Care & Feeding of Spiritual Leaders, Part 3

Crossing Borders Without Crossing Boundaries



There are dilemmas we face in spiritual leadership. Sometimes we are unaware of where we are, our sense of place. Then we look around and wonder, "how did we get here?" Is this where my vocation has led? Or, has there been a current into which I have stepped, unreflectively, and just gone along with the flow?



I remember a dreadful realization during my seminary education. One of my jobs during seminary was to sit up all night and make sure that the seminary was safe. On the hour, I would walk the halls of the seminary classrooms and dorms to make sure that the doors leading outside were all closed and locked. It was a great job for a student. I ended up doing most all of my studying on my night shift.

One night as the dorms were quiet and the whole building was silent, a fearful insight hit me. I lived in the dorm, an institution of the church. I spent my days in the classrooms of the seminary, an institution of the church. At night, I worked for the seminary security, an institution of the church. When I ventured off campus, I served as an assistant to one of my professors, himself an institution of the church. And when I went outside those institutions, I was usually either at church in worship, or visiting with friends from church. How could I be learning to extend the good news of the reign of God when everyone I knew already went to church and was a professed Christian? Shouldn’t I be hanging around non-Christians? I realized then and there, this might very well be my life.



Years after that night of reflection on my immersion in the institutes of the church, I had a similar revelation. I was in my first congregation. I happened to be preaching through Luke-Acts (if that helps to set up the theological dissonance!) at that period in my life. But one day it hit me as I was in our parsonage. I lived in the parsonage, an institution of the church. I spend my days in committee meetings, visiting members, and in the office preparing sermons and photo-copying bulletins, supporting the institutions of the church. When I ventured away from the “parish”, I went to ministerial groups and church-wide conventions. While the unity of life and work can be energizing, for me it had become too narrow. How could I be preaching and teaching from the great missionaries, Paul, Luke, and the early disciples, and not know a single non-Christian?



Now I am not against the supportive care of pastoral ministry and the deep abiding value of sharing good news with those who have already committed themselves to the reign of God and to a personal relationship with Jesus. But there was a leash of sorts in my training and in my pastorate that either led me to fulfill certain expectations, or, kept me close to home. The leash can lead, or the leash can restrain. Crossing boundaries becomes problematic in this kind of life. The ever-moving plan in the Acts of the Apostles kept frustrating me.



As we speak of developing missionally formed spiritual leaders, there is a need to take time to consider the borders we are, or want to be, crossing. For some, crossing another border can become an outlet to get away from too narrow a horizon for ministry. For these, crossing the border may have more to do with a need to get away, rather than a need to engage. Sometimes leaving behind to flee that which is painful is necessary, but it can also become a temporary escape. When a broken person seeks escape, rather than dealing with the issues that are causing pain, there is a possibility that crossing borders is not the intention at all. If there is enough brokenness it may be healthy boundaries that have been broken and crossed.



For others, there may be opportunities to cross borders out of a positive calling forward, not an escaping from. One acquaintance in full-time pastoral ministry has spent the past twenty years as a soccer coach for community (not church) leagues. The intention has not been that he brings these families into the church, but the church, through the giving up of their pastor, brings itself into the community. Another friend in full-time pastoral ministry accepted the call to his present church with the caveat that he be allowed to be, “the public chaplain, not just the parochial priest.” Both of these spiritual leaders have an opportunity to carry out a missional pastorate. They are capable of crossing borders with a positive calling forward, rather than a negative sense of escapism.



As we speak of developing spiritual leaders, there has to be an awareness of the leader’s ability to find an awareness of her or his part in the missional church. It may be in quiet friendships with neighbors, or in larger, “public chaplain” activities. But the degree to which a spiritual leader can do this has ramifications on the expectations of the local congregation being served as pastorate. A lively polarity needs to be addressed: the tension between the local church being served, and the spiritual leader finding ways to engage the community beyond the congregation, “within” versus “beyond”.



A vital spiritual awareness of our sense of place in God’s care and hope is a foundation for forming as a missionally formed spiritual leader. More on sense of place next time…

Care & Feeding of Spiritual Leaders, Part 2

Need for Spiritual Practices

Authors Willimon and Hauerwas wrote:

"pastoral ministry is too adventuresome and demanding to be sustained by trivial, psychological self-improvement advice. What pastors, as well as the laity they serve, need is a theological rationale for ministry which is so cosmic, so eschatological and therefore counter cultural, that they are enabled to keep at Christian ministry in a world determined to live as if God were dead. Anything less misreads both the scandal of the gospel and the corruption of our culture, (pg 144)."

Immersion in a counter-cultural narrative requests from us a determination to live into another story.

The basic practices of lectio divina, contemplation, and varieties of prayer are affirmations of another narrative taking root. At times feeling synthetic and forced, these practices in time emerge as lively and dynamic. This loss of this basic reality of Christian spiritual practice can be seen in the rejection that some church-leavers express. Alan Jameison identifies frustrated leaders creating frustrated followers. Jameison notes that those who leave church at a high percentage are frequently its lay leaders. These leaders have experienced poor pastoral ministry, limiting administration, or unaddressed conflict. At the heart of their search, however, is spiritual vitality. As these leaders leave church, intending to never go back, they often create fellowships of spiritual and relationtional integrity. It was not church these people were rejecting; it was the spiritually dislocatedness of the churches they had known from which they were separating themselves. Spiritual leaders need spiritual practices in their own lives, but also, these practices are necessary for the sake of the leaders and congregational participants in the process of being mentored and formed.

One of the pressing needs for spiritual leaders is the opportunity to carefully view issues relating to boundaries. Each of us has internal pressures seeking relief from a variety of pressures. Some are basic, others more complex. Many boundaries can become confused. Desires for rest, intimacy, challenge, and prosperity can become skewed, resulting in a variety of disasters. Spiritual leaders falling victim to various sins may be falling victim to natural hopes and desires unidentified and unattended; or, falling victim to misplaced desires while seeking to console one pain through the expense of another aspect of their own identity. For instance, unethical sexual relationships for spiritual leaders frequently occur as the result of misplaced desires for a new identity, or a desire to be admired, a need for friendship, etc. Being unaware of the broken and wounded areas of our own lives makes us easy prey for these destructive tendencies. At this level, spiritual practices are vital not only for spiritual leadership, but being a spiritual human person. Spiritual practices lived by leaders in the congregation remain vital for the health of the congregation. The griefs, loss, anguish, and confusion in congregations arising from the ethical violations of their pastors, ministers, and spiritual leaders is extensive and long-lasting. Spiritual practices become a vital piece in helping spiritual leaders from engaging in sexual violations, abuse of laity, financial scandals, substance abuse, workaholic lifestyle, and many others.

Protecting Boundaries While Crossing Borders

The issues relating to broken boundaries have been discussed widely and at length in many church systems, denominations and fellowships. Yet a few crucial aspects may be missing from these conversations. First, we are in a missional era for the church. The missional era requires new skills, new narratives, and new practices from spiritual leaders. Many of the practices and attitudes of Christendom will not add the vitality needed to pursue the vocation God is granting. Second, this new world of missional leadership is filled with opportunities for rabbit trails, side-paths, and unfamiliar mazes.

As missional spiritual leaders we need narratives that make sense of our dissonance with much of contemporary culture, but keep us in relationship with it. While in fear, we may be defensive about the protection of certain boundaries, we need also to cross over some defensive walls that get in the way of a missional life-style.

In more than one of my pastorates, I was expected to help retain the separation of the faith and the social and cultural reality of the neighborhood and larger community. This was done in small and simple ways. For the most part my job description was to care for and serve the congregation. Any reach beyond that would face scrutiny. For the attempts to reach out in relationship to the wider community, when that is not valued in practice by a local congregation, requires a variety of leadership skills. But it also requires more foundationally, spiritual discernment and practices which clarify and strengthen missional identity. For instance, a bishop I know explained that he was trying to insert into his portfolio of expected tasks a mission way of life. Realizing that all of his time was spend caring for the congregations of his synod, he had no time to engage his neighbors or his local community. Furthermore, it could be the case that he didn't even have a local community because the expansive territory he had to cover, geographically. After prayer and conversation, he was able to develop a percentage of his ministry time to engaging in his local community in a missional way. But that development took time.

As pastors move from Christendom/maintenance churches toward missional churches keeping personal boundaries will be all the more crucial. As the role-defined boundaries give way from a maintenance mode to a missional one, the temporary loss of a proscribed identity can be disturbing for some. To understand a God-given self-definition in the midst of this change is vital. To know who we are in God's eyes as we serve and relate in a new "parish" (i.e. our expanded awareness of our wider communities to which we have been called to serve) is the only way in which we can serve to demonstrate the reality of the kingdom of redemption, healing, and hope that we are proclaiming.

While there are boundaries to protect, there are borders to cross over. Knowing the difference between the two also calls forth the need for other types of fellowship, accountability, and prayer.

How have you experienced the balance between protecting boundaries and crossing borders?