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“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring.” (Jacques Derrida, on “quotation marks'“)
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“Woah, we're half way there
Woah, livin' on a prayer” (Bon Jovi)
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We now come to the middle of this journey in A Guidebook To Progressive Church. We are half way there, and indeed living on a prayer (we’ll probably need a chapter on “what, to a progressive, is prayer?).
But I’ve decided first to write about pastors. Clergy occupy an unusual position in the progressive church. In some progressive groups (like Friends/Quakers), there aren’t any clergy. I’m assuming some other peace churches committed to non-hierarchical forms of governance probably lack them also in the traditional sense.
But among the majority of progressive churches, located as they are within the landscape of “mainline Protestants,” clergy are indeed a driving force in Christian progressivism. For better or worse, like much of the rest of the Christian world, there is a dynamic interplay between clergy and congregation, with a heavy burden on the clergy to maintain and lead the vitality of the congregation.
But… as regards the breaking of context for the word “pastor”—which signifies that many Christians who aren’t progressive doubt whether progressive pastors “count” as pastors—I often receive the “pastor” title more in the Derridean sense, engendering infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion.
Which is why I put the title of this post in quotations with a nod to Derrida. This is a nod to all the critics (there are many) who when they speak of me or other progressive pastors consistently put “pastor” in scare quotes. I salute you!
I concede the point that how I move in the world may not line up with the expected or typical movement of a pastor. I move sideways, if you will, sometimes showing up in surprising spaces.
It’s like when a kid runs into their teacher at the grocery store and says, “What are you doing “here”?!” I guess as I’ve wandered deeper and deeper into this thing called pastoring, I’ve simply felt called to tuck into some lesser explored rooms and turn the lights on.
I don’t spend all of my time in these side rooms, mind you. Visit the church of my ideation turned into daily practice, and part of the time you’re going to find me preaching and chanting Sunday mornings; I spend a lot of time visiting the sick, counseling those who seek care, playing with kids at youth group, taking communion to the homebound, all the things you imagine pastors have done since forever.
Where things go sideways, the times I’m most likely to earn those quotation marks around “pastor”, are myriad. They begin with simple cultural, political, and social commitments. Radical affirmation of LGBTQIA people, Socialist, Universalist, valuer of multi-faith participation, gamer dad, prison abolitionist, etc.
I think the fundamental mark here is certainly connected to who I am, idiosyncratically as a person. I kind of believe that has to be an accepted part of pastoring. You need to be yourself. So if I take the Strengthsfinder inventory, it highlights that I’m into ideation and into connection. Thus it’s no surprise that I both come up with ideas for new organizations, and then actually organize them.
However, because I’m radically on the left, and committed to living that radical leftist vision in public as public church and public pastoring, and because doing those things are somewhat unusual for pastors, I think some who see this kind of practice wonder if that’s the main thing I do, and then wonder if I’d be better off working as a community organizer or non-profit E.D. Or running for office.
But (and this is totally a vocational aside, a sort of model answer to the question, “But what are you called to do?”), I’ve never felt called to actually become the E.D. of a non-profit or sign up for community organizing. I’m a pastor.
Well, except if you really wanted to ask me what I thought I was doing in traditional, biblical terms I might tell you I doing the bridge-building work that is sometimes called “apostolic,” and that my tent-making work was pastoring. I’m not sure I’m totally signed up for all those distinctions of terms for leadership in the church (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers), but I do know at least for me it makes some sense that my main gift whenever I take the inventories is apostles, and right after it are prophet and shepherd.
As I have increasingly attended to the writings of liberation theologians and analysts of the subaltern; as I’ve taken into account the class analysis of socialists; and as I ponder the breadth of classes I’ve inhabited (rural farming, academia, small town pastoring, urban life), more and more I’ve felt it was important for clergy to get embedded in the daily life of working people.
So I know this is a random shift, but this is why I asked my church council last year if I could start substitute teaching. I wanted to help alleviate a crisis in the culture, a shortage of teachers and subs. I also wanted to get closer to school life, and spend time with young people. The traditional churchy way to do that would be to try and do more youth programs at the church. But we aren’t hyper-focused on programs at our church, and I kind of think everyone’s already too busy as it is. Subbing gets me into the nitty gritty.
It also opens up some unique opportunities. Because I’m subbing AND have a community voice as a pastor, I can use that voice to advocate for better wages for subs and other classified school staff.
The same holds true for some of the non-profits we have started. As a result of starting Queer Camp at our church, I’m honored to be in touch with youth queer culture and can advocate for their needs in solidarity with them in ways I couldn’t if I had simply preached about inclusion without actually practicing it.
The one problem this presents for congregational life (and it’s a rather big problem) is that the main body of the congregation can sometimes wonder, “How is this new emerging thing for us?” It can come as a bit of a shock when, at least for a period of time as a new thing is launched, the worship and announcements and energy of some of the volunteers and the energy of the pastor are all focused on the launch of the new.
This was certainly true when we started Canopy NWA, a non-profit that has now grown into the main refugee resettlement center for the state of Arkansas. Until we got the funding together to hire our first E.D., there was about a six month period when I was about half-time organizing the refugee resettlement org and about half-time pastoring.
But, and this is crucial, a lot of this has to do with perceptions of time, and how ministry (and any kind of social justice work) occurs over time. That is to say, if you can wait long enough, you as the parishioner will likely see the benefit to you as a member. In the case of refugee resettlement, what emerged, over the long haul, were opportunities to volunteer with co-sponsor teams for arriving refugees, and now, a few years into it, many new neighbors to know and love from all across the planet.
Similarly with the launch of Ozark Atolls, our Marshallese ministry, back during the beginning of the pandemic. Sometimes you just jump into something because it’s the right thing to do, and when we knew we could help and we knew Marshallese were dying and struggling with COVID, we knew what to do.
Now, two years in, I’ve begun to realize what started as an emergency response to crisis is becoming, and I think of it as this, our main practice of Christian reparations. We offer our space, our time, our resources, to a community of people, who suffered tremendous harm from the testing of nuclear weapons on their islands. As a congregation, we can’t repair all of that harm, but entering into this partnership at least repairs a little bit.
Perhaps the part of this that will sometimes be the most troubling to those who see this kind of pastoring in action is that it can be perceived as “divisive.” The problem with advocating for the subaltern is that it will always be perceived as divisive. Speaking up for and standing in solidarity with oppressed communities is inherently divisive, because the power of the status quo will see it as such.
Take, as an example, Arkansas’ passing of anti-trans legislation denying health care access to trans youth. A middle non-divisive approach to this would be to try and work in the middle, bringing to the table the needs of trans youth AND the concerns of legislators.
Except, in this case, the concerns of legislators are completely at odds with the recommendations of the medical community, and originate in hate and transphobia. As a pastor, I believe there is no other way to act in the face of hate than to stand in solidarity with those suffering from the hate, and suffer with them. In fact, I think it’s a part of pastoral ministry (this is good shepherding) to draw some of the heat away and toward yourself.
It’s one thing for trans youth and their parents to stand up for themselves. It’s a whole other thing when a wider community not directly impacted by the legislation stands up for them also. And it’s a whole other thing again to turn the attack back around and into a fight, and name the legislators as immoral and bigoted. Which they are.
To say these kinds of things, to say them out loud, to keep repeating them, to not back down. To believe that is good pastoring. This is part of what earns the quotation marks.
I’ll conclude with one simple observation: all pastors who use social media are now navigating ministry in a way different from their predecessors. It’s why I like to talk about this work as open-source and public. Social media has made it possible for a parish to get a glimpse into the life of pastors in a way unprecedented compared to previous generations. For better or worse, my congregation and a lot of my wider community knows not only my political views but also about the games I like to play and the food I eat.
I’ve certainly made some mistakes along the way, maybe over-sharing or stating more briefly and starkly what should have been a long-form essay. When you get angry and Twitter is just a few taps away, that’s part of the new ministry landscape.
But this too is part of pastoring. It’s why I first joined social media when I got that personal invite from Mark Zuckerberg (*wink*) and have never looked back. Shepherds spend time where the sheep are.
I’m still uncertain some days about whether that’s a good metaphor for the role of pastor in a community, but it is how a congregation tends to think of its pastor (I know mine does, in spite of my continuing gestures towards an-archism). I guess we live with it as a form while also listening to the God who in Christ did not think of being like God as something to be grasped, but instead took on the form of a servant. Until somebody finally figures out the Holy Grail of a self-actuating group, I think we’ll always see the Spirit at work in the interplay between “leader” and people, hopefully never with too much focus on the leader, but just enough to make it about “the people.”
I want to be that kind of “pastor.”
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Reflections from a progressive Lutheran pastor in the South.