone was eventually hired, but I’m equally certain that whoever took on this mantle of “pastor” let his/her congregation down pretty quickly. Perhaps letting a congregation down is the best thing a pastor can do, since it forces everyone to talk about their expectations and abilities.

There are no simple solutions here that I know of. I wouldn’t dare offer a one-size fits all solution. However, I can offer a few thoughts on what we should aspire for in our pastors and some dangers to avoid.

What Pastors Must Do: Managing Direction

A pastor keeps a group of Christians pointed in the right direction. That applies to big picture stuff and to smaller groups and ministries in our churches. This is a huge task to fulfill, and I know many pastors who do this well.

However, some congregations expect their pastors to do a lot more than this. Whether they’re from a pastor’s personal expectations or a congregation’s expectations, these can contribute to burn out.

The Pastor as A Jack of All Spiritual Trades

Pastors are usually one of two kinds of people: leaders of people or managers of people, both of whom love teaching the Bible and praying for people. However, most churches want a visionary leader/manager/counselor/custodian/communications manager/whatever else needs to be done.

I grew up in a church that had a head pastor and counseling pastor, which struck me as one of the smartest things a church could do. 

The Pastor is Responsible for All Spiritual Growth

Most people go to church hoping to be “fed” in some way. We want something spiritually significant to happen each Sunday, and that is a huge burden that pastors have to carry. In addition, our church service formats place all of the emphasis on the pastor to make it happen.

That is one of the reasons why I don’t put a lot of stock in Sunday meetings. I prefer to view church as a bring your own lunch, with the pastor responsible for preventing a food fight.

Most Churches Want a Visionary, Big-Picture Pastor Who Does Stuff

You can spot a manager pastor by looking at his to-do list. Is he/she involved in every committee in a hands-on capacity? Does he/she take on smaller tasks that should actually be delegated? I’ve found that many churches want a visionary pastor who can see the big picture, but they may feel slighted if that pastor isn’t involved in a hands-on way like the manager pastor.

The visionary pastor and manager pastor are two very different people. A visionary pastor will be more hands off, while a managing pastor will be more hands on. Expecting both qualities in the same person will lead to burn out.

The Pastor Serves “Us” or Else

The hardest part of being a pastor is being placed in a position where he/she must challenge or confront a congregation to move in a new direction. When I look at the ministry of Jesus, he spent a lot of time telling his followers what they didn’t want to hear. Can you imagine what we would say to him today?

“Why do you keep talking about going to Jerusalem so you can put us and yourself in danger? Talk sense Jesus!”

Any pastor who suggested the possibility of death in Jerusalem wouldn’t have a salary for long.

And that’s the problem: our pastors serve US. If they don’t give US what we want, we can cut them loose. Even worse than that, if pastors don’t meet our unrealistic expectations, we may view them as failures.

Maybe some pastors have issues. I’m not here to discuss that. All that I can see for certain is we pay some very ordinary people very little to do some very extraordinary work—work that requires incredible dependence on God.

The fact that most congregations have some kind of financial power over their pastors is perhaps inevitable. I don’t know if there’s a better way to compensate pastors through freewill offerings or some kind of tent making hybrid—I’m sure there are advantages and disadvantages.

However we set up our compensation for pastors, we need to remember that we are putting quite a lot of pressure on the men and women who serve as pastors and that we hold tremendous power over them. This is a power we can use to bless or to curse.