Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Pastors and Personality
MMI links to this at Crosswalk:
It seems to me that if we are in the transformation business - that is to say we are God's tools in transforming ourselves and others, then this cleavage should be a disappearing thing. I would presume that as we are transformed by the Holy Spirit, it would require less discipline to behave in a "proper" manner.
I find that hard. Here's an example. Regular readers know of my weight loss and that it is quite significant. I have been at it for 4-5 years now. I have always hoped that after enough time I would become a more normally sized person, that it would no longer require the enormous concentration and discipline to not eat excessively. Well, to date that has not happened. In a room with finger food it requires all my concentration not to consume it, ALL of it. There remain times when I "lose control." I m not, yet anyway, normal when it comes to food. I remain quite wrong and all it takes is a bit of a slip and the old fat John is back with a vengeance.
When it comes to spiritual transformation, I think the same can be true. It takes a lot of discipline for very little transformation. So what is a pastor - a person that is supposed to model the transformed life - to do?
May I suggest rather than modeling transformation, model the path to transformation. That is to say, be human, exercise discipline and be confessing.
Spiritual leadership is not about being at the destination and calling people to you, it is about being a half-step ahead on the journey.
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I make this call to Personality Cleavage (that is, cleaving to one's personality) because in my professional life as a lunch mooch and meeting crasher, I have had a fair number of occasions to hang with people whose job it is to essentially represent God to truly vast numbers of people. And I'm always sitting around with these people, and they might be having a drink or two, the way normal people do when they're hanging out with their friends, and they'll be way funnier than you'd think. (Or that I expected, anyway.) And I don't mean the kind of humor where you chuckle with restrained verve and then ask someone to pass the rolls. I'm talking Teamster humor. Rude stuff. Jokes that make you wish you hadn't just taken a bite of a roll.I think it is fair to say that I have seen this in EVERY Christian professional I have ever met to some extent or the other - myself included when I was a Christian professional.
It's awesome.
But then, later, I'll see those same people on TV, or hear them on the radio, or whatever, and it's like they'd gotten attacked and treated by a taxidermist. They've gone from Richard Pryor to Maury Shaffer. It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Church Lady. From Gildna Radner to Aunt Bea. From Willie to Principal Skinner. From ... well, you get the idea.
It seems to me that if we are in the transformation business - that is to say we are God's tools in transforming ourselves and others, then this cleavage should be a disappearing thing. I would presume that as we are transformed by the Holy Spirit, it would require less discipline to behave in a "proper" manner.
I find that hard. Here's an example. Regular readers know of my weight loss and that it is quite significant. I have been at it for 4-5 years now. I have always hoped that after enough time I would become a more normally sized person, that it would no longer require the enormous concentration and discipline to not eat excessively. Well, to date that has not happened. In a room with finger food it requires all my concentration not to consume it, ALL of it. There remain times when I "lose control." I m not, yet anyway, normal when it comes to food. I remain quite wrong and all it takes is a bit of a slip and the old fat John is back with a vengeance.
When it comes to spiritual transformation, I think the same can be true. It takes a lot of discipline for very little transformation. So what is a pastor - a person that is supposed to model the transformed life - to do?
May I suggest rather than modeling transformation, model the path to transformation. That is to say, be human, exercise discipline and be confessing.
Spiritual leadership is not about being at the destination and calling people to you, it is about being a half-step ahead on the journey.
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