Baptists & Priesthood

I was asked recently to write an article for the Alliance of Baptists, “Connections,” newsletter on the Baptist value of priesthood. They have given me permission to re-run here as well. As we celebrate 400 years as a tradition, conversations about our Baptist identity are both important, and crucial. Give this a read and share your comments.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” - 1 Peter 2:9

In a recent interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” while discussing how he began his latest book, writer E. L. Doctorow exclaimed, “first lines are crucial…they give you the voice. They are the acorn from which the oak grows. You can find the entire book in that first line.” If we were to take that approach in looking at the story of Baptists we would see that our first line represents a voice of dissent. The Baptist acorn is one of dissent, and it has remained a significant identification embodied by the oak tree that has steadily grown for the last four hundred years.

One of the most significant ways in which Baptists exercised dissent from the status quo religious structures of 17^th century England, was to listen again to texts like the one quoted above. To listen and reinterpret it on the margins of the established, state-sanctioned, orthodoxy of the church of England. The conclusion they came to was that the priestly hierarchies of the Church of England were not the sole arbiters of God’s revelation and will. This was one of several liberated acts of biblical interpretation that led to the need for the first Baptist’s to escape to Amsterdam. The location where the first congregation was formed.

The Baptist value of priesthood has certainly evolved. It originated among Baptists, I believe, as a desire to both embody an authentic expression of faith, and a prophetic protest to the church. In its simplest form, the doctrine of priesthood serves to liberate every person unto the possibilities of living as God’s priest on earth. However, as priesthood became contextualized by modernity’s individualistic foundations, and the ensuing project of “civilization” it paradoxically became captive, and captivating. The fruits of which can be dialed up in one’s imagination when you read and hear statements like “chosen people,” “holy nation,” and “God’s special possession.” These, and phrases like them, have been invoked by white European and American political leaders and preachers for much of the last several centuries. While they may have brought comfort to the hearers in “western” lands, such phrases spoke with an oppressive voice of conquest and occupation among regions of the world like South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The Baptist value of priesthood has not ceased to evolve. A new context for interpreting priesthood has been emerging for the last 50 years or so. A context that is now defined more by pluralism rather than individualism. While its still too early to tell, there are some Baptists who are heading back out to listen again to the texts on the margins of both Christendom, and established Baptist orthodoxies. Unsatisfied with the status quo interpretations of modern Baptists, both liberal and conservative, emerging Baptists are reimagining priesthood, and for many of the same reasons our fore fathers and mothers did.

In honor of the “first line” in the Baptist story, some are dissenting from interpretations of priesthood that have limited the possibility of it only to those who are like “us” and not like “them.” Often, priesthood is found better embodied outside the church in organizations, communities, and persons who may or may not even be Baptist or even Christian. Some are also dissenting from the notion that priesthood somehow gives one the authority to make others in one’s own image. For some priesthood is less about making copies and more about naming where God is present in diverse and unique ways.

While Baptists enjoy waving the banner of priesthood, the joke that frequently gets whispered is that we honor it in theory and not in practice. By practice, some would argue that Baptists truly honor “preacher-hood.” Its the holy grail of church leadership and still the main emphasis of our institutional formation for ministry. Some Baptists are dissenting from this interpretation of priesthood as well. Priesthood can be exercised anywhere by anyone, and often those most free to practice it are not numbered among Baptist clergy.

I am fascinated and hopeful about the possibilities for priesthood. My concern is that those possibilities can only work when we are free to live into the future because we are not captive to our past. For many emerging Baptists like myself, there is a mountain of disappointments that cast a heavy shadow over our personal histories within the Baptist church. If we are to be liberated by, and unto, new possibilities of priesthood, we will first need to forgive and come to terms with our respective pasts. The measure of which will be evidenced in two forms: in our ability to infrequently speak of that past without contempt or condescending judgment, and in our newly formed habit of frequently articulating a future.

Gnaw on This 1.0

As a practitioner and facilitator of spiritual formation I live with, and relish questions. I’ve decided to attempt a series here at baptimergent where I simply share questions that I have been chewing on myself. Who knows? You may be asking the same thing. Feel free to share you responses in the comment section.

Question: Shouldn’t the church be the most creative, life-giving community on the planet? Why then are so many churches communities of pathological fear, insecurity, & resentment?

Pastoring As Friend: What could it look like?

I was asked to follow up on the last post with some tangible suggestions. I’ll confess that its a bit difficult to offer a lot of concrete application here because the space wherein to pastor as friend is still quite small. Specifically in a traditional church context. I’ve found some spaces to do it, and I’ve imagined some ways that it could be nurtured and given room to grow.

The greatest space to pastor as friend is in your own home. My foray into this began when I was campus minister. During the summer months we would have students who were enrolled in summer school over for dinner every Monday night. We would have upwards of 25 college students pouring out of our little Cape Cod, hanging out on the porch, playing Bocce Ball, or congregating on the deck. Seeing your house as a space for mission and ministry places those types of “churchy” programs in a safer relational context…for you and for others. They might expect to see you in a suit in the church building, but that would look really stupid in your house. In other words, you can be yourself in your own home, and others will allow you to do that. This creates avenues for greater, dare I say, more authentic conversation about life, faith, and so on.

Another way to pastor as friend is to office once or twice a week in a public space like a coffee shop, cafe, or bookstore. Preferably a space with free wifi and free coffee refills. This is something you will need to work out with the rest of your staff and possibly with your personnel committee. Its a good way to meet with folks for pastoral conversations that do not demand a high degree of confidentiality. Its also possible to promote that time as a community chaplaincy. You should talk to the business owner before doing something like that. They may even help you promote the time you are available. I recommend doing this after you develop a rapport with the owner and staff. My first go at this was at a coffee shop that had free wifi and free refills on Thursday if you brought your own mug. After getting to know the owner and some of the staff, I asked if I could use their art gallery space to do a weekly sitting meditation for 30 minutes every Thursday morning. After talking it over with the gallery director, we were doing Lectio on prayer cushions at 7:30 AM every Thursday surrounded by local art. I was given permission to promote it using rave cards on tables, and posters on bulletin boards and bathroom stalls. What’s more, most of the people who came were not Christians.

A third space to pastor as friend is virtual space, specifically through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Blogging is also another venue. None of these are a substitute for relationships of physical presence, but they are a supplement and a “front porch” kind of venue for friendship. All of these mediums of social media were indispensable in my work as a campus minister, and I have found just as much application for them in a traditional staff context. I’ve done Sunday School classes that have a blog for weekly conversation on topics and themes brought out in the Sunday morning conversation. Facebook and Twitter are also both great venues for sharing news, starting reading & conversation threads, sharing links to resources, and on and on. Additionally, there are people you do not know who may view your profile, read your posts, or follow your tweets. The potential for new relationships and connections are abundant. Herein again the expectations are not as constrained as they are in the church.

The above suggestions are not new, but they do require time and adjustments in the typical pastoral schedule. All of these ways of pastoring take place outside of the church. Mainly because that’s where there is space. There is space that can be made within the church that will take time to develop, but they will come slowly and only after a clergy person has developed trust within their congregation. The core of these changes has to do with decentralizing power in the church. Specifically decentralizing clerical power structures. As long as these structures remain, the expectations of church members for staff to inhabit those structures will remain.

One structure that can be decentralized over time is the liturgy/worship service. The word “liturgy” means “work of the people.” Unfortunately its been the work of the staff, and most often, the work of the music or worship minister. Contrary to traditional assumptions, worship is public property. You won’t get to that mindset any time soon in a traditional Baptist church, so baby steps will be required. The ideal in my mind is to get to a place where staff and members, either through a worship team, or community conversation, discuss the thematic direction and liturgical elements of a given service. What’s more, again speaking ideally, the practice of worship would involve diverse voices, spoken or sung, wherein the pastor(s) is but one of many. Part of becoming a pastor as friend is dismantling the invisible wall of separation that exists in every sanctuary after you pass the front pew and approach the podium stairs. The architecture of our liturgy, and of our sanctuaries lends itself to our clergy being higher, distant, and set apart. That way of being is ritualized and thus forms the imaginations and identities of our community members.

A second structure that will need to be decentralized over time in order to pastor as friend is staff hierarchy. From pay scale to roles and responsibilities, most traditional staffs travel up a pyramid of leadership with the senior pastor at the top. Not only does this hinder pastoring as friends, it often hinders working as friends, especially for younger clergy. A decentralized staff allows its leaders to serve from healthy self-acceptance that comes from being able to speak, create, and share on a level playing field. It allows the for the kind of vulnerability that’s necessary for good collaboration because you’re less likely to be made anxious by criticism from a peer. You also have confidence that whatever disagreements or challenges you face together, no one person’s neck is on the line. Thus you can meet challenges with greater confidence, rather than have new ideas, or creative projects sabotaged by the one with the most to lose, i.e. the one at the top. You take your wins and loses together. When you can work as friends, you can pastor as a friend. Practically speaking, I imagine that if your co-equal group of pastoral leaders agrees that you all want to do more pastoring as friend, it has a higher likelihood of happening. You’ll work with one another to make it happen because you are in the habit of sharing responsibility and being accountable. Plus, its easier to relax and be yourself with your members when your weekly work practice allows you to do that same thing.

Like I said above. There is still a lot of flesh left to be put on these ideas. There is space out there to pastor as friend. It may not be in the church you serve right now, but there is plenty of space outside and in the virtual world. Explore these options, but make sure your church knows and understands what you are doing. You’ll kill any way forward by running off and doing these sorts of things without letting anyone know. It will look like you’re shirking responsibility to most folks.

As for changes on the inside of the church, Jesus said it best: “This kind can come out only by prayer.” (Mark 9:29) I don’t ever read “prayer” as the passive supplications of those consigned to let God do the work. Prayer is our allowing the Spirit of God to speak into our imaginations and inherent creativity so that we can bring the kin-dom of God on earth as it is heaven just as Jesus prayed. It will take time. It will require investing in relationships, particularly with those who do not trust, and are afraid of this new world that is emerging. It will require that some doors be opened within the various structures that still exercise a fair amount of control and influence in Baptist life. It will also require survival skills for those on the lead edge of what will, over the next 50 to 100 years, become the new incarnation of what it means to be church in the 21st century.

Cynicism as Relational Apathy

“The opposite of creativity is cynicism.” – Esa Saarinen

This Lent, I’ve put some things under the microscope of personal introspection. The central question I’ve put to myself has been this; “You (me) can conceive and articulate a relational way of being and knowing, but how well, if at all, do you (me) embody it?” This is quite honestly an over-intellectualized way of asking myself how well I put flesh on the great commandments.

One thing that has emerged during this reflective process has been a serious critique of cynicism. That’s right, cynicism. The default posture of the post-boomer Gen X culture. As I have thought about it over Lent, cynicism has shown itself to be non-relational, and at its worst anti-relational.

Cynicism is primarily a response to assumption about an other. Chronic or habitual cynicism is a choice to relate to assumption rather than what is actual. Cynicism is satisfied with reductions of others. In this way, it dehumanizes the other. Its why we love parodies and satirical humor. It lets us off the hook for having to truly know an other as a whole person.

Cynicism is also a stand against having to trust. I believe this has much to do with the fact that trust involves risk. To be fair, the post-boomer generations have many legitimate reasons not to trust. However, I believe we need to consider the consequences of our collective inability and unwillingness to trust. Without trust there can be no relationship. Relationships require self-giving and vulnerability. Cynicism is a posture that protects against having to be vulnerable — against having to take any risk in relating.

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” -Oscar Wilde

These are all things I have observed in myself, and they are all things that do not jive with my relational understanding of God and reality. Of the things that stand in the way of embodying a relational posture, cynicism is chief among them. As a self-avowed postmodern, cynicism betrays a cognitive dissonance in my own perspective. A cynic categorizes others in a truly modern fashion. What’s more, its hyper-individualistic in the sense that its categories are based on subjective assumptions about others. In many ways its a narcissistic ritual of self-righteousness. Its easy to be a cynic because you never have to leave your world to face reality.

As a follower of Jesus, cynicism is an even greater affront to the ethic of the kin-dom, and the movement of God toward us in self-giving love. Had God been cynical, we would have been written off a long time ago. Had Jesus embodied that cynicism, he would have been one more self-righteous activist who pleased some and alienated others. That’s not the good news we find in our collective narrative. What we do find is a God who is willing to be vulnerable to the point of being present and then murdered. What’s more, that kind of self-giving, risk-taking love is unable to be conquered. It is eternal. In Jesus we see that such a relational paradigm involves pain, loss and disappointment, but on the other side of all of them is a resurrection. A new life. A new beginning.

As I have critiqued my own cynicism during Lent, I have reached some distillations for myself.

1. I cannot trust in a resurrection reality and be a cynic.

2. I cannot relate to others who are not like me and be a cynic.

3. I cannot embody the great commandments and be a cynic.

4. I cannot, with integrity, consider myself a postmodern follower of Jesus while at the same time categorizing others according to a hyper-individualistic template. That’s just not pomo-cool.

5. I cannot truly work for the redemption of ALL things and be a cynic.

“I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.” - Ralph B. Perry

This has broad reaching implications for those of us post-boomer folks who find ourselves serving churches and running into challenges. In transitional contexts marked by collective anxiety, uncertainty, and emotional gridlock, cynicism is a handicap and perpetrator. It will prevent a good leader from imagining a way forward that includes everyone, and will thwart one’s ability to patiently persevere. Cynicism will serve its own needs rather than what is right for the community of faith as a whole.

While asking questions and carrying a measure of existential doubt are assets in the process of discernment, they are not equivalent to a cynical approach to others or even systems. If we desire to be the creative re-imaginers of today’s church for tomorrow, we’ll need to give up our cynicism and courageously engage the diverse range of others in our churches. Especially those whom we “assume” stand in our way.