Thesis 11: Your Pastor is Lying to You

Hell, no, I definitely can't...

Sat down for coffee with my pastor (who’s a friend, let’s call him Phil) yesterday for the first time in awhile. I’d been resisting the chat, outwardly on busy summers and lives but inwardly because, frankly, I’m done with being pastored in the contemporary sense. It was a nice catch-up chat, until it turned to spiritual matters.

Dude. Why can’t we just be friends?

We have an interesting dynamic, he (of course it’s a he) and I. We’re both intellectuals with a robust reading life and academic background, and I know that the intellectual limitations of pastoring often give him stress: i.e. he’s waaaaaaay too smart to be confined to the shepherding of simple minds (that often convince themselves they're not that simple, but...) that pastoring demands. Like me, he sees the world in greys and complex patterns, while most of the flock does not/cannot. I think Phil enjoys my company because I refuse to blow smoke up asses and ejaculate mindless platitudes.

Still, he has to do those things, and has admitted as much that it bothers him that the sect he’s aligned himself with (he’s not a lifelong member) doesn’t allow for debate much less theological variety. I’ve reached an uncomfortable peace with this friendship: on one hand it feels hypocritical to affirm the shit he has to spew out, and yet I also recognize that his seeking me out is a ministry opportunity as well.

Yesterday, in a moment of frustration, Phil lamented that the elders have demanded that he do more for the church, that he needs to do a better job of reaching more people and being better at speaking across the various divides that define any large group (racial, social, economic, spiritual, etc.). He said, “I can’t be everything for everyone, can I?!” but then defended why he needs to try harder and can do better.

He was lying to me. I know he knows that the task is impossible — what’s expected of solitary pastors is simply far more than a single human should be expected to bear — and yet, he still fell back on the leadership platitudes that define the pastoring profession.

My response? I told him he isn’t supposed to go it alone, that the biblical model of leadership is not solitary men leading large, stationary groups of people. That the Jesus model doesn’t apply because the dude moved around and had a transitory following. That all of the apostles and Pauls and leaders of the Bible wouldn’t recognize Church leadership as we’ve created it. That the entire construct of one-way, church-pew ministry is anti-scriptural and cultish. And then I asked him if he’d dissolve his pastorship and join me on this church deconstructing movement I’m hoping to be a part of.

No, I didn’t say those things (fuck, I’m a coward). But I did look at him and tell him that what the church asks of its leaders is impossible, that it’s a fool’s errand to try and please everyone and be everything, and that I feel for him.

Of course, he heard it as “I’ll pray for you” and then fell back into pastoring mode and onto a few things he’d wanted to connect with me about, mostly centred on my spiritual life and relationship to our church.

In other words, he kept lying.

Your pastor is lying to you, too, and probably knows it. There is simply too much discussion of pastor burnout and corruption and fallen stars to imagine a large proportion of pastors not recognizing the issue. Maybe they’re not talking about their whole career as being hellishly anti-Christian, but they’re certainly seeing the cracks in the model. When was the last time you heard your minister admit in public that he’s in over his head, practically, emotionally, spiritually?

You haven’t. Your church leadership might have — most often in the form of meek requests to hire more help — but that would’ve happened in private. Which is, of course, anti-biblical as well: transparency among the early churches was a founding principle. But pastors have been conditioned to believe that any admission of fallibility is weakness, and so these things mostly stay hidden. Plus, it’s a big ask to think that the Pastoral Industrial ComplexTM would be willing to put entire careers and the very existence of pastor-puppy farms seminaries on the block.

I like Phil, so will I try to limit our pastor-lamb sessions, keeping our interactions to sports events and building sessions with minimal small talk (fuck small talk, amirite)? I hope not, but I also hope I can keep whispering blunt truths into his pastor-deaf ears. Maybe someday we can burn our church building down together…or at least give it to the needy in our community.

Fuck, it seems like a long way away.

Are there any other guerrilla church deconstructionists out there?

PS. Okay, I can't hold it back. It's a brand of Baptist church. What an unholy mess.

Keywords: Your Pastor Is Lying to You; Pastor; Minister; Clergy; Faith; Deconstruction; Religion; Christian; Christianity; Church; Sin; Corruption; Scandal; Bible; Abuse; God; Jesus; Stewardship