Radical Moderates

"Liberal and sophisticated groups are usually trapped in current social correctness, and just keep affirming peoples' selfishness. It is classic enabling and codependency, with too much false horizontal affirmation and almost no vertical truth-speaking. Most fundamentalist and conservative groups just threaten people with God's harsh judgment and their own, but do not normally teach people how to heal or how to make amends, or how to let go in practical, emotional, and mental ways (no teaching of contemplation). 'Jesus has forgiven it, so we can forget about it.' This is far too vertical with almost no horizontal dimension. Their guilt problem was solved and that is all that matters."
    (from Breathing Underwater, Richard Rohr)

Nice critiques of both sides, Mr. Rohr.  Of course, every church is erring in one of these directions. What do we do?  Seek out the radical middle. Become followers of Jesus who yield to the natural hierarchy that God created to exist in the church, while resisting the urge to become authoritarian, hyper-religious legalists.  Learn how to pray for the Spirit's authentic healing of hurts in ourselves and others, and how to achieve vulnerability in healthy relationships with others rather than ignoring addictions or enabling destructive behavior.

It's so tempting to let people 'live their own lives' or alternatively to make people 'behave,' but the radical middle ground somehow strikes a balance between the freedom of spiritual maturity and the virtues of spiritual discipline.

Priests and Pastors

Calling & Character

William H. Willimon

If we hold to the ‘priesthood of all believers' doctrine, do we need separate ethics for pastors? If so, what are they?

            The Protestant tradition has long emphasized the doctrine (Biblical or not) that all Christians are qualified and capable of performing the same sacraments and roles as priests do in the Catholic tradition. Martin Luther puts it this way:

Now we, who have been baptized, are all uniformly priests in virtue of that very fact. The only addition received by the priests is the office of preaching, and even this with our consent. […] Thus it says in 1 Peter 2, “Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, and a priestly kingdom.” It follows that all of us who are Christians are also priests. […] The priesthood is simply the ministry of the word. So in 1 Corinthians 4 it says: “Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.””[1]

Willimon is writing in the Protestant tradition, and after nearly 500 years there is still much of Luther to be found in Willimon’s Methodist theology of the clergy.  He writes, “My starting point for thinking about the ordained leadership of the church is baptism, the ministry of all Christians for which ordained, pastoral ministry is but a species of a broader genus called the ministry of the baptized.”[2]  Whereas Luther must argue against a special class of Christian ministers in order to raise the moral bar and stop many abuses in the church, Willimon is arguing for at least some special treatment of pastors and ministers in order to raise the moral bar and stop many abuses in the church. He goes on to say that his book “seeks to highlight those ethical challenges that are peculiar to clergy, the morality and virtues that adhere to the practice of Christian leadership today and the way in which clerical character informs those challenges.”[3]

            In light of what Luther says, I appreciate Willimon’s emphasis throughout his book on the pastor’s call to faithfully preach the Word.  If pastors are meant to be believers who are called to serve the rest of the priesthood, their most difficult and thankless tasks are to offend people with Scripture, to expose their own failures and messes, and to confront the most embedded cultural sins of our time.  Perhaps this is the ethic from Calling & Character that pastors most need to hear.

As Willimon points out, all the ethical issues that pastors seem to struggle with most—such as inappropriate relations with churchgoers, financial irresponsibility and impropriety, or obsession with church growth and ‘success’—are merely role confusion.[4]  If we think our job is to meet people’s needs as much as possible, or to sacrifice ourselves to the point of burnout and embitterment, or to cater to the demands of the nominal masses from the pulpit, we will inevitably fail. But if we keep in mind the core of the gospel and remember that Jesus is the head of the Church, then everything we do will be aimed at creating “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”[5]

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[1] Martin Luther Babylonian Captivity of the Church 345-6.

[2] William H Willimon Calling & Character 10.

[3] Ibid., 12.

[4] Ibid., 24.

[5] 1 Timothy 1:5.