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.

Pastoring as Friend: an emerging struggle.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the source of tension within my vocation as a church staff person, i.e. professional minister. There are a lot of annoyances in church work, just as there are in any job. However, as a fundamentally relational being in the most relational of vocations, the greatest struggle for emerging clergy is the nature of church relationships. Here’s what I mean.

Within the church of the modern era there emerged a relational matrix. Largely guided by modern theological and social assumptions. Assumptions like, “The pastor is the spiritual shepherd of the flock,” or “The pastor is the visionary leader of the congregation.” (Basically the same assumption as it has adapted its language from the mid 20th century into the 90’s) In other words, Pastors and ministers are autonomous individual leaders (mostly men) who existed above the community. What’s more, there developed an assumption that a certain measure of distance between clergy and laity be maintained. I remember being told in seminary never to develop close friendships with church members.

The proof of such base assumptions on the part of traditional or established churches is in the structure of staff job descriptions. To be blunt, they keep you so busy you don’t have time to get to know anyone; especially anyone outside of the church or outside of the faith. What’s more, members will all too frequently complain about a minister who appears aloof or impersonal. All the while ignoring the fact that structurally most pastoral staff are precluded from making real connections with people. To emerging clergy who are inherently relational in their approach to the vocation of ministry, this is frustrating if not altogether toxic.

In a lot of ways, this dynamic reflects modern theological assumptions about God; distant, all powerful, authoritative, in control, approachable but only on “his” terms.

As a pomo-kid I really didn’t buy into that vision of church leadership (or of God). I still haven’t, and therein is the rub. For those of us in traditional church contexts the modern matrix of church leadership still holds sway. For the most part, established churches want visionary individuals who will bring numerical success at a safe distance. Meanwhile, many of us emerging ministers long for nothing less than authentic friendship with the people to whom we are called. To know and be known together in the presence of God and to walk with on another in a life-giving exchange of stories, prayers, practices, and projects.

Perhaps emergence for established churches begins by creating space for emerging clergy to pastor as friends.