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.

The Tidiness of Doctrine

This is the seventh 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.

I’m sorry that I engage so much of what is happening in our culture and our world on a doctrinal level and not as a matter of faith that is sometimes messy and unsure.

My faith lives in my head.

This is one of the main criticisms of the mainline Church in America and Lutherans are champions of this kind of faith. It’s why we are so good at theology. We think about faith. This was the faith in which I was raised and, as one of my favorite songwriters penned it, “you can only grow the way the wind blows.”

But it’s also where I find I am most engaged with God. I love to meditate and reflect on what I see God doing in the world. I can spend hours trying to sort out the relationships that we humans have with both creation and the creator. I find peace while listening for the Divine to speak in a variety of ways (except when I experience frustration at hearing nothing or hearing something that I don’t want to hear). I find joy whenever a new insight inches me closer to understanding what this life is all about.

To be honest, though, I like living out my faith in my head because it’s safe. It’s like sharing your faith in a sermon. Many people think that preaching in front of a large group is difficult but, once you get over the fear of public speaking, you soon find that sharing what you are thinking in a place where people aren’t (usually) welcome to respond, refute or rebuff can make a person pretty bold. (If you haven’t already, see my post from a couple days ago From Authority to Resource to get an idea of the kind of authority that is granted in preaching.)

I also like to let my faith live in my head because it is always a bit neater and more tidy than in the world of emotions. I can sort things out and categorize them. I can rationalize and reason. I can remove myself from the roller-coaster ride that emotions take us through. Again, it’s all about finding a safe place. So when someone comes to me with the raw emotion of life’s messy issues overflowing around them, retreating to the safe confines of religious doctrine is my first response for all these reasons.

The thing that I am being forced to learn is that faith doesn’t lead to a safe place. That’s where we want to end up: In a place of safety and comfort. But faith (and life) leads us to places of risk. As one conference presenter put it, the major stories of the Bible are all about leaving home, over and over again. Life is a constant leaving of the places where we have become comfortable in order to risk and grow, not just for ourselves but to help others grow as well.

I am constantly learning and relearning the importance of staying in the moment no matter how thrilling or anxiety-producing it is. I am a firm believer in a ministry of presence; just being there with people in their sufferings and joys. But it is never my default mode of ministry (or existence). I have to catch myself as I turn to doctrine to tidy up a messy situation and be mindful to just sit within the pain, the tension and even the delight. That doesn’t mean I can’t reflect upon it later or that I can’t help someone else reflect on it when they are ready. It just means that sometimes I have to experience life before I try to make sense out of it.