Hello, friends.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We’re excited today to kick off a new series here at First Pres,
and we’re excited to take a turn down the road that maybe
is a little bit more lighthearted.
We know that the last few series that we have been on
have been very heavily focused since the beginning of the year on self-reflection.
Of course, with that series where
we were working at a spiritual checkup
and asking ourselves a question of how our faith is,
certainly I want to encourage you to take a look at that
if that’s of interest.
But then over the Lenten series,
we looked at the seven deadly sins.
Once again,
another great spiritual tool.
So we’re seeking to live out our faith,
but also incredibly reflective,
incredibly humbling to look at the reality and truth of ourselves and our spirits.
And so today, we’re going to be kicking off a new series.
And in this, we’re going to be talking a little bit
about some of the things that behind the scenes
may sometimes drive pastors a little crazy.
And I want to be clear that we’re not
going to just spend a series complaining,
at least we don’t intend to.
But we want to spend a little bit of time
maybe looking at some things that may not first
come to mind for folks when they think
about the challenges of being pastor,
or maybe more rightly said,
the challenges of leading a community of faith.
Because there’s some things that maybe are obvious.
They kind of stick out and they’re clear.
But in the day to day of working with folks,
of seeking to try to be faithful and hold up
the Word of God in the midst of community,
there are some roadblocks that seem to come up semi-regularly.
And some of them you may anticipate.
Some of them may be new to you.
But this series is going to be devoted to talking
about some of them.
Yeah, so what we’re not interested in
is a kind of opportunity for Michael and I
to whine about our jobs,
which really isn’t the case.
Being a pastor is a great job.
Being a pastor has so many wonderful aspects.
But I think as those who are charged
with some type of leadership,
some measure of leadership,
there are always difficulties that come with that.
There are hurdles, there are challenges.
And I think the idea here is for us to look specifically
at some of the challenges of the church,
some of the things that the church seems to have
to consistently try to navigate in order to move forward.
And it is difficult,
this is a tough time
for churches to make progress.
It is not a friendly environment in the culture
at large right now for mainline Presbyterian type churches.
And so as we continually struggle to move forward
and as those who are involved in the leadership level
of trying to figure out what that means,
there are some things that seem particularly challenging.
And you know, Michael, you and I have had
this conversation before.
There are a lot of pastors who I think,
if you listen to them,
almost kind of feel sorry.
They treat pastoring as if it’s some monumentally
difficult task and all jobs that you try to do well
are difficult and everyone’s job has challenges,
everyone’s job has difficulties,
everyone has aspects of their job
that they wish weren’t a part of it.
And I think pastoring is no different.
This is an opportunity I think for you and I
through our lens, hopefully in a lighthearted way
to share some of those things,
because we believe they affect not just the way
we do our job,
they affect the church
and they affect the church’s ability to grow,
to learn, to serve and to follow Christ faithfully.
And I think ultimately that’s the important thing.
It’s not about the things that you and I find frustrating.
It’s about the things that have the potential
of getting in the way for our Christian community
and our faith family.
I’m sure you’ve had this happen,
Clint.
I know that I’ve had it happen numerous times.
A person makes what is always intended to be a joke.
It’s for humor,
but they’ll make a comment,
something about how being a pastor is a job
that you have for one day a week.
Isn’t that great pastor that you’ve got a job
that you only need to show up on Sunday?
And I’ve never had that said to me.
Seriously, it’s always been in form of joke,
but there is though unspoken this kind of idea
that the bulk of the church’s work happens
on that one day a week.
It’s certainly the most visible.
And so what may be surprising as we go through this series
is how many of the church’s struggles
are actually built into the day-by-day functioning
of the church.
The stuff that every church does on some level
has within it both the potential to be gracious
and invitational and challenging.
And it also has the capacity for smallness
and for arrogance and for judgmentalism
and for all of the things that we seek to diminish
for the sake of lifting up the thing that matters.
And ultimately, that’s not just the practices that matter.
That’s the one who matters.
That’s Jesus Christ, keeping him at the very center of our community.
You know, what I think is interesting about that is
that it is a day-by-day kind of job.
No matter what you think the pastor’s role is,
the people who sit in that role,
that is the role of the entire congregation
in our many different giftings.
Whether that be a thing that you do
through your study participation,
through your service and the leadership of the church,
through your participation in the mission
and the work and the service of the church.
You know,
this is a very broad conversation
and I think it does land on each of us,
though maybe, Clint, we come to it
with a particular kind of day-in,
day-out kind of vantage
that not everyone shares.
Yeah, I don’t know if it will be an interesting opportunity
for people to maybe get a glimpse of the church
through the eyes of the people who spend the most time here.
But that’s kind of the idea,
that’s kind of our hope.
And I think one of the things that may surprise people is pastors,
in my experience, personal and somewhat professional
in terms of conversations with other pastors,
we are rarely bugged by the big stuff.
It is the little stuff that tends to weigh you down
and wear you down.
It’s not the big mountain that you have to climb occasionally,
it’s the little bumps you go over day-in and day-out.
Those are the ones that I think really kind of
wear people down.
And I don’t think that’s true just in the past with Michael.
I think that’s true in all jobs.
There are some challenges that are sort of invigorating.
You get excited about trying to solve a problem,
but then there’s that chatter that goes with it,
the deadlines and the this thing and the that thing.
And I think that small stuff
often takes the wind out of our sails.
The other thing that we wanna say on the front end
is that these frustrations that we may give voice to
in the next couple of weeks
are not exclusive to the congregation,
neither in this place nor in general.
In other words, some of the things that we may list as challenges,
we wrestle with them personally.
It is not an us versus them kind of thing,
a you versus us kind of thing.
These are challenges we all face
and they get in our way as pastors
as well as in the way of church members and parishioners.
And so we in no way,
shape or form think that we’re looking in on this
as neutral observers from the outside.
That’s not the case.
I would even add to that.
It’s not limited to one congregation.
I don’t think we’re talking necessarily
with a address on the label to First President Spirit Lake,
the place where we have the privilege to serve.
I mean, I think both in engagement and other congregations,
conversations with other pastors,
that’s served in other places.
And I will even take that another level to say
some of the institutions and machinations
that happen above the congregational level,
whether that be in denominations or affiliations
or whatever that looks like,
the temptations that happens very visibly, sometimes very practically
on the church congregational level
exist at the higher level of the organized church as well.
So this isn’t intended to be in any way directed.
It’s rather a reflection upon patterns.
Sometimes I think when you see a thing happen enough times,
you begin to wonder,
I wonder if that is a rhythm
or if that has a sort of thread that goes through it.
And I think our topics here,
for good or worse,
I think our reflection of some items
that we’ve seen in the past,
talked about in the past,
has having that kind of thread that strands through them.
Yeah.
Threads through them.
Yeah, and one of the blessings
of being in this place, Michael,
is that I think I could say with pretty clear conscience
that most of the things that bug me as a pastor
don’t necessarily bug me here.
They’re often outside the context
of First Presbyterian Church.
Now, it’s not to say that they don’t show up here
on occasion, they do because we’re all human,
but I think most of my deepest frustrations with church
don’t have to do in particular with this church.
And for that, I’m grateful.
Yeah, I agree.
And so I think that really maybe just helps us transition
straight into the topic.
We certainly wanna sort of flesh out a little bit
what this looks like.
So today,
we titled this as a working title,
our favorite,
and then in parentheses,
our least favorite,
idols. And, you know,
Clay, I just wanna maybe say
at the front end of this,
I grew up thinking that idols was the stupidest thing.
You know, I read the Bible a lot as a kid
and when you read the Old Testament
and you see like golden calves and people burying things in their tent,
and then that later being found,
you know, stealing stuff from pagan temples,
you know,
to a kid’s mind,
that’s like just foolish,
right?
Like if you believe in God,
why would you wanna have all these graven images?
I mean, if God has called you,
why isn’t that good enough?
It only takes a little while with mature eyes
to look around us and to see how very apt,
how very wise, how very discerning the biblical authors are
to show us the human propensity to idol making
instead of thinking of idols as golden calves
that people put on their mantles,
which may be our temptation.
If we think of idols as the things in our life
that we make more important than they should be,
then we suddenly enter into a realm in which that image
of the idol making aspect of the human heart
becomes incredibly relevant, relevant for today.
And when you work in church and you work with people,
the reality is that every single person,
once again, us included on this list,
every human is adept at creating idols.
In fact, one of the core truths of idol making is
that we don’t even know we’re doing it.
I remember an Exodus when Moses comes down and Aaron says,
“Well, we threw in the gold and the calf came out.”
Like it just happened.
That’s what it seems like to us
is that idol making just happens.
And so whenever you work with people,
and those people are often unaware of their own idols,
but you see how those different commitments
are becoming very tenuous
as people are trying to all sort of navigate together,
it starts to become of supreme importance to understand
what is the thing of highest importance?
What are the things of lower importance that we’ve elevated?
And then how do we navigate between them
as a community of faith?
You know, Michael, in some ways it would be much simpler
if idols were a thing that sat on our mantle,
that they could be that easily identified
and that getting rid of them was a matter
of just removing them from the shelf
and putting them in the dumpster.
But most of our idols reside in secret.
They’re in our hearts,
they’re in our minds.
And oddly enough, we didn’t set out to make them.
Typically,
I think our experience of an idol
is not that we wanted to create a false God,
it was that we started to have good feelings about something,
that we had good experience with something,
and that over time we came to elevate its importance
too highly, we came to put faith and trust and meaning
in it and on it that it doesn’t deserve and shouldn’t have.
And an idol is really nothing other than something
we elevate that gets in the way of our faith,
that gets in the way of following Christ.
And so, yeah, it would be great if we just throw out
the golden calves and that was the end of it.
But I think far too often we don’t really know
what our idols are because they seem to us simply
as good, important, and often as extensions of our faith.
And I think the first one that we could talk about
is very much that if there is a most common idol
that churches struggle with,
in my experience, I think we’d have to at least suggest
that it could be our church campuses,
our buildings.
We have loved our buildings,
and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Part of that is good stewardship.
We’ve tried to manage and keep our buildings.
But at times,
churches have been far too attached
to their sort of physical locations
and everything that goes with that physicality.
And we have, at times, treated being the church
and having our building as one and the same.
And the building then becomes a thing that gets in the way.
It becomes a barrier because now we have this thing
in the place we worship God,
but at times, we almost seem to worship the thing itself,
or at least to kind of very much highlight the thing itself.
And I don’t think the history of the Christian church
is short on examples of elevating our physical space to idol status.
Yeah, no, absolutely not.
And it doesn’t take much looking into the Reformation
to see how suspicious the Reformers were
as to the power that space can have over us.
In fact,
they very famously went into many sanctuaries
that today would be considered artistic masterpieces.
And they,
even then,
to great controversy,
went in and stole out this art,
and they got rid of all of this
sort of beautiful architecture.
And they said that the sanctuary space should be plain,
it should be a blank canvas upon which we can then
turn our attention away from the physicality of the thing
to the spiritual presence of the one who really matters.
That was the heart behind their action,
whether or not they achieve that or not,
we can leave that to theologians and historians.
But I think the point for today is to say
that while we consider the power that buildings have
upon our spiritual formation,
it would be foolish, really,
honestly immature,
to not just admit
the place where we have our children baptized,
the place where our wedding has been held,
the place where we have buried our loved ones,
the place where we have been week after week,
this is going to naturally,
because we are humans,
become an important place in our life.
The same way that our home would,
or the family farm,
or whatever that kind of central place for you might be,
that is going to become a beautiful kind of pattern
that gets fashioned into our life.
The danger is when we allow that place itself
to become the meaning.
Instead of it being a conduit,
a vessel, for the Christian body to gather,
for these beautiful moments of life,
sometimes very hard moments of life,
to be lived out,
instead of it being that, it becomes rather
a kind of physical museum,
a thing that we need to protect,
or that we need to wall off,
a thing that we need to resist change.
Those are maybe some of the initial signs
that the space has gone from being a conduit
of our communal life to rather a fixture unto itself.
And that is where we are at least in danger,
if not having crossed the line into idolatry.
Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting observation,
Michael, essentially that the place
in which we encounter the sacred,
we are tempted to believe is the sacred.
And when we stand in a sanctuary
and we’ve had meaningful experiences
and we’ve had growth,
we begin to treat that space
as if it is the thing that makes it sacred
rather than the one who shows up,
inspires us, meets us there,
and comforts and challenges us.
You know, I recently heard a story about two small churches
of different denominations who decided
they would try to partner.
And so they would take turns worshiping
in each other’s building on and off.
And there was a small contingent of people
from each church who wouldn’t go to worship
on the Sundays it was in the other church,
that they were so committed,
they were so stubborn about their, quote unquote,
building,
that they wouldn’t go to the other place and worship there,
even though this church had decided together,
collectively these two communions were going to try
and become a community,
a family of faith together.
And yet within that,
there were people who said,
well, I will only go to the things that happen
in quote unquote, my building.
And, you know, there’s a sadness to that.
When we care more about the place
than what happens in the place,
then I think we have to raise this idle question.
We have to ask some serious,
difficult questions about where we are and whether that’s healthy.
You know, I think one of the New Testament stories
that is certainly very challenging is the story
when Jesus goes to the temple
and he points out the kind of money and power
and prestige that’s being held
over the people coming to worship.
And he very critically praises that action.
And, you know,
for the people of Israel,
the temple being available to them,
that very building had a kind of historic connection
as their own people,
a kind of hope for what may come
in their own restoration in the future.
And when Jesus predicts that it’s going to be tore down and destroyed,
and of course, that later comes to be in 70 AD,
I think we discover even in Jesus’s life and ministry
that he resisted that temptation that people had
to make it the place of the encounter with God
instead of the actual encounter of God,
that Jesus himself was the living tabernacle
and any other physical tabernacle
that we might call our place of worship,
it is merely a contingent or a passing or a created place.
But that should never become a substitute
for the one true one who we encounter,
whether in that place or not.
If you cannot conceive of,
if I cannot conceive of,
our Christian worship happening alongside the riverbank
or, you know, under the trees like the early church,
you know, when they met in the catacombs
and fear of being found,
that there was no stained glass.
There was no pew,
there was no pulpit,
there’s no table.
Now, we’re grateful for all of these things.
Don’t get me wrong,
I mean, I’m not advocating that we should leave these things behind
as if that would fix our idol making.
Friends, we’ll find a new idol.
But we, I think, do need to become aware and intentional
that we aren’t making one thing a particular focus
in our faith development.
If you find yourself really anxious or really angry
or really frustrated about one part of the building
or one specific aspect of its care,
or, you know, if that’s it,
I’m not saying that you’re wrong.
You may be 100% right,
but the problem with idol making
is we always think we’re right.
So it’s the stepping back to ask
from what is this motivated?
And if we discern within ourselves
with true humble and honest reflection,
that there’s any form of kind of self-driven narrative
or kind of focus upon the thing as opposed to the community,
then that’s a moment I think that we should all step back
and prayerfully ask just for some perspective
as we’re seeking to make it about the one who saves
and not the place where we seek to encounter him.
Yeah, so church historians point out
that in about 325,
313 AD,
Christianity becomes legal.
325,
we have the Council of Nicaea.
In the aftermath of that,
the church, which had had no buildings,
had met in secret, met underground,
they begin to come above board
and they begin building cathedrals.
They begin building churches.
And when that happens,
looking back, you can see very much their mission flagged,
evangelism flagged.
Some of the lifeblood that had sustained the church
up till that moment now became focused
on their physical spaces.
And it is an incredible blessing to have a physical space,
but there is a challenge that comes with it.
I read a story years ago,
a beautiful story.
There was a church in the South,
I believe a Baptist church that was hit by a tornado.
And that tornado happened on Saturday night.
And on Sunday morning,
the people went
and standing where their old sanctuary used to be,
they surrounded their foundation of their building.
Someone brought a guitar and they had worship.
Their building was gone,
but rather than say,
we have nothing now,
we can’t be the church,
they said we’re going to be church in a new way
until we have a building again.
And I think that’s a lot to live up to.
I think that’s a really strong example
of that the church should not take its buildings for granted,
neither should it rely on them.
And yeah,
we’ve been tempted to do both of those things
in our history and we try to navigate that.
I think the same would be true of our kind of next thing
on the list, Michael, which is essentially money,
budget in the church,
not money in general, culturally,
but specifically in the church.
And I think interestingly,
this one can get us on both sides.
This one can get us when we have lots of money
and we’re doing really well and we don’t want to spend it
and we want to have a certain amount
and we want to have security.
And it’s sort of easy to see how that could take our focus.
Ironically though, it also happens when the church is struggling
and everything becomes about the budget.
Every conversation is about,
can we afford this?
Can we do this?
And the budget begins to move front and center
into the church’s goals,
into the church’s…
So being church becomes in that season
about can we meet budget?
And when that happens,
it’s a negative idol,
but it does become an idol in the sense
that we become obsessed with it
and everything else seems to seek to serve that goal.
And so this is a tricky one
because I think we can experience it
both in wonderful times of blessing
and in times that are lean
and we can get distracted in both.
Right,
well, a budget is fundamentally difficult
because it puts in quantitative numbers
a reflection of the values of those who hold it.
Whether that has been deeply thought through
and processed or not,
it’s always a reflection of values.
And when a church budget is out of whack,
when it begins to have an undue influence
in the church in either direction,
I think what begins to happen is
values that should remain at the periphery,
not that they are unimportant.
And I wanna be very clear about that.
There’s some things that the church needs to do
and it needs to do them well.
There’s some administrative tasks, like for instance,
the counting of money,
the keeping of money,
the accurate reporting of taxes
to its members.
I mean, all of this matters,
both within the congregation,
but also to our local community,
to our state, to our nation.
These are people that we report all of these things to.
We should do these with integrity and transparency.
That’s important.
But if we make that process unto itself
of undue importance,
then it becomes the source and function of the church
as opposed to a group of people who are called by Christ,
equipped by Christ outside of their own comfort
for the service to others
and for the sake of inviting them to participate
in God’s best in the world.
That is where I think this idle frame may come to help us.
It’s that there’s really nothing to use Paul’s language.
There’s really nothing that is not allowable.
We’re free as Christians to partake
in all of God’s good things.
And so as people who try to be good stewards
of the resources that we’ve been given,
I think budget is one where we often get off track
because it is important and it’s not to deny that.
It’s that we imbue it with too much importance
or a kind of importance it doesn’t deserve.
And when that happens,
our theology becomes hijacked by the necessity of the moment,
whatever we perceive that to be.
And then that has a way of over the long haul
taking away from us the very heart of the Christian gospel,
Jesus Christ,
the one who’s transforming us.
And it rather becomes somewhat of a staid
kind of conversation about what can we
and can’t we do because of the numbers.
Right, and that’s when I think we see on them
both ends, Michael churches that are doing well,
budget wise and churches that aren’t,
it becomes about us.
It becomes about our needs, our wants,
and our sense of what is enough and what should we do.
And in both instances,
it sort of pushes the church to focus inwardly,
which is very close to the definition of idolatry
when we take our focus off of our larger mission
and purpose in the world,
and we begin to look only at ourselves
and budgets can clearly do that.
As can our next topic,
which is, I suppose maybe success would be a good overall,
maybe sometimes in the mainline church,
in the Presbyterian church,
I think we experience it as kind of attendance or bodies.
We have been in the Presbyterian church nationwide,
we’ve really been on a period of decline for a long time.
And so there are times we’re tempted to just do anything
that would bring people in.
It doesn’t matter.
Let’s,
if it’s Starbucks and muffins,
if anything that will get people here,
let’s do it.
And the people who aren’t here
essentially become the idol,
the idea of attendance,
the idea of outreach.
And let me be clear,
having people come to church is beautiful.
Outreach is one of our fundamental tasks
that we’re called to do as Christians.
And yet when it becomes about that,
when it becomes about the number that we write down weekly
of how many came to church,
then attendance becomes the idol.
It no longer serves the greater purpose
of our mission to the world.
It becomes again, about us.
We used to have X number of people
and now we have X plus 10.
And as soon as we do that,
I think we’re on the wrong track.
I think that it’s dangerous thinking.
Yeah, it is.
And yet it seems Clint,
I think to be such important thinking
because we identify that in the moment,
especially in which we see less people,
we identify that as a reflection upon our value,
upon our purpose, that we are failing,
which I wanna be clear,
every church needs to honestly evaluate
every part of our ministry.
There are maybe places where we’re not succeeding
or where we’re failing to invest in the right thing
or we’ve over invested in the wrong ministry.
There are lots of very nuanced conversations
that I think wise Christians should have
as they seek to be faithful.
But Clint,
the danger of using those numbers
is to think that they mean something that they don’t.
The idea that a small group of Christians
can’t be faithful is false.
You don’t need to be huge
to be doing what you’ve been called to do.
You don’t need to have a massive facility
and a ministry that reaches around the world
to be making a substantial difference for the kingdom.
That’s what we turn to when we look to Paul’s theology
of the oneness of the body.
There are many different gifts,
hands,
feet,
and of course, many sermons about the spleen
and the heart and the guts, right?
How preachers try to make that applicable,
right?
But not every congregation can serve every population.
Not every group of disciples
can be the place for every disciple.
So there’s a great gift in our plurality.
The lie that we believe,
if we believe that less numbers by definition
mean something is that we have invested meaning
in the number as opposed to the calling
that comes to us by Jesus Christ.
I wanna be clear,
you know,
I do believe that the church in its DNA does grow.
When we’re invitational,
when we show the world
what it means to be people of character,
that has a way of inviting others to partake.
So it’s not that numbers don’t help us.
It’s not that they’re not a tool that could be useful.
But Clint,
the line from a tool to a thing
that we are obsessed with or driven by is a very thin line.
And the church is always tempted to cross it.
Yeah, I mean, the story of the church,
Michael, is growth.
And I would say even the call of the church is growth.
But when growth becomes the primary goal
instead of a byproduct of faithfulness,
when growth is not the result of what we’re doing
in service to the gospel,
but it is its own thing.
And we are then tempted to say,
“Well, whatever brings people in must be good.”
And we’re also tempted to say
that that large congregation must be faithful
because people are going to it.
And when we do that,
and that’s not jealousy,
there are some beautiful,
wonderful large congregations.
But there are also 80,000 people that attend the Super Bowl
and that has nothing to do with faith.
So crowds do not verify faithfulness.
All we can do is to say,
as we seek to practice the gospel,
the Spirit will make room for people
to wanna be a part of that and will draw people to it.
And when we treat growth as its own thing.
And I would say a sort of byproduct of this,
Michael, this was huge and maybe the,
oh, I don’t know, late 90s, early 2000s, there was this movement of young adult ministry,
which was wonderful because we realized,
hey, young adults and their families
aren’t coming back to church the way we hoped they would.
But for a while,
every conversation about church became,
do you have young adults there?
How many young adults do you have?
Do you have a young adult service?
Do you have small groups for young adult?
And we almost sought to measure faithfulness
in a congregation by how many 30-year-olds were there.
And again,
should a church be a place
that is reaching out to 30-year-olds?
Without a doubt, there is no question.
But should the church use a 30-year-old
as the barometer of how faithful it’s being?
No, because that’s one measure among hundreds
and it’s not sufficient.
There are just lots of ways that we can get off track
when we pay too much attention to attendance,
to membership,
to size, to growth.
If we don’t keep that in its proper perspective,
then I think it becomes the cart in front of the horse.
And when that happens,
I just think,
it’s going to create some problems.
Full disclosure per what we talked about
in the beginning of this conversation.
I do think pastors are particularly,
I do think there is temptation towards buildings and budgets,
especially when those things aren’t working.
If your toilet doesn’t flush,
that becomes a problem that needs fixed.
When you don’t have the money to pay for the services
that the church needs,
that becomes a massive problem.
But Clint,
correct me if you disagree with this,
but I feel like the body’s number
is a particular temptation for lots of pastors.
That’s a thing I hear a lot,
even sometimes in that introduction of,
I’m a pastor at this church,
we’re a church of this number.
And generally, the bigger, the better.
So maybe of the things we discussed this far,
maybe it seems in my experience at least
that pastors share this particular temptation.
Yeah, I’ve joked before that at pastors conferences,
the primary question is what’s your name
and how big is your church?
And my temptation is always to say,
oh, about a million.
You know,
it just becomes this thing
that it shouldn’t be,
and I do wanna back up,
Michael.
I wanna say this again,
I just wanna insert this.
Buildings,
budgets,
bodies,
those are all great things.
We don’t make idols out of things we don’t love.
We don’t make idols out of bad things.
We make idols out of good things.
We make idols out of important things that we care about.
Those are the things that we have to be on guard.
Something that we hate and don’t wanna do
is never going to be our idol.
It just isn’t.
Being poor is never going to be our idol.
We simply elevate things that are good
and we make them overly good in our own eyes.
And so, yeah, that’s very true of attendance and bodies.
And I think you’re right.
Pastors are probably more prone to that than congregations.
Pastors,
there’s a lot of self-affirmation.
There’s just a lot of stuff that goes into that.
And by extension,
that sort of goes to programs as well.
This one I would say is partly pastors.
When pastors talk, do you do this,
do you do that?
We have this kind of thing,
we have that kind of thing.
But it’s also,
churches are very prone
to idolize the things they have always done.
And sometimes it can be very difficult for churches
to navigate the transition of not doing
a certain thing anymore and moving on to do other things.
And those can be painful moments for churches
because people have often invested time
and effort and passion into those ministries.
But there comes a time when those things
simply aren’t working in the same way anymore.
Time has changed, culture has changed.
And churches struggle in those moments
not to elevate the past and be sort of overly attached
to what was done just because it’s when things
were going really well and it’s when I felt good
and it’s when I was connected.
And I think that is a,
I think that’s a common temptation.
You know,
I think that is a particular truth from our vantage.
So as Presbyterians who are part of a mainline church
like the Methodists or the Lutherans,
I think that is 100% accurate.
I think from a different vantage,
there are churches who every six weeks
they completely redo their stage.
They put,
yeah, and that’s what they would call it.
They put big decorations and they throw stuff away
and they bring new stuff in.
I think there’s a competing temptation by some churches
to glorify the future and possibility.
Like the idea we need to just get rid of stuff all the time
so that we can keep people interested.
That I think is the opposite side of the exact same coin.
Whenever we essentially put our experience
and our desire for something that we think was good
or could be good and we make it the focus of our attention,
then fundamentally what we’ve done
is we made it about our own opinion
as opposed to a living encounter.
And there’s some wisdom in having some old things
that remind us of the storied connection
to the historic faith.
There’s something deeply beautiful
about having that foundation,
that footstone that has the year that the congregation was planted
to remind you of the passion of the people who said,
“We need to be faithful followers of Christ.”
It’s another thing when we surround that
with the red museum tape and we say,
“Don’t touch.” Stay away, kids, from the church, from the sanctuary.
It’s a very vibrant, living,
messy middle of being church that recognizes
we both need to have the best of what we have done,
but also an awareness that all of the best
of what we did have was for the purpose
of serving Jesus Christ in that moment.
And so anything that no longer serves that purpose
for those disciples gathered today,
then simply just needs to be retooled or reimagined
or needs to find a new way to live itself out
because the best things of the past always spoke to Christ.
And so the best things of the present will do the same.
And that is painful work because of our investment,
because of how much we put into it.
In some cases, how much we loved it.
I think that’s a helpful comment, Clint.
There is legitimate grief sometimes in church
when we realize that we might need to change a thing
for the sake of our fellowship, our community,
our whole body.
But that’s a sacrifice we’re always making,
like in a marriage or parents and their children or friends.
You know,
every relationship requires a give and take
and it requires a kind of flexibility to grow.
So the same in the church.
Yeah,
I think,
I think again,
I think you’re onto something,
Michael.
In our experience of that as Presbyterians,
I think it tends to be more centered in the past.
You know, I read a really interesting quotation recently that said,
“Churches are dangerous when they care more
about their past than their present.”
And you could, I think you could reasonably insert future.
Churches are dangerous when they care more
about their future than their present.
But in the Presbyterian experience,
I think we live in the past sense of that quote.
You know,
most Presbyterian churches used to be bigger
than they are now.
They used to do more than they do now.
And they miss those days.
And they think that if they can just get a couple more years
out of the annual coat drive
or the Christmas tree giveaway or whatever it was that they did,
that maybe it will come back
because they don’t just miss that thing.
They miss the experience of being the congregation
who was able to do those things.
And it is a sense of loss,
but the idol in that is to forget.
We begin to worship the past.
We begin to idolize what we used to do instead of saying,
what are we going to do right now with who we are now?
Not who we were,
because we’re not who we were anymore,
but who are we right now?
And what does God want to do in us and through us in this moment?
How can we plug into our community in some new way
that we haven’t done before?
How can we grow as a church deeper or larger
or whatever growth that looks like
as who we are in this particular moment?
And I think sort of being stuck in the past
keeps us from those conversations
and by definition then keeps us from growth.
Just very, very briefly, I won’t belabor this.
I think that this is relevant not just to congregations,
but actually to entire denominations.
And I think the way that this looks for denominations
looks like a kind of longing for yesterday’s influence and yesterday’s importance.
This is especially true for mainline denominations
who remember a day,
maybe 50 or 60 years ago
when their voice was sought after in the public discourse.
In some cases,
a politician could be made
by what denominations they said they were a part of
or the kind of edict that a group of denominations made
could have substantial impact
in sort of a cultural imagination.
And those days, if we’re going to be honest,
are largely behind us.
A lot of that sort of cultural influence,
which if we were gonna be reflective,
some was good and certainly there was some that was not,
has certainly diminished.
And so because of that,
I think there’s a kind of longing
for that old day when the denomination
had a kind of influence and power and cultural attention
that no longer has.
That unto itself, I think breeds distraction at best.
At worst,
it’s a complete sort of diversion
from the task that the church is called to be.
And that is not a place where influential people gather,
but a group of people who gather
under the only influence that matters.
And that is Jesus Christ.
So it’s an inversion of what we’re called to be as Christians
if we put our emphasis upon our earthly power
as opposed to God’s power.
And to be fair,
I think much of that
is probably rose-colored nostalgia
as opposed to pure historical fact.
But I think it functions at a much higher level
than just the congregation is my point.
We had in our denomination a moderator
for many years named Marge Carpenter.
And Marge had this well-known litany
that she began her speeches with.
And it was this refrain,
“I’m proud to be a Presbyterian.”
In fact, I think she would sometimes say,
“I’m sinfully proud to be a Presbyterian.”
And then she would,
from there, go on to narrate
how many presidents had been Presbyterian,
how many governors,
how many astronauts,
how many Supreme Court justices,
how many whatever, award-winning people,
Olympic-level athletes, and this litany of how many great Presbyterians we’ve had.
And it was interesting.
It was even compelling.
I mean, I guess it made you feel good.
But I remember hearing that as a 20-year-old thinking,
“Well, where are they now?
“And so what?” I mean,
it’s great that we’ve had that wonderful history,
but what does that mean to look forward?
Why are we,
does it really matter
who’s been a Presbyterian?
Let’s talk about what we’re going to be.
And I’m not criticizing Marge,
beautiful, wonderful lady, and a very competent leader,
but I always thought it was interesting
that that was the measure of what it meant
to be proud as Presbyterians,
that we had had all of these important members in bygone ages.
And I don’t know,
I was a little skeptical.
I think wherever we become tempted
for it to be a good reflection on us,
we have walked into very dangerous territory.
Now, there are moments in which I think the church
does need to pursue character and pursue,
seek to root out the weeds in our garden,
because we’re called to be the kind of people
who reflect the fruits of the spirit, right?
And so there is a kind of,
I guess, an awareness,
an outer awareness in that,
but it’s not chiefly about what other people see.
That’s the short road to hypocrisy.
It’s rather an honest and heartfelt desire
for the spirit to transform us
and to work within us this kind of conversion
that will continue until the day
that we take our last breath
or we’re taken up in the sky to meet Jesus,
whatever happens first.
I think the temptation that lives in our individual hearts,
lives in our congregations,
and it lives in our gatherings of congregations,
and it is this desire to tell a story of who we are
that looks more like a painting
than it does look like reality.
And we have no need to brush up the church.
Jesus Christ died for sinners.
So we don’t need to put makeup on
to be good enough for Jesus.
I think instead it’s a matter of being honest
about who we are right now
and then seeking to allow through the day-by-day
kind of discipleship that happens in our congregations
and in our personal lives for that to then transform us.
That may actually be the road to influence
that some people long for,
Clint,
but not an influence from the top down,
but an influence of deep character
and sort of the kind of influence of those
who would want to follow someone
who has found the wholeness of Jesus Christ,
as opposed to people who just have a lot of letters
behind their name or great success in their past life.
Yeah, and in fact, Michael, I think one of the cautions of,
you call it top down,
one of the cautions in that for the church
is that in many congregations,
the pastors themselves have been idols.
The church becomes a reflection of the pastor’s ego,
of the pastor’s giftedness,
and there are many congregations
that have allowed themselves to sort of
become tied into service of the pastor
rather than Jesus.
And that’s a particular warning,
I think, to congregations not to elevate its own leadership too highly.
That’s not always the fault of the pastor,
though the pastor always bears some of the fault,
but a congregation has to be careful
not to elevate a person above their status as well.
And then, ultimately, that’s true of all of us.
We have to be sure that we’re working
not to put ourselves in the center,
in the middle,
our own opinions.
One of our great idols is my opinion,
and I think you and I,
we join everyone firmly in that,
that the idea that I want this place
to be a place that serves what I think and what I want,
that I want this place to be a reflection of my own needs,
of my own desires,
of my own wishes
and thoughts on what is best and what should happen.
And when we do that,
we make an idol out of the church itself, and that’s dangerous.
I want to speak carefully here,
but I do think in the present moment in which we live, Clint,
this is particularly relevant.
When we live in a time where one’s affiliation
with a group of any kind reflects a certain kind of
acceptance of any range of ideas.
In other words, if you’re a Democrat,
it means you believe all these things,
or a Republican the same,
or I’m a conservative of this stripe,
it means this, or I think in some cases this applies these days
to sports teams.
I’m a fan of this sports team,
so that means that I think this about all of these things.
We live in a time that is so polarized,
there’s so much push to edges,
that what happens in the midst of that is
we baptize people’s opinion.
We say,
well, because I think this,
I’m unwilling to entertain a conversation
with someone who thinks someone else
because they are a put a label on it.
They’re a that,
they’re a that, they’re a that.
And because they’re that,
we know that there’s no help for them.
The reality is that Jesus Christ came
for the salvation of all.
Now we don’t know the mysterious way
that God is making that work out in the world,
and that’s not for us to figure out,
but it’s to say Jesus entire ministry
in a reading of the four gospels makes it clear
he was preaching a more expansive kingdom
than the religious leaders of the day
were able to understand.
And I think that for Christians gathering in Christian community,
that doesn’t mean that we’re all wrong.
Doesn’t mean that everything we think
is just our opinion and therefore it doesn’t matter.
Of course not.
There are things that we think and believe
that are true and helpful,
but that will not be found.
We cannot, I would argue strongly,
we cannot discern the difference between opinion
and truth without a gathered body of disciples.
That is a very strong,
reformed commitment that comes all the way back from the Reformation
and before to the historic faith
that no bishop should be the one
who determines the faith for all the church.
That should be done in council.
That should be done in conversation.
That’s where we get this word discernment.
It happens together.
And that is going to require us
to be able to name our own opinion.
Opinion’s not a bad word.
In fact, being able to name this as my opinion
can sometimes be the most helpful starter to a conversation.
But if we can’t name it,
then the obvious temptation is that we’ve taken our opinion
and we’ve made it truth that we expect everyone
to see the exact same.
And if that’s the case, Clint,
that can make it very difficult
to navigate as a Christian body.
Yeah, Michael, I think that whenever we feel compelled
to modify the word Christian,
I’m a conservative Christian.
I’m a liberal Christian.
I’m a Bible-believing Christian.
I’m a fundamentalist Christian.
I’m a progressive.
Whenever we feel the need to put a modifier
before the word that means Christ follower,
we have to be very cautious
that that word doesn’t point toward something
we’re in danger of idolizing,
an agenda item.
It is not that those words are bad.
It is not that Bible-believing is some kind of knock.
It is not.
But when we feel compelled to elevate that label,
conservative, liberal, whatever,
to the equality of Christian,
then we’re on thin ice
and we have to think seriously
about what do we understand that modifier to mean
to us and to others?
And in what way could it be a barrier
to that primary word Christian,
which is ultimately the only thing
that we are called to be,
is followers of Christ.
And Christ will determine how to modify that
and modify us in that relationship.
And we have to be,
I think, very careful with the idea
that we need to add something to that
for the benefit of self and others
to locate ourselves on the spectrum.
We do not need to do that, in my estimation.
As we make way to bring some conclusion to the conversation,
I just think it’s worth saying
that as we reflect on the prevalence of idolatry
as being human is really what we’re talking about.
Idolatry lives in every corner of the earth.
Wherever there is a human,
there’s a temptation for idol-making.
This is not just a church thing.
This lives everywhere.
But as we reflect on that,
it’s not to beat anyone up over it.
It’s not to say, hey,
look at these horrible idols,
you, you, you, I mean,
from the inside of that circle,
Clint and I, as we live inside of it,
it’s to say it’s not that idols are just bad
or that they’re theologically incorrect.
It’s rather that they stand in between us
and the saving God,
that we take a thing
that we have created or that we’ve made more important
than it should be,
and it sits in between us
and the God who is seeking to redeem and save us.
Jesus Christ is the only mediator.
He’s the only one that should ever be
in the middle of anything.
And we put stuff there.
And whenever we do that,
it’s bad for us.
It hurts us.
It hurts our soul.
It makes us more selfish.
It makes our world too small.
It makes us sick.
It’s not just a bad boy or bad girl.
It’s not like a sin thing.
Of course,
the church has a theological tradition
that we can draw upon,
but I think the point
I wanna just make here is it’s not about the idolatry
that makes this conversation important.
It’s about the freedom that can live on the other side of it.
If we’re willing to give up the idol
and allow Jesus Christ to be the one in the middle
and not these things that we make more important
than they should be,
then we’re more free
as God’s children to be grateful.
We’re more free to love.
We’re more free to embody the spiritual gifts
that we all know would make our life more whole and full.
That’s the beautiful invitation here.
Don’t get caught up in any kind of judgmentalism,
but rather be focused on the invitation by Christ
to give away our own burden so that we might take his,
to take his yoke instead of our own.
And they’re easy words to say,
granted,
but if we’re able to live in that practice day by day,
Sunday by Sunday,
friends, it will have an impact
on our own lives and on the congregations
that seek to worship and be faithful.
Yeah, absolutely.
Our idols do several things.
They weight us down,
they distract us, they keep us from real growth and real progress.
They do that as individuals
and they do that as congregations, as church communities.
And so as we spot them,
we certainly wanna be on the lookout
and as we identify them or as we struggle with them,
we want to release them and move on
so we can treat those things as the gracious gifts they are
and not turn them into things that make it harder for us
and others to follow Christ.
Well, friends, I think that will end
this conversation for today.
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