Spiritual Authority?

How do you think of your pastor/s? Do you want them to be spiritual experts that tell you what you should believe and how you should believe it? Or do you want them to help you see connections between faith and life that you might be missing on your own? Do you want someone who is an authority or someone who sometimes struggles with faith and belief and is honest about it?

I came into ordained ministry with the idea that I would be the spiritual authority for the people I served. I had been through four years of post-graduate studies and had promised to uphold the theology and doctrine of the Lutheran church. Furthermore, I found that people came to me looking for spiritual advice and many were willing to accept what I told them as absolute truth without another thought.

What I found out was that there are a whole bunch of people who know a whole lot more about life and are more acquainted with the Bible than I was. Whenever I sat down at a Bible study there was always someone who had spent more time reading the Bible than I had. Whenever I applied lessons from the Bible to daily life, there was someone present who had experienced more of life’s ups and downs than I could imagine.  

It was hard not to feel like an imposter. I was in my late twenties and had just started a family and a career. How could I even begin to talk about the relationship between faith and life? What could I tell people in their fifties or eighties that they didn’t already know deep inside themselves? I wondered how long would it take before people noticed that I wasn’t the expert that they expected me to be.

This is the tension and dilemma that I live with most days. I am trained and called to lead a community as an expert while at the same time I am certain that I am no more an expert on the ways of faith and life than anyone else. Yet every time someone asks, “What I am supposed to believe about                                   ?” I’m reminded that I am expected to be that expert.

My natural impulse in the face of this dilemma was to become even more of a spiritual expert. I didn’t want people to think that I wasn’t qualified to be their spiritual leader. Instead I wanted them to think that I was able to provide something they didn’t have. I wanted them to turn to me when they were in need of spiritual care and guidance. So in my spare time I read more theology books and attended leadership conferences. I spoke with certainty and confidence in my sermons and classes even though I didn’t feel that way inside.

That I would do this based on the fear of being discovered as a charlatan should be a clue that it is not a good impulse. Whenever I hold myself up as an expert in faith and life I sustain the notion that a spiritual life is a complicated endeavor filled with indecipherable theological thoughts and language. I also give the false impression that there is one, right way to think about God, faith and our relationship with the world. And because many people believe that what happens to them after they die depends on making sure they have that one, right way figured out (even though I was telling them it does not) I was likely adding to their anxiety at some level.

 

When religious belief is tied to communal identity it is important to believe the same thing as everyone else in the community. This is the way religion has been for ages. But up to this point in history personal identity has been tied community. Today we live in a world that is increasingly individualistic and identity is found in things other than community. (This has been a long and gradual change in the Western world but now accelerating and becoming a global shift in the way we understand who we are.) Therefore what it means to be a spiritual authority has to change as well. At best I can share with someone what I believe to be true and perhaps help them discover what it is that they believe. This is a very different than trying to be an expert.

These days I find myself straddling the line between being an the expert in faith that many people expect in a pastor, and trying to be more like a spiritual partner and guide to those who are trying to travel their own faith journey. I find a greater sense of peace surrounding those people who look to me as a partner and resource in their journey than in those who want me to be an expert. Maybe that’s because of my own place of comfort or maybe they really are more at peace. I don’t know for sure.

And that is a phrase that I am trying to become more comfortable with every day.

Learning to Preach

We all try to fall into a groove where life becomes more manageable and we can be comfortable. But then something happens to move us out of that comfort zone and we have the opportunity to learn and grow. When that happens we are faced with a choice: Do I return to the old way as soon as possible or do I take a risk and open myself to a new way of being in the world?

At the three-point parish where I started ordained ministry, the senior pastor and I presided at four worship services every week. One of us would lead worship at the two churches in town on Sunday morning. The other would be at the Saturday evening worship in town and then drive to the country church on Sunday morning.  We would do this for a month and then trade. This rotation meant that I had to write and deliver a sermon every week. Most associate pastors don’t get to preach that often or even close to it. Since I enjoy preaching it was a great opportunity to do something I felt I was good at. The frequency also helped me get better.

Coming out of seminary I worked hard to craft each sermon, carefully choosing phrases and editing my words until they were just right (or until I ran out of time and couldn’t work on them anymore). Having put all that time into them I would print them out on the dot-matrix printer connected to my computer, double spacing them so that I could easily read from my manuscript as I stood in the pulpit. I would rehearse by reading through a sermon two or three times before worship, making sure I was able to look up from my text and make eye contact with the congregation. This, I was told in preaching class, made it more personal for the people in the pews. At the end of the first service I would greet the worshipers at the back of the church, pack my bible, sermon, and whatever else I needed into my briefcase and take it all with me to the next service.

If I was in town for the month the drive was just six blocks to the next church. If I was going to preach at the country church it was a beautiful, winding drive through the hills, valleys and farmland of western Wisconsin that took between 15 and 20 minutes. It was, of course, one of the days when I was at the country church that I arrived for worship and discovered that I had left my sermon manuscript sitting in the pulpit after the Saturday evening worship.

I dug through my briefcase one more time hoping that it would miraculously appear. Looking at the clock I did the math with the sickening realization that I didn’t have time to run back into town and retrieve my sermon. It occurred to me that I could send someone from the congregation into town but there was no guarantee that they would be back when it was time for the sermon. I either had to explain to the congregation what had happened and tell them there would be no sermon that day, or I would have to preach from memory. I chose to risk the embarrassment of preaching from memory, possibly forgetting part of the sermon over the embarrassment of admitting that I was unprepared.

When it was time for the sermon, instead of stepping up into the pulpit, I descended to the floor in front of the congregation. In that old, country church the pulpit was a raised platform that jutted out from the front wall above the congregation. Whenever I stood in the pulpit my feet were at eye level with the worshipers sitting in the pews. The architectural design was meant to be impressive and authoritative. Stepping down to be at the level of those in worship had a very different feel; definitely more casual but more intimate too. Instead of being someone who stood over them I was standing among them. I realized the symbolism and significance of that gesture immediately.

As I preached that day without manuscript or notes I discovered a sense of freedom. I had been using my manuscript as a crutch. I knew what I was preaching but was too worried about the exact way in which I said things. I knew the points I wanted to make and the illustrations that I had chosen to make those points. I had been telling stories by memory for years and a sermon is simply a story of how we understand something written in the Bible. By stepping away from the manuscript I sounded more like myself. Preaching became a personal thing, a way of sharing what I understood about the text, faith and life.

The encouragement I received after the service caught me off guard. The sermon I preached was not as concise as my regular sermons with a manuscript, but it seemed to have struck a chord with those in worship that day. Sheepishly, I admitted the real reason behind the change in preaching style while in my mind I committed myself to making the change a permanent one.

Noted media professor Marshall McLuhan said that “the medium is the message.” Preaching a sermon from the heart, without notes, sends a message to the listener beyond the meaning of the words. For me it meant more work rehearsing what I wanted to say. It also brought a change to the way I prepared sermons. I no longer spend time fretting over exact wording in front of a computer screen. Instead, I spend time listening to the words that come out of my mouth, wondering how I would hear it if I were sitting in the congregation.

Had I never left that manuscript in town I might never have discovered the style of preaching that works so well for me. In the years since then I have continued to experiment with that style, searching for my voice in a world that is ever changing.

Something Completely Different

Some of the hardest things in life to see are the incongruities that we have been taught to overlook. Life is filled with actions, symbols and meanings that contradict the things we claim to believe. Becoming aware of these contradictions and resolving them can be both heart breaking and liberating.

The seminary is an accredited institution of higher learning. Pastors graduate with a Masters of Divinity degree but the seminary can also grant other Masters degrees as well as Doctorates. So in the spring of every year, those who have fulfilled all the necessary requirements get to participate in commencement exercises.

 My graduation from seminary took place at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis. Central is a huge, cathedral-like building with gothic architecture, ornate wooden carvings and magnificent acoustics. It’s a church building that was meant to inspire the worshiper and magnify the wonder of God. The seminary used the church for graduation ceremonies because it was one of the few churches in the area that could hold all the graduates, faculty and guests.

Because I played tuba in a brass ensemble that performed at graduation, I had been to the commencement ceremonies in the past. One of the traditions of the ensemble was to let the graduating seniors choose a song from the group’s repertoire that would be played as part of the prelude. As a tuba player I love John Philips Sousa marches and, since there were a couple in the collection of songs that we played, I requested “Liberty Bell March.”

When we got together to rehearse for graduation I was not surprised to be informed that my request had been turned down. I was, however, annoyed by the short, but stern rebuke from the campus pastor who sat next to me in the group and played baritone.

You see, Liberty Bell March is the theme song from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Most people don’t know it by name but when you hear it you immediately think of the irreverent comedy show. Someone on the worship planning team caught it and didn’t see the humor. Not only did my request get rejected but as a punishment I wasn’t allowed to make another request. I remember something being said about the seriousness of the occasion, apparent disrespect to my classmates and the whole seminary community, and disappointment that I would try such a prank.

I thought about playing dumb at that point but I didn’t really care.  It would have been so amazing and more than fitting, in my mind, to hear the strains of the Liberty Bell March echo through that august sanctuary right before my graduating class processed in. The only thing that would have made it even remotely better would have been to shout “And now for something completely different” immediately before we launched into the song.

To me this was more than a prank. It was a statement about everything I had been through in seminary. It was about the hoops and hurdles. It was about the seriousness with which the church and its leaders tend take themselves. It was a statement about the silliness of the whole commencement exercise compared to what we were being asked to do as pastors. It was about the incongruity of graduating in a building that was the showpiece of 19^th century, urban church architecture and the reality of being sent to serve in rural churches with cracked walls, crumbling foundations and mildew issues. It was about the sheer audacity to put on this show of pomp and circumstance highlighting our mastery of a theological education without the slightest hint of irony in claiming that we were going out to be servants.

There are other places where the symbols of master and servant clash in the church . The stoles that pastors wear over their robes represent the yoke of Christ and are a symbol of a servant. Clerical collars that peek out from under the same robes are modernized versions of the collars professors wore in centuries past to symbolize their authority and learning.  We are taught that these are symbols of the “office” of ministry so we overlook the way they contradict each other. But you can’t be both master and servant at the same time.

I am frustrated by the incongruities and the lack of clear vision within religious systems. And yet such uncertainty seems to hint at much greater liberty for individuals and communities than most of us expect. Opening our eyes to the contradictions between our personal (and corporate) actions and beliefs, being able to laugh about them in a forgiving way, and making adjustments to resolve them is the way towards peace.

From Authority to Resource

This is the fourth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

For believing that the one-size-fits-all model of spirituality and piety was ever a real thing that could be attained with enough training or persuasion, I apologize.

As I go through this week I am finding that writing these gets harder and harder. I have been struggling with this one for years and I find that I am not the only one who has trouble with it. Lay people are struggling with this one too.

In a wonderful TED Talk about learning through our mistakes, educator Diana Laufenberg shares how her grandmother attended a one room school house to be educated. She went because that’s where the knowledge was: stored in the teacher’s mobile memory device (her brain). When Diana was a student her parents bought a set of encyclopedias. She didn’t need to go to the library anymore to get information for a report since she had access to a reliable memory device at home (books). Today, with computers and even smart phones we no longer have to go where the information is. It comes to us. Instantly.

This change in where we store and retrieve the knowledge we need to learn and grow means that the principal role of the educator has changed. A teacher is no longer the authority who carries information in order to pass it along to someone else. A teacher is now someone who facilitates interactive, self-directed learning. It is a process that avoids rote memorization of facts in favor of learning by exploration.

The same can be said about church. I was trained to be the local authority on spirituality, scripture and doctrine. People came to church to learn what God said through the scriptures. Pastors and priests taught spiritual practices that reinforced what they said from the front of the church. We even wear clothes that symbolized the learning and authority we had acquired. (The clerical collar is a modernized version of the old doctoral collars worn by professors. In some denominations the pastor’s robe is similar to a graduation gown.)  

The thing about teaching a large number of people at one time is that you have to find a way that reaches everyone in the group. Basically, you have to find a one-size-fits-all piety. Then you try to cram everyone into that shape. You repeat it over and over from the front of the congregation. You back it up with bible studies printed by your denominational printing house. You invite other authorities with the same view point to “give a fresh perspective” to the congregation. And you limit the knowledge that you pass on, in part because you yourself have limited knowledge and in part because it's easier that way.

But in a world where finding information about other spiritual traditions and beliefs is as easy as typing a question into a phone or computer, people don’t need an authority. I am no longer the mobile memory device for spirituality in the community. I am another resource in the spiritual journey of each individual. At best I can serve as a trusted guide as people explore their own spiritual path. One size does not fit all in this new world. It probably didn’t in the past either but we all make do with what we are given.

In my ordination I promised to uphold the doctrine of the church (with the assumption that my tradition was the one who did, in fact, hold on to THE correct doctrine of all that is holy). I promised to be an authority. But now I see that what the community needs is a trusted resource. The transition from an authority to trusted resource is a humbling and difficult transition. In many ways it feels messy and out-of-control.

Moving from authority to resource means stepping away from the front of the community and walking with people where they are. It means letting go of the need to control details. It means being available when an individual is ready, not making them be ready when I am available. It’s a lot more one-on-one. It’s an overwhelming task in a large congregation. As people walk their own path they will make mistakes. They will venture beyond the bounds of “correct doctrine.” As they serve in the church community as part of their spiritual journey they will pass along bad ideas and misinformation about the faith. But they will also inspire others and give birth to new ways of understanding the mystery of the Holy.

Many lay people resist this transition because it means they have to be responsible for their own life of faith and that's a difficult thing to do. So I feel caught between the people who want me to serve as guide and those who want me to serve as authority. I find that doing both is impossible. I flip-flop back and forth and am aware that this isn’t helping. I am hearing God’s call to make the transition to resource/guide but don’t know how to do it. I’m still waiting to see how that might happen.