I’m trying to relearn how to pray. And one of the resources I’m using is Paul Miller’s A Praying Life. One particular sentence stuck out to me the other day:
“Except for Judas, the disciples are without pretense.”
Miller’s point is that the Lord wants us to relate to Him without pretense. But I got to thinking about the disciples and how they would just say things to the Lord that they were feeling. This is why we laugh at James and John when they talk about burning down a whole city just because they got spurned. Or Peter who says that Scripture doesn’t apply to him and no matter what he isn’t going to abandon the Lord, and then denies him in front of a servant girl. We don’t give these things a nervous giggle because they are funny. We laugh because they are us. We remember being without pretense as children. And I’m convinced that somewhere in our muddied hearts we long to have that vulnerability again.
I thought about Judas too. I thought about his suggestion that they should have sold that ladies perfume and given it to the poor, but really his heart was seeing dollar signs after he took his greedy cut. That’s pretense—trying to make something that isn’t the case appear to be true.
Can We Do Ministry Without Pretense?
Paul Miller is correct, our relationship with the Lord should be without pretense. But why in the world does it feel like if you want to survive in pastoral ministry you’d better develop skills in pretense? Maybe it’s just my own spin on things, but it seems to me that a ton of ministry books/blogs advice is more like Judas’ speech and less like the disciples. Let me explain…
Last week Thom Rainer listed ten common sentiments pastors wish they could express. I found myself nodding to almost every one of those. But why are these sentiments that pastors wish they could express? I think part of it is because we have been trained that if we want to see change and growth and such happen in our church then we can’t be completely forthright.
We know that if we stand before our congregation and say, “I’m so tired of attending mundane meetings” that such a confession will be costly. Costly doesn’t necessarily mean that folks will respond poorly, it just means that such a statement will inevitably create a withdraw out of our relational equity account. And so rather than simply saying, without pretense, “we should stop having mundane meetings”, the pastor has to work the system to create institutional change.
My friend, Dave Miller, explains it this way:
There is, in every church a Pastor’s Authority and Credibility Bank which contains the capital the pastor needs to lead the church – his pastoral authority, his credibility as a leader, his job security and his ability to cast a vision and set the direction of the church. Every day of his ministry the pastor makes deposits and withdrawals from the bank. The key to effective ministry is for the pastor to regularly and consistently make more deposits than he does withdrawals! (In essence, that is just another way of saying he is there to serve, not to be served.)
I agree with Dave that this exists, but I think it’s problematic. It just is. But I wish it wasn’t so, because this is why we feel like we cannot minister without pretense. We expend all of our energy trying to please people and keep those withdraws at a minimum and deposits at a maximum so that we can be about the Lord’s work. And it’s very easy in these times to walk in pretense and call it “wisdom”. We realize we cannot really please everyone but maybe we can keep the damage to a minimum. A good minister, I’ve been told, will lead the congregation in such a way that they think his ideas are their ideas. (That doesn’t seem very authentic, does it?)
When all this happens we lose our center. We become more like pagan priests than gospel ministers. When we “fall prey to those insecure moments when we allow the approval and disdain of our congregations to define us” our goals for ministry change. It becomes less about the gospel and more about “making people happy or avoiding their wrath”. This is why David Rohrer calls us people-pleasing pastors “pagan priests”, because “our primary ministry ministry becomes making sacrifices to the gods of our congregation that either beseech their approval or divert their anger”. (Rohrer, 72)
It feels like we cannot do ministry without pretense. But we must…
Conclusion:
Pretense doesn’t mean that you say everything that is on your mind. There is wisdom in being patient and plodding. But there is also a type of “wisdom” that is more serpentine than faithful. Pastors shouldn’t be manipulative or underhanded in our attempts to cast vision within the church. We should be able to say, straight-faced, with Paul:
“we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” –2 Corinthians 4:2
It’s risky to minister without pretense. But we have this ministry by the mercy of God and so we labor in that knowledge. Is ministry without pretense possible? I sure hope so. I can’t imagine that God would call us to be and act with our congregation in a way that is not consistent with how we are to relate to Him.
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