Pastoral Ministry & Neo-Calvinism and Mega-Churches

I’m sitting here beside Pam as she watches the Academy Awards (I can’t really say that I am watching it because I am really just here because I like her and she likes the Oscars) and I am wondering if New-Calvinism and megachurch mindsets are killing pastoral ministry. Both seem to put all the focus of importance on a pastor’s preaching to the exclusion of pastors actually being involved in the lives and needs of their parishioners. I am wonder if Neo-Calvinism does this because of a mindset that right belief is all that matters (possibly a little Gnosticism here) and therefore preaching becomes the best thing a minister can do for his/her people, and in the megachurch because there isn’t enough time for the preacher to be involved in people’s lives. I believe this is why I run into pastors who brag about spending 30 hours a week in sermon preparation and not having any time to really spend with the people of the church. I’m not sure if this is really true or not, it is just something I am considering while I also wonder how many awards Mad Max: Fury Road is going to win.

WiFi discovery

Screenshot_2016-02-25-11-13-33Today I discovered that I was within 30 feet of an acquaintance that I haven’t seen in several years, and it was all because of WiFi.  I needed to check my email while I was out today and saw that my phone was telling me that there was an open (i.e. unsecured) WiFi hotspot around me. I don’t use a lot of mobile data but instead use free WiFi the vast majority of time. So I pulled up the WiFi connections list on my phone to look for the open connection. When I was looking at the list I saw the name “Caleb Azure’s iPhone”. I knew a guy named Caleb Azure who was an associate pastor in Green Bay years ago. He moved out to California a few years ago and I haven’t seen him since then. So I was a little surprised when I saw his name associated with a iPhone signal that was around me.

So I looked around and saw a guy sitting in a car across from me that looked pretty much like Caleb. Of course, it isn’t really very cool to knock on a stranger’s car window so I thought I would reach out to Caleb via the only contact I have with him anymore … Twitter.

And then I waited. I checked my email, looked around, twiddled my thumbs, and waited for him to look up or respond. He didn’t. I decided to just get out and knock on his car window. So I got out of my van, started to walk towards his car, and then stopped and turned around when I saw him start talking on his phone. After all it isn’t nice to interrupt someone’s phone call. I tweeted him again.

So I got back into my minivan and waited. I checked Twitter, looked at the steps I had walked during the day, and listened to a podcast about the history of Christianity. I waited till it became awkward. I kept looking to see if he looked up. He didn’t. I finally decided that I should go. So I tweeted that if it were him that I just barely missed him.

And as you can see from his tweet above he responded back 12 minutes later that it had actually been him. Small world and a weird way to discover that an acquaintance has moved back to Wisconsin.

Lost & Found

In January I wrote about my possible and included in that post that the Leatherman that resides in my possible is thanks to my brother. Today I have a different Leatherman in my possible and it is thanks to my brother again. Here’s the story.

YEARS ago I bought my first Leatherman multitool and loved it. It was wonderful. I also bought a cheapo multitool which was okay but not great. Everything was usable on the cheapo multitool but it didn’t fit and feel near as good as the Leatherman. Of course, that didn’t matter much because I carried my Leatherman with me and just left the cheapo one in my vehicle’s glovebox.

Then one day I was at my parent’s house and pulled out my Leatherman to work on something with my dad. He immediately loved it and said he had been wondering how good they were. I told him no problem I have a cheapo one that I don’t use very much at all and he was welcome to it. Yeah if I were a good son I would have just handed him my Leatherman but I am my father’s son and therefore I have a strong cheap gene in my DNA. I reached into my glovebox, pulled out the cheapo multitool, and gave it to my dad. Dad was thrilled.

Well at least I thought I gave it to my dad. What I actually did was give him the Leatherman by mistake. Dad was happy and I drove the hours back home (I can’t remember if we were in Missouri or had just moved to Louisiana at the time). When I got home dad called up and asked if I had really meant to give him that multitool. When I said yep he responded with “I thought you were going to give me your cheap one, not the Leatherman. Thanks!”

I wish I could say that I purposefully gave him the Leatherman, but I can’t. I was really planning on giving him the cheap one. Yet my pride was such that I wasn’t going to tell my dad that I had meant to give him the cheap one. Nope as far as he was concerned I was going to make sure that he thought I gave him the Leatherman. And that is what he thought. So I stayed quite for years. At least a decade, possibly two.

When dad died back in October mom asked if there were any specific things that Ken and I wanted to take with us and that we would figure out everything else later. I told her I wanted one of dad’s knives for Adam, Noah, and me and that I wanted my Leatherman back. I told mom the story of how dad ended up with it originally. I don’t believe she had ever heard that story, not unless dad had figured out that I hadn’t actually meant to give him the Leatherman. So My mom, brother, and I looked everywhere we could for that stupid multitool. Every time we straighten something out or looked for something else we had the Leatherman in the back of our minds. None of us found it and our speculation was that he had possibly given it to someone else (not out of character for him) or dropped it in a river while fishing (not out of character either). I figured it was gone.

So my brother decided to surprise me for Christmas with a new Leatherman and a note. Christmas morning I opened up my present form my brother and read the note which said, “Merry Christmas. I probably stole the other one, so here is a new one.” It was a wonderful Christmas present and that Leatherman has been with me in my possible since Christmas morning. It has been used quite regularly.

You can see the Leatherman in the lower left corner
You can see the Leatherman in the lower left corner

Then Ken had to go and top his Christmas present to me by actually finding the lost Leatherman that I had accidentally given to my dad. Pam, the boys, and I sent mom flowers for her and dad’s anniversary. By way of letting us know that she liked them the devious woman (that’s right mom, I said you are devious) decided to post a photo on Facebook with a hidden surprise. The Leatherman is on the table beside the flowers. Mom didn’t say a word about it. She just posited the photo and hope I would see the Leatherman. Ken had been cleaning out mom & dad’s Airstream and had accidentally found the Leatherman behind a coffee can of tools. I know I had looked there. I am positive of it.

Anyhow I now have two Leatherman’s in my possible bag that I am emotionally attached too because of my dad … and my brother.

Maybe I'm Mentioning This Too Much

Maybe I should view it as a hint I’m saying this too much when a member of the Tapestry Leadership Team sends me a link to a comic strip decrying left lane drivers. You see, pretty much any time I search for examples of pure evil for a message I come back to one of two things: 1) Left lane drivers, or 2) Brett Favre in a Vikings jersey.

Here’s the comic strip that Pete sent to me.

Pearls Before Swine

Burnout and Parker J. Palmer

Pam has recently turned me on to the writing of Parker J. Palmer. Last week I read his book “Let Your Life Speak” on a Christian understanding of vocation. There are a lot of quotes from Palmer that I could share because it is an excellent book, but I thought I would share this one concerning burnout.

Palmer writes in his book:

Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess-the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.

This quote fits in nicely with one of my understandings of idolatry. Idolatry does not only lead to us worship a false god but it also destroys the very thing that we try to worship. The object that we are wrongly worshiping was never meant to have that much meaning placed upon it. The idol can’t handle that pressure and is thus destroyed by it. It is the irony of idolatry that it destroys the very thing worshiped.

Palmer’s description of burnout has a similar focus. We burnout not because we give too much but because we don’t actually have what we are trying to give. I can’t actually be someone’s messiah. I don’t have that ability in me. Therefore, when I try to be someone’s salvation all I do is let them down and burn myself up because it is too great task for me. When I recognize the abilities and strengths that God has given me and function within them I function well. When I step out of those abilities and strengths and don’t refer to others, or more importantly to Him, when the time is needed then I push myself into situations that I am not capable of handling.

I see ministers do this regularly. We want to help our parishioners and someone view referring them to someone else as a weakness. Then we start to take on things we never should. I am a trained pastoral counselor and pastoral theologian. To be honest I think God has gifted me as a pastoral counselor and thus I believe I am pretty good at it. Yet, that doesn’t mean that I have the same skill set as a trained counselor. They have experience and training that I do not and I have training and experience that they do not have. I have to recognize this and refer to them when a referral is needed.

When I was a youth minister one of the things I regularly needed to refer on was cutting. It was just something that I couldn’t wrap my mind around. The best thing I could do to help the teens that I dealt with was walk them, and their parents, through the process of finding someone who could help. I wasn’t leaving them to fend for themselves but I also wasn’t trying to give them something that I didn’t posses.

This is part of why for me counseling situations typically don’t last more than sixish sessions without me referring someone to other help. I don’t want to try and give someone in need something that I don’t posses. To do so wouldn’t be any good for them or for me.

The Fundamental Issue

I’m presently reading “Resident Aliens” by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon and just read the following quote which goes along well with my thoughts from yesterday.

… the fundamental issue, when it comes to Christian ethics, is not whether we shall be conservative or liberal, left or right, but whether we shall be faithful to the church’s peculiar vision of what it means to live and act as disciples. p. 69

Yep, that about sums it up.

2016 Presidential Candidate Charitable Giving

Just read a couple of articles that I thought were interesting regarding the giving of the the 2016 presidential candidates. You can find the articles I read here and here. There are still quite a few candidates whose giving isn’t known yet because either they have not yet released for public viewing their tax documents or the documents they have released did not include their charitable giving.

Anyhow here is a list of the charitable giving I was able to find for our 2016 Presidential Politicians Charitable Giving. I will update this list as I find more information.

  1. Ted Cruz 0.9%
  2. Rick Santorum 1.8% – CAMPAIGN SUSPENDED
  3. Chris Christie 2.9%
  4. Jeb Bush 3.7%
  5. Bernie Sanders 5%
  6. Hillary Clinton 10.8%
  7. Carly Fiorina 13.4%

Candidates whose giving is unknown at this time.

  • Ben Carson
  • Jim Gilmore
  • Mike Huckabee – CAMPAIGN SUSPENDED
  • John Kasich
  • Rand Paul – CAMPAIGN SUSPENDED
  • Marco Rubio
  • Donald Trump

For some comparison I thought it would be nice to have two things for comparison. First, supposedly the average US household gives around 3-5% to charity. While I haven’t yet found an actual source for that stat (several articles have mentioned 3-5% but I haven’t found links to actual evidence associated with them) yet it does makes sense using two known numbers. The average American household gave $2,974 in 2014 (found here) and the average American household income was $53,657 in 2014 (found here). This equals 5.5% so I feel safe in presuming that 3-5% is close.

Second, here is the charitable giving from the 2012 presidential candidates’ tax documents. I thing the giving of both is quite impressive.

  1. Barack Obama 21.8%
  2. Mitt Romney 29.4%

I don’t know that we should vote for someone just because of their charitable giving but I do find it interesting to see who gives more substantially and who doesn’t.

Is Your Jesus At The Bottom Of A Well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXS9IZnvzPI

The historical movement known as the first quest for the historical Jesus was destroyed by Albert Schweitzer when he pointed out the obvious fact that the “historical Jesus” that these “questers” was describing looked almost exactly like the “questers” themselves. That seemed very convenient. Schweitzer illustrated this with a story that may have been first used by George Tyrell and was surely influenced by the poet Robert Frost. Anyhow Schweitzer said that these “questers” had looked down at the dark, cloudy water at the bottom of a well, saw their own ambiguous reflection, and declared it to be Christ. It is always nice to convince yourself that the Messiah you claim to serve looks exactly like you. That means other people need to change rather you needing to change. That’s nice and comfortable.

Of course, it is also idolatry.

The quote “God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor” is often attributed to Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While I don’t know who really made the statement I see proof of its truth all around me and unfortunately also sometimes within my own life. Far too often I have shaped Jesus to look a great deal like my own image rather than being transformed into His image. The latter should be the goal of all who claim to be disciples of Christ. We should be striving, begging, yearning to be shaped each day a little more into His image. While Jesus became one of us through the Incarnation He is still wholly other (a term Karl Barth liked for describing God’s transcendent nature) and thereby different from us. We must become like Him because He is the end/goal of life. Reducing Him to being in our image won’t work because we are broken and He is life. Making Him a Republican, Democratic, Independent or any other political system Messiah produces a false god that can’t bring us life. That false image, our dark reflection at the bottom of the well, simply isn’t adequate to bring true hope.

That’s why the above video (that I saw from two friends at the same time – ht Joy & Scott) makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Hearing those words come out of the mouth of an actor portraying Jesus stands in strong contrast to the words of Jesus I see in scripture. I laugh because I catch the incongruity between the image and the words. I cry because I see the truth of this incongruity actually happening in my culture and faith. If I can’t imagine my words being said by the Jesus conveyed in scripture and I claim to be His follower, then I need to change my words (and actions) quick, or just admit that my faith is not what really defines me.

I’ll use another video to further explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtLJfIGbowg

I have been a fan of Duck Commander, and thereby Duck Dynasty somewhat too, since I started duck hunting five years ago. I was introduced to them by Andy Lickel and soon learned to like their duck calls. I’ve enjoyed the show because while it is incredibly cheesy I believe that a real family love is still strongly conveyed through the show. So I’ve been with them through their various controversies. Sometimes this was because I agreed with them (though maybe not with the manner in which they said it) or sometimes because my affection for them was enough to just blow off what they said. Then this past week Phil Robertson made the following quote in endorsing Ted Cruz. Robertson said:

“I’ve never run upon a true conservative who was not a godly man or at least a God-conscious man, And by the same token, I’ve never run up on a godly man who wasn’t a true conservative.”

This is so disturbing to me. Not the endorsement of Ted Cruz but the implication of the use of the word “godly”. The term “godly” (the highest compliment I believe a follower of Christ can receive) has been connected by Robertson with certain political ideology and Jesus is thought to look like a conservative. Why? Well because we have looked down in into the bottom of a well, seen our own dark and muddy reflection, and declared it to be Christ. When this happens we no longer need to repent and allow God to shape us, to remove some aspects and add others, so that we look a little more like His son. There is no need for change because “Jesus” looks exactly like us because we have made god in our image instead of being made in His. I know godly people of many different political persuasions. They are focused on the kingdom of God and that kingdom shapes what they do and how they respond to the politics of their country. I would never associate being conservative with being godly anymore than I would associate being progressive with being godly. After all Jesus came to declare that the kingdom of God was at hand, not that the world was about to receive democratic capitalism.

Don’t get me wrong this isn’t just a a conservative problem. It happens just as much on the progressive side. In fact, Schweitzer’s original use of the well reflection analogy was in response to liberal protestant theologians. Finding “Christ” in our own reflection is an equal opportunity form of idolatry. It is equally destructive to all who will give into it.

I hope the image that shapes me comes from looking toward the real Christ, rather than my own dark and muddy reflection seen from a far.