Friday, January 22, 2010

Pastors as Friends

One of the pastors at the church I attend posed the following question: "Heard in class today about the pastoral role: "People need a pastor MORE than they need a friend." Agree or disagree?"

Full disclosure: my dad was a pastor so my perspective may be skewed.

My answer is that I agree. We have an awesome group of pastors at New Community, men and women I would be proud to call friends in the truest sense of the word. I have had meetings with all the members of the pastoral staff and they know my name and I know theirs. They know a few things about me and I know a few things about them. I pray for them and they may or may not pray for me. Either way, I would not consider them friends in the way I consider others to be friends and I want it to stay that way. Why?

A pastor's role is to shepherd an entire mass of people all with their own issues, hang ups, agendas, strengths, weaknesses, and complications into a deeper relationship with a God that you can't actually see. Christians are living under what is either the craziest paradox ever or the most corporate delusion ever. I have put my hope and faith in the fact that it's a paradox.

You have this group of people who are trying to fathom something that is unfathomable and you're trying to get them pointed in the right direction. Maybe shepherd gives us too much credit; pastors are cat herders. So anyway, the pastor is running around doing all that is in his or her God given ability to accomplish the impossible.

As a member of a church, the best thing that I can do for a pastor is believe and trust them and stay in the middle of the pack. Maybe try and grab a few cats on the way so the pastor's job isn't as impossible. Those people that I'm trying to keep going in a God driven direction are also trying to keep me going the same way. The result is a tiny group (at NC3 we call them Community Groups) of Christians struggling in the trenches. Then on Sunday, we get together and our tiny groups are given direction by a pastor.

When the question comes up, do I want a pastor or a friend, the answer is obvious. To me, a pastor is someone who brings messages from God. They have a job that I do not want to do (and will not do unless God himself tells me otherwise...preferably through email) partly because of this responsibility and the difficulties of keeping congregants facing the right direction while staying semi-isolated. When I leave church on Sundays, my wife and I talk about the message, not the pastor, and I want it to stay that way.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Being White on MLK Jr Day

I'm white, if you've met me once, it's fairly easy to tell that I have a distinct lack of melanin. There are spots of melanin, but they don't connect. Anyway, today is an interesting day on which we are supposed to take time to reflect on Dr King and what he accomplished. I have read the biographies, heard the speeches, read the books, been to the museums, and have done my best to understand the issues that plagued our country from its inception.

The question is not one of knowledge or of understanding or even of commiserating. The best way to describe the issue would be to draw a parallel. I have been to Mass multiple times and I understand its beauty. I understand the concepts of Mary, the Pope, confession, transubstantiation, genuflection, and etc. However, I do not understand it in its context. I know the history of the Catholic church and I can enter into its world, but there will always be a disconnect as there are things about being Catholic that I cannot understand unless I convert to Catholicism. I will never be the part of a parish or part of the mundane things that become extraordinary or truly understand why specific things are immensely important while others fall by the wayside.

The same applies to MLK Day. I understand the concepts of slavery, apartheid, oppression, Jim Crow, nonviolent resistance, reconstruction, Bull Connor, Black Panthers, SCLC, and etc. I did not, however, live in the 1960s and I'm not black. As a result, there will always be things that I do not understand, why seemingly mundane things become extraordinary and why specific things are immensely important while others fall by the wayside.

Some day, when Jesus comes back, I will be perfectly able to commiserate, understand, love, and rejoice with all people every day. That, to me, is the true message of MLK Day. There are things about each other we cannot understand fully but we need to walk into each others lives and do the best we can to understand but to realize and admit that it will always be imperfect. The beauty of humanity says that we are different but that it is because through those differences that the love of Christ can be shown to a world that says "we need to celebrate MLK Jr and the things he stood for one day a year."