Sabbatical Reflection #3: An idolatry of control and people-pleasing

My sabbatical is coming to an end and I think I am ready. I am missing Salem Pres, missing the excitement of a new workday. These are the exciting forms of leadership for me. I love to look at our community and identify why things are thriving or not. And then I love to form patterns, habits, and communications to either perpetuate or correct these situations. This is my vocation.

Not many pastors like these forms of leadership. They usually like to think about ideas, disseminate those ideas in one-on-one conversations, in small groups, or to whole communities. Those ideas shape thought and behavior in a community and in many ways this is the pastoral calling—teaching. This mimics what the Apostles. They reflected on the words of Christ and took those words to the world not just to share opinions, but to shape thoughts and lifestyles so that people can dwell in union with Christ. I too like these forms of leadership and in many ways my sabbatical has been a time of reclaiming this calling of the pastor-poet.

But I also love to think through how the system operates. There is a lot of creativity and curiosity involved. Its like taking apart an engine and putting it back together. But this analogy only goes so far. An engine only works one way – the way it was designed. Church communities do not have one design. They are like families more than they are like engines. The beautiful side of my passion is that I can work with our community to prevent conflict and promote hospitality. Articulating and designing ways for people to join our family and ways to continue participating in our family are the work of a sort-of deacon-elder hybrid, which is how I see myself. Every gift has a dark side though. For the teacher, it might be the desire to impose one’s world-view on a group or it is a narcissistic need for validation. For my vocation, it is control and people-pleasing.

Because I like to “take things apart”, dissect, and reassemble, I spend an immense amount of energy preparing for each leadership moments in our church. When we discuss something organizational, I come with research, angles, analogies, and a proposal. Most of this is rooted in zeal—until it turns dark. It turns dark when I have no curiosity and act on fear. This is the language one of our elders used when confronting me about this behavior. Zeal means coming with much excitement, many ideas, and many proposals. Zeal turns to control when the excitement, the ideas, and the proposals are non-negotiable.

When I began at Salem Pres, there were so many leadership opportunities. The church was (and still is) so young. So much of the church was formed by lay leaders without strategy or the ability to scale-up. Many of these pioneers had also come and gone. It was the frontier. Small groups, the worship music, the liturgy, even our budget, were all led by people outside the elders and deacons. This was not a bad thing, and control of these things did not need to be “wrestled” away from these lay-leaders. It was simply that more intentionality, more attention could be invested in each for the long-term flourishing of the church. All these exciting raw portions of the community were opportunities for creativity and definition. Many of those raw portions have been shaped into something beautiful because of cooperation in our church.

I happened to come to Salem Pres in its sort of “third iteration.” It began as a grassroots, loosely defined community within community. Then it transitioned to being its own independent collective. When I came on it was beginning to pursue more definition as not just a community, but a community with a mission to grow, to be inclusive, to be thoughtful. It has been such a fun journey to participate in the settling of the wild frontier and to watch it prosper.

Many people probably do not know that I have worked in churches since 2003. I worked for churches in Colorado, California, and North Carolina before coming to Salem Pres. In that time I saw more examples of malady than vitality. That illness was often rooted in the pastoral leadership. Without meaning to, Pastors can hurt people deeply. Unfortunately, I have seen the deeper sickness of pastors deliberately hurting people, but even if it is accidental it can be scarring.

This motivates my zeal for being careful and thoughtful in pastoral leadership. It is terrible when pastors abuse and manipulate people for their own agenda. But the lesser evil (which is an evil none-the-less) is still the “gospel-cowboy” who while well-intentioned, does not think critically about collateral damage or external costs on people’s emotions when churches make decisions. I am scared to death of the church not assessing every single potential externality. When it hopes to prevent conflict, this is a good desire. But when fear is relentless and it produces stubborn over-thinking, the result is control and people-pleasing.

Being controlling is very problematic for the Christian because it basically dismisses God’s power and it also makes grace futile. So that is a big deal. It is not the same as micromanagement. I like to spread leadership around the community and empower people to contribute. I have loved over the past few years the way our church has empowered lots of worship leaders, liturgy writers, new elders, new servant leaders, re-thought small groups, and introduced new ways to do hospitality. Unfortunately I began to fear what could go wrong in each of this arenas and I became controlling. This probably comes as a surprise to the congregation, because it really only manifested itself in session meetings. Thankfully we are Presbyterian! My weakness was (hopefully) disguised by the particular body of wise, prudent, and spiritual elders our congregation called.

This form of control is rooted in people-pleasing, an accusation I would have never leveled at myself. I always thought people-pleasing meant a passive desire to be liked. I think some would accuse me of being socially aloof and callous  before they would call me a people-pleaser. But, my desire to prevent conflict and hurt in the church has been so graceless and controlling that I’ve realized its a form of people-pleasing. I may not care if people like me or like Salem Pres. I am just terrified people will rightfully say they were damaged by the church.

But of course they will be damaged by the church! I can play a small part in preventing that, but moving into fearful, controlling, non-negotiable thinking will certainly not stop it. Only prayer, humble curiosity, and grace will. Oh God, and your church, forgive me. Thank you for your grace.

 

Sabbatical Reflections #2: Misunderstanding My Calling

One of the great joys in reading Craig Barnes’ The Pastor As Minor Poet, is a reclamation of my vocation. I became a pastor because it was the closest things I could find to combining my interests. I studied poetry in undergrad, theology in graduate school, I have been a musician, I enjoy hospitality and community building, and these all manifest themselves in the pastorate. Barnes’ image of the pastor-poet reclaims for me a combination of these interests. It combats my trend towards executive-administrator.

Recently I have been daydreaming about what a different pastoral calling would look like. Not in a wanderlust sense at all. If anything, I probably idolize our current community too much. There is no temptation to flee. Instead, I recall portraits of Catholic priests in literature and film. It seems we always find them pacing the sanctuary, completely interruptible. A parishioner wanders in, the priest sits one row in front of his guest. He drapes an elbow on the back of the pew offering an ear to the only other soul in a hallowed house of God. In these scenes there is poetry, hospitality, and community. I endeavor to accomplish these, but struggle. With no sanctuary pews, no office couch, and a pile of spreadsheets, calendars, and tasks, I find myself inhospitable.

What is missing in the priest scenes is that someone has to sweep that sanctuary. Someone must pay the electric bill and order the candles. For the person to have found the parish, perhaps a website exists. I like to do these things. I like to serve my community by oiling the gears of the church’s engine. I enjoy nailing together the trellis on which the vines of community grow. But they have consumed me.

My resistance to self-care, my cynicism about the extraordinary nature of pastoral work, have led me to value the practical, the measurable. Instead of imagination I seek order. Instead of curiosity, I pursue policy. And people demand it in a sense. I want people to be happy and if they are unsatisfied with an indefinite small group, an unarticulated reason behind childcare, I feel an addictive urge to speak back with both volume and precision. I think our church is thriving because we took seriously the work of stewarding our money with intention. I think having a calendar allows us to flow through seasons of ministry without looking chaotic to the newcomer. I am proud of this work, but it is not missionary in its nature. These are the acts of caring for the soil, but they are not the harvest.

I actually think it is really important for churches to have pastors doing the administrative work. Were it given to an unordained administrator or a volunteer,  it becomes even easier to make the tilling an end instead of a means. The good souls tasked with clearing the garden bed would do their best work, but they would probably do such a good job that no one would ever stop to see if the field was seeded. The calendars, spreadsheets, newsletters are tidy, but are the wayfaring finding the gate of Christ? This is how so many churches operate. Good people make meticulous calendars, detailed spreadsheets, tidy member rolls, and precise budgets, but these are abstracted from the ministers.

I live in a conflicted space. It is good for me to see the field, till it, prepare it. But I need to do a better job of letting it go a little. I need to play with it more. The danger is to till it beyond health. It becomes so turned over nothing can grow there.

Okay, I have belabored the agrarian analogy long enough. My calling is to be a pastor-poet, interpreting the word of God into the lives of Winston-Salem. This might involve some organizing, but I cannot let that own me. There is bigger work as Barnes puts it

One of the reasons that people need pastors is precisely because God is always present but usually not apparent. It takes a poet to find that presence beneath the layers of strategy for coping with the feeling of its absence.

I am not an executive, an administrator, a president, politician, or chairman. I am a pastor-poet called to shepherd a flock of Americans trying to cope with a severe modernity that wants to obscure the gentle Christ.

Thoughts on Sabbatical #1

It has been over two years since I wrote something on this blog. That is for two reasons. One is that I was working on finishing my Th.M. thesis and hoping to turn my M.A. thesis into some sort of book. The other is that I have been burning the candle at both ends and half-failed at the first reason. So here I am in Indiana, listening to the breeze sweep across the tree tops on my in-laws farm, enjoying a short sabbatical, and I would like to share why.

This post is written with my church, Salem Presbyterian, in mind as audience. For clarity’s sake, I will note these are just my personal, biased, not-peer-reviewed thoughts. It has been a pretty crazy season for our church with Ben needing to take some time away for physical healing and our congregation moving to a temporary summer home. I did not really announce to people I would be taking most of July off, but I am in fact away as you may have noticed. I wrote a letter to the elders about a month ago asking for time away to refresh and with great kindness they agreed.

Since beginning at Salem, I have been running at a break-neck pace because I absolutely adore our church. I love pouring blood, sweat, and tears into the lives of our community and especially into making that community function as a place of mission and hospitality. But there are problems with this pace of life, as many of you know. One of the really hard things to deal with as a pastor is the constant state of being “on.” It is almost impossible to know when I am not working and in a lot of ways I do not mind because I love my job so much. I have always resented pastors who draw thick lines between work and life. The parish is too much of a family to be so unimaginative. But in my youthful arrogance, I did not offset a blending of work and community with sabbath and reflection.

I am reading two books right now (well I’m juggling a few more very poorly, but…) as part of my sabbatical I have assigned myself Resilient Ministry by Bob Burns, et al., and The Pastor As Minor Poet by Craig Barnes. In The Pastor As Minor Poet, Barnes notes the story of Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and writer I have always adored. Nouwen checked himself into a monastery for seven months after he realized he was writing, lecturing, but failing to simply spend time in prayer. Barnes describes Nouwen’s situation as, “complaining about all the demands on his schedule, [yet] he paradoxically found himself afraid to be alone.”¹

This is where I am.

It has been awesome to watch God work over these few years at Salem Pres. We have almost doubled as a congregation and seen so many new members come through our doors even as we commission many to go out into the wider world. I love tinkering with so many of the gears and pistons that make our community possible as we embrace and send, embrace and send. But a number of unhealthy habits and narratives have snuck into my mind.

I have described Barnes’ book as both a salve and a compass. His humor and empathy help me cope with the challenges of pastoral ministry. I have also resented pastors who claim that ministry is unlike any other career. I find that to be such a self-appreciating claim. On the flip side, it is a strange vocation and through these readings I am learning to embrace that it is a sometimes lonely and murky way to spend a life.

Resilient Ministry is more a diagnostic manual, identifying streams of habit and thought and prescribing alternatives to the destructive ones. I am learning about a few of my bad habits. When I wrote to our elders describing my exhaustion, I noted that I do not think my job description is too much work. It fits my gifts and I believe I can accomplish it reasonably. However, three things have led to dysfunction in my work-life.

 

1. Self-consciousness about my work life
2. Misunderstanding my calling
3. An idolatry of control and people-pleasing

I will save the latter two for later reflection. For a moment, I would love to address my self-consciousness about my work life. Resilient Ministry recommends finding ways to share with one’s congregation what it is we do for both the pastor’s and the congregation’s benefit. This combats a few of the habits and narratives I have allowed into my daily life. They note that pastor/writer Eugene Peterson was accustomed to writing a quarterly update on what it is he does week to week as a way of cluing-in his people. I hope to make a habit of the same…starting now.

I was so relieved to learn a study by the Anglican church found a pastor works an average of fifteen hours more a week than lay leaders realized. I feel this in a heavy way. I try to find work, because I feel I need to justify my vocation with other busy professionals in our church. Like I said before, I know my job could be accomplished in reasonable ways, but I feel like I need to “work.” I feel guilt about reading, I feel guilty about praying, and I feel guilty about NOT “working” during “business hours.”

Each morning I get to my desk intending to read scripture, pray, and journal. But immediately I think of the people out there doing “real work” like digging, bandaging, calculating, and serving. So I open my laptop and I begin to answer emails, make phone calls to small group leaders, create forms for the retreat, edit the bulletin, send out the weekly email, check our finances, or audit our member rolls and assure the unbaptized are scheduled for a baptism. Before you know it, it is lunch and I am meeting someone, then I meet with Ben in the afternoon, perhaps spend an hour again chipping away at emails, and by then it is dinner time. I eat dinner and head out of the house for a session meeting, to visit a small group, or to lead an evening prayer meeting. By the end I have busied myself, I have been with people, I have justified my existence and perhaps even competed with the most busy professionals in our congregation. But my soul is worse-off.

There are breaks in those times and some days I do not have any meetings. I could spend those days reading or even simply working on our house or yard, but I am afraid of being “caught” not working. I feel like I have to prove my job is a real job (which is absurd because when I look at other pastors I think “that is a nearly impossible vocation to survive.”) For myself however, I hear voices that people think I only sip coffee, flip through my study Bible, listen to podcasts, and go on walks.

I told a group of Duke Divinity School students earlier this year that the thing that surprised me most about being a pastor is that almost always someone is mad at you. My own pride drives me to tinkering with administrative work (which is necessary and valuable) because it is measurable and it makes me feel like I can rebut people’s expectations with my busywork. But this ignores the loftier task of being a priestly poet, one who discerns God’s word and then hopefully inserts it artfully in the lives of those around me–even if they are mad at me.

This task can only happen with self-care. Add “self-care” to the list of things I hate that pastors say. For those keeping score, I hate (1) firm lines between pastors and congregants (2) claiming ministry is unlike ANYTHING else, and (3) self-care. I fear these lines of thinking contradict Jesus’ call for followers to die to themselves, to take up their cross, to incur the cost of discipleship. Thankfully, Resilient Ministry has identified my equally arrogant cynicism,

The idea of self-care involves the pursuit of physical, mental, and emotional health. While just as important as spiritual formation, self-care may initially sound selfish. After all, didn’t Jesus say that those who follow him must give up all rights to themselves (Mark 8:34)? How does our Lord’s call to self-denial square with the idea of self-care?

In truth, responsible self-care is actually a way to deny oneself…The old life may have included slothful or obsessive activities such as inconsistent sleep habits, crazy work hours, poor or neurotic exercise, and an unhealthy diet. Self-denying self-care, on the other hand, may include getting to bed on time, saying no to work by setting aside periods for sabbath and sabbatical, getting responsible exercise, and eating a balanced diet.

Someone recently asked me what my hobbies are and while I have hobbies, all I could think of was work…I work.

I hope I can be at Salem Pres for a long time. For my part, I need to take better care so I can pour myself out better to the congregation. Barnes says, “Anybody with a few skills can run an effective meeting, so why waste a pastor on that assignment?…What if, instead of working so hard at omnicompetence, pastors were free to work hard simply at being better poets?”³ The only thing stopping me from following this advice is my own misunderstanding of my call and my own need for control.

¹ Craig Barnes, The Pastor As Minor Poet, 55.
² Bob Burns, et al., Resilient Ministry, 21.
³ Barnes, 44, 28.

Koinonia

Koinonia is a bit of a buzzword. A lot of churches use it as a catchy name for an organization or a certain way of thinking about a church activity. It is not just because it is trendy to integrate Greek into programs. It is such a helpful word that captures much more than any English word might in translation. It means the common life of people, fellowship, cooperation, and sharing. It is bigger than a simple sharing of interests or affiliation. Koinonia is like building a brand new transcontinental railway. The people swinging the hammers in unison, harmonizing in labor songs, supping together after a day’s work, and sharing a tent for slumber.¹

Salem Presbyterian has an interesting history. We began as the 5 pm service of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, but this service was not a repeat of the morning gatherings. It flourished into its own cultural community, even a few years before we began meeting in West Salem. Now we are our own church, with a unique geographic footprint, and while our history roots our identity, in many ways we are searching for some markers to define our present and future.

That is why it says “est. 2013” on our bulletins. While we have bonds which run deep through Redeemer Presbyterian Church and our years as a site with the Redeemer Church Network, we ventured out on our own in 2013. There are perhaps two crucial ingredients that produced the church that is Salem Presbyterian Church – est. 2013. The first was the support and roots we have at Redeemer. Those are gone, but not forgotten — the way a person’s identity is forged in their childhood home, but with the reality that in adulthood it becomes one’s own responsibility to steward and cultivate that personhood. The other was what might be called “Friday Night Leadership.”

“Leadership” was the essence of koinonia. Before we had elders, servant leaders, a senior pastor, Google Docs, a church retreat, there was just a tall Associate Pastor named Ben and a crew of Christians interested in praying and taking on the work of the church. As the systems of our church became formalized it was difficult to figure out what to do with “Leadership” and attendance dwindled. It seemed there were now elders, servant leaders, staff, and of course Google docs capable of supporting the structure of the church. It was collateral damage in our maturation, but it might be for the better that we took a break from “Leadership” so as to learn how vital it was to healthy church.

Taking time to raise up leaders in shepherding and mercy ministry was really helpful for Salem Presbyterian Church. But it is apparent that we still need everybody to pray and work together — all of us! The common life of the church means coming together without too much official business to just worship God and bind together to make his body closer and more hospitable. Somewhere between our large worship gathering and our small group discipleship gatherings in homes, there needs to be a space where we get work done and leave space for informal prayer. “Leadership” might give the impression that certain leader qualifications might be necessary to participate. Of course back in the day, “Leadership” was the church’s leadership, but now we have official leaders. What we need to safeguard and recapture is the normal, everyday, knit together quality of laying track together, supping together, and resting together. That is why we are bringing koinonia into the mix.

We will gather quarterly to sing songs, pray, and divvy up little tasks giving every person in the church access to a little ownership on the work of Christ’s Kingdom in our little city of Winston-Salem. Each quarter we will focus on one facet of our threefold mission of Worship/Community/Outreach. Our first gathering will be focused on “community”, specifically our small groups and our late summer church retreat.

 

¹I do not mean to romanticize a history so rife with cultural violence and slavery, it is simply an effective metaphor.

The Case for Summer Church

I mulled over this post for a week or two thinking there was still time to polish it, but alas the summer already struck its first blow to our church community gathering. It may seem weird to make a case for going to church year-round. The fact remains, summer church attendance is lower than the rest of the year — a lot lower. Last evening at Salem Pres our attendance was half what it has been for 2014. It was a sudden drop too. My guess is the reason is not because people weigh the facts and make a willful rejection of the gathered community. I think we just need a pithy argument to have in the back of our minds when we are tempted to skip church for a beach trip or because we are spent from a great summer weekend.

I want to start by setting aside a few uncomfortable thoughts. First, there is a fair argument against measuring church health by numbers. Second, I am a pastor so I might be motivated to measure my success by worship attendance and thus browbeat the congregation toward worship commitment. Conversely, it would be unhelpful to keep these from making some helpful suggestions. It is not helpful to wish for summer to be the same when it simply is not in most churches. So this is a case for what is healthy and helpful about making a conscience effort to attend church.

I understand the temptation. The logic goes, “if we leave the beach in time to make it back to church, we will really be cutting a day off our trip.” Or perhaps you think as I have thought, “I have not had any down time after this packed week/weekend.” I offer three counters to this logic. First, is for God. He made the church his bride. We show our love to him by assembling each week and glorifying with him, engaging with him as more than individuals, but as his family, his beloved collective.

Second, it is a good thing to come and hear preaching and take the Lord’s Supper and hear each other singing. Yes an extra day at the beach is nice and it seems wasteful to not take full advantage of such an opportunity. But the assurance that God is with us and among us is a far greater treasure, though more difficult to embrace and appreciate. This leads me to my third reason, it is important for others to see you at church. You may feel like things are going well, but they are not for your brothers and sisters. The lonely, the jobless, the broken, they need you to sit among them in church and confess your sins with them. They need to hear you singing and be encouraged that God is real and with us.

The author of Hebrews, more than a few times, begs his congregation to not neglect the fellowship. Its not because he wants good numbers or he thinks are bad people if they skip worship. Its because “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV). For God, and for your brothers and sisters, plan to be back from the beach by Sunday. Push aside the hectic weekend not by lounging at home, but by relaxing in the respite of liturgy, prayer, silence, music, preaching, and the supper. Cut the road trip short, rush in the church doors late, though you smell of sweat, saltwater, and sunscreen. Plan your summer around gathering for worship, not because its the good Christian thing to do, but because it is hard to be a human being. You, and your brothers and sisters need you to. I need you to gather with me to follow the founder and perfecter of our faith.

 

the shipwreck

I will be reading this poem Sunday 12.18.11 at Salem Presbyterian.