nakedpastor

Years ago Lisa and I read an excellent little book called Codependency No More by Melody Beattie. At the time we read the book we were suffering the fallout for extricating ourselves from a toxic and codependent relationship with the church and some of its leaders. It had an impact on me because it got me thinking about my codependent relationship to the church. I deal with codependency all the time. I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the most prevalent codependencies is between a pastor and his or her church. I am prone to it just like everyone else. It is an ongoing struggle because, no matter how resolute I might be in maintaining a healthy relationship with my church, there is another partner involved… the church itself. The gravitational pull of all organizations is toward codependency, and it takes the diligence of both parties to strive for health between them. I personally believe that the helpers (pastors, employees, civil servants, clients, etc.) usually become the victims, and for a lone victim to stand up to an entire institution for the sake of his or her own health is often quite costly.

This list, as I looked over it before posting it, can apply to any relationship. It could apply to an employee’s relationship to his employer and company. Any relationship! Check it out and see how you do. In this list, I presume, for simplicity’s sake, that we are the codependent wife and our church, institution, company or whatever partner, is the husband:

1. I believe I can change him.
2. I depend on his money to live.
3. I would rather be loved poorly than to not be loved at all.
4. I believe there is a decent person deep inside of him.
5. I can’t picture life without him.
6. I help him. He needs me.
7. I keep things calm by repressing my true feelings and personality.
8. I accept that I am called to suffer for this, even though I am often sad or even depressed.
9. I feel incredible guilt even when I just think about leaving.
10. I can’t listen to the advice of others to get out. They don’t understand.

Can you say any or all of these things in reference to the relationship in question? Then it may be codependent and unhealthy and something may need to be done. And it is up to you! Tomorrow I might post on what we can do if we discover we are in a codependent relationship. Or, if it isn’t codependent but heading that way, what we can do to bring health into this relationship, if possible.

A few weeks ago I ordered Lonnie Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher. It arrived yesterday and I watched it last night. I don’t want to discuss the technical aspects of the film at all. I want to address its message.

Beginning in the Jesus Movement in the early 60’s, Lonnie became very influential in the beginning success of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel movement, as well as John Wimber’s Vineyard movement, of which I am a part. After a long season with a powerful impact on the church, he was exposed as gay. Then he was methodically removed from visibility. He was eventually fired. Then rejected and ostracized. And now he is effectively written out of the histories of both of these movements. He died of AIDS in 1993 at the age of 43.

What more can be said? I realize that this documentary in many ways is sympathetic to Lonnie Frisbee and critical of those who rejected him. However, this has been my observation about the church as well. It is no surprise. It is disturbing but predictable. What more can be said? The documentary provoked today’s cartoon.

But one of the things this video left me with was the very real fact that even though the Vineyard has written him out of our history, he is a part of our foundational roots. The issue of being gay in the church is a very real issue today, one I wish to address and deal with, and this video suggested to me that the Vineyard might be one of the places to do this well.

We had another Open Round Table meeting for our church community again last night. Although we have a kind of body of executive elders to make crucial financial decisions, etc., about the church, we want the oversight of the church to be open and collegial. We don’t have a membership role at Rothesay Vineyard. So anyone who is at all interested in the welfare of the church and wishes to have a voice in its health is welcome to come. Generally speaking there are approximately 20 or so people who come. I would like to see more come. But it is totally volunteer based. No pressure on anyone to attend or skip. Anyone can play.

And this isn’t just talk. We are serious about it. I opened the meeting by reading Psalm 133 where it talks about unity and harmony. How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity! After some beautifully picturesque descriptions of what this unity looks like, it closes by saying that where this unity is kept, “there the Lord ordains his blessing”. I feel it is our task to maintain harmony. God, in turn, will bless that. Unity and harmony is blessed. We have these meetings so that we can maintain harmony among ourselves. This is an exercise in unity. They can hear my heart, and I can hear theirs. Together we can hear the heart of God for the church and the heart of the church for God.

As usual I went into the meeting nervous because I don’t carry an agenda with me. I try to empty my mind of all motive and desire so that we can have a true and open dialog. Together we will care for this community and through our conversation discover how to do this well. As usual there are awkward moments of silence at the beginning. But once a conversation starts, that hour and a half is a wonderfully chaotic exchange of energy and ideas. We don’t reach any conclusions necessarily. We just get a feel for each other and the community. These are a few of the things that emerged in our conversation:

1. We are different and unique and hard to describe. But we like it and wouldn’t trade it for anything else. What we don’t need is a mission statement or a vision. What we might need is a language to describe ourselves. What we might need is what the Bible calls giving a reason for the hope that is within us. We believe that as we shine our own light with truth and integrity, that this will be the way we love those around us.
2. We are sitting on a huge asset of over 15 acres of prime commercial or industrial land. We also own a very functional building. However, we have developed in such a way that it doesn’t really match our personality as a community right now. We are not sure what to do about it yet, but there was a lot of energy and discussion about what the possibilities are. I admired the sense of adventure the people shared, as well as their courageous willingness to take risks to become more integrated in all that we are and do.

For the past couple of weeks I have been hearing lots of criticism and negative rumors about me and our church. I allowed them to get me down. I would enter very dark moments when I questioned my own call, the church, and even my own sanity. But when those who care about the community gathered together last night, all those phantom rumors evaporated in our mutual love for God, each other and the church. I left encouraged and fortified to fulfill my call as a pastor, as I am sure everyone else there did.

Thanks to my online friend John over at microclesia for recommending this video to me as an insightful model for ministry and church community. John writes:

Creatives are wired to contribute. Creatives aspire to have their voices play a constructive role in community formation and direction, including (especially) religious community. Great orchestra conductors become conduits for this individual creativity to flourish. An intentional virtual network is like a well-led orchestra with every player listening carefully to the ensemble while masterfully contributing their individual part.

This gets close to what I am trying to say. Enjoy Israeli orchestral conductor Itay Talgam share his perspective on conductors.

Someone who reads my blog sent this to me today. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve received emails from people in libraries, schools, universities, their places of employment, and even in their own homes!, who have been denied access to nakedpastor. It is because of the “naked” in nakedpastor. I’m not sure what to do about it. I started the blog under a different name that was completely uncontroversial. But this, by far, is a better name and gets closer to what I’m doing. I wish there was something I could do about it.

Sometimes I get so discouraged. This shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve been following my blog at all. And it’s not just because it is Monday either. My discouragement is timeless. But this is what is getting me down today: we are stuck in a performer/audience mentality in the church. It seems impossible to break. One day a few weeks ago someone told me that I was really deep and intellectual and that I preached way over their heads. The same day someone told me that they weren’t learning anything from my teaching. It was too shallow and boring. I conclude that usually compliments and criticisms are two sides of the same coin. I am being judged and scored according to my performance.*

Let’s say a husband looks at a sexual self-help book with graphic instructional pictures. He loves his wife and they have sex. But in his mind he imagines what he’d like the sex they have to be like. He does everything he can to match his fantasy and constantly pressures her to do this and do that. Afterward, when they are lying next to each other, he says, “Well, that was about a 4 out of 10!” Or another time he smiles and says, “That was definitely a 10!” Guaranteed, sooner or later his wife is going to express her unhappiness. She’s being measured. She has expectations placed upon her. She is under the pressure to match a fantasy in his head. It won’t work because it is not love.

Same with church. If I am constantly being measured, expected to fulfill peoples’ fantasy of what a pastor or public speaker should be like, or what a great church should be like, I am going to be unhappy very fast. Same with the people. If I continually give them the impression that they are being scored week to week, that they are components I am trying to properly align to a fantasy I have for them, if they have any sense at all, they will grow unhappy too. The whole paradigm needs to be tossed. Criticism and flattery are two sides of the same coin.

Didn’t Luther say that if you put two lovers in a bedroom alone, they won’t have to be told what to do. They’ll figure it out. If we learned how to love each other, first and foremost, we’ll figure it out. And it will be completely outside the scoring paradigm.

*I admit this isn’t always the case. Sometimes someone criticizes what I said because they really disagree with it. Or someone thanks me for what I said because they realized something new. They really learned something. This is a different thing altogether.

I meet pastors for coffee. Every one of them says something like this to me: “I got an email this week from somebody who says they’re leaving my church.” I’m like, “Welcome to my club. At least you got an email.”

We have the right to change churches. We have the right to quit being a part of one altogether. We even have the right to leave the faith. But there’s something I notice in charismatic type churches, or churches who have been connected in any way with the renewal movement: we are more transient. We’re looking for something. And if the church loses it or doesn’t provide it, we’ll be faithful for as long as we can, but eventually we’ll move on. When I was a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, I never saw anything like this. There are many churches in this area that people move around in. Like certain birds, we tend to migrate around to wherever it’s hottest and most agreeable. Renewal and charismata does something to us. And it ain’t all good. It plants a discontent deep within us that can never be satisfied, at least for long. I know what I’m talking about because I fight this restlessness all the time. As messed up as it was, Corinth, the conference capital of the Roman world, would’ve been my drug.

Yes, I’m infected. I have the charismatic renewal virus. But I also realize that what I value most is relationship. I am worshiping, praying and learning with my friends. To go after my drug would mean to abandon them.* I don’t want that. I love them. They love me. My God, all we’ve been through together! And, as disappointing as church can be sometimes, when it comes down to it, the greatest of everything and anything is love.

*I realize that some people leave my church because they believe I am not preaching the gospel, or the whole gospel, or something other than the gospel. But that’s another story.

1. I have several original 2009 paintings on sale. Want them gone. 50% off!
2. Makoto Fujimura inspires me.
3. People can’t resist delicious rumors. I hear delicious rumors about me almost daily.
4. I’ve become a Cormac McCarthy fan.
5. Started writing music again.
6. Why do so many people want to see me and my church fail?
7. René Girard is important.
8. Received lots of flack last year for nakedpastor and got intimidated. Not again.
9. I love chorale music, especially from Russia and Estonia.
10. The z-theory (type it in my search box) continues to draw attention.

This is one of my paintings for sale, “Birch Row with Stars” (watercolor on Arches 140lb cp., approximately 10″x22″ (25cm x 55cm). I’ll sell it for $80 USD.

A young man in our congregation asked if this could be read last Sunday morning. He composed it during the week. He’s going through an unbelievably difficult time. We meet often, and I am frequently overcome with the intensity of his struggles right now. I asked him if I could share this with you, and he said I could. I not only appreciate what he had to say, but the fact that he could say it in the context of his spiritual community, his church. The event (the reading and the hearing) says as much about his community as it does about him. What follows is verbatim what he wrote:

Well what is faith? How do we understand it? I believe that faith is being able to continue on with the assumption that there is hope even though everything around you in a worldly sense points to things being hopeless. When all you can see or predict has a likely or potentially negative outcome or an outcome that will continue toward an already downhill turn of events. This is where faith comes in. I look back on my life and I see that these are the times where God has performed the miracles.

What do you need to let God take over in your life?

I had a sense that 2010 was going to be a good year, but it began with a rather heated discussion on a what I thought was a fairly innocuous post, the first one of the year. What started as an appreciation post to my readers became a rather heated debate, largely around whether or not I qualify as a pastor, especially within the Vineyard movement. It evoked 79 comments. That discussion pretty much indicates the wide variety of reactions nakedpastor arouses. But I want to address one reaction in particular. That is, some people feel that since I am a pastor of a local congregation, I should keep my sometimes heterodox and dissenting thoughts to myself, for the two are incompatible to each other.

So the underlying message is that, no matter what I am thinking or struggling with, I must conform to the status quo. I am expected to comply to the vast variety of everyone’s expectations of what a pastor should be, and our church is expected to align with what everyone thinks our church must be. In other words, no matter what I really am, it doesn’t matter. They don’t want to hear about it. Just behave! No matter what your struggles are, present yourself as equal to our expectations. We don’t care what your community is really like. Because it is a church with an evangelical, charismatic and renewal history, and because it is a Vineyard church, this is how it should be!

One of the things I highly value is the freedom of thought and speech within the church. I am passionate about providing a place where people are free to explore their own faith, discover their own spiritual path, and to do that with the benefit of community without fear of judgment, both locally and online. This, in my opinion, applies to myself as well. If religious exploration is something I value and encourage, then I will model it. And our church community will do the same.

One of the most recognized features of the church by those inside but especially those outside is its propensity for hypocrisy and duplicity and its use of power to protect these. I have exercised it and been a victim of it. I challenge it. And one of the best ways to do it is to live in the opposite spirit. That is, with truth, honesty, and humility. I have found that it is very difficult to do so within the church because hypocrisy, duplicity and power are often the gravitational pull of organized religion. I know I am not consistent. I most often fail. But I try because I believe in the church and the communion of saints, in spite of all blemishes. No matter how many times I am asked to reconsider, I intend to press on.