The Crucifixion of Ministry
By Andrew Purves
Editor’s Note: The United Church of Canada, like many
denominations, is beginning to respond to the alarming increase in clergy
dissatisfaction, stress and burn-out. This article frames the question of the
“value” of ministry in theological terms.
Varieties of Christological reductionism
If Jesus is understood to be a continuing
moral influence, but nothing more, then everything in faith, life and ministry
is now up to us to actualize and achieve. Jesus, in fact, becomes more or less
powerless, with no continuing ministry. He has become abstract and theoretical;
he is an idea which we have to enflesh as best we can to make him and his cause
actual. We have to incarnate him in order to make him effective. Having given
us the moral code and the ministerial imperatives, he now sits on the sidelines
of the cosmos, arms folded, as it were, waiting for us to do something, even
though he might cheer us on when we do well. A cheerleader Christ is the best
we can hope for. But he is not involved in the "game." This is the
devastating consequence for ministry of reductionism in Christology. And it is
a tragic recipe for a ministerial experience that is now inevitably located
between guilt and burnout. We labor under the weight of the ministerial
imperative: do it. But we soon discover we can't do it at all.
Get Jesus wrong by consigning him to be only
metaphorically alive as a continuing moral influence and what is left is an
experience in ministry of which many of us are all too familiar: depression,
guilt, and exhaustion. We get trapped into the grind of thinking that it's all
up to us. The prospect is daunting, to say the least.
Alternatively, Jesus is God active in the
life of the world, in our personal lives, and in ministry at every turn. The
problem is, rarely do we think radically enough concerning Jesus. We have him
tamed, boxed, and safe. But as he is the living and reigning Lord, the question
now becomes: What is he up to and how do I get in on whatever it is that he is
up to? The answer is twofold: the classical doctrines of the vicarious humanity
(and ministry) of Christ and our participation in Christ through the bond of
the Holy Spirit. Everything is cast back on to him, on to God who is present
for us by the Spirit in, through, and as Jesus Christ, yesterday, today, and
for ever. In this case, because ministry is what he does, ministry is properly
understood as gospel rather than law, as grace rather than as obligation.
Letting Jesus “crucify” our ministries
The first and central question in thinking
about ministry is this: What is Jesus up to? That leads to the second question:
How do we get "in" on Jesus' ministry, on what he's up to? The issue
is not: How does Jesus get "in" on our ministries?
This is my way of restating a very old
doctrine, thought to have been stated first by Ignatius of Antioch from the
period at the end of the first Christian century at the close of the apostolic
age: where Christ is, there is the church (ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia). Or
to put that in a way that mimics how Karl Barth once said it: it is not Jesus
Christ who needs our ministries; it is our ministries that need Jesus Christ.
So my dictum is: wherever Christ is present (real presence!) in ministry, there
my ministry may be found. This is the meaning for ministry of John 15:5,
"Apart from me you can do nothing."
Exploring these issues brings us to the
difficult awareness that our ministries must be displaced by the ministry of
Jesus. This is more than relinquishment, however. We must be bumped aside,
firmly, perhaps mortifyingly. For us, this means the death of our ministries.
The reason is that this displacement is not an invitation to let Jesus take
over by letting him "in" on our territory. Rather, this displacement has
the character of mortification; otherwise, most likely, we would never let go
of our grip on our ministries. What we think we should do, and can do, and in
fact do in ministry, is put to death. Why? Simply put: too often they are in
the way. Our ministries are not redemptive, even when conducted from the best
spiritual, therapeutic, and moral motives. Only the ministry of Jesus is
redemptive.
I am calling this process of displacement
"the crucifixion of ministry" in large measure because crucifixion carries
the notion of redemption in Christian thought. As the crucifixion of Jesus is
staggering good news of our salvation, now also the crucifixion of ministry by
the process of painful displacement by the ministry of Jesus, likewise, is
staggering good news- for us, the ministers, and for the people we minister
among. The crucifixion of ministry is the ground for the redemption of our
ministries, and for us, the ministers, the source of hope, joy, and peace in
our service.
None of this should come as a surprise:
Jesus, after all, told us to take up our cross daily-to die daily-and follow
him (Luke 9:23). Paul writes of being crucified with Christ (Galatians 2: 19).
Why would our ministries not be included in that crucifixion? The Christian
theology of baptism reminds us that as we have died with Christ, so also we
will be raised with Christ (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). The sum of all
Christian living is given for us by Paul at Colossians 3 :3-we have died, and
our life is hidden with Christ in God. No less so should we expect that our
ministries too should need to die, even to be killed, that they may be raised
with Christ.
The notion of the crucifixion of ministry
opens up the deep theological root of what ails us. One time, when speaking
about this at a conference, a minister approached me afterwards with the
observation, "You just nailed me!" (An evocative allusion, I think.)
I find, however, that seminarians rarely internalize and appropriate the lesson
of the crucifixion of ministry and the theology behind it. Perhaps we have to
be bashed about a bit in ministry before we are able to learn the lesson that
the crucifixion of ministry is God's gift. Also, I think that while the
theology of the vicarious humanity and ministry of Christ is not so difficult
to grasp at a cognitive level, it is difficult to internalize in such a way
that one's ministry is deeply and redemptively formed by it. For this to
happen, the truth of Christ in our stead must convert us in heart and mind, as
in pastoral practice. We have to move from thinking about our ministries - and
all the attendant concerns for strategies, programs, and processes that make
ministry ostensively more effective - and think rather of Christ's ministry in
our place, and what it means that we are connected to him and what it is that
he is up to. The form and content of ministry then takes an explicitly
Christological content and shape. And all this is hard for us because it means
that ministry is no longer about us and our skills. It is now about the real
presence of Jesus Christ, whenever and wherever in his gracious freedom and
love he is Emmanuel, God with us. It is the actuality of his ministry
that makes our ministry possible.
A story to make the point might be helpful
here. My wife is minister of a small, urban Presbyterian congregation in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was sitting with my adult children during a
moderately dull Christmas Eve service. The attendance was very poor for some
reason; the choir seemed a bit off and unenergetic; a couple of under-fives got
free from their parents right at the beginning of the sermon, and were noisily
roaming the pews - charming certainly, but it was hard to concentrate on what
my wife was saying.
As we reviewed the service later I confessed
to her that tonight I really struggled with my annoyance at small
congregations. I recall thinking, "I bet my friend Craig Barnes at
Shadyside is putting on a great show tonight." (Shadyside Presbyterian
Church is a fairly large and prosperous congregation in town. Dr. Craig Barnes
is the senior minister and a colleague on the faculty of Pittsburgh Theological
Seminary.) And then a truth dawned on me! I had spent part of the day writing
this, and, now, in the evening I had already forgotten what I had written. I
wanted excellence in musical and homiletical performance. My attitude had been
after the fashion: what will they do to give me a Christmas Eve spiritual high?
With a prideful sense of entitlement I was focused on the ministry of the
musicians and the preacher. With sadness, I realized later that I had not been
attending to what it was they were pointing to, namely, the ministry of God
with and for us, Emmanuel, whose birth we were there to celebrate, and who, in
the Spirit, was present there with us. The service was not about the choir's
performance, the quality of the sermon (which actually was very good), or the
meditative calm of the sanctuary. It was about what God was up to then...and
here, now...and I had missed it. I had, so to speak, been looking at the finger
rather than at what the finger was pointing to.
Pastoral
Depression
Experientially, what is happening to us, we
who are the ministers of Jesus Christ in the mainline Protestant churches? Many
of us are professionally, spiritually, and financially depressed. The figures
produced by the studies only serve to quantify what we may have bitterly
experienced for ourselves. Something is very wrong, and the costs-personal,
spiritual,' familial, and financial, as well as congregational-are terrifying.
For example, one respected study concluded that around forty percent of
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod clergy suffer from mild to severe burnout. There
is no reason to doubt that these figures render the experience across the
denominational spectrum. Our stress levels are at a medically significant
level, as various studies have recorded for a number of decades. In fact,
denominational health insurance agencies report that the medical costs for
clergy are higher than for any other professional group! Another report, a
summary of which was written by Michael Jinkins of Austen Theological Seminary,
and published by the respected Alban Institute in 2002, is poignantly entitled
"Great Expectations: Sobering Realities." Excessive demands on time,
conflicts within congregations and between ministers and members, loss of one's
personal spiritual life (the study discovered that of the sample group, 62% of
ministers have little spiritual life!), and loneliness, account for a deep
malaise within our professional and personal lives. Experience in ministry for
many of us is more or less contained in a category labeled "hell," at
least for much of the time.
Ministry has always been hard. Weariness is
par for the course. Spiritual embattlement is to be expected. We are not in it for
the money, and the social status of ministers now-a-days is mostly low and
likely to remain so. I am told that we rank somewhere just below a factory
foreman on some sociologist's ranking, which may not be so bad! But once-held
professional status on a par with the classical professions of law and medicine
is mostly long gone. We are tired, often over- worked, usually over-stressed
and under-paid, theologically confused and, dare I say, somewhat ill- educated
for the tasks before us, often bored, and probably guilty for feeling this way.
So: ministry has always been hard, but now for many of us it feels just a lot
harder. Whatever the reasons, in some denominations, around one third of
ordinands leave the ministry after five years, never to return. It's that bad!
Still, many of us nevertheless continue to drag ourselves out of bed in the
morning and labor on.
While I recognize the danger of sweeping
generalizations, it would appear that something has gone very wrong with regard
to the education, nurture, and employment expectations of ministers. And heaven
knows, those of us in theological education go round and round on what to do.
We hear the pain stories term in and term out from our Doctor of Ministry
students. Candor insists that we have been and are part of the problem, just as
we must be part of the solution. It will be no surprise to those who know of me
and my writing that I believe that a broadly liberal theology, and especially a
dilution of classical Christology and the attenuation of interest in the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity, have produced a couple of generations of
ministers with a theology that seems to have failed at the congregational
level. The theologians in mainline seminaries have too often bitten the bait of
accommodation to what Enlightenment philosophies have said we could or could
not believe. As the Enlightenment project is now in serious, hopefully
terminal, decline, the theological generations who hitched their wagons to its
engine are now in disarray. Reductionism in theology, we are discovering-
reducing God to fit modem, predetermined human categories of experience-does
not grow congregations or lead to fulfillment in ministry.
And that's where I come in to tell you what
you already most likely know and prayerfully hope to be true: "Jesus is
the answer." The bumper sticker had it right. I believe that the answer to
our malaise and disappointments in ministry is theological. It has to do with
God, and how we connect to whatever it is that God is up to. But it is theological
in a particular way. My concern is not with complex concepts and arguments, but
with the practice of God and our sharing in it.
Ministry – Where Christ is
In summary fashion this is the argument. 1.
The ministry of Jesus is the ministry of God. That, at the end of the day, is
what most of our creedal and confessional language concerning Jesus Christ is
about. 2. Jesus' ministry is at once historical, present, and future. It is not
just a past influence reaching into the present. 3. By sharing in the life of
Jesus (the doctrine of our union with Christ, which is the principal work of
the Holy Spirit), we thereby share in his, that is, God's, continuing ministry.
In other words, it is he, not we, who primarily "do" ministry; and by
the gift of the Spirit we are joined to him to share thereby in his life, and
thus, in his ministry in some regard. Wherever Christ is, there is the church
and ministry.
Ministry kills us, not least with regard to
our ego needs, desire for power and success, and an enduring wish to feel
competent and in control. It does not take us long to discover that we cannot
heal the sick, raise the dead, calm the demonized, guide the morally afflicted,
sober up the alcoholic, make loving the abusive, calm the anxious, pacify the
conflicted, control the intemperate, have answers to all the "Why?"
questions, give the teenagers a moral compass, and so on, and all the while
grow the congregation and keep the members happy. We preach and teach, do the
round of pastoral visitations, and administer the congregation's life, while
the sore heads more often than not remain sore headed, the stubborn remain
stubborn, the quarrelsome remain quarrelsome, and the stupid seem to get no
wiser. Meanwhile people continue to die.
Crucifixion
precedes Resurrection
I suspect that there are two major
crucifixions or seasons of dying in ministry. The first, as I noted briefly,
happens early on, as the studies now show. After seven years in higher
education, the great expectations of service in the Lord's vineyard after a few
years turn often to sad and angry disappointments. About one third of those in
early ministry leave, never to return. This is a major death, full of deep
disenchantment and at times embittered recriminations. It is a personal,
fiscal, and ecclesiastical disaster.
The second crucifixion is more subtle, less
dramatic, and it probably moves in on us more slowly that the rapid, stunning
disillusionment that characterizes the first crucifixion. But it is more
profound, and in its way more deadly. But once endured and understood for what
it is that is happening to us, it may usher in a deep, that is, resurrected,
theological conversion that really makes ministry possible for the first time.
It is now the deep death, if I may speak that way, of our ministries. I suspect
there are no surveys to consult here, and the time-frame is likely different in
each case. I am doubtful that it is reducible to a paradigm of death and dying.
There are no Kübler-Ross-like category equivalents. My impressions of the
general characteristics, however, go something like this: the first crucifixion
survived (that's a curious notion!), our minister begins to realize that some
serious skill learning beyond what the seminary offered first time around is
now urgently required. It may take the form of a Doctor of Ministry degree:
peer learning, theological retooling, and skill enhancing. Some of us travel
for a while in the rich pastures of spiritual renewal. We become Merton
groupies, walk the labyrinth for a season, and light candles in midweek Taize
services-and all, let's be clear, to our spiritual good. It is likely, too,
that we may begin to make our way along the career track. Workshops,
conferences, seminars are grist to the surviving minister's professional mill.
Then somewhere along the way - ten, fifteen,
twenty years out, who knows when, or what events precipitate the process - a
terrible awareness may begin to dawn on us. Now the hurt is deeper than before,
because it goes all the way down to the core of our being. It is a theological
crisis, for that's its real nature. I can't do this. I can't convert them. I
can't heal them. I can't give them hope, or make them happy, or pray like
Peter, or preach like Paul. I can barely understand the theology books anymore,
even when I carve out the time and energy to try to read them. My drawer full
of pastoral, homiletical, and administrative skills is impressive; and the
weight of experience is a great comfort to me, for I now know how to survive in
a parish. But something inside tells me that the whole ministry enterprise is
turning to sawdust. Inside I feel I can't bury any more babies, listen to any
more divorcing couples, conduct marriages for any more pregnant girls, listen
to any more tales of cancer diagnoses, conduct funerals for any more friends,
or preach the Beatitudes for the third time. And I have had too many arguments
over the color of church carpets, the brand of cookie for VBS, and bulletin
covers for Mother's Day. The yoke is too heavy and the burden is too great to
bear. Maybe, too, I discover that I am just plain bored.
Here's the issue: Does God show up any more?
Because if he doesn't, I can't carry the load, make the faith exciting, or meet
the siren calls for my attention any longer. My knees are buckling under the
weight of my obligations. My compassion recoils; it is killing me. And if God
does show up, do I have the theological and spiritual apparatus to understand
what is happening? If God does show up, what does that mean for what I am
supposed to do and say?
The Courage to be “crucified”
I think it takes great courage for the
seasoned minister to admit her second crucifixion. I suspect many of us don't.
It may get buried beneath ecclesiastical bonhomie. Outward good cheer masks the
inner death of compassion. Keeping busy, running what Eugene Peterson once
called "the shop," may usefully occupy our days. A Doctor of Ministry
class once insisted with me that more or less 90% of their time was taken up
with administration of one kind or another. What ever happened to Word and
sacraments, I wondered?
The darkness of Gethsemane is never welcomed.
Its nights are too long and fretful, its prayers are too hard, its waiting is
too lonely, and its tears are too stained with blood for a welcome. We stare
into the spiritual void, into the theological abyss; we discover the terror of
our personal tohu wabohu, and vaguely hope that the Spirit of God is
hovering over us. Indeed, it takes great spiritual, theological, and
professional courage to look this second crucifixion in the eye and name it for
what it is: this is the death of my ministry.
Henceforth, faithful ministry - that is,
God-glorifying, Spirit-empowered, world-transforming, and kingdom-announcing
ministry - is now only possible on some other basis. And this, most likely, is
a basis I dare to suspect that for many of us neither the seminary, nor the
purveyors of ministry skills, nor the demanding judicatory leaders have ever
told us they know anything about. This other basis to be worked out now is a
sharing in the continuing ministry of Jesus, for the church and her ministry
can only be found where Jesus has already showed up. He has to show up, carry
the load, and do the job of saving people, for I am no longer capable or
available. I have discovered a terrible, limiting truth about myself: I am not
the Messiah. I don't do salvation any more. As a minister, I am being
crucified; I am gone, out of the picture. The ministry of Jesus the Lord is
displacing me from the throne of my ministry, and in every meaningful sense it
is a death. Success is not a predicate that meaningfully follows crucifixion. I
am no longer Lord in my own house.
Whose Ministry is it?
Now there is a point to make here that is
very important and which deepens our understanding of what is really happening
to us. The problem is precisely our ministries, as if we own them, as if
they are all about us. Let us not delude ourselves. We deeply invest in our own
success - certainly we might wrap it up in pious language to soften its pridefulness.
We wish after professional fulfillment. We enjoy the applause lines and the
warm affirmations when they come. We are human, after all. We are all, more or
less, co- dependent.
Thus far I have placed the weight on the side
of our experience of ministry, and looked at some of the consequences. Yet it
is a mistake to leave the impression that our ministries are crucified only by
the back-breaking burdens of responsibilities and obligations. Remember, the
Word of God is combative: it is a sword; Yahweh Sabaoth is Lord of Hosts,
commander of the heavenly army. God will not be timid about getting us out of
the way. So there is more to say: I believe it is now theologically necessary
to go beyond what I have already said, and to say now as clearly as I can that
when necessary, God kills our ministries. The problem is that we have
reversed the ancient axiom. In the practice of ministry it now becomes:
wherever my ministry is, there is Christ and the church.
If we are in some measure not very successful
in ministry (however that is measured), God doesn't have too hard a time
getting us out of the way. In fact, it may be a great relief when God brings us
to the ministerial Jordan: cross and let me do it, God in effect tells us; stay
here on this side and it's an early and resentful retirement. It may be that
the burdens of office are so heavy that we welcome with open arms being bumped
aside by Jesus. I suspect many of us find ourselves here.
If we aspire to be ministerial royalty,
however, the crucifixion by God may have to be much more brutal. (Amusing, I
think, that we speak of "pulpit princes," "cardinal
rectors," and the like.) Certainly some of us are upwardly mobile, moving
seamlessly from associateships in prosperous congregations, under the guiding mentorship
of able pastors, to solo pastorates and then to larger congregation head of
staff positions, where the cycle repeats itself. Those of us who are
"successful" ministers should be especially aware that the
mortification we should expect may be particularly cutting. We might be a long
time dying. The embedded pride and the myth of competence may be very deep. Too
easily we may have slipped into the business of purveying religious merchandise
to choosy consumers, with measurable productivity and identifiable success. Our
situation, in which case, is dire!
In either circumstance, whether we are
successful or not, or just somewhere in the middle, we get in the way. Whether
we minister with just some competence, or with a truck-load of competence, with
small success or with much public acclamation (and the salary to go with it),
we are brought by God to the point where our reliance on what we think we can
do is killed by God.
The second crucifixion means that we have a
chance of seeing, maybe for the first time, the glorious freedom of ministry in
terms of Galatians 2:20: /, yet not /, but Christ. Everything is
summed up here. Everything is now to be rebuilt on this foundation. This
is the hermeneutic of the gospel in every regard. Jesus Christ stands in for
us; as in faith, and worship, so now also in ministry, he does for us what we
cannot do for ourselves. We are bumped aside by God-with whatever forcefulness
is required-so that Jesus stands in our place, offering the worship,
discipleship, faith, and ministry that we thought we could offer, but in truth,
can't. As I said at the beginning, this displacement, this crucifixion of
ministry, is staggering good news. For ministry is now possible for us,
probably for the first time, as gospel.
The crucifixion of ministry is good news! 1.
Conceiving ministry as our ministry is the root problem of what ails us
in ministry today. 2. Ministry, rather, is to be understood as a sharing in the
continuing ministry of Jesus Christ, for wherever Christ is, there is the
church and her ministry. "[he effect is that our ministries are displaced
by Christ's ministry-thus the notion of the crucifixion of ministry. In more
formal terms, we need to recover the paramount significance of two weighty but
quite neglected doctrines: the vicarious humanity and ministry of Christ, and
our union with Christ. The Christian identity and the faithful practice of
ministry are not possible on any other terms.
This article is a slightly amended form of
"Introduction" to a book under contract with Intervarsity Press The
Crucifixion of Ministry, scheduled for publication late Summer 2007. It first
appeared in Theology Matters (A Publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and
Ministry) Volume 12, Number 5 (November-December, 2006)
and
is used by permission.
