Church Nightmares?

As if I hadn't enough to keep me busy, I've become a Gordon Ramsay junkie. I don't have cable TV, but I managed to catch every episode of Hell's Kitchen Season 4 on Hulu.com. And when I get time, I watch episodes of Kitchen Nightmares (UK version, of course) on YouTube.

For the uninitiated, Gordon Ramsay is a world-class, Scottish-born, f-bomb-dropping chef with twelve Michelin stars and millions of dollars per year in revenue from his various restaurants worldwide. On Kitchen Nightmares, he spends a week at some tanking restaurant somewhere and, at little or no cost to the establishment (as I understand it), works with might, main, and brain to pull them out of the soup.

Time and again, the featured restaurant is going down because the owners/head chefs have some fixed idea of what their eatery should be like, but it bears no relation to what they can actually cook and serve, what ingredients are affordable and available, or what the potential customers actually like and want. And Chef Ramsay's fix generally is, "Find out what you can do and do it attractively and well. Let your customers know what you have now that you have your act together. Stop trying to attract the type of customers who aren't out there. Stop trying to be too clever-- keep it simple and uncomplicated. And while you're at it, clean out your f*cking [sorry, wouldn't be GR without the f-word at least once] deep-freeze and kitchen!!"

But O! the nightmare! It never fails: The owners/chefs seldom listen to Ramsay. Often they sabotage what he's trying to do. They want to go on doing exactly what's got them in the mess in the first place. But O, Chef Gordon, save us! Pull our chestnuts out of the fire!!

Last Sunday, I couldn't help but think of Gordon Ramsay and Kitchen Nightmares. I was being interviewed for an Interim Pastor position at a church over in an adjacent county. And practically the first thing I heard from the interviewing committee was how wonderful it used to be with them back in the 1980s, when their youth group was bursting the church at the seams. Practically the first question I got was how good was I at relating to youth.

But do they have any teenagers among the church membership right now? Apparently very few. Are there gangs and gangs of unchurched teenagers in the church's catchment area right now? Apparently they have no idea.

Is it a good thing to be a church with a lot of families with well-involved teenaged kids? Oh, certainly, yes. But is that where this church is now? No. Are families with teenagers the type of people who are living in that area, spiritually starving for the good news of Jesus Christ? What if they're not?

But they want to hire an interim pastor who can come in for a year and miraculously revive their image of themselves as the church with all the kids. Never mind the unchurched people of whatever age who are actually there in the neighborhood and need to be ministered to. Never mind that the talents and gifts of the people of the church might go better to serve a totally different demographic. We have our image of what we want to be, and you'd better buy into it, Pastor, whether it's realistic or not!!!

I told them, yes, I'm pretty good at working with kids--if I'm allowed to be an adult and a mentor and not a superannuated ersatz-teenager buddy. But maybe, I suggested, what if the Holy Spirit just might be leading them to other fields of ministry that better fit who they are now . . . ???

I felt like Gordon Ramsay telling the owner of a pub in Lancashire to knock it off with the exotic Asian stuff out of mixes and try serving up good fresh honest pub grub for a change.

I can't take the Kitchen Nightmares analogy too far: There's one fixed item on any church's menu that can not and must not change, whether the public thinks they want it or not: Jesus Christ crucified for our sins and risen for our life. But how the church lives out that good news in 2008 may not be just as it was in 1985!

I wouldn't be surprised if they don't hire me. They also want their new IP to generate a lot of new programs, and I told them that programs have to follow needs, and be run by the members. And they're hoping their new Interim Pastor will move into the manse. No, not feasible. Not for a one-year contract. Alas! that's another dream of theirs I've destroyed.

But I can't rule them out myself. This dream-on attitude is endemic with most struggling mainline churches. It'd be the same anywhere else!

If I were to be taken on at this church, I'd have it easier than Gordon Ramsay in one way-- I'd have a year to redd up the place, where he only has a week. But it'd be a lot harder, too-- I can't overawe anybody with the ecclesiastical equivalent of twelve Michelin stars . . . and unlike Chef Ramsay, I am not permitted to cuss.

Some Easter "Hymns" Need to Be Egged

A brief rant before I retire to bed this Easter Sunday evening:

I was just downstairs, plinking out Easter hymns on my new old piano, out of the 1933 Hymnal. "Come Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain." "Welcome, Happy Morning." "The Strife Is O’er." "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today." Good, solid hymns with good, solid doctrine about what Jesus really did for us on the cross and at the empty tomb.

So what did I get for one of the two hymns in the church where I preached this morning? "He Lives." What were people singing all over "evangelical" America this morning? "He Lives." Which is not really about Jesus and His resurrection and what He’s accomplished at all, it’s about "me" and how Jesus makes me feeeeeeeeel!

I was stuck with it because the organist at Indian Hill* picks all the hymns and, in the absence of a regular pastor, what he says, goes.

Lord help me, every year I’m less able to tolerate that piece of gnostic, sentimental chozzerai.

This morning I barely sang it. I went "la-la-la" to the melody line in first verse, and for the other two I made a half-assed attempt at following the alto line, still on "la-la-la."

Irreverent, you say?

Ha! I gave the bloody piece of tripe exactly what it deserved, and more.

No, I didn’t disrupt anyone else’s worship "experience." The organ was behind me and it quite effectively drowned me out. Which was the idea.

. . . I need to stop feeling angry about this. It’s not my calling to go on a one-woman crusade against bad Christian music. It is my calling to preach the gospel of Christ crucified and risen again, and Lord helping, I believe I did that this morning.

But I see I've gotten sidetracked in my rant. It ultimately isn’t about disgust. It’s about sadness.

Sadness that so few modern hymnals have the great classic Easter hymns in them at all. Sadness that it's not popular or fashionable to sing them even if they are. We’re losing our musical heritage, and with it, a great support to our faith. Something like "The Strife Is O’er" goes a lot farther is teaching a Christian what he believes and why he should believe it, than something like "Christ Arose."

But even "Christ Arose" is better than "He Lives." Gaaahhhhggghhh!

"The Other Mary"

I just noticed something intriguing while working on my sermon for Sunday:

St. Matthew, telling the resurrection story, reports that it was "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary" who went to the tomb early that first day of the week after Jesus was crucified.

St. Mark and St. Luke say it was Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James who went, as well as other female disciples, named and unnamed.

"Mary" (or Miriam) was a very popular girl's name at the time, so to identify this second disciple as "Mary the mother of James" meant that everyone in the church knew who "James" was and would think, "Oh, yes, that Mary. James' mother!"

But which James? James the brother of John? I don't think so. Every time the Gospels refer to her, she's always "the mother of Zebedee's sons." In fact, in chapter 27, Matthew mentions Mrs. Zebedee as standing "at a distance" along with "the mother of James and Joses" as Jesus died on Calvary.

Could she be the mother of James the Less, one of the Twelve?

Probably not. His career wasn't prominent enough to make him someone to be identified by.

Unless James the Less is the same as James the Just, the writer of the Epistle of James and leader of the Jerusalem Church for many, many years?

But I'd argue against that. Because James the Less was one of Jesus' disciples-- and James the Just (pace my Roman Catholic readers, if any) was the half-brother of our Lord. St. Mark in chapter 6 of his gospel records the murmuring of the crowd against Jesus: "'Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph [ Greek Joses, a variant of Joseph], Judas [i.e., Jude] and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?'"

Hmmm. And St. John tells us in chapter 7 that Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him. Their eyes weren't opened till after the resurrection. (Which may explain why Jesus commended his mother to John, and not to one of them!).

But Jesus' half-brother James did come to faith in him after he rose from the grave, and became known as James the Just, the renowned bishop of the Jerusalem church.

So who is this "other" Mary, the mother of the famous James and his brother Joses? It looks to me as if it were Mary, the blessed mother of our Lord!

So why don't the gospel writers come out and say so? Why all the understatement?

I could argue that they didn't want the pathos of a mother's sorrow to upstage the drama of God played out in the resurrection.

But I think it's more likely that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all pointing up the fact that with the resurrection, Jesus transcends his blood relationships with any one human being. No individual can now claim special identity from being his kin after the flesh.

For now Christ is united in holy and spiritual relationship to all who believe in him. Now that he is risen, the blood relationship that matters is the one forged by the blood of his cross. It is entered into not by sharing his DNA, but by faith when we accept the atonement won for us in his blood. This blood relationship is birthed in us by the Holy Spirit and nurtured every time we partake in the cup at Holy Communion.

Since the resurrection, Mary of Nazareth no longer has a special human claim on her Son; she is one with all her brothers and sisters, falling joyfully at the feet of the One who is her Savior and ours.

"The other Mary," indeed! Are there any legends of her pulling rank or demanding special treatment in the church because the Christ was born of her womb? I've never heard of any!

That's humility worth emulating!

"Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"

Today is the Feast of St. Peter and Paul, and the tenth anniversary of my ordination.

I wish I could also say it marked the completion of my tenth year of gospel ministry. But things haven't worked out that way since that evening when the presbyters laid hands on me in my home church and I was ordained a Minister of the Word and Sacrament.
My ministry has been marked by some success, some failure, and much interruption. In that I am told that I am following a usual course for women in ministry. A friend and colleague in my current presbytery did her Doctor of Ministry thesis on the rate of continuance of ordained women in full time parish ministry as of ten years after their ordinations. Her research demonstrated that the percentage is very low.

There are some who would say that that attrition is only right and proper and can be put down to the realization, by congregations or by the ordained women themselves, that females ought not to be ministers of the Christian faith.

But the real reasons are less heroic.

Sometimes women voluntarily abandon the Gospel plow for the same reasons men do: poor health, family issues, frustration, financial problems.

And as with male pastors, some women leave the ministry because their ministry temporarily or permanently has left them. Intradenominational conflicts, creeping congregationalism in connectional church bodies, modern individualism, the market mentality, and a lack of appreciation for the pastor's efforts and duties all lead pastors of both sexes to be fired or forced to resign without substantial cause. Some get right back into the church job search, some step away from pastoral work to breathe for a little while, and some give up parish ministry altogether, finding it necessary to serve Jesus Christ in some other way.

A consumerist sense of entitlement leads many churches literally to demand that their pastor be all things to all people. It doesn't matter that the pastor is faithfully and purely preaching the Gospel, reverently administering the sacraments, lovingly and conscientiously ministering pastoral care, uprightly representing the congregation in the community, and fruitfully participating in the higher bodies of the church. Anything or nothing is adequate to start a dump-the-pastor campaign. Did you not like the hymns last Sunday? Fire the pastor! Do you abhor the way your pastor combs his hair? Fire the pastor! Did the pastor wait till the day after her day off to come visit your aunt's best friend (who goes to that other church, but still--!) who had outpatient surgery to get her corns removed? Fire the pastor! After all, there's plenty more where this one came from! We'll get perfection next time!

But even where both men and women might suffer an interruption of ministry, I've noticed that with woman pastors, the ramifications of a perceived misstep are more severe and the tolerance for pastoral error is lower. Women pastors, especially those who are single, are expected to be both pastor and pastor's wife. Woe to her if she doesn't show up with a pie for the social, though her male predecessors never did! Women pastors are more susceptible to being pushed around by strong lay leaders, and more likely to be resented if they push back. Strong doctrine coming from the mouth of a woman is frequently considered "unpastoral"--a woman should look out for people's feelings! A woman pastor can be taken as anti-man, simply by virtue or (vice?) of having gone for ordination, and grievances will accumulate that she has no idea of. And let not a clergywoman betray any unsurehandedness on a church's tiller! Too often, I have observed, it will be put down to a lack of competence, rather than to simple inexperience or to systematic problems in the congregation itself. This tendency in higher judiciaries can work against male pastors' ministries as well. But isn't there just a wee bit more temptation to swoop in and rescue the poor little woman and send her off for counselling while the congregation goes its merry way?

To be fair to my current presbytery, they pretty much had to send in the cavalry on my last fulltime charge. The church had been chewing up and spitting out (male) pastors for the past twenty years, and my only distinction was that I was the catalyst that brought things to a head. But in that, my being a woman was instrumental. Even before I took that call, the Committee on Ministry in their formal interview said, "This church hasn't had a woman pastor before. Do you think [the Clerk of Session who was also the Moderator of the Pastor Nominating Committee] might want you because he thinks that as a woman you'd be easier to manipulate?" Oh, no, no, he was a nice, upstanding guy! We were in total agreement on doctrine and church leadership! He'd never do that!

Yes, he would. If he could have gotten a little twerp of a clergyman to play Mr. Collins to his Lady Catherine de Bourgh, that would have served his purpose. But as a woman, I was seen as ideal: the powerless figurehead, with the clerk and his family as the real motive force. As a woman, I would not make trouble; I would let things go on as they had in the three years they'd been without an installed pastoral head.

But, surprise! I did not. I could not. And as I was overmatched in my clerk, the presbytery had to step in. For the record, the clerk and his family jumped ship to another denomination, and the remnant of the congregation have settled down under the hand of a part-time Stated Supply, who is-- a woman.

. . . This was not supposed to be a rant, but a reflection. So, as I look forward to a future fulltime pastorate, let me reflect on what I would do differently. Let me consider what the interview process would be like, God helping, as I offered myself to a church as a woman pastor.

I would explore with a PNC what it would mean for the church to have a woman pastor. What would be the hopes? The fears? The expectations?

I would begin as I meant to go on. If I meant to be forthright and outspoken, I would be that in the interviews. The forms of cooperation I expected from my lay leaders, I'd make known from the first. I would do my best to make sure the committee saw me, and not just what I might represent to them as a "woman pastor." I would flee the temptation to be what they wanted me to be, instead of who I am.

I would be honest about my capabilities and what I could deliver. I would not fall into the trap of promising the moon when I can only bring a good three-way lamp. On the other hand, I would be willing to be stretched and to grow.

I would, God willing, have the courage to follow up on anything that seemed doubtful. I would not let my desire for a call turn my vision distorted and rosy. As I pursued such matters, I would do so with an attitude of "we all want what's best for the church. Let's see if I would be a good person to work together with you to achieve that best."

And I would look out for what I could bring the congregation, for how I could serve them, and not be swayed by the excitement of being wanted into accepting a position that isn't really mine.

Because, let's face it, it is very "feminine" to want to avoid conflict, to want to be nice, to want to be wanted. I have to acknowledge those tendencies in myself and turn them around for good. I have to face that every pulpit committee will inevitably see me as a woman first, though for much of the past decade my attitude has been, "My gender doesn't matter. What matters is preaching and ministering the Gospel."

But our God is a God who works through incarnation. He likes it so much, He took on flesh Himself. Every ministry, even the Word of God itself, is mediated through a human being: through Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, first of all, then through His ministers. I can't pretend to be a detached intelligence, a bodiless heart! I am who I am: a woman of a particular age, of a particular time and place, of particular education, appearance, and experiences. I am perceived, rightly or wrongly, based on others' interpretations of who and what I am.

So let me be honest and aware of that, and do my part to see that my being a woman pastor really and truly undergirds my being a woman pastor, to the glory of Jesus Christ. And may the God who called me guide me as I guide His church, remembering the closing hymn of my ordination service:

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but Thou art mighty:
Hold me with Thy powerful hand!
Strong Deliverer, strong Deliverer,
Be Thou still my strength and shield,
Be Thou still my strength and shield.

(William Williams Pantycelyn, d. 1791)

"'For I Am with You and Will Rescue You'"

We gathered for daily worship in our interim pastor training course (which ended yesterday); an essential thing, given the clergy's propensity for thinking the fate of the church lies all on us. The experienced interim pastors taking the advanced course planned and led the worship. On Thursday, the woman with preaching duty reflected on how down churches and church members can get on their potential and possibilities. How it's so easy to focus on past failures and present ordeals. "It's just too hard for me," is the woeful refrain.

And ain't it the truth . . . !

And I thought, that sounds like a blues song! "It's just too hard, too hard for me . . . " Yeah. So let's write the rest of it. Except, I'm going to call it

The Pastor's Lament

It's just too hard, too hard for me,

I wanna lay this burden down;

This road's too high, too long and weary,

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for my Jesus,

There's nothing too hard for my Lord.

He carried my load up Calvary Road;

There's nothing too hard for Him.

We're poor and broke, no money's comin',

I wanna lay this burden down;

The roof has leaks, the walls are crumblin',

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for my Jesus . . .

The world's no help, and evil's knockin',

I wanna lay this burden down;

I tell the truth, seems no one listens,

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for my Jesus . . .

Sometimes it seems that there's no use in tryin';

Sometimes it feels I'm a fool to go on.

Young folk don't care and the old folks keep dyin',

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for me with my Jesus,

Nothing's too hard for me with my Lord;

He lifted my load on Calvary's road,

There's nothing too hard for Him.

(Copyright 2005, St. Blogwen's Well)

This is a work in progress, of course. And I reserve the right to change it around whenever the inspiration hits me. But I suppose it's the same with pastoring, interim or otherwise. It's always a work in progress. And it's not going to be done-- or done well-- without a large dose of in-Spir(it)-ation!

"Without Spot or Wrinkle or Any Kind of Blemish"

I'm here in wild and musical Austin, Texas, attending an intensive, week-long training course for pastors doing or thinking of doing intentional interim ministry. The word "intentional" is intentional. The idea is that one comes in after the departure of an installed pastor and helps the congregation come to terms with its history, its identity, its mission and goals, its conflict points, and so forth. In short, helps them redd up the place so a) they go looking for the right kind of new installed pastor, and b) the new installed pastor has a better chance at making a go of his or her ministry.

That's the idea. But after one afternoon and evening of class discussions, I'm already discovering that some people here think that isn't really possible. That congregations' issues and problems are so ingrained, that no amount of work will ever change anything. That unhealthy systems are unhealthy systems, and there is no cure.

My immediate response to that was, what are we here on this course for, then? If we'd just be wasting our efforts trying to bring light and hope and self-awareness to church situations, let's just lead Sunday services and visit Aunt Tilly in the hospital while the pulpit committee's doing their work, and then hand the stinking filthy baby to the new installed pastor for him or her to cope with.

Of course, my immediate response really "should" be is that Jesus transforms all. That He's in the business of changing lives, and that includes (she said ironically) lives in the church. But it's true-- some of the most resistant characters are sitting in the pews, and the holy church of our Lord Jesus Christ can attract some of the most unholy behavior. (Do I hear a word beginning with "Phar . . . "?) It's almost enough to make a pastor flee in frustration and take up real estate selling instead.

Almost, but not quite. It helps to remember what St. Augustine said about the church being a corpus mixtus-- a mixed body of the good and the bad and the in-between. And except in the case of flagrant, scandalous sin, it isn't usually our job as pastors to sort everyone out. God could do it right now if He wanted to, but for some reason He hasn't chosen to disclose to us, He doesn't. But while we can't order the Almighty to change our churches on demand, we can ask Him to change us, to help us be the sort of people who can make healthy change possible. That goes for lay men and women as well as for pastors.

Most of all, it helps me to remember what St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, that someday Christ is going to present His Church to Himself as a pure bride, without spot or wrinkle or any kind of blemish. Can I forecast how that is going to happen? No, I can not. Do I think it will be Christ's greatest miracle since the Resurrection? Yes, I do. But the Holy Spirit says it's going to happen, and therefore I believe that happen it will.

And that perhaps, my participating in this course this week will make me better equipped to be one who in some small way will help bring that miracle to pass.