CLERGY SUPPORT AND PARTICIPATION.
As one prepares for this journey of faith, it is helpful to keep in mind two different images of the church. According to both the Bible and our historical experience, God works with both healthy and unhealthy individuals and corporate communities (i.e. church). Recognizing characteristics of healthy and unhealthy people and communities helps us learn to be faithful in our responses.
IMAGE OF AN UNHEALTHY CHURCH
We live in an anxious age and the church is tempted to reflect that anxiety as drawn from the society around us. Think about Brene Brown’s description of how society responds to vulnerability but apply it to a congregation. In order to numb the fears generated by a sense of vulnerability, unhealthy churches tend to:
- Demand certainty in the face of uncertainty. We don’t want ambiguous answers to our questions but clear proclamation of definite answers. Give me the three ways to heaven, the 4 habits that will provide a perfect marriage, or the 7 steps to prosperity.
- Want perfection in the face of our anxious world. Churches should be perfect, clergy should be perfect, community should be perfect. If something goes wrong, it is clearly because someone messed it up. Get rid of them and everything will be all right again.
- Pretend that what we do as a church is our own business and doesn’t impact others. We don’t determine doctrine according to its impact on those it excludes. We don’t design our buildings according to how it impacts the neighborhood. We don’t consider the impact of our budget decisions as a testimony to the larger world.
IMAGE OF THE HEALTHY CHURCH
Contrast the above with the characteristics of a healthy church following Brown’s research. Healthy churches believe that they are made worthy not by what they do but by God’s grace. Therefore, by God’s grace, they are worthy.
- They have the courage to be imperfect. They tell an honest story of a people who are willing to “live the question” without having all the answers. Like Abraham and Sarah, they are on a journey without knowing the final destination but trusting in the God who leads them.
- They are not defensive about their faults but are willing to explore them honestly so that they might grow from them towards a maturity in Christ. They know the biblical story of how God chooses to work through imperfect people — Abraham, David, the Disciples, Saul, and the list continues throughout all of church history.
- Their practices emphasize a blending of gratitude and joy, They are grateful to having been invited on the journey. Doubt and questions are simply the boundaries on the edge of growth.
- They trust that being vulnerable to both others and God is the birthplace of creativity, compassion, joy, belonging, and love. Therefore they are not afraid to fail. They dare to let God use their offerings for great things for the world God loves.
- They believe in and practice connectivity. Faith well lived is lived in community among imperfect people who choose to practice their hope in community. After all the doctrinal debates, they know that it boils down to relationships as Jesus declared in the Great Commandment
HEALTHY CLERGY MAKE HEALTHY CONGREGATIONS
I will explore this thesis more later, but essentially, I believe that the healthier a clergy person is, the more capable s/he is to respond even to unhealthy behavior in a way that enables churches full of imperfect people to be incubators of grace. Consider what qualities you would add to either the characteristics of a healthy or unhealthy congregation. Then consider a similar description for healthy and unhealthy clergy.
God is not dependent on perfection
As we continue to explore the role of the church in responding to racism, it is important for us to recognize the freedom of God to enable transformation and liberation through imperfect people and communities. As a corporate body, the Body of Christ, we are shaped by not only our imperfections but those of our ancestors. When we come to the prayers of confession, it is not only our personal sins, but also both our current communities’ imperfections and that of our ancestors. Our faith declares that it is God’s grace that transforms our humanness into divine possibilities. Imagine God’s possibilities if a congregation not only confessed their personal sins but also recognized and learned from the sins of our ancestors. We don’t need to deny the racism in our history. We need to demonstrate the power of God’s grace to make use even of those sins to become a channel of God’s Transformative grace.
Have the faith to trust that for the spiritually sensitive, God’s grace can heal our past and set us free for God’s future.
