He Wants Me to Call Him: The Care and Feeding of Clergy

An old acquaintance, whom I haven’t seen for over ten years, has left his phone number with a third party saying that he would like me to call him. Ordinarily I would be delighted to make a contact with someone from the past, and I have maintained relationships going back over quite a number of years; but there is an interesting background to this request.

            This man, let’s call him Ozzie, mainly because I don’t know anybody named Ozzie. Here’s what happened more than once, twenty years ago. Ozzie would make an appointment with me and come to my office. He would sit down, and with a paternal smile take a list out of his pocket, and then begin by quoting from Holy Scripture, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness…” [Galatians 6:1-2]. 

            Having set the stage Ozzie would read me a list of what he considered to be my transgressions. My first response was concern, then a certain amount of shock, then the realization that he wasn’t only listing what he considered my “transgressions;” but things that he didn’t think that I was doing right. My first response, knowing my human frailty, was to accept his critique.

The second time he did this he graciously added, “I know you have an Alcoholic Personality, but …” I told him that he was out of line. I had been in recovery for over twenty-five years, and I had gone through quite a bit of therapy. One of my discoveries was that I was too willing to accept shame and blame. I realized that this wasn’t really about me, but about him and his need to have power and control over others.

Around that time I discovered that Ozzie was going into the office every Monday morning with a list of mistakes he found in the Church bulletin. As you can imagine Ozzie was driving them nuts. The result was that I had to firmly tell him that he didn’t have a ministry of correction, and that the Office staff didn’t need him sitting in judgment on them. There is only one accuser of the saints.

Ozzie wants to get me to call him by leaving a message through a third party. That by the way is called “triangulation;” the attempt to apply leverage by getting a third party to get someone to do something. Sometimes that’s not important, but in Ozzie’s case it is. Ozzie has easier and more direct options. He can ask his Rector to find my phone number, or he can call the diocese and ask them for contact information; then he can initiate the call himself.

Enough years and geographical distance have separated us that I have gained some perspective. I don’t harbor any bitterness, and I extended forgiveness to Ozzie years ago. That’s not the point. What is the point is, that there are people in the Church who think that it is their responsibility to correct the pastor and keep him in line; but be aware that they think it’s their God given ministry to correct everybody else too, and you might be next.

A Prayer for Troubled Times

These are troubled times, and as the international threat of Islam is constantly in the news, the Prayer of Hannah comes to mind. Often for Christian’s the Magnificat gets in the way, because Mary paraphrased Hannah in her own prayer. But for a minute step back into the troubled times of Hannah, the mother of Samuel the Prophet, and listen to what she had prayed.

The Prayer of Hannah: 1 Samuel 2:1-10  

¹ And Hannah prayed and said, "My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in the LORD. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation.

² "There is none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. 

³ Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. 

⁴ The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. 

⁵ Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn. 

⁶ The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. 

⁷ The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. 

⁸ He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and on them he has set the world. 

⁹ "He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall a man prevail. 

¹⁰ The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven. The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed."

A Comment on the Cries for Justice in America

A Comment on the Cries for Justice in America: Everybody is crying out for Justice, but how can you call for justice without the whole truth?

Do you know what happened in the Garden of Eden? The simple story is the game of shame and blame; Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent ducked for cover and slithered away, laughing as he went.

The toll was terrible. Adam and Eve, not being satisfied with having everything, wanted their own way, lost Paradise, and sin had entered into the world and God had to send His Son, a blood sacrifice for them all.  All that is, except for the serpent. The last laugh was on him. “He who sitteth in the heavens hath the devil in derision.”

But sin, in the form of bloody murder, had entered into the world and with that, murder…Cain killed Abel…and the cry for justice entered the world. The blood of Abel cried out from the very ground, and the theme of the mystery novel was born. What happened? Who did it? Will justice be done in the end?

Justice is being confused with entitlement. Like Adam and Eve, people want their own way, not accountability. Justice and entitlement are not the same thing. You cannot tell the story of justice accomplished without telling the story of why it was needed. You cannot do true justice unless the justice meted out is commensurate with the bloody crimes that call for it. 

Oh, Yeah!

There are some benefits and some drawbacks to contemporary worship music. It’s simplicity has the benefit of making a good chorus memorable; after all I have occasionally had a good gospel chorus run through my mind in the middle of the night. I don’t wake up in the middle of the night singing Bach, even though I prefer Bach to much of the contemporary worship music that I have heard.

On the other hand there is a difference between being simple and being simplistic. Some of the contemporary worship music is so theologically simplistic that it is like jumping head first into a shallow pool; you just might strain your brain! Recently I was exposed to a contemporary praise song that posed some problems for me, not that the theology was all that bad, but the presentation distracted seriously from the message.

First of all it was lousy poetry. C. S. Lewis objected to some of the hymns in Hymns Ancient and Modern for the same reason, so maybe we can call it a draw, but not quite. Even though some of the hymns in Hymns Ancient and Modern were not very good poetry, at least the lines had some rhythm and rhymed. The same cannot be said for much of contemporary praise music.

The depth of contemporary worship music can hardly be favourably compared with,

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

and with fear and trembling stand;

ponder nothing earthly minded,

for with blessing in his hand

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

our full homage to demand.

The real problem with the contemporary music piece was the last line of the last verse; “Such a marv’lous mystery yeah!” Now I understand that the composer’s intention was to present his song in colloquial English, but the word “Yeah” introduced the last double singing of the chorus. Guess which word the music team and the congregation sang with the greatest gusto and unbridled enthusiasm, Yeah?

The Oxford English Dictionary says of the word “Yeah” that it is a “Nonstandard spelling of yes, representing informal pronunciation.” It may be a matter of taste, but I usually prefer a steak to a McDonald’s hamburger. Can you imagine singing, “Come with us O blessed Jesus, yeah! With us evermore to be, yeah!”? Somehow it spoils the effect of a worship song, yeah! even though the chorus of the song might be theologically acceptable, Yeah!

The Call to Ministry

In the book of Judges there is a story about a “call to ministry,” or to be more accurate, about hiring a priest. That confusion still goes on today. You don’t hire a priest, you call a priest, and the call must be validated by the Holy Spirit and by your bishop. When the priest arrives he is not a hireling. If he is, you get what you’ve paid for.  

Here is the story:

This guy named Micah steals 1,000 pieces of silver from his mom, then fesses up and gives it back. She says, “Well, bless the Lord!” Then she takes 200 pieces of the silver and has an idol made and gives it to Micah? Why? I can only speculate; that ought to remind him what a twit he is. He then sets the idol up in a worship center in his house, and then hires a young itinerant Levite to be a priest. He pays him 10 pieces of silver, a suit of clothes each year, and board and room.  Then Micah says, "Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest” [Judges 17:13]. Many very faithful priests still get only 10 pieces of silver and a suit of clothes, along with modest board and room.

Now the tribe of Dan found claiming their inheritance too hard so they went looking for a place that was easy prey for their conquest. On the way they come to the house of Micah…and say to the Levite, ‘“Keep quiet; put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and clan in Israel?’ And the priest's heart was glad. He took the ephod and the household gods and the carved image and went along with the people” [Judges 18:19-20].

Now you might think that this only happened in ancient Israel, not so my naïve Christian friend. Years ago when I was in a small diocese we called a priest to be our bishop. It turned out that he was a hireling. Six weeks after he arrived he stood in our back yard and told us that now the he was a bishop he was going to look for a larger diocese. Incredible? He became a big name in the larger Church, applied to a number of dioceses but most of them caught on. Years later his persistence paid off and he found a grander “call to ministry” in a much larger diocese.

A call to ministry comes from and God and from the people and is a two-way invitation love and be loved for both priest and people. It is a call to preach the gospel whether or not it tickles the ears of the people. It is a call to be God’s man or woman, in a particular place at a particular time. By the experience of many in ministry today it is also a call to suffer the pains of love.

Now in our diocese we have just called a good man to be bishop, and our previous man was a good man. We took care not to call a hireling; but I wonder if some will try to pay him and treat him like a hireling? Keep your bishop, your priest, and their families in your prayers and remember that they were called and not hired.

The Basket of Apples

Churches are like a basket of apples; some are very good, but others so bad that they cannot be eaten. When all the apples are sound the basket of apples is sweet. When one apple goes rotten it has to be removed and the apples around it need to be washed. When several apples begin to rot, they need to be thrown out, and all the apples in the basket need to be cleansed. But that is as far as the parable goes. Unlike apples, people in churches have freedom to choose. Sometimes they choose to honour the rotten apples. Are there rotten apples in all churches? Yes, of course there are. The church is like that proverbial field of the wheat and the tares.

Bonhoeffer said, “The old world cannot take pleasure in the Church because the Church speaks of its end as though it had already happened--as though the world had already been judged.  The old world does not like being regarded as dead.  The Church has never been surprised at this, nor is it surprised by the fact that again and again men come to it who think the thoughts of the old world--and who is there entirely free from them?  But the Church is naturally in tumult when these children of the world that has passed away lay claim to the Church, to the new, for themselves.  They want the new and only know the old.  And thus they deny Christ the Lord” [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, translated by John C. Fletcher.  (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 11].

The Church is in the redemption business and we should be glad that the children of the world come to the Church; after all “such were some of you.” But care needs to be taken to speak the truth in love to the tares that are in the church, rather follow them. Christians are like salt and are meant to flavor the world, but if Christians lose their saltiness and fail to speak loving words of truth to the grumblers and murmurers in their midst, soon the whole basket of apples will only be fit to be thrown out. In one church there was a row of rotten apples that all sat together in one pew. That is why one morning the minister of music began to sing, “When the row is called up yonder, I’ll be glad.”

“And the LORD said to me, "What do you see, Jeremiah?" I said, "Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten” [Jeremiah 24:3.

Who are the Arabs?

An interesting problem is posed by the King of the Ammonites in the Book of Judges. He declares war on Israel claiming that Israel had taken his land away. (Judges, Chapter 11:1-28). What actually had happened was that the Amorites had taken the land from the Ammonites, and Israel in turn had conquered the Amorites. We have a similar problem today. Muslim Arab claims to Palestine of Israel have at best a shaky foundation.

Muslims make up only part of the Arab World. It doesn't help to lump together all Muslims and Radical Islam with all Arabs, any more than lumping together all Baptists, and all Christians, with Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

Who are the Arabs? The “Arabs” are a pan-ethnic group, a culture rather than a nation. As long ago as December, 1938, a conference of Arab students in Europe, held in Brussels, declared that "all who are Arab in their language, culture and loyalty … are Arabs.”

The Arab-American Ant-Discrimination Committee defines “Arab” as: "Arab" is a cultural and linguistic term. It refers to those who speak Arabic as their first language. Arabs are united by culture and by history. Arabs are not a race. Some have blue eyes and red hair; others are dark skinned; many are somewhere in between. Most Arabs are Muslims but there are also millions of Christian Arabs and thousands of Jewish Arabs, just as there are Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Americans.”