To be a coward...

Reading The Power and the Glory again is probably partly to blame for me thinking this way, but I'm realizing how much of a coward I am when it comes to ministry. Luckily I'm not the only one, but it still stinks.

In his great book The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson claims that the pastor must be subversive. His point is that most people in the church cannot handle everything the pastor has to teach, so you give it to them a little at a time, slowly guiding them to some tough questions and answers. Most pastors seem to resonate with this, including myself, though I'm realizing that we like it because it gives us an easy out. The truth is, we are afraid to tell it like it is.

Why is this the case?

For years I think there were many American pastors telling things exactly how they saw them. And the church caught on and agreed. Unfortunately, I really don't think these views were correct. And now the church is firmly entrenched in what it believes is right and wrong, and it is a form of church suicide to disagree with that. So we sit and hope we can be "subversive," which is really just an excuse to hide in our cowardice.

In under two months I go on another youth retreat. We are planning on spending the weekend discussing the book of Revelation. Unfortunately many of my kids have "churched" parents; the kind of parents who, if we want to stereotype, have probably spent one entire year of their life studying different cults, believing they can now argue somebody out of their faith, and another year studying Revelation, now believing they can see the US's role in the apocalypse, have a good idea who the beast is, and are continually leary of any new technology with fear that it may in fact be the mark of the beast. They are waiting for the end, and unfortunately teaching their kids to do the same. And I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to get into theological arguments where I have explain to people why their exegesis is poor, only to have them stubbornly hold onto ideas that are too entrenched in their minds to lose. Honestly, I just don't want to fight.

I know not all in ministerial positions think this way. Some are only too eager to get into it. But what it often boils down to is us being afraid of losing our congregants, if not our very jobs, by calling people out on poorly thought-out ideas and beliefs that have more to do with the Western worldview than Biblical faith. So we instead sit in our offices and try to plan out how to continue disguising our cowardice as subversion.

Perhaps there is a better way?

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: The Present Future by Reggie McNeal. The staff at the church I work at are required to read it, and I was honestly scared at first. It's written by a Southern Baptist, and I never know what sort of rude thing I might accidently say when discussing how to do church with others... Anyways, the book is surprisingly intelligent and challenging. But I'm still scared of what I might say. I definitely see things differently and I really don't think that would always be seen as a good thing there.