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Afflicting the comfortable comes with the call
Q:What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination? Do clergy have a moral obligation not to challenge the sincere faith of their parishioners? If this requires them to dissemble from the pulpit, doesn't this create systematic hypocrisy at the center of religion? What would you want your pastor to do with his or her personal doubts or loss of faith?
If seminary has done its job, the difference between the pastor and the sincere faith of his or her parishioners begins the first day. It is a dilemma every ordained minister faces.
At its best, theological education expands the students' faith and knowledge. Biblical studies, church history and systematic theology are meant to challenge the assumptions the seminarians enter with so that, by building on study and prayer, the believer called to ministry is able to lead the Church with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.
This inevitably includes challenging the sincere faith of our parishioners.
Indeed, one of the common definitions of preaching is "to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." This includes our comfortable assumptions, which members often insist are firmly rooted in the defining beliefs of a denomination or branch of Christian tradition. And it often feels like affliction for both pastor and pew to distinguish between what is central and what is not, what is faithful to Christ and what is extraneous.
Yet this is exactly what the minister is called to do. It is nothing new; this dynamic was at work among the first Christians, as the letters in the New Testament make clear.
The comfortable, sincere assumption of the first followers of Jesus was that Jewish law defined their faith. Jesus had said that He came to fulfill the law and they continued to abide by it. Both Peter and Paul challenged this sincere faith after the Holy Spirit inspired them to see a deeper essential tenet that brought Jew and Gentile together in the Church. And though much of Paul's letters testify to the discomfort and difficulty felt by his parishioners, Paul had a moral obligation to challenge the traditions they assumed to be essential tenets of faith in Christ.
Take, for example, Paul's fierce words toward those who insisted upon strict adherence to Jewish law (Gal. 3:1-3). Paul sensed that this assumption, though comfortable to Jesus' earliest followers, would stifle and kill the growth of the church. We don't know what would have happened if those calling for adherence to Jewish law had won out, but we can guess that the rich diversity of the Church that includes everything from Celtic Christianity to Russian Orthodoxy to Presbyterianism would likely not have emerged from a community for whom Jewish laws were defining beliefs.
Just as Paul challenged the early Christians with the idea that Jewish law is not an essential tenet of Christian faith, today, too, it is the duty of pastors to challenge the sincere beliefs of their parishioners and help our flocks to separate assumptions about "the way things have always been done" from the truly defining beliefs of our faith.
Our defining beliefs are difficult but not mysterious: they are to love God through Christ and love our neighbor. This is what Jesus insisted upon. If a pastor no longer holds to these tenets, he or she needs to stop and take a deep breath. I would want my pastor to be able to honestly face his or her doubts and work them through.
But if a pastor is struggling with a conflict between his or her faithful knowledge of Scripture and the traditional assumptions of the congregation -- even when congregants hold to them tightly as defining beliefs -- then welcome to ministry. There is no getting around the fact that afflicting the comfortable is an aspect of our calling.
By
Janet Edwards
|
March 17, 2010; 12:41 PM ET
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Posted by: garoth | March 25, 2010 4:00 PM
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It is my understanding that a pastor can only bring a congregation to the spiritual level that the pastor him/herself has achieved. The same would naturally follow for educators (secular or seminary). So it's imperative for leaders and educators to keep themselves in a state of constant challenge and growth.
Posted by: d_pgh | March 22, 2010 11:28 PM
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This is a wiggly, little offering, Rev. It seems you chose to interpret the question not as a loss of faith on the part of the pastor but a simple difference of opinion between pastors and the denomination. I assume you can imagine a religious leader losing faith. It is possible, right?
Posted by: NaN_ | March 18, 2010 11:25 AM
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It is certainly possible - perhaps probable -for a pastor to lose faith. The "fathers" called it the "winter of the spirit." What pastor has not gone through a "dry spell," sometimes for months, even years, before coming out the other end? Mother Theresa, at the end of her ministry, doubted that she could be called a Christian. The Gospel is not that we can work up faith, or that those who lose it are going to hell; it is that we are held in the grace of God - in arms that will not let us go.