Engaging Pastors

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At the Engaging Pastors Summative Conference this past week we began an interesting discussion of Learning 2: "There is an urgent need and opportunity for pastoral, biblical and teaching authority to be strengthened in the Mennonite church." The Summative Conference Listening Committee reported that this particular learning took us "to the land where wild things are."

The wording of the learning was deemed problematic. There was a general sense of ambiguity about what is being asserted here, and a lot of ambivalence about the notion of authority itself. There were many "yes, but" comments made in the various working groups.  We need, the committee said, more clarity about what authority means (what it authorizes one to do, to say, to be), and what it does not mean (what it does not authorize).

As someone who helped identify and craft the language of the learnings I found myself wondering if inserting two additional words might have been helpful. What if we had said, "There is an urgent need and opportunity for understandings of pastoral, biblical and teaching authority to be strengthened in the Mennonite church"? During Summative Conference discussions I found myself wanting to explain that by "authority" we didn't mean "authoritarianism" and that by "strengthening authority" we didn't mean moving people further up the ladder of autocratic rule. I wonder if this notion of the importance of strengthening our understandings of pastoral, biblical and teaching authority might not be closer to the sense of what these working group conversations uncovered, as well as perhaps truer to the experiences of those who participated in Engaging Pastors projects along the way.

The Listening Committee concluded that it may be that engagement with this particular learning has the most potential for substantive change to the Mennonite church. The other two Engaging Pastors learnings relate to structural change, but this one goes "to the heart of the matter," they said. Ultimately the committee called for more teaching about leadership and authority--a call I want to second with the proposed re-wording of this learning.

Jewel Gingerich Longenecker

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Reflections on theme 3

Exhortation is never sufficient. Every parent has learned this. What children, the first time you told them to go clean their rooms, just up and did it--and did a good job?

 

First, they had to realize that it was a problem if they couldn't walk through the room without stepping on toys. Legos in the night, on the floor--pain is a motivator! Next, they needed to be convinced that their participation in cleaning their room was a good idea. Then, they had to be trained in how to clean their rooms and learn what all was included. "We'll put all the books on the shelf, and the stuffed animals over here." Then, they needed opportunities to practice their skills, try out new ways of doing things, and get better at cleaning their rooms. "I can pick up the Legos faster if I push the Lego bin around the room rather than carrying each Lego separately over to the bin on the shelf." Finally, it helped if someone was there to do it with them. It was harder to drift into some alternative activity if others were there working--and cleaning the room could be fun if you did it together!

Learning how to be a missional church has some parallels with learning how to clean your room.

 

Realizing there is a problem

In change theory, this first stage is sometimes called "building awareness." Many pastors and professors have already realized that the church is not in Christendom any more, and that Christendom was not such a good idea in the first place. There have been study guides and books on missional church. Many people see that the same social and cultural analysis that missionaries have used overseas can be applied to North American cultures.

Becoming convinced that missional church is a good idea

Many parts of the Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA have become convinced of missional theology. But this is where the process gets stuck if congregations do not have any training in how to become missional.

Training

This is what many churches are ready for. They want to be equipped in discerning their congregation's missional vocation, understanding their contexts, communicating their faith, etc. Church and seminary need to develop intentional training programs that go beyond mere exhortation to learning new skills, habits, and attitudes.

Practicing and trying it out

The next step in the process involves opportunities to experiment with ways of being a missional church. This includes giving ourselves permission to let some experiments fail; we learn from failures as well as successes.

Working together

In the early 1990s, Mennonites participated in the Living in Faithful Evangelism (LIFE) process. An important reason why many congregations discovered new ways of being church was that they were going through the process along with other congregations in their area conference. There were companions on the journey who provided understanding, accountability, and joy. The current process in reading and engaging our missional contexts will necessarily involve having companions. Part of the task of the broader church--churchwide agencies, area conferences/regional churches, and seminaries--is to develop the common processes that make it possible for missional change to happen--with joy!

Lois Barrett

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A response to Joel Miller's reflections on theme 3

The most important part of Joel's story is that he and his wife moved into the neighborhood. They wanted to be bodily present to the people around the church. Everything else flows from presence; for missional leaders the act of solidarity always comes first. If Jesus is our model for God's mission, then we see that God's love is solidarity--being with another and sharing a common life. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us.

When he hears news of violence, Joel digs deeper into the neighborhood. He organizes spaces for grieving and prayer. These spaces offer the opportunity for solidarity, for strangers to hold hands, for neighbors to share tears--an opportunity for the formation of a new communion. Anything can happen when people hold hands and open themselves to God through prayer.

Sure, seminary probably taught Joel some stuff about prayer, about how to read the Bible, and about the doctrine of the Incarnation. But Joel points to a specific skill he learned at seminary that shapes how he does ministry. He learned how to be a careful and observant reader. Seminary taught him the hermeneutics of attentive patience--to joyfully receive the gifts before our eyes that we haven't yet been able to see. If this is a foundation for ministry, then we discover that leadership is about letting God impregnate us with the world so that good news may be born in our midst. Leaders are people like Joel who wait and watch and listen for what God wants to happen. In this sense, leaders are fundamentally followers--awaiting God's beckoning voice. Then leaders become mothers whose labor receives God's life as a new creation is born.

Ella Baker was a leader who took seriously the call to mother forth a movement of love; she is our model for leaders as mothers. Baker was one of the ordinary leaders of the Civil Rights movement. She and a host of other African-American churchwomen created the network of communities that gave Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a movement to talk about. The church folk of Littleton, N.C., showed Baker how to make room for God's loving solidarity to transform life. The church created a matrix of mutual care where people in the community fed one another, shared farming tools, and raised each other's kids. From these common folk Baker learned the essential wisdom of community organizing: "it all boils down to human relationships," she said, "whether there shall be a we." Leadership, for Baker, is all about how folks facilitate the formation of a new "we," a new communion. Leaders are agents whose labor mothers forth a new body, a new people, reunited flesh. To serve as a leading mother requires patient attentiveness, to be present in body and spirit. Baker's ministry consisted of walking the neighborhoods and talking to anyone she came across; she excelled in "the fine art of strolling," as Joanne Grant put it (see Ella Baker: Freedom Bound). This mothering-love communicates the good news through an act of solidarity. As Baker said, this love speaks through us and says to another, "I am going to sit beside you." That's how missional communion begins.

Joel, it seems to me, may be this kind of mothering leader--or at least he's laboring to be one. From what I hear, it sounds as if becoming a mother isn't something you can entirely prepare for. Pregnancy always comes as a surprise; and nothing can quite prepare you for the feeling of a wonderful bundle of life growing inside. Seminaries can never fully prepare leaders to be mothers of God's grace in their communities. Maybe the most important work seminaries do is to teach the stories of those who have already mothered good news. While no pregnancy and birth is exactly the same, it's helpful to hear about another's travail. Maybe seminaries can be places where future missional mothers learn stories from across time and geography--from the 8th and 13th centuries, and from the Ukraine and Saskatoon, for example. As Jim McClendon said, biography is the best kind of theology.

Yet no amount of education can make you pregnant. That only happens to those who receive God's Word from the streets as the Spirit overshadows the neighborhood. Leaders are mothers who gather people to pray, like Joel did, with Mary as our model mother: Let it be with us according to your word (Lk 1:38).

God speaks with local accents, in the needs and wisdom of neighbors and strangers. As Ella Baker would say to new community organizers, "You've got your education, now sit and learn."

Issac Villegas

(Everything I say about Ella Baker comes from Romand Coles: see chapter 3 of his book with Stanley Hauerwas, Christianity, Democracy and the Radical Ordinary).

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Reflections on theme 3

Like other recent seminary graduates, my first weeks and months of pastoring involved becoming oriented to the life of my congregation as well as entering into the role and responsibilities of the office of pastor; in my case, as a solo pastor. I settled into the routine of weekly study and sermon preparation. I visited homes and, occasionally, a hospital. I attended committee and church council meetings. I participated in ongoing mission work -- such as the twice monthly "Community Meal" our congregation serves in our church basement to those in the neighborhood. I prayed with and for people. For all these activities I felt relatively well-prepared. I felt my studies at AMBS gave me a solid foundation of theological and biblical knowledge, helpful ministry tools for going about this work, as well as confidence for finding the necessary resources to address various situations. For this I am grateful.

One event for which I did not feel well-prepared, however, occurred within several weeks of my beginning pastoral ministry: a teenage boy was shot and killed a block from our church building. I brought with me a high value on missional leadership and the church being a loving presence in its host neighborhood. One of the reasons my wife and I bought a house on the same block as the church was because we desired to build relationships with our neighbors and be present in the community.

However, when the murder happened I was unsure how to respond. I barely knew anyone on the block and was unfamiliar with organizations in the city who may address this. Our response as a congregation was to mention this in our prayers of the people during Sunday worship, and to have some informal conversation about how to be a more active presence in the neighborhood.

For me, the incident helped highlight one of my desires for ministry -- that a pastor be not only a congregational leader, but also a community leader -- that the wellbeing of the church and the wellbeing of the wider community are inseparably linked, and that pastors are a significant touching point in that dynamic relationship. I have much to learn in both areas, but I feel less equipped in the area of being a community leader.

During my time at AMBS I feel I received the best training for this while taking classes through the SCUPE program (Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Ministry) in Chicago. These classes focused on the intersection of theology and urban ministry, using the city of Chicago as a laboratory for learning and practicing contextualized ministry. While significant, these classes were a small percentage of, and disconnected from (geographically, relationally), the overall seminary experience.

Whether we call this being a missional leader, or use Jeremiah's phrase of "seeking the shalom of the city" (or countryside), or whether we think in terms of faith based community development, I have felt a disconnect between what I value in theory, and the knowledge/skill base I have for carrying this out. And from the sounds of what has been heard from the Engaging Pastors project, I am not alone.

Much of this, I recognize, is and must be learned as on-the-job-training. Now in my third year of ministry, I am thankful for the ways my setting, the city of Cincinnati, has provided opportunities for developing these skills. I have worked at building relationships with other pastors who are involved in community leadership, I have become more aware of the many organizations doing good work throughout the city, including ways that members of our congregation are well connected to these organizations, and I have participated in some of the educational forums in our city.

Sadly, there was another murder near our church earlier this year. This time I felt better prepared and better relationally connected to initiate a prayer vigil outside the home of the victim: asking neighbors to attend, being in touch with the police, contacting a local non-profit organization that has responded to murders in the past, and inviting local pastors to participate. It was not a massive response -- there were 20-25 of us offering prayers and trying to keep our candles from being blown out by the cold January wind -- but it was an important statement to the community about the church's ministry of reconciliation. So there's growth in this area. And there is still a long way to go.

One of the skills I most value from AMBS is that I was taught to be a careful, observant reader of text. Professors modeled and conveyed the importance of treating a text with respect and patience -- parsing content, paying attention to how one part relates to another, looking for how structure shapes meaning, becoming sensitive to nuances which help inform interpretation. I believe being a community leader means that these same kind of skills need to be applied to reading one's social context -- parsing the word and the world, paying attention to the scripture and the street. And then, allowing our reading, our renewed eyes, to shape our practices, our renewed energy, conviction, and mission.

We are doing this in the Mennonite Church, but there are many possibilities for growth. Whether this happens at the seminary, denominational, conference, or congregational/level I'm not sure. Probably a combination of all those. It's an area where we would benefit from more discussion and more experimentation. Can Elkhart be more intentionally approached as a learning lab for students and more community partnerships developed? Can congregations around the country who are doing this well provide internships for ministry students looking for this kind of training? How can we continue to make our practice of our theology ecclesial and public? These are a few of my ongoing questions.

Joel Miller

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A response to Jennifer Davis Sensenig's reflections on theme 2.

The woman in the Bible study reminds me of Bishop N.T. Wright's essay, "How can the Bible be Authoritative?"

I am saying that we mustn't belittle scripture by bringing the world's models of authority into it.  We must let scripture be itself, and that is a hard task.  Scripture contains many things that I don't know, and that you don't know; many things we are waiting to discover; passages which are lying dormant waiting for us to dig them out.  Awaken them..... I suggest that our task is to seize this privilege with both hands, and use it to the glory of God and the redemption of the world.¹

Wright posits true Biblical Authority is not about exercising control, but rather liberating us "to judge and condemn evil and sin in the world in order to set people free to be fully human."  Isn't this our core longing, but far from what we often experience?

Also a recent Anabaptist convert, I was attracted by our historical emphasis on communal discernment of Scriptures. I believe a call for pastoral, biblical and teaching authority must involve saying, "It's okay to wrestle with Scripture, it can handle our questions." So, Jennifer, I'd like to speak to your struggle illustrated by your four "I feel" statements.

A favorite text is Genesis 32, where Jacob wrestles with the Angel and walks away with a new name, a blessing, and a limp.  As I child of God, I too wear the name "One Who Struggles With God," a reminder that an encounter with the Living Word is not without personal cost. I too struggle upon a muddy riverbank. Sometimes, I am given a glimpse of God's face and greet the rising sun holding a blessing.

This struggle appears in Matthew 18:19-20 when Christ says, "Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them'."  The Mishnah says something similar:

When two sit together, and the words of Torah pass between them, the Divine Presence rests between them, as it is written (Mal. 3:16) 'Then those who revered the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord took note and listened and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the Lord and thought on his name (Pirkei Avot 3:3).'

Agreeing takes work. When rabbis say, "the words of the Torah pass between them" or Christ says, "if two of you agree," this isn't passive receptivity or combative argument, this is active yielding to "the Spirit's agenda in Scripture" through communal discernment.


I offer an illustration from former vampire lit author, Anne Rice. In her research, she had been struck by the unusually deep emotions surrounding Biblical scholarship. Curious, she began to read the Bible.

"Something has happened to me in the study of these documents. I find them inexhaustible in a rather mysterious way.  I'm at a loss to explain the manner in which every new examination of the text produces some fresh insight, some new cascade of connections, some astonishing link to another part of the canon, or to the Old Testament backdrop which enfolds the whole...."

Picking up the Gospel on any given morning is picking up a brand new book. There is something so explosive about this body of work that it not only dwarfs the fragile assumptions of the skeptics, it dissolves them to nothingness. And at times, I have the feeling that I will die, with my face down in one of these books, on the verge of some new and momentous question or insight. In sum, there's no visible bottom to this well of meaning. It's unlike my experience with any other written text."² 

She admits she still struggles to reconcile personal views with traditional teachings, but she has committed to yielding to Christ and the Holy Spirit.


What if church leaders testify of their own Living Word encounter and say, "Here am I Lord, teach and send me." I'm convinced through real wrestling with the Word, one is able to authoritatively "proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:18-19)."

Tyler Hartford

¹This essay was expanded into a 2005 book called  The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God -Getting Beyond the Bible Wars.
²From her autobiography, Called Out of Darkness.

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Reflections on theme 2

A woman from the Bible study group told me that she appreciated that I "let the Bible speak" and that I "got out of the way." By God's grace, we all have good days.

As a Bible teacher I feel pressure to be relevant, wise, humorous, brief, prophetic, pastoral, Christ-centered. As a preacher in Mennonite Church USA I feel some responsibility to inspire the next generation of leaders, tell the story of Anabaptist heritage, claim our unity with faithful Christians beyond our tradition, and dissent from imperial religion as it is expressed in North American society. As a woman serving in a lead pastor role, I feel an obligation to express the fundamentally liberating news of Jesus, prove that I'm 'worth the risk' that churches take in calling women, and use my power on behalf of others in solidarity with the oppressed and the lost. As a Mennonite who did not grow up in this tradition I feel a desire to distinguish Menno culture from Christian identity, affirm the tradition and institutions that have shaped the church who welcomed me, and make a way for those who are coming from a variety of histories to share their gifts and build up the church in new ways in the 21st century.

So it is with trembling that I turn to the Bible. What if, in light of the aforementioned concerns, the ol' Word is inadequate? Admitting this question in my gut, I'm learning to yield my agenda to that set by the Holy Spirit in Scripture.

The Anabaptists of the 16th century had a word that attracted me when first I heard it: Gelassenheit. Gelassenheit -- yieldedness -- is essential for establishing trustworthy authority in the church. This yieldedness is not milk-toast self-deprecation or false humility. Our churches and our neighbors don't need any more of that. Gelassenheit is being yielded to the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, releasing one's own kingdom in order to receive the kingdom of God -- for which we pray -- and deliberately trusting Jesus as the only legitimate source for our authority as leaders.

When the Holy Spirit is working through the church and new believers are being added day by day, there are usually a lot of collaborators. We who are leaders in the church must be committed to collaborating with the Holy Spirit. Thus, one of my commitments is to keep biblical work at the center of my ministry, because it is in scripture that we discover the Spirit's agenda.

I believe it will be a good day in Mennonite Church USA when authority is characterized by the patient love and spiritual boldness that caused Jesus to announce and live the kingdom agenda. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor."

My sense of pastoral and teaching authority is not something that I wrapped up in year three of an M.Div. But a regular practice of seeking the Spirit's agenda in scripture has been the best way I've found to build on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Jennifer Davis Sensenig

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A Response to Jerry Buhler's reflections on theme 1

Professors are an integral component in the formation of a pastor; their questions, challenges, and affirmations were a crucial component in my accepting the call to becoming a pastor.

And then I entered the world of the congregation, far away from the teal-carpeted halls of AMBS and the professors' doors I knew I could knock on, and I encountered a multitude of responsibilities and some thorny situations, along with people I was coming to love.  Fortunately, I was connected to a mentor through my conference who offered invaluable advice, but there were times I wished for conversations with the community that had formed and sent me.

When I participated in Engaging Pastors events, I soon learned I wasn't the only one who appreciated time to reconnect. And while the content of discussions we pastors might want to have with professors will change over the years, the desire for those discussions continues.

Jerry noted that pastors have to navigate a wide range of attitudes from congregants towards academics. It's a hypothetical issue for a student, but once you're in a congregation you find the issue does require finesse and careful thinking. My congregation includes both people who are enthusiastic about James Dobson and others who appreciate the work of Marcus Borg - and people at all places in between - so navigating these contexts is not straightforward.

One place we could enrich the conversation between the seminary and pastors is at church conferences. At the recent MC Canada conference we received an update about activities at AMBS over an evening meal. It was informative, but most of the info could have been found at AMBS' website. What might it look like, instead, to structure conversations that would be helpful to both pastors & professors? It would probably take more time than available over supper, but since we're already gathered, it'd be an ideal time to have deeper conversations.

Myrna Miller Dyck

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Reflections on theme 1

As a matter of course, pastors are inescapably positioned in places where they interpret to their congregations material from Scripture, literature, culture, media, etc. This often necessitates the integrating of multiple disciplines, which requires a pastor to be well grounded in theology and able to demonstrate some degree of adeptness at communicating with academic language.

It is crucial that there be a strong academic connection that ensures a certain level of integrity, and for pastors, the seminary personnel are the obvious connection.
 
Increasingly pastors possess substantial academic background and experience, and find it essential to stay updated with current scholarship and practice.

Also, pastors need to navigate contexts where sentiments range from a disregard for biblical academia because the Bible is "simple enough for all to understand," to a heavy reliance on formal training. There still exists among church adherents a suspicion of higher theological learning. There also exists a full embrace of scholarship as directive and authoritative.  

As a student at AMBS I was moved by the profound commitment to the church that was evident among faculty and staff. This perception was confirmed and deepened during my experience with Engaging Pastors. Clearly the faculty feel the importance of staying intimately in touch with the church for the purpose of developing relevant course content. Beyond that, they recognize the ecclesiological value of the seminaries in terms of formation and resourcing, and the interdependence of the two bodies. My observation was that this commitment is authentic.

Functionally, it is sensible for school administrators and conference ministers to have ongoing structures of interaction that allow some consistency in the process of formation and selection of pastors. It is also important for pastors and professors to have occasion to communicate for mutual benefit. Pastors would find it helpful to have some sort of immediate access to scholars when faced with specific questions and dilemmas, even if as simple as approved permission to e-mail inquiries, etc.

Certain existing events could easily be slightly modified to accommodate the gathering of teachers and preachers. These might include events such as Pastors Week at AMBS, annual assemblies of delegate bodies, and other conference and course settings.

Jerry Buhler