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.

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.

It's no longer working

Somewhere in my 40s, I started noticing something about people in my age group. It's become more apparent now that I'm a decade past that. Perhaps I see more of it because I'm an ordained minister and people tend to confide in me. But I really think I am on to something.

What's hit me is how many people who have been trying to make life work on their own terms seem to hit the wall at about this point in their lives. However they've been coping with life's realities become less and less effective with time, and now it's to the point where it's crumbling.

Addictions don't fly under the radar anymore—now they're causing real damage. If they've been self-medicating to get by, it's no longer enough. If there are financial issues, at this point the hole seems impossibly deep. If mental health hasn't been looked after, now its built-up repercussions are taking a real toll. If there has been physical neglect, disease has set in. It's also the time when friendships, marriages and families fall apart.

In every aspect of life, people can no longer get away with living as they did when they were younger. The chickens come home to roost in these decades.

Everywhere I look in my age group—friends and family, co-workers and church folks—all seem to be hanging on by a thread as they experience setbacks and major life disappointments, many of their own making.

What an opportunity for the church to offer hope to ordinary, broken people, to really reach out with a message of love, acceptance and healing.

Sometimes, I'm proud of our church folks

When you work in ministry, you often get complaints.

Something wasn't done well, or right. People didn't help enough. Someone got saddled with all the work. Your theology is off. The music's too loud. We did things better back at my old church. We visited your church and you let us down.

This last one has always stumped me, mostly because I personally would never have the guts to write a pastor I didn't know and tell them their church is no good.

But such is life.

We got one of these the other week, and it was a stumper. The writer claimed they visited but had been ignored. The email was shared with church leadership, and as the week progressed, it became apparent that not only was this not the case, but that the person's family had been emailed, called on the phone, and even had coffee with folks from our church. What's more, each of these acts of friendship came from a different church person. And in addition, while some of the acts were by leaders, others came from our rank and file members.

What started out as a complaint turned into an affirmation of the many ways we are trying to reach out to our visitors.

We still haven't figured out why our actions seemingly have not been enough for this family, but at least we know our community is trying. I say, "Good for us."

Sometimes, we do get it right.

Similarities

The members of one of my small groups recently challenged themselves to adopt members of the military who are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and do not receive regular mail. Some friends of ours whose son just returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq provided the names.

When we were trying to figure out what to send, we found numerous lists of items on—of course—the Internet. The items looked reasonable, but basic: toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, hand sanitizer, hard candies, old magazines and paperbacks, and so forth.

At the same time, our church is doing a Christmas mission project for a homeless shelter. We are providing "gift bags" to men in the shelter. We were given a list of items we could provide. It was extremely similar to the list I was using to purchase items for the soldier.

This got me to thinking.

In the past I've participated in mission projects for nursing home residents. It's essentially the same list of items. Soldiers, homeless people, nursing home residents. People who are easily forgotten until it's a designated time to remember them.

Are these really the items they need? Or are they items that must be provided by someone as a matter of course?

Does my soldier appreciate cast-off paperbacks and magazines? Or does he look at them as someone just cleaning out their recycling pile? I've often wondered this about used clothing donations. Is cleaning out my closet really an act of charity that helps others, or is it a way to unclutter my house and feel good about myself?

Do these items actually make the recipients feel happy and loved? Or are there more creative, time-consuming, thoughtful—dare I say it—expensive things we could be doing instead? Things that would take a chunk, instead of a token, out of us?

I don't have the answers. But I do have a lot of questions.