Chapter 4: Professional Religionists and Pastor-Heroes

When Ryan walked back into the restaurant a few minutes later, he had that smirk on his face like he did back in high school when he had an idea that he was sure Anthony would love.

RW: My wife is ready for bed, but she would like to have a male presence at the house—-just to feel safer. How about we go back to my place, you can meet Kimberly before she turns in for the night and then we’ll continue this conversation in the Jacuzzi?

At this point, a similar smirk formed on Anthony own face…

AT: Sounds great. I’ll stop at Ralphs to get the Twinkies.

The two of them had a tradition during their two years on the varsity football team after every Friday night game. Win or lose, they always came back to Ryan’s house and soaked in the hot water with the air jets on full blast, playing the game back over and over while they polished off a whole box of Hostess Twinkies. Ryan’s parents moved out to Palm Desert just a few years ago and handed Ryan the keys to the house [with the Jacuzzi!] since he was the only child.

When they got to the house, Anthony finally met Kimberly and they chatted for just a few minutes. Ryan, as he did back in high school, came back out in his tight speedo—-just like the ones that Olympic swimmers wear—-and it somehow caught Anthony off--guard, perhaps due to the 40 extra pounds Ryan had put on over the years, as he almost hit the floor laughing. Anthony borrowed one of Ryan’s ‘normal’ swimsuits and they headed outside. Ryan started in immediately:

RW: So, do you go to church in Kansas?
AT: Oh, we don’t have to ‘go’ anywhere. We have church at our house. Don’t get me wrong, this isn‘t like how my dad used to joke about going to St. Mattress with Pastor Sheets on Sunday mornings. We actually have a little ‘house church’ that meets every Monday night, which is great for us during the football season and recruiting period since I have to travel quite a bit on the weekends. There are 5 couples that are committed to the community and we’ve been meeting every Monday for the last 7 years. We have dinner together and then someone will direct a time of Scripture reading, but the floor is always open for questions, comments and concerns. We’ll have a time of prayer and sharing. We’ve really gotten to know these folks over the years and they’ve really gotten to know us. We feel like we really get to experiment with this New Testament concept called koinonia—what most English translations of the Bible call ‘fellowship’—but better translated ‘common life’ or ‘solidarity’ in Christ.
RW: That sounds just like our ‘small groups,’ but you guys save a lot of gas money and time not going to the Sunday service—what a deal! In fact, we even call them ‘Koinonia Groups’ at Grace Evangelical! How’s it different from that?
AT: Well, it doesn’t necessarily need to be any different from your small groups at all. But we do think our focus is a little bit unique. Most churches that I’ve experienced tend to be places that offer worship services and ministries to be involved with. We think that, overwhelmingly, ‘the church’ in the United States has come to mean a place where Christians go to get their needs met, whether that’s emotional worship through music or sermons to understand life and the Bible better or classes and groups to help them ‘grow spiritually.’ We are attempting to model a different idea of what church is. We think the church is a ‘political body’ or as Jesus called his gathered disciples, ‘a city on a hill.’ The church is the community where Christians, together, pledge allegiance to the kingdom of God with all of its alternative beliefs, practices and virtues.

In addition, churches divide their people into two groups: there are ‘professional clergy,’ pastors like yourself who are called and paid to do the work of the church, and then there are ‘laity’ like myself who have ‘secular’ jobs during the week and participate with the church on Sundays and during specified activities during the week, like small groups. Yoder speculates that what we now call ‘senior pastors,’ or ‘bishops’ and ‘priests’ in other traditions, started popping up in church communities about 75 years after the time of Christ. These ‘professional religionists’ were probably a carry-over from the pagan lifestyle of the Gentiles. Yoder critiques this idea and even thinks the New Testament doesn’t really support it. Our community wants to wipe out the ‘laity’ label altogether.
RW: So, does this mean you don’t have any leaders?
AT: No, actually we are all leaders in each of our own gifted ways. We’re all ‘professional’ Christians playing our roles in the power of the Spirit. Just like what Paul writes about in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 and, if he wrote it, Ephesians 4: we all have different gifts to serve the church with—-all vitally important for the health of the community. This NT vision of the people of God is empowering to all and gives both privilege and responsibility to all of God’s children, in all of their unique giftedness.
RW: What do you mean ‘if he wrote it?’ Are you questioning Paul’s authorship of Ephesians?
AT: Can we get back to that later?
RW: Sure, but it seems like your group is a standing rebuke to my career. Almost a thousand members at our church look to me as a ‘professional’ when it comes to the Bible and counseling and spirituality and basically all things ‘Christian.’ I don’t get paid much when compared to other ‘professions,’ but without the pay I wouldn’t be able to serve the church like I do. Isn’t it ‘biblical’ that each church has certain people who are called and gifted to be leaders, and that in these positions of leadership, they have greater responsibility for the spiritual growth of the congregation. These are leaders with a God-given ‘authority’ exercised to interpret Scripture, to feed God’s sheep, to protect the church from wayward teaching and to maintain a certain degree of order. Isn’t this vital so that not just ‘anything goes’ and so that decisions can be made instead of breeding chaos.
AT: This is something that I’ve been wrestling with for years. It seems to me, from observation and experience, that pastors in evangelical churches have become jack-of-all-trades spiritual advisors-teachers-comforters-administrators all rolled into one. All these roles that Paul and the other NT writers wrote about in regards to church communities were filled by multiple men and women. Now, these roles have all been laid on the shoulders of one or just a few pastors who are overwhelmingly men. Why is that the norm? I think there are two factors: (1) men like you are extremely gifted in a variety of areas of leadership so they find themselves doing ALL these tasks for the church and, if they can get paid for it, all the better; and (2) human beings feel more comfortable with certain men being the professionals in the whole realm of spirituality so that they can focus on ‘the rest-of-their-lives,’ as they lean on Pastor Ryan's expertise with ‘religious’ matters. American culture, from heroic characters in movies to CEO’s running corporations, has trained us to value the Renaissance man who can do-it-all and get the pretty girl in the end. I firmly believe that if pastors took seriously that this new people of God in Christ are ‘a kingdom of priests’ [not a kingdom with priests] then there would be a real burden lifted, a level of stress and pressure that they have to do everything in the church. It would also be tremendously healthy for church members to really be challenged with using their gifts and to take seriously that they, too, are doing priestly work for the kingdom, both at their ‘secular’ jobs and when the community gathers.
RW: So, in your opinion, should all these pastors like me give up their salaries and go out and get ‘real jobs?’
AT: I don’t envision that at all. Church communities, especially with a thousand people in it, desperately need leaders that are trained in the art of interpreting the Bible and others trained in counseling and others who are needed to give a little extra time to administrative work. These shouldn’t all be done by the same person and they shouldn’t all be men. It sends a message to the church community at large and to the non-Christian world that says, ‘We have some people in the church who are ‘professionals,’ and in many cases ‘superheroes’ or ‘rock stars’ who are doing the real work, the kingdom work, and then there are the masses who attend services [put on by the experts] and work at other non-kingdom jobs, but are expected to ‘do their time’ with a ministry at the church—the ‘kingdom work.’
RW: I think you are on to something here. In our own church leadership meetings or at these pastors’ conferences we go to, we often talk about how we can get the rest of the congregation serving—how 10% of the church does 90% of the work. The general consensus is that it is very much ‘their problem’: they are too busy or too lazy or don’t care about ‘spiritual’ things enough or are afraid of getting too involved or they are too comfortable. Yoder’s analysis seems to be getting at the heart of the problem—that God’s design is for his people to be a community of priests, not divided between two different classes of ‘Christian’—which, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily mean solutions are easy.
AT: There are pastors I’ve heard of doing creative things like giving 10% of their salary each year until they are serving at the church voluntarily with what they are gifted in. Of course, that means they are working increasingly more and more part-time hours somewhere else and others in the church community are putting in time with the church community. I heard of another pastor recently who was doing all the teaching on Sunday mornings for years, but now he only teaches once a month because he finally realized that he wasn’t as gifted a teacher as he was with some areas, but some in the congregation were gifted and passionate and surprisingly well-trained to do the teaching. I just think we need pastors who aren’t threatened by the thought of others—who are gifted in areas that they aren’t—doing that work for the community. We need leaders who are committed to empowering people and not manipulating them. Maybe we just need a lot of pastors who don’t take themselves so seriously.
RW: Don’t you think that part of the solution must lay with the congregation though?
AT: Amen. Many of those descriptions you recounted earlier—too lazy, too comfortable, too busy—-are all valid issues, and those same every-Sunday-church-attendees are content, without a hint of critical thinking, to let the religious expert tell them how to live. But I do think that the church leadership [pastoral staff] must guide this in ways that are empowering to the rest-of-the-church-body. I think the majority of evangelicals need to get over this thing where everyone needs a ‘pastor-hero.’ This will take both humility and empathy. They need to humbly admit that they can’t possibly do it all and that its not God’s plan for the church. They also need to learn to see and experience the struggles of life through the point of view of ‘Joe the Plumber-Christian’ who works 40-80 hours a week just trying to pay the bills AND, in their workplace, be a sign and foretaste of God’s inaugurated reign. Wow…that’s a challenge! I think pastors need to invite a dialogue, challenging congregations with the notion that, perhaps, Scripture doesn’t really support it. But maybe more importantly, pastors need to start modeling it. These ‘pastor-heroes’ are just going to need to respectfully and gently say ‘no’ to a lot of what they are doing, and give opportunities for others in the community, with their distinct gifts and talents, to be involved with some of the burdens placed on the pastors’ shoulders. As harsh as it sounds, perhaps the ‘pastor-hero’ should stop taking all the hospital visits and others in the community can be challenged and, in the process, empowered to step it up with their gifting. But, I know, there is always something comforting, something special to have the ‘pastor-hero’ by my hospital bedside kneeling with me in prayer before the big operation! This is the bind that we are in. Expectations need to be scaled back and the people of God need to see what a community where everyone does pastoral work really looks like.
RW: I think I’ll need you in our leadership meeting on Tuesday to communicate all of this.
AT: It's all yours. I’ll be busy trying to win football games…and be a sign and foretaste of God’s reign in the process! Wow…what a challenge!