The Professional Christian
I have a friend who is a pastor. And sometimes I think he secretly wishes he could dump the label.
One of the tensions I see in the church is the dichotomy between the pastor and the members of the church. The system is actually designed to help foster this tension. There’s a guy up front who does all the thinking, and the people out there who take it all in. The guy up front is has a higher degree, is likely ordained, and is paid to pour over the Scriptures. The people out there actually pay to come and listen. Rarely do the two ever meet. This tension is magnified during failure. When the guy up front fails, the level of anguish is catastrophic. Entire organizations can be transformed literally over night. When a person out there fails, it can easily be swept under the carpet or forgotten within days.
This professional class of Christians troubles me because it fosters the idea that to participate in missions means doing what the guy up front does. It means going back to school, selling it all and becoming an itinerant preacher. I’ve actually had someone say that to me. Yet if this were true, the church would be made up of people who were simply talking instead of listening.
But as I look as the Jesus model, he began with the un-professional. He assumed the people could become like him. He worked with a small group of people culturally unqualified for the role and stayed with them continually over three years. He modeled the Way of grace and love and trust, and invited them to follow it too. And then he released them as elders, as someone who could then teach others in the Way. There were no degrees, no guy up front, no dichotomy. The assumption was that anyone could participate in the Kingdom.
Which brings me back to my friend. What is funny is that when we’re really honest with each other, he sometimes wonder if he’s even cut out for the label. Most of his friends from seminary have quit or moved on to “other” professions. He periodically ruminates on the idea that he’s slowly killing himself in the process of holding on. Being up front has created an expectation that is virtually impossible to fulfill. And the harder he tries the heavier the expectation becomes.
What if the problem is not the Gospel, or the message, or the Kingdom of God, but the structures we have created to communicate them? Truth is, we like to insert stuff into what God is doing. We like to take God’s image and fashion it after ourselves. And what we end up with is a structure that cripples us in the process. And all the while God stands back and just laughs, thinking, “You don’t have to live like this.”
What if we found the courage to simply follow Jesus and do it His way? What if we took the risk to return to an elder led, discipleship oriented structure that fostered community, spiritual formation in a tight knit group, and focused on living out the Way. What a concept right? Yet when the ecclesia engaged this process, it flourished.
I would suggest that one of the real significant changes over the next fifty years we will see is a move away from the professional Christian and to an elder led ecclesia. The professional will likely exist, but not as the dominant form of spiritual formation or even community. And when we do, it will release people to participate in the Kingdom.
