Why Clergy Don't Need Self-Care

I have heard a lot of talk of clergy self-care and like this spin on it a lot.

Words that resonate with my experience

Authorities I trust, from Wendell Berry to Sri Ramakrishna, all remind me that the particular is the only means we have for touching the universal. We arrive at what is true for all by committing ourselves to particular beliefs, tasks, persons, and places that are true for us.

Garret Keizer, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry

Ordered Ministry

The more I have to blog about the more overwhelmed I feel by it all and the less likely I am to do it. So I'm choosing one thing to get me started again.

A couple of Saturdays ago I went to a fundraising dinner for the United Church seminary in Saskatoon, St. Andrew's College. This isn't my seminary, nor my denomination, and if I'm honest I would say I wouldn't have gone except that we've had students from the chaplaincy go through there and the people putting the dinner on are huge supporters of the chaplaincy. So, out of a sense of communal support I paid my $100 for roast beef and a talk by Lorne Calvert. I knew Calvert had been the NDP premier of Saskatchewan but didn't realize he had been in active ordained ministry in the United Church before entering politics. And lets be really honest here, I was expecting the same old social gospel/United church/NDP message I've heard many times before. Don't get me wrong - this is a message that has shaped me profoundly and I find it a bit like comfort food, warm and nourishing, if not exciting.

It was a surprising delight when I heard one of the most encouraging articulations of the place of ordered ministry (he began by saying he didn't know what to call it since the United church has all sorts of different forms of ministry - licenced lay, ordained, diaconal.... - but he was talking about the person 'up there' who everyone knows is the 'minister'). He used three passages of scripture for his talk:

Isaiah 52:7 - how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news

Romans 10:14-15 - How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

Mark 2:1-10 - A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"


He started by suggesting that the church has so emphasized the ministry of the many that they haven't articulated an understanding of the ministry of the few. He pointed out that Paul certainly understood the many gifts of the entire body of Christ but that Paul also understood the role of some who are set aside for particular ministry. The heart of that ministry Calvert understands to be being the servant of the servants of God.

He said people working in the world have multiple portals to the world. He described how he has multiple sources of information/advice as a politician and suggested that this isn't that unusual. He went on to say though that he doesn't have many portals to the holy. The image he used was of the four men who carry the paralytic to Jesus and have to create an opening in the roof through which they can lower the man to Jesus. This is what he suggests ordered ministers do: we create openings to allow people to encounter the holy that they seek. He went on to talk of the ways in which the proclamation of the word and the administration of the sacraments are critical is allowing people to encounter God. And he told us that we should never underestimate the value of what we do on a Sunday morning. Take the eight hours to write a sermon, take the time to work with the music team, because that may be the one place in a person's week where he or she will become aware of the holy.

It was a really encouraging talk and I wish more clergy had heard it.

Chasing Francis

After reading Maggie Dawn's comments yesterday about the novel Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron I went down to our local Christian bookstore and bought it. It isn't a heavy read and I just finished it. It was a good read in many ways...'creaky' as Maggie described it in others.

It is the story of Chase Falson, a pastor of an Evangelical megachurch in New England who goes on pilgrimage to Italy with his uncle, a Franciscan, when his faith goes off the rails. Spending time in the places where Francis ministered in the company of Franciscans helps Chase reimagine and rediscover his faith.

There were a number of things I appreciated about the novel. I too have found that old certainties have become less solid to me over time in ministry. People's lives and God's grace just don't seem to fit all the nice categories I used to have. And I too have found comfort, challenge, new insight from returning to the lives of the saints. I say returning because unlike Chase who is thoroughly shaped by a Protestant evangelical sub-culture my early formation took place in Catholic communities.

There is a lot of good material about Francis and Franciscan spirituality as well for people, especially folks interested in the Emergent Church movement. But if I had a basic criticism of the novel it is the same one that Maggie made:

There are pages where the story has to stand still while a sermon is preached or a lesson delivered. I wonder if there isn't something inherent in the form of fiction that demands that you can't absolutely make a point and still have fiction that lives and breathes.

There is a certain irony when Chase returns to his church and tells them that they need to stop treating the faith as if it is principally a matter of the head instead of something transcendent because much of the novel does read like a lecture on Franciscan spirituality. He says that they have to show people the faith and not load them up with books and yet the first thing his uncle does when he arrives in Italy is load him up with books. His journal which runs through the novel reveals much more about what he is reading than it does what he is experiencing. The most compelling parts of the book for me are instead when Chase goes to Mass and when he serves in a soup kitchen and then AIDS hospice.

It strikes me that there is a difference between Christian fiction and fiction written by Christians that has to do with whether or not the primary focus is make a point or to tell a story. In Chase's words:

"I'm beginning to see that there's a difference between art that trusts beauty's simple power to point people to God and Christian art that's consciously propagandistic. My Uncle Kenny, with whom I spent most of my time in Italy, said something profound--that you can make art about the Light, or you can make art that shows what the Light reveals about the world. I think the latter is what we want to do."

Yet I think in many ways Chasing Francis is still an example of the former. Graham Greene and Frederick Buechner would be better examples of the latter.