Pastors vs. laity. Laity vs. pastors.

At the end of 2000, I decided I needed to take a sabbatical from four decades in the United Methodist Church. When I walked away, I was worn out, burned out, jaded and angry, first from watching what happened to family and friends who served in the church, and then from what happened to me and people I grew to care about when we also served.

In 2013, as I weigh whether to rejoin the denomination, I'm uncovering a lot of old reminders of why I left. And they're making it hard to return.

At the top of the list of things I need to come to terms with if I return is the terrible chasm and disconnection between the UMC's clergy and its laypeople. It's the main reason I needed to take a break back in 2000, and things don't seem to have gotten much better in the interim.

The UMC is not alone in this regard. Many kinds of churches suffer from the uneasy relationship between clergy and laity. This recent opinion piece on the Alban Institute's website illustrates the issue.

Being a clergyperson, the writer sees the problem from the clergy's perspective. And that perspective is that the laity are sheep who are unreasonably dependent on, and have unrealistic expectations for their clergy. If only the laity would take more responsibility, be more mature, stop seeing the church in terms of what benefits them, and serve and welcome those who are on the outside, clergy tell each other, things would be so much better and we could really be church.

Then there's the counter perspective of the laity. They've seen clergy who do think their role is to have all the answers and the congregation's role is to follow them. They've been led by clergy who like being in charge with a more or less helpless congregation that they alone can lead. They've noticed that some clergy do not want to share power in the church with even their most mature members and will use their position to make sure that does not happen. They've been talked down to by clergy do not think people in their congregation even have ideas, or that if they do, that they are silly, or stupid, or "backwards," and certainly not based on what the latest church thinking happens to be. And they suspect some clergy enjoy feeling superior and "closer to God" than their congregants, and are more than happy to have a handy group of people to blame for things that do not work and problems that arise.

How do I know this? I am in the strange situation of having a foot in both camps. I went to seminary and am ordained, but I have spent most of my service in a lay capacity. I know how clergy complain to each other about their people, and I also know how frustrated the laity are with their clergy and denominational officials.

What I have hardly ever seen is an actual dialogue on equal footing between clergy and laity, where any of these kinds of issues are discussed and perspectives shared. Instead, each camp mutters about the other behind the closed doors of their own camps.

So let me say it here. Laity, you can be pretty immature, lazy and petty. Clergy, you enjoy the power and the feeling of spiritual superiority. And by the way clergy, you do hold most of the cards and you haven't played them very well over the years.

This is not just a UMC problem. It's a problem in all churches. We've got to figure out a way to work together, not at cross purposes. Things would be so different if clergy and laity were actually partners who had respect for each other, rather than people who see each other as problems and antagonists. Let's power share and responsibility share and honor our mutual and separate gifts. To get there, though, we first have to be willing to at least talk to each other. The time to start is now.

All in the family: recent observations in the gospel of John

If you would like to know what I learned about my relationship with God from a recent reading of the Gospel of John, visit my devotional website and read the posting "God is not my boss."

Glimpses of grace

I used to occasionally be allowed to preach. It was one of the greatest joys of my ministry life.

I think I was fairly good at it. I felt God gave me things to say that challenged and helped people. But I could have been a lot better if I had been allowed to do it on a regular enough basis that I could have practiced and developed my craft.

I'm still coming to terms with why that did not happen for me. Sadly, even after graduating from seminary and being ordained, the churches where I served were not in healthy enough places themselves to mentor me and my gifts. The pastors did not do it for me, and I in turn did not do it for other current church leaders like myself or for people who were taking discipleship seriously in the congregation. We were all just struggling to hold these places together.

We were dealing with the crises of the moment, always, always. We were not imagining or building for a better future. Yes, we should have been. But we were doing the best we could with what we had, and taking away another night of the week when one was already spending three or more nights at the church, and putting in 20-30 hours on top of full-time jobs to keep the place going...  Maybe in hindsight we should have been more forward-looking. But that's always easy to say. What I remember is just being continually exhausted and frustrated. Not in any kind of place to innovate or mentor or look to the future.

Actually, I think that's how a lot of ministry goes in the local church. You know what you want to accomplish, how you want to serve Christ. You have a heart for it. You feel a calling towards it. The Holy Spirit urges you on. But there's your people, with their dysfunctions and issues and problems. And survival is always a concern. And so, what you can manage at best is small victories related to the vision God's given you. The rest of it remains elusive and out of reach.

And yet.

I actually think God's OK with that. With the effort, I mean. With the intentions and the small results that come from trying to stay on message even though so much remains unrealized. And every so often he gives us glimpses of his grace to help us keep going.

I didn't get to preach much, but God-things have resulted anyway. A few weeks after I preached on John's prologue at a Christmas Eve service, a shy woman in her 20s in our congregation presented me with a painting she had made, showing the light shining in the darkness, which the darkness could not overcome. What I had said that night had resonated with her and inspired her. Her painting is one of my most treasured possessions.

The other day I received an email from a former congregant who had taken notes in her Bible on a Sunday I had preached, more than a year ago. She was in a time when she needed encouragement, and going through her Bible, she came across her notes, and what I had said, and God spoke to her again. She then emailed me to let me know what had happened, and she in turn encouraged me on a day when I was having a difficult time.

These glimpses of grace keep you going in ministry, even when the overwhelming preponderance of what we do seems to not bear fruit. You have to be attentive and recognize them when they come along, because like the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit they are easily missed.

I wish I had been able to preach more. I wish I still had opportunities to preach now. But I am gratefult that the times I did, God took what I said and did something with it. That's about as good as it gets.

Family relationships in John

As an example of reading the Bible on your own as an adult, I'd like you to try this exercise, which I recently completed myself. It's from the book, Becoming God's Beloved in the Company of Friends, by Mary Pazdan.

Go through the Gospel of John, focusing on one thing: what John (and Jesus within this gospel) have to say about Jesus' relationship with the Father. Make some notes whenever you see a passage or verses that mention how they relate to each other.

•  What themes do you see mentioned multiple times?
•  What are some of the key features of their relationship?
•  How would you describe their relationship?

Then, when you see Jesus explaining how humans can become part of this relationship, take notes on:

•  What do humans have to do to join Jesus and the Father?
•  What benefits will humans have in the relationship?
•  What will be expected of humans in the relationship?

Now look through your notes. What conclusions do you come to about Jesus and the Father? About what salvation is all about? About what the gospel of John is about?

In a forthcoming post, I will share with you what I learned when I did this, how this has affected my walk with Christ, and why I am glad I continue to read the Bible as an adult.

What do Christians know, and when do they know it?

I've led a lot of Bible studies and small groups, in both mainline and evangelical churches, and I continue to be astonished about my fellow Christians' lack of understanding of the Bible.

I've found it's the people who grew up in the church who have been the hardest to get into an adult study group. This seems to be because they think they already know what the Bible is about: what it teaches, what it tells us about God, and what its instructions are for living our lives. They learned these things as children and it's hard to convince them they would benefit from reading the Bible as an adult.

What do Christians know, and when do they know it? If you grew up in church, your understanding of Scripture probably started in Sunday School, where you learned Bible stories. So you believe you know the Bible. But really, you don't. Sunday School teaches kids sanitized versions of selected stories with action and memorable characters and miracles and children in them.

Children's Sunday School is a start to learning about what we believe. It's where you get the basics in child-sized, discrete portions. Sunday School is where you learn that Jesus loves you and you learn "what God wants from you."

But it's not where you learn that the whole of Scripture weaves certain themes about God and people, about what our problem is, and what God's solution is. It's not where you realize that the timeless issues plaguing the human race—issues we suffer through today just as people did in biblical times—require God's equally timeless response and our repentance.

It's not where you learn the Bible is not sanitized for your protection. Those perfect characters you learned about as a child are not perfect at all—a real eye-opener for adults who re-read their stories. They seem to be more like us, filled with flaws, making mistakes, and sometimes acting very badly.

It's not where you have to wrestle with the hard parts—the system of sacrifices, the genocides, the treatment of women and children, the slavery. In Sunday School you don't have to ponder how a Bible that was written a long time ago for people living in a very different world than ours still has relevance for us today.

A lot of Christians operate at the same level of understanding they gained as a child. But when we never progress past the Sunday School Bible story view and grow into an adult faith, we do both ourselves and God a disservice.

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The other place Christians tend to learn about the Bible is through Christian authorities, whether a pastor's sermons or the things that Christian celebrities tell us to think as we watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, go to their rallies and read their books.

Unless you are reading, on your own, the passages these folks interpret for you, you are stuck with  their views on what's important, why it's important, and what you should think about it. Sometimes authorities get it right, but sometimes they're way off base. How will you know unless you are reading the Bible for yourself?

A friend of mine is searching for a new church. She went to one recently where in his sermon the pastor came to some conclusions about faith and the work of Christ that were patently wrong. The pastor had a point he wanted to make, and he was going to make it even though he had to twist Scripture to get there. And so he said that some verses meant something they did not mean at all.

Alarms went off in her head. Had my friend not known her Bible, if she had not read and wrestled with and understood the Bible as an adult, she would not have blinked an eye at the pastor's dangerous interpretation. But because she had, she knew that was not going to be the church for her.

Even if you've spent your life in the church, it's vital to open your mind and read the Bible as an adult. It's important to read big sweeps of the Bible, to see how passages connect, and what messages God repeats to us. It's crucial to experience words that make you uncomfortable or cause you to scratch your head. It's important to read the parts that seem grounded in ancient ways of thinking, and to wrestle with what they could mean for us today. And it's critical to see how the context of a passage helps us to better interpret what it says.

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Some people come from specific upbringings where they memorized Bible verses key to their church tradition's worldview. They believe they know the Bible because they have quotes for many different occasions. Bible memorization is helpful, both for ourselves and for others, but only when the individual verses are grounded in their surrounded passages and not left to stand alone out of context—either the context of the Bible or the context of the occasion for which they are used.

I once knew a woman who sprinkled all her conversations with Bible verses. No matter the topic, she had a number of verses to share that she thought settled matters. The problem was, most of them did not actually apply to the situation, and she was totally unaware that was the case. She had been raised in the "prooftexting" tradition and saw the Bible as a collection of regulations to live by, do's and don'ts, and promises that God was obligated to fulfill. Over the years, she harmed quite a few people by dispensing "biblical advice" in an authoritative tone that was both inappropriate and guilt inducing. But because of her upbringing, she thought she had a handle on what the Bible says, and that she was doing people a lot of good. She had learned things as a child and just carried that system with her into adulthood, never realizing the Bible isn't a recipe book.

We owe it to ourselves and to God not to sell the Bible and our faith short, but to give them the attention and thought they deserve. The rewards are rich, both for ourselves and the people in our lives. But when we are content with the faith we inherited as a child, and what we were taught when we were young, we rob ourselves of an adult understanding. Reading the Bible as an adult is one of the keys to developing a mature faith that is ours, not someone else's, and to helping, not harming people with what it says.