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.
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Since I have qualified to make it on a few lists of blogs, most recently into the top 55 pastor bloggers, and since I am a pastor who has been blogging at nakedpastor for a few years, I figure this allows me to give some suggestions to pastor bloggers. This is not to say that I am good at any of this. But I do have some thoughts and experience as a pastor blogging. Here’s a list of 10:
- Anonymity: I don’t favor it except in extreme cases. If you are going to put yourself out there, then do it. Unless it’s extreme. The purpose of blogging, IMO, is to make formerly obscure information available to everyone. Obscurity defeats this purpose. Again, unless your situation is extreme, dangerous, sensitive or unusual.
- Originality: There are tons of blogs out there all saying the same things, quoting the same scriptures, repeating the same clichés. Although you may wish to remain rooted in your tradition, be original and creative in your thoughts and your articulation of them.
- Privacy: Do not disclose sensitive issues about your congregation or people in it, your friends or family… unless you have their expressed permission for certain stories. You might gain some readers, but you will definitely risk the alienation of your people. Avoid sensationalism for its own sake. Respect others always.
- Employment: You may run the risk of losing your job as a pastor if you upset too many or the right people. You will be expected to be conventional and orthodox and to fall within the bounds of normality and acceptability. Don’t let the blog rob you of time. I spend at the most one hour on my blog per day, and that includes drawing the cartoon and writing the post. The weekends I keep very light. Perspective and priorities!
- Care: Some of the readers you gather may become an online community that you might have opportunities to care for as a pastor. This includes moderation, which I find very difficult sometimes. I like diversity so I’m a very relaxed moderator. Once in a while I try to remind the nakedpastor community that we can challenge ideas, but not insult the person. Difficult to remember and do!
- Blogging: One of the things I had to realize is that blogging every day prevents you from writing perfected and completed thoughts. But I see this as completely valid: you are allowing people to observe you process your theology and praxis and person. Books are concrete. Blogs are concrete before it hardens. So your ideas and writing will be imperfect and sometimes outright wrong. Get used to it.
- Monetizing: If you are hoping to make big bucks from a religious blog, good luck! I tried and pennies trickled in. After a few years though, I have been approached by a few businesses offering bigger bucks. But it won’t make me a living. Yet. I talked with Problogger about this a couple of years ago and he agrees: religious sites will have difficulty making money.
- Networking: If you want to build a readership, it is important to engage with other bloggers, especially those who seem to be on the same page as you. I have made wonderful friends online and value them in my life. Plus, I just think there is value in online relationships. I feel that my life is enriched by these real people in far away places.
- Support: I have found it crucial to have some local moral support for what you are doing. I didn’t at first because I didn’t think nakedpastor would turn into anything. But it did, and now I couldn’t continue as easily without my support network locally and virtually. I might mention here the important task of critiquing the church. One of the church’s slogans, “Reformed and always reforming” means that, unlike a business who’s chief end is profit, the church is concerned with change and reform. So critique in helpful ways rather than sounding like you’re just trashing the church. This is one area where my supporters are especially helpful.
- Honesty: You can be as honest as you feel you can. But remember that there are others who will be affected. Some people can handle only so much. You’ll need to decide how far you are willing to go. You don’t want to become divided: one person online and another in person. Fortunately, I pastor a congregation that is, for the most part, tolerant or even supportive of nakedpastor. However, it is a tricky path that must be negotiated wisely.
So Online Christian Colleges informed me today that I made it on their top 55 pastor bloggers list. Funny that I should get this during a time I am really struggling with the issue of whether a pastor can really blog honestly or not. Is it even possible? Is it possible for a pastor of a church normally recognized as somewhat orthodox to honestly and openly put his thoughts out there for public viewing, including his or her congregation’s? I’m beginning to wonder.
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Sorry I haven’t been blogging much. The holidays, for one thing, kept me busy. Our oldest son Joshua is home from Ottawa too so that kept me away from my computer more than usual. Plus, on top of all that, I have just been struggling with the whole blogging thing anyway. I often wonder if it’s worth while. Is it serving any purpose? Is it useful? Is it making me rich? Oops. I didn’t mean that last one. But seriously. I’m not sure it’s worth continuing.
The truth is, I don’t think we change our minds. The way I think about church and community, I’ve come to realize since writing this blog, is far different than what is usually considered orthodox or even normal. It is not just slightly different, but off the grid. Perhaps I should just keep pastoring this local community and not worry about what others are doing. Perhaps it is only intended to be done locally. Perhaps it is an indigenous thing, so that writing about it only publicizes it, therefore polluting it. It’s almost like I have a choice: be a pastor, or try to explain it. Like the old saying: those who do, do. Those who can’t, teach. Maybe.
Oh, and another thing. I’ve been working hard on my art, developing my online art gallery haywardART.com. I enjoy doing my art, and it provides me with hours of relaxation, contemplative time, hard work that has visible results (unlike the ministry), and extra income to supplement what I make as a pastor. I’d love you to visit my site and check it out.
So this is what I’m considering: instead of trying to come up with mini essays with something important to say every day, I’m thinking I will make it even more personal and diary-like… as if you were trespassing into my personal journals. I’ve always kept a journal, so maybe this will help it seem less daunting. In other words, like I said last year: perhaps I’ll become even more naked.
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I am so honored and humbled to share with you that nakedpastor is one of the winners of the 2007 Millennia Awards. They are awarded to virtual communities…
that excel in passionate conversation while remaining hospitable, charitable, and beneficial to all participants. Millennia Awards are given to participatory communities which bridge superficial cultural and religious divides – exploring commonality as much as difference; maintaining fresh, creative, missional formats accessible and relevant to a diverse audience; remaining sensitive to our shared humanity and common need for grace as we learn and grow together.
I have found it rather interesting that such a vast variety of people participate in nakedpastor, from atheists to fundamentalists. You can find the other five winners here. Thanks John and Cynthia! The prize money will be put to good use.
Also, a book I wrote a chapter in, Volume One of the Wikiklesia Project, Voices of the Virtual World, was honored last Wednesday evening in Boston with an Award of Merit by the Society for New Communications Research. You can read more about it here.
Anyway, I’m frantically trying to update my house. An appraiser is coming in tomorrow. If he appraises it high enough we might be able to consolidate some of our debt. In the process, I cut my baby finger on my left hand to the bone with a piece of glass out of a window. You wouldn’t believe how important that finger is for typing! So I’ll say goodbye for now. I’ll try to be back in full swing tomorrow.
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Thanks to Frank Emanuel over at Freedom Log for informing me that my blog’s reading level is “Genius”. Apparently it’s the highest Frank’s ever seen. I have no idea what the criteria are, but I’m sure it is more a compliment to you, my dear readers, than it is to me. Hat’s off to ya!
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Every once in a while I want to start having guest writers and cartoonists on my blog. Today I’m featuring two cartoonists, both of whom read and comment on my blog with some frequency. I also visit their blogs on a regular basis. The first one is submitted by William Lehman of Artist Hideout. Thanks William. I hear ya dawg!
The next one is submitted by Jon Birch of asbojesus. Thanks Jon! Right on!
So I was notified this morning that Slice of Laodicea is no more. As Heather from Deconstructed Christian wrote to me (and you can read the full comment HERE ):
And now it’s gone…. Slice has passed from the internet world and exists only within the worrying mind of Ingrid herself and the nightmares of those who have scarred their retinas by accidentally clicking on a link somewhere. A silly mistake by a webmaster, a clever hacker, the work of the devil, or the hand of God? You decide.
Good comment Heather. You can read Ingrid’s farewell letter HERE. I must say, after having read her letter, that I wasn’t sure how I felt. I just want to make a few points:
- Why didn’t she back up her files? This is an easy function for Wordpress users. This would have prevented such a crisis. This is what backups are for!
- The server people sound kind of sketchy to me, if Ingrid’s account is accurate. Someone should be held accountable somewhere. Ingrid’s site was well-read and therefore had tons of traffic. For the servers to just say, “Oops!” just doesn’t cut it.
- I was a little amused by the fact that she felt victimized by personal insults from people, mostly men, who didn’t agree with her. I received some pretty harsh treatment from her critique of me and nakedpastor. I thought that if you can’t take it, don’t give it.
- But having said that, I think Ingrid was sincere in her motivation and efforts to reform the church that she believed had “gone off the rails“. I don’t believe she was trying to be mean-spirited. She herself was alarmed and hurt by the “cheap shots… it can be devastating“. And these cheap shots, she contemplates, was on a personal level from men who “claim to love Jesus“. She’s right there. When you get down to it, we are all the same on both sides. We are both sides of the same coin. There is no difference.
I’m sorry Slice is gone. We live in countries that allow free speech and freedom of expression. Even though I feel Slice had the slight aroma of a violent, irrational fundamentalism, I think it did serve a purpose. It certainly made me examine myself to see if I was indeed all those things I was accused of. Everything serves a purpose. For some reason, I feel like a formidable foe has fallen. And I’m sad about it.
The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Mark Hemmings, and is from his Mannequin series.
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I want to take this opportunity to thank Paul Walker over at Out of the Cocoon for a very generous REVIEW OF MY CHAPTER, “Virtuality and the Practice of Authenticity” in the Wikiklesia project Voices of the Virtual World. Walker has taken on the incredible task of reviewing all 40-something chapters on his blog. You can see the book ad on my sidebar to the right where you can also download it. Paperback available soon!
To require people to live according to scripture creates admirable human beings, but it does not create free human beings. To insist that people live by the Bible appears to advance the development of the human being, but it is really just a religious form of bondage. It is not only unhelpful but dangerous to say that the Bible should be our guide. When we use the word “guide”, we think of a manual or instruction booklet. This approach to the human being only creates fear of failure and punishment and leads to arrogance if one succeeds or condemnation if one fails to live up to the instructions.
Freedom is the healthiest condition of the mind and heart, and it is the happiest place of humanity. If you read the scriptures, they must inform that reality of freedom and testify to our momentary liberation. Somehow, scripture must act like a fertilizer that percolates our minds and hearts with the freedom that the Spirit brings. The bible is not to be used as an instruction booklet on how to follow the proper steps to salvation. It is like a document from a free land that announces to us that our bonds have been broken and we are free indeed.
The sudden attention I received from Slice of Laodicea. and Apprising Ministries a couple of weeks ago didn’t bother me because they are only what all religion is, including Christianity, except on steroids. They are like many people I already know, including myself at times, only ramped up. They are only higher-paying passengers on a higher deck of the same sinking ship. But even though that kind of religion and Christianity produces exceptional people, the whole enterprise is nevertheless misdirected and doomed. We are not free, but enslaved under our traditions and scriptures and religious guidelines. There is a freedom that is presently available to us all right now, but the carnage that would be left of our religious lives and selves is just too horrible to imagine, and we shrink back from the freedom that is rightfully ours.
The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Mark Hemmings, and is from his mannequin series.
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David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
