Jeremy Smith offers some brilliant advice to clergy candidates who care about justice issues.
As I said on his blog, this list of suggestions should be handed out to everyone in the ordination process. Great advice.
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Something about me
I am a part-time local pastor serving Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church and a participant in the Indiana Conference's Wesleyan ConneXion. I teach business communication at Indiana University in the Kelley School of Business.
I also blog at Luc means light and contribute to The View from Here blog at Next Step Evangelism.
My wife, Lisa, and I have been married 23.5 years. Luc, 8, lives with us. Zach, 22, and JillAnn, 18, are off at college much too soon for my liking.
Contact me at johnmeunier at Gmail.
Words from Wesley
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
— John Wesley
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Father John
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That image is from the WV Annual Conference Ordination service. Hopefully that will be me under Bishop Lyght’s hands in 2012.
God willing.
Thanks for the link and your comments, John!
I still think much of this is a shame. I do agree that clergy need a certain amount of diplomacy, tact and circumspection. And I absolutely agree that – in any circumstances – if a leader is going to try to make changes or feels the need to criticize that s/he better make sure that s/he gets to know and to love the congregation first.
But it’s a shame if the reality of the situation is that clergy can’t be honest with congregations about either theology or life-struggles. That really just leaves us all like mushrooms – the proverbial feed them manure and keep them in the dark. Everyone struggles with faith and with life and if can’t learn to do these in a healthy way rather than imitating our culture’s approach of smile, gloss over, suppress and pretend that everything is fine, then really what is the point of being church? The reason that AA’s process works so much better than the church is that it’s not based on pretending that we can’t have struggles.
If our clergy don’t connect with the people then why ordain them or even license them in the first place? Who is the UMC, the clergy or the people? Both. But if the clergy can;’t connect with the people, if the clergy aren’t Wesleyan and reflect our UM teaching, then why don’t they go find another church to lead? This is what Chad Holtz finally got right. there are several more UM clergy who should probably join him. The CTA calls this “disconnect.” Disconnect is alive and well.