I've done a little work through the years in helping ministers get positions on church staffs. Every Baptist minister, I guess, has done that. Where are the bishops when you really need them? But it's been fun to help young ministers, particularly those who were students of mine from my campus ministry days. Incidentally, since anyone of us could find ourselves in need of such help at any given moment, I make it a policy to share with those whom I have placed one key Scripture verse. It's Luke 23:42, where the penitent thief cries out, "Remember me when thou comest into Thy kingdom"!
I've liked helping young ministers think through exactly what the right place would be, testing the potential in this church or that, looking for the right fit.
And so I thought maybe I would just bring one of these placement cases with me today and let you help me assess whether this minister and this church are right for one another. Would you just check out these descriptions, and let's see if this fellow and these people might not fit, hand in hand.
The minister was well-trained, but mostly in another faith. His training for Christian ministry consists of a background in investigation. It seems he spent a good while arresting and prosecuting people with suspicious and seditious intent. In fact, he even assisted at least one execution.
Further, this preacher, having become a believer in a very sudden and dramatic way … one might even feel that there was a degree of instability in his decision … this minister trained for his new profession not with a formal education, but largely by reflecting alone in solitude for some three years and by meeting briefly with some of our denomination's leaders, with whom he has subsequently been known to disagree vigorously.
The brother whose resume' I am studying has no family life to speak of, has not remained in one situation more than a few months before moving on, and has built no buildings. He has started a capital funds drive, but has not yet completed it.
Honesty compels me to mention that he does have a prison record, that he is tough on young associate ministers, and that some feel he is, shall we say, opinionated and contentious.
But this much we can say, positively: This fellow can preach a humdinger of a sermon; he can write a letter that will fairly jump off the page; and, if worse comes to worse, he can make an honest living at a secular job.
You think he is not too promising? Well, however, listen to the kind of church I propose he go to. Don’t you think he might serve well in this pulpit?
The church is located in a seedy part of a seaport town, not too far … or I guess I would say, not far enough, from the red-light district. There are some ugly rumors … but I won’t go into that.
The congregation is one of those troubling multicultural, multiracial, multinational, and therefore multiproblem crowds. Everyone has brought to church his own ideas. And, although theirs is a short history, still they have been around long enough to have built up factions, cliques, and divisions. In fact, I think this is the church in which first arose the old joke to the effect that whenever you get three Baptists together in a room, you will have at least four opinions!
I don’t know if we would want to tell the prospective pastor this or not, but the church has been very upset lately over some lawsuits. Some of the members have taken other members to court to get their disputes settled. But I guess that’s because they are so used to being in court. It’s just a natural place for a lot of them, because quite a few of the church members are known to have been involved in everything from theft to prostitution to plain old public drunkenness. Going to court is like going home for some of these folks.
However, it seems that the members of the church would prefer that their new minister not get into things like that. They want somebody who will deal with the really important stuff, like speaking in tongues, like the proper form for the Lord’s Supper, like what kind of body we will have at the resurrection. You see, they want someone who will deal with the really spiritual things and stay away from talking about worldly things like sexuality and stewardship. Just somebody who is a Bible-believing, Spirit-led preacher whom they can then dissect just like the other preachers they've had.
So what do you think? What kind of match will they be, this minister and this church? What sort of relationship could you expect, this pugnacious preacher and this contentious congregation? If you were doing placement, would you ever in your wildest dreams think it could work, a partnership between the Rev. Mr. Paul and the First Baptist Church of Corinth?!
To tell the truth, yes, it would work. It would work, it could work, it did work, because they deserved each other. You see, most pastors and people do, after a while together. Whatever it is like, they deserve each other. Most pastors and people, most ministers and congregations do deserve each other. And that relationship, tenuous though it may seem at times, unlikely as it may appear at others, can work, if certain realities are recognized along the way.
The Convention theme is "Laity and Clergy – Laborers Together with God." I do not notice any question marks in that theme. It is a given. It is a declaration. It can happen.
I
So first, notice that pastor and people, clergy and laity, deserve one another, and can work well together, because they come together in humanness. Their very humanness, their very imperfection, makes them fit for one another. And it is in the crucible of that awful humanity that the refining fire of God's Spirit can work to create something wonderful.
Paul reminds his brothers and sisters in Corinth that he could not speak to them as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. Acknowledging that there are tensions among them, calling attention to their factions and their playing favorites, Paul names the reality: "Are you not behaving according to human inclinations? When one says, 'I belong to Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos,' are you not merely human?"
What I want you to see is that it's not all bad being merely human. Being merely human is where we are; and we may be on the way to being spiritual and to being mature, but being human is where we are right now. That is an opportunity, not a handicap. That is a positive more than it is a negative.
Being human means that we can feed together on the milk of God's word. Being merely human means that we can grow together. Being human together, pastors and people, clergy and laity, means that we can all stand together under the grace of God and let the miracle happen for all of us.
Pastors and people, clergy and laity, deserve each other, and the relationship can work, if we can acknowledge our common humanity, our common incompleteness, our common need to grow in Christian maturity.
But there is a serious impediment to that acknowledgment. A real obstacle gets in the way of our being authentically human and open to each other.
That obstacle is clericalism. That obstacle is the preening pride of preachers placed on pedestals by congregations who want somebody to be holy for them so that they don't have to be holy for themselves. That obstacle to a partnership of pastor and people is what Ed Bratcher in his little book calls the "Walk On Water Syndrome". And it is corrosive, it is destructive of genuine partnership.
When I was doing campus ministry for you I got to know one of the priests at Georgetown University. Father Jacques was French, and had served for a time as a Parish priest in France, where the custom still prevails that the bishop of the diocese will make a circuit of all the rural parishes and will spend the night in the country rectories. And so Father Jacques tells of the next morning after his bishop had spent the night in the guest bedroom. To the breakfast table came his excellency the bishop, clad in rundown slippers, a nondescript bathrobe, and, resplendent on his chest, a purple vest and a heavy gold cross. Father Jacques was amazed and asked, "My lord, did you wear all of that to bed?" And the bishop replied, “My boy, suppose the Lord should come in the night. How else would He know I am a bishop?"
Well, I will admit to a dirty little secret. Some of us in ministry have a hard time getting out of the posing, the posturing, and the prancing. We may not wear crosses to bed, but we carry invisible crosses around and feel we have to be convincing on every subject and unassailable on every issue. Some of us, as someone has said, need to be the center of attention, "the corpse at every funeral and the bride at every wedding.”
And if you, the people of God, have put us on that pedestal, sometimes you have done so just so you could knock us off.
Let me, however, not waste time on accusations. That would defeat my purpose. I am this morning claiming for both pastors and people the right of being human. I am pressing for what Henri Nouwen called "wounded healers", men and women who know their own woundedness and are therefore able to understand one another’s deep need for healing.
The relationship between pastor and people begins when they can say to one another, as Paul said to the Corinthians, "Are you not merely human?"
II
But there is more. People and pastor, laity and clergy, will deserve each other and will build an authentic relationship when they can move to partnership through competition. We begin simply by recognizing our humanity and by seeing that humanity as an occasion for the grace of God, and then we are ready to discover our need for each other. We are ready to discover partnership through competition.
"One says, 'I belong to Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos' … What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth … The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose."
You see, once again the apostle is naming the reality. I am so glad that, whatever else you may charge Paul with, you cannot charge him with the psychological sin of denial. This man speaks his mind and names the malady. And the disease is competitiveness, the kind of competitiveness that is always seeking recognition. It is a part of the fabric of life; but happily it can breed success rather than failure. It can mean partnership rather than self-destructive splintering.
When I am preparing couples for marriage, and we are planning the ceremony, I often tell them that I will be doing a brief sermon during the service, and that they should select the Scripture on which I will base it. I give them some choices, and they go to work on this task. I figure that at the very least I've gotten them to talk with one another about some basic Biblical truths concerning marriage.
Well, they start with Ephesians 5, and "Wives, submit to your husbands" gets set aside by the bride. Then they go to Genesis 2:24, and the groom gets nervous about the thought of leaving and cleaving. It sounds so final; does it mean I will no longer have access to the old man's checkbook? And so they settle on I Corinthians 13, the great love chapter. Ah, now all is settled. Romantic, oozy-gooey pieties can be expected from the preacher out of I Corinthians 13. Not even our pastor can make that one harsh.
Oh, what a surprise they get from me, because I will sermonize in their wedding service about how tough love is! I will speak about the mess and the conflict and the competitiveness the Corinthian church was in; that's the occasion for the love chapter. That's the reason for the essay on the more excellent way. And then I will tell this couple, by now trembling at the altar, that they are about to enter into conflict. I will tell them that unless they were bred as jellyfish, they will find themselves competing with one another, even in the intimacy of marriage.
And then, just before he snatches back his ring and she shoves her flowers down his throat, I remind them that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and that God has called them through their very competitiveness into partnership with one another. And that tension, that competitive edge, that desire to do well, can bring them to authentic partnership. The Corinthian letter strikes again!
Friends, no relationship that means anything is free from competitiveness. Neither marriage nor the church of Jesus Christ is ever going to be free of competitiveness. We will never be past the Paul applause and the Apollos adoration. The trick is to turn all of that into partnership. The trick is to take this one's skills and that one's gifts and blend them together so that the Kingdom is served. The trick is to take this one's energy and that one's drive and create out of the tension something beautiful for God.
"What is Paul?" Paul the planter, the founder. Some of us are loyal to Paul. Some of us compete on the basis of what used to be. Some of us need to be recognized today for what we did yesterday. Some of the laity need for somebody in this newer, younger generation of preachers to know what we did for the Kingdom. When I went to Takoma Park as pastor, I was told that the chief anxiety among many of our elderly members was, "What if I die? This pastor doesn't know anything about me." Some of us are Paul's people, and we need to be recognized for what we have done.
And "What is Apollos?" Apollos the waterer, Apollos the new kid on the block, who is changing everything and not a moment too soon. Some of us ministers compete on the basis of our affinity with Apollos. Some of us need to be rising stars, noticed and affirmed for our new ideas. Some of us compete on the basis of changing things, just changing things, so that we'll be recognized. After I had been at Takoma Park for a few months, one long-term member said to me, "All I ever hear from you is change, change, change!". And she was right, of course. Got to make that mark.
I'm saying that all of that is normal, it is natural, it is church. It is a heady, delicious mix of old and new, seasoned and seasoning, tried and untried. But when God's people, Pauls and Apolloses, people and pastors, clergy and laity, work through their competitiveness and use it, they can achieve partnership.
"Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose."
III
"For we are God's servants, working together". Or, in the language of the King James Version, "We are laborers together with God."
The bottom line is not only that we are laborers, working out of our imperfections, struggling with our incompleteness. The bottom line is that as we labor, God is laboring too. God is at work in us and through us in this relationship of pastor and people.
The bottom line is not only that we are laborers together, in a partnership that builds on our competitive natures. The bottom line is that you and I are together and at work only because it is God who has been at work ahead of us, God who is at work in us, God who in Jesus Christ has gone before us into the world. "And we are God's servants, working together" "We are laborers together with God."
One Sunday morning just before the benediction I was reminding our people that the next Sunday's service was going to focus on healing, and that they were being asked to prepare and bring with them rolled bandages, which we would then pack and send to a missionary in Ghana. Never one to let pass an opportunity to have a little fun as well as to instruct in a memorable way, I took an old sheet and proceeded to demonstrate how the strips were to be torn. I said something like, "This will be good therapy for you. You can get rid of a lot of your hostilities while you are doing something for missions. Look: I think 'deacon' and tear off a strip; I think 'trustee' and tear off another strip; I think 'finance committee meeting' and rip off a big strip." Well, it got the desired laugh. But it got something else as well.
That afternoon one of our deacons called me and said, "Pastor, I guess some of us just don't track with your brand of humor. I know you were just trying to have a little joke. But honestly, most of us didn't think we were so bad that we were to be torn off and thrown away. We thought we were working at holding things together." He's right, you know. The ties between pastors and people, clergy and laity, are never so bad that they should be ripped to shreds and discarded, for usually we deserve one another.
There is, indeed, a seamless garment which is the church of the Lord Christ and its redemptive mission. And in that there need be no tears save the tom flesh of the savior, who loves His church and longs to present it to Himself spotless and without blemish. .
There need be no unresolvable issues between pastors and people if we can together determine to work where God is already at work, in the broken lives of humanity. There need be no unsolvable conflicts if laity and clergy fall alongside the servant Christ, let loose in the world. Humanness, yes, because it gives us the exhilarating struggle for growth; competitiveness, of course, because it gives us that creative edge; but above all, together, laborers, laborers together with God.
