Called...to keep our mouths shut?

Down in North Carolina, there is a man named Chad Holtz who used to be a student pastor at a United Methodist Church in Henderson, NC.  What happened to Chad is very unclear at the moment; we do not know if his departure from the church he pastored was forced or voluntary, how or whether the conference to which the church belonged participated in the dialogue that led to his current state of unemployment, or the role that his blog post about the new Rob Bell book "Love Wins" may have had in all the hullaballoo.  Given that the list of what we don't know about the situation far outruns the available facts, I'm not even going to attempt to address the quagmire unfolding in North Carolina, beyond saying that Rob Bell probably doesn't need any more publicity than he already gets.  What I'd like to talk about is a post that Holtz put up on his website, http://chadholtz.net/ addressing the role he believes his blogging played in his departure from the church.  The following is a verbatim reprint:

"Pastors and Shepherds, here are some helpful tips if you wish to remain employed.    Disregard at your own risk.1.  Don’t blog or Facebook.2.  If you ignore #1, at least do so anonymously.3.  If you ignore #1 and #2, be sure your stuff is fluff.  Write about daisies, the weather, your kids t-ball game, vacation plans, car repairs, and dinner recipes.4.  If you ignore #1, 2, and 3 and choose instead to write about matters of faith, be sure your ideas, thoughts, opinions and questions match the ideas, thoughts, opinions and questions of your congregation.5. If you ignore #1, 2, 3, and 4 you can join me in a job hunt.   And, if you are not completely disillusioned, help me plant a church where advice like this will not only be unnecessary, but absurd."

Now, it goes without saying that Holtz is speaking from a place of pain and anger, and his advice may be well-intentioned, if emotionally tinged.  However, I also believe it's flat-out wrong - except for one crucial piece.

For those few of you who don't know me personally, I am what might be politely termed a blabbermouth.  Far too often my temper and my mouth outstrip my brain, and more than once I have been held to account for something I have said or done which has not been spiritually strengthening to those I serve, or to myself.  Sometimes those conversations were constructive, sometimes they were painful, and sometimes they were just downright silly - but each one has provided me with insights about the way I communicate and how I can better serve myself and my God when interacting with others.  And that is my call - to serve God and the community to which I have been sent.  Do we have a call to speak truth to power?  Absolutely.  But does that call involve saying whatever the heck we think and then justifying the results in the name of prophecy or even just honesty?  No.

Restraining my mouth - or in the case of the Internet, my fingers - is the single hardest part of my everyday life in ministry.  At first, I tried to make it easier by putting on a "professional mask", if you will - following Holtz's advice about anonymous blogging and Facebooking, and revealing as little of my personal life to my congregation as possible.  I was keenly aware that now my livelihood depended on pleasing the people in the pews, and I thought I could accomplish that by becoming a sort of ministry mechanic - a largely nameless and faceless behind-the-scenes worker who ensures that everything moves along as it should.  However, it didn't take me long to discover that people rarely turn to their mechanics for spiritual guidance, and that I could not be an effective leader unless I allowed the people around me to see me for who I was.  Those people, in turn, had to adjust their expectations of me, which took time and a number of tense conversations as we truly got to know one another for the first time and I learned the boundaries of where honesty moved from being a ministry tool and natural expression of self to a sledghammer that tore down the very ministry I was trying to build.  But a year and a bit into my ministry at this church, I think my youth, my volunteer leaders and I can all agree that we are a better and stronger team for that struggle, and that our ministry is more effective when we are able to share openly with one another.

That's where we get to the piece of advice Holtz offers that I do endorse: #4 on his list, with a caveat.  As the spiritual leader of your congregation, you should be engaging the same issues of faith that your congregation is, and sometimes it is essential that you disagree with them.  However, there is a difference between leading your congregation toward a different viewpoint and broadsiding them with thoughts, opinions and ideas you haven't prepared them for, or simply ignoring the congregation altogether as your pursue your own theological quandaries down the proverbial rabbit hole.  That difference is essential, crucial, life-giving or life-taking in your ministry - as Holtz has discovered, to his cost.

We are not called to be silent - in fact, ours is a ministry of words, without which we cannot hope to reach out to one another or to God.  But we are called to subjugate ourselves - our words, our deeds, our lives - to the call of leadership, that our words might be always and everywhere honoring to God.

A Call To Becoming

Today I woke up and, as I do every morning, checked my email and Facebook accounts.  My email this morning contained a note from my District Superintendent inviting me to submit a first draft of my ordination essays for my dCOM to review and approve next month.  Then I went to my Facebook page, which handily reminds me at the top of my page that I work at Mt. Zion UMC as their Youth Director and Pastoral Intern, attend Wesley Theological Seminary and live in Washington, DC.

That may sounds like a singularly uninteresting morning, but today I was bowled over my reminders of just how far I've come in the last four years.  Four years ago, I was a college junior (fifth year, because I had a meltdown during year 2 and failed five classes), looking for banking jobs after I graduated and becoming painfully aware that my horrific GPA was going to keep me from being accepted into any kind of graduate program.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life - I was thinking about a life in ministry, but I was well aware that my parents were going to flip their lids if I went down that road, and my church's first female pastor had just been appointed back home, throwing the church into chaos and resulting in nearly half the congregation seeking greener pastures at nondenominational churches nearby that did not recognize any woman's call to ministry.  Marriage and family therapy seemed like a good way to help people that didn't involve so much pain and messiness (well, at least not MY pain and messiness).  In the meantime, I already had several successful years under my belt at a local bank, and I knew that I could make enough in that industry to support myself right away, even if it wasn't my dream career.

Never would I have thought that two years later, I would leave a well-paying job at a small bank where my star was rapidly rising to move to DC, with no job and no prospects, to go to a seminary that chose to take me despite my horrendous GPA on the strength of recommendation letters written by people who believed in my call and my ability to excel at something I had never tried.  The dorms often bear an uncanny resemblance to the set of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", but here at Wesley I have truly found my place, for perhaps the first time in my life.  Today, I am blessed to run a growing youth program at Mt. Zion, staffed by amazing volunteers and filled to bursting with kids that I have learned to love the way my youth leaders loved me.  And while the idea of those ordination essays still freaks the living daylights out of me, they are no longer an impossible height I could not hope to reach - just another step forward, another reason to grow, another call to become who I was created to be.