Why Are Mature Pastors Incompetent?

Had dinner with a friend recently. He's a highly regarded pastor in his sixties. Part of our conversation included his lament that he is just not really up to doing his job.

It reminded me of conversations I've had in recent years with a number of pastors who are in their fifties and sixties that included the same refrain. "I'm just not adequate for the job."

Certainly not all pastors are highly competent. Some are in competent. However, I wonder why pastors that are widely regarded as effective, competent and conscientious regard themselves as marginal?

As one said to me awhile back, "In any other profession--medicine, education, science--at this point in our careers we would regard ourselves as at the top of our game. We would be the papa bears, the mentors, the experts. Instead, we constantly struggle with a profound sense of inadequacy and marginal effectiveness."

Do you ever feel that way? Are your feelings reflected back to you from others?

How do you know if you are doing a good job?

Oops. Moving memoir to new location

I am moving the chapters from my in-progress memoir from this blog to God, Rocks, And Souls. Address is godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com. See the link to the right.

(I can't figure out how to put a hyperlink here in the text of the blog.)

Spiritual Gerontology

I am a lousy evangelist.

Which is puzzling to me. I have always liked talking about God and spiritual life to people who are not believers. I trained under two different evangelists with solid reputations–Roy Naden and Harry Robinson. My church attracts non-Christians.

Still, by any objective (i.e. numeric) measure, I’m a lousy evangelist. Sometimes it eats at me. When I attend Adventist clergy meetings, I am constantly reminded that Jesus commissioned us to go into all the world making disciples, teaching and baptizing. Baptisms are the easiest part of this process to count. And by that measure, I’m a failure as a minister.

But in my own head, I’m starting to push back. Counting baptisms is an appropriate measure of one’s effectiveness as an evangelist. However, ministry is more than evangelism.

Among my friends are an obstetrician, a hospice doctor, an ER doc or two, an allergist, an anesthesiologist and a surgeon. It has never occurred to me to criticize the hospice or ER guys or the surgeon or allergist because they are ineffective in increasing the population. Maybe the ER guys have attended a birth or two “by accident.” The hospice doctor probably did deliveries in his “other life” when he was a family practice doc in a small town. Still, if you added together all the deliveries done by my physician friends who are not obstetricians, their numbers would not match the total of the single OB. (The surgeon, a woman, called my wife, an OB nurse, for advice when her cat was giving birth.)

On the other hand, I did not call my OB friend for advice when my son had a sudden onset of pain in his groin hours before he was to get on a plane to Asia. I do not consult the obstetrician when I want help understanding the needs of parishioners who are dealing with their parent’s Alzheimer’s or their children’s asthma.

In short, I value the special effectiveness of the different specialities in medicine. It would be a sad world that had specialists only for birth.

It’s the same in ministry. “Perinatal care”–evangelism and the instruction and assimilation of new believers–is an indispensable specialty in the church. So is sports medicine, psychiatry and gerontology–the care of people who have damaged themselves through misapplied zeal, those who struggle with mental health and spirituality and those facing the unique spiritual challenges of maturing.

It is highly unusual for someone to be both a highly effective evangelist and a highly effective pastor for life-long, middle-aged male believers–especially if those male believers are educated.

I’m a gerontologist. The most notable impact of my ministry is among middle-aged males–men who have been alienated from church for years, sometimes decades. This ministry does not lead to baptisms. Most of these men were baptized as young people. Most were never removed from the church rolls. They were just gone. Now they are back.

Not bad.

Holy Man

Recently a pastor friend told me he saw me as a holy man and meant it as a compliment not a joke. The context of his remark was a conversation he had had with someone else who was complaining about some of my ideas. (And certainly some of my ideas are, shall we say, not mainstream.) He said he had told the person, “John is a holy man.” Then he reiterated it to me, “I see you as a holy man. I really mean that.”

His statement set me back on my heals. Me? A holy man? Whoa. What does that mean?

I don’t consciously “pose” as a holy man, but for at least a decade it has been my conscious goal to be a holy man. It seems to me the most important ambition for any clergy person. If I am a holy man, in fact or even merely in the eyes of others, what obligation does this impose? How do I avoid rank hypocrisy?

It is almost comic to think of how deeply conflicted my own faith and spiritual life are. I carry in my own soul the unanswered questions of truck drivers, physicians, scientists, seekers, and agnostics–most of them men. The same people who sit down at 11:00 on Sabbath mornings and look at me expecting to hear something believable about God.

I was called by God. I know that. God is good; the purpose of life is love; making beauty is better than making ugly. On good days, I know that, too, but not much more. Still, I have a job. And since I am called (not merely employed), I somewhat boldly stand and speak for God, flattered by the honor my audience confers by listening, grateful for their support in my calling.

I am carried by the very people who see me as a holy man. My religion and spiritual life are utterly dependent on the church. I preach their Bible (not the Bible of the academy). I do the work they give me. I live on the income they provide. I serve the God they know better than I do.

What do they expect in return? That their holy man speaks well of God. That I voice their faith–both the faith they possess and the faith they aspire to–a faith, that somehow, in spite of my defects, doubts and failures, I embody. What an honor. What a daunting responsibility.

Except for their confidence, it would be a joke. Maybe it really is a joke. A happy one. God using a buffoon for some grand and glorious purpose.

Keeping Company with the Dying

Not long ago late on a Sabbath afternoon, I remembered one of my church members was gravely ill. She had been gravely ill for months. For some reason that afternoon, I suddenly realized it had been a while since I had been to see her.

I went.

Only her relatives could tell that she was aware of my presence.

She died the next morning.

Today, I sat for an hour with a friend who is dying. He's been dying for two years or more. I can't stop the dying. My prayers have been ineffectual at shrinking the tumors. He says it matters that I show up.

Do you know someone who is dying?

Go see them. Today, if at all possible. Then go again and again and again.

Keeping company is something we pastors can do.

I don't understand why it matters that we do, but apparently it does.

So do it now. Don't wait.

The Book that Saved my Ministry

Some years ago I read a book titled Father Joe: The Man who Saved my Soul by Tony Hendra. The book saved my soul or at least my ministry.

I’ve often gone through crises of vocation. What business do I have being a minister. Yes, I was called by God. But that was long ago and far away. How do I, a man tormented by unanswered questions and incompetent in many ways, justify continuing as a professional clergyman, taking a salary to represent God? Father Joe offered a believable answer to that question.

If you are better at encouraging the ministry of others than you are at giving orders, if you are better at giving permission than giving directions, or if you are amazed at the good things God is doing in people around you, you will probably appreciate the story of Father Joe.

I see his ministry (and--on my good days--my ministry) paralleled more closely by the story of Barnabas than the story of Paul.

My blog this week at liberaladventist is a sermon based on Barnabas. Maybe it will offer you some encouragement. But I think Father Joe would do you better.

Make Friends or Suck It Up

1. Church is about sublime truths and ineffable encounters with God.
2. Church is about making friends and cultivating social circles.

This bi-modal reality of church life is highlighted in the book of Romans. The book is regarded by many to be the most sophisticated systematic exposition of theology in the Bible. It begins with Paul’s affirmation of his call as an apostle and ends with the peroration, “Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him–to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ.”

But not all of the book is so “high-flown.” Chapter 16 is comprised largely of Paul’s personal greetings to relatives and acquaintances. It even includes a personal note from Paul’s scribe to the good people in Rome.

Several things jump out from Paul’s list.

First, he sees many of the people in groups. “Greet Priscilla and Aquila . . . and the church that meets in their home.” “Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the saints with them.” The church in Rome was not “one big happy family.” It was a collection of families and affinity groups.

Second, Paul’s “church circle” included a substantial number of relatives. “Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me.” “Greet Herodian my relative.” “Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my relatives, send their greetings.”

Third, Paul had special friends. “Greet Rufus and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.”

Fourth, women played a major role in Paul’s church, “I commend to you Phoebe our sister, a servant of the church in Cenchrea . . . she has been a great help to many people, including me.” “Greet Truphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.

Fifth, people who were leaders outside the church were leaders inside the church. “Erastus, who is the city’s director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings.”

What lessons do I take from this for our life together as a church?

Once a church has more than a dozen or so attending it will be characterized by “insiders” and “outsiders” unless the members form smaller circles of friends within the larger congregation. These friendships are “real” only if they bring people together outside of church on Sabbath morning.

It is normal for church circles, friendship circles and family circles to overlap. It is not “unspiritual” to find your closest friends among people with whom you share social affinities like education, recreational interest, blood relationship, mission interest, political leanings.

Unless you actively cultivate special friendships with a few people in your congregation you can expect to be disappointed by the “care” you receive from the congregation. One hundred people are not going to notice if you quit attending, get sick, die or have a baby. Four or five friends will notice and care.

The leadership core of your church is not going to notice if you get sick, go on vacation, get discouraged, are dumped by your spouse, are fired or drop out of school. They are not bad people. They are not selfish or snobs. It is simply not likely the seven to ten “key leaders” in your congregation will notice all of the significant happenings in the lives of the 180 members of the church (a third of whom are absent any given Sabbath).

If you are not part of a small, close circle of friends, you are going to be overlooked some time. Count on it.

So what to do? Come to church for the worship and don’t expect quality social interaction. Or make friends, real friends, with other people at church–people who are not already in the “leadership core.” (These leaders already have more friends than they know what to do with. They don’t need you.) Your relationships with real friends will enrich your worship experience and will change the “fellowship of the saints” from a merely theoretical religious notion into an experiential reality.

Making friends often requires you to be intentional. Ask some one to join you for dinner, a hike, a service project. If you have a good time, ask them again. And again. And again. If you wait for someone else to ask you, don’t complain if you have to wait a long time.

Do something to improve the quality of your church. Make friends.