It’s a good thing Jesus didn’t have to candidate for the position of Messiah.
Being in all points tempted like as we are, however, he faced a comparable situation. He came out of seminary (so to speak) with a mighty flourish, a commencement ceremony at the river Jordan crowned by a Voice from heaven that announced to all gathered relatives, friends, and future parishioners, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” An impressive start.
Then came Satan’s design to challenge and undermine everything God had said about Jesus. Had our Lord bought into the alternatives presented, he would have ceased to fulfill his calling.
When a seminary says, “These are our children, whom we certify; with them we are well pleased,” it waves farewell to what it firmly believes is the new pastoral leadership of the church. Quickly following or even overlapping this event, however, is another that contrasts sharply. It is the process of candidating . . . the minister’s temptation.
And unlike Jesus, most of us have to go through the wilderness more than once as the years of our ministry progress.
Pastors on Parade
The specifics of the process vary from denomination to denomination, but the goal is the same: connect a person with a church, get a job (shanana), fill a position. The temptations are manifold while this is taking place. The minister is usually in a precarious financial situation; funds are low and the future uncharted. Understandably, he wants some kind of security.
Hence, the great temptation of the candidate: to sell himself to the prospective buyer (congregation). As resumes are filled out and interviews are held, the urge to unleash the phantoms of style and image and first impression nudges aside the substance of the candidate. In short, the integrity of God’s call and leadership in his life is vitiated, sometimes even eclipsed.
I know of at least one seminary in my denomination that holds special dossier-writing classes for its seniors. Students are cautioned to keep the language vague enough to appeal to as many churches as possible-something very important when just beginning a ministry. You can get more specific about yourself and what you believe later on when you have proved yourself out on the field. The placement office of that same institution has kept a map with little flags stuck into it each time a student lands a job. Sometimes the flags are annotated with who was at that church last and where he or she was able to go from there, the proximity of golf courses to the church office, and other such vital information.
Pastors are no different from anyone else; they are sinners too. When a sinner doesn’t know where he is going and is fatigued over where he has been, a spiritual crisis is likely to develop. But there are other reasons for this wilderness, not related to the individual candidate, and much harder to deal with. They have to do with the shape the church has taken in North American history, all flowing out of the concept of a “free” church.
The Making of Our Wilderness
In his book The Lively Experiment, church historian Sidney Mead has written a brilliant essay on the impact of American denominationalism. Something happened here in the early years of this nation that had not happened for more than a thousand years of European church history: the concept of “free” churches became dominant in religious life. No church would be established by the state. No church or governing body would prevent the establishment or spread of any other churches.
The church was to be “free,” and with that concept-which was in itself revolutionary-came an even more revolutionary idea. The power of any church could no longer rest on its authority or on coercion. The power of a church came now from its ability to persuade its members. Protestant churches in the United States as well as Canada thus became voluntary associations of individuals. The glue that held them together, and still holds them together, is what Mead calls the principle of “voluntaryism.” It is the ideology that people should come together independent of civil power and independent of each other, freely giving their consent to submit to the authority of the church. Moreover, consent is not given once for all. It must be won by the church and its leaders again and again.
This is the crucial point to grasp. If leadership in “free” churches comes from the power of persuasion, then whatever else pastors or denominational leaders may be able to do, they must be able to persuade, to be politicians.
This explains more than anything I can think of the preponderance of evangelical demagogues and showmen. From the beginnings of our history, we have insisted that our leaders be men of the people. Sometimes that has been good, as in an Abraham Lincoln or a Dwight L. Moody. But often it has encouraged the likes of those whose names escape me at the moment.
Voluntaryism has also tended to breed mediocrity in church leaders. To lead, they must be tuned in to the people they would lead. Of course, any leader should. The problem is they must be so in touch with the people that they cannot risk being too brilliant or creative or innovative. Otherwise they may be perceived as too removed and too unlike their constituencies, which spells certain death for a leader in the egalitarian, voluntaryistic North American church. When Gerald Ford took office, he told us in a speech that what we were getting was “a Ford, not a Lincoln.” I will leave it to historians and political scientists to determine whether or not he delivered on his promise of mediocrity. But I will venture to state that churches generally prefer Fords.
Candidates know all these things and more when they seek positions in churches. Even if they cannot articulate it, they know they have to woo the committee. They sense that if they are successful, they will have to continue to woo the people in order to stay. That bit of realpolitik doesn’t render leadership with integrity impossible. It just makes it very difficult, perhaps overwhelmingly so, for many pastors, especially the young.
A Few Remedies
What can we do about this? I don’t have many proposals. Perhaps we could learn something from those traditions that place recent seminary graduates according to the decision of a bishop or other ruling body rather than having them candidate. As one Episcopal bishop put it, at least they get the message that they are servants of the Church of Jesus Christ, not this or that particular church-or worst of all, their own career ambitions.
We could also look a little more critically at what our history has meant for us, especially we evangelicals who have been so profoundly influenced by the “free” church ideology. If we were more aware of the sins endemic to our particular way of doing things, we might be more specific in our prayers for grace to overcome those sins.
That is the issue, is it not, even for us pastoral veterans, who are often worn out, depressed, confused, and facing the dark night of the soul? We are never exempt from the temptation to make our congregations a clientele. We never rise above the urge to twist our calling into a career. Whatever our system or tradition, it cannot save us from our sin. Only Jesus can, and we must repent of our evil ways and believe the gospel every day of our lives.
Ben Patterson is pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church, Irvine, California.
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