After eighteen years in professional ministry–mostly full-time, usually at least parallel with working with youth, a vast majority in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)–I resigned my pastorate and left vocational ministry for a season. I do not know if the season is everlasting, like summer is quickly becoming. It’s not mine to know right now–I am to show up, do the next right thing, and serve others. It’s part of the ongoing work I’m doing.
I have no intention nor desire to drag Godutch1 Christian Church through the mud, nor do I want to bring them along with me to what’s next. I’m doing the work, and processing my resentments and feelings. I’m taking inventory of what’s mine in all this, and I do not do inventories for/on others. I just want to move on, and it’s easier to travel if stuff’s been unpacked, recycled and put away tidily.
I don’t know what’s next, in terms of ministry if not vocation. I turned thirty-nine this year. It seems like an inopportune time for a career change, but here we are. I do know that, for now, I am done with congregational ministry. Godutch helped me realize that I don’t like the institution, especially one that will seek to preserve itself at all costs. (I’m talking about a lot of the Church2, not specifically (only?) about Godutch.) My friend Dale said the Church is more interested in Lazarus, and cheap resuscitation, than in Jesus, and resurrection that comes from death. That’s stuck with me.
So, too, has the realization that people like the institution, and that’s theirs to do. As for me–I’m a self-titled iconoclast. I think the best hamburgers are made from golden calves. I believe in novelty for the sake of novelty at least sometimes. I’m not fit to curate a museum, nor build permanent installations for display purposes.
An aside: I once said at Godutch that if they wanted a museum curator, they were wasting my time and I was wasting theirs. I found it challenging to start and/or sustain any sort of change while I was the pastor there, and I mean any. (I deleted a bunch of particulars, unnecessarily included in draft and removed before publishing. Again, it's really not about them.) A member of the congregation, in the meeting in which I said I'm not a museum curator, spoke to me after and told me he took great offense at being called a relic. At the time I responded that it was not about the people, but now I think I'd add, "However, if you stay put in a museum, behind glass, unchanging, day in and day out--how would you describe yourself?"
I preached my last sermon on Sunday, May 22. I did not darken the door of a church for three months.3 I have transferred my membership to another congregation in Kansas that’s not in Wichita. And now I’m trying to be forthright, honest, and faithful to whatever call God has on me, and to what’s next. And I’ve realized I want the coat I left in Troas.
This is genuinely one of my favorite scriptures–I’ve paraphrased numerous translations because of word choice and order, and I don’t give a damn about Carpus, sorry.
“When you come, bring the coat I left at Troas (with Carpus?); also the books, and above all, the parchments.”
2 Timothy 4:13 (ALCT, Arthur the Lesser Conglomerated Transliteration)
The reason it’s one of my favorite scriptures is because it’s an onion of foolishness for it to be Holy Writ.
Three Things to Remember about Scripture
- The Authority of Scripture has limits.
The Bible is not Holy because it declares itself to be so (which, I guess it does), but because we, the Church, do. The Bible is literary, not literal; complex and collected, not simplistic and solid. It is multivalent. It has parts that speak loudly every time, and parts that awaken something, and parts that require conversation and conflict, and parts we can completely ignore. For example: I don’t need to know how to treat enslaved people in my household (here’s to you, again, Ephesians!) because I will not have enslaved people in my household. I will actively fight against others doing it too. I don’t care what Paul?4 has to say about it. Scripture is not one voice, and it cannot be followed in its entirety because 1) it contradicts itself and 2) it’s in conversation with itself and 3) if it should all be followed why do we love the Greatest Commandment and Great Commission so much?
It’s why I always ask folks, when they go on the tangent with six scriptures out of context but sharpened to harm the LGBTQIA+ community, the “being gay is the unforgivable sin” crowd–is that the central message of scripture? Of course not. Honestly, it’s much, much closer to this. - Christian Scripture is particularly weird and it requires context.
Christianity is the only religion I know of that uses mail as Holy Writ. Say what you want about the Apostle Paul, but I don’t think he was writing letters knowing they’d be held as canon, comparable and sometimes overshadowing the teachings of the Christ he adamantly loved. Maybe the later writers who were Absolutely Not the Apostle Paul did–it depends on your timeline of when the New Testament writings were done, another thing we cannot definitely know. But, even with the circulars and sermons and teachings we call letters because someone somewhere was lazy–we are privy to a one-sided conversation. We can glean, sometimes, what the issue is that Paul is writing about5. We can guess, sometimes, about what the response of the community is.6 But we can’t completely know. Nor should we. Because, of course– - Scripture is in conversation, and should be discerned in community. Do personal Bible study and devotions–but don’t only do personal Bible study and devotions, right? Read Scripture, but don’t read only Scripture. When Faux Paul asks Not-Timothy to bring the books and above all the parchments with him, he’s not asking Not-Timothy to bring other New Testament texts. There is no New Testament at this time, no matter your timeline of its formation. Hebrew canon was always pliable, so it’s probably not that.7 It’s as if Scripture is not the only guide, nor is it the Fourth Person of the Trinity. There are other sources of divine revelation and understanding. Scripture is God-breathed8–but so are we, and we were God-breathed first.9
So I need that onion of foolishness back. The last few years of ministry was hard. There were really great moments–I baptized my daughter, for example; just about everything we did with youth and children was awesome–but also, it took way, way too much. So I’ll do my part, and I’ll faithfully wait for what’s next–AND, I want my coat back. I need to travel lightly, be prepared but not weighed down. I’ll take what I need, and I’ll leave the rest, since things are so uncharted right now. And that’s okay.
- Not the name of the congregation, obviously. It’s probably not hard to figure out what congregation it is. Does it matter? ↩︎
- So I think there’s more than one Church, that really nice scripture from Ephesians aside. There are multiple Christianities, and it looks more and more like the ecumenical movement is becoming interfaith partnerships between Fundamentalist, Evangelicalist and Progressive branches of Christianity. Add into it that I’m speaking solely from the experience of White, North American, Mainline Protestant Christianity… I can’t speak for nor about the whole Church, and I’m not going to attempt it here. ↩︎
- With one exception: I accepted an emergency (an hour and a half’s notice) pulpit fill request because I like the ministers at this congregation and I said “If I can do anything, please let me,” and there you go, something to do. ↩︎
- There will be plenty of other times in which the three Pauls–Apostle Paul, Paul? and Faux Paul–will be delineated and examined. I am looking forward to these! It is not here. ↩︎
- Was there inside pressure and conflict in the church in Philippians, or was it only external, cultural pressure? Was Paul addressing concerns, or trying to stave off open conflict erupting from petty squabbles? Like the Apostle Paul, it can go both ways. (Oh, I mean be Jewish when he needs to be and Gentile when he needs to be–what did you think I meant?) ↩︎
- Would you keep supporting a preacher who suggests you should lop your own cock off? I guess it depends on what you’re into, but the Galatians probably took that suggestion as the Apostle Paul intended it to be taken–with great offense and scandal. ↩︎
- Did the Apostle Paul even know about the Book of Daniel? I think he gestures at it in the Corinthian letters. I can’t remember, and I’m not going to look it up right now. ↩︎
- 2 Timothy 3:16, one of those passages where the scripture says scripture has divine authority; the brain named itself, remember. ↩︎
- Genesis 2:7. What’s funny is the exact same people who will suggest that we carry original sin will deny that we also carry that divine spark in us, too. Some people really, really, really want everyone to be as miserable as they are! ↩︎